Strong Enough (Tall, Dark, and Dangerous #1)(10)

I was uptight yesterday. I’m sure he’s not nearly as heart-stopping as I thought he was. No man can be that gorgeous, that sexy, that intense.

I take a deep, cleansing breath and I swing open the door.

And realize how very, very wrong I am.

—

Standing on my stoop is a man that is quite possibly even more disturbingly handsome than he was yesterday. His arms are crossed over his broad chest, a casual gesture that belies an unmistakable impatience I feel rolling off him.

“Ready?” he asks in a no-nonsense way that fits him as perfectly as the lightweight black T-shirt he’s wearing. The long sleeves are pushed up his forearms, revealing golden skin, ropes of sleek muscle and thick, bulging veins. I’ve never wanted to stare at forearms before today.

I feel my frown appear again. I’m baffled that anything could distract me so much from my worries, yet it seems that every millisecond that I’m around Jasper, my focus is pulled inexorably in his direction. He fills my thoughts and warms my blood. I suppose I should be thankful for something to take my mind off my concerns, but Jasper is almost too consuming. If he affects me this way when I’ve got so much else to consider, God help me when I don’t.

“Hello?” he prompts, bending slightly to put his face in my line of sight.

I shake off my thrall. Or at least I try to. “Sorry. Yes, I’m ready.”

I roll my suitcase over the threshold and turn to lock the door behind me. “Got someone to feed your fish for a few days?”

“I don’t have fish.”

“Cat, then?”

“I don’t have a cat.”

“Then what kind of pet do you have? You look like a woman who likes animals.”

“I do?” I ask when I finally turn to face him, which is a mistake. Jasper’s heavy-lidded amber eyes are strolling down my body, studying me in such a way that I feel naked before him, like he’s peeling off clothes as he goes.

When they rise slowly back to my face, he answers. “You do. Like maybe you’d take in all the strays. Let them sleep in your warm bed.”

I steel myself against the little shiver that trembles through me at his words. The way he said “warm bed,” like he wants to be there, too . . . Holy Lord!

I swallow the cotton in my mouth and focus on his observation, which happens to be accurate. All but the bed part.

When I was younger, I’d beg the Colonel to let me keep every animal I stumbled across. He always agreed, but after a few weeks (or sometimes just a few days), they’d disappear and I’d never see them again. I’d search for days and days, hang fliers all over whichever base we were stationed at, but they never turned up. They were just . . . gone.

My father would console me, take me for ice cream, promise me that I’d forget about each one, but I never did. It wasn’t until I got older that I began to see a pattern. He never admitted it and I never asked, but I knew that the Colonel was doing something with them. It gives me a cold chill down my spine just to think about it, about what he might’ve done to all those sweet little animals that he didn’t want. I finally stopped bringing them home. I knew they’d have a better chance of survival if I didn’t, so I’d sneak off after school and on the weekends to feed them and play with them, wherever they happened to be holed up. It never stopped me from loving them or wanting to take them in. It only stopped me from letting it show.

“Well, I haven’t been here very long, and . . . and I’m not sure how long I’ll stay, so . . .”

“I would’ve taken you for the roots kind.”

“Most people are the roots kind, aren’t they?”

“Most,” he answers flatly.

I tilt my head to one side to consider him—the warm skin at home in the sun, the raven hair still wet from a shower, the whiskey eyes that seem both hot and cold all at once. “But not you.” It’s not a question. It’s an observation. One he doesn’t bother to refute. He only watches me quietly.

“We’d better get going,” he finally says. With that, he picks up my busting-at-the-seams suitcase like it’s light as air and starts off down the sidewalk, leaving me to follow in his mysterious wake.





SIX


Jasper

I’m comfortable in the quiet. In fact, I prefer it. I thought I’d made the rules of this road trip clear to Muse in advance.

Evidently I didn’t make them clear enough.

“So, how did you get started in this kind of work?” Muse asks after less than an hour in.

I shrug. “Just sort of fell into it, I guess.”

“How does one fall into bounty hunting?”

“If you have the right skill set . . .”

“And how did you come by the ‘right skill set’?”

I sigh. Loud enough for her to hear. “I thought you weren’t going to ask questions.”

“I thought you said not to ask questions about your methods. You didn’t say anything about asking questions about you.”

“I like the quiet,” I tell her. She takes the hint.

—

Two hours later, I can tell she’s about to bust. She has filed her nails, organized some sort of list on her phone, cleaned out her purse and turned the radio on at least twice. Each time, I’ve turned it off.