Julie Walker: Born Wild

“Yeah, and I might be onboard with that except the part where this guy is an ex ,” he stressed the word, frowning, “FBI agent.”

Eve stepped in before the two of them could start slinging insults again. Grabbing her cousin’s arm, she looked up at him imploringly, “Please, Jeremy. You’ve done everything you know to do and—”

“I could try to talk to my captain again,” he interrupted. “I could—”

“Get yourself fired,” Eve said, shaking her head. “Your captain has had enough. He agrees with the fire department and the investigator on the case. There’s no evidence. You can’t keep harping on him. You can’t keep questioning his judgment. He’s the only true friend you’ve got down at that station. Believe me, you don’t want to mess with that.”

The fact that Jeremy had chosen to become a police officer when he’d inherited enough money to keep him footloose and fancy free for life had caused more than a few problems for him at work. Most cops, who struggled to get by from paycheck to paycheck, couldn’t understand why Jeremy chose to risk his life on the force every day instead of whiling away his hours on a beach. But Eve understood. A person needed a purpose, something worth waking up for every morning. And Jeremy’s purpose was to be a hero…

She watched his cheeks hollow and his chin twitch from side to side as he considered her words. Then he cursed, and she knew she’d won.

“Fine,” he grumbled. “I’ll go get them.”

“Thank you,” she whispered, going up on tiptoe to kiss his cheek, his expensive cologne tickling her nose. “And I’ll call you tomorrow to let you know how things are going.”

“You sure you want to do this?” he pressed, searching her face.

Um, no? She didn’t want to do any of it. What she wanted was a char-free condo and a Vespa that had brakes, but those two things were no longer options.

“I’ll be fine,” she assured him, avoiding his question. “I trust the Black Knights to keep me safe. Plus,” and she was going to go straight to hell for this lie, but she knew it would go a long way in easing her cousin’s misgivings, “Becky will there.”

A hint of relief flashed behind his eyes. “Okay,” he nodded. “But if things change, or if you catch too much flak from that one,” again he jerked his chin toward Billy, “then you call me.”

“I will.” She smiled, squeezing his arm and taking a deep breath before shouldering her purse and overnight bag.

A warm breeze wafted into the condo when Billy opened the balcony door, bringing with it the hot smell of summer, of fresh-cut grass, heavily blooming flowers, and steaming pavement. It ruffled Billy’s thick, dark hair like playful fingers. But somehow he still managed to pull off that whole mean and menacing thing. Which was good, she supposed. Because mean and menacing was exactly the kind of man she needed right now. And, perhaps, if she was honest with herself, it was the kind of man she’d needed all along. Or more specifically, he was the kind of man she’d needed all along. It crushed her to think about all she’d lost that night during her freshman year in college when she finally caved to her father’s wishes and agreed to go out with Robert Parish’s son, Blake.

One night out with the big-time land-developer’s pride-and-joy had changed her life. Forever…

“When we reach the street, I want you to stay behind me,” Billy murmured once she’d crossed the room to him, wrenching her from her unpleasant thoughts.

“Why?” When she glanced up into his hard, handsome face, she didn’t like what she saw there. She figured this was probably the expression he wore during those times he was knee-deep inside the wiry innards of an IED.

And, yes, it still blew her mind to know that Billy’d spent nearly a decade either making things go kaboom or disarming things that went kaboom .

Talk about having a set of brass balls. Geez Louise.

“There’s a car parked on the street out front,” he said, his voice disconcertingly calm, especially when compared to his I-eat-metal-shavings-for-lunch expression. “There’s someone in the front seat…watching this condo.” A chill snaked up her spine despite the heat of the day. “I can’t make out who it is. Jeremy,” he raised his voice when Jeremy reentered the room with a manila file folder tucked up under his arm, “you carrying?”

“Of course.” Her cousin jogged over to them, instantly on alert. See , they were so much alike. “What’s up?”

“See that black SUV parked across the street?”

“Yeah,” Jeremy nodded after craning his head through the open door. “What’s the score?”

The atmosphere was vibrating with masculine tension, and Eve fancied she could actually taste the testosterone hanging in the air like a mist.

“The score is someone’s real interested in this place, and I want to make sure whoever it is doesn’t get a shot at Eve,” Billy said. The last part of his sentence made her dizzy.

A shot at her…

He was afraid someone was out there ready to take a shot at her!

Holy crap , this was just too surreal. She’d never done anything to anyone. At least not something that would warrant an extra hole in her head. In fact, the only instance where she could recall being purposefully mean to someone was that time in kindergarten when she ripped up Curtis Forsythe’s Thanksgiving craft project—the turkey made from his handprint and construction paper—because he kept pulling her pigtails.

But, surely that wasn’t enough to deserve a bullet in the brain…

“Once we’re downstairs, we’re going to edge out the front door, keeping Eve behind us until we make the Hummer,” Billy instructed. “When we’re on our way, if that Chevy takes off after us, which I’m pretty sure it will, I want you to use your connections with the CPD to run the plates.”

“You don’t think it’d be better to leave Eve up here? Let you and me go down there and question this fucker?”

“Nope,” Billy shook his head, causing a dark brown lock to fall across his wide forehead.

And, great. Now was not the time to be thinking of how incredibly sexy he was, to be remembering what it felt like to run her fingers through his silky hair after it’d been warmed by the summer sun and tousled by a friendly breeze, but there you go. Because those were the exact thoughts scrolling through her head.

For Pete’s sake, Eve. Even after all the nasty things he’s said to you in the past year, you still get all gooey-bellied and jelly-kneed around him? What the heck is the matter with you?

She refused to contemplate the answer to that question. She had enough on her plate right now without dealing with her ever-present feelings for one William Wesley Reichert.

Case in point…“I want to find out who this is without them knowing we’re on to them,” Billy told Jeremy. “So we’re going to stroll out there, calm as you please, like you’re just seeing us out. Savvy?”

“Aye, aye, Captain,” Jeremy snorted, playing off Billy’s Jack Sparrow jargon as they turned for the door.

And, huzzah! Eve mentally patted herself on the back for picking up on that reference, because she wasn’t much of a moviegoer. As a girl, her father hadn’t liked the idea of her sitting in a darkened theater where anyone and everyone with an eye toward ransom could sneak up and grab her. And then, after she’d become an adult, a single adult, sitting alone in the gloom, eating too-salty popcorn while being surrounded by all those starry-eyed couples just reminded her of everything she’d lost when she’d lost Billy.