Chapter 2

She didn’t know Pierce Walker, but one thing she didn’t doubt? He intended to come after her.

“What the devil was that caveman bit about earlier?” Brea turned to Cutter in his big truck with a piqued glare. “You let everyone think I’m your girlfriend.”

He had the good grace to wince. “Mostly Walker. I was protecting you.”

“He was merely talking to me.”

“While he undressed you with his eyes. I told you, he’s no good.”

Brea didn’t understand. Nor did she feel like being the agreeable good girl she’d been her whole life. “He was perfectly pleasant until you confronted him.”

“Bre-bee, you don’t know him. I hate to be crass with you, but the man is only after you for a piece of ass. Besides being a lousy teammate, he’s a douchebag. And I’m using exceptionally nice language for your sake. He takes unnecessary chances on the job, he doesn’t listen to anyone, and he refuses to compromise.”

She slanted him a glance. “You’re no social butterfly yourself, and you’ve always been as stubborn as the day is long.”

“But I would never put myself—or others—in an unnecessarily risky situation because I was arrogant enough to presume I was right.”

“And he did?”

“He does it all the time.” Cutter gripped the wheel like the memories alone chapped his hide.

“Is he usually right?”

“That’s not the point—”

“Isn’t it? You’ve always said people should fight for what they believe in.”

“And they should. But how am I supposed to trust him as a teammate—with my life—when he won’t stick to the plan?” He sighed. “Brea, look…he’s not the marrying kind.”

They’d just met, and she wasn’t expecting a waltz down the aisle…but they had shared something—a moment—and she wasn’t ready to let go yet. “You know that for a fact?”

“Well, I doubt when I saw him at Crawfish and Corsets off Highway Ninety last weekend, coming out of the back room with one of the female bartenders while zipping up his jeans and wearing a smile, that they’d been swapping Bible stories.”

Brea swallowed down absurd jealousy she had no right to feel. “Cutter Edward Bryant, maybe you shouldn’t be casting stones. You haven’t been chaste your whole life, either.”

He squirmed in his seat. “But I have relationships. I usually date women for a while before we take that step. I don’t just nail random females in the back of a bar at one in the morning.”

“No?” She raised a brow. “What were you doing there, then?”

“The whole team had gathered to play pool. Zy beat the hell—I mean, the heck—out of almost everyone. Since Walker isn’t a team player, he decided to use his ‘stick’ for other activities.”

“Maybe he just hasn’t met the right woman yet.”

“Are you thinking that’s you?”

Cutter’s tone made her sound incredibly naive, and it pricked her temper. She crossed her arms over her chest stubbornly. “How do you know I’m not?”

He sighed, looking as if he mentally groped for his patience. “Bre-bee, I love you. No matter what our blood says, you’re my sister and I will protect you with my dying breath. If you want me to die early or go to prison for murder, you go ahead and take up with that man. Do you know he’s a killer?”

“What do you mean? You killed people in Afghanistan.”

“Combatants who wanted to end me simply because I was American. I wish I hadn’t been put in that position, and I didn’t relish a single one of their deaths. I’ll even admit I haven’t been without sin or blame since I went to work for EM. The job can force you to make snap judgments about whether or not the enemy feet away from you will really pull the trigger so you should pull yours first. I never do it without due consideration. But Walker? His sole job responsibility is to kill.”

That couldn’t be right. “What do you mean?”

Cutter nodded. “He’s a well-trained military assassin who wants everyone to call him One-Mile because that’s his way of bragging about his longest kill shot.”

The news hit her like a punch to the chest. Yes, Pierce Walker had reeked of danger, but Cutter made him sound like a cold-blooded murderer. “His actions are not for us to judge. That’s between him and God.”

“But you need to know the truth. When Walker is given a mark, he doesn’t ask questions. He doesn’t feel compunction or remorse. He doesn’t care about the blood on his hands, and if he touched you with them”—Cutter gripped the wheel so tightly his knuckles went white—“if he defiled you, I would have to kill him.”

“I’ve never known you to dislike someone so intensely.”

“That should tell you something.” He stopped at a light and turned to pin her with a stare. “Promise me you won’t ever tell him we’re not a couple. That would be like waving a red cape in a bull’s face. Promise me that when he comes sniffing around—and he will—that you’ll have nothing to do with him.”

Cutter’s demand came from a place of caring. As far as he was concerned, her father wasn’t worldly enough to protect her from men like Pierce Walker, so he would do it for Daddy. Brea wasn’t worldly, either. She knew that. The instant, blinding attraction she’d experienced with Cutter’s teammate had been unlike anything she’d ever felt. No wonder it had made her want him to be the right man for her.

But her feelings hardly meant he was.

“Brea, please,” he pressed. “Promise me.”

“All right.” Cutter was probably right, and she tried not to be disappointed. But she already suspected she’d never feel as alive again as she had those handful of minutes with Pierce Walker. “I promise.”

***

One-Mile did what he had been trained to do whenever he locked his sights on a target. He watched, studied, and dissected. He learned a mark’s habits, weaknesses, and quirks. He traveled their haunts and memorized their stomping grounds. Then he figured out how and when to strike.

Except this time, he wasn’t here for a kill.

During the EM shindig at Hunter’s house last night, One-Mile had watched pretty Brea Bell. He hadn’t spoken to her again. Cutter, the uptight prick, would have felt compelled to cut him off at the balls and start something. A team getting-to-know-you wasn’t the place for strife. But neither his stare nor his thoughts had once strayed from the beautiful brunette. In those few hours, he’d discerned three important things: She was every bit as warmhearted as he’d first imagined. She was attracted to him, too. And most interesting, she was probably as passionate about her sex life with Cutter as she was about taking her trash to the curb.

As he’d watched Bryant lead her out to his truck and drive away, he had debated the wisdom of pursuing Brea. Then he’d decided fuck it. She deserved the orgasms her boyfriend wasn’t giving her.

One-Mile couldn’t put his finger on the reasons he wanted Brea so fiercely. She wasn’t his type. Usually, he gravitated to blondes who liked to show off their tits, but he’d never encountered her sweet sort of allure. He wanted to see where this inexplicable desire led—and not merely as a fuck you to Cutter. Bryant could pound sand—or his own cock—for all One-Mile cared.

Which explained why he sat in his Jeep now, parked on Napoleon Avenue just before noon the following day, watching parishioners meander out of the little white church across the street and hoping for a glimpse of Brea.

She was one of the last to file out. Immediately, she fell into conversation with two elderly women before a little boy tugged on her skirt. When she bent and wrapped her arms around him, her smile was genuine and contagious. Then she slipped the imp a piece of candy from her purse and ruffled his hair in a motherly gesture that made the boy grin.

Thank fuck Cutter was nowhere in sight.

One-Mile was tempted to cross the street and plant himself in her personal space just to see recognition transform Brea’s face—and make sure he hadn’t misinterpreted her excitement when their eyes met.

But he could be patient, so he leashed the urge. The right moment would come. First, he needed facts.

“How deep are your ties to Bryant, pretty girl?” he muttered.

He’d stayed up half the night trying to figure that out, using search engines far more in-depth than Google. Within a few minutes he’d tracked down her vitals. Brea Felicity Bell. Her twenty-second birthday was next Thursday. She’d grown up in Sunset. Her mother had died from complications of childbirth. She’d been raised alone by her father, a local Baptist minister. She’d gotten good grades and never been in trouble. Apparently, everyone loved her. She currently worked as a hairdresser at a family-owned salon—the only one in Sunset. She’d grown up next door to Bryant and his family, but Cutter had moved to an unpublished address some while back. Brea wasn’t shacking up with him, thank fuck.

Those facts told One-Mile everything and nothing. What did she look like first thing in the morning? What would she taste like under his tongue? What would she smell like after he’d freshly fucked her? He was hungry to know. But she intrigued him far more than mere sex would satisfy—a first for him. What made her smile? What made her cry? What made her mad? What made her heart melt? He needed to figure Brea out, and he’d never manage that simply by staring. He had to talk to her without Cutter or that church crowd surrounding her.

For the next twenty minutes, she weathered the summer heat, shaking hands, exchanging hugs, and listening to the people of her father’s congregation, all with a patient smile and kind eyes. Something about her goodness was so compelling, probably because he’d never seen anything like it. He damn sure wasn’t drawn in by her sack of a dress, which covered everything between her neck and her shins in a pale pink fabric sprinkled with gray and lavender flowers. She wore the silky light brown hair he ached to wrap around his hands in a loose bun that emphasized her delicate features and her slight build. She’d finished it off with a pair of sensible wedge sandals and a sheer wrap, presumably to combat the blast of air conditioning inside the church.