Dangerous Beauty by Melissa Koslin

Author:Melissa Koslin
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Romantic Suspense;Romantic suspense fiction;FIC042120;FIC042060;FIC027110
Publisher: Baker Publishing Group
Published: 2022-06-20T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter

TWENTY-SIX

Liliana was halfway down the hall when Meric came out of his room. He held his hand out. “The papers.”

She paused.

“The combination for the safe is 225121. I’m not trying to take this away from you. I’m going to help make sure it’s done right.”

“Promise me.”

He met her eyes. “I give you my word.”

She handed him the folded papers. “I want to look at them later.”

He nodded then walked back in his room, set the papers in the safe, closed the door, and came back to her. “But if you decide you want out of this, the slightest doubt, I’ll make it happen. No matter what.”

She nodded once.

“Come with me.”

She went with him down the hall. “I’ve never been this way.”

“You don’t explore when I leave you alone all the time?”

She shrugged. “Why would I?” It wasn’t her house.

“To check out the strange guy you live with. You can go anywhere in the apartment you want.”

“Why do you leave me alone all the time?”

Silence.

He went into a doorway on the right. It was a big almost-empty room. There was a weight bench in the corner closest to the door and a hanging bag in the opposite corner, chained to both the ceiling and floor. The rest of the room was empty, just a wooden floor and windows covering two walls looking out across the flat white roof gleaming in the morning sun.

Halfway across the wooden floor, he paused. “It’s not you.” He turned and looked at her. “The reason I leave.”

She kept her tone muted, careful. “We don’t lie to each other, right? We may not tell each other everything, but we don’t lie.” She didn’t understand why he always left, why he felt the need to “give her space.” Maybe her situation reminded him of his mother and that was too difficult to be reminded of all the time?

The muscles in his jaw tightened. “I don’t regret what I did. I need you to know that. I will never regret it. No matter how all this works out in the end.”

“It was reckless. I know you well enough now to know that’s not like you.”

“You don’t know me that well.”

“I think I do. I may not know all of your history, but I think I know how you work.”

He didn’t respond.

“I want to do something like that,” she said. “I want to—what’s the English phrase?—pay it forward.”

“You don’t owe anyone anything. You don’t need to pay anything forward.”

“I owe you.”

He stepped toward her. “Don’t do this job with Bando. That’s how to pay me back.”

“How many times have you gone undercover? How many people have you saved?”

He sighed, almost a growl.

“I want to do this for them too, all those people you’ve saved. For all of those who are too broken to pay it forward.” Then she said, “Teach me how to defend myself. That’s why you brought me here, right?”

He met her gaze for several seconds.

Finally, he said, “The self-defense you said you learned from reading—show me what you know.

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