by Reina Torres
“Those eyes don’t work on me.”
Cruz’s smile called bullshit. “You talked.”
A muscle ticked in Vicente’s cheek. “You’re an ass.”
“Hey,” Cruz lifted a shoulder in a half-shrug, “I see what I see. And what I see is that you’re in deep.”
Lifting his chin by a degree, Vicente offered an answer. “I’m doing my job.”
Cruz’s smile was telling, like the cat that ate the canary. All that was missing was a stupid yellow feather peeking out at the corner. “You’re falling for her.”
Vicente’s hands fisted at his sides and Cruz leaned back an inch.
“Don’t kill the messenger. You’re not that dense, ‘Cente.” Cruz sighed. “You forget, I was undercover when I fell for Mickie. Falling for a woman someone wants you to kill can throw a bucketful of cold water on a fire, but I knew deep down that she was it for me.”
Cruz passed an assessing glance over him and he was determined not to flinch.
“It’s not the same. You and Mickie, you two fit together. Sloane is…” his gesture was vague at best, “she’s so much more… deserves more than I can give her.”
The look on his friend’s face bothered him and Vicente turned away.
“Don’t try to convince me otherwise. She’s royalty in San Antonio, man. I’m just-”
“The man that’s putting himself between her and a bullet?”
Vicente waved off his friend’s words. “If we went by that, she should be shacking up with that rookie cop that was shot at the accident site.”
The words that came out of Cruz’s mouth turned the head of a nurse walking down the hall. Her pale cheeks flushed with color and she looked away in shock.
“You’re determined to be dense, so I’m not going to argue with you.”
Vicente’s shoulders sagged in relief.
“You’re running on scared and stupid when it comes to Sloane. It’ll work for now that she’s got a target painted on her forehead, but when this is over and the adrenaline that’s pounding through your veins is gone… then you’ll have to figure it out for yourself.” Cruz pushed away from the wall and took a step back. “Are you going to let her walk out of your life, or are you going to realize the truth?”
He didn’t want to ask, but as he watched Cruz turn toward the hospital room, the question burst from his lips.
“What is the truth?” he asked his friend. “What do you see?”
Cruz tossed him a look over his shoulder. “You know. You’re just afraid to admit it, and Vicente?”
“Yeah,” he growled the answer at Cruz.
“Keep lying to yourself and someone’s bound to get hurt. Don’t put her through that. She doesn’t deserve it. And neither do you.”
Cruz stepped inside to speak to the doctor, leaving Vicente alone in the hallway.
And alone is exactly what he didn’t need at the moment. Alone meant that his thoughts were much too loud in his head.
Slipping his phone out of his jeans pocket, he called his sister.
“Hey, what’s up?”
He shook his head at her upbeat greeting, so much the opposite of his own mood. “We were able to get some information. If you ever want a suspect to talk, remind him how his buddies left him for dead and he ends up talking more than you do.”
Vicente knew the look on her face, he didn’t have to see it in front of him. He’d seen it too many times to count growing up.
“I’m going to forget you said that because you’re going to bring us Las Quesadillas. Apparently, you took Sloane there and now she’s hooked, craving them like you wouldn’t believe.”
He laughed, but the sound scratched in his throat. He didn’t need a reminder of what she looked like biting into a bit of cheese-filled heaven. He’d replayed the images in his mind a time or two… or ten, but he wasn’t counting.
“Okay, so if I bring Las Quesadillas home, I won’t get a kick to my shins?”
All he heard was a non-committal sound that said the jury was still out.
“How is she?”
There was a beat of silence. “She,” Pilar cleared her throat, “is looking at me, probably wondering why you didn’t call her after you talked to the suspect.”
“She,” he mimicked his sister’s tone, “is probably wondering why you’re talking about her like she’s not in the room. Pick at me all you want, Chiquita, but don’t be rude to Sloane.”
“Hey,” her tone held a note of resignation in it, “I know. Seriously, we’re okay. Did you get enough information to-”
“I’ll tell you both when I get there, okay?”
Pilar’s end of the conversation was quiet for a moment. “Yeah, okay.”
“Is something wrong? Pilar? Let me talk to him.”
He winced when he heard the concern in Sloane’s voice. He was joking to keep his temper under control, but Sloane didn’t know that. And if he heard his sister’s tone correctly, she wasn’t exactly blowing off the tension on her end.
“Let me talk to Sloane for a second.”
He heard a few muffled sounds and then, “Vicente? What’s going on? Did you talk to the man?”
“Hey,” he forced himself to smile to lift his tone enough to ease her worry, “hey… calm down, everything’s going to be okay. I’m going to grab us some food and I’ll be home before you know it.”
He heard a soft chuckle and knew that she was laughing at herself.
“Good. I’ll feel better when I can see you.”
Her words hit him square in the chest, but he told himself not to read into them. He had a job to do.
“Stay with Pilar. Feel free to irritate her as much as you like. She’ll love every minute.”
Now he heard the laugh he was hoping for. Soft, but full of humor and maybe a little joy.
“I’m so not going to do that. Your sister would kick my ass and love every minute.”
“That’s right,” he heard Pilar’s voice in the distance, “and I’m damn good at it. Bring the food!”
The call ended a moment later and Vicente dropped his phone back into his pocket. Shaking off the knowing look that Cruz sent him through the large glass window, he walked off down the hall.
It took several days to get all the local Agencies to fall into step with each other. Vicente had given Sloane precious little information and that was really weighing on her mind.
Vicente had kept to his promise and she’d had plenty of time to visit and work at the center, but there seemed to be something ‘odd’ in his behavior.
Now, she didn’t have any real knowledge of how law enforcement worked, who did what and when, but there was this thinly-veiled tension in the way he moved around her, around her apartment.
Sloane had asked him about it, but he told her it was nothing.
“Nothing for you to worry about.”
To her, the words meant something. The way he said them meant something.
And there had been enough secrets in her life. With her parents they hid much of the dirtier aspects of business from their children, choosing to present a very rosy appearance whenever the girls visited their father at the office.
They didn’t see the cold and calculated side of the business.
The edge that made their father a man most considered a ‘shark’ in San Antonio. The Kings had family money that they’d inherited, but her father had always told Sloane that just ‘having’ money wasn’t enough. People with money had a responsibility to either make more money, instead of resting on their laurels, or to spend their money for a purpose.
He had endless stories ancestors in the King family tree. He especially loved how ancestors had funded good works and businesses in Texas as long as the family had lived on the soil of what had become the Lone Star State.
And it was those stories that Sloane had taken to heart, even if she preferred the stories of building schools and taking in widows and orphans to the stories of cattle barons fighting hand to hand against rustlers to
recover their beeves.
But it wasn’t until after her parents’ deaths that she realized that much of what her father did in the name of business was but one step removed from what one might call ‘cutthroat’ deals.
Oh, he’d never done anything criminal as far as she could tell when she read between the lines, but her father, the great Robert King, had ridden that line as well as he’d ridden horses. And Robert had been a damn good rider.
The secrets only continued with her sister. Kimberly had learned from their father, or perhaps it was just part of the King family DNA that Sloane didn’t inherit with as much veracity as her father and sister. Still, Kimberly was a master of secrecy.
No one played hide-and-go-seek like Kimberly Macy King.
And no one hid dangers and sometimes illegal activities like her sister.
Underage drinking? Check.
Pills and pot? Check.
Sex? Check, check, & check.
Still, there was one thing that Kimberly didn’t hide from Sloane, that was how much she loved her.
The King sisters loved each other to Pluto and back.
Sloane shook her head to distract herself from the prickle of tears in her eyes. Her sister hadn’t even lived long enough to know they’d demoted their favorite planet.
On one of the few nights when their parents had grounded their free-bird and kept her home, Kimberly had cuddled up with Sloane in her little double bed and they’d held each other close.
She doubted that Kimberly had known that her little sister was awake when she’d started to cry.
Gathering Sloane in her arms, Kimberly had pressed what seemed like a hundred kisses on Sloane’s head and wrapped her arms securely around Sloane’s much smaller form.
“Don’t ever, ever, doubt that I love you, Slo. You’re the sweetest thing in my pitiful life and if it’s the last thing I ever do,” she’d gasped in a breath and pulled Sloane so tight against her that it was a miracle that Sloane kept still enough to hear the rest of Kimberly’s words, “I’m not going to let anyone hurt you. You hear that, baby sis? I’m going to protect you with every single breath.”
A few months later, Sloane’s life had changed.
Her parents had died in a random car crash and their Uncle Glen had moved the girls in with him. Sloane had hated every minute of it. All their things were back at the house and she wanted to feel like her parents were still there with them.
She couldn’t feel them at Uncle Glen’s house. And Kimberly, she had grown even more sullen and dark in her moods.
So, they’d hired a live in nanny of sorts and only Kimberly made visits to Uncle Glen’s after that.
And then when Kimberly died…
“Hey.”
She felt Vicente’s warm hand on her leg and she lifted her head from her knees to look at him. Mustering a smile, she lifted her hand and smoothed his hair back from his forehead.
As hot as Vicente was when he was all badass FBI Special Agent, when he was lying in her bed, naked under her sheets, he called to the better, purer parts of her soul.
She couldn’t help but think all of this would be over as soon as they found the men responsible and put them in jail.
“You’ve gone missing again.”
Sloane blinked and shook herself slightly to clear her head of the fog. “Sorry, I was thinking.”
He pushed an arm under his body and managed to lean over and plant a kiss on her shoulder. “I don’t mind if you’re thinking, but whatever it was in your head was making you sad.”
She laughed, trying to fool both of them. “I worry. It’s my thing.”
He pushed himself up even more and sat beside her, the sheet pooling low on his hips. Vicente set his hand on her shoulder, lightly tapping the tips of his fingers along the thin silk strap of her tank, working it toward the edge of her shoulder. “What can I do to take your mind off of your worries?”
She closed her eyes and let the sensations wash over her, giving into the distraction just the littlest bit.
When she felt his breath fan over her shoulder she froze. When his teeth gently brushed against her as he tried to pluck the strap from her skin, her eyes flew open.
She hated to break the mood, especially when a quick look in his direction showed her just how into this he was, tenting the sheet over his lap, still… he’d been distracting her like this for days.
As her strap fell from his teeth, she picked it up with her fingers and set it back in place.
“Something wrong?”
She heard his guarded tone and prepared herself for the fight.
“What aren’t you telling me?”
A moment passed before he smiled and leaned in against her arm. “You mean how good you look this morning? Or how much I loved making you scream last night?”
She couldn’t help the rush of liquid heat that surged through her at the memory of the night before, tangled in his arms as he made her crazy with need.
But, she could tamp it down. She could remember that there was something she needed at the moment more than an orgasmic trip down memory lane.
When he slipped his hand between her back and her tank, she turned toward him, tucking her legs beneath her, and focusing on the strong lines of his face.
“Why won’t you level with me? Tell me what’s going on?”
His expression lost any hint of a smile and he let out a long, heavy sigh. “Because I can’t, baby.”
Vicente let his hand fall to the mattress behind her, just the tips of two fingers grazing the curve of her backside.
“There are things I can’t tell you. All you have to do is know that this is going to be over soon.”
This.
Something pinched at the back of her neck, making her shiver a little.
“We have a plan in place to catch them in the act. The suspect we have in custody gave us enough information that we think we can beat them at their own game.”
She nodded. “Okay. And what game is that?”
He blew a breath out of the corner of his mouth, lifting the very ends of his hair that had fallen beside his temple. “You’re not going to give up on this, are you?”
Leaning forward, she cupped her hands against his jaw and felt the subtle scratch of his hair against her palms. “If I was keeping a dangerous secret from you,” she rose up on her knees just enough to touch her lips to his mouth, “would you want to know what it was?”
He shifted positions on the bed, getting up on his hands and knees to return her kiss, pressing into her until she sat back down.
Once she was there, he pulled back slightly, enough to look into her eyes.
“If it involved you being in danger? Absolutely.”
“Well-”
“But I’m not in any danger, baby. They train us well, you know.”
Her expression told him exactly what she thought about his words, and it wasn’t pretty.
“I’m just worried because I can feel how much this is bothering you, Vicente.”
He moved closer, spreading his legs just enough to cage her between them.
“The only thing bothering me is the idea that there are still people out there trying to hurt you and stop the good that you’re doing.”
She tried to brush off his concern. “I don’t need the money that my family made and saved all of these years. I have enough to live off of and some to take care of me when I’m older, the rest,” she sighed, “can do more good for others than it can do for me. The last thing I want to do is give up the foundation, but if the people we serve might be hurt because of all of this… then I would. But right now, my concern is you. What kind of danger you’re going to be in.”
He reached out and set his hands on her hips and pulled her up onto his lap.
Sloane wrapped her legs around him and lightly crossed her ankles, pressing her as close as she could get to him.
Vicente groaned and slid his hands around to her backside, smoothing his hands over her curves as he spoke. “I
can’t give you all the details, but what I can tell you is that we think we have enough information to do a sting. We’re going to put several undercover officers and agents in the area that the men are likely to target for new victims. We’ll have separate teams covering the undercover women, and we’re confident that we’ll pull these men out of hiding and they will then lead us to the man who’s running the show. Once we get him into custody, his whole organization is likely to disintegrate. We think we’ll pick up many of them before they can go into hiding and when all is said and done, you’ll be safe. You can continue on with what you do so well, and your life can go back to normal.”
She nodded, slowly, and her eyes closed as she considered her next words. “And your life?” Knowing it was too vague, she added a few words. “What will your life be like when it goes back to normal?” She felt her teeth grind together. Her words were still too vague, but they were all she had. Then again, she was used to being inadequate at times like these.
“Me?” He cupped her closer, rocking slightly against the apex of her thighs. “My ‘normal’ is a job with somewhat regular hours that is sometimes frustrating and still satisfying. I have a family that likes to stick their nose into my business much too much for my own peace of mind. They’re pushing me to follow the example set up by my eldest brother and sister. Find the perfect woman. Marry her and have a ton of babies with her so my nieces and nephews can have even more playmates. Although, at this point, my mother might just overlook if the babies are started before the wedding.”
Sloane swallowed against the lump in her throat. She hadn’t thought of children in years. She’d made such a mess of her life, children didn’t seem to be a good idea, or even in the cards.
“And you want a bunch of kids?” She heard the squeak in her voice and looked away when his eyes tried to search hers. “Not that it’s any of my business, but-”
He silenced her with a kiss, rubbing the tip of his tongue against her lower lip before he leaned back again.
“You’re so adorable when I shock you into silence.” He smiled at her. “It has everything to do with you, Sloane. I know I’ve been distracted lately, and you’ve had to deal with a number of other agents and police as security, but it wasn’t because I don’t want to be here.
