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  He frowned in spite of himself. “Desk duty calls.” It would bore him to death, truth be told. He might not need to be constantly solving crime, but he liked to be out and active in the community.

  And he liked being here, though that had more to do with her and Gigi than anything Bonesteel lacked.

  Liza frowned at that. “You’re hurt.”

  “I can take calls. Gage’s got my Bonesteel attachment for the time being, which means I absolutely need to go back to work and give him the trouble he’s always giving me.” He reached out and squeezed her arm. “You’ll both be safe here. For as long as you need.”

  * * *

  LIZA STARED AT the man she loved, who’d given her the space to all but smother Gigi these past few days. She’d needed that. Some time to focus on Gigi alone. To think about what their new life would look like.

  But it didn’t look like anything without Jamison in it. He wanted her to stay here. Out of the way and safe. Because he loved her, and he was a man who’d spent his life saving people. So, he thought love was sacrifice.

  She’d have to teach him otherwise. She placed her hand on his chest. “I can think of another place we’d be safe.”

  Jamison stared at her hand, then at her. He looked hurt almost, which didn’t make any sense to her.

  “Liza...if you want to take Gigi somewhere far away, I’d understand. I could help. But you should wait—”

  “I’m not talking about far away,” she said, giving him a light shove. “I’m taking about a town with a school, and a very serious police officer keeping the streets safe.”

  He opened his mouth, but he didn’t say anything.

  “Unless you’re taking back all the love stuff.”

  He straightened. “I’m not taking back anything.”

  “Ace is in jail,” she said, wrapping her arms around his neck.

  “For now,” Jamison said, but his arms came around her waist. She could see the worry in him, feel it. But he wasn’t stepping back.

  “Even if he wasn’t, I’m on his list.” When Jamison tensed, she kissed his jaw. “You know I am,” she said gently.

  “What about Gigi?”

  “It just so happens I have a great role model in keeping younger siblings safe. She’ll be safe with me. With us.”

  “You could both disappear. If you gave me time, I could—”

  “For how long?” Liza shook her head. A younger her would have been hurt that he could live without her, but the woman she was now understood all too well he was just trying to protect. “You could have sent your brothers to the ends of the earth. You all could have left. But you stayed, because this is home, and because they dictated too much of our lives already. We stay, Jamison. And if we’re in danger, we fight. Together.”

  “I love you. I want you by my side, Liza, but—”

  “No buts. That’s it. We love each other. We’ll keep each other safe. And we’ll both do everything in our power to keep Gigi safe and happy. What more could a girl want?”

  “Well, probably a better place to live than a shabby, empty apartment above the local lawyer’s office.”

  “So, we’ll find a house.”

  He looked down at her, so serious. If she hadn’t always loved him, that careful, serious study would have done it.

  “If we find a house, we’re going to be finding the altar,” he said resolutely, something like a challenge.

  She merely raised an eyebrow. “You think that scares me?”

  “I don’t think anything scares you, Liza. But... Realistically...”

  “Realistically I faced death about ten times in the past week.”

  He brushed a piece of hair away from her face, and when he spoke his voice was gentle. “So, maybe we’re not in the best place to be making lifetime commitments.”

  Liza laughed. She couldn’t help it. “How many women have you been with in the past fifteen years?”

  He straightened, all flustered and indignant. Adorable and perfect. And hers. Always hers.

  “I don’t see what that has to do with anything we’re talking about.”

  “Not very many, then.”

  “I didn’t say... That doesn’t mean...”

  “It means you were waiting for me, whether you admitted it to yourself or not. Because you made a promise to me a long time ago, and you, Jamison Wyatt, don’t break promises.” She let out a sigh, because it was true now, and it would always be true. “Even when you want to. You were waiting, because somewhere deep down you knew we’d find our way back. Just like I did, no matter how little I could let myself hope for it.”

  “I don’t know how it’s possible. To be apart for so long and change in a million ways, and yet... I don’t believe in any of that stuff. In knowing what we don’t actually know. Waiting without realizing. I don’t believe in it. But...”

  “Here it is.”

  “Here it is,” he repeated, lowering his mouth to hers. But he didn’t kiss her. Not just yet. “I guess it doesn’t matter how, as long as we believe it is.”

  “I do,” she said, then pressed her mouth to his instead of waiting for him to get around to it.

  Because her future was now, and she’d always been fighting for one with this very good man.

  * * *

  Keep reading for an excerpt from Protective Operation by Danica Winters.

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  Protective Operation

  by Danica Winters

  Chapter One

  In a world filled with diamonds and pearls, Shaye Griest had never really thought about what she didn’t have—the staff would take care of such things for her. She’d never found herself lacking tangible things. No, not when her father was the prime minister of Algeria, the head of state in the oil-and-gas-rich country. When she had been merely five years old, she had been given a gold-plated Rolls-Royce by the president of Nigeria with the flippant comment “for when you can drive.”

  Fifteen years later, the car sat in a garage in the underbelly of her father’s lair in Algiers—where she would never see it, or her father, ever again.

  Truth be told, she had never been a fan of the car, the man who had given it to her or her father who now held it in his keep. Good riddance.

  She pulled up the collar of her coat around her neck as she made her way to the Combine Diner in the heart of Mystery, Montana. The wind had started to kick up, making the bite of the December cold even more vicious. It was ten degrees outside, but it felt like she had stepped onto the dark side of the moon. She may as well be on the moon—her father would sooner look for her there than Mystery, Montana.

  Or at least she hoped. The bastard always had a way of finding her.

  The diner’s wooden sign rattled as the wind pulled it against its chains, making a sound like the Ghost of Christmas Past. The sound echoed off the glittering snow that lined the edges of the road and sidewalks, reminding her of her abject loneliness.

  She thought she had known frigid temperatures, thanks to all of her travels, but she had failed to calculate the level of desolation that came with the icy grip.

  She should have run away to somewhere warmer; Tahiti was nice this time of year. And yet, the thought of Chad Martin and all he had done for her had pulled her in his direction.

  She owed him and his family so much, yet instead of paying him back, here she was showing up in his last known location in a feeble attempt to find him, with nothing but her hat in her hands and a request for shelter. He and his family were hiding out and were probably long gone, but she had to try and catch him here. He was her only h
ope.

  She should have texted before she flew to the middle of nowhere, but no.

  A sane person would have texted, not dropped her family, been ostracized by her friends and then caught the next flight to a man who barely knew her.

  What had she been thinking?

  This was exactly the kind of pattern of actions and reactions her father had always criticized her for. She could hear his voice now. “Child, you will go nowhere, be no one. The weight of your imprudent decisions will always pin you down.”

  Well, damn it, she was going places and living her life as best she could—pins or no pins.

  She walked to the door of the diner and grabbed the handle. It made a dull thump as she pulled against the bolt. The blue-and-red neon Open sign was glowing, its light casting a purple shadow on the snow. Apparently, open meant something different in Montana. Maybe it was more a suggestion of what could be if the conditions were just right...kind of like marriage.

  The thought made the harsh taste of sadness rise in her mouth.

  It had been nearly a year since Raj had been killed, but sometimes thoughts of his death struck her like a bolt of lightning.

  She tried the door one more time, but it was just as locked as it had been before.

  Ugh. She sighed.

  The words hot mess clanked in tandem with the sounds of the sign’s chains.

  “If you’re looking for a hot meal, you came to the wrong place,” a man said from behind her, making her jump.

  She reached into her purse and grabbed her pepper spray. She clicked open the safety, but didn’t take it out as she turned to face the man.

  “If you want food, Missoula is about twenty miles that way,” the man said, jabbing his thumb toward a pink cloud of light pollution in the sky behind him. “And as safe as Mystery normally is, as of late, this ain’t a real good place for a woman like you to be walkin’ around alone.”

  The way he spoke was ambiguous. He was skirting the line between a threat and a warning. He was tall and lanky, and he stood with his feet apart and perched on his toes—the style of protectors. He must have been military, or perhaps law enforcement of some kind. Or maybe, just maybe, he was here as one of her father’s minions.

  It wouldn’t surprise her if her father had someone posted at her heels.

  He’d sent his people after her before.

  She slowly pulled her hand from her purse, palming the pepper spray but keeping her finger on the trigger as she checked the direction of the wind.

  It would send a clear message to her father if she took out his man.

  “I’m not homeless, or needy. Thank you very much,” she said, but as she spoke, she knew those words were a lie. She gripped the canister harder. “And if you are truly concerned for my safety, I think it best if you leave.”

  The man in front of her frowned and his hand slipped down to something at his waist. Before he could draw a gun, she pulled her pepper spray. It misted, throwing a cloud of capsaicin into the air. The yellow liquid hit him straight in the face and over his open palm as he tried to stop the spray from reaching his eyes.

  “What the hell? No. Stop.” He waved at her as he was overtaken by a coughing fit. As he gagged and spat on the ground, he stepped toward her blindly.

  “You can go back to whatever hole you crawled out of.” She emptied the can, wishing she had bought something bigger instead of just the tiny one she had picked up at the gas station. Dropping the glittery can to the ground, she rushed toward the man who was gagging and spitting.

  “Stop. Right. There,” he said, dabbing his eyes frantically with the sleeve of his jacket.

  She circled around him, careful to stay upwind from the spray. “Tell my father that I’m not his little plaything. I’m not coming home.”

  She had to get out of this one-horse town. If anyone knew she was here, and if her father was looking for her, then she would be putting Chad and his family in danger. Her father was capable of anything. In a different world, her father would have been the perfect hitman—he was cold, calculating and devoid of anything resembling remorse.

  “Wait,” the guy said as he staggered toward the pickup that was parked a few slots down from her car on the street. The truck was a banged-up old white Ford that had seen better days.

  This hillbilly had another think coming if he thought she was going to listen to him.

  She opened her car door, then paused and stared over at the staggering mess she had created. The man’s eyes were red and puffy and tears streamed down his cheeks. But even as a slobbering, sweating mess, he wasn’t bad-looking, even though he wasn’t her type. And the ring on his finger was the nail in the coffin.

  And he was no Chad.

  As she stared at him, the man didn’t even look in her direction—not that he really could—but something about his helplessness made her call into question whether or not he was truly one of her father’s men. Her father usually employed only the best of the best, and this fumbling and spitting man was definitely not that.

  A tiny bit of guilt wiggled up from her core. Maybe she’d been a little too defensive. Maybe she should have waited another second between seeing the threat and acting—but if Raj’s death had taught her anything, it was that a single nanosecond was all it took to decide which way the sickle would fall.

  The man grabbed a bottle of water from inside the cab of his truck and started flushing his eyes. As he worked, she glanced back at the ring on his finger—it was one of those newer black silicone ones and it appeared to be devoid of any normal wear and tear.

  Most hitmen weren’t married. It didn’t fit the lifestyle—in fact, it was about as far from the lifestyle as a person could get. All of the henchmen she had ever met were made up of three things: muscle, too much testosterone and a machismo complex. But hitmen weren’t all terrible. Chad Martin, for example, was built like a lumberjack—complete with the flannel shirt—with arms the size of small tree trunks, but when he spoke there was a hint of another kind of strength within him, as well. And it was likely that it was this charm and down-to-earth likability that made him even more efficient and deadly when pulling the trigger.

  Damn it.

  Even now, facing down a possible threat, she was haunted by Chad.

  She got into her car and slammed her door shut. She shifted into Reverse and hit the gas without looking back.

  There was a large thud as her car struck something.

  She gasped as she stopped. “Holy. Crap.”

  Glancing in the rearview mirror, the man was lying on top of her trunk, facedown.

  It was one thing to pepper-spray the man, but she hadn’t meant to kill him. Oh, God, what if he was dead? And what would happen if someone had just witnessed her hitting him? What if she got arrested? How would it look if she did prison time for killing an American in the first days she was stateside?

  Her father would have a diplomatic mess on his hands. And that was to say nothing about what she would do...or if she would even be able to walk away without prison time.

  The blood rushed from her face and down into her toes as she stepped out of the car. “Are you okay? I’m so sorry.”

  He groaned.

  Good. At least he is still alive.

  Now to keep him that way.

  She stepped closer and as she moved near, the breeze turned toward her and with it came the residue from her pepper spray. Her eyes started to water and her nose ran, and as she took another breath, trying to free herself from the spray, she only inhaled it further.

  She gagged and laughed at what she had done to herself and to the poor man she had tried to take down.

  “Laughing at me now, too?” the man said with a groan. “You know, there are a lot of easier ways to kill a man.”

  She tried to open her eyes, but she could only squint, thanks to the pain.

  �
�There’s more water.” She heard the sound of the man standing and moving toward her.

  He kneeled down beside her and pushed a bottle into her hands. “Just pour it right on.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said through wheezing breaths.

  “Me, too.” The man dropped down on the ground beside her as she opened the bottle and started pouring it over her face. The water was ice-cold, but it did little for her burning face and eyes. Instead, all it seemed to be doing was freezing to her eyelashes. “I didn’t mean to scare you. I just thought with it being so cold and all, you might have needed a little help.”

  He wasn’t helping the swell of guilt growing within her.

  “This really is the backside of hell, isn’t it?” she said, chuckling at where she had suddenly found herself.

  “You ain’t seen nothing yet,” the man said. “If you want real cold, you should head up to the Hi-Line sometime.”

  “Hi-Line?” she asked.

  “Clearly, you aren’t from around here. The arctic fronts run through there like a shiver running down the Devil’s spine, freezing cows where they stand,” the man said. He groaned as he tried to put weight on his leg, then he pulled up his pant leg. “Crap, there goes my dancing tonight.”

  Even through blurry eyes, she could make out the blood that twisted down his leg from a gash on his shin. “Seriously, I’m so sorry. I didn’t see you back there. I just—”

  “Wanted to get the hell out of Dodge,” he said, finishing her sentence. “You’re hardly the first person to step foot in this town and immediately want to head for the hills.”

  “That’s not it... It’s just—”

  “I scared you...and you thought your father sent me,” he said.

  “Are you in the habit of always finishing other people’s sentences?” she asked, slightly annoyed.

  “Ha, it’s sad, but you aren’t the first woman to tell me that. My wife loves to constantly remind me.” He rolled down his pant leg. “Now, what was all this nonsense about your father? Clearly, you’re on the run—I’m assuming from him. But where you running to?”