Run To You

She’d been freaking out about how she was going to pay for an expensive hotel room that was bigger than her apartment in Miami. A heck of a lot fancier, too, with the enormous windows looking out at the gulf, two cushy bedrooms, and bathrooms with jet tubs and six heads in the three-person showers. Before she’d plugged five dollars in the Lucky Seven slot machine, she worried about how she was going to pay for a Diet Coke from the wet bar. “Now I can pay my half for the room and chip in for gas.” And not have to freeload off her sister or anyone else.
    “I told you not to worry about it.” He set the glass back on the table and cut off a hunk of steak. He’d been drinking, and not just water. Not that it really showed in obvious ways, but she was a bartender and picked up on it. He was just more relaxed. Less uptight. Loose, and of course she’d smelled whiskey on his breath when he’d planted that kiss on her downstairs. “You’re a business write-off, Boots.”
    He’d said that, yes. She still wanted to pay her own way. Buy a swimsuit and a bikini wax if she needed one and not have to worry about how she was going to get home. Or where she was going to live. “I can hire someone to move my stuff from my apartment now.”
    He raised his gray gaze to hers as he chewed. “I took care of that. I’ll need your key so my guys don’t have to pick your lock.”
    A soothing piano concerto played through the restaurant’s sound system, and the clank of plates gathered from the next table filled the air. “When?”
    “We’ll FedEx it tomorrow.”
    She shook her head and dunked her lobster into butter. “When did you ‘take care of that’?”
    “Today.” He took a bite and swallowed before he continued. “Around the time you were annoying me with ‘Pumped Up Kicks.’ ”
    No man had ever taken care of anything for her in her life. “Thank you.” It felt strange, she thought as she ate her buttery lobster. New. Different, and she didn’t know whether she liked it. “I’ll pay for it all, of course.”
    He shrugged. “It’s not that big a deal. I know some guys who owe me.” He dug into his potato, and normally the amount of food he ordered would have been an obvious sign of intoxication, but for Beau it was just another meal.
    She took a bite and tried not to moan. Beau didn’t like it when she moaned, but the lobster was delicious. Technically, she supposed, this was the third time he’d helped her. The first time had been the night he’d punched Ricky. The second, when he’d rescued her from her apartment amid a fog of flashbang. She was afraid she could get used to having a man around who had her back. “You don’t like ‘Pumped Up Kicks’?” she asked so she wouldn’t have to think how nice it felt to have a man pick up a bit of her load.
    He swallowed and reached for his water. “Last time I was on Fremont Street, it was playing in all the casinos.”
    “Fremont Street, Las Vegas?”
    His eyes met hers over the bottom of the glass, then he set it back on the table. “Yeah.”
    “When were you there last?”
    “On Fremont?” He shrugged, then turned his attention to his dinner. “About a year ago when I moved to Henderson.”
    “You live in Henderson, Nevada?”
    “Yeah.”
    “I used to live in North Vegas. In a real crap apartment with two other girls.” She laughed and reached for her own water. “We started a girl band. The first of several that I belonged to.” She shook her head. “Lord, but I’ve sung in some real dive bars.”
    He looked up but he didn’t bother to look surprised.
    “But you know that. Don’t you?”
    “I know your employment history.” He waved his steak knife in her direction. “And before you get twisted about all that again, you know my employment history as well.”
    She pulled her hair over one shoulder and stabbed some asparagus. “I only know that you were in the military and now you’re a spy.” She took a bite and smiled.
    Predictably, his brows lowered. “I was in the Marines and I’m not a spy, but I think you know that.”
    Yeah, she knew that. “Did you drive a tank?” She could see him driving a tank through clouds of smoke and fire and flashbang.
    He chewed slowly as he ate, as if he was weighing exactly what he wanted to tell her. “I was a scout sniper.”
    Sniper? “Ah, that sounds kind of spy-ish.”
    “Snipers aren’t tasked with gathering that sort of intel.”
    She guessed she didn’t have to ask