Page 120 of When He Lies
Weaving a bit, Logan headed toward Ryan and Konstantin. Had Logan been too close to the blast? She’d told him to run, hadn’t she? Maybe not.
Logan took a swing at Konstantin. Only it was a wild swing that missed the Russian by a mile. Oops. Yes. He might have been too close to the blast. He definitely seemed disoriented, too.
Her ears were throbbing. She kept hearing a whoosh. Huh. Maybe she was disoriented, too.
As she watched and tried to get her body back under her control, Ryan whirled toward Logan. He drove his fist into Logan’s face. “That’s for betraying Simone, you dick!”
Logan nodded. Didn’t even try to punch back. “Deserved…”
Ryan hit him again, then spun back for Konstantin but…
The other agents had closed in. MI6. CIA. Jezebel. Simone had to crane her head and stand on tiptoes in order to see what was happening. She definitely heard, “Under arrest” and the phrase, “Never seeing the light of day again…”
But Ryan didn’t stay in that swarm around Konstantin. He left the agents and the Russian and stalked toward her.
Her hands twisted. “Flash,” Simone heard herself say.
He stopped right in front of her.
“Bang,” she whispered. It had gone just as Jezebel predicted. The plan that Ryan and Jezebel had hatched. Simone had just needed to get close to the car. To let Logan know that his grandmother was safe. To distract Konstantin and to throw the flash grenade inside the car and haul ass away. That was all she’d needed to do…
And she’d been promised that the agents would finish everything else.
So she’d run back to the waiting vehicle, trembling and acting afraid as she frantically glanced over her shoulder, as if looking back to see if she was being followed. Acting like the perfect prey who was just doing as she’d been ordered by the big, bad international criminal…
And then, when Konstantin’s guard had been lowered, when he’d been frantically clutching that prized egg…
She’d made his world explode.
Ryan hauled her into his arms. Or maybe she hauled him into her arms. His mouth took hers, and he kissed her with wild, utterly uncontrolled passion, and she kissed him back just as frantically. Joy, adrenaline, leftover terror—her whole body shook, and he was her anchor. She held tightly to him and knew that she never, ever wanted to let this man go.
Not dead.
Very much alive.
Kissing her. Holding her. And…
His mouth tore from hers. “I love you.”
Loving her.
A soft meow sounded near her feet. Shocked and delighted, she glanced down. A familiar black cat with a ragged ear stared up at her. “What…?”
“Good luck,” Ryan told her. “We’re taking the cat home with us. He’s gonna be our good luck charm and we are going to have the best life together.” A promise.
“Did you…bring the cat here?” She was trying to follow along. It had been one hell of a day.
“I might have.”
“You…you don’t like black cats.”
“Hell, yes, I do.” Ryan scooped Simone into his arms. “They’re lucky. You’re lucky. I’m a lucky bastard because I am going to spend the rest of my life with you.”
The joy she felt buried her terror. “Again, I don’t think that is a real marriage proposal. You seem to have issues with that concept. A real proposal.”
Agents were running everywhere, but Ryan was walking away from the chaos and heading back toward the lurking off-the-books building with her cradled in his arms…and with a black cat dodging his feet.
“You’re going to have the best proposal in the world,” Ryan assured her. “Just wait and see.”
