Page 29 of Forbidden Protector

"I own three couches."

"That's worse."

He almost smiles. I watch him decide not to let it finish and count it as a win anyway. Underneath the win, some other and less professional part of me notes exactly how close he's standing, and how long it's been since either of us moved.

He takes me to Nell's for lunch like it's a foregone conclusion. Like a woman doesn't get a vote on where she eats once she's moved onto Blackwater ground.

"I could've ordered for myself," I tell him at the counter.

"Didn't say you couldn't."

"You're standing there like you're about to."

"That booth sees both doors. You'll want it."

I want to argue and can't, because he's right. It's a cheap thing to give him, so I let him.

We're four bites into a lunch I didn't plan on enjoying when a man slides into the booth uninvited. Cologne loud enough to announce itself before he does, a smile built for somebody who's never once been told no.

"Agent Tatum." He says it like he's tasting it, and his eyes take the same slow trip down and back up that his voice just did. Unhurried, like he's got every right to the inventory. "Heard you're in town asking questions. Figured I'd save you the trouble."

The back of my neck goes tight.

I don't know his name yet, but I clock the truck through the window anyway, out of nine years of habit: a rental sticker, Montana plates, nothing on the doors at all. Men who work for McKenna don't advertise.

"I didn't ask you anything."

"You will." He leans in an inch too close, and my whole body goes to flat, professional stillness. The kind I've used on men exactly like him a hundred times. "Everybody in this county's got an opinion about the Blackwaters. Mine's the interesting kind."

I open my mouth to handle it myself. I've handled men like him alone in worse rooms than this one. But I don't get the chance.

Holt sets his coffee down.

He doesn't slam it, that's what I notice. It’s the thing that tells me more about him than a raised voice ever could. He sets it down with exactly enough weight that the man across from me hears it land. Then he stands, unhurried, all six foot four of him unfolding out of the booth like weather arriving. He doesn't say a single word.

Five seconds. That's all it takes. He stands there with his hands loose at his sides and his eyes on a man half his size, and the man's smile goes from confident to remembering something urgent in his truck.

"Didn't mean anything by it," he says, already sliding out, already gone. The door swinging shut on a cold gust that doesn't touch the temperature in this booth at all.

"You didn't have to do that."

"I know."

"I had it."

"I know that too." He sits back down. His jaw is still set. "Doesn't mean I was going to watch it."

I don't have an answer for that one that doesn't give away more than I want to give, so I eat my fries instead.

Holt's knee finds mine under the table and doesn't move away. Neither do I.

The drive back is quiet. Not empty.

His hand rests on the shifter. I let mine stay closer to it than it needs to be, and I note the half inch of air between them the whole twenty miles. Neither of us closes it.

By the time we clear his gate, the half inch is doing more than a hand would.

I fall asleep faster than I have any right to, in the downstairs guest room of a house that isn't mine, under a roof that belongs to a man I still don't fully trust, with a dog's weight against the door like he's decided to guard it from the wrong side.