Page 56 of A Shot at Love
It had all come out in a rush and when she stopped, she felt a wildfire of heat rush up from her neck to her face.
Ky stared down at his mug for a moment. When his gaze hit on her face again, compassion warmed his eyes. “I know you do,” he said. “I know how hard this all must be on you, I really do. Witnessing a murder, getting attacked, then shot at. It’s not what you’re used to.”
“No lie,” she muttered.
His mouth quirked as he took a hit of the coffee. “Let’s do this. You can choose a gun and we can get in some target practice just so I’ll know you’ll be able to use it, and then we can take a walk around the property.”
“Together?”
Laughter danced at his lips. “That’s what we usually means. Yes. Together.”
“I wanted to go…you know…alone.”
“Not gonna happen.” And just like that, once again, frost formed in his eyes.
She wanted to fight him on it. A few days ago she would have. She would have argued relentlessly. But in the end, she knew it wouldn’t do any good. She’d come to understand his intractable stubbornness where her safety was concerned. He wasn’t going to leave her side, no matter what.
So Gemma did something she never did if she could help it: she acquiesced.
Chapter Ten
“How many do I have to hit for you to be satisfied?”
Ky looked over to where she stood at the side of the garage, the Glock in her hand, its barrel aimed at the ground. Her eyes had gone wide at the hidden supply of weapons Bannerman had in the pantry access room, but her only comment had been a muttered, “Why am I not surprised?” before she’d made her choice.
He’d watched her load the clip, then weigh and balance the gun in her hand like she did it every day of her life.
“This’ll do,” she told him.
He found a box of empty beer and wine bottles in the garage and set them up at varying distances from where he’d told her to stand. He wanted to ensure she was comfortable shooting up close and far.
“All of them.” He came and stood next to her.
“Are you kidding? All of them?”
“You might never get a second chance if a first bullet misses an attacker, so yes. All of them.”
She moved to the line in the grass he’d drawn for her to shoot from, mumbling something he couldn’t hear, but guessing it wasn’t something complimentary.
“Ready?” he asked.
“Yup. Any particular order you want me to hit them in?”
He had to bite back the grin threatening to fly free at her snooty, disgruntled tone.
“Your call.”
Gemma nodded and planted her feet. He wasn’t surprised when she angled her body with one foot slightly behind the other in a Weaver stance—a more aggressive, weight-forward position—and not the triangular, or Isosceles stance. Gemma held her gun up to her face, lining up her shot, both elbows bent and close to her torso. Her brother-in-law, Josh, had been a New York City cop, and if he’d taught her to shoot, it made sense he’d taught her this way. Although the Isosceles stance was the more popular, Ky knew the Weaver was a power stance, and Gemma was a woman for whom power could have been a middle name.
She flexed her shoulders and neck, the motion so subtly erotic, it made his pulse quicken, and shifted her weight. From his viewing position behind her, he appreciated just how tall and lean she was. Narrow shoulders were relaxed and tapered down into a waist no bigger than a hand span. How many times in the past few days had he thought what it would be like to slip his own hands around that tiny area and pull her in close? Too many for prudence, that was for sure.
The first bottle, the one he’d placed the farthest from them, shattered into a thousand fragments. Before he could take a full breath, she’d hit the next two.
The final three closer ones she dispatched with equal ease.
When she turned to him and asked, “Satisfied?” in a tone filled with condescension, Ky had to physically restrain himself from running to her, lifting her up in his arms, and kissing the gorgeous smirk off her mouth.
Because he’d discovered how much he liked sparring with her—go figure that out—he pursed his lips and nodded. “Not bad.”
