Leave Me Breathless (10 page)

Emotions were a bitch.

“It’s not what you think,” Callie said.

“I think it’s your job to watch over him.” Elaine tapped her fingers together. “The assistant title is clearly a cover. I’m assuming you work with the man who was watching over Judge Blanton and got injured.”

Callie tried to force her eyes back to normal size level. “I can’t really—”

“I know all about the judge’s brother Mark. That one might have an important secret job, but I’ve been with the judge from the beginning, which means seeing Mark often. What I’ve figured out is he’s an agent of some type.”

Callie just knew Mark would blame her for this. “That’s not my business.”

“I also think that whatever it is you’re doing with that quiet investigation of yours has nothing to do with Judge Walker’s safety. This is personal for you.” Elaine didn’t raise her voice. Still, her comments came out like a lecture from a disappointed mother.

Callie had a bigger problem. With the stalker still out there, no one should know about her true position. Elaine might not look like an assassin, but who could tell? Besides that, Callie knew blowing her cover would be the last straw with Mark.

“Do you plan to talk with Ben about the paperwork?” Callie asked.

“I think you should do that, don’t you?”

“Of course.” In time but not now.

“I trust you’ll do the right thing and not sneak around.”

Callie hated it when people said stuff like that. It was a ticket to disappointment and guilt. Almost made her wish she hadn’t asked her hacker friend to track down Ben’s past and dig around, including into the boring stuff that looked too good to be real.

Elaine’s gaze never wavered. “I’ve worked with the judge a long time. He deserves honesty.”

Callie vowed to give that to him…eventually.

“Y
ou sure know how to show a girl a good time.” Callie made the comment as she walked into lane five of the shooting range.

“Not every woman would view a few hours working with a gun as the perfect date.” Standing behind her, Ben took it all in.

The snug jeans and gentle swing of her hips as she moved around the three-by-five space. A hard shiny gun in direct contrast with her soft curves. The woman was so damn hot. Even the earphones hanging around her neck didn’t turn him off.

“When you challenged me to a shoot-out, how could I say no?” She opened the box of ammo.

Excitement all but poured out of her. No question the woman knew how to handle a gun. Seemed to enjoy the smooth feel of the steel against her skin, because she kept caressing it. Kind of reminded him how she touched him, firm and knowing. She was a woman who had learned what she liked and went after it every chance she got.

Totally fucking sexy.

“Technically, you challenged me,” he said.

She chuckled. “Because I said you were getting soft?”

That happened two hours ago after they finished the afternoon docket and she informed him that his job was “boring as shit.” She then went on to tell him why, including plenty of profanity and complaints about lawyers in her explanation.

“Yeah, thanks again for that.”

“Oh, please. Your ego is fine. Besides, it wasn’t a comment on your fitness. It was a statement on how you spend your life in this unreal state where people agree with everything you say and want to make you happy.” She checked the gun before lowering it to the shelf.

“You including yourself in that crowd?”

“Absolutely not.”

“That’s unfortunate.”

She snorted. “You’d get bored with a woman who fell at your feet and treated you like you shit gold.”

“That’s an interesting visual image.”

“You can be snide all you want. You know I’m right.”

He did. Emma had said the same thing. Despite his burning need for privacy, the women in his life seemed to know a great deal about his likes and dislikes. That sensation pissed him off for some reason.

When her gaze wandered down his torso, he thought about skipping the shooting and dragging her down to the floor instead.

“Do you disapprove of my choice of clothes?” he asked.

She pointed at his face and wiggled her finger around. “See, you’re doing it again.”

“Talking?”

“No.”

“Flirting?”

“Getting all hoity.”

He’d never been accused of that until Callie came along. His background was as far from the rich kid ideal as possible. “What, no toity?”

“I’ve decided it’s a defense mechanism.”

Great, a psychological exam. Just what he wanted from her. “How about we start shooting now?”

The bullets jingled when she put her fingers in the small box and moved them around. “It’s not true, you know?”

As usual, he had no damn idea what she was talking about. “Excuse me?”

“You know, you can just say ‘what’ without the other stuff. You don’t need to pretend you’re the king or something.”

Only Callie could get away with talking to him like that. “I didn’t—”

“My point is that you’re not soft,” she said

The quick change in conversation direction took him a second to adjust. “Okay.”

“You look good.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Very good, actually. Spectacular even. It’s one of the few things the sniping women in the courthouse get right.”

“Thanks. I think.”

Her eyes did that dipping thing again, leaving his face and going on an extended tour to his stomach, then lower. “You’re actually in great shape.”

“Okay, that’s enough.”

“And your stamina?” She smacked her lips together in a fake kiss. “It’s like you’re twenty.”

His pants started to feel tight. “We can stop this conversation anytime now.”

“Problem?”

“Only with my concentration.”

“You worrying about misfiring?”

“I think we’re off track here.”

She treated his growing erection to an intense stare before getting back to work at the counter. Her fingers worked over the metal. “I’m just saying that if a man doesn’t practice handling his weapon he gets rusty. You got to keep it primed and ready to go.”

“Are we still talking about guns?”

She threw him a sexy smile over her shoulder. “What else would I be talking about?”

“Right.”

She concentrated on loading the weapon and steadied her stance by separating her legs.

“You ever miss it?”

Ben forced his gaze away from her ass. “Excuse…huh?”

“A life that doesn’t include sitting behind a desk. The military. The travel. You ever wish you were still there?”

He leaned against the wall to her right side so he could see her reactions play across her face as he spoke. “Since I served during a war, no.”

“I’m sorry.”

He barely thought about those years now. “It was a long time ago.”

“Then what about the other parts? What happened in all of those years in between? I’m thinking nothing as exciting as what went before.”

“Ah, I see. You’re saying my current life is boring.”

“Remember that I’ve sat in on the motions docket.” She rolled her eyes. “That’s some terrible stuff right there. Boring doesn’t even come close to describing the brain-numbing nature of those hours.”

“Yeah, I have to admit that’s not a highlight of the job.”

“Hardly.”

A round of bangs echoed in the background. Ben stuck his head out of the lane and saw the light on six stalls away. That meant another shooter had come in. Between the hum of the lights and the shots, Ben figured this was as private as this building could get.

Callie didn’t let something like an audience stop her hunt for information. She kept on making her list. “The adrenaline rush? The strategy sessions? The brotherhood bond of your unit?”

Without knowing it, she had touched on some of the reasons he joined. That, and he didn’t have any other options. The army provided him with structure and a home when he desperately needed both. “You know a lot about the military?”

“No.” She looked him in the eye this time. Her hand didn’t move from the weapon, but he had her attention now. “I’m fascinated by the idea of people putting their lives on the line in that way. The honor and integrity angles are pretty irresistible.”

“This sounds like some type of men-in-uniform fantasy.”

“You gotta admit that level of courage is pretty damn sexy.”

Getting women was about the only reason not on his “pro” listed for signing up for the army all of those years ago. “And here I thought the ladies liked the judge’s robe.”

“That’s only because they’re all trying to figure out what you have on under there. Me, on the other hand, I’m trying to figure out what’s under here.” She laid her palm over his heart.

The touch sparked something warm inside him. He tended to balk at oversharing and ploys to get him to talk about his past. Women always wanted to know what happened before, but he was a live-in-the-now kind of guy. But with Callie, the questions came with such a genuine zeal, without any agenda, that his inner wall holding her out crumbled slightly.

He slid his palm over hers. “You worried I’m empty under all the judge stuff?”

“No.”

Not the most convincing response he’d ever heard. “Then?”

She dropped her arm, breaking the contact, and stepped back. “You’ve raced through several careers and landed a gig as the top banana. You’re protective of Emma and wary of Mark. You’re a monster in the sack and a star in the courtroom.”

“That’s quite a rundown.”

She tapped her forehead. “A smart woman finds out all she can before hitting the sheets with a man.”

A red flag went up in his mind. That comment sounded more real and less flip than he expected. “I suspected it before, but now I know. You checked on my past.”

She shrugged. “I read the file Mark gave me.”

There was more. The churning in Ben’s gut told him that much. “And?”

Her head fell to the side. “And poked around a bit.”

Now that scared the hell out of him. “After all that investigating, what do you think now?”

“I’m not sure.”

He knew the thoughtful look on her face was a bad sign. “Tell me what that means.”

“I want to know if there’s more to you.”

“Like what?”

“You tell me.”

Ben had no idea what she was searching for. “Is this a test of some sort?”

“Yeah, I think it is.” She finally dropped the gun and fully turned to face him. “Let’s try it this way. We’ll play a game of twenty questions.”

“Isn’t that what we were just doing?”

“An actual game this time. One with rules.”

“Most people stick to shooting targets here.”

“Not us.” She ticked off the instructions to her makeshift game on her fingers. “If you want to answer, you answer. Otherwise, you shoot. But without a big number shot—I’m talking a plug to the head or the heart—you have to answer anyway. You only get one chance to evade the uncomfortable question and nothing is off limits.”

“You do know I was a sharpshooter in the army, right?”

“And I was top in my class at Quantico.” She petted the gun again. “You in?”

“I’m going to regret this.”

She motioned for him to step up to the bar. “You can even go first.”

He sensed a trap. The scenario she outlined sounded good. They’d both have an equal shot at finding out what they wanted to know, but he could see her fixing the game. Her lax stance suggested she didn’t care much about what happened in the next few minutes.

The look was total bullshit. He’d bet she was ready to pop. Hell, he could see it in the way she shifted her weight from foot to foot. Calm outside. A ball of nerves inside. But what was life without risks?

“So, how does smart-mouthed Callie Robbins end up in the stiff FBI, earning high marks in gunplay?” He could have reached out to her or slipped his foot an inch or two to the left and touched her. He stood still instead.

She leaned back against the wall across from him. The move put them less than two feet apart. The tight area made the personal subject matter even more intimate. “I grew up in a small town. The type where girls got married at eighteen and pregnant right around then, usually before. College wasn’t a priority. Excitement amounted to smoking behind the gas station and sex in the back of the movie theater. I went away to school, escaped really, worked my butt off, and joined the FBI. All of that because I wanted a real challenge.”

“I never would have taken you for a farm girl.”

“No farm, just small town. Stifling, really.” She smiled. “Now it’s my turn.”

“I’m ready.”

She snorted. “Right.”

“Try me.”

“Okay, smart boy like you with all of those opportunities. Why the military? Not that I think it’s beneath you or anything. You just strike me as the college scholarship type.”

He didn’t realize he was holding his breath until it escaped his lungs in a rush of relief. Of all the questions she could ask, this one was the safest. “No money and mediocre grades.”

“You, the judge, weren’t an academic wonder?”

“I spent more time getting into trouble than opening books.”

“Trouble as in you couldn’t stay out of high school girls’ panties?”

“Among other things. Truth is the army was really good for me. Gave me focus. I couldn’t be more grateful for the chance I got there.”

“Impressive.”

“Without it, I don’t know where I would have ended up.”

That wasn’t a lie. He had spent many years defending his mother and trying to understand his parents’ choices. His father cheated. His mother, seeing the love of her life having sex with someone else in her bed, lost her mind and found the only gun in the house. Ben understood now that he dealt with the numbing loss back then with the quick use of his fists. He punched as a way of releasing his unspoken grief.

The draining loss lessened with the short move away from his hometown. Something about those extra thirty miles of distance let him focus his energy on sports instead of pounding people. The inevitable name change helped, too.

But he knew all about his secrets. He had lived with them for years, explaining the truth only when he had to and even then in small pieces, like to the governor’s staff and committees who interviewed him for the judicial position. All of that was done in confidence. Still, the truth could seep out at any time. Ben actually waited for the day to come.

He wasn’t worried about that now. No. All the question marks in his head right now related to Callie. He wasn’t about to let this opportunity to really know her pass by.

“Who did you have to shoot?” he asked in a whisper, even though shots rang out from the other stall and echoed throughout the enclosed space.

By the way her eyes narrowed, she heard him just fine. “How did you know that?”

“You said it once in passing.”

“I guess that means you do listen. Good to know. Most men aren’t so good at that.”

“You’re stalling.”

She looked down at her feet and then back up again. “I shot my former boss at the FBI. In the leg. One shot, but it did the trick.”

Then she went silent. Actually looked up at him with those big eyes and an innocent smile.

“That’s it? No story.”

She chuckled. “You asked; I answered.”

“Gee, I wonder what my next question will be.”

“Doesn’t matter because it’s my turn. Why do people think you broke up Emma’s engagement?” The words rushed out of Callie as if she’d been holding them in forever.

“Because I did.”

Callie’s eyes bulged at the fast response.

The question wasn’t exactly a surprise. He knew Callie would hear the courthouse gossip about that one eventually.

“And?” she asked.

“I answered you.” When her eyes darkened and mouth fell, he shot her a smile. “Hey, just following your interpretation of the rules.”

“Oh, come on.”

What the hell.
“Emma was in love with Mark and the fiancé was a total ass. All wrong for her. A law partner with no personality. I just helped her to see it. Everyone assumes the rest. All of that untrue, as I’ve said about a million times.”