The flow of conversation was easy. Comfortable. It reminded him so much of the night they’d met. He remembered wanting one more hour of time with her. One more question answered. Harper fascinated him, and very few women had ever managed to do so. Galen found himself wishing the drive would go on forever. Too bad her condo wasn’t farther away. Say, in Montana, maybe?
“Favorite movie?”
Harper cocked her head to the side and puckered her mouth as she contemplated her answer. “It’s hard to pick just one. Plus, I watch all kinds of movies. If I have to pick . . .”
Galen waited for her response. Probably
The Notebook
. Or some other chick flick.
“. . . I guess
The Avengers
.”
That’s right. She had a thing for superheroes. “It was all right, I guess. Superman is the only true superhero in my opinion. The rest are poseurs.”
Harper stared at Galen, her jaw slack. After a couple of weeks together, he still couldn’t get enough of that scandalized expression. It was so easy to push her into a spluttering state of shock. “You’re kidding, right? I mean, you have to be.” You’d think he’d called her mother fat or insulted her grandma’s cooking. Galen laughed and if anything, she grew even more indignant. “Batman? Spider-Man? Wolverine? They’re not true superheroes?”
“I’m just saying. Those guys are cool and everything, but they’re still only human. Bruce Wayne has no super powers at all, just a jaded attitude, a lot of money, and shit ton of gadgets. Spider-Man would still be a hapless high school kid if not for the spider bite. Wolverine? Mutant. But still human. Superman is so awesome that he has to
pretend
to be human. And the only way he thinks he can blend in with the rest of us is to make his alter ego a clumsy, awkward, working-stiff doofus.”
Harper’s answering laughter exploded out of her, the sound a relaxing balm to Galen’s foul mood. “So what you’re saying is that Superman is so amazing, he actually has to dumb himself down to interact with the lowly humans he protects.”
“Something like that.”
“Why protect them at all, then? I mean, if he thinks he’s so much better than the rest of us, why bother?”
Galen thought for a moment. “Because he feels sorry for us. We’re weaker, we can’t fly, and we’re not bulletproof. Plus, we’re obviously no match for the super villains, otherwise we wouldn’t need him at all.”
“Pity protection?” Harper responded with incredulity.
“Yeah,” Galen said, smug. “Totally.”
She rolled her eyes, but a smile still curved her lips. “Whatever.”
As they pulled up to her building, Galen reflected on the events of last year. What he’d wanted, the way he’d felt, the experience they’d shared, and of course, the text messages he’d read on her phone and his assumption that she’d used him and played him for a fool. An unspoken accusation she hadn’t even been given a chance to defend herself from.
Harper turned to him and smiled. “I think I’ll make us grilled cheese for lunch.”
Maybe those assumptions didn’t matter to him so much anymore.
Chapter Fourteen
Harper didn’t know what was better: the little silver nugget she’d found in her bag, or the way the dark cloud of Galen’s mood had lifted. Once again she found herself feeling optimistic, and that was a very dangerous thing. Their superhero conversation was so reminiscent of the first time they’d met. Had it jogged anything in his memory? God, was it totally stupid of her to hope that it had?
She led the way to her condo as she had so many times over the past week with Galen not far behind her. His protective instinct overwhelmed Harper in its intensity. As though reassuring her on a subconscious level that he’d never let anything happen to her. Her hand shook as she retrieved her key from her pocket and slid it into the lock. She knew if she leaned her head back, it would find his shoulder. And if she did, would his strong arms encircle her like they had that night? Would he reach up and cup her breasts? Tease her nipples into aching peaks? His mouth hot against her skin?
“Harper? Are you all right?”
Galen’s voice rumbled in his chest and the vibration traveled the length of Harper’s spine. No matter how many times she told herself to let it—
him
—go, she couldn’t do it. Why? Why him? Why now? “I’m fine.” She let out a deep sigh, hoping he couldn’t hear the tremor in her voice. “Just taking a little breather.”
He put his hands on her shoulders, and Harper started, not because he’d caught her off guard, but because the physical contact was something that she’d wanted for so long. A year was a long damned time to be without a man’s touch. Not that she’d had a whole hell of a lot of it before her one-night stand with Galen.
“It’s going to be okay.” Every syllable rippled through her, each word drilling into her stomach with the force of a jackhammer. How was it possible to want someone so badly?
“I know.” The words were hollow as she spoke them. No matter the outcome, nothing was going to be okay. Not if, when it was all said and done, Galen turned his back and left her again. Forgotten.
He reached over her and his hand covered hers. Harper’s eyes drifted shut as she reveled in the sensation of his skin on hers. The warmth of his touch. He turned her fist, and the key, in the lock and pushed the door open. His breath sent chills down Harper’s spine as he said close to her ear, “Come on. I’ll make you a grilled cheese.”
Harper’s appetite rarely failed her. Until today.
She stared at the perfectly golden-brown grilled cheese cooling on her plate. Was it wrong to hope that Davis, in all his ineptitude, never found Ellis’s killer? And then Galen would have to stay with her indefinitely. Wouldn’t that be nice? Her own captive U.S. Marshal. Surely Galen would jump at the chance to spend the rest of his life hanging around her apartment.
Ugh
.
“I really like Michelle.” She picked at the crust of her sandwich. “And her apple fritters are the best thing I’ve ever eaten.”
“Everything Michelle makes is the best,” Galen said as he slid a second grilled cheese onto his plate. “Her beignets are absolutely killer.”
The pride in his voice caused Harper’s chest to swell with emotion. She’d always wanted a brother or sister. Being an only child could be so lonely. “Are you guys close?”
Galen demolished almost half of his grilled cheese in a single bite. After a pause, he said, “Yeah. She pretty much raised me. I lived with her full-time from sixteen on.”
For some reason, Harper had always pictured Galen as having a super well-adjusted childhood with a storybook life. Maybe her fantasies of the man she’d imagined him to be had bled over into her perception of the man he really was. Imperfect. With trials, bad memories, hang-ups, and baggage just like everyone else.
“Oh.” She didn’t really know what to say. Maybe she didn’t need to say anything.
“My parents fought a lot.” He gave a rueful laugh. “More to the point, my dad yelled and browbeat my mom a lot. She tried to keep him level, but he was just a son of a bitch who thought the entire universe revolved around him.”
Harper took a bite of her grilled cheese. More to give her mouth something to do than anything. She didn’t want to interrupt Galen or make him feel like he was obligated to continue. Up until now, their conversations had been light. This took their
whatevership
to a deeper level, and she didn’t want to ruin the moment by asking a nosy question or saying something that might put him in retreat.
“My dad sort of demanded attention, you know? To the point that my mom put Michelle and me on the back burner to deal with him.” Galen stared at some far-off spot and Harper wondered what unpleasant memories he’d dredged up. “He acted like an entitled kid all the time so we really didn’t have a choice but to become the adults.”
“That’s awful.” Oops. There went her mouth, screwing everything up.
Galen gave her a lopsided, albeit sad grin. “I’m probably making it sound a lot worse than it really was. It’s not like we were chained in the basement with no food or water. We had good times, too. When everything went smoothly and my parents were relaxed. I didn’t know for a long time exactly what it was they fought about all the time. It was only after my dad finally got sick of us and left that Michelle told me about his affairs. She knew because my mom didn’t have anyone else to talk to about it. I think Michelle told me because she didn’t want to have to bear the burden of it alone. She was the only thing keeping Mom together.”
“That must have been a lot for her to deal with,” Harper said. She wrapped her fingers around the bar stool to keep herself seated so she wouldn’t succumb to the urge to go into the kitchen and wrap her arms around Galen. “How old was she?”
“Nineteen,” Galen said. “She didn’t go to college because she didn’t want to leave me home alone with our mom. She sort of shut down. Couldn’t cope with the divorce.” He snorted as though the idea were ridiculous. “In the long run, I guess it wasn’t such a bad idea, though.”
“We don’t have to talk about this, you know. I didn’t mean to pry.”
Galen quirked a brow. “You call that prying? I thought you were a journalist. Aren’t you supposed to peel back my layers, inch by painful inch, digging your way in until I tell you what you want to hear?”
“If you were up for reelection, maybe.” In one sarcastic sentence, Galen had managed to lighten the mood, but Harper couldn’t help but wonder if he was merely deflecting. Had they crossed a professional line? And what would it mean if they had? Harper suppressed a groan. Her journalistic mouth might have kept quiet, but her damned overactive brain made up for it. Why couldn’t she quit analyzing every last detail and simply live in the moment? “Is it true that you speak French?”
“Michelle’s got a big mouth.” The words were scolding, but laced with affection. “Yeah. I spent all of last year in Paris working a personal security detail for the U.S. ambassador to France. A group of extremists had made some threats and as a part of my SOG duty, I was sent to oversee his security.”
France? Wow. Could that explain why he’d walked out on her last year?
“SOG?” Harper’s curiosity got the best of her. There wasn’t a single detail about Galen Kelly that she didn’t want to know.
“Special Operations Group,” Galen said. His face lit up with the words, as though he couldn’t wait to talk about it. “It’s an elite division of the Marshals Service. We’re on call twenty-four-seven and take certain special assignments. They don’t take many deputies for the program. I got lucky.”
Right. As if luck had anything to do with it. His modesty was part of his charm, but Harper knew that Galen had to have earned the appointment. She smiled. “Will you say something in French?”
Galen reached around and rubbed the back of his neck, his expression almost sheepish. Good God, that simple act had Harper’s toes curling. Now she had to hold on to her chair for a completely different reason. Want swelled within her like storm clouds boiling in a summer sky. Her stomach clenched tight, and she realized her lips had parted as though in anticipation of a kiss.
Keep it together, Harp
.
“
Tu es la femme la plus belle que j’ai jamais vu et je déteste avoir autant envie de toi. Je pense à toi chaque nuit et je compte les secondes jusqu’au petit matin
.”
Oh. Holy. Shit. Was it possible to have an orgasm without touching? Because if he said one more thing, Harper was pretty sure her body would burst into flames of volcanic proportions. No way would she be able to keep her distance after today. She was as good as enamored.
Jesus, dude, what the hell were you thinking?
The words had left his mouth in a rush, as if trying to beat his brain to the punch. Because if his brain had won, he never would have told Harper that she was the most beautiful woman he’d ever laid eyes on. Or that he thought about her every night, counting down the minutes until morning.
But even though she didn’t have a clue what he said, Galen knew his words had affected her. Her hazel eyes, large and sparkling, delved into his with an intensity that locked him into place. And her lips, parted and inviting, begged to be kissed. Harper’s cheeks flushed red as she averted her gaze and Galen wondered what she was thinking. Because, right now, the only thing keeping him from vaulting the bar that separated them was the Internal Affairs investigation that would no doubt follow on the heels of today’s episode with Davis. Too bad Galen’s cock hadn’t gotten the message about mixing business with pleasure. Christ, he was hard as a fucking brick, one more reason to stay firmly planted behind Harper’s kitchen counter.
“That’s beautiful,” Harper breathed. “What did you say?”
For a goddamned year, Galen had shut himself off. No relationships, no entanglements. Not even a prospect. He could have passed the nights with a woman here or there. Hell, he’d been hit on occasionally, but they all paled in comparison to the woman who stood before him. And what did it say about him that he was willing to overlook her indiscretion, the fact that she’d deceived him and cheated on her boyfriend with him? Maybe he was more like his mom than he cared to admit, chasing after a dream. Great. Fucking wonderful.
“Oh, you know, just something about the weather.” Nice.
The weather?
Maybe now was a good time to bang his head on the counter and knock himself the hell out.
“Well,” Harper murmured, “you make the weather sound amazing.”
Galen could definitely put his second language skills to good use. Spread Harper out on her bed, strip her until she lay bare, every inch of her exposed to his gaze. He’d whisper the words against her skin:
mollet
as he kissed her calf,
le ventre
as his tongue traced a path up her torso.
Les seins
before he cupped her full breast and drew her taut nipple into his mouth and
le cou
as he grazed his teeth across her throat just before he thrust into her.
Whoa
. Well, that didn’t do anything to cool him down. Nothing short of a dip in Arctic waters would quench the lust burning in his body.
“Heh.” He choked out a laugh and cupped the back of his neck as though a quick massage would ease the tension that had settled there. “Yeah, well, everything sounds good in a foreign language, I guess.”
Since day one of this assignment Galen had found it damned near impossible to deny his attraction to Harper. Rather than making excuses to put distance between them, he found himself looking for reasons to be close to her—like out in her hallway when he’d unlocked the door for her—even if it was nothing more than a whisper of contact. Did she have any idea of the effect she had on him? He was fairly certain that in the back of Harper’s mind, he was still the asshole who’d picked her up in a bar and promptly forgotten her face the moment he’d come. And now, nothing more than property he was responsible for looking after. She did a damned good job of hiding her disgust if that was the case.
He’d killed any chance of a relationship with her, though, the day he’d decided that his job was more important than admitting to Monroe that he knew her. Now, only a couple of weeks after that decision he’d been so certain of making, he already regretted it. “What’s on your work schedule for today?” he asked. No more French. No more details about his life spilled. Building intimacy between them would only lead to ruin. Galen needed to get his head back in the game. Distance. Detachment. Professionalism.
“Sam officially put me on paid leave,” Harper said, her tone deflated, “since it’s too hard to go out and do what I need to do. I’m used to leaving the office, going to meetings, press conferences, interviews. But since I’m not exactly low-key right now, showing up at a press event is probably not the best idea.”
Galen hated that she was upset. If that stupid ass hat Davis would get off the paranoia train and actually
do his job
, then maybe they would have caught Ellis’s murderer by now and Harper would be free. Then again, with Harper’s safety in the clear, she’d no longer need him around. What would he do then? Just walk away? Again. Turn his back on what could be something amazing? Or take a chance and risk getting burned by Harper yet again?
“Sorry about work,” he offered. “Maybe you should use the afternoon to get in touch with your friend about a lawyer?” He didn’t want to thrust her back into reality so harshly, but after this morning’s cluster fuck with Davis, he was pretty certain the scrutiny would only increase. For both of them.
Galen’s phone rang and he didn’t need to dig it out of his pocket to know who was calling. Let the scrutiny begin! He swiped his finger across the screen and brought the phone to his ear. “Kelly.”
“So, you decided this detail wasn’t quite exciting enough,” Monroe said matter-of-factly. “That’s why you pushed Davis into a wall. Because you wanted to bring the wrath of the FBI down on your head, right?”