While it was always with me, it was usually hidden away just like the three phones.
“Why do you have a gun?” she demanded.
“You should always have a gun at sea. Pirates are still a real thing, you know.”
“First, we aren’t at sea. And second, do you even know how to use it?”
It was my turn to snort. “My brother is in the military, and my dad is a sheriff. What do you think?”
Neither one of them was the reason my aim was damn near perfect, but I couldn’t tell her that. Dick and Truck had each taught me how to handle a gun, but neither of them had taken me to the range. My flawless ability to hit a target came from the part of my life no one knew about. No one could.
“Do Mandy and Leena know you keep one here?”
“I don’t keep it here. It goes with me wherever I go,” I told her.
“You can get arrested for having a concealed weapon.”
“Not if you have a carry permit.”
“And you have one?”
“Yes,” I told her. She weighed my words as if trying to figure out if I was being honest when I’d never been anything but with her.
She put her hand to the back of her head and winced.
Without a word, I turned her so that I could see the back, running my fingers along her scalp. There was a knot forming. Not enormous, but enough that she’d certainly be feeling it in the morning. With the alcohol in her veins, it was going to be hard to tell if her lack of focus was from a concussion or from being drunk.
I grabbed an ice pack from the freezer and stuck it to her head.
She grabbed it from me, our fingers tangling, sending lightning rods of awareness through my veins. I pulled away, tucking my hands under my chest to try and keep them from returning to her waist and the body she still had on display.
“Seriously, what the hell happened tonight?” I asked, eyes lingering on her topless form and drunken sway.
She suddenly seemed to realize what I was looking at and tugged the lapels of the coat together, buttoning it. She may have hidden her skin from my view, but it was still flashing in my brain like a neon sign.
She sighed. “This was the result of an unfortunate accident. Yet another in a long stream of them.”
She started moving away from me, one hand still on the ice pack, the other grabbing the brandy bottle I’d set on the counter before heading for the stairs. She could barely walk straight, feet turning in her heels, body bumping in the doorway.
I followed, and when she almost fell off the second step, I couldn’t handle it anymore. “Jesus, you’re going to kill yourself.”
I swept her into my arms. Fucking mistake. Biggest mistake I’d made in a long time, because she fit there perfectly. She was almost weightless, and yet her very presence engulfed me, scent and motion and vision combining as I stalked up the stairs.
I didn’t take her to the room that had always been hers. Instead, I took her to mine. Another goddamn mistake, but I didn’t trust her on her own. I couldn’t risk the alcohol and the bash to the head sending her into a comatose state.
I turned the knob, kicking it open softly, and set her down on the bed with the sheets twined and twisted from the nightmare that had woken me.
She looked around at the mess I’d made in the room in just the few hours I’d been back. Clothes were strewn everywhere, and papers were all over the desk. Several empty coffee cups were littered about. Ever since I’d gotten back from the Crab Shack, I’d been lost in work—both shipbuilding work and my other job—laying out the plans for both like puzzle pieces.
When her look returned to me, her eyes were asking questions. Why did you bring me here? I had to look away at the hope and lust and wariness that were mixed in them. No way could I give in to that look. Not with her drunk. Not with my three worlds whirling around me in fragments. Not when Jersey and Truck would both bury me alive.
“What happened with Silas?” I asked, turning away from temptation and locking my gun away in the safe.
“The beginning, the middle, or the end?” she asked. When I finally looked at her, she’d worked the cap off the brandy and was