and then I was difficult. You were right—I’m hard work.’
‘And I’m not?’
When he searched her eyes he found wonder mixed with the vulnerability she kept hidden from everyone else. Added to the insight he’d gained when she’d talked about her fear of not being enough, it felt as if the final piece of the puzzle had slotted into place. The need to reassure her made him reach out so he could hold her while he admitted there had been plenty of times she was more than he could handle. But when the sharp pain in his shoulder made him grit his teeth to stifle a groan a second possessive palm on her other hip was as close as he got.
‘I’m no angel and I don’t want to end up married to a saint, either.’ He leaned closer. ‘So if you think you have to be anything more than you already are you’re wrong. You pulled me back from the edge. No one else could have done that. Last night—’ he cleared his throat ‘—I went there to kill him.’
As he stood tall and waited for her judgment Miranda frowned. What was he talking about? Then it clicked. ‘He was the guy you sent a message to.’
‘Yes.’
Not that she believed it for a second. ‘Why were you going to kill him?’
‘He made it personal.’
‘How?’
His gaze lowered to one of her hands when she set them on his forearms. ‘Her name was Candice.’
Miranda felt an immediate surge of jealousy.
‘I busted her a few times when I was with Vice.’
She exhaled the breath she was holding.
‘When she fed me some useful pieces of information I put her on the payroll—one of them led to a drugs bust that took me to Narcotics.’ He took a long, controlled breath. ‘A month before I got assigned to Municipal Security her dealer changed and she witnessed something that could have put a major player behind bars. I said I’d protect her if she agreed to give evidence in court but left her alone to chase the lead. By the time I got back she was dead.’
‘What happened?’
‘He beat her to death with a baseball bat.’ The hand at the end of his good arm moved from her hip to tunnel underneath her sweater in a way that suggested he needed to feel the warmth of her skin. ‘I recruited her. I ignored the danger she was in and it got her killed. To him it was business. To me it was personal.’
With the explanation, how seriously he’d taken her safety made perfect sense to Miranda. She ran a palm up his arm, across his shoulder and raised it to his jaw, waiting for him to look into her eyes before she spoke. ‘I know you well enough to know if you thought something might happen to her you would never have left her alone. You’d have fought for her, Tyler—taken the beating for her if you could, died if it meant saving her life.’
While trying to bring her murderer to justice he almost had.
‘I should have known the risk.’
‘If you think worst-case scenario in every situation...’ The realization it was exactly what he’d been doing twisted her heart. ‘That’s why you saw potential threats everywhere you looked when you became my bodyguard, isn’t it?’
‘Partly,’ he admitted reluctantly, before pressing his mouth into a thin line. ‘If I tell you something you have to promise not to freak out.’
Meaning she wasn’t going to like it...
‘The guy outside the movie theatre was the one I saw outside the school.’ Long fingers flexed against her skin in reassurance. ‘Lewis Rand was briefed but I need you to be careful until I track down the rest of the letter writers. There’s only a couple more to go so—’
‘Wait.’ She interrupted. ‘Are you talking about Paul?’
He frowned. ‘Who the hell is Paul?’
‘Dark hair, glasses, has a problem with the three-second handshake rule.’
‘You know him?’
Miranda nodded. ‘He’s a self-professed superfan. Re-Tweets everything I say on Twitter and tries to see me in the real world as often as he can. He’s quite sweet really. His mother died a few years ago and I think he’s lonely.’
‘Great,’ Tyler said flatly. ‘I threatened Bambi.’
‘You can apologize the next time you see him. If we get married he’ll probably be outside the church...’
‘If we get married?’
‘We’ll get to that in a minute.’ Sliding her hand from his jaw to the back of his neck, she wriggled closer to the edge of the counter and locked