I really shouldn’t be. But the man was like freaking catnip. “Good thing . . .” Gah. I lost whatever retort I’d had prepared when his front met my back and he snagged my fork, picking up another bite and lifting it to my mouth.
“Eat,” he murmured.
“I—”
He slid the tines in between my lips, and I swear to God, if the man wasn’t so sexy, if the omelet with all of its works weren’t so freaking delicious, I would have snatched that fork back and put it through his right eyeball.
Very specific? Yes.
Very truthful? No.
Also, if I were being realistic, my retort probably wouldn’t have been a good one anyway.
He scooped up another bite and plunked it into my mouth when I started to form another protest. Not that my protest would have mattered. I was starting to see that this man was very much a force to be reckoned with. I needed to get my shit together and find a way to hold my own, even with all of his yumminess pressed to all of my . . . none-i-ness?
Fuck, Conners, that was bad.
So bad, in fact, that I found myself snorting at my inner monologue, drawing the focus of both Maggie and Talbot. Maggie, I could see, her brown eyes sparkling with interest as they studied me—or rather me and Talbot pressed to my back. Talbot, on the other hand, I couldn’t see, not with him still at my back, but I knew he was looking at me, just knew it.
How? Someone might ask.
Idiocy and instinct, I might reply.
Another snort escaped me, more focus settling my way, but I didn’t acknowledge either of them, just plunked the fork out of Tal’s hand, started eating in earnest, and then used the remainder of my available brainpower to wonder how in the hell I’d gotten here.
Unfortunately, I didn’t have any answer, other than to blame the gun . . . oh, and the knife, too.
Chapter Fifteen
Talbot
I don’t think Tammy realized how bad it was until after we finished eating and Maggie sat us down in the family room and pulled out her laptop.
She brought up screen after screen, too many articles to ever read, blog posts galore, photos and YouTube videos, Instagram stories and tweets. There was even an entire thread on TikTok that had gone viral. The attack had been covered in everything from gossip sheets to all those social media influencers to local news to national papers. It was, in a word, everywhere.
Tammy grew quieter with each page that came up, with the news clips and the comments that followed.
The only good thing was that the paparazzi had caught everything.
The older man, his face lined and drawn, his eyes huge and sunken. I had to admit he looked frighteningly crazed on the videos, much more so than I’d been able to comprehend the night before with everything moving so fast. They showed the man lunging toward us, the knife held above his head.
They’d caught Tammy’s warning to stop.
They’d caught the first shot and then him getting back up again, where they’d also filmed the rest of it. Tammy firing twice more, kicking the knife away, and then immediately trying to save the man.
All with blood pouring down her arm because he’d cut her with that knife, and in that sexy black dress.
She was fucking amazing.
She was a fucking superhero.
And right now, people seemed to realize it.
But sooner or later, that tide would turn, someone would find something to exploit or frown upon or to rally the forces against her. I needed to make sure that didn’t happen.
I needed Maggie to make sure that didn’t happen.
“Right now,” my publicist was saying, “they haven’t identified you, yet. That’s a good thing. That gives us time to figure out how we want to play this. You’ll want to release a statement soon, though, otherwise the frenzy will continue. We can consult with your lawyer”—Maggie’s gaze came to mine, and I nodded, assuring her that Tammy would have access to any of my resources I could supply her with—“and figure out what we can say—”
“No.”
I blinked, glanced at Tammy, whose skin had gone ashen.
“No, I don’t want a statement,” she whispered. “I want to forget that ever happened. I want to just go back to my life and—” Her voice broke as she closed the laptop. “This isn’t right. I-I hurt someone. He might die, and those people out there”—she threw an arm out in the direction of the front gate—“they don’t