Meet Cute (Love, Camera, Action #5) - Elise Faber Page 0,50

and down the hall to the kitchen. I was starving, and I knew that he was going to wake up the same.

We’d worked up quite an appetite the night before.

Giggling, I walked into the kitchen.

And then did a very un-cop-like thing.

I screamed.

The man in the kitchen spun toward me, raising—I reacted without thinking, my body seeking cover, moving to put a wall between myself and the intruder before I fully processed what he held—a camera, pointed in my direction.

Pounding footsteps—from in front and behind.

Then Tal was there, putting himself between me and the man, the camera. I don’t know why I was frozen, why I should have been reduced to a piece of furniture when I could take on an attacker with a knife, drag down a suspect, keep my head clear in any multitude of stressful situations.

But this one—a strange man, creeping toward me, a camera pointed in my direction, especially when I was naked beneath Tal’s T-shirt—well, it had me reduced to a lump.

The shutter seemed gunshot loud, whirling clicks radiating about the space like bullets, gouging the peace and quiet by bouncing off the floor, the cabinets, the ceiling. My eyes drifted around, half-expecting to see gouges in the wood of the cupboards, chips out of the tile, holes in the sheetrock overhead. But . . . nothing was different.

Except, me.

“Get the fuck out of my house,” Talbot growled.

The clicks didn’t stop, even as the intruder said, “Come on, man. I’m just trying to—”

“You know you can’t use those pictures,” Tal said, still standing between me and the cameraman, shifting as the man came closer. “You’re trespassing.”

“I take ‘em, someone will buy them. That’s just the way it is.” He walked toward us, still clicking away, the fucker, and I finally got my head out of my ass enough to actually be a part of this conversation.

I stuck my head out from behind Tal’s shoulder. “Look you—”

“Tammy,” Tal said. “Can you please walk to the panel there and hit the code six-four-seven-two?”

I blinked.

But despite being more than used to giving the orders, his tone had me instantly obeying. I moved to the keypad, punched in the numbers. Crossed back to Tal.

“Thank you,” he murmured.

The paparazzo was moving around the room, his camera still pointed at us, at me, at Talbot. It was the most unnerving thing I’d ever experienced, even more so because of how casual he was, just walking around in a home that wasn’t his, taking pictures in a constant fury.

“You need to leave,” Tal said.

“I just need—” The camera dropped, and I saw the greedy look in his dark brown eyes, the shadows beneath, the lines around his mouth. He smelled like cigarettes, the odor filling the room, masking the lovely spice of Tal’s scent. I hated that, hated the man who’d destroyed the small slice of peace, of happy we’d managed to build.

It was as though he had jabbed his fingers into the wound on my arm, was jiggling them around, just for good measure.

“He asked you to leave,” I said. “And as an officer of the law—”

The front door burst open.

Two huge guys launched themselves at the intruder, and in approximately one-point-five seconds, he was face-first on the floor, his camera ripped out of his hands, and those hands restrained behind his back.

Talbot turned to face me, one hand on my uninjured arm, the other on my cheek. “God, Tammy, are you okay?”

“I’m fine.”

He stared deeply into my eyes, and I saw regret pass through his. “I’m sorry.”

I opened my mouth, ready to tell him that it wasn’t his fault, but he was already turning back to face the trio of men.

“My camera!” the man complained.

One of the security guards shoved him more firmly into the floor, told him to “Shut the fuck up.”

The other came over to us. “The police are on their way.” He held up the camera. “I think you’ll find that the camera’s memory card is mysteriously wiped.”

Tal nodded. “How’d he get in?”

Fury on the tall, built man’s face. “I don’t know that yet, Mr. Green. We’ll review the tapes and—”

“I want Annalise here,” Tal said in a voice harder than anything I’d heard before.

“I’m not sure—”

I could have sworn I heard Talbot’s teeth grind together. “You tell your boss to get her ass down here immediately. I don’t give a fuck where on the planet she is, but I expect her to be here by tonight.” He stopped, shoulders rising and falling on a breath. “I don’t