Midnight Kiss (Men of Midnight #7) - Lisa Marie Rice Page 0,21

Hope. This is the way it is. You can sleep in as long as you want,” he said. “Breakfast will be any time you want. I just need you to know that you are as safe as safe can be here. The hotel’s security team is alerted and will let me know if anyone comes up to this floor or if there are any issues at all. The door is reinforced and alarmed and I am armed. Nothing — and trust me when I say nothing — will happen to you.”

He said it without smiling, sober as a judge, meaning every word.

She sketched a shaky smile. “Unless the zombie apocalypse happens.”

“Then, too. I know to aim for the head and I’m an excellent shot.” He didn’t smile back. “Still, no zombies tonight, guaranteed. Sleep well.”

She nodded and walked into her bedroom and he let out a breath he didn’t realize he was holding.

This wasn’t going to be easy and not because she had killers after her. That was the easy part.

Hope finished unpacking the bag Summer had prepared for her and, as promised, Summer had been thorough. Hope had enough clothes for at least a week and she could always order online, Luke had said. Anything she needed would be ordered off a company card and delivered to the company and then brought to them. Summer, like her, had apparently perfected the art of dressing Nerd Chic. Comfortable clothes made of excellent fabric, well cut, but sporty. Clothes you could look good in even when working twelve-hour days.

Summer had included new underwear that was a little large, a new toothbrush and toothpaste, minimal makeup and tampons and — whoa. A box of condoms at the bottom. A box.

It contained more condoms than the times she’d had sex in her life.

Standing there like an idiot, with the box in her hand, she blushed furiously. Hope rarely blushed and if she did, it wasn’t about sex, it was when she made a very rare professional mistake. Sex didn’t play a big part in her life. Ordinarily, she’d have smiled and put the box of condoms away, but she stood there like a dork, package in hand, while intense heat prickled through her entire body.

Because, well, condoms meant sex and she had the sexiest man she’d ever seen in the next room. Luke Reynolds was, as they said, sex on a stick.

Hope worked in a man’s world, but the man’s world she was in wasn’t full of men. Not men men, anyway. It was full of humans with a Y chromosome who were really interested in a) data, b) software, c) money. If they were interested in women, that came way, way down in the list and after office hours. And since most everyone worked fourteen-hour days, sex didn’t play a big part in their lives, either.

In her classes at MIT, at the NSA and now at the hedge fund that she had probably resigned from, since she’d gone AWOL, there wasn’t an ounce of testosterone. The rec room goodies were more interesting than the men.

But Luke Reynolds … huh. While being utterly serious, even grim, he simply oozed sex. He was built — though maybe too lean — but that wasn’t it. Or at least that wasn’t all of it. He just was a man in the truest sense of the term. After that initial flurry of terror when he’d woken her up in the plane, she’d felt nothing but safe with him. It was like he’d thrown a magic male protective net over her. And all the time they’d been together, he’d been armed. The men after her were armed, but so was he. He’d been a special forces officer and then a cop, a detective. No doubt he was a really good shot, just as he said. But above all, he seemed serious and focused on her.

She was a job, sure. He hadn’t made any moves of any type, neither physically nor verbally. He’d been a perfect gentleman every single second. But he couldn’t help being so dazzlingly handsome.

In Hope’s most desperate moment, Felicity had thrown her a lifeline. A man who could and would protect her. Hope was really really grateful. But why did he have to be a hormone magnet? Why? Was this fair?

No, it wasn’t. But life wasn’t fair, she knew that. Had known it for a long time. All of her life, in fact.

So she’d tuck the condoms back into the bottom of the wheelie and