on out front. If it turns red, get the hell out of here any way you can. You remember the other way out, don’t you?”
“Yeah, I do.”
“If things go all to hell, follow the tunnel to the other end. You can lay low there, or if you need to be moving, the keys are under the floor mat.”
“Thanks, Dwayne, and we’re even after this.”
* * *
Twenty minutes later, Kat had made some serious inroads into the heaping plate of food that Dwayne had delivered. She often made do with coffee and maybe some yogurt for breakfast. Today, though, the pile of eggs, hash browns, bacon and toast really hit the spot. Evidently, living in stark fear revved up the appetite.
She studied the man sitting across from her. She’d cost him so much, and yet here he was ready to lay his life on the line for her again. Why? Three years before he’d acted out of duty, at least at first. Now he had every reason to hate her. But when he held her in his arms, it certainly didn’t feel like hate. Even that morning when Conlan had dragged her to the couch and taken her hard and fast, he’d been careful with her. It felt like a claiming, the emotion behind his passion something she was reluctant to name. She should know. That same powerful emotion had taken up residence in her own heart.
Conlan had already cleaned his plate. Right now he was eyeing her last piece of bacon. She laughed and held it out to him.
He hesitated. “You sure?”
“Sure, go ahead, but it’s going to cost you. I’ve got a few questions.”
He obviously wasn’t worried about the price, because he quickly finished it off. “Ask away.”
How best to put this? “You and me, we’ve been through a lot, shared a lot, but I don’t really know anything about you. That doesn’t seem fair, since you’ve had access to everything the Coalition has in my file.”
The jerk actually laughed. “Funny, Kat, after the past few days, I would’ve thought you’d gathered a lot of firsthand knowledge.”
The little burst of heat in his gaze made it clear what he was talking about—like how his kisses tasted and that sexy growl he made when they made love.
Okay, point scored. She was an expert on a few things about him.
“Yes, I know the important stuff, Conlan, or I wouldn’t trust you with my life. It’s the little stuff, you know, like your favorite color.”
“Whatever you call the shade of blue your eyes are.”
She rolled those very same eyes. “Yeah, right. Where are you from?”
“An estate about two hundred miles north of New Eire.”
“Parents?”
“The requisite two.”
“Conlan.” She infused enough temper into that one word to make him hold up his hands in surrender.
“Okay, sorry. They both died in an accident when I was fifteen. No siblings. No clan, not anymore. That affiliation officially ended when they disowned me after I went to prison.”
She gasped, but he was already shaking his head. “Before you feel bad about that, I left the estate when I was eighteen and never looked back. Once my parents were gone, my father’s pureblooded relatives had little use for a grief-stricken teenager, and neither did my mom’s folks.
“Rather than hang around where I wasn’t wanted, I applied for and won a scholarship that got me out of there. If I’d stayed, I would’ve spent my life living on whatever crumbs they tossed my way. To tell you the truth, I was surprised they even went to the trouble to disown me. I didn’t know they were even aware that I was still alive.”
Then he got a funny look on his face. “Rafferty considers me clan. Never saw that one coming. He didn’t even act like Joss nagged him into it. He even told me to get my ass back to the estate where I belonged.”
Somehow she doubted Conlan realized how much he’d revealed with that last bit. It was obvious that before Rafferty said that, the only time Conlan had ever felt he belonged someplace was when he worked for the Coalition. No matter what justification she’d had for her actions three years ago, the end result was that she’d stripped Conlan of everything that had given his life meaning, cutting him adrift. It was a miracle he hadn’t finished off the job the mercs started when he’d realized she was the one lying facedown in the dust.
She still had one question left to ask, one she needed to