Say I Do (Wilde Ways #10) - Cynthia Eden Page 0,53

to face her.

“You wouldn’t let me in! You rejected me. I told you that I’d give you everything, but you didn’t want it.” A low snarl escaped her. One that was a mix of pain and rage. “You didn’t want me.”

He didn’t look away from Heather. “You were paid to hurt me.”

“I was paid to kill you.” Then she gasped, as if she’d realized she’d said too much.

“Don’t stop now,” Dex ordered into the stark silence that stretched in the small room. “Do tell us who paid you. I can’t stand the suspense.”

Heather grabbed Roman’s shirt. “Help me.”

A muscle flexed along his jaw. “Why did you go after Lacey?”

“Get me a deal. We both know you and Dex work deals together. Get me out of custody. Get me a new identity. Let me walk away, and I-I’ll tell you everything.”

So this chick had shot several agents, assaulted Roman…and tried to kill me, yet the woman thought she was going to get to head merrily into the sunset? “I don’t think so,” Lacey informed her briskly. “This isn’t the time for deals. This is the time for you to talk. If I were you, I’d talk fast. Because from where I’m sitting…”

Heather’s head whipped toward her.

“It seems to me you were hired to do a job. You didn’t kill Roman, though, and I’m still breathing, too. I’d call that a double fail. If I were your boss, I’d be pretty furious. Especially seeing as how you are now a loose end. And you do know what happens to loose ends, don’t you?” She smiled. “They get cut.”

Heather’s lower lip trembled once more. “Protection,” she demanded. “I want it.”

Oh, now it was about protection? Not heading into the sunset? “Protection comes for a price.” Lacey tossed that part out casually, as if she had some magic power to give the other woman protection. She figured Dex did so… “Why did you shoot me? Considering it wasn’t, ah, personal, I believe you said, then that must mean someone else wanted me dead.”

Heather seemed to reach some decision. “I was hired to get close to Roman. To find his weakness. When I relayed the information about his obsession with you, my boss told me to aim for your heart. Because you seemed to be the only damn thing that mattered to Roman,” she finished bitterly.

A would-be lover scorned. Lacey couldn’t feel a whole lot of sympathy for the woman. Considering, you know, the whole shot-to-the-heart bit.

“He was going to find your body. Then I was supposed to kill Roman.” Heather heaved out a breath. “But I wasn’t. I wasn’t going to kill him. I—”

“We know you were running away after you took the shot at Lacey,” Dex interrupted to say with a rather bored air. “My agent already told us that part. Just to make certain I have all of this straight, let’s recap, shall we?”

Roman’s stare was on Heather. Heather was looking miserably at Dex. And Dex…

His eyes glittered as he told Heather, “You were paid to get close to Roman, so you took the job as his bodyguard. I warned you against hiring her, by the way, Roman—which makes this yet another time when I was right.”

“Fuck you, Dex.”

Dex rolled on. “You tried to find his weakness. While doing that, you fell for your target. He didn’t return your feelings and that pissed the hell out of you.” His fingers curled over Lacey’s shoulder. “Then you found her. You told your boss that Roman was obsessed. That he was looking for her and—wham—she’d just turned up at the same lodge Roman was visiting. I’m guessing you then received the order to take her out. To make that big, bloody statement to Roman, huh? Right before you killed him.”

“I told you, I wasn’t going to kill—”

“You were going to kill my fiancée. Mine.” Dex’s voice was different now, definitely not bored. She’d never heard him sound quite so lethal. “That means no deals,” Dex continued in a deep, dangerous voice. “That means if you want to keep living past this room, this minute, you talk now. I want the name of the bastard who was your real boss. I want to know where he is. I want to know every single thing about him.”

Fear flashed on Heather’s face. Her head jerked toward Roman. “You…you won’t let him hurt me?”

Roman spun away from her. He stalked for the door.

“No!” Heather lunged after him.

Dex jumped into her path and caught her shoulders. “I want the