Free The Perfect Stranger by Jenna Mills Page B

if she didn’t have a clue who he was. As if she’d never watched him from across a smoky bar. Never approached him. Never let him touch her. Never lifted her mouth to his. Never cried in his arms.
    Never held on as though she couldn’t let go.
    “You know I’m a cop, right?” Vanilla. The scent whispered around him, bringing with it the faintest trace of roses. “A detective. One of the good guys.”
    She fought it, but he would have sworn he saw her mouth twitch. Her lips were pale, slightly cracked. “I know you have a badge and a gun,” she said, and though the words were hard, the tangle of dark hair against her make-upless face gave them a softness he knew she would hate. The bottle of pale-pink nail polish sitting on the table by the door didn’t help. “But that doesn’t make you one of the good guys.”
    He let out a rough breath. “You think I’m dirty?” The question came out harsher than he’d intended. “I saved your life, damn it,” he growled, and this time he moved, despite the guns. He destroyed the distance between them and put his hand to the butt of the 9mm, turned it away. “You really think that’s the action of a man on Lambert’s payroll?”
    Her eyes went dark. “If that man wants to gain my trust and make me think he’s on my side—yes. If he wants to use me—yes. If he likes to toy with people, to play with people—”
    “No.” He took her shoulders and pulled her close, lifted a hand to slide the hair from her face. Her eyes, damn it. He wanted to see them—needed to see them. And God almighty, even more he needed her to see him. “What happened to you?” he asked, as the shadow of Cain’s words fell around them. “Who did this to you?”
    For a long moment she said nothing. Just looked up at him with her chin at a fierce angle, her mouth a mutinous line.
    John wasn’t sure he’d ever wanted to kiss a woman more.
    “Just because a woman doesn’t take chances,” she finally said, “doesn’t mean something has happened to her.”
    In other words, she wasn’t about to tell him. “Touché.” But he wasn’t about to let her shimmy away that easily. “But I’m not talking about not taking chances.” He paused, could feel the jerky rise and fall of her shoulders beneath his hands. “I was there,” he reminded, making it explicitly clear he’d seen everything she tried to hide. Everything she wanted to deny. “At Lucky’s,” he clarified, when she’d tempted him with an honesty he wasn’t sure he’d ever experienced. “Last night.” When she’d put her arms around him and pretended he was a stranger, even as her body clearly remembered every detail of the last time they’d been together. “This morning.” When she’d pulled back from his kiss and blinked at him, only to tug him back for more. “No matter what you have or have not told your brother, I saw everything. And I know you’re not afraid of taking chances.”
    He wasn’t certain what he expected, but it sure as hell was not for her to push up on her toes and lift a hand to his face, tap a finger against his lower lip. “Calculated risks,” she said with a slow, take-no-prisoners smile. “There is a difference.”
    Everything inside of him went very still. Because of what he’d seen, he told himself. Because of what he knew. Not because of the words she’d just spoken. Not because he knew they could only lead to one place.
    “Tell that to Alec.” For the first time since he’d seen her standing with the gun in her hand, the kid gloves came off. Gentleness had its place. But so did toughness. “He took a calculated risk and look where it got him—”
    Her eyes narrowed. “You were there, weren’t you?” Through the shadows of her living room she stared at him as if he wasn’t a man but a window. And through him she could see something that horrified her. “The day he died.”
    John wasn’t a man to look away first. He wasn’t a man to yield. But he couldn’t just stand