Free Blamed by Edie Harris Page A

young, and there would be hell to pay for whomever had handed Beth her first gun. Hell. To. Pay. “Casey, we’ll wait here for Tobias. I’d recommend minimal contact with us until secure lines can be arranged.”
    “I’ll contact Tobias when he lands. He’s waiting on me to give him the location for your meeting. Beth?”
    Beth started at Casey’s prompt. “Yes?”
    “You kill Vick if you have to.”
    For a long, awkward moment, Vick waited for Beth to laugh, or for Casey to assure him it was a joke. Surely he’d meant it as a joke.
    No one laughed.
    Silently, Vick crossed to the dining table, picked up her abandoned Beretta, and returned to set it on the counter in front of her. Like a magpie presented with a shiny object, Beth quickly tucked the gun at the small of her back, flipping the hem of her blouse to hide it in a motion so practiced she must have done it a thousand times.
    Why the hell would seeing that make him so sad?
    Beth cleared her throat. “I’ll be safe, Casey. Cross my heart.” A tap of her finger on the phone’s screen, and the call was done.
    He knew the dialogue playing out in her head right now. Echoes of Casey’s words—and his own—rang in his ears. “Come here.”
    “No.”
    “I said, come here
    “I’d prefer not to.” She eyed him warily, posture stiff as he shook his head with a wry smile and skirted the edge of the counter to pull her off the barstool. The second her body collided carefully with his, however, everything in her seemed to melt. Reaching up, she curved one palm around his nape, the other cupping his jaw, and drew him to her for a deep, slow kiss.
    He had no problem accommodating her. “I remember...” Dazed by the rightness of having her without any distance between them, he permitted himself a moment to nuzzle her nose, tenderness toward her a fragile thing in his constricted chest. “I remember the moment I realized you truly would be the death of me.” His hands settled on her hips as he tauntingly licked the corner of her mouth. “And not because you inadvertently felled a three-story building on me.”
    “Oh? What moment was that?” Her breath feathered over his lips, forcing him to steal another scorching kiss from her.
    When he lifted his head, pulse pounding, he explained, “After you arrived home following the fundraising gala at the Art Institute last December.”
    That had her pulling away, out of his arms. “
After
I arrived home?”
    “I watched you. It was my job to watch you.” Yet never had it felt like work until that night, when he could see but couldn’t touch. “That night you were barefoot in your flat, wearing that little black dress that hugs your curves so very, very right. You walked around for an hour after you came back from the gala, dancing and singing in your living room all by your lonesome, and all I wanted to do was knock on your door and join you. Dance with you. I was hard as fucking stone every goddamn minute until you turned the lights off and went to bed. You owe me for that hour, Beth darling, and I intend to collect.”
    “You watched me. How—No, never mind, I honestly don’t want to know.” She stared at him, cheeks flushed, chest rising and falling in rhythm with his own racing heartbeat. He was a wretch, taking satisfaction in seeing her rattled, but satisfied he was.
    The feeling only grew when she drew in an unsteady breath and determinedly squared her shoulders. “I owe you nothing, Vick
darling.
You let me think you were dead for a year.
A
year.
” Ill-concealed rage shook her voice. “And I should kill you for that, but I’m so stupidly happy that you’re alive and...and here—” She broke off, shaking her head when he moved to hold her. “I’m an idiot over you. I always have been. But goddammit, Vick, I lived with your death on my conscience, and all the while you were sitting pretty right across the street.”
    “Beth—”
    “You knew. You knew, and you let me carry this terrible