Free Detect Me by Selma Wolfe Page B

really.”
    There was something intensely vulnerable and unsure about Nikki in that moment, so much so that it was difficult to connect this woman with the one who had confronted an armed criminal empty-handed. She was waiting for him to walk right out that door, and Mark knew that it was time for him to go. He imagined letting the door slam shut behind him; imagined his last look at Nikki being her sad, resigned face. His last look at Nikki… Mark’s gut clenched.
    “Well…” he said slowly, “I don’t think you’re out of danger yet.”
    And in spite of the truth to those words, Nikki’s face brightened.
     
     
     
    Watching Mark sit there at her tiny dining table in his sleep-wrinkled clothes, looking larger than life with his gorgeous features and streetwise confidence was slightly surreal. Nikki knew that in reality Mark was too big for her apartment; too big for her life. And yet somehow when he settled back to use her vacated chair as an ottoman and shot her a schoolboy-naughty grin, everything fit.
    It shouldn’t have worked, but it did.
    “See, I’m a little bit familiar with Ghost,” Mark said, tipping his chair back on two legs and staring up at the ceiling. He missed her raised eyebrows. “And the one thing I can tell you about Ghost is that she holds a grudge. Remember what she said to you, that she wouldn’t forget? That she’d be gunning for you? She meant it.”
    The elation Nikki had unthinkingly felt when Mark had told her she wasn’t out of danger started to fade. See, Nikki knew already that if she was in danger, Mark wasn’t going anywhere. But the other side of that coin was… she was in danger. From a very scary criminal.
    She gulped. “So you think she’s going to, what, try to find me? Come to my apartment and…” Nikki trailed off. She didn’t really want to think about the details.
    The front two chairs legs slammed back into the ground and Mark looked across the room at her, all the amusement dropped away from his face, leaving him with solemn eyes and a tight-lipped mouth. He shrugged.
    “I don’t know what she plans to do, but I’m going to stick around until we find out,” he told her. Their eyes locked. “I’d promise you safety, but I can’t. The only thing I can tell you is that I’ll do anything and everything I can to keep you safe.”
    A cell phone ringer shattered the moment; Mark pulled his phone out of his pocket and started to pace across the apartment. Nikki started to wash dishes to give her hands something to do. She gathered from the terse statements Mark was barking into the phone that the police were calling in their claim to his time.
    “I’ll see you in a bit,” Mark sighed, finally stabbing the end call button and shoving it in his back pocket. Nikki tried not to examine his butt too closely. But she gathered that it was definitely worth further attention.
    Though not for her. The truth of the matter was that Mark had slept over and tried a grand total of nothing. He hadn’t so much as given her a hug. Heck, he’d seen her practically in her undies and barely blinked. True, Mark had been injured, but Nikki was quite sure that even if she was bleeding she’d still want to jump him.
    She had to face facts that even if she’d felt like jumping into a relationship with a workaholic who appeared to only have significant personal connections with criminals (and hmm, yes, she really needed to inquire further about that at some point), Mark just wasn’t interested. And that was okay. Fine, really. Things were better this way.
    “Okay,” Nikki said, determined not to be sad or nervous about being in the apartment by herself. She couldn’t live her life ducking at shadows. “Are you going to, um… come back?”
    Mark blinked. He opened his mouth and then closed it again. He reached into his jacket pocket and drew out something that clinked in the palm of his hand.
    “Here,” he said, and reached across to her. Nikki watched in disbelief as