Total pages in book: 70
Estimated words: 66515 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 333(@200wpm)___ 266(@250wpm)___ 222(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 66515 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 333(@200wpm)___ 266(@250wpm)___ 222(@300wpm)
I blanch and run after him, gun still in hand. By the time I’m at the railing, he’s at the door with Savage by his side. Blake and a few of his men are at the table, but I don’t care. I don’t care about anyone but Aaron, and the mistake I just made with him. I trust him. Of course, I trust him. I’ve never heard him say he had a thing with any other woman. I got jealous. I got confused. I just—I was shortsighted. “Aaron!” I call out, desperate to stop him, but he doesn’t turn. “Aaron, damn it, I will shoot you if you walk out of that door like this. You can’t go like this.”
He turns and holds out his hands. “Maybe you’d be happier, Ashley. Maybe we both would.”
“I won’t shoot to kill you. I’ll just wound you.”
“You already did that, baby. You already did that.” He drops his hands and turns and leaves. And I let him. I can’t stop him. I was just an emotional idiot when I hate emotional idiots. That’s how I sent him off to fight. Already wounded and at a disadvantage by my foolishness.
Chapter forty-two
Ashley
Istare at the door where Aaron just disappeared with Savage.
What just happened? What the hell did I just let happen? My lashes lower, eyes squeezing shut. I’m not an emotional or jealous person. I’m not, but Aaron isn’t just an average man either. He’s a CIA agent, even if you put “ex” before CIA. He does things to stay alive, and he does things to end other people’s lives. He lives, he has lived, a much different life than a normal human being. Is kissing an ex to free himself and me a huge deal? Yes. God, yes. It feels big. It feels like it defines us in some other way. No. What defines us is that I didn’t even know she existed.
“Ashley.”
At the sound of my name, I open my eyes. Blake steps into the living area just below me. “Unless you want to shoot me, come down and talk to me.”
“And me.”
That comment comes from his wife, Kara, the pretty brunette who joins him and waves up at me, her long brown silky hair around her shoulders. I met her six months ago, when my boss hired Walker Security to protect me from Aaron, of all people, which was how I met Smith as well. She’s pretty. She’s petite, and from what Smith told me back then, she’s a badass with a gun as well as just in general. “How are you?” she asks.
In need of advice, I think, and I need that advice from a badass woman who has a badass man like Blake by her side. I lower the gun that’s still pointed a the door where Aaron disappeared. “I need a lot of things right now.”
“He’ll be back,” Blake promises.
He’ll be back.
Aaron will be back.
Unless I distracted him emotionally and mentally, and therefore, he ends up dead. Or, unless his ex-woman, whoever she is, saves him and runs off with him. Because, of course, she really is like him, while I’m just a secretary who now knows how to shoot a gun. I back away from the railing, but I don’t retreat. That’s just not who I am. I’m not retreating. I might be having a moment of emotional jealousy and personal fear, but I’m still me. I’m still a fighter. I still need answers. And I need to know if Blake knows about this woman. I need to know that every fear bubbling up inside me right now is as lame as every time I said I wanted to be the attorney I never really wanted to become. If I had wanted that, really wanted it, I would have made it happen. The way I made shooting this gun second nature quite quickly.
Gun still in hand, I rush down the stairs, and I find that Blake and Kara are my only remaining company, which tells a story. There were other men here before. I set the gun on the island. “What’s so big that everyone is helping Aaron but you two?”
“We are helping,” Kara says, placing a cup of coffee in front of me. “That has Almond Joy creamer in it because it’s Savage’s favorite and that’s what he has in the fridge. Does that work for you, or do you want it black and hard like Savage’s soul?”
“Thank you for the coffee,” I say, “and the attempt at humor at Savage’s expense, but I can’t laugh. Though I’m fairly certain it would have been a very funny joke another time. I need to know what’s going on.”
“Mick was selling government secrets to Russia and China for large payouts,” Blake supplies, without making me push harder. “He created an offshore account in Aaron’s name with Nicole Wagner’s help. Nicole was—”