Such a Pretty Girl

by Tess Diamond

  The elevator doors opened and Grace strode out toward the gun range and he followed. They had the range to themselves, and Grace immediately walked over to the middle row, pulled out her Glock, and set it on the counter in front of her.

  He wasn’t so full of himself that he was sure she couldn’t beat him. He was a crack shot, but if she was as good as she—and Harrison—said, he’d have to be at his best.

  But even if she won this little game of theirs, there was no way in hell he was letting her out of his sight. He was coming home with her and he was going to make sure she was safe.

  This unsub, whoever he was, was the worst kind of murderer. He was exploring his urges, perfecting them.

  Once he was satisfied with his skill set, he’d come for Grace.

  Gavin gritted his teeth at the thought as Grace lined up the paper targets and pushed the button that sent them zipping to the back of the range.

  “What do you say?” she asked. “Best out of three?”

  “Sure,” he said, taking the row next to her and pulling out his .42. The weight of it was familiar in his hands as he looked over to her. “Ladies first.”

  “Such a gentleman,” she said, and he hated the tightness in her voice and face. He wanted to ease it.

  But he knew better than that. Grace was a woman on a mission. She sought justice. Maybe it consumed her a little, like sometimes it did him. And this—this entire case—was personal.

  She raised her Glock, all the tension fading from her in a split second as her stance settled, as she focused on the target, everything else falling away.

  She fired off four shots in rapid succession, two in the target’s head, dead between the eyes, and two neatly paired in the center of the chest.

  “Maybe I should start calling you Annie Oakley,” he said, taking his .42 in his right hand and leveling it. He breathed in, then out, then in, and in that crystalline point between breaths, his finger squeezed the trigger gently. One. Two. Three. Four.

  Grace frowned as she brought the targets forward, examining his.

  “You learn to shoot like this in the military?” she asked, switching out the used targets for new ones.

  He laughed. “No,” he said.

  “Really?” She sent the targets back to the end of the rows.

  “No. Texas, actually.”

  She looked over at him, one slim brow raised questioningly.

  “My grandfather,” he explained. “He was a Texas Ranger. He could hit a quarter in the air from fifty feet away. Damn fine shot. Finer man.”

  She tilted her head, a smile tugging at her lips. “You miss him.”

  He didn’t even have to ask how she knew he’d passed away. She knew things like that. Intuited them or used that big brain to puzzle them out from his facial expressions or word patterns or whatever. “Every day.”

  There was a moment where she looked at him, soft and understanding, and he felt that jolt inside him, the same one he’d felt the night they’d met and she’d placed her hand in his when he’d asked her to dance. It was a rightness he’d never experienced before, a feeling that had echoed through him the last two years when he’d been with anyone else, because he finally knew what he’d been missing.

  What he’d been looking for.

  He’d never considered himself a terribly romantic man. He believed in love—valued it, understood that lasting love was rare, that sometimes it was work. But he’d never felt the earth shake or sworn he’d found a missing piece of himself or any of the things people talked about.

  Then one night in November he went to the Policeman’s Ball. Grace Sinclair entered his orbit. He’d been drawn to her as if by a gravitational pull, holding his hand out and asking her to dance before he even realized what he was doing. She’d burned her mark in his soul with one touch, one smile, one night of the most intense connection he’d ever had with another person.

  And now they were here, partners, teammates. He knew she felt it: how well they worked in sync, how they didn’t think the same but instead in conjunction. She approached things from the psychological and he from the emotional—and it was working. It was like fireworks being on a crime scene with her. Like a Roman candle sparking in his brain and gut as they moved through a scenario, every step they took in tandem. A dance they were never taught but seemed to know innately.

  This was more than attraction. More than a meeting of two minds. And he wanted all of it.

  All of her.

  “I’d never picked up a gun until Quantico,” Grace said, raising her Glock again. Her stance was just a bit too wide, he thought as she fired.

  Sure enough, the bullet snagged the top of the dark circle in the middle of the target. Still a great shot, but by her standards, probably not.

  She was hard on herself. The kind of driven that came from long-buried hurt. He didn’t know the specifics, but he’d been around her enough to see it: some man had screwed with her, maybe when she was young, probably college, and whatever he’d done . . . it had left a wound. It had caused her to put up walls so thick not even the most determined, devoted man could get through. Not unless she let him.

  God, he wanted her to let him. She was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen, a gun in her hand, confidence and ease and strength in every inch of her body. A warrior queen, a fierce protector, a woman you wouldn’t want to reckon with.

  Grace let out a frustrated little breath and then adjusted her feet, slipping back into that perfect form. She waited, breathing for a few seconds, getting ahold of herself. His eyes were on her face instead of her hands as she fired, three perfect shots to the head. Her mouth quirked up triumphantly.

  “So you’re a natural,” he commented, turning to his own target. He fired off his shots quickly, the muscle memory singing through him like an old friend.

  “That’s what my instructors told me,” Grace explained primly, switching out the targets again. “Deciding round,” she added.

  Her shots were perfect. Clean, grouped tightly together, and hard to beat.

  “I have a confession,” Gavin said, and he couldn’t resist the tug of his smile as she frowned, confused. He moved his gun to his left hand. “I’m not actually right-handed.”

  He barely glanced from her to the target before he fired, four rapid shots, the sound reverberating in his ears. He pushed the button to bring the target forward, and Grace stepped from her row to his to examine the paper.

  There was just one hole, dead center in the target’s head. Each bullet had gone through that hole, neat as a pin, barely disrupting the edges of the paper.

  He’d won.

  Grace’s mouth twisted, disapproving, and God, she had to stop doing that or he was going to . . .

  She propped her hands on her hips, facing him. “Sneaky,” she said, and his mouth curved, because it was the first time she’d said that with approval—even if it was reluctant approval.

  “So you tell me,” he said.

  “You play dirty,” she said, and there was a timbre to her voice, a huskiness that made his stomach tighten and his fingers twitch, desperate to touch her.

  He dipped his head down—she was tall for a woman, especially in those heels, but he was taller than most men. Her eyes flicked up to his and then down, lingering on his lips.

  “You like it,” he said.

  He wanted so many things in that moment, he felt torn in a dozen different directions. He wanted to kiss her, hard and fast and deep. He wanted to take her home and put her in his bed with a shot of whiskey and tell her everything would be okay and then somehow make it that way. He wanted to fall to his knees and push up that skirt and show her exactly how dirty he could be.

  “Maybe I do,” she said, and she straightened slightly, so that her breasts brushed against his chest, just barely. She smiled when she heard him take in a quick breath at the touch. “What are you going to do about it?”

  After a shocked second, he leaned forward, so close that he could feel her breath against his li
ps. Instead of drifting shut, her eyes stayed on him, and it was even hotter that she wouldn’t break the gaze as she challenged him to take what they both wanted. He lifted his hand and curled it around her cheek, dragging his thumb across her lush lower lip, still stained red from her lipstick.

  “I’m going to take you home,” he said. “And I’m going to make sure you’re safe. Because I won.”

  She let out a little huff of breath that was half a laugh. “Barely,” she said, and he pulled back, his gut aching as he put space between them. He couldn’t kiss her here. If he kissed her now, he wouldn’t be able to stop. And every inch of this place had cameras. He wasn’t going to mess with her reputation like that.

  “You put too much weight on your left leg,” he said, expecting her to protest or roll her eyes or deny it.

  But instead she nodded. “I know,” she said. “My second year on the job, I got shot. Right thigh. When I’m stressed, I shift my weight.”

  “You got shot?” It came out a lot more alarmed than he wanted. But the idea of someone marring her skin, hurting her, spilling her blood . . .

  He wanted to kill them. Instantly. Intensely.

  “It was years ago,” she said, grabbing her gun and holstering it. “The unsub kind of kidnapped me.”

  “Grace, there’s no way to ‘kind of kidnap’ someone.”

  “Fine—he got the drop on me,” she said shortly as they walked out of the gun range. “Knocked me out. But Maggie got me through it before I bled out.”

  “That’s your friend the hostage negotiator?”

  Grace nodded as they entered the elevator.

  “So,” he said slowly, wondering if he should ask it, “when you said you have experience with PTSD . . .”

  “I had a lot of trauma to deal with after that case,” she said. “Hiding it, not talking about it? That doesn’t help anyone. Stigmatizing something that so many of us go through isn’t healthy—it’s harmful. And we need to be healthy physically and mentally to protect the people who need it.”

  He wondered if she knew how brave she was, if she had any kind of inkling of what it took for some people to even admit they needed help—let alone ask for it or take their own experiences and use them to do good.

  “You’re looking at me strangely,” she said, softly.

  “You’re beautiful,” he said, because all he had was honesty in the wake of her courage and passion. “I mean, you have to know that.”

  “I do,” she said, and any other time, it would make him smile, her cool acknowledgment. She had heard it hundreds of times, he was sure. Men had been telling her she was beautiful her entire life, and she was smart enough to know what her beauty meant, how it changed people’s perceptions, for better or worse.

  “But here.” He reached out and pressed his fingers against her collarbone, his palm on her breastbone, above her heart. His hand moved to her forehead, tracing over the elegant wing of her brow. “And here?” His fingers rested lightly on her temple. “Way more impressive.”

  And that’s when Grace, true to form, surprised the hell out of him. Because instead of scoffing or pulling away or laughing him off, she tilted her head up and kissed him.

  Chapter 16

  She kissed him because it’d been forever since someone had pulled a fast one on her, and it’d been years since someone had beat her at shooting.

  She kissed him because of the crinkles around his eyes and the teasing in his smile and the sensory memory of his callused hands catching in the most delicious ways against the softness of her skin.

  She kissed him because, quite frankly, she was sick of fighting this feeling in her chest, the whisper of maybe and what might happen.

  She wanted to know if it was as good as she remembered.

  His hand slammed down on the stop button and she suddenly found her shoulders up against the wall of the elevator, the solid, warm weight of his body pressed against hers.

  His hands were in her hair, buried in the neatly wound braids, his palm cradling the back of her head, protecting her already.

  It was like drinking water after days lost in the desert. She pressed closer to him as they kissed, long, languid kisses that seemed never ending. His hands fell to her hips, hoisting her up against him. She wrapped her legs around his waist, grateful for the kick pleat in her skirt. The hard planes of his chest pressed against the sweet curve of hers, making her gasp into his mouth. His lips moved from hers, tracing the sensitive line of her jaw, resting against her ear. He panted against her skin, and she couldn’t stop the self-satisfied smile that curled her lips. She’d made him do that.

  “You’re killing me,” he said, his breath tickling her ear, making her shiver as his lips brushed the silky skin. “We can’t do this here.”

  He was right. The security team would be alerted soon about the elevator stoppage.

  But the last thing she wanted to do was pull away.

  His hands dragged down her sides, settling on the dip of her waist as he slowly lowered her to the floor. His forehead was still resting against hers, and for a moment, they just stood there, breathing in each other’s presence.

  “I have to get you home,” he said.

  “You don’t need to—”

  “You’re not gonna go back on your word, now, are you?” he asked, and he leaned away from her to quirk his eyebrow questioningly.

  “I can take care of myself,” she insisted. How was she going to handle him in her house? She wouldn’t be able to resist—and she needed to.

  He was the worst kind of dangerous, because he was a straight shooter. He knew what he wanted and he didn’t hide it. He’d tease, but he wouldn’t play games.

  All Grace did was play games. Games that were familiar. Games that kept her from getting hurt.

  She could see into a person and know them after less than an hour of observation. She could recognize some of the deepest, hidden parts of people. It made her who she was. It made her great at what she did. It was a gift. It was a curse. It made her unable to trust. Slow to reveal. Hard to love.

  But Gavin Walker . . .

  He looked at her as if he were the profiler. As if he saw through her, to her deepest, hidden parts—and he didn’t turn away. He didn’t flinch.

  He kept moving forward. Toward her. Always the straight shooter.

  Everything inside her told her to run, like last time.

  But that hidden part of her—the part she was sure he could see—urged her to stay.

  “Fine,” she sighed. “Take me home.”

  Strangely, the drive home wasn’t horrible. She’d worried that it’d be long and drawn out, the tension simmering between them. But instead he coaxed her into a conversation about the merits of bebop jazz versus swing, and she was surprised to find him pulling up in front of her brownstone before she knew it. Still aflame from his touch, she marveled at all the parts of him that she had no clue about . . . but now longed to discover.

  They walked up the stairs, both of them drawing their guns as they entered. Methodically, they cleared the downstairs and upstairs before meeting back in the living room.

  The light was fading from the sky, the room darkening with each minute, so Grace turned on the lamps, casting the room in a golden glow as Gavin took in the surroundings.

  “I didn’t exactly get a good look at the place last time,” he said with a grin. He pointed to the main wall, where an enormous Jackson Pollock dominated the room. “This part of your art collection?”

  She nodded.

  “A Pollock?” he said, looking up at the mess of blues and greens. “But that would mean . . .” He frowned. “When you said your collection was worth a lot of money . . .”

  “I meant a lot of money,” Grace said, wondering if this would be the thing that would shake his ego. Some men were drawn to her because of her wealth. And others, it drove them away—it was too intimidating. She’d been worth tens of millions of dollars the day she turned eighteen and inherited Gran’s collection. It had
enabled her to walk away from the trust fund her father tried to use to control her, but it also made people who knew treat her differently.

  “So you’re an art heiress,” he said.

  “You could say that.” She watched him closely, looking for any trace of intimidation or unease. But instead he picked up the bronze sculpture on her mantel, weighing the sphere in one hand, then the other. “I like this one,” he said. “That one”—he nodded to the Pollock—“kinda reminds me of my niece’s finger painting.” He grinned, to show her he was teasing, and she tried to suppress a smile.

  “Well, I can’t take credit for the Pollock,” Grace said. “My grandmother, she was good friends with Peggy Guggenheim and had a tremendous eye for art. She started collecting Pollocks before people even knew who he was. But that . . .” She took the sculpture from him, the solid weight in her hand cool and familiar. “It’s an early Jonathan Wylder. I got it at a little gallery in Bath about six years ago when I was traveling. It’s worth a small fortune now that he’s blown up.”

  Gavin whistled as she put it back on the mantel. “Looks like your grandmother wasn’t the only one with an artistic eye,” he said.

  She flushed at the compliment. She had no artistic talent of her own—she could barely draw a stick figure—but her grandmother’s collection was her pride and joy. Not just for its beauty but for what it had done throughout the years. She’d kept a few sentimental pieces—the Pollock being one of them—in her home, but the bulk of the collection was leased to various museums, and all the money was donated to charity. She’d been able to fund a new wing of the center last year and give a substantial amount to pediatric cancer research.

  “You’ve got a lot of old books too,” he said, looking at her rare book collection in the glass cabinets. “I like old books.”

  “You do?” she asked.

  “I’ve got a set of first-edition Hardy Boys,” he said with a rueful grin. “I loved those books as a kid.”

  She couldn’t help but be charmed by the idea of him as a little boy, curled up under the covers with a flashlight, reading deep into the night. And the idea of the man that boy grew up to be, carefully collecting first editions of the books he loved so as a child, that maybe even inspired him to become a detective . . .