Two of Hearts

by Christina Lee

  Her lips tilted into a slight grin that didn’t meet her eyes. “No, I’m not.”

  I considered reaching in my purse for the Mace Shane had given me. A lot of good that would do me now. I should’ve been carrying it in my hand in the first place. But the truth of the matter was that I wasn’t really thinking that something was going to happen at my own condo. I was so wrong and I was sure to hear about it from Shane.

  I took a sideways step, considering the distance to the exit. “Then who are you?”

  “Relax, Dakota. It’s okay,” she said sliding her hands up and away from her body as if in a surrender position.

  “How do you know my name?” I asked, trying to keep my hands from shaking.

  She sighed as if in defeat. “I work with Shane.”

  “With Shane,” I said, parroting back her words. He’d said that my mom and I would be protected. I have my ways, were his exact words.

  “Yeah,” she said. “I’m a U.S. Marshal.”

  That gave me a jolt. I didn’t know why I expected his team to consist of all men. How pathetic of me, since I was a strong career woman myself. But this woman standing in front of me? She was pretty, in a girl-next-door, athletic kind of way. Jealousy expectantly flared in my gut.

  “My name is Charlie,” she said, thrusting out her hand. “Short for Charlotte.”

  I took her hand in mine and attempted not to wince from her strong grip.

  “Charlie,” I said, trying to get it straight. “So you’re here with Shane?”

  “We are,” she said, and I wondered just who she was referring to. Was it the other coworker Shane had told me about named Alex? “But I’ll let him fill you in on those details. Especially since you don’t look too happy about it.”

  “Surprised is all,” I said. “He doesn’t . . . talk about it.”

  “I get that,” she said, holding her phone to her ear. A second later she said, “There’s been a situation at your woman’s condo.”

  My mouth dropped open at the way she was speaking to Shane. Like one of the guys. I supposed that might’ve been necessary working in a field of pure testosterone. Still I couldn’t help being a bit taken aback as she listened to whatever Shane was saying. “In the garage. He wasn’t close for very long before I was on him.”

  She listened a beat more and then said, “I’ll let her know.”

  She clicked off the phone. “He’s on his way.”

  I gritted my teeth, knowing I’d be in for a tongue-lashing about leaving on my own in the first place. “I’m sure he is.”

  She nodded and I saw how her lips flattened and rolled in an almost imperceptible smirk. “He said to tell you to get to your condo, lock the door, and he’ll see you in a few.”

  “Sure thing,” I muttered, almost rolling my eyes.

  “I’ll walk you to the door,” she said, her face contorted as if holding back a grin. I wondered then just how much of our history she already knew.

  When I got to the entrance, I turned to her. “So you’ve been watching me?”

  “We’ve been keeping an eye out,” she said. “You, and your mom, too. Shane’s concerned about your safety and given what happened tonight, you should be too.”

  Her words jolted me back to the incident. I had been so surprised by her visit that I momentarily forget myself. A shiver raced down my spine at the memory of that man’s hand on my mouth and his voice at my ear.

  “I definitely am.” I nodded. “That man didn’t look familiar to me.”

  She shrugged. “Not surprised. He was probably somebody’s henchman sent to give you a scare.”

  I stood staring at her, wondering who in the hell would send somebody to threaten me. My mind immediately flew to Flint Thornfall or one of the many protesters. But that didn’t sit well with me. Flint wouldn’t stoop to using violence, would he? And I had gotten a good look at those protesters on a daily basis, especially Herman, who now seemed the most vocal. The man who had just threatened me was definitely not Indian.

  “By the way, your elbow is a very powerful tool.”

  I looked down at my arm. “My elbow?”

  “And your knee and your hand. If you can reach his throat or his eyes, or even his groin, that’s your best defense. Jab, squeeze, punch—anyway you can to throw him off-balance.”

  I looked down at my hand as if in wonder, never considering its use as a weapon.

  “I . . . I . . . thanks,” I said, appreciating the offer.

  She walked me all the way to my door. Before I shut it behind me I said, “So grateful you were there, Charlie.”

  “Not a problem.” Her smile was so dazzling that jealousy squirmed its way back into my gut. “Glad you’re safe.”

  Chapter Twenty-six

  DAKOTA

  As soon as Shane burst through the door, I was shoved against the wall with my hands held out to my sides as his eyes thoroughly scanned me over. “What did he do to you?”

  “You have some explaining to do,” I said, avoiding his overheated gaze.

  “Not now,” he growled and my eyes snapped to his. “What did he do to you?”

  “Calm down,” I whispered. “I’ve got stuff to be upset about, too.”

  “I’m sure you do,” he said, eyes drilling into mine. “And I’m sure I’ll hear about it later. Now answer my question.”

  I decided not to debate it any further with him, because he was, after all, only concerned about my well-being. That alone made my insides catch on fire and then liquefy.

  “He came up behind me,” I said, remembering the man’s large palm again, my voice trembling. “He put his hand over my mouth and said something in my ear.”

  “What did he say?”

  “He said that if I didn’t convince Mom to sell the casino then they would.”

  “Motherfucker,” he said, easing his grasp on my hands and bending into me, his face at my neck. “So glad you weren’t hurt, baby.”

  I’ll admit hearing him so worried comforted me but made me highly uneasy as well. “My mom—”

  “Checked,” he clipped out. “Safe and sound.”

  I sagged against him in relief. I hadn’t had a moment to call her before Shane showed up and truth be told, I was also afraid to tell her what went down because she’d be super worried.

  My hand reached his hair, the short bristles feeling good against my fingers. “Who is he?”

  “That’s what we’re trying to figure out,” he said, kissing my shoulder, his hips rolling against me, hemming me to the wall again. I tried to stay on track despite his assault on my senses. It was like he was trying to make sure that I was safe but also real. Like I might’ve disappeared before his eyes. I’ll admit his concern was heartwarming. But that wasn’t the only part of me that was getting heated.

  “We,” I said, more breathily than I’d intended. “You and Charlie—short for Charlotte—and Alex.”

  His head sprang up to meet my eyes, his face holding no amount of pleasure. Only annoyance. “Yes, me and Charlie and Alex.”

  I pushed out of his grasp to move around him. “Why haven’t you told me anything more?”

  “Because I didn’t want you to panic like you’re doing now,” he said, seizing my hand and lugging me back into the hard wall of his chest. “Or get scared. You have enough on your plate to worry about as it is.”

  A gathering ache of aggravation set up camp in my shoulders. I schooled my features and tipped my head close to his face. “I’m a grown-ass woman and I should be allowed to make those decisions for myself.”

  He nodded, his hand gripping my waist as he tugged me even nearer and increased his hold. “Charlie said you’d say that.”

  I huffed out a breath and attempted to struggle free but I couldn’t worm my way out of his grasp. “How much does Charlie know about me?”

  “I’ve worked with her for a long time, so pretty much everything,” he said, his voice softening as his lips worked their way along my jaw to my ear.

  “What
the hell does that mean?” I clamped down on my tongue to avoid moaning from the feel of his teeth at my earlobe.

  “It means that she knows our history and how we ended,” he whispered in my ear, making me shudder. “Except she doesn’t quite understand the why. And frankly, neither do I anymore.”

  “We ended because I was destined to be here and you were destined to be traveling the country,” I said, pushing at his shoulders, which refused to budge. “Obviously working with Charlie on other things.”

  “Don’t do that,” he said softly.

  I tilted my chin. “Do what exactly?”

  “Pile up those bricks, shut me out.”

  “Is this your way of trying to soften me up, by holding me hostage while your mouth does . . . what it’s doing.” Before he could make some smart-ass comment I said, “And for your information, you’ve got walls, too.”

  “I know I do, but damn if I don’t want them to come down block by block. I want there to be nothing between us. I want us to reach each other and keep each other this time. I want us to matter.” I gasped and he lifted my chin with his thumb. “And no, this isn’t my way of softening you up. This is my way of showing you that I can’t be around you without wanting to touch you.”

  I practically wilted in his arms. But I kept my resolve. “You’d better start talking then.”

  He lifted me up suddenly, my arms linking around his neck as he carried me to the couch.

  He laid me down, then slid beneath my legs and began massaging my feet. “What do you want to know?”

  “I want to know why Charlie and Alex are here,” I said, getting myself comfortable against the throw pillow.

  “We’ve worked cases together over the years,” he said, kneading my arch as I held back a whimper. “I trust them with my life.”

  I raised my eyebrows at how much Shane had changed. How much he’d come into his own. It was remarkable, really. And sexy as hell.

  “And they’re here now because?”

  “I needed help with surveillance,” he said, his fingers firmly rubbing my heel. “They’ve got other cases they’re working on, too. So I called in a couple of favors. I’d do the same for them.”

  “Surveillance?” I asked, gritting my teeth. “Do I get to know what that means?”

  “You already know that we have some eyes and ears out there. We’re just trying to figure out if anybody is up to no good.” He huffed out a breath. “And now you see that somebody is. Somebody wants your mom to sell the casino, and they’re desperate enough to make a threat.”

  “The only one I know who wants our casino is Flint Thornfall,” I said, shuddering. He opened his mouth to voice something else but then tamped it down. “I don’t know who that man in the garage was. Do you think Flint put him up to threatening me?”

  “Has he ever acted irrationally with your father before?” he asked. “Been desperate enough to pull something like this?”

  “He’s always been obnoxious and a pain in the ass, but he’s never done anything like this. Not that I know of,” I said. “Shane, this is scaring me. Do you think I should ask Ridge what the heck—”

  “No,” he said abruptly. “Listen, Dee, it’s better if you just go about your day-to-day business and let us do our job. I know you have a . . . friendship with Ridge but I’m not sure if involving him is going to solve anything.”

  “He might know if his father is up to something, he’s told me in the past if—”

  “No,” he said, this time more inflexible. “I don’t know why you’re being so stubborn about him.”

  “I don’t know why you’re being so pushy,” I said. “Ridge is my friend.”

  “A friend who wants more,” he said in a warning tone. “He wants to get back together with you.”

  “How—” I looked at him and realized that his surveillance might mean a lot more than I thought it did. I tried to yank my legs away but he held them in place on his lap. “How do you know that? Besides that one lunch you told me about, have you been spying on me?”

  “Spying? Don’t be so full of yourself, babe,” he practically growled and again I tried to push from his grasp.

  “Full of myself?” I gripped his fingers so he’d stop kneading my legs. “You’re the one who’s being secretive.”

  “Not secretive, doing my job. It’s for your own good,” he said, not even looking the least bit uncomfortable or regretful. “You don’t even—”

  “Who are you to decide that?” I said, balling my fists and smashing them into my own thighs for no other reason than to release pent-up frustration. “You come marching in here like you own the place. Like you’ve been part of our—”

  “Who’s being treated like an outsider now?” he rumbled in his scary U.S. Marshal voice. “Don’t I have just as much of a right as you do to know what’s happening in a place I’ve considered home for a long time? I might not be Native American, but I care about this community.”

  Crap. I had reduced him to a stranger over the past few weeks; it was the same thing I’d been feeling about myself lately. Not good. But still, he’d been keeping secrets from me and that felt really uncomfortable. “I didn’t mean—”

  “Your family,” he bit out. “Your people laid the spiritual foundation for me when I was young and I thought it was amazing. The idea that all living things are connected. That childhood story about the red bird—the name Stuart calls you.”

  I nodded, and he adjusted himself to fully look me in the eye. “I felt part of this community, like I belonged, was accepted. But now, everything seems so backward, so fucked up.”

  I sat silently because I hadn’t linked those dots before. That Shane had grown up almost as an honorary member of our tribe, that he’d learned the same things that I had. And now it felt like we had strayed so far off course that we were pointing out differences instead of celebrating connections. All of our traditions and rituals that brought us closer as a community had derailed.

  “To answer your original question, I’m a guy,” he said, his voice strained. “And I’ve been doing this for a while. I can read people and I know that Ridge wants you for himself. I just can’t understand why he keeps at it after all this time. It’s almost like he feels the need to be protective of you or something.”

  Those words ignited a volcano inside me. I was just teetering on the edge, spitting fire, wanting to erupt and lash out.

  “So he can’t want me because he cares about me, enjoys spending time with me?” I said, my chest constricting with that suffocating feeling again. But I stubbornly tamped it down.

  His eyebrow arched. “Baby, that’s not what I meant. His father might’ve been desperate enough to threaten you and maybe Ridge knows—”

  “But that’s the nature of their relationship,” I said. “Not everybody has a healthy relationship with their parents. I mean, look at how your father struggles to open up. You want me to compare the two of you? Because I can draw comparisons.”

  It had been a low blow, and I knew it when he sat up suddenly and the flame fizzled in his eyes, as effectively as throwing a water bucket over him. His father could be emotionless, and Shane never got what he needed from him as a child. That might’ve been the exact reason he had thrived under my father’s eye. “Shane—”

  “No,” he said, pushing my legs off his lap as if he was ready to bolt. “You wanted to aim below the belt, and you did.”

  “Please wait,” I said, reaching for his hand that had now become a rigid fist. “I was just trying to make my point. Ridge and I—”

  “Ridge and you what?” he said through clenched teeth. “I want to know why the hell you’re so defensive of him when your standards for everybody else are so damn high.”

  I inhaled a sharp and painful breath and gaped at him.

  “I mean, fuck, Dakota, you held a grudge with your best friend for months when she was secretly dating your brother,” he said. “And it felt like you were doing the same thing with me all these years. And now you
’re trying to hide who I am, what I am to you.”

  I lifted my face to the ceiling. I definitely had set inflexible standards for the people that I loved. Some of it came from a place of insecurity—that I wasn’t good enough, didn’t measure up—and now he was filleting me open, willing me to voice it out loud.

  If I didn’t lay my heart out to him, he might leave, maybe for good. And I didn’t want that. I didn’t want a repeat of the last five years. I wanted him so badly that it was time to let go of my pride. The same pride that would continue eating me alive, leave me bereft and alone. And lonely. Always lonely. For him.

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  DAKOTA

  I sank to my knees in front of him, and Shane’s reaction was instantaneous. He placed his fingers on my neck, his jaw rigid. “Dee, what are you doing?”

  “I know you can’t see it, because I didn’t want you to,” I said, staring into his eyes, my lips quivering, my shoulders shuddering. “I didn’t want you see how weak I feel inside.”

  “You’re the strongest woman I know,” he said, gripping my arms. “Now I need you to get up.”

  I shook my head violently. “No.”

  His gaze softened and his head lowered toward mine. “Get off your knees, angel.”

  “Don’t you see?” I said, my eyes filling with moisture, my mouth gulping in large pockets of air. “At least Ridge was willing to fight for me.”

  I heard his breath hitch in the back of his throat as my cheek sank to his lap. I swallowed hard several times to keep my tears at bay.

  “Ah hell.” His fingers drifted over my hair before he dug his hands beneath my arms and hauled me up to eye level with him. He laid me across his lap and wrapped his arms around me, engulfing me in his warmth.

  “You never need to kneel in front of any man. I’ve seen one too many scumbags make a woman feel like she had to, and that shit isn’t cool, you feel me?” he growled. “Say what you’ve got to say up here, looking into my eyes.”

  I nodded, stunned by his actions as much as by his words.

  After I composed myself a bit more, I said, “I thought . . . I thought . . . the way Ridge wanted me even after I broke it off with him? I thought it meant he truly wanted me, the way you never did. And if you’re saying . . .”