Beyond the Rules. Doranna Durgin

need to, and there was a final clink of shifting weight before he climbed the old wooden stairs leading from the basement, creaking on those fourth and seventh steps as usual. He came out of the kitchen with a towel around his neck and one of those T-shirts with the cut-off sleeves that showed his biceps to perfection, and that pair of shorts that hugged his ass just right.

      “You’re wearing those on purpose,” she said, narrowing her eyes at him. Worry dogged his eyes, but the tough-guy-I’m-working-out expression let her know he wasn’t interested in talking about it—about his grandmother—just now.

      He grinned, convincingly enough. He’d been drinking that Kool-Aid again, leaving a smirch of blue at the corner of his mouth. “Do you think so?” He stalked closer, hands on either end of the towel, an exaggerated prowl. Sweat blotted his shirt here and there, but not so much as to cry out for a shower.

      She didn’t answer. She told him, “Hank is gone. And Hunter’s not sending me anywhere.”

      That diverted his prowling a moment. “No?”

      “I’ve got some local spy-girl duty,” she said. “Maybe I’ll have the chance to throw myself in front of an important political figure in the line of duty.”

      “The governor’s visit,” he guessed. “That’s not bad. It’s barely more than a drive-through.”

      “As penance goes, I’ll take it. But sooner or later, I’ll go out on assignment again.”

      She didn’t have to say any more; he shook his head. “I still haven’t decided if I want to go back to that kind of work,” he said. “I’ve been burned badly enough. I don’t have that need anymore, the drive to go out and take care of the things no one else even knows about. Make the world safe, blah blah blah. Been there, done that…and there are others better qualified than I. You, for instance.”

      “You were driven enough last fall.”

      “That was different. That was family. You know that. And you know I hardly blend into the crowd. I found ways to use that to my advantage with the agency. I was good for drawing attention away from other case officers when they needed it.”

      She could well imagine that. At six-three and with that bright blond hair, those striking angles in his features, the natural warmth of his rich brown eyes, he’d drawn her attention quickly enough.

      “I can be hidden, but…it’s not what I’m best at. And my back means there’s no way Hunter could use me in their more…active assignments. I’m done with paramilitary. So…” He shrugged. “I can find work with boats here, too. I don’t have any problem with that.”

      “It’s less of a commitment,” she guessed, surprised that it hurt to say it. It was common sense, that was all. Dabble your toes in the water before jumping in. If she hadn’t just had that conversation with Owen she wouldn’t think twice about it. That conversation in which she realized that she still fully expected Rio to walk away when it suited him.

      Who could blame him? It wasn’t as if Kimmer herself had ever been anything but a loner, using her personal interactions as transactions and trade-offs.

      And Rio just shrugged, a gesture that neither confirmed nor denied but simply didn’t get into it.

      Kimmer took a deliberate breath. “Okay,” she said, letting go of the subject quickly enough to surprise him. “Besides, anyone would need time to recover after meeting my very suave brother. Did he leave you any of those fried pork rinds?”

      “OldCat loves ’em,” Rio reported.

      Kimmer shuddered with exaggeration. She tipped her head back and scrubbed her fingers through her near-black hair—not long enough for the curls to do any more than suggest soft waves along her head and a few wispy, feathery curls at her nape, but still long enough to ruffle under her fingers. She shook like a dog, shoulders all the way down to her fingers, torso down to her hips, making a rolling-R noise of a shivery nature. “There,” she said, straightening to find Rio watching her with interest. “All those Hank vibes…gone.”

      “Do that again,” he said.

      “Do which? The whole—?” and she shook her arms to demonstrate.

      “More the part with the hips.”

      She gave him a speculative look from beneath half-lidded eyes; his own widened. She had no idea how he’d ever been a spy guy.

      Because what he shows you isn’t what he’d ever show anyone else.

      He swallowed visibly. A flicker of tension ran up his arm, a brief clench of muscle. Kimmer murmured, “You goof,” as if it were actually an endearing phrase, and then a moment later it occurred to her that she was kissing him and had been kissing him for who knows how long. Pressed up against his slightly damp shirt, fingers pressed into the hard muscle of his arms, hips against his and angled to connect most intimately. She pulled back long enough to tell him in her most serious voice, “You must use this power only for good,” and then to laugh with pleasure at the dazed expression already glazing his eyes.

      Somewhere in the back of her head Owen’s words trickled through, and she followed his advice the only way she knew how. A long, slow kiss that said I’m here for you. A lick and nibble at the corner of his jaw, I care. A delicate nip at his ear, one that made him groan, made his knees buckle down in the way they sometimes did, made him surge back up again to hold her more tightly, lifting until her toes merely brushed the floor. Slow kisses, her fingers skimming his back beneath the shirt and down, caressing cheeks that clenched under her touch. I’m here. I care. I love, as best I can.