A Shot at Love. Peggy Jaeger

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СКАЧАТЬ was no doubt of it. In the span of a few seconds she had captured an act so heinous and violent that if seen through a normal person’s eyes would have been unbearable. Through her talented ones, though, she’d immortalized the scene.

      “Is that my SD card, or did you upload the pictures to your laptop?” Gemma asked from behind him.

      He’d been so engrossed with the photographs he hadn’t heard her approach. “I uploaded them,” he told her.

      “Do you have my card?”

      “No. It’s still being examined.”

      She sighed. “I have some really great shots on that card,” she said, leaning against the kitchen counter. “There isn’t any way I can get just those back? Never mind the shooting stuff. I don’t want to lose a whole day’s work, especially since it was really productive.”

      It took him a moment to reply. “The FBI IT techs uploaded your pictures onto the main data frame and I did the same with my work laptop. I copied the ones we don’t need to a flash drive. I was going to give it to you later on, after you’d rested for a while.”

      For the first time since he’d met her, Gemma smiled. The joy that filtered through it almost knocked him backward. Her entire face changed with just the parting and uplifting of her lips. Ky had thought she was a gorgeous woman without it, but when she looked into his eyes, her own glistening with happiness, he realized just how beautiful she truly was.

      “Really?” she asked, wobbling closer to him. “Can I have it now? Please?”

      He reached into his pants pocket, took out the flash drive and handed it to her. “Like I said, the kill shots aren’t on this.”

      Her hand rolled over the drive, no bigger than a stick of gum, as she held it. Like a lover stroking a mate’s naked flesh, her long fingers twined around and fondled the drive as she spoke to him.

      “Do you know…anything?” Gemma asked.

      Ky shook his head. “Not yet. The man who attacked you, I believe, is one of the soldiers in the Ritandi mob family.”

      “This Ritandi. He’s the one who killed your men today?”

      “He didn’t do it personally, but he ordered it. I’m certain.”

      Gemma shuddered. She rubbed her hands up and down her arms and then crossed them in front of her, the flash drive tight in her grasp. “Curiosity compels me to ask why. But I really don’t want to know.”

      Ky nodded. “Believe me, you’re better off not. Just know that we’re doing everything in our power to find the man who attacked you.”

      “In addition to this Ritandi guy?”

      “Oh, I have a good idea where he is,” Ky said.

      “Then why haven’t you arrested him?”

      “Knowing where someone is, and proving they did something are two different things.”

      Gemma’s lips formed a small O. “I get that. But if you know where he is and you know he’s responsible for what he did today isn’t there some way, some piece of information, that can help you link the two?”

      Ky put his hands in his pants pocket. “That’s exactly what my men are trying to do right now.”

      Gemma nodded.

      “I’m betting you’re a little pissed off you have to sit here and babysit me, because I can guess you’d like nothing more than to be out there on the chase yourself. I know I would be if I were you.”

      Ky stared across at her. He shouldn’t have been surprised by her statement. She seemed an astute woman, attuned to what was going on around her.

      “Don’t get the wrong impression,” he told her. “I’m not pissed off, to quote you, at being here to keep you safe. It’s part of my job. But I will admit I’d like to be there when we locate the guy who attacked you. Once we know who it is, I’m positive there’ll be a link to Ritandi. One I can use to take him down for good.”

      The corners of Gemma’s lips turned up in the slightest of smiles. “Yeah, you’re pissed off. And I can’t say I blame you.”

      They stared at one another for a few moments. Neither spoke. Finally Gemma shrugged and said, “Thanks for the flash drive. If I have to be stuck here at least I can do some work.”

      At that moment her stomach rumbled loudly. When she laughed and placed her hand, open palmed, across it, Ky didn’t know which was stronger: the jolt that leaped around his heart at the sound of her laughter—low, but so seductive—or the heat that palpated through his lower region as he watched her hand flex and contract against her abdomen. Even though she was fully clothed Ky knew the skin under the material would be soft, tight, and hot.

      “Obviously, you’re hungry,” he said.

      “Obviously. When all hell broke loose this afternoon at my apartment I was in the process of making something to eat. I’d been working since early this morning and when I got home after being at your offices for over three hours, I realized just how hungry I was.”

      Ky didn’t miss the irritation in her words. “We keep this house filled. There’s plenty to eat. What can I make you?”

      Her eyes widened with surprise. Ky wasn’t in the habit of cooking for people other than his family or friends. Not that he wouldn’t. The women in his family had seen to his culinary education while he was growing up. Standing in the safe-house kitchen with this incredibly desirable woman, Ky realized he not only wanted to cook for her but he wanted to make something that would be satisfying both nutritionally and emotionally.

      “You don’t have to cook for me,” Gemma said. “I’m a big girl. I’m used to fending for myself.” Her lips lifted in one of those smiles Ky was starting to want to see on her face all the time. “I couldn’t be Kandy Laine’s sister and not know how to cook, even a little.”

      “I just thought, with your knee and all, you wouldn’t want to be hopping around the kitchen. I’m more than willing to whip us up something quick.”

      He couldn’t read the look she tossed him.

      “If Ky is offering to make dinner, let him,” Jon said as he came into the kitchen. “At least we’ll get something edible.”

      With a shrug, she said, “Okay. Mind if I sit here and upload these to my laptop so I can work on them?” She held up the flash drive. “The lighting is better in here than in my room.”

      “Not at all.”

      “I’ll get your laptop,” Jon said. “You rest that knee.”

      When Gemma smiled her thanks, Ky swore the feeling dropping in him wasn’t jealousy. He wanted her to smile at him like that: naturally, and with warmth. So far, she’d scowled at him more than anything else, and although it was tantalizing to see the passion in her anger, he realized he’d like nothing more than to see that emotion revealed in a much more enjoyable way.

      “Do you have any food restrictions?” he asked as she sat at the breakfast СКАЧАТЬ