Defending Hearts. Rebecca Crowley

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      “Maybe we should price out bulletproof glass,” she murmured, foolishly thinking out loud.

      That set him off, shattering the accord she’d worked so hard to build over the last two hours.

      “Stop.” He held up his palms, speaking quickly and forcefully, his clipped accent becoming more pronounced as his agitation grew. “Let me make something absolutely clear. I agreed to basic security measures. Basic. An alarm system, beams in the yard, a couple of motion lights. Not ideal, but I’ll live with it. Anything else is a step too far, an admission of fear that I’m not willing to make. First, there’s no way you’re replacing the glass in this house. Second, I don’t want any visible changes to the outside. I’m not building a fence, or stringing barbed wire, or installing bars on the windows—”

      “Of course not, bars won’t stop a bullet.”

      That shut him up.

      “I’m not trying to scare you,” she told him, keeping her voice calm and reasonable. “Probably someone’s just being provocative, throwing in Ausonius’s name. Your job is to shrug it off and keep living your life. My job, though, is to be overcautious and paranoid and respond to the slightest perceived threat. We won’t make any additional changes today, but I have to think about the best way to respond to the mention of a long-range gunman.”

      Oz’s tight jaw and thinned lips illustrated his unhappiness with her answer. She braced for another argument when a crash resonated from the kitchen. Oz was past her and racing down the stairs before she could say his name.

      She should chase after him, she thought, be ready to smooth over whatever catastrophe had occurred. She should shield the poor technician who was probably already on the receiving end of Oz’s misdirected anger. She should fix this situation. She should own it.

      Instead she drifted to the window and gazed over the front yard.

      Oz’s house was beautiful. His life was beautiful. He had more money than he needed, more space than he needed, more cars than any single man needed. He was a professional athlete, paid ridiculous sums to play a game, and not even a particularly popular game. According to his Instagram, he had friends, family, and plenty of time to take exotic vacations.

      Why was he so pissed off?

      Her vision focused on the mailbox at the end of the lush lawn. He’d clearly made an effort to remove the graffiti—a desperate effort, leaving rough scrape marks from what she guessed was steel wool. It hadn’t worked. Though some of the interior of each stroke had disappeared, the outline of the swastika was unmistakable.

      She imagined Oz bent over the mailbox in the evening twilight, scrubbing futilely at the awful symbol while his neighbors slowed their cars as they drove past. Despite everything, her heart tugged.

      She jogged down the stairs, grateful for the website which had informed her Oz was five-foot-eleven—only three inches taller than her—and as such gave her permission to never, ever wear heels in his company. She found the left-back by the sink, examining a superhero-printed coffee mug.

      Bryce, the youngest of the workmen, raised his hands to her in innocence. “It fell into the sink and made a racket but it’s not broken, I swear.”

      She winked at the nineteen-year-old, then spoke in a commanding tone. “How about you quit throwing this man’s possessions around and do something useful. There should be some solvent and scrub brushes in the truck, go outside and fix that mailbox.”

      “Yes, ma’am.”

      Kate watched Bryce scurry out of the room, and when she looked back, Oz’s gaze was on her. His expression had changed very slightly—softened, warmed. She dared a fleeting a smile, but got nothing in return.

      Maybe she was seeing things.

      “I thought of something,” he said, his tone unreadable. “There’s one more room I spend a lot of time in, where it might be hard to hear the alarm or get to a panel quickly.”

      “Which one?”

      “The gym. In the basement.”

      “That’s no problem,” she assured him. “We’ll put a fifth panel down there.”

      He shook his head. “Impossible. The walls are all mirrored.”

      She smiled around gritted teeth. “Let’s have a look and see what we can work out.”

      Had she ever wanted to punch someone as bad as she wanted to punch Oz Terim in that moment? Not enough to remember.

      Chapter 3

      “I had a really nice time tonight, Oz.”

      “Me too.”

      “Let’s do this again soon.”

      He hesitated. He didn’t want to mislead her, but the curb in front of her waiting taxi wasn’t exactly the best place to deliver the let’s-just-be-friends speech, either.

      Thankfully she had more to say. “Or we could keep going, right now. Do you want to come back to my apartment, meet my dog? She’ll love you, I promise.”

      He exhaled in relief. She opened the door. He only had to walk through it.

      “I don’t think so,” he said as gently as he could. “I’m not sure this is going anywhere romantically, but I had a lot of fun. Maybe you should come to my box for a Skyline match. Bring some friends, meet my friends, and we can all hang out. What do you think?”

      Disappointment shimmered in her eyes, but to her credit she kept her chin up and her smile seemed genuine. “Actually, that would be great. Thanks for being honest.”

      “Pick a match and it’ll happen.” He opened the taxi door. “And let me know you got home safely.”

      “I will.” She hugged him, briefly but warmly, then slid into the backseat and pulled the door shut behind her.

      He waved as the car pulled off into the sparse, Thursday-night traffic. As soon as it was out of sight he spun back toward the restaurant and wiped his hand over his eyes.

      What was going on with him lately? This was the third date in as many weeks that was perfect on paper and even better in person, yet he had zero inclination to take any of them further. Jamie was intelligent, hilarious, a medical student at Emory who’d spent two years after college working for an AIDS-prevention charity in Uganda. She was gorgeous, said all the right things, even had a minor interest in soccer. She would absolutely fit into his long-established plan for his post-soccer future—essential criteria for even considering a second date. There was no good reason he shouldn’t want to see her again.

      But the thought of another getting-to-know-you dinner with her filled him with dread.

      He unlocked his phone and swiped to a taxi-hailing app. His thumb hovered over the Request Car button, then he closed the app and looked up. He wasn’t ready to go home yet.

      A neon sign flickered in the window of a rundown, fake-Irish pub three storefronts from the restaurant. Normally he hated dives—the stale-beer smell, СКАЧАТЬ