“What?” She stared up the street where the car had disappeared. “You think that was on purpose?”
“Yeah, I do. Did you recognize the car? It was meant for you because as far as I know, nobody’s out to kill me.”
“If they knew you, they would be,” she said between her teeth. “It was just an accident, Jude. I’ve never seen that car before. It wasn’t aiming for me.”
“Twenty dollars says you’re wrong.”
“All right.”
He pointed to something over her shoulder. Dread turned her stomach sour as she spun and stared at the windshield of her Subaru Impreza.
WATCH OUT.
The words screamed at her in blood-red paint, and a nude paper doll had been stuck to the trailing line off the T like an obscene exclamation point.
“No.” She swayed again, and Jude slid an arm around her waist to steady her.
His expression hardened, and he all but dragged her toward a black truck parked three spaces down from her car. He opened the passenger-side door and lifted her into the seat. Numb, she stared at the dashboard, barely noticing when he climbed into the driver’s side and started the engine.
Someone was actually trying to kill her.
Holy hell.
“We got a problem,” Jude said.
She glanced over to lash out with a derisive, “No shit, Sherlock.” Not very original as far as comebacks went, but she wasn’t exactly at the top of her game.
Except he wasn’t speaking to her. He held a phone to his ear.
“An attack,” he added. “There was another message on her car. Yeah, another doll, too. Then someone tried to run us down with a blue four-door sedan, possibly a late-model Ford Taurus. I got a partial plate number.” After that, whoever was on the other end of the line did most of the talking. He nodded once, then again, then said, “Okay,” before hanging up.
“Who was that?”
He slid the phone back into his coat pocket. “Your father. He’s going to meet us at your place.”
“Oh. Great.” Here she’d thought this day couldn’t possibly get any worse, and now she had to deal with Jude and her overbearing, overprotective father at the same time. “I thought you two hated each other.”
“We’re Marines. Personal feelings don’t factor into missions.”
“Missions. Right. I’m just another mission.” She told herself not to let that hurt and failed miserably. The dispassionate tone he’d used burrowed under her skin and tweaked at her nerves. She angled her head at him. “Personal feelings don’t factor into anything for you, do they? You avoid emotion like leprosy.”
“Pretty much. Emotion is messy.”
She slumped in back in her seat. The jabs she kept taking at him weren’t wholly deserved, especially after he saved her from becoming a road pancake, but she just couldn’t seem to help herself. The man pushed all of her buttons—good and bad—and right now, she needed the distraction he presented. Anything to take her mind off the image of that car headed directly toward them…
Oh God, why wouldn’t her hands stop shaking?
She rolled her fingers into fists on her lap and clenched her jaw to keep the trembles from traveling up her arms and into the rest of her body.
For once, Jude didn’t rise to the bait of her snide remarks. He studied her for a second, then reached over and covered both of her hands with one of his.
“Jesus, your hands are half-frozen.”
She tried to pull away, but his grip tightened. She wasn’t going anywhere until he allowed it, and that knowledge grated. “Let go of me.”
To her surprise, he did and turned up the heat, angling the vents her way. But, being Jude, he couldn’t leave it at that. “You used to like when I touched you.”
She still did, a little thrill dancing through her belly at every contact, but she’d bite off her own tongue before admitting it. “I was young, stupid, and horny back then.”
One corner of his mouth kicked up in a half smile. “Yeah, been there.”
“From what I’ve seen, you’re still there,” she said.
He actually laughed. “You know, Reece said the same thing to me yesterday. Sure he’s not your brother?”
She vaguely remembered Reece and Greer. And the twins, but she couldn’t remember their names. She’d met them all once at Jude’s apartment, but only very briefly. Jude had rushed through the introductions and then hurried his brothers out the door, making a fake excuse about having dinner reservations.
That should have been her first clue their relationship was doomed.
Young, stupid, and horny.
She looked at him again, let her eyes trace the line of his long, muscled frame, and a spark of pure desire heated her from the inside out.
Yeah, so what was her excuse for wanting him now?
…
When Jude pulled to the curb in front of her house, her father’s car already waited in the driveway, and he stood in the open doorway, his big body backlit by the lamps in the living room. He held a gun in his hand.
Libby sighed and got out of Jude’s truck. “Dad, put that away.”
He merely grunted.