One More Night with You by Lisa Marie Perry Page A

her life, yet it was Zaf’s 9 mm bullet that had torn through her.
    The precautions, training and Kevlar hadn’t shielded her, not really. No armor had covered that vulnerable strip of lower abdomen. Nothing had even stopped her heart from breaking.
    The shot had been meant for the man who’d seized her, but she had ignored Zaf’s signals because she didn’t trust him. Failed signals, miscommunication, and ultimately the sharpshooter had pinned her at close range and she lay crumpled on the ground scarcely aware of the bloody chaos around her.
    That had been the last time she’d seen Zaf, until he’d decided to invade the new life she was trying to build here in Nevada.
    At least Joey wasn’t paranoid. The wariness that warned she was being followed had been perfectly on the mark. Only, this wasn’t the kind of thing she was happy to be right about.
    Zaf had eyes on her, but why?
    Outside again, beneath a canopy of heavy clouds, Joey wasn’t entirely surprised to see him on the front entrance steps. He wasn’t the type to tuck his tail and run when a mission was on the line. Besides, he owed her a hell of an explanation.
    Resting against the handrail, he looked at her with steady intensity. Had what they’d shared not quite twenty minutes ago affected him? It left her a little embarrassed and a lot aroused, reminiscent of when she’d picked open his locker at their Washington, DC, office and tucked her undies inside. “Still here, huh? Did you come for the mind games but stay for the books?”
    â€œI came for you and I stayed for you.”
    â€œYeah, you did come for me, Zaf. In a couple of ways. The more pressing issue should be how quickly you can get yourself into a pair of clean pants, yet you’re still here angling for a way to get something from me. Single-minded, much?”
    Zaf straightened to his full height; he towered over her but somehow it hadn’t mattered before. “I want you to let me do my job.”
    God, the man was prince of the cloak-and-dagger. “Which is what?”
    â€œProtecting you.”
    Joey halted, taking a moment to seek out the lie in his face, but she couldn’t break through. She saw a man she’d missed even as she cursed the sweltering summer day she’d met him seven years ago. All she could seem to attach herself to were the memories of lazy conversations and how he altruistically volunteered his life for the law. Lean and carelessly sexy with that serious, brooding look that magnetized people even as it pushed them away, he was the Zaf her heart recognized.
    But the guy who’d manipulated her into a confrontation? That screamed Archangel. It was his modus operandi.
    â€œGoodbye, Zaf.” She skirted around him to the other side of the handrail.
    â€œWait, please,” he said, matching her steps but keeping the rail between them. “You can’t look me square in the eye and say you haven’t wondered if somebody’s tailing you.”
    â€œYes, I’ve wondered.” She’d also wondered if paranoia was making her crazy. “Now I know I was right and the doer is you.”
    â€œIt’s not me—”
    â€œActually,” she said, eyes narrowed as she looked around them, “the old guy with the ratty corduroy pants and the Copernicus biography. Is he on your payroll? Because I’d hate to think I handed a one-hundred-dollar bill to one of your spies.”
    â€œNo, I didn’t recruit spies.” He wasn’t even fazed that she’d accused him of it. That’d probably disturb some, but putting extra sets of eyes on subjects was a common investigative practice in their world. “You gave a hundred dollars to a beggar?”
    â€œI don’t know if he was a beggar for certain, but figured the money would cut him some slack. So I’ll skip my next manicure. I don’t mind.”
    â€œYou’re a beautiful person, Jo,