Nina made a frustrated sound. “Throw me a bone, will you? I want to talk about something that’s not related to people trying to kill me.”
Most of the time, if given the choice, Essie would rather punch a rabid grizzly than talk about her personal failures. Yet now she felt a weird compulsion to answer the damn question. “Marrying Jackson was a mistake. I realize that now. It was foolish and reckless. To this day, I still can’t explain why I did it. But I did, and I make it a policy to never repeat my mistakes.”
“Have you ever considered he might not have been a mistake? Maybe it was just the wrong time, and the right time is now.”
Essie shook her head. “We had our time, and now it’s over. Jackson and I…” Shit, was she really going there? Apparently so. She huffed out a breath. “It would make things easier to have someone to blame, but that’s not what happened between us. I don’t even remember how it started, but one day I noticed this…distance between us, and it just kept getting bigger and bigger until it felt like we were two strangers going through the motions of what married people do.”
“Do you still love him?”
Essie considered denying it, but what was the point? She suspected Nina’s other superpowers included a built-in bullshit detector. “A part of me will always love Jackson. But it takes more than love to make a marriage work.”
“So you love him. And trust him. He obviously feels the same way about you. And by the way, your chemistry is off the charts. I can feel it every time you’re in the same room. I can only imagine what it must be like when—”
“Enough, all right?”
“Hey, I’m just saying.”
“And I’m saying let it go. You’re not my damn shrink.”
“No, I’m not.” Nina’s smile slipped. “I’m trying to be your friend. It seems like you could use one.”
It was rare for Essie to be struck speechless. After more than a decade in the field, she’d gotten pretty good at talking her way out of perilous situations. But for some reason, this felt more dangerous. This time there was no gun pointed at her head, no threat to her life or the lives of others. It was an offer of friendship, plain and simple, one she found oddly compelling, even though that jaded part of her wanted to know what Nina expected in return.
She slanted a glance at the other woman, and saw no hint of agenda in her eyes, just the warmth of genuine affection. Something inside her thawed a few degrees, and she thought,Maybe, but not yet.
“Until this is over, my biggest concern is keeping you alive. I can’t afford to let anything distract me from that. But once this is over and the dust has settled, perhaps we can go out and get coffee or something, okay?”
A smile lit Nina’s face. “Screw coffee. I want a good stiff drink after all this.”
“You and me both.”
Chapter 12
During normal times, Jacksondidn’t attend the weekly Six Points management meeting, and that suited him just fine. For starters, he wasn’t a member of upper management and didn’t aspire to join the ranks. He preferred to remain at the team leader level, because the thought of working in an office made him twitchy as hell. Given the choice, he’d much rather get his hands dirty out in the field.
But these were far from normal times.
Jackson followed the mouthwatering scent of pizza to the conference room. A half dozen boxes were lined up on the back table, along with an assortment of sodas and bottled water. Jackson loaded a few slices onto a paper plate, grabbed a can of Coke, and sat between Ryan and Navarre.
“How did things go at the range?” he asked Navarre as he cracked open his can of soda.
Six Points didn’t have their own firing range, so they maintained an account at the nearby outdoor facility for their employees to use. All active security agents were required to go at least twice a month to sharpen their skills, though just about everyone went more often than that. And because Navarre was the best marksman at the company—hell, one of the best in the country—he’d been put in charge of ensuring every new employee attained a certain level of skill with a pistol and a rifle.
Annoyance formed on Navarre’s face as he swallowed a bite of pizza and washed it down with a sip of Mountain Dew. He was still pissed about Essie staying at their house but was slowly coming to terms with it. “I spent most of my time teaching Luther how to properly handle his weapons.”
That didn’t surprise Jackson in the least. One of the recent hires at Six Points, Luther was a valuable asset on personal protection details due to his spectacular resting asshole face. Most of the time, he looked as if he wanted to rip somebody’s lungs out, and that had a way of making people reconsider any bad intentions. Unfortunately, everything Luther knew about firearms he’d learned from the movies, which meant he did a lot of stupid shit that only looked cool to people who didn’t know better.
“Did he ever get around to firing live ammo?” Jackson asked.
“Oh yeah.” Navarre chuffed out a breath. “He’ll have one hell of a bruise on his shoulder tomorrow because he insisted on learning the hard way.”
One by one, the Flint brothers filtered into the room, grabbed some grub, and grabbed a seat. Austin, the oldest brother and founder of the company, sat at the head of the table, while Nate claimed a seat on the other side of Ryan. Ty Flint had even driven up from his home in south Florida, one more sign the family was taking the threat to Nina’s life seriously. The only brother missing was Wade, who was currently in Virginia with his woman.
A short time later, Essie came in with Nina, and every cell in Jackson’s body leaped to attention. Today she wore dark clothes and minimal makeup, with her long brown hair pulled back into a simple ponytail. He’d never met a woman who worked so hard to avoid attracting attention, a lingering habit from her former career where standing out in a crowd could get her captured or killed. As far as he was concerned, she could dress in a burlap sack and Dollar Store flip-flops, and she’d still be nothing short of stunning.
As she crossed the room, Essie’s gaze caught his, and heat warmed his skin from within. Time seemed to slow, while his pulse sped up. He couldn’t look away if he tried. Then she smiled, a subtle curve of her lips, and a flood of inappropriate thoughts swamped his brain.
Over the past few days of living and working together, he’d noticed a thaw in her attitude toward him. Progress was progress, no matter how small, and it gave him hope for their future. They’d even watched a movie at the house last night, one of their old favorite pastimes, and he’d loved every minute of her tearing apart the latest Bond flick.
