Total pages in book: 70
Estimated words: 68509 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 343(@200wpm)___ 274(@250wpm)___ 228(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 68509 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 343(@200wpm)___ 274(@250wpm)___ 228(@300wpm)
“Let’s try this again, darlin’,” he said, his breath warm on the shell of my ear. And it totally didn’t make a shiver course down my spine. Because I was absolutely not that hard-up for the closeness of a man.
I also totally didn’t notice the way he smelled, either. All bright and fresh, maybe slightly citrusy. Which was refreshing. Most guys wore spicy or clean scents that always made me wrinkle my nose.
“Try what again?” I asked, pitching my tone just a little more innocent.
“Bullshit. You’ve been following me since Miami. Who are you and what do you want?”
“Maybe I just want the pleasure of your company. Hey! Hands!” I snapped as he pinned me harder with just one of his strong arms, and his other hand started to drift, patting over me.
“You’re not armed.”
“How would I get on a plane with a weapon?”
“You’ve passed half a dozen following me the past few hours.”
“Maybe I don’t want to kill you. Though the possibility is increasing with each passing second.”
He was so damn fast.
One second, he was hugging my arms to my chest and my body to his chest.
The next, he was releasing me and stepping away while simultaneously whipping my crossbody bag up and off of me.
“Hey!” I whipped back to face him, ready to get my bag back—even if I had to strangle him with the strap to do it.
But it was too late.
He had it unzipped and had pulled out my wallet.
“Violet,” he read off my ID.
I saw it the second he came across my bounty hunter identification card.
One of his brows inched up and he shot me a look from under his lashes.
“You’re a bounty hunter?”
Was that disbelief in his voice? Mocking?
I’d busted my ass to get that damn license. Lord knew the state of New Jersey didn’t exactly make it easy.
Not liking his tone, I simply crossed my arms and glared at him.
“Where’s your badge then?”
“Those are ornamental, worn only by the guys who think they’re bigger badasses than they are. Besides, that’s another thing I couldn’t have brought into the country.”
“Because bounty hunters are illegal here.”
“It figures that you would know that.”
“I skipped bail. Of course I know,” he said, slipping my IDs back into their slots. He put my wallet back in my bag, zipped it, then held it out toward me. “What, exactly, was your plan here? To ask me nicely to return to the States so you could collect?”
“No.”
I couldn’t exactly tell him my actual plan. Or that I was still kind of hoping I could accomplish it.
“Knock me over the head and smuggle me back?” he asked, lips curving up ever so slightly at the edge.
“That’s always an option. That becomes more likely with each moment spent in your… pleasant company.”
“Can’t imagine I’m obligated to be friendly to someone who wants to bring me to jail.”
“For crimes you committed.”
“So, that whole ‘innocent until proven guilty’ thing…”
“Makes a nice soundbite. But you’ve already been convicted in the court of public opinion.”
“And if I didn’t do it?”
“That’s your lawyer’s problem, not mine.”
“You don’t even care if I did it or not?”
“I care that you did skip out on your bail.”
“And if you haul me back to be locked up for a crime I didn’t commit?”
“I’d say that if I had a dime for every time a skip told me they were innocent, I’d be a wealthy woman. Little secret,” I said, leaning in for dramatic effect, “they’re all guilty.”
He considered that, biting the inside of his cheek. “Statistics say that roughly five percent of everyone incarcerated is innocent. That’s, what, one in every twenty? How many skips have you handed over to a system that was hellbent on convicting them, regardless of if they did it or not? More than twenty?”
A hell of a lot more.
“That’s on the lawyers and the jury. I’m doing my job.”
“Well, you can’t do your job here. So maybe you should turn around and head back to the States.”
“Yeah, that’s not happening.”
“Suit yourself,” he said, turning to walk away.
“Warwick,” I called.
“Wick,” he said. Turning his head over his shoulder, he gave me a raised brow look.
“I’m going to bring you in.”
“Yeah?” he asked, lips curving up in a way I totally didn’t find annoyingly attractive. “I’d like to see you try, duchess.”
CHAPTER FOUR
Wick
Fuck.
She was a complication I didn’t need.
Between the fake IDs I paid a small fortune for, but was just testing out for the first time, the wanted posters of me that had—no doubt—made their way to international airports, and the fact that I was innocent of the crimes I was being charged with, I had more than enough on my plate.
I’d seen her looking at me at the airport back in Miami. But my ego had let me think she was just checking me out. And, to be fair, I was doing a lot of my own checking out too.