The Perfect Target

She lifted her chin. “Wasn’t it?”

“Bella,” he said in that hoarse voice of his, that seeped through her defenses like a smoky mist no matter how hard she worked to reinforce them, “I hate to shatter your illusions, but this isn’t a drill or a lesson. This is as real as it gets.” His gaze on hers, he lifted his hands to his chest, his fingers practically brutalizing the buttons of his black shirt.

Her heart started to hammer again, this time in a halting, irregular rhythm. “What are you doing?”

“Those shots back there were the real thing,” he said, his voice softer than before. Almost strained. Reaching the waistband of his pants, he shrugged out of the cotton shirt.

Miranda braced herself for the sight of darkly tanned flesh and hard muscle, but instead found herself staring at a thick gray vest.

A vest she instantly recognized.

“The man trying to hurt you was real,” Sandro continued, working the buckles and snaps of the familiar body armor. Impatience snapped through his voice. “And come morning,” he growled, dropping the heavy vest to the floor and turning his back to her, “this will be a real damn bruise.”

Shock cut through Miranda. She stared at the nasty green and purple already discoloring the center of a back otherwise magnificently perfect. His shoulders were broad, bronze, thickly muscled. They tapered to the center of his back, which in turn tapered perfectly to the waistband of his pants.

Perfect, that was, save for the nasty streaks of dark red.

Abruptly, she followed the trail of dried blood back to his shoulder, where a crust tried vainly to conceal blood still oozing from a nasty wound. “You’re bleeding.”

Sandro twisted around to look at his upper back. “Am I?” he asked, then grimaced. “Son of a bitch. No wonder my shoulder feels like it’s on fire.”

Deep inside, Miranda started to shake. The chill came next, starting in her heart and seeping through her blood. This man had risked his life for her. He’d been not only shot at, but shot.

Because of her.

“Here, let me,” she said, stepping closer. She lifted her hands to his back, not really knowing what she planned to do, but knowing she had to touch him. Help him. Very gently, she touched her fingertips to the heat of his flesh—

“Cristo!” he shouted, then continued in a language she didn’t understand.

She jerked back. “I’m sorry. I—”

“Your hands are like ice!”

And his skin was like fire. She stared at him, but the room started to revolve. The walls pushed closer. The air grew too thick to breathe. Thoughts and possibilities crashed around inside her like bullets in a mausoleum. Horror stabbed deep.

It was real. Everything that had gone down in the crowded marketplace had been authentic, not staged. The shots and the shouting. Hawk going down, then pulling himself back up, only to be mowed down again.

Dear God, Elizabeth. Her sister said she didn’t love Hawk, had never loved him, but Miranda had always believed—

“Miranda?”

She blinked rapidly, working desperately to bring Sandro’s face into focus. He was moving closer, his big body blocking out the meager light seeping through the window, until her world consisted only of him.

“If there was a th-threat, he should have told m-me,” she whispered in a voice she barely recognized as her own. “He should have warned m-me. T-told me about you.”

“Miranda—”

“I wouldn’t have been on the street like that,” she insisted, gazing up at him. She widened her eyes, imploring him to believe her. She’d seen how her sister’s death had shattered her family, would never do anything willingly to put them through that again. She wasn’t foolish. She didn’t have a death wish. She’d taken countless self-defense classes. Had a few tricks up her sleeve. “I would have been more careful.”

“Miranda.” Sandro took her shoulders in his hands and gave her a gentle squeeze. “Your father loves you,” he said softly but firmly. “He wants to keep you safe. Where’s the crime in that? If I hadn’t been there, don’t you realize where you would be right now? What could be happening to you?”

She did realize, that was the problem. If he hadn’t been there, she could be with the horrible man who’d killed Hawk—or dead. But in not warning her about the threat or telling her about Sandro, her father had left her equally vulnerable.

“What if you’d been shot somewhere besides your chest or back? What if I’d stabbed you? Then what would have happened? Both my bodyguards would have been down, and because my father chose an underhanded method of protecting me, I wouldn’t have had a clue what was really going on.”

Sandro lifted a hand to her face, his fingers skimming her cheekbone. “None of that happened. I have you now, and everything’s going to be okay.”

There was an unmistakable gentleness to his touch, a persuasiveness that sent an unwanted rush through her. “Why didn’t he warn me? Why didn’t he tell me about you?”

“Everything happened too fast. There wasn’t time for warnings.”

“He should have found a way!”

“Bella, bella, bella,” he said, his voice like velvet. “Are you always so tough? Do you always malign those trying to help you? Protect you?”

The softly spoken questions hit with unerring accuracy. “You don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said, ripping away from his touch. She needed to think, but couldn’t gather her thoughts when he stood so close she felt his every breath, his every heartbeat.

“Don’t you have something more important to do than psychoanalyze me?” she asked with a sharpness he didn’t deserve. “Like report back to my father?”

His expression darkened. “Actually,” he said, glancing at the nasty wound on his shoulder, “I do.”

Regret hit hard and fast. This man had been shot because of her, was bleeding. This man had put his body between her and a bullet. And here she stood, berating him because he willingly followed the orders she’d grown to despise.

“I’m sorry,” she said, appalled at her thoughtlessness. But when she started toward him, he lifted a hand to stop her.

“Don’t, bella. I can take care of this myself.”

“But I can help you.”

“That’s not necessary.”

She didn’t know what she heard in his voice, bitterness or resolve, maybe regret, but she recognized the look in his eyes, that hard, cold look of a man who didn’t allow others to interfere with his code of conduct.

“You’ve been shot,” she said.

“It’s only a flesh wound.” He turned from her then, reached for the body armor. “Bullet barely grazed me.”

“What are you doing?”

He fastened the vest around his upper body and retrieved his black shirt, wincing as he slid the wrinkled cotton over his injured shoulder. “This is wrong, bella. This isn’t how things were supposed to go down.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You’re not supposed to be with me,” he growled, and almost sounded pained. “There are things you don’t understand. Things I need to find out. What went down back there was a mistake. You’re right. I was the backup. I wasn’t supposed to end up with you. Hawk was. Now I’ve got to figure out what went wrong and what happens next.”

She watched him fight with little black buttons far too small for his fingers. “Why can’t we just go to the embassy?”

“Too risky,” he answered without hesitation. “Too public.”