Kieran glanced across to where Janina was currently enjoying having lunch with her two friends. All three of them were looking back at him with various degrees of curiosity and annoyance. The latter was from Janina.

  His mind drifted back to earlier in the week to this exact same image. Janina had been relaxed and happy that day too. She—

  She’d received and answered a text message that day!

  Was it possible it could have been from Carla? Asking if Janina would babysit Marco the following evening while she and Leon went out to dinner?

  An interruption to their lunch break her two friends would ask about and Janina would innocently have answered. Maybe not specifically, but enough so the assassin had been able to guess the rest?

  It was a leap to have come to that conclusion, and yet Kieran knew instinctively it was the right one. “Jesus,” he breathed softly, instinctively checking that his gun was in its shoulder holster without taking his eyes off the three people seated at the table. “It’s either Paul or Zoe,” he stated with certainty.

  “I told you it isn’t Paul.”

  “You can defend your lover later,” Kieran told Liam fiercely. “Right now, we need to get the three of them out of this cafeteria.” Thank goodness it was between breaks and there were only a few stragglers left from the early lunch, and the late lunch people hadn’t yet arrived. “We need to do it as quietly and calmly as possible so we can go somewhere private and ensure no one else is harmed— Fuck!” he grated. He saw he was too late when Janina was grabbed and a gun was pressed against her temple as she was pulled to her feet and forced to stand in front of her attacker.

  * * *

  “What are you doing?” Janina gasped as painfully tight fingers dug into her forearm to pull her to her feet. “You—” She broke off as she felt the cold barrel of a gun pressing against the side of her head.

  This couldn’t be happening!

  Not here and now.

  And not from someone she had thought of as a friend.

  A glance across the cafeteria showed Kieran was walking determinedly toward them while Liam quietly went from occupied table to occupied table, asking and then ensuring that people quickly left before they even became aware of the scene playing out across the room.

  By the time Kieran came to a stop a few feet away from their table, the cafeteria had emptied, even the cashier and the cooks from the kitchen having left, and just the five of them remained.

  “You don’t need to do this.” He didn’t look at Janina as he spoke calmly to her attacker. “The person who hired you is dead,” he reasoned. “If you put the gun away, there’s no reason you can’t just walk out of here.”

  “And what would it do to my reputation as a killer for hire if it gets out that I didn’t fulfill my contract?” Zoe scorned in a derisive tone Janina had never heard her friend speak in before.

  Except Zoe wasn’t her friend. Instead, she was, to quote the woman herself, a killer for hire.

  And she had been hired to kill Janina.

  It was incredible, unbelievable, that a person she had thought of as a friend should also be the person paid to shoot and kill her.

  “Besides,” Zoe continued in that calm voice, “I’ve already infiltrated the Brunelli estate and killed six of your men. Which you have somehow managed to keep quiet,” she said with admiration. “But that doesn’t mean you aren’t going to want retribution. A good way for you to do that without involving your dead colleagues would be to ensure the police connect me to the dead man found in an alleyway on the East Side early this morning.”

  Kieran’s top lip curled back. “Would he be the same man who shot at Leon and Carla last night as they were leaving the restaurant, so that you were free to go to the Brunelli estate for Janina?”

  “I don’t believe in leaving loose ends.”

  “And yet you didn’t kill Janina when you had the chance.”

  She sighed. “That’s because in spite of why I’m really here pretending to work in this hospital, she’s been a good friend to me these past few weeks.”

  “Pretending to work?” Janina repeated.

  The other woman shrugged. “No one questioned it the first time I turned up here and bought myself lunch and the three of us started talking. After that, it was easy as fuck to pay someone to hack the hospital employment records, get a fake ID, and then continue to act as if I worked on the main reception desk.”

  Paul frowned. “You don’t really work there?”

  “The hospital records say I do,” Zoe dismissed. “But if anyone had actually bothered to question the other receptionists, they would have told them they’ve never heard of me.”

  “So, for all these weeks, you’ve been planning to kill me?” Janina winced. She was having great difficulty reconciling this cold-blooded killer with the woman she had been friends with for the past five weeks.

  “None of this is personal, Janina,” Zoe assured lightly. “I’ve actually enjoyed being your friend. If things were different, we might even have become more than friends.” She gave Janina a suggestive smile. “But it’s time for the fun to stop and for the two of us to get out of here and go somewhere more private, because I really do have to kill you now. No hard feelings, I hope.”

  Janina couldn’t breathe, let alone speak again.

  No hard feelings!

  What the hell…!

  Who said something like that when they were about to kill you?

  A psychopath, that’s who.

  Why hadn’t she noticed something odd about Zoe before now?

  Because psychopaths were capable of mimicking emotions even if they couldn’t feel them, Janina reasoned. The same way Zoe had mimicked being a friend to both her and Paul.

  Although, her partiality for Janina didn’t sound fake either.

  It just wasn’t enough liking to prevent the other woman from wanting to kill her.

  Janina glanced sideways to where Paul had also risen to his feet and was standing on the other side of Zoe. His face was pale, eyes wide as he stared in disbelief at the woman he had also thought of as a friend.

  He glanced sideways at Liam as the Irishman made his way stealthily toward them after clearing the room and shutting and locking the cafeteria doors.

  A look seemed to pass between the two men, one that Janina couldn’t read.

  Possibly because the blood had all drained from her head the moment the gun barrel was placed against her temple, and she was now seriously in danger of fainting.

  Which was probably why, when Paul made his move of knocking into Zoe, unbalancing her, Kieran was easily able to grab Janina’s other arm and pull her out of the way. At the same time as two gunshots sounded loudly in the empty room.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Janina had never fainted before in her life.

  She had never been shot at before either!

  Had she been hit and then fainted, or was it only shock that had caused her to black out?

  Whatever the reason, Janina regained consciousness lying on the back seat of what she quickly realized was one of the fast-moving Brunelli SUVs, her head resting on Kieran’s thigh as he solicitously bent over her.

  She didn’t seem to hurt anywhere, but that didn’t mean she hadn’t been shot. A lot of people who woke up in the hospital after being seriously injured in a car crash said they hadn’t felt any pain at the time.

  Not that a gunshot wound could be likened to a car crash, but…

  Dear God, why was she prevaricating, even inside her head, when Kieran was right here to answer her questions?

  She moistened her dry lips with the tip of her tongue. “Was anyone hurt?”

  “Liam has a shoulder wound, but still insists on driving.” Paul was the one to answer her.

  Janina glanced toward the front of the vehicle where Paul had now twisted around in the passenger seat to talk to her, Liam next to him behind the wheel.

  “It’s a surface wound,” Liam dismissed gruffly.

  “You’re still my hero,” Paul gushed, the two men briefly sharing a warm smile.

  “Ignore them,” Kieran spoke wearily. “Apparently, they have a ‘connection,’” he added dryly.

  “What happened to Zoe?”

  His gaze didn’t meet hers. “She no longer represents a threat to you.”

  “Because Liam shot and killed her,” Paul put in excitedly. “It was awesome. Liam’s a sharpshooter, and he just lifted his gun and fired. The first bullet hit that bitch perfectly between her eyes, and the second one went directly into her cold, dead—”

  “Now’s not the time, babe,” Liam advised, his hand resting briefly on Paul’s thigh to take the sting out of his words.

  “Oh. Okay.” But Paul continued to gaze at him with open adoration.

  “They have a connection,” Janina acknowledged softly to Kieran.

  “Yeah,” he confirmed ruefully.

  “And Zoe is dead?” She gave an involuntary shiver.

  Not because the other woman hadn’t deserved to die for having already admitted to killing seven men, but because of all those wasted lives.

  He nodded. “I called Leon immediately after. He’s smoothed things over with the hospital authority. Even as we speak, several more of our men are dealing with…tidying things in the locked cafeteria under the guise of dealing with a gas leak. In a couple of hours, no will know anything untoward happened in there.”

  Paul chuckled. “And Dragon Lady is no doubt throwing a complete fit because she now has to actually do some work after Mr. Brunelli insisted we both be allowed to go home for the rest of the day.” He touched Liam’s arm. “I know exactly what I want to do during that time.”

  “TMI for our audience, babe,” Liam warned.

  Paul looked completely unperturbed by the fact he might have shocked Janina or Kieran.

  Janina wasn’t shocked. She was pleased that Paul, in his late twenties and something of a cynic, had found someone he genuinely cared for and admired. That Liam seemed to feel the same way about him was really wonderful.

  But it didn’t answer any of the questions still plaguing Janina.

  She moved carefully until she was sitting upright on the leather seat. It meant she was no longer resting her head on Kieran’s thigh, but she could think a little more clearly without that physical connection to him. “Is it really all over?”

  He reached out to link his fingers with hers. “The immediate threat to your life is over, yes.”

  Janina looked at him searchingly when the emphatic statement seemed unfinished. Kieran met her gaze unblinkingly as his fingers tightened about hers.

  Letting her know that “they” weren’t over?

  God, she hoped that was the case.

  Kieran was feeling impatient and frustrated by the time he let himself back into the house he and Janina currently shared.

  Carla had whisked both Janina and Paul away to her private sitting room as soon as they returned to the estate, leaving Kieran and Liam to report to Leon and then help with the rest of the cleanup from both the attack the previous night and then the shooting today.

  It was early evening by the time Kieran was able to get away and go looking for Janina. Paul was still with Carla, waiting for Liam, but the other man told him Janina had gone back to the house an hour ago.

  “I think she needed to be alone for a while,” Paul told him over the top of Marco’s head, the baby happy in his arms.

  Kieran hoped that his brother Liam saw babies in his future, because he could see a definite gleam of intent in Paul’s eyes when he looked at Marco.

  Carla had walked Kieran to the front door. “Janina is taking all this in stride, but it still has to have been a big shock for her to discover one of her close friends was an assassin out to kill her.”

  Kieran walked slowly back to the house as he mulled over Carla’s words for the warning they were obviously meant to be for him to go carefully where Janina was concerned. He was still thinking of how best to proceed when he let himself into the house—

  “I thought you were never going to come home.”

  Kieran turned at the sound of Janina’s voice and then almost swallowed his own tongue as he stared at her standing at the bottom of the staircase completely naked.

  “Cat got your tongue?” She teased at his obvious predicament as she moved slowly toward him. Her breasts were tipped with engorged red nipples, her hips swaying provocatively.

  He swallowed hard. “Don’t we need to talk about what happened today before we—before?” he asked awkwardly.

  She came to a halt in front of him. “I think there’s been enough talk for one day. Zoe tried to kill me. Now she’s dead. There’s nothing more to say.”

  There was plenty more to say but Kieran knew from Janina’s challenging expression that she didn’t want to talk about it right now.

  Well, that suited him just fine, because he had something he wanted—needed, to say to her.

  His arms moved about her waist as he pulled her naked body in close to his. “When I saw that fucking gun pressed against your temple and thought I might lose you, I realized how much I love you.”

  She blinked. “You do?”

  He nodded. “So much, I can’t think straight half the time.”

  “I love you too.”

  “You do?” he gasped.

  She smiled. “I have for some time. Since not long after I pointed a gun at you in Moscow, to be precise.”

  Relief and happiness spread through Kieran, totally obliterating his previous feelings of frustration at being apart from her for so long.

  He bent and swung Janina up into his arms. “We still have things we need to talk about, but for the moment, I just need to make love to the woman I love.”

  “And I need to make love right back to the man I love.”

  They didn’t need anything but each other right now.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Christmas Eve.

  Three weeks later

  “What are you doing out here in the cold?”

  Janina turned to smile warmly at Kieran as he repeated his question from that night at the beginning of December.

  A night very similar to this one, and when she was once again standing outside on the terrace of the Brunellis’ home.

  Not because she still felt out of place here.

  No, Janina had no doubt of exactly where she belonged now, and it was wherever Kieran was.

  Nor, as she glanced through the window at the festivities taking place inside the Brunellis’ sitting room, did she feel an ounce of yearning for what the other couple had.

  Because she had everything she needed right here.

  Most of all Kieran, the man who loved her and whom she loved in return.

  Her sister, Marisha, and her husband, Jericho, Kieran’s brother, were back from their honeymoon and happier than ever.

  Their father stood talking to Leon, having made the journey from Moscow several days ago so that he could spend Christmas with his daughters and their “family.”

  Carla was chatting animatedly with Natalia and Killian. The couple expected their first child to be born very soon.

  Standing next to them were Liam and Paul.

  Marco, as usual, was in the Paul’s arms, the two having openly adored each other from the moment they first met.

  Janina had a feeling it wouldn’t be long before Liam and Paul made their relationship official and went about having a baby of their own. She couldn’t have been happier for them both.

  Then why, in the midst of all this love and happiness, had she once again sought the solitude of the Brunellis’ terrace?

  Probably because the past three weeks had been like an emotional roller coaster, full of the ups and downs of both euphoria and sadness, and this was the first chance she’d had to really be alone with her thoughts.

  She was slowly coming to terms with Zoe’s pretense of friendship. Although, she doubted she would ever forget how casually Zoe had spoken of killing her.

  The memory would fade with time, Kieran assured her on those nights when it bothered her the most. Nights when they then made love before tightly holding on to each other until morning, happy at just being alive and together.

  “Here.” Kieran now placed his jacket about her shoulders.

  Janina’s eyes widened as he lowered to one knee in front of her, uncaring of the snow covering the tiles of the terrace, an open ring box in one of his hands, containing a solitaire diamond gleaming on a narrow white-gold band.

  He reached to take one of her hands in his. “Janina Sokolova, will you make me the happiest man in the world and marry me?”

  “Kieran…?” she breathed in wonder.

  “I wanted to ask you sooner, but then I thought, as your father was coming here for Christmas, that I should do it right and wait until after I’d spoken to him,” he explained.

  “He would have liked that.” She glanced inside the house to see her father was now holding Marco, and Liam and Paul were laughing together as they danced around the room to the Christmas music playing in the background.

  The look of yearning on her father’s face told her that he was looking forward to holding his own grandchildren in his arms one day.

  No more than Janina was looking forward to carrying Kieran’s babies inside her and then the years of the two of them doting on each other and their children.

  “I could have proposed on your birthday tomorrow,” Kieran added. “But I have other presents to give you then. For both your birthday and Christmas.”

  “You’re spoiling me.”

  “Always,” he promised.

  Janina dropped onto her own jean-clad knees into the snow. “Yes, I’ll marry you, Kieran Price,” she accepted as she flung herself into his arms. “Yes, yes, yes!”

  Joy and love glistened in Kieran’s eyes as he pulled back only long enough to place the solitaire diamond on her finger before their lips met in a promise for a long and happy future.

  Together.