Beyond the Rules. Doranna Durgin

he said, “I could be almost dead and that would still happen.”

      Her cheek moved against his shoulder as she, too, smiled. “Okay, then,” she said. “Just checking.”

      “Nice shooting, by the way.”

      “Had to be. Last cartridge. I wasn’t expecting the whole propane-tank thing, though.”

      “I wasn’t expecting Hank to identify the men as the ones running his chop shop.” Rio kept his voice low, although the televised sound of car engines and crowds—and his sporadic couch coaching—inspired little concern that Hank would actually hear them. “Boom, the end of all his troubles. He never lifted a tire iron, never touched the trigger. Just a victim.”

      “I never expected anything else,” Kimmer said, and traced Rio’s collarbone through the fabric of his T-shirt in a way that made him want to rip it off. Okay, that, Hank might notice.

      Too damn bad they’d both decided the unpredictable man was best kept close to home—a decision Owen had emphatically endorsed. For although the Hunter Agency had taken only a generation to expand from a small missing-persons agency to the current elite collection of international undercover operatives, it remained more than discreet on its wine-country home turf. It was invisible.

      And Owen wanted to keep it that way.

      “We’ll be okay,” she added. “The cops aren’t happy, but they know what Owen does for this town—that his operatives go out of their way to keep the area safe. We’ve pitched in on plenty of their difficult cases.”

      “They owe you? That’s not exactly how the law is supposed to work. Turn the other cheek is more of a civilian option.”

      “Trust me, we’ll earn it when we go in for our little discussion at the station tomorrow. They’ll pry every detail from us, write it all down and look it over as carefully as they would anyone’s. They’ll know Hank isn’t telling the whole story about why those guys were after him, but they don’t have anything on him here. And when there are legitimate choices to be made, they’ll give us the benefit of the doubt. Nothing happened out there today that wasn’t self-defense. And they know I tried to draw the action away from anyone else. Tried being the operative word. And come on, there were so many other things the goonboys could have hit besides that propane tank. That wasn’t fair.”

      “Probably the very last things that went through their minds.”

      “Yuck.”

      Hank’s voice rose above the sound of his television program. “Hey, Kimmer, bring some coffee this way.”

      Kimmer stiffened. In that moment she stopped being the woman who showed him glimpses of a gentler, playful self, and returned to being the woman he’d first met. Hard. A woman with edges. A woman who had no intention of being ruled by her past, in whatever form it came. She no longer fit perfectly into his lap; she just happened to be sitting there. And she said, “You want I should make up some sammitches, too? Call up some girlfriends to keep you company? And I got a little bell you can ring anytime you need something, how about that?”

      Rio winced.

      She knew it; she felt it. For all the ways her knack of reading people failed her when it came to Rio—when it came to anyone close to her, for good or bad—she’d learned to compensate. To observe and know him. She withdrew, sliding off his lap to stand before him. “It’s not the same and you know it.”

      Rio’s grandmother had ruled her Danish-Japanese children, and then her grandchildren. His sobo had instilled her courteous, often ritualized ways through the entire family—and those who had married into it soon found themselves murmuring courteous phrases, taking off their shoes at the door, providing slippers to guests…and going out of their way to make guests feel at home. In Sobo’s household, failure to anticipate a guest’s needs—so much as a cup of coffee—was a profound failure indeed. Those in Rio’s generation were more relaxed about such things, but still respectful, still attentive. And though during the years away from home—the CIA years, as Rio thought of them—Rio had adjusted to myriad cultures, he’d easily returned to most of his old ways once he’d come home.

      Well, his old ways if you didn’t count the constant adjustments he made for that spot where his kidney used to be, and all the not-so-well-adjusted muscle and tendon that had also been in the way of that bullet.

      Rio looked up at Kimmer, found her defiant and hard—that same demeanor that had drawn him in, the one shouting I don’t need anybody when in fact she needed everything. Someone to accept and love her for who she was, just for starters. Petite but carrying hard, toned muscle, lightning-fast in reaction and as quick in improvised strategy as she was on her feet. Features saved from being cute by the hard line of her jaw and the look in her deep, clear blue eyes. And because being honest with Kimmer was the only option, Rio said, “No. Hank is not a good guest, or a welcome one. But it’s not about him, it’s about you.”

      “Exactly.” She gave an assertive nod, and if Rio didn’t know her so well he might have missed that faint tremble in her chin. “It’s about me never forgetting the things my family taught me—even if they didn’t mean to.” Not entirely true; Rio knew by now that Kimmer’s battered mother had deliberately left her with a set of rules to live by. “And I guess there’s no hope if I haven’t at least managed to learn that men like Hank will own you—if you let them.”

      “That’s not—” Rio started and then stopped, because he could see that the conversation was over, that Kimmer had gone to that place where her past very much ruled her, even if in a way she’d never acknowledge. She hesitated a moment, clad in lightweight drawstring pants and a French-cut T-shirt, and Rio’s experienced eye saw vulnerability beneath that hard edge. When she turned away, it was to stalk out to the front porch on bare feet that had been wrapped in sports tape at heel and ball to cover the damage the day had wrought—tree bark, asphalt, gouging bits of stick and gravel had all left their mark.

      Rio had thrown his socks away, but they’d lasted long enough to leave him with little more than a few pebble bruises.

      He lost himself in the appreciation of watching her walk away, and then he tipped his head back and closed his eyes, trying to call up the moments when he’d had her in his lap and they’d manage to forget—mostly—that Hank was here, and all the things he’d brought with him. Goonboys. Troubled past. A really bad attitude. And then he sighed and told himself, “Walk the talk, Ryobe Carlsen.”

      That meant switching off the heating pad and getting up to walk silently into the next room, where he interposed himself between Hank and the television and said, “I’ll make some coffee. Go out and talk to your sister.”

      Hank couldn’t have looked more startled. His gaze flicked past Rio to the television and then out to the front porch. Rio made his point by turning off the television. Before Hank’s open mouth could emit words, Rio jerked a thumb at the front porch. “Go. Talk. She saved your ass today.” And then, as Hank slowly, uncertainly, stood, Rio added a low-toned, “And be nice. Don’t crowd her. Don’t boss her. Just try saying thank you.”

      Of course Hank had to open his mouth. “Kinda looks like she’s got you pussy-whipped.”

      “You think so?” Rio cocked his head to consider it. “You know what? I don’t. Maybe you and I will have a talk about that another time. For now, you want that coffee? You go be nice.”

      Hank shook his head, a gesture of disgust—at just exactly what, Rio wasn’t sure. And didn’t care. Hank headed for the front porch—and Rio found himself walking in the wrong direction to make coffee. He found himself following Kimmer’s brother, stopping to hover within earshot through the screen door.

      Hank, diplomat and master of subtlety, let the screen slam behind him, shattering what peace the porch might have offered Kimmer. “There you are,” he said, and it somehow sounded accusing, as if Kimmer had deliberately inconvenienced him by choosing to sit out in the cool spring night. Rio could see her there in his mind’s eye—on the porch swing, her shoulders