Being Emerald Read Online Free PDF

room. He chucked the picture into the garbage can and threw the linens in the washer.
    Breakfast was prepared when she joined him, fresh-faced and smiling, in the same shorts and tank from the night before.
    “Eggs and potatoes okay?”
    “Yeah.” She held up a toothbrush he’d never seen before. “I used your toothbrush. I figured you could put it in the dishwasher.” He must have blanched because she tilted her head and said, “What?”
    He tried to squash his smile as he dropped the toothbrush in the dishwasher’s silverware basket.
    “What?” she asked again.
    “Not my toothbrush.”
    Her eyes widened. “Oh…girlfriend’s?”
    “No. You can have it after it’s run through the washer. It’s yours now.”
    She shrugged. “Okay.”
    Sitting next to each other at the island, Rock barely tasted his breakfast, too fascinated in the slow withdrawal of Laila’s fork from between her lips and the momentary flutter of her eyelids when she groaned her pleasure. When Laila pushed her half-eaten food away, he slid it back. “Get used to having a big breakfast. You’re going to need your energy on training days.”
    “I can’t eat all this every day. My clothes wouldn’t fit me in a week.”
    “You’re not going to have to worry about that.”
    “I still can’t eat another bite, Rock.” She jumped off the stool. “I gotta get dressed. I’ll be back.”
    “No skirts.” He got up from his stool and slotted the dishes into the dishwasher. The ambient temperature of the suddenly silent great room lowered five degrees when she walked out the door, and the pervasive feeling of solitude returned. The woman was a storm, churning up long repressed feelings he’d buried deep. She brought some life back into what had only been an existence two days before.
    In his downstairs bathroom, he stripped himself of his jeans and turned on the shower. While he waited for the water to warm, he looked at himself in the mirror as if through Laila’s eyes, assessing things he hadn’t paid much attention to for a year. He was haggard with a week’s worth of whiskers shading the lower half of his face. His once super-short cut, worn when he was in the Amber police department, was now shaggy to the collar of his T-shirt. The combination made him look wild. He shaved in the accumulating steam and then stepped into the shower.
    The original plan of glossing over the training so he could focus on more terrorism while in the city was out. He’d assumed Laila was just another snooty academic raised in privilege and viewing him as the help. One who, he’d thought, would have a stick prominently stuck up her ass and be a pain in his. What one night did to his perspective was mind-boggling. This was not that.
    He cared. She roused his protective feelings and it left him feeling like an itch in just the right part of his brain had finally been scratched. Her voice strummed the horrible silence away. His soul purred with anticipation of what was to come. He hadn’t been looking for a companion, yet here she was. She had his name written all over her in blinking neon lights.
    Now, he was more suspicious than ever that Morgan was fucking with him and setting them both up to die. He ran down training exercises he might be able to use to help her master some of the skills he’d neglected during his initial planning. He needed to train her to follow a command without question and defend herself whether he was with her or not. To some degree, he’d done it twice before. Not overly well, since Emily was dead. He’d been easy on his girls back then, indulging their playful acts of defiance. He wouldn’t make the same mistakes this time.
    Over the din of the shower spray, Rock heard Laila enter the house and call his name.
    “In here. I’ll be out in a second.” He finished quickly, stepped out of the shower and dried off. He’d forgotten to bring clothes into the bathroom with him, so he wrapped the damp towel around his waist and