Blamed by Edie Harris Page A

work.”
    “Like hell you are.”
    Her eyes narrowed on her spy. “I’m sorry, did you think I dressed up for you? It’s a weekday, pal, and I have a job that I can’t simply not show up for.” Stalking over to where Vick stood, still shirtless, still blatantly sensual, she poked him in the middle of his bare chest, trying to ignore the shimmering warmth of his skin beneath the pad of her forefinger. “No, scratch that—I don’t have a job. I have a
career.
” A career she refused to jeopardize, even if there were a bunch of soggy Englishmen out there prancing after her with silenced pistols.
    He glowered at her. “Fine. You want to go to work, darling? Let’s go to work.”
    “Oh, no. No, no, no.” She whirled to face Tobias, though why she thought getting him on her side meant that Vick wouldn’t follow her to the museum regardless, she had no idea. “I don’t need a babysitter.”
    From behind her, Vick snapped, “Bit of a difference between a babysitter and a bodyguard, love.”
    “Both get paid by the hour, so fuck off,” she retorted hotly. To Tobias, she said, “You know I’m capable of taking care of myself. I mean, seriously. I saved
his
ass last night, not the other way around.”
    Vick snorted but wisely said nothing.
    Spine stiff, she folded her arms over her chest. “Besides, he doesn’t have anything to wear. His shirt is covered in blood.”
    “Not to mention in the waste bin,” Vick chimed in helpfully.
    Tobias studied Vick for a moment. “I have a dress shirt he can borrow.”
    The shoulder seams of which Vick will rip if he so much as sneezes.
A muscle-bound soldier-spy her brother was not. “Please,” she pleaded hoarsely. With every passing second, her new normal was trickling away, like a gelato dropped to the pavement in July. “Please.” She only wished she knew what, precisely, she was begging her brother for.
    But Tobias, man of ice, remained unyielding. “You’re too smart to think going anywhere alone is an option until this situation is resolved, so it’s either him or me, Beth. Choose.”
    “God. All right,
him.
”
    Tobias’s too-shrewd gaze speared her for a handful of heartbeats before he turned his attention to Vick. “I will talk to my sister. Alone.”
    Half of her wanted to stomp her foot and insist that whatever Tobias had to say to her, he could damn well say it in front of Vick. But the other half of her—the half still smarting from the revelation of just how long Vick had allowed her to live with his death on her conscience—was scared stupid at the idea of trusting him again.
    She’d trusted him once without ever knowing who he was or where he was from or what he was doing whenever he showed up in the same city as her during a job. All that trust had gotten her, after Kabul, was a broken heart and a tormented conscience.
    What was wrong with her that she had almost felt worse over killing him than she did over causing the deaths of those children? Weren’t the innocents more worthy of her sorrow, her shame? No way in hell was Vick an innocent...yet she’d barely been able to reconcile the outcome of Kabul with her bruised psyche a year after the fact.
    So when Vick glanced to her, as if to make sure that speaking alone with Tobias was what she really wanted—as if, should she say otherwise, he would refuse to leave her side even if it meant coming to blows with her brother—she attempted a casual shrug. “Family stuff,” she said, by way of explanation. Not that she owed him an explanation to begin with.
    Gaze flicking to Tobias before returning to her, he nodded. “I have a go-bag stashed across the street with a change of clothes. I’ll go collect it, then.”
    Strange that she heard a question in his voice, though he’d been making a statement. It really was as though he didn’t want to leave. Did he worry she wouldn’t be here when he came back? Did he think last night’s shooter would find his way over to her side of the street,