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 “She no longer represents a threat to you.”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.