orders were orders. Taking a deep breath, she removed her sunglasses.
He stared like everyone did at her eyes. No human had eyes that color. At least no normal human did. She knew good and well that she looked like an alien with her eyes uncovered like this.
He mumbled, “Okay, so your eyes are a unique shade of … of gold. And it’s very striking, by the way. Surely that’s not why Jeff sent you here.”
Striking. What a polite word for weird. Her eyes were brilliant, freaking yellow. She responded drily, “I imagine he sent me here because I can read a newspaper from a hundred feet away.”
“That’s it! An eagle,” he exclaimed.
“Excuse me?” That was not the usual reaction she got from people when they saw her real eye color or first heard about her eyesight. Usually they called her a damned liar and demanded a demonstration.
“You reminded me of a predator earlier, but I couldn’t figure out which kind. It’s a bird of prey. A powerful one like an eagle.”
“My eyesight is better than an eagle’s,” she responded, more than a little flummoxed. “They rely on spotting movement, whereas my superior human brain can better process and analyze acuity-based input.” She broke off before she could descend into even greater geekdom. She wasn’t about to give this guy the slightest advantage over her if she could avoid it.
“Seriously?” he blurted.
“Seriously.”
His face lit up. “Surveillance. I’ll bet that’s why Jeff sent you here.”
“Could be. My eyes don’t require any electronic enhancements to do their thing.”
“If you were to look at a person, how far away could you be and still make a positive facial ID?”
She shrugged. “A mile or so, day or night.”
“Huh?”
“I see as well at night as during the day.”
“You’re kidding.”
“Call Jeff if you don’t believe me.”
“I think I’d rather see a demonstration in person.”
There it was. The skepticism and mistrust. This was more like it. She was back on familiar territory with this man who, up till now, had put her so off her stride. She shrugged casually. “Sure. When it gets dark.”
“Why not now?”
She glanced at the heavily covered windows. “Sun’s out. Small drawback of my eyesight—I have about ten times as many rods in my eyes as you do. Cones see color, but rods are light receptors. And that means I’m a wee bit sensitive to bright light.”
“After dark, then. It’s a date.”
Surely he’d meant those words innocently. But their double meaning sent a ripple of something she’d rather not name through her body. He really was gorgeous in a mysterious, brooding way. He was far too clean-cut for her usual taste, though. She went for wild guys. Losers with no ambition or, more important, no sense of self-preservation.
Gemma Jones said Sam had a death wish but pushed it onto her lovers rather than face it in herself. Whatever the heck that meant. Sam had had enough of well-meaning but clueless counselors after she’d landed on the streets in her teens and periodically got dragged into shelters by various do-gooders.
She stood up, acutely aware of Gray’s sharp gaze on her. For a moment, she almost regretted her choice of leather, then thought better of it. Let the guy look. It wasn’t like he was ever going to get a taste of any Sam candy. With a toss of her head, she announced, “I’m going to go catch a few hours’ sleep. I do my best work at night.” And she darned well meant that double entendre.
She lived nights, truth be told. But she wasn’t about to share any more of her personal life than she had to with this man who already knew enough about her to make her feel naked. And frankly, the sensation was unsettling. Grayson Pierce was far too attractive for his own good. She needed to get away from him for a little while. Get her feet back under her.
She had yet to hear about the guy whose pictures were spread all over the kitchen counter and why Jeff had asked her and Gray to check him out, but that would have to wait until she could think clearly. Until she’d achieved a little emotional distance from the disturbing man staring intently at her.
“The second bedroom’s pretty small,” he offered, “but it’s clean and reasonably comfortable.”
It sounded like he’d had to go to some effort to achieve both. “Thanks,” she muttered. She relished the view of his muscular physique as he showed her down a short hallway and into the room. Streaks of sunshine leaked between the slatted blinds, and she slammed the sunglasses back over her eyes as icepicks of pain stabbed her eyeballs.
“Sorry,” he said quickly. “I’ve got an errand to run, but I should be back by the time you wake up.”
As he backed out of the room, she quickly dug in her duffel for eye drops and her good blindfold. She never spent this much time in daylight, and for good reason. She’d forgotten how bad direct sunlight hurt. She put in the anesthetizing eye drops and sighed with relief as they numbed her burning eyeballs. She popped a pain pill for her smashing headache, pulled a velvet blindfold over her eyes and fell asleep to visions of a tall, enigmatic stranger who was far too sexy for his own good and not her type at all.
She woke to the sounds of quiet swearing from the living room. Based on the rosy light that made her squint as she peeled up a corner of her blindfold, it looked to be near sunset. But just to be safe, she donned her sunglasses before taking off her blindfold all the way.
The swearing led her to Gray, who was seated on the living-room floor with nylon cord tangled all around him. And yet, he still managed to look … noble.
“Making your own fishing net there, Sparky?” she teased.
“Putting together a new curtain rod for your room. But these instructions stink. They’re really, really badly translated into English.”
“And I need a new curtain rod why?”
“I got you some blackout shades, but you need something to hang them on.”
The thoughtfulness of the gesture pierced her defenses almost painfully. People didn’t do nice things for Sammie Jo Jessup. Ever. She knelt down beside him and said softly, “That’s incredibly sweet of you. Thank you.”
He looked up in surprise and their gazes met. She rocked back on her heels, startled at what she saw there. It was like looking into the depths of … nothing. It wasn’t that he was a psychopath. She’d looked into the eyes of guys like that a time or two. After all, punks and jerks were her specialty.
Rather, it was as if everything Gray was had been stripped away from him. As if he was completely, utterly lost. He wasn’t caught in the abyss. He was the abyss.
Shaken, she offered lamely, “You don’t have to bother with a curtain rod.” She looked into his eyes again, and this time saw only a wall of gray-green. Had she been hallucinating there for a minute? She mumbled, “If you have a roll of duct tape, just tape the curtain to the wall. Minimizes leakage of light.”
“But it won’t be very attractive.”
She shrugged. “I’m more about functionality than beauty.”
“That’s too bad,” he remarked as he climbed to his feet. “Life’s too short not to enjoy its beauty.”
The words made sense, but they felt recited. Like he’d heard them before and was parroting them back with no conviction or real understanding. What in the heck was going on with him? Is this why Jeff had sent her out here? To rescue his buddy?
Gray fetched a roll of duct tape from a drawer in the kitchen and she followed