They all laughed, but it was Lina who answered. “Umm, no. Not a chance in hell. He says I don’t spend enough money as it is. Dalton will be thrilled I’m buying anything that isn’t a weapon.” She smirked. “He also dragged a promise out of me that I’d try and be better about buying stuff for me. Consider this helping a girl out.”
Rose hesitated. As much as she’d love to tell her yes, she’d only promised Caleb that she’d stay a couple of days. She stuffed a spoonful of Rocky Road into her mouth to give herself a couple of seconds to figure out how to answer without sounding ungrateful. “I?—”
Becky, damn her, knew exactly which buttons to push. “If you don’t say yes, then Lina will order one off Amazon, and her in-laws will cry for the wrong reasons when they get those photos.”
She wanted so badly to agree. She almost said yes, but two more spoons of ice cream kept her from doing it while she tried to figure out if she dared take a couple of more days before she left. The others left her to her thoughts and peered over Becky and Lina’s phones as they looked at cameras on Amazon.
“If you’re doing some shots for Lina, will you do some for us too?” Lily asked. “RJ is growing up so fast. He’ll be taller than me soon. Someday, I’ll tell you mine and Rexar’s story, but I have nospecialphotos of him and RJ. Please, will you do it?”
In this day and age, with all the cameras on phones and the internet, these mommas wanting to have special photos of their kids and their families called to something in her soul. “Okay, I’ll do it.”
The next thing she knew, she was showing them options on a website. She had no business visiting, but Lina picked one and then bought it. She even paid for overnight shipping. “Operation Spec Ops Kiddo Photoshoot is a go.”
“Yay.”
“Yippee.”
“Wonderful.”
“Shh, don’t wake the baby until we at least get some book time.” Lina put her phone down and picked up her book.
Rose took the wine glass that Adalyn handed her and sipped. She hoped to God that she’d done the right thing. “Caleb won’t mind me staying a few more days, right?”
“Nope, from the way he came into my house earlier,” Lily reassured her, “he’ll be thrilled.”
Hearing someone else say it made her feel better. “I hope so.”
22
As he made his way into HQ, he decided that being booted out of his own house was worth it when he heard Rose’s voice in the midst of the chattering women as he’d listened outside the door. It had reassured him that she’d be okay without him. Plus, with Lina and Lily there, not to mention Snow, Rose had some of the deadliest operators on the property at her side. He knew almost nothing about comforting upset women. Especially not when that woman was his…
Mine.
He stepped out of the elevator into the bowels of Nemesis headquarters and allowed the rage he’d banked while comforting Rose to rise from deep within him. He strode forward at a swift pace. He could even hear his footsteps sound furious as he made a beeline for the interrogation room.
“In here, Caleb,” Dalton called to him from a different room as he approached the door. “Logan and Jeep are in there. You and me are watching.” He gestured to the observation room.
Tempted to ignore his boss and go into the other room, Caleb bit back a growl of annoyance. He wanted to be part of the interrogation, not to watch it from the sidelines. That asshole deserved to have his teeth sent straight down his throat, and he’d give almost anything to be the one to do it.
“Door’s locked.” As if Dalton could read his thoughts, he pointed into the observation room. “Get your ass in here with me.”
Caleb admitted to himself that he understood his boss’s rage back when he’d found Lina and figured out what had been going on to keep her from him more now than he ever had before. Dalton deserved a damn medal for being able to keep his head mostly on straight while they’d figured that crap out. But now Dalton had two people to fight for and not one. It irked him that Dalton was keeping him from losing his shit on the person who deserved it.
In an effort to get himself under control, he scrubbed his hand down over his face and took a breath. He resolved to at least try to follow orders for now. That way, when he took matters into his own hands later, Dalton couldn’t bitch at him. He followed him into the observation room. He glanced through the glass to where the dumbass sat on one side of the table. “Why Jeep and Logan?”
“Because one will use finesse and the other brute force.” Dalton stood with one arm across his chest while the other stroked the scruff on his chin. “I have clearance to class this as a hostile invasion. And we are treating it as such, but we have to follow protocol so our hands come out clean.”
Orders from the top, then. He could deal with that. He should have known Dalton would go straight up the chain of command and get clearance to investigate the issue thoroughly. Dalton always preferred when I’s were dotted and T’s crossed. He dipped his chin toward his boss. His agreement to do things his way for now didn’t mean he didn’t want to punch the asshole in the nose a time or two, just that he could wait until Dalton was satisfied they’d found out everything they could before he showed the asshole what coming for someone he cared about resulted in.
“They’re starting.” Dalton cut into his musing. “Pay attention if you don’t want to miss anything.”
That was something he didn’t want to happen. Caleb gave himself a mental shake and forced his fingers to unclench. Dalton probably knew how close he was to snapping, but there was no reason for him to confirm it for him with his body language.
Jeep walked back and forth in front of the table the asshole was sitting at, then he paused directly in front of him and pinned him with a glare. “Why didn’t you declare all your weapons as you came through security?”
“I was in a hurry,” the fucking new guy replied. “I didn’t think. It was stupid.”
“Yeah, it was stupid,” Jeep agreed. “You read the contract, signed it, and agreed to our rules and regs,” he informed him. “Then you broke them in the first week.”
