Oh, for the love of God. There she’d gone again. What was it about Leo that made it impossible for her to keep her mind on task?
Oh yeah. Everything. From the way he looked—all golden and gorgeous. And the way he talked—all low and Southern. To the way he handled himself in every situation—with integrity and flat-out courage.In short, Leo Anderson was everything a man was supposed to be and then some. Which in turn made her insides go all soft and warm and malleable, making her feel like…well…like awoman.
SweetbabyJesus. And now I’m channeling old Shania Twain songs. Sheesh, Mortier! Pull your head out of your ass. That thing isn’t meant to be a hat!
And speaking of hats…she hastily donned her imaginary CIA cap. “Uh, sorry. Yeah, I, uh…” She swallowed and crossed her arms over her chest just in case, you know, all that gawking had caused her to nip out or something.Imean, friggin’-A.“No. No Russian sub. I was…I was just hoping maybe you’d tell me about that promise Wolf mentioned in the kitchen back on Wayfarer Island.”
Leo cocked his head, narrowing his eyes. Green. They were definitely green in this light. “Why do you care about that?”
Okey dokey. That was a valid question. Whydidshe care about that? But, of course, she knew the answer.
She cared because of Syria. She cared because she owed them. She cared because she’d already cost them so much, and she’d be damned if she’d be able to live with herself if she ended up costing them evenmore.
“I just…I know how much you guys pride yourselves on your honor, on your integrity. And I would hate it if…if…” She stammered to a stop, trying to gather her thoughts. “I would hate it if any of you felt forced to renege on an…oathor something just because you all can’t say no when you think the lives of innocents are on the line and because, well, on top of that you need the money and here I am offering you some that is totally skeevy and sort of makes you hookers…er…gigolos I guess is the correct term since you’re men, but that’s not as bad as me playing the part of a big slimy government pimp that has you by the short curlies and I-I-I—” She realized she was talking without punctuation again. Twisting her lips, she shrugged, hoping he’d been able to make sense of that jumbled mess of run-on sentences.
“Who are you?”
“Huh?” She searched his face. Back when she first met Leo, she’d thought he wore those damn sunglasses to keep people from seeing his eyes, to keep them from discovering whatever he was really thinking in that consternating head of his. But it hadn’t taken her long to figure out that staring into the multihued pools of his irises, like she was doing right now, told her no more than staring into that old well in the woods out behind the orphanage. In a word: nothing.Hewouldhavemadeanexcellentspy.“What do you mean,whoamI?”
“I mean, the woman I met almost two years ago wouldn’t have thought twice about our honor or our integrity. She would’ve used us and any means necessary to retrieve those capsules.”
Each of his words felt like a knife slashing into her gut.Holyjeez.Isthatwhat he thought of her?Ow!She resisted the urge to press a hand to her stomach. “You don’t know me as well as you think you do,” she whispered, glancing away from him because, for a split second before that good ol’ Langley training kicked in, she wasn’t able to hide the hurt in her eyes.
Of course, she should have remembered that Leo was the most singularlyperceptiveman she’d ever met.
“Shit, Olivia.” He pushed away from the counter to lay a warm hand on her shoulder. The calluses on his palm were scratchy, and up close like this he smelled of suntan lotion, sporty deodorant, and healthy sun-kissed skin. “I didn’t mean it like that. I swear. My uncle says sometimes I come off as rough as a corncob.” One corner of her mouth hitched at the analogy. “But I promise I wasn’t criticizin’ or disparagin’ you. Ilikethat you kick butt and take names—and make no apologies for doin’ either.”
No apologies? Well, that might be true. But that didn’t mean she didn’t harbor a boatload of regrets.
She lifted her chin. His eyes looked more blue than green now. Deep, grayish blue. Ocean-after-a-storm blue. But she couldn’t let herself drown in them, even if she was really,reallytempted to. “I don’t want touseyou. Not if it means—”
“Shh.” He tapped her lips with his index finger, and the stupid things tingled like it’d been his tongue. “You’re makin’ too much of this.Yes, we need the money. Andyes, we wish we didn’t. But that’s life, right? We make the best of bad situations.”
And she couldn’t help but noticeshewas the proverbial bad situation.Hell.
“And about that promise,” he said, dropping his hand from her shoulder. The skin that had been beneath his palm felt cold and bereft, which was…weirdand…dumb.
Imean, bereftness—if that’s even a word—isn’t really something skin can feel, is it?
“What about that promise?” she asked, her heart pounding.
“It’s not like it’s classified information or anything.”
“You could’ve fooled me. The way the guys were acting”—she gestured toward the door to the galley—“you’d have thought I asked them to reveal a state secret. They said I needed to talk to youinprivate.”
When she stressed the last two words, a strange look slid over his face. His eyes became even more shuttered, and his mouth tightened into a straight line. If she wasn’t mistaken, a little muscle was ticking toward the back of his jaw. “No good, interferin’ sonsofbitches,” he muttered under his breath.
“What?”
“Nothin’.”
“Doesn’tsoundlike nothing.”
He shrugged one big shoulder, and she took that to mean he wasn’t going to expound on the subject. She was proved right when the next words out of his mouth were, “The promise Wolf was talking about has to do with Rusty.”
And just like that, the air inside her lungs burst into flames and her stomach congealed into a ball of acid that was one part nausea and two parts heart-shredding guilt. Rusty Lawrence…the man she’d watched get leveled by five rounds of center-fire ammo. Rusty Lawrence…the man who had given his all, his last full measure of devotion to save her life and, ultimately, the lives of her assets inside the terrorist group that went by many names, one of which was the Islamic State.
Chapter Six
