Maybe he reallywasgetting too old, or maybe he just had other things on his mind—notOlivia, not Olivia…okay, probably Olivia—but Leo just couldn’t force himself to feel any enthusiasm about the prospect of another meaningless one-night stand. “Thanks for the offer, even as distasteful as you just made it sound.” He grimaced. “But believe me when I say she’s all yours if you can get her.”
“Don’t you worry.” Doc winked, pushing up from his seat, throwing the toothpick into the fire, and turning toward the rambling old house. “I’ll get her.”
Yes, sir, Leo figured Doc probably would. After all, a woman had once told him that Doc was the spitting image of some big French actor. And though Leo hadn’t the first clue who she was talking about, he figured from her dreamy expression that the comparison was meant to be a compliment. “Me and Uncle John will hang out here. Give you all some time to do your wooin’.”
“If that’s the case, you may be here all night,” Doc boasted. “My wooing has been known to last—”
“Yeah, yeah.” Leo waved him off. “Get lost, will you? I’m tired of lookin’ at your smug face.” And sure enough, Doc’s expression became even more…well…smug. Leo grinned because he knew just what to say to get rid of it. “Besides, you stay here too much longer and you may give Romeo time to convince dear, sweet Sophie that a little two-for-the-price-of-one action could be lots of fun.”
Doc’s grin melted away as he called Romeo a foul name beneath his breath. But to Leo’s surprise, Doc didn’t hightail it up to house. Instead he angled his head, his eyes searching Leo’s face over the glow of the fire.
“Well?” Leo asked. “What are you waitin’ for?”
“It, uh…” Doc lifted a hand to scratch his head.
“What’s up, bro?” And, yes. More than hismen, or hisfriends, or even hiscrew, the five guys who’d hitched their wagons to his mule were hisbrothers. In every way that counted.
“You know, the, uh, the way I see it,” Doc said haltingly, “part of our pledge included no more pussyfooting around when it comes to going after the things we really want.” Leo watched Doc unconsciously rub the tattoo on the inside of his left forearm. “And it’s been obvious since day one that you want Olivia Mortier.”
Damn.Just hearing her name spoken aloud made the hairs along the back of Leo’s neck stand up.
“So, why don’t you send her an email, huh? See if she’ll take some time off from The Company to come down here for a little visit.” And now that smug smirk was back on Doc’s face. “Maybe after she’s wobbled your knob a time or two, you’ll stop mooning around like a lovesick teenager.”
Sonofa—Sometimes it sucked ass living in such close quarters with a group of men trained and tested in the fine art of observation. “Wobble my knob? What are you? Thirteen?”
“Avoiding the question?”
Damnit.“For the record,” Leo growled. “I don’twanther to wobble my knob, as you so eloquently put it.” A voice inside his head warned him his nose would be growing Pinocchio-style any minute now.
All right. So, if he was totally honest, hewouldhave liked to see where things with Olivia were headed. He would have liked to know if all those not-so-subtle flirty looks and that one ball-tightening kiss could have turned into something more—knob wobbling included. Unfortunately, Fate had intervened in the form of the goatfuck of all goatfucks, which had precipitated his exit from the Navy and negated all chances that he’d ever again work in the same arena as one oh-so-tempting Olivia Mortier.
He was a civilian now. And civilians and CIA field agents weren’t exactly known to find themselves in a position to mix it up. So even if hecouldconvince her to take a vacation from missiles and mayhem, it’s not like there was any real chance at a future for them. After all, the woman was all about the adrenaline high, and he was…well…retired.
Chapter Two
3:21 a.m.…
“We need to haul Leo Anderson’s ass out of retirement,” Olivia Mortier told her supervisor over the phone as she hastily threw T-shirts and shorts into an overnight bag, admonishing herself for not already being prepared to go. Then again, her part in this mission wassupposedto be finished. She wassupposedto have a night off because Morales wassupposedto be running the show from here on out.
Butnothingiscertainexceptdeathandtaxes. Okay, and yeah. There wasthat.
Blood rushed through her veins until it pounded in her ears, and her adrenaline was spiked way past the red line. She chalked up both afflictions to the fact that she’d just found out their scheme to root out the CIA mole ormoleshad officially and finally failed spectacularly, and not the fact that she might get the chance to work with Leo again.
Big, world-weary Leo “the Lion” Anderson.
A recollection of the last time she’d seen him blew through her brain like a mortar round, making her forget where she was in her packing. He’d been climbing into the back of a CH-47D heavy-lift Chinook helicopter, and when his dusty combat boots hit the ramp, he’d turned to look back at her, grabbing her hand and squeezing.
Holyshit, you better believe the moment was crystalline in her memory…
The wash from the rotors caused his sandy hair to riot around his head, and the shaggy beard covering his comic-book-hero-esque jaw had been matted with blood and dust. She’d wanted to tell him so much,toomuch because…well, because in the three months they’d been stationed together, she’d grown not only to like and respect him, but tocarefor him in a way she’d never cared for anyone.
Of course, she’d done her duty and kept her mouth closed despite knowing that his hawk-like gaze was searching her face from behind the mirrored lenses of his sunglasses. And his expression in that moment?SweetbabyJesus, even now, all these months later, it still made her sick to her stomach. It had been the look of a soldier who had crossed long miles on short rations. The look of a leader who had just seen one of his most loyal men loaded into a body bag.
He didn’t know it—and a part of her, acowardlypart, hoped he’d never find out—but that body bag was all her fault…
As it happened any time she thought about that catastrophic mission, a wave of unremitting guilt washed over her, the force of which was almost enough to drop her to her knees. Then Director Morales spoke up. “Why Anderson?” he asked, and she was able—just barely—to focus on the question and the problem at hand while pushing the paralyzing remorse to the back of her brain.
Compartmentalization. It was a handy skill. One just about every CIA field agent learned to master lest one day they find themselves eating a bullet from their own service weapon. And considering her background, she was better than most at keeping things locked away in safe, separate emotional cubicles.
