He’d followed her turn-for-turn for five full minutes. When she’d pulled into the lot of a small city park, he’d walked his bike to the opposite curb, cut his engine, and leaned his forearms across his handlebars to watch her leap from her Jeep and be welcomed into the group of people gathered around a picnic table.
He’d known they were her familynotbecause he had much of his own to speak of. But because he had Black Knights Inc.
The men and women who worked at the covert government defense firm that masqueraded behind the façade of a custom motorcycle shop were his siblings by choice instead of by blood. And the children of the OG group—Britt and the five guys who currently ran missions with him were BKI version 2.0—had become Britt’s noisy, oftentimessticky, honorarynieces and nephews.
Being welcomed in the fold at BKI meant he’d easily recognized as goodhearted sibling rivalry the noggin scrubbing Julia had received from one of the big-shouldered men who’d greeted her. He’d pinpointed the motherly love in the eyes of the older woman who’d hugged her before brushing back a strand of hair from her forehead. And he’d identified the squeals from the crowd of kids who’d swarmed her legs as the excitement of children whose favorite aunt had just arrived.
Forgetting about his hangover, Mr. Mustache, and those sweet handlebars, he had spent the next hour covertly watching the festivities in the park. Smiling as Julia pushed a wild-haired boy with a Bluey Band-Aid on his dirty little knee on the merry-go-round—adorable. Curling his hands into tight fists while she played a rather harrowing game of flag football with her brothers, a group of men twice her size—anxiety-inducing. And sucking in a ragged breath when she wrapped her luscious lips around a hotdog—talk about shwing!
Just that easily, Britt the Stalker had been born.
He might have forgiven himself the voyeurism had that afternoon been the sum of it. But like jumping out of an airplane or hanging off the side of a mountain by a pencil-thin safety line, he'd been hooked once he’d tasted that sweet adrenaline.
Now, he made it a point whenever he was CONUS—military speak for inside the continental U.S.—to get up early and grab the table in the far corner of Peet’s Coffee in South Riverside Plaza because, Monday through Friday, Julia O’Toole came in at precisely seven-thirty A.M. to order her standard cup of no-frills java.
How had he learned this was her pre-work pitstop, you ask?
To his utter shame, he’d followed her home from the park that first day and watched from down the block as she was greeted by two mangy-looking dogs and one loud-mouthed cat. The picture window in the front of her bungalow-style house had afforded him an unencumbered view of the large, gray parrot that had flown from its perch to alight on her shoulder. And when one of the animals had done something to make her smile, when he’d heard her soft laugh drift out through the screen door, he’d been transfixed.
Captivated.Enthralled.
He’d gonebackthe following morning because he’d told himself if he saw her in her boxy pantsuits, if he caught a glimpse of her badge, if he watched her walk into the FBI building, then the spell she’d cast over him the day before would be broken. He’d told himself if he could be reminded she was Agent O’Toole and not the sweet, Southside girl with a soft spot for rescue animals, he’d be able to go back to not dreaming about her when he was asleep and fantasizing about her when he was awake.
Turns out, he thought now.I lied.
Before she’d made it to the field office on Roosevelt Road, she’d stopped at Peet’s Coffee. And even in her pantsuit, even with her hair pulled tight into a bun and her sidearm poorly concealed in the shoulder harness beneath her jacket, she’d still been…
Julia.
Julia with the kind of face you’d see on the girl next door—the one who always waved as you passed by. Julia with the kind of fresh complexion that was soft and inviting, a natural sort of beauty that needed no enhancement. Julia with that direct, unfaltering gaze…behind which lay a mind as honed and precise as a steel trap.
Far from being freed from the spell she’d cast over him, he’d been hooked.
Hooked on catching a glimpse of her smile. Hooked on hearing the deep, sultry tone of her voice. Hooked on the warm, sweet scent of her perfume that seemed to linger even after she left the room.
Which brings us to this morning and my spot here at the corner table.
He liked the corner table because it was shadowed, hidden behind the condiments station, yet still afforded him a view of the counter, the cashier, and anyone who placed an order.
You know, if he leaned to the side and wasn’t thwarted by an idiot in a three-piece suit standing in front of the jug of cream and checking his phone instead of getting on with it and moving the hell out of the way!
Britt glowered up at the man.
When Mr. Three-Piece felt Brit’s knife-sharp gaze, he quickly filled his cup with cream before scampering away in a pair of wingtips that probably cost more than the custom chrome exhaust Britt had recently installed on his motorcycle.
“Agent O’Toole!” A deep voice broke through thehissof the barista’s steaming wand and the low hum of conversation emanating from the coffee shop’s many patrons.
Today’s cashier was Britt’s least favorite. Maybe because the asshole had hero hair, and any man who spent that much money on product was automatically suspicious in Britt’s book. Or maybe because the guy’s teeth were so perfectly straight and so blindingly white that Britt felt the need to slide on his sunglasses anytime the dickhead smiled. Or maybe—okay, most likely—because Julia flirted with the twatwaffle.
Case in point…
“Hey you!” Her grin was patently sexy. Britt loathed seeing it aimed at the bastard behind the counter. “Long time, no see.”
“I keep telling you twenty-four hours is an eternity between visits.” Chaz shook his head. Yes, the bastard’s name wasChaz.Oh, the clichés abound!“I get off at noon. Want to meet me for lunch?”
“You know I don’t mix business with pleasure.” Julia’s dark lashes fell to half-mast so her expression became decidedly…bedroom-y.
Britt gripped his mug so hard he was surprised it didn’t shatter in his hands. He wanted to jump up and shout:Can’t you see he’s vain and vapid and sporting a micro-penis?
