Rachel shook her head. “A room with Diego is fine. I’d rather not be alone anyway. Thank you for this. I owe you.”
Alyssa wondered what Rachel meant about not wanting to be alone. She assumed it had something to do with the tension she’d picked up on earlier at their motel, but Zane was going out of his way not to look at her, so she couldn’t tell.
She gave Rachel a smile. “Don’t worry about it.”
“We’ll swing by Stefan’s house to see if anything is going on there, then check out of the motel and move everything over to the Fairfield,” Diego said, opening the door. “We’ll grab your stuff, too, Zane.”
“Thanks,” Zane said as he took their burgers and fries out of the takeout bags and set them on the table.
Alyssa shrugged off the light jacket she was wearing and hung it on the back of one of the chairs, glancing out the window, then at the open laptop on the table. None of the cars she and Zane had marked with the tracking devices had moved all day.
“What was Rachel saying about not liking to be alone?” She took their drinks out of the cardboard carrier and set them down on the table beside the food. “I know she and Diego are pretending to be a couple, but something tells me that’s not what she meant.”
Zane didn’t bother to take off the leather jacket he’d been wearing since she’d met him, and a part of her hoped he wouldn’t. He looked so damn sexy in it, even if it wasn’t needed in the temperature-controlled office space. In the dim light of the room, Alyssa could see the pensive expression on his face as he sat down and started to unwrap his cheeseburger. He looked tired—and worried.
“Rachel went through some stuff about a year ago, before she came to Dallas and joined our department,” he said. “It was pretty rough, and she still has bad dreams about it. I think it helps knowing there’s someone in the room with her. Someone she can trust.”
Alyssa slipped into the chair across from him and started opening ketchup packs. That was the part she hated about eating takeout. How the hell was anyone supposed to eat fries with these tiny dribbles of ketchup? And whenever she asked for more, it was like they were handing out gold. It took twenty of the damn packs to even get a respectable-size puddle.
“It’s not really any of my business, but if she’s having nightmares, wouldn’t it have been better for her to stay back in Dallas, so she could get some help?”
“If any of us knew she was having issues, then yes, but she’s here now and she wants to see this through,” he said. “And truthfully, I understand why she needs to. When our compound was attacked, Rachel was as much a target as the rest of us. She wants to get the man who tried to kill her teammates just as much as I do.”
Alyssa never had a boss who’d tried to kill her, but she supposed she could see how that might drive someone to ignore everything else going on in their life until they caught the person. She’d pushed herself in the past to do her job. Rachel was obviously no different.
Other than the possibility of not being fully human.
They ate in silence for a while, keeping an eye on the parking garage at the same time. She was nibbling on a fry when she noticed Zane regarding her thoughtfully.
“What?” she asked, hoping she hadn’t dribbled ketchup on herself.
“Nothing.” He smiled. “It’s just…I wanted to thank you for getting us other rooms. I could care less about where I sleep and I’m sure Diego is the same, but Rachel has had a bad few days. A nicer room will help a lot more than you might think. So, again…thank you.”
She started to say it wasn’t a big deal, but then she caught the genuine gratitude on Zane’s face and realized that it was a big deal to him because Rachel was important to him. For all of a second, she felt a little twinge of something that might have been jealousy. But it disappeared just as quickly. While Rachel was obviously important to him, so was Diego and every other member of his SWAT team back in Dallas.
“Rachel and the other people on your team are like family, huh?” she asked, picking up her cheeseburger and biting into it. It was juicy and delicious. Not as good as the fries, because seriously, nothing was as good as french fries. Still, she could see becoming addicted to the things.
Zane didn’t answer right away, his expression introspective. Like he was thinking hard about what she’d asked. Of course, it was also possible he hadn’t replied because he didn’t feel like talking to her about it. But then, his sensuous mouth curved.
“Yeah, they are my family.”
She wasn’t sure how it was possible, but he was even more attractive when that charming smile of his was mirrored in his dark eyes. When that happened, they seemed to almost sparkle. And when his dimples deepened, she almost jumped up and hugged him just for an excuse to bury his face in her breasts.
“You said you grew up near London, right?” she asked, mostly to get the image of his gorgeous face nestled between her boobs out of her head. “Are you still close with your family? Your blood family, I mean.”
His smile faded, and Alyssa immediately regretted bringing up the subject.
“The FBI background check didn’t cover that?” he asked, taking a big bite of his cheeseburger. Crap, he could put away food. Which probably explained why’d he’d bought enough to feed four people. “I’m not sure whether I should be thrilled or disappointed.”
She laughed. “Truthfully, the file I saw didn’t go that far back. I know you served in the British military, then came to the U.S. in late 2007. I know nothing about your family at all. But if you don’t want to talk about it, that’s okay. I didn’t mean to pry.”
Zane shrugged as he took a sip of his soda. “Not really much to talk about. I’m not close with my family. I haven’t been in a long time.”
There was something about the way he said the words that made her think he was trying to act like it didn’t matter to him when it really did. “Did you and your family have a falling out? Is that why you left home and came to the States?”
He scarfed down the rest of the first burger and reached for the second. “We didn’t exactly have a falling out, but there were a lot of arguments.”
“What did you argue about?”
