After that I’d only caught glimpses of her as she clung to her father’s hand while her mother, already well on her way to laying the groundwork running for her first senatorial election, schmoozed with the crowd.
“Wow, I don’t remember that at all.”
Pressing a hand to my chest, I pretended to be wounded. “Ouch, Ms. Holloway, way to bruise a guy’s ego.”
Lennon’s laugh was bright as she shook her head at my joke. “You’re funnier than you look, Agent Adams.”
“Zeke,” I told her, knowing I was crossing a boundary here but suddenly not caring all that much. “You can call me Zeke when we’re alone.”
Gray eyes widened as her lips silently formed my name before her cheeks pinkened and she took another sip of her champagne.
A flush of a deep cherry scent wafted up between us again, almost too tart to be just regular cherries.
No, Lennon’s scent was like a dizzying cherry wine, so potent that it had me taking a step back away from her and blinking the haze away from my vision.
Reaching into my coat pocket I pulled out the little tin that I kept my oral suppressants in and hurriedly popped on into my mouth before Lennon could see.
They must have been wearing off after such a long day and I made a mental note to set a timer on my phone to remind me to double up on the dose.
The last thing any of us needed was to be thrown off by her sweet scent and do something we’d regret.
“What’s your favorite ice cream?” Lennon asked, suddenly turning to look at me and seemingly oblivious to my struggle with her scent.
I blinked at her, surprised. “Pardon?”
“Your favorite ice cream flavor,” she repeated. “I’m sure you know all about the things that I like and yet I don’t know anything about you or your guys. How unfair is that?”
“Did you know much about your security detail before?” I pointed out, thinking about stone-faced Greg Brady who I couldn’t imagine eating anything sweet.
As if reading my thoughts, Lennon’s nose crinkled with irritation. “Agent Brady loved rum raisin ice cream. He had children and a wife who he adored. He preferred cats to dogs because they didn’t need to go outside in the rain to go to the bathroom and he always felt bad for dogs in the rain. He was also an avid crocheter and I have several scarves and hats he made during the years he was the head of my security detail. So before you assume that I’m some spoiled rich girl that treats her security like inanimate objects, remember that they were like a family to me and a family that died protecting me.”
Lennon sucked in a long breath, her cheeks flushing as her eyes darted away from mine like she thought that she had said too much.
I sat for a moment, trying to digest her words and finding myself surprised by how much she’d defended her previous security detail.
Most of the people we protected abroad didn’t pay much attention to us. We served a purpose and we did it so well that they never had to think of us much at all, and once we finished our jobs, we moved onto the next one. That was it.
It was one of the reasons we’d stayed with the State department for so long rather than moving over into the Secret Service sooner.
There were no attachments to be had and that suited our team just fine.
But now I realized how lonely that would sound if I said it out loud to her.
The men and women we protected abroad probably couldn’t even remember our names and here was someone who knew her security detail and still mourned their loss months later.
“Chocolate cherry,” I finally said, my shoulders sinking in surrender.
“Pardon?”
Questioning gray eyes shifted up to my face.
“My favorite ice cream flavor. It’s chocolate cherry.”
Kind of like your scent,my mind provided silently and I shoved the thought away. I wasn’t supposed to be able to smell her in the first place.
It had never happened to me when I used oral suppressants before and the re-upping of the medication didn’t seem to be going into effect fast enough for me to not smell the deep, intense cherry scent wafting off of her.
I opened my mouth to say something, anything else, but before I got the chance Maverick’s voice crackled in my ear.
