Yardley sighed. Her favorite thing about the Max Konstantopoulos cover was that she did not have to be polite to anyone, and she certainly didn’t have to flirt with Jack Tremblay. “You’re right.” She eyed him intently. “We’re on the same side, and you were useful in Sweden. That nearly makes up for the Sisters’ failure to prevent our asset’s abduction off the street in Toronto. Nearly.” Yardley tilted her head. “So what do you have for me?”
Jack’s face fell. “You mean what intel do I have.”
Yardley suppressed at least two dozen sarcastic and cutting comments that left her mouth too cold to melt butter. Being Max was sorelaxing. It offered her the rare opportunity to set aside literally everything she’d learned from her mama about how girls should behave.
“Right,” he said. “Not quite yet. Just got here myself. I’ve not even really circulated.”
Yardley started walking away.
“But let me know if you need anything!” he called after her.
The politico who KC had been talking with kissed KC’s cheek and moved off, leaving her by the plinth alone.
Gorgeous.
“Were you good at fifth-grade basketball?” Yardley asked, leaning against the plinth, taking in KC’s muscled legs in stilettos and how the short, backless silver lamé draped precariously over a very small area of her body and made Yardley, or maybe Max, want very bad things.
“Who’s good at fifth-grade basketball?” KC moved closer, andthey both turned their bodies toward the guests as if they were an audience.
Which they were.
“I was vicious at fifth-grade basketball,” KC said. “I yelled at the refs for not calling everyone’s blatant double dribbling, and I had a long and elaborate free throw ritual involving multiple hand signs and spitting. But I was a forty-five-pound, three-and-a-half-foot-tall feral animal, so no. Not reallygood.”
“Are you having a nice evening?” Yardley moved closer, relishing her cover because Max Konstantopoulos would not hesitate to move too close and look at Daphne Sullivan like she wanted to devour her.
KC didn’t balk. She reached up and touched the diamond lariat resting on Yardley’s bare sternum and cocked a hip. The room got quieter in some places. Louder in others.
Yardley broke out in shivers.
“It’s not a terrible party, but I’m more the backyard barbecue type.” KC flashed her elf smile at Yardley, and the memory of the Virginia heat when this woman had touched her for the first time chased the shivers right off Yardley’s skin.
Tabasco was fully in her powers tonight.
“Is he usually this hard to pin down?” KC asked, meaning Miller.
Yardley knew Max wouldn’t let the fingertip of a woman like this fondle the chain of diamonds on her chest without erotic retaliation. She grasped KC’s hand and ran her own fingers down her forearm and back up again. Then, she lifted KC’s hand to her mouth and kissed it with a flick of tongue that made a woman twenty feet away gasp.
Yardley found her in the crowd and winked.
“What a sweet gig these gray-templed white dude agents get.” She kept hold of KC’s hand and moved indecently close. “Ritzy cover, fancy flat, intelligence flowing as freely as top-shelf cognac, occasional soft check-in at your pleasure. Never mind U.S. spies leaving calling cards around the city like a car warranty salesman, please do enjoy your game of snooker at your exclusive club that my taxes pay your membership for. His failure to check in seems more like hehasn’tturned to me. Otherwise, whoever has been tapped to clean up behind him would’ve come for us. I’m thinking Dr. Brown is keeping his cover with Miller. Probably to maintain the channel of intel.”
“I want Miller. I want to know where Dr. Brown is.”
“We’ll get him. We have so many excellent people working together on this.” Yardley moved her face alongside KC’s. “You’re not alone anymore,” she murmured.
“I’m not.” KC smiled against Yardley’s cheek, making her eyelids heavy at the familiar, fleeting sensation of KC’s lips on her skin.
The last thing Yardley remembered from their conversation yesterday before they’d fallen asleep in each other’s arms, fully dressed beneath a knitted blanket KC pulled up from the foot of the bed, was KC saying,Kittens. Did you ever think we should have a kitten?
The question was the first thing she’d thought of when she woke up to find KC gone, and what rang through Yardley’s head like church bells was that “we.”
She’d rolled over. Paper crinkled under her shoulder. When she pulled it out, it was a note in KC’s precise handwriting.
If I could take anything back, it would be when I told you that you never wanted to justbewith me and talk. I accused you of this, in a fight, in a crappy Swedish apartment that smelled like a dead plant. I would take that back because I neverletyou just be with me, and for that I’m so sorry, and that apology is directed at us both. Because if I had known how much more I could feel, for you, for me, for us, I would’ve found a way like I did with my game.
I have something else that if I told you, I’d have to kiss you.
But I’ll wait for another moment that’s about nothing but you and me.
