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Carter turned to the side, checking on me again. Was he having similar thoughts? Regrets? Or maybe he’d dipped inside my head and plucked out my thoughts, knowing I’d been thinking about his wife.
Ex-wife. Had he really accidentally called her that back at the safe house? He’d clearly been surprised by his slip of the tongue, too. I’d witnessed his shocked expression when the words left his mouth.
Griffin was still talking to him, and although Carter’s arms were locked across his chest, his attention was locked on to me. Was he hearing anything his teammate was saying?
Griffin slapped a hand over Carter’s shoulder, physically redirecting him his way. The tense thread between us broke, finally forcing my feet to move.
I made it halfway through the cabin before Mya said, “Please tell me Carter slept for a bit. That man is broody enough, but without sleep, he might Hulk out.”
“He slept a little.” Just before he gave me the best orgasm of my life.
Mya closed her laptop as I sat next to her on the couch. With everyone in the cabin working, I felt utterly useless. This wasn’t a problem I knew how to outsmart yet.
“I can fill you in, if you’d like?” She drummed her nails on top of her laptop. “Or you can wait for the Big Guy to do it,” she tacked on since I was taking too long to answer.
“Big Guy” was the understatement of the year when it came to what he was packing below the belt. Adjusting my sleeves so they covered both my tattoo and my goose bumps, my attention cut back to Carter just as he was dragging his thumb along the underside of his lip. He’d done it in such a provocative way I found myself squirming on the couch.
I could stand in front of a crowd of hundreds and lecture on an attempt to merge quantum mechanics with Einstein’s general theory of relativity without missing a beat. But try and have a conversation with Carter’s smoldering eyes and enough brood to charge a nuclear reactor pointed my way? Not likely.
“I’m guessing you didn’t hear me,” Mya said with a little chuckle, waving her hand in front of my face twice.
I squeezed my eyes closed, chills peppering every inch of my skin like a suit of armor, a gift of invisible protection from Carter. Being in his presence did make me feel like I was cloaked in safety, though. The man exuded confidence and strength as much as he did sex appeal.
“You have news?” Those three words took far too much effort to say. “Please, go ahead and tell me.”
“You sure you don’t need another moment to, um, untangle those thoughts of yours?” Mya’s tone was both teasing and surprisingly comforting at the same time. It did the trick and had me opening my eyes.
Hoping to ground myself in this conversation as opposed to mentally being back in Carter’s arms in the bedroom, I interlocked my hands and rested them on my lap. “I’m ready now, I promise.”
Mya peeked over her shoulder toward the distraction himself before offering me a kind smile. “You and Griffin are the only two people who knew Carter before . . .”
Before he became a pseudo criminal? Before Rebecca died? Before what? I kept those questions bopping around in my head instead of verbalizing them. I didn’t need Carter to overhear us talking about him.
“I’m going to get back to the mission in a moment, but I’m curious now to know something.” Her smile stretched. “Sorry, the former journalist in me.” After a hesitant pause, she asked, “Was he different back then when you knew him? I never asked Griffin this, but I guess I assumed Carter was always Mr. Rough and Tough.” Mya’s tone was soft and lured me into the trap of distraction yet again. “Seeing the way he is with you has me rethinking that.”
I flipped through the pages of my mind, recalling the few times I’d spent with Carter over the years. “He was sweet and kind,” I whispered, my chest heating up as if my grandmother had given me a shot of her homemade grappa. “Funny. Charming, but in a way appropriate for a married man.”
“Wow.” Mya sighed. “Maybe you can bring that man back to us?” She lifted her palm from her laptop. “I mean, don’t get me wrong, there’s a time and a place for the scary version of him,” she added with a chuckle, “but I’d like to see him happy. We all would.”
“Happy’s such an interesting word, don’t you think?” When did Oliver join us? He raised his good arm up, bracing his hand against the ceiling. Leaning in a bit, eyes on Mya, the huskiness to his voice couldn’t be missed as he said, “It’s subjective like art. What makes one person happy is another one’s misery.”
“Oh is it now?” Mya challenged while drawing her arms over her chest as if preparing to play defense. “We were having girl talk,” she added before he could adjust course and explain his random interjection into our conversation.
“Shouldn’t you be discussing the mission instead?” Cocking his head to the side, he stared at her with such a sharp intensity, I felt the ripple of energy emitting between them.
“And shouldn’t you be taking care of your bad shoulder and crying over your messed-up tattoo?”
Mya’s words provoked a smile from him as they continued some type of staring contest.
Guess there’s something between you two. Feeling uncomfortably like a third wheel, I accidentally blurted, “So, you two are exes or something?”
Oliver unlocked eyes from Mya’s and pushed away from the ceiling, failing to hide a wince as he set a hand over the sling on his other arm. “No, Mason’s her ex, and he’s on the second jet.”
“Where I wish you were instead,” Mya sputtered, not so convincingly. “Also, we didn’t date.”
“Ah, no, you’re right. You just—” He cut himself off from what I assumed would be a crude word, and I had a feeling Mya would’ve done it for him if he hadn’t.
Great. Turbulence from within the plane. “News? You, uh, said there’s news, right?” If there was ever a time to regroup, I supposed now was it.
