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I bite back a grin of relief. It’s the one line from Mission Impossible I distinctly remember and I take it as a sign that he’s going to call. I go to him, stepping between his legs, to hug him tight against me. He wraps his good arm around my waist and the warmth of him is so comforting.
“I don’t deserve you,” I whisper to him.
“Sometimes you really don’t,” he whispers back with a laugh.
“Thank you, thank you, thank you,” I say as I pepper his hair with kisses. “I know I’m asking something crazy and costly. So thank you.”
He pats my hip and I nearly dip my head down and kiss him right there. My fingers brush across his cheek and he looks up at me with heart-melting eyes as his hand moves up to linger on my waist.
Standing here like this, looking into the best brown eyes in the world, feeling the sheer force of years of friendship compounded by desire and genuine care, wanting more than just a passing moment of passion, wanting a lifetime of it is reaffirmation.
I am so in love with Everett Park, my bodyguard.
And he’s leaving me.
CHAPTER 15
I take the laptop with me to the kitchen to give Everett privacy to make his call and find Ainsley rummaging through the fridge.
“You don’t keep much food around do you?” she asks. I set the laptop on the counter and take a seat on a barstool.
“I mean, there’s food, but Everett is the chef. He’s the only one who knows how to make a meal out of this.”
I pick the cuticle around my thumb while tapping my foot against the footrest. The nervous energy that’s been latent is now pushing up into my chest and I desperately want to burn it off. I want to run and work through the biggest question of all - why is Everett leaving and how can I get him to stay?
“Do you think we have time to go for a run?” I ask Ainsley. She shoots me a look that tells me I’m crazy for asking. “What?”
“Laina, do you know how much press is after you right now? You want to go for a run?”
Right. Forgot about that. Time is moving in a weird way now, the tension making each minute seem hours long.
I wonder how Everett is doing. I don’t want to go check on him and make him feel like I’m nagging, but I’m also wondering how many times Mr. Delancey has called him and what the repercussions are going to be.
“You got something.” Ainsley announces, pointing to the screen.
My stomach drops as I read it out loud. “1700 tonight, downtown helipad 3, Laina must accompany the laptop to the drop. Pass phrase required.”
Adrenaline pumps through me. I remember the code my dad told me and I mentally chant It’s snowing in the Black Hills. This is it, where the plan takes me out into the open. This is the scary, real stuff, the stuff I’ve only seen in movies. I’m about to go take a laptop to a helicopter to stop a bad guy.
“We’ve got about an hour then,” says Ainsley. “Get some food, do whatever else you need to do. I’ll go with you. We’ll leave Everett here, he’s in no condition to handle something like this.”
“What happens if this dossier ends up in the wrong hands?” I ask. “Should we do some sort of decoy or try to copy the contents of it onto a back-up?”
Ainsley makes a face. “Eh, I have a feeling it would require computer skills above my pay grade. We have a guy back at Black Swan that could do it, but we don’t have enough time. A decoy computer case at least may not be a bad idea though. We’d have to work with whatever we have here.”
“I might have something in my room, or we can look in my dad’s office.”
Ainsley nods. “It’d be good to give you something more than your fists. I’ll see if Evvy has some weapons for us.”
“Speak of the devil,” comes a low rumble from the doorway. Everett leans against the door frame of the kitchen. “Ains, there’s a small cache in the closet of the guest room down the hall.”
“Got anything good?” she asks, raising an eyebrow. “Boss tends to give you the latest and greatest.”
“Go see for yourself,” says Everett. She gleefully skips down the hall.
I try not to look at Everett, try not to exude anything that feels like pressure.
“What’s the message?” he asks.
