BEN
In the six days since the team party at Kat’s house, things had gotten weird between Savannah and me.
I blamed it on having most of my time consumed by all-hands team meetings and special cram sessions with Bloom to teach me all things HEAT, and physical training sessions led by Wheeler, who was determined to break my ass. Of course, I’d kept up with the rigorous requirements of Ranger duty with no problem, but there’s a special kind of hell you go through in basic that pushes you to the breaking point. It seemed Wheeler was hell-bent on pushing me to that knife’s edge all over again.
Which, of course, meant I couldn’t show the toll the grueling workouts were taking on me.
Mai sent me daily encouraging texts, but her arrival kept being delayed. She did tell me Lang was on the same mission she was, which explained his continued absence but annoyed the hell out of me when I found out he was supposed to have overseen my PT instead of Wheeler.
Savannah had her own demanding schedule, now that the IT team was helping her spy on her own company. She was assessing the damage Devlin had caused, devising workarounds, writing business recovery plans, and makingconfidential calls to suppliers, financiers, and a handful of trusted employees. Due to the long, slow process of getting warrants to allow Pasco to dig into Devlin’s personal records and accounts, they still didn’t know what, exactly, they were dealing with, and that, in turn, made it harder to get warrants. The IT team described their frustration as trying to do their jobs with both hands tied behind their backs, their feet nailed to the floor, and their heads encased in shatterproof helmets.
All this information came to me through Pasco because Savannah and I barely talked.
That’s not to say we avoided each other. We spend at least part of our nights together. Most of the time, I went to her door. A couple of times she came to mine. We fucked. Sometimes fast and furious, other times slow and savoring. We took out our frustrations and pent-up emotions on each other’s bodies.
But we didn’t discuss them.
Something had shifted the night of the party; some invisible line had been drawn, and I was pretty sure I was the asshole holding the pen. I’d almost asked her for more. Maybe she’d sensed it and had put up a wall to protect herself. Maybe she’d sensed my hesitation when I’d realized I was wishing for something I couldn’t have. I was no Gage Halifax. I wasn’t a long-term guy. Or maybe that realization had me building the walls between us. Hell, it was probably some combination of all the above.
The cause didn’t matter, though. It was the effect that was killing me. Sav and I had benefits, awesome fucking benefits, but we’d stopped being friends.
Monday night, the night before the 0700 start of my hours-long obstacle course/fitness test, I stood outside her door. I squeezed and relaxed my fists, willing my hands to behave themselves long enough for me to have a conversation with the woman. I drew on the steely resolve I’d learned from mytraining and field experience of the past seven years. Girded my loins like I was going into a fucking battle, which I was, although the fight was with myself.
I blew out a breath and knocked on her door.
She opened and pulled me inside, then pushed me back against it. She slipped her hand under my T-shirt and ran it up and over my chest. How the hell could I want her so badly when I’d left her bed less than twenty hours earlier?
I put all my hard-won discipline to work. Instead of running my hands over her body, I pulled hers off mine and held them chastely between us.
“Oh, sorry,” she said. “I wasn’t thinking. You need to save your strength for your fitness test tomorrow.” Her beautiful gold eyes sparkled as she smiled. “I think Ryan plans to put you through your paces.”
“Wheeler hopes to kill me. I won’t be sorry to disappoint him.”
She arched an eyebrow. “Cocky.”
I let that one slide.
She stepped back and invited me into the living room. On the coffee table, neat stacks of papers surrounded the laptop Pasco had set up for her. A nearly empty glass of whiskey sat on a coaster. A notebook with hand-scribbled notes lay open on the sofa.
“Can I get you a drink?” she asked. “Probably not alcoholic. Water?”
“No thanks.” I sat on the upholstered chair. That was a first. The little bit of time we’d spent in this room we’d been on the sofa. And we’d only been sitting if she’d been straddling me. I rubbed my hand over my face, making a piss-poor attempt to erase the vivid memories so I could focus on words. I pointed to the table. “This looks intense.”
She sat on the sofa. “It is. It’s like trying to crack a code. Following Devlin down rabbit holes, trying to figure out whatthe hell he’s been up to. It doesn’t add up. There’s something I’m missing.”
“Tell me. It might help to talk it through.”
She probably already had, with Pasco and Jensen and who knows who else, but I wanted to learn the details. I wanted to be let back into her confidence. I wanted to hear her voice.
She started piecing the story together for me. She walked me through the changes in the corporate accounts, the odd income and payouts. She slid onto the floor as she talked, and I could tell that’s how she’d been working before I’d come over. It reminded me of how she used to study when she and Mai holed up in our basement before finals. Mai would spread out her stuff all over one of my dad’s old desks and sit in a straight-back chair to work. Savannah would set herself up at the coffee table with cushions as her seat. I’d forgotten how much I enjoyed watching her work, seeing her quick thoughts translated into action as she worked through problems.
“Unrelated question,” I said. “Did you work like this when you were setting up your business plans and starting the company?”
She glanced at the coffee table. “I did. I’d moved back in with my mom to save money before moving to California. Why?”
I remembered her mom’s apartment, and I could picture Savannah working there. I smiled. “No reason. You were saying?”
She furrowed her brow at me but didn’t pursue it. She pulled out a list of calendar printouts. “I found something else in these. I knew about the trips he was taking, but honestly, I didn’t think much about it until I saw in black and white just how many trips he took to New York.”
