“It’s not that bad.”
He scowled. Full-on scowled! Apparently itwasthat bad for him. “I’ve also asked him to coordinate with one of our old friends.”
“Friends? Someone else you two served with?”
“You could say that.” He took a sip of his tea, placed the mug to the side, and began typing. “Her call sign was Morganna. Tristan’s trying to recruit her for his new company. She was a CIA targeter when we worked together.”
“Targeter?”
“She identified the people who mattered, how they connected, and how we could use the information. Since she left, she’s gone into open source intelligence, using public sources to do sort of the same stuff.”
“Useful skill for the company?”
“It is.” Garrett ‘Galahad’ Cruzdidtake protection seriously. He’d cleared my apartment like a hero in one of my novels, was researching my egg so he was aware of everything going on, and called in the CIA to help identify whoever was in my apartment. Well, former CIA.
And there was no way he was staying at Tristan’s tonight because the airport was closer. Green tea had caffeine—he wanted to stay awake. He was protecting everyone in this house right now.
He glanced up at me. “You’re staring.”
“Sorry.” I blinked. “I’m trying to figure something out.”
“What?”
“You.” I smiled, lifting my mug again to hide how silly my smile was. “You’re pretty nice when you’re not yelling at me for not calling you.”
He snorted an almost-laugh. “I wasn’t yelling.”
“You were definitely yelling.”
“That was concern.” He closed his laptop fully and folded his arms across his ridiculously broad chest. “There’s a difference.”
“Is there?” I pulled the mug closer, inhaling the gentle scent of the chamomile, reminding my lady bits to relax. “Yelling is about volume. Concern is tone. Two totally different things.”
“I don’t...” He sighed, flexing the fingers of his visible hand. “I’m not good at this.”
“What? Talking to people without scowling?”
“Something like that.” He came close to smiling. It was no more than a hairline fracture in his outer shell, but I saw it. “When I see a threat, I react. Sometimes too strongly.”
I raised an eyebrow. Maybe my lady bits were on the right track. Nothing wrong with a little flirtation, right? “And I’m a threat?”
“No. You’re...” He paused, the almost-smile quickly returning to a definite-frown. “You’re someone who needs protection because she doesn’t seem to understand the danger she’s in. The real threat I’m talking about is the men coming to your shop.”
Flirting failure. “I understand plenty. I just don’t let fear rule my life.”
“You’d be safer if you did.”
“That’s no way to live.” I slid out of my chair to retrieve the sugar bowl from the counter. More sugar wasn’t what I needed, but I had to move. Had to stop staring at the way his muscles shifted with every breath. “You can’t always expect the worst.”
“It keeps people alive.”
“But does it let them truly live?” I added a spoonful of sugar and stirred my tea, the spoon clinking softly against the ceramic. I returned to my seat, taking a defiant sip of my far-too-sweet tea. “My grandmother used to say fear is excitement without the breath.”
His frown deepened even more, which I would have thought impossible if I hadn’t seen it myself. “Your grandmother never met the people I have.”
“She lived through World War II.” I shrugged. “She spent time hiding in the tunnels under London. She knew about danger.”
AlthoughhadDidi been in the tunnels under London during the Blitz? When had she gone to France? What parts of her story had she hidden from us?
