Page 68 of Playing With Love

“Not if you’re smart.”

“Thankfully, before Lauren switched to that mud water, mushroom stuff, she had a taste for expensive coffee. Since Logan doesn’t care what kind of coffee he drinks and I do, she gifted me her stash. I only pull out the Hare That Chases the Dog for mornings after I’ve worked all night. But I’m thinking it’ll work as your morning pick-me-up until we can find you some gas station with half and half evaporated carafe concentrate.”

God, I loved when Tucker teased me.

“You should get on the coffee before my brain fully awakens and registers it’s been without caffeine for eight hours,” I grouched, not meaning a word I said. Wishing we could stay in his bed forever.

Unfortunately, he gave into my demand and rolled me off of him. However, he didn’t roll off and exit the bed, he pinned me to the mattress with his lower half, balanced on his elbows, and grabbed my face.

“Loved waking up next to you, Lizzy.”

My heart swelled.

When he dropped his mouth to mine and gave me the sweetest, softest brush of his lips across mine, my heart started jackhammering.

Those lips traveled over my cheek and paused by my ear to whisper, “One day soon, when we’ve fully come into us, I’ll show you just how much.”

With that, he rolled off and exited, leaving me alone in his bed. I stopped studying his ceiling and turned my head just in time to see his boxer-briefs-covered ass disappear out the door.

“Damn. You should’ve looked sooner,” I mumbled out loud.

I heard Tucker’s amused chuckle from the hall.

“Up, baby, and don’t take a year!” he yelled from the hall.

“I don’t take a year to get ready!”

“You will if your ass isn’t out of that bed by the time I get back.”

I wanted to stay in bed until he got back just to see if he meant what I thought he did.

“Being an adult sucks!” I shouted and got out of Tucker’s big, comfortable bed that stopped being warm and inviting since he was no longer next to me.

Then I did what a responsible adult who had a job did—showered and got ready to leave to go undercover with Tucker Mitchell.

Six hours later, I was no longer Liza Monroe.

I was Liza Michaels, Tucker Michaels’ wife.

It was then the real delusion began and the rest of my walls crumbled, leaving me raw and vulnerable and my fake husband with the upper hand.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

I believed Liza the other night when she said she was exhausted. She was tired of always having to be strong. However, last night watching her deal with Frank and to some extent Greg, I now had a better understanding and her exhaustion had nothing to do with a six-hour road trip where she played DJ between calls from Shannon and Jason, and snoozing. No, it had to do with the amount of shit she put up with as soon as we got to the hotel in Knoxville.

We’d checked in, gotten Allyson sorted in her room, dropped off our bags, and gone down to the bar in the lobby to wait for her colleagues to join us for a brief. Frank had already proven to be a dick, I reckoned he sucked at his job from the little time I’d spent in his presence. But it went beyond him being a lazy asshole. The man was completely incompetent and had to look to Greg to field Liza’s questions. Greg’s irritation with Frank was undeniable. He was over babysitting and wanted to dump Frank back on Liza.

It was Greg who had surprised me. He was friendly. He was smart as hell. He’d been with the ATF a hell of a lot longer than Liza and he was a training agent. So at first when he asked Liza to explain her every thought, I figured that was just his way to encourage deep critical reasoning and how to articulate ideas. But the more he did it, the more it began to feel like an interrogation and less like a seasoned agent mentoring a respected peer. The longer I sat there, the more pissed I got. Liza sensed this and sent me a text telling me not to speak.

That pissed me off more.

It wasn’t long after that text that Allyson had come down to join us for dinner. Frank’s demeanor didn’t change. Greg’s did—totally. He was patient and kind to Allyson. He asked her questions about growing up, how she knew Liza, if she’d ever met me, how much time did Liza spend at her house while they were in high school. He kept the prep helpful and easy. By the end of dinner, Allyson was relaxed and talking with Liza like they were the lifelong friends they were supposed to be.

After dinner wrapped up, it was just me and Liza at the bar for a drink before we headed up to our room. A room with a bed that I was trying to stay out of for as long as humanly possible, or at least until I knew I had a grip on my control and I wasn’t going to make a move Liza wasn’t ready for.

I asked her about Greg.

“That’s just him,” she told me. “I don’t think he realizes the way it comes across. He’s actually a good guy and a good training agent.”