Page 13 of Jonas

I needed to focus.

Daryl Barnes.

I searched my memory banks for the name and came up empty. I’d never heard that name before.

“I don’t know who that is.”

Jonas nodded. “Kira’s working on it. What can you tell me about Seth?”

I glanced at the couch. “Should we sit?”

“I’ve been in a car with Cash for the last two hours. An hour and a half of that was while he was driving.”

He delivered that information like it said it all. When he didn’t go on, I lifted a brow.

“He drives like we’re dodging IEDs on Route Irish.”

I’d heard of the stretch of road between Baghdad Airport and the Green Zone. The DC beltway could be a nightmare but it was nowhere near as bad as driving in New York or Iraq.

“I take it traffic was bad?”

“Traffic was a breeze. Route Irish is his default.”

I couldn’t stop my lips from twitching.

“Better you than me. I get car sick,” I unnecessarily informed him.

“Advice then, don’t ever get in a car with Cash.”

Jonas stepped away from the large windows, but instead of going to the living room area where two cream leather couches opposite each other with a chunky—could wood be described as chunky?—coffee table between them dominated the space, he moved toward the kitchen. For such a large man, Jonas’s strides were fluid, surprisingly light, yet his limbs were fully at his command.

Predatory grace.

He didn’t simply walk, he stalked.

Between his intense stare and the way he moved I could see how he’d be intimidating to most. His imposing height nor the wall of muscle I knew he hid under his clothes didn’t scare me, but that stare…the way his eyes studied, processed, and saw…now that scared the hell out of me. I’d learned to school my thoughts, I’d mastered disguising my emotions, but I had a feeling Jonas would be able to see through my mask.

I couldn’t stop the shiver accompanying that thought. Jonas didn’t miss it. Was it bad that I hoped he’d mistook the shiver as my reaction to the sparking awareness of his proximity? I’d rather him know I found him attractive than the alternative.

Emotions were messy.

They were a weakness.

They lied.

It had taken me years to wrest all my feelings into a box and tape it closed. Unfortunately, it had taken a few more years to forget the box existed. But I’d done it. Now all that was left were facts and truth. Those didn’t lie.

“Do I make you nervous?” Jonas’s rough voice cascaded over my skin.

I used my years’ worth of hard won training and shored my defenses.

“Why would you make me nervous?” My retort was accompanied with a smirk I hoped looked more like a sexy tip of my lips than a grimace.

His mouth formed the perfect smile—lips that hitched up surrounded by neatly trimmed dark-brown hair.

That was better—focusing on his good looks and masculine beauty instead of the ripple of fear that he could see through me.

“Just checking.”