Page 4 of Brooks

“What has you laughing?” Max asked.

“Just thinking about how pissed she’s gonna be tomorrow morning when she finds out I’ve already been diving and cleared the area.”

“You gonna tell her?” Kyle joined in.

“Hell, yeah.”

“Please do not fuck this op up. In and out, that’s it,” Declan groaned.

“That’s what he’s hoping for, a quick in and out.” Thad clapped Declan on the shoulder. “Don’t worry, we’ll still be on schedule, he only takes five minutes.”

Declan cracked the smallest of smiles and shook his head. As the newcomer on our team, he’d learn we jack-assed around but when it was go-time, we were on our game and as deadly as we needed to be.

Chapter 2

I’d given Brooks Miller too much headspace over the last twelve-plus hours. I didn’t give a flying rat’s ass what he and his team needed to do in Bahrain. As long as they didn’t interfere with my mission objective, they could frolic in the Gulf all they wanted.

If that was the case, why the hell was I standing on the dock at slip fifteen at four-thirty in the morning instead of in bed sleeping?

Aggravation. That was why. And maybe a little curiosity. I knew the area was clean. I’d cleared it myself, not that I’d told Brooks and his team that. I’d told them more than I should’ve already. I knew they didn’t believe my UN cover story. I didn’t need them to; as long as no one on the naval base next to the fake annex I’d set up started asking questions about my presence.

“Well, well, well.” Brooks’ deep rumble made me shiver, even though it was already nearing ninety degrees. “I didn’t have you pegged for an early riser. Yet here you are, thirty minutes earlier than necessary. And you called me an overachiever.”

“I don’t like to be late, it’s rude.” His long, confident strides stopped a few feet away and he openly checked me out from the shoes I was wearing all the way up to my ponytail pulled tight on top of my head. “You know what else is rude? Staring.”

“You’ll find there are a lot of things I do that polite company would consider rude. You’ll also figure out I don’t give a shit what people think. If you take offense to me verifying you’re wearing proper footwear and clothing for a boat ride, that’s not my problem, Doll.”

Foot, meet mouth. Shit.

“Ready to go?” I asked, instead of apologizing for my incorrect snap judgement.

“I was born ready.”

Yeah, I bet he was. Guys like him were all the same. They had lingo and quick answers for everything. Brooks and his silver-tongue was no different than my ex-husband. All talk. Rules to follow. Commands to bark. Work life and private life separate, never the two shall collide until they do.

“Where’d you go, Doll?”

How’d he get so close? And why the hell was he calling me ‘doll’? I had a damn name, he could use it.

“Nowhere. The boat’s right here.”

Needing the distance more than I cared to admit, I jumped aboard the Bayliner.

“This yours?” Brooks asked.

I wanted to laugh. I lived out of a suitcase. I didn’t own a home anymore, let alone a boat.

“I’m borrowing it,” I answered as he came aboard the twenty-foot vessel, his arms flexing as he maneuvered his heavy dive bag.

“Legally?”

That made me smile. “This time.”

“Damn, a woman after my own heart.”

I didn’t want to touch that statement with a ten-foot pole. So instead I started the engine. Without me having to ask, he untied the lines from the dock and neatly coiled the ropes like the good sailor he once was.

“You know how to operate this thing?”