AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“So I brought the guy a pizza,” I concluded. “I walked up to his door and knocked.”
Hux shoved himself up from the table much faster than a tired person should have been able to move. He lunged toward me, grabbing my upper arms roughly and pinning me with an intense glare. “You did what? Have you lost your fucking mind, Kevin Rogers?”
My heart hammered in my chest, and my eyes went wide. “I… I…”
Champ laid a hand on Hux’s chest. “Let go,” he said, his low voice deep and commanding. “That’s inappropriate and unprofessional. Huxley, you’re scaring him.”
Champ’s last words seemed to penetrate Hux’s frantic anger because Hux let go of me instantly and lifted his hands in the air in a “don’t shoot” posture. His face fell. “I… I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you.”
I shook my head, unable to speak for a moment. How could I explain that fear was not remotely what I’d felt when Hux had grabbed me and his eyes had locked on mine? That my heart was racing for an entirely different reason?
“You didn’t,” I managed to choke out. “I’m not scared of you.”
Hux clenched his hands into fists and nodded once. “I still shouldn’t have touched you like that.”
You shouldn’t have let me go, I wanted to say, but I managed to close my mouth before the words could escape.
This is not the time or the place, Kevin. Not the guy either, I reminded myself.
“Okay,” I said instead.
Champ nudged Hux out of the way, but I could still feel Hux’s eyes roving all over me as if to assess whether or not I’d come away from the hotel unscathed. Maybe I should have been insulted—I mean, honestly. I was capable of simple tasks!—but I couldn’t work myself up to it. It felt too nice to imagine that he cared about me.
“You shouldn’t have done that,” Champ said calmly. “You’re not a trained operative. We don’t know who we’re dealing with, but we know Vince is dangerous. You could have been recognized. You could have been hurt—”
I held up my hand to stop him. “I wore a baseball hat, a Pizza Plaza sweatshirt with the hood pulled up, and the thick plastic glasses I had in high school, which, trust me when I tell you,” I added wryly, “render me invisible to all men. He was busy doing something on his Horn and barely glanced in my direction before he slammed the door. I apologized and said I had the wrong room, then I left. End of story. But I was wearing a hidden camera, so I was able to run his face through facial recognition when I got home and discover his identity.”
I tapped on the tablet to send the data file to Hux’s work email. “That’s everything I got. I’m sure you can take it from there.”
Hux didn’t look mollified by this, but he returned to his computer and began typing. My eyes stayed on him, hungrier than ever. As annoying as he was, he was also, somehow, a comfort. Of all the fit and capable people in the room, I felt most understood by him. I still felt the strong grip of his hands around my arms, even though he was no longer holding me. His eyes had been filled with a mixture of surprise and fear.
He’d worried about me. About my safety.
Champ pointed me to an empty chair at the table. “Let me get you some coffee. You look dead on your feet.”
I shook my head. “I’m used to it. It’s okay.”
“Nothing about this is okay,” Hux muttered without taking his eyes off his monitor. “Should have been me. Should have been someone on the team.”
Once again, I wanted to meet his anger with anger and retort that I was perfectly capable of knocking on a door without dying, but I noticed a muscle ticking in Hux’s jaw, and I remembered Champ’s explanation from earlier. He feels guilty when he thinks he’s let us down.
He really had been worried for me.
“You were working it from another angle,” I said softly. “It’s not like you’ve slept either.”
Hux looked up at me. “How do you know?”
Heat filled my face and made me look away. “Just guessing.”
I wasn’t going to admit that I remembered what he’d been wearing the day before because that would be weird… wouldn’t it?
And I was definitely not going to say that I always had a sixth sense about where he was or what he was doing, or tell him that his presence had tugged at me like gravity from the first moment we met, or admit that sometimes it took all my self-control not to track his devices or spy on him digitally just to make sure that he was okay. He’d think I was a stalker and have an even worse opinion of me than he already did.
