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After he left her office, he rode the elevator back down to the cafeteria. As he passed a wall of windows, he stopped dead in his tracks.
Indika was sitting at a table outside.
With a man.
She was laughing at something he said, her glossy black hair swishing along her spine when she leaned toward him.
Apollo’s gut tightened. Goddammit, he always knew it was possible that Indika would forget about him. He just didn’t think he’d ever witness it with his own two eyes. Even when she told him to stay out of her life, he saw through her and knew it was all a cover for the pain he’d caused her.
Maybe he was kidding himself, thinking that he saw a gleam of love in her deep, expressive brown eyes, but it was all he had left. When he woke with nightmares and a scream on his lips, he recalled that look.
That glimmer made him get out of bed in the morning when he had little to live for and nothing to do with himself besides obsess over when he could return to Blackout.
As he looked on, the man seated opposites Indika reached across the table and brushed his fingers over the back of her hand.
She smiled up into his eyes.
And Apollo…well, his chest felt hot and tight, prickly with annoyance and slithering with a black snake of jealousy.
What now? Did he go on with his plan to share what he learned about the terrorists and hope Indika could place the intel in the right hands? Or should he turn around and leave before she spotted him?
Fuck, what did he have left? No team. No family or friends to fall back on.
No woman.
He stood rooted to the floor, watching her smile and laugh…with another man.
* * * * *
Indika tossed back her head, chuckling at Robert’s comment about working conditions in the ICE office. Only fellow coworkers at the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement couldfullyunderstand these inside jokes, and Robert was good company.
She enjoyed his sense of humor. It felt good to let go and be lighthearted again. After three years of loss and heartbreak, shedeservedit. These lunches with Robert also broke up her lonely days. He’d asked her out to drinks and dinner a few times, which helped alleviate the even heavier loneliness weighing on her each night.
When he smiled at her, his gray eyes crinkled at the corners. She liked that he was a little older than her and probably had a better handle on life.
It didn’t hurt that the man could fill out a suit. Plenty of the women in the officeoohedandahhedover his broad chest and how his muscular buns looked, especially in the navy-blue trousers he wore today.
Indika had to agree with them. He was nice to look at. He was alsonice. For once, she wasn’t dating a bad boy.
Look what that got me.
The image of AJ Apollo popped into her head—unwanted, unbidden and unbelievable.
The SEAL was tall and broad, stacked with muscle in all the ways that made a woman feel safe and protected.
She shook off the image and focused on Robert again. Apollo wasn’t theonlyman who looked good packing heat. Robert’s weapon was strapped to his hip and she’d seen him wield it a time or two on the job.
They didn’t work together very often, and that was a good thing. She didn’t need a repeat of what went on between her and Apollo.
From her viewpoint, the only drawback to seeing Robert afterhours was the possibility of tension, rumors and a breakup.
Robert cocked a brow expectantly at her, as if waiting for a response to something she missed when she was too occupied with thoughts of Apollo.
Damn that man. Would he never get out of her system? She was over him. The years and years she’d spent mourning Apollo were in the past.
She wished she didn’t mentally compare him toevery manshe crossed paths with.
It also didn’t help her state of mind that Apollo had actually risen from the dead and popped back into her life.
