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“Gabby? Well, she’s officially a McLendon now, and I have three outrageously overprotective son-in-laws who spoil her rotten, which is nothing less than she deserves.” Grant shook his head. He would never judge, especially after all they’d been through, but he couldn’t imagine himself sharing a wife with two other men. He simply wasn’t built that way. A sudden and unfamiliar rush of possessiveness had him peering out the window to check on Thalia. “And I’m about eight months away from being an honorary, overall wearin’grandpa.”
“Stop!” Grant held out his hand as if he could force the image away. “Stop, please. I’m going to have to eat a bullet to get rid of the ridiculous picture you’re about to paint.” Grant grabbed up a pencil, nervously tapping it on the desk. Now that he had Daniel on the phone he wasn’t sure how to go about asking him for what he needed, or if he should. He’d been through enough and it seemed at least some of the lifelessness that plagued him since his daughter’s disappearance had lifted from hisspirit.
“I know better than to ask questions, Grant.” A little relief washed over him when he heard the seriousness return to his friend’s voice. “You wouldn’t be calling if it wasn’t important. I told you then I owed you one. The offer stillstands.”
He didn’t know any other way than to come out straight with it. “I need access to the victim profile documents in Hector Morganti’s evidence file. SCI clearance is apparently not enough and I can’t getneed-to-knowaccess for what I’m notofficiallyworkingon.”
Grant could hear the air being sucked out of Daniel’s lungs. He stayed quiet and gave his friend a moment to absorb the mental blow. “You foundsomething?”
Grant shook his head and tossed the pencil across the room. “No, not on Natalie.” Dammit, the last thing he wanted to do was give him some sense of false hope. This had nothing to do with Daniel except his need for access to the information. “I can’t talk about it. It’s probably nothing, but you know how annoying hunches canbe.”
Daniel blew out a breath and Grant could almost picture him running his meaty hand over his dark gray flat top. “Yeah, I do. I have copies of everything that’s stored in evidence. I’ll send you whatever youneed.”
Fourteen
Thalia closedthe door behind her and turned to see Grant jump from his seat. He slammed his hand down on top of a laptop she’d never seen before, awkwardly attempting to hide it from her view.What is it withhim?
He’d been acting strange since the moment he’d opened his eyes and rocked the hell out of her world. Then he wouldn’t let her return the favor? Yeah, she could safely throw that experience into the awkward category. No one had ever made her feel so much at one single moment in time. There were no words to describe the intensity that flowed from his body into hers. He’d literally worshiped her with his mouth. It was toomuch.
The man was taking nice to a whole new level and it was freaking her out.What was all of that talk about healing his soul?She shook her head and carried the basket of fruit to the kitchen sink, leaving him to finish hiscall.
She’d spent the last hour and a half stretching out her sore muscles, muscles she’d forgotten she had, and trying to peel her pride from the bottom of her boot. She’dcriedin front of him. Twice! She never cried. Stab her, shoot at her, kill her parents? No tears. Throw a hot man with a smart, talented mouth and a broad shoulder to cry on in front of her and suddenly she was an emotional trainwreck.
She’d also had another nightmare. She hoped like hell he hadn’t noticed. They were getting worse, and more intense. Usually she couldn’t remember them, but lately there had been small, terrifying details that seemed to etch their way through the usual fog that clouded her memory ofthem.
Memories from the nightmares she’d had the night before were filled with images of scorpions and maggots, the feeling of being suffocated as they filled her mouth and nose and the muffled sounds of her screams as they crawled into her ears. Her skin crawled and her fingers balled into fists as she pushed the images away.Please let him not have heard my screams.If he had heard her at least he hadn’t made her talk about them. Maybe that was why he was acting sostrange.
She liked Grant a lot. Okay,likewas a bit weak. More like one look into those lethal eyes and her ovaries imploded from overexertion.“Dammit!” Thalia hissed through her clenched teeth as she chased the dozen or so loquats that had rolled from her basket onto thefloor.
She couldn’t afford to get caught up in whatever this was between them. No distractions. She’d promised Issa she would finish this. She didn’t care what he’d been involved in. She owed him everything, and he deserved better than dying the way hedid.
Grant had a good point about waiting a few days before calling Jauhar. She was in no shape to deal with him anyway. That plan, however, didn’t solve how she was supposed to gain his confidence to secure another face to face meeting with him. For the life of her she couldn’t come up with anything else that might work. She was losing her focus and that had tostop.
She couldn’t depend on Grant to come up with a way to get to Jauhar. She couldn’t count on anyone but herself. “Uhhh!” she groaned, picking up each fruit, washing and then setting them on the counter with a little more force than was necessary. If she had to say the wordsyou’re rightto that man one more time she would gag. Dammit, but he was right. She couldn’t give up control of this. Not even tohim.
“There’s probably a food processor in one of these cabinets you know. It’s a lot easier than beating them against the counter.” Thalia jumped, splashing water down her shirt and knocking half of the cleaned fruit to thefloor.
“Sonofabitch!” She should have known Mr. Lightning Reflexes would catch the damn fruit she’d flung at his head. “Don’t sneak up on me likethat.”
“I wasn’t sneaking.”Shit!She wanted to kiss and then slap the sarcastic, mocking smirk off his perfectly curved lips. In thatorder.
Instead she left the sink and began picking up the once clean fruit. “No? Is that why you slammed the computer closed when I walked in? Because you weren’t sneaking?” With the hem of her shirt pulled up to carry the fruit in, she swiveled her hips. “What were you looking at? Another pornstash?”
Shit, shit, shit.She didn’t know why she was pushing his buttons. What he did was none of her business anyway. Judging by the voracious look in his eyes, it was a truly reckless idea to push him if she planned to gain back any of that control sheneeded.
“I was wondering when you were going to bring that up.” She took a step back as he took one towards her. “Let me guess. Winston?” She was caught like a deer on a dark winding road by the white hot heat swirling in his eyes. She couldn’t look away or even blink. A few more steps and she’d have no place to go. “I figured as much.” His hand reached out and he pulled the hem of her shirt from her grip, the small round fruits tumbling back to the floor at their feet. “That damn monkey followed me everywhere.” Her back pressed against the unforgiving surface of the wall behind her as his hands snaked under her shirt and cupped her sides, his thumbs teasing the tender undersides of her breasts as he stared at her lips. “The only thing I need to make me hard as a rock is you,Thalia.”
A breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding whooshed from her lungs as his lips devoured hers, a tiny, short moan revealing the ache in her chest as her tongue slid against his. One of his hands slid from her waist, over her hip and tunneled under her shorts, clenching her ass and pulling her against the hard bulge in hisjeans.
“Mmm. You taste likeloquat.”
And he tasted like man. Pure, hot, sexy man. Thalia squeezed her eyes shut to keep them from rolling to the back of her head.Sexy, distracting, controlling man. Damn, she was doing it again. Letting him pull her away from what was important. “Um, we need to stop.”Weak! That was so weak.She pushed at his chest, but he wasn’t budging, pinning her between his thick, hard body and the wall behindher.
“I know.” He nibbled on her lower lip, tracing the little bite with his tongue, and sending a sharp ache ricocheting through her womb. “I wanted something sweet before we talked.” He gave her lip a gentle tug, then one more brief kiss before he let her go and backed away, leaving her nearly breathless and melting against the wall. He walked to the island bar and pulled out a chair. “Have a seat. I’ll get us something todrink.”
“Talk?” She had a few other thoughts rattling around in her head, but apparently she was only capable of producing them one word at atime.
“Yeah, you know.” Grant took out a couple of glasses and filled them with ice. “Jauhar, Hamisi, the thumb drive.” The glasses full of water, he stopped and stared at her from across the room. “Earth to Thalia? Do you still want to make those plans today? Because I can think of a few other things I’d rather do, you being at the top of thatlist.”
