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The idea fit Lena to perfection.
Slade tracked her as she broke away from the ladies laughing at some silly photo and drifted to the poker table. She cast a look over the table at the cards there and the peanuts they used for currency stacked in the middle. Slade could tell by the calculating expression she wore that she was assessing everyone’s strategy in a single glance.
The woman could clean up that table and take the pot. So why wasn’t she playing?
She avoided his stare, refusing to meet his eyes. He was used to it by now, but that didn’t mean it didn’t grate on him.
She reached into her pocket and brought something to her nose. A small white square he’d noticed her touching it to the tip of her nose more than once tonight.
It wasn’t a tissue. She didn’t have a cold.
Her breasts swelled outward as she filled her lungs with air. Slade knew this woman inside and out, and he wasn’t blind to anything she did. In fact, he was so dialed into her that nothing escaped him.
Like the fact she hadn’t touched a drop of the tequila she loved and that she was sniffing what he would guess were alcohol prep pads.
Before he went Blackout, his brother’s teenage girlfriend also had a sudden addiction to sniffing those—right before they announced they were going to be parents.
Lena was pregnant.
Slade’s skin prickled. Jesus, could he be right? His instincts were always on, especially when it came to Lena.
He counted backward to the night of the gala.
He rubbed a hand over his face.
Exactly eight weeks. He knew little about pregnancy or babies, but it was time enough for her to have symptoms.
Fuck. A baby. And Lena didn’t even want him in her life.
All that would change now, wouldn’t it?
He had to get her alone. No small feat. The woman bugged out faster than a couple of bogies on a sortie. Their little joke that she was Mary Jane to his Peter Parker wasn’t exactly true—the woman would scale a building to get away from him if she could.
“Overstreet!”
At the call of his name, he swung his head toward the poker game.
Sparrow held up the deck he’d been shuffling. “Deal you in the next hand?”
“Not tonight. I’m good right here.” He lifted the glass he held. Ice tinkled in the nearly full glass of bourbon that he’d barely taken a sip of.
Sparrow’s brows slanted together, accentuating that deep line between them. The entire time Slade debriefed with him and Bishop, second-in-command of the Alpha team, that furrow had deepened with the telling.
Slade’s experience with the cartel and their reasons behind nabbing him off the street was cause for concern and a matter Sparrow took straight to Blackout’s commander. Slade wasn’t fully recovered from his experience in the garage, but right this minute, he had more pressing things on his mind.
He shifted his stare to Lena and found her gaze on him. That familiar live wire of awareness sparked within him, and she quickly looked away.
He returned his attention to Sparrow and gave him a chin lift to say he was fine. Sparrow nodded in response and started dealing in the players.
Getting her alone wouldn’t be easy. Since she lived in the barracks and didn’t have her own place to go to, all he had to do was wait for everyone to leave the party.
Even if she locked herself in her room, he could still sit outside and chat through the barrier.
Or break it down and force her to look him in the eyes and tell him she wasn’t carrying his baby.
He brought his drink to his lips and let his eyelids droop so he could study her. She looked exactly the same. Her curves weren’t diminished by the muscle layered on her body. God, he loved her body. Loved sliding his hands over her sleek curves, closing his fingers around her hard thighs and spreading her for him.
He flicked his gaze from her body to her face—and found her staring at him again. When her attention switched to the drink in his hand, an idea sparked.
