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She curled her fingers on the muscled planes of his back and held on tight. Because this really might be their final stolen moment.
Before she could curl up next to him, he rolled off the bed and reached for his jeans. She protested when she saw the phone in his hand.
“What are you doing?”
“Clay was going out, and I forgot to check in.”
“Check in?” she asked.
“Yeah, it’s past time.”
Dove sighed. Of course, even in the post-haze of sex, Quaide was always by the book.
* * * * *
Grandma wouldn’t recognize her dining room now. Well, if she looked beyond the computer equipment filling the entire old-fashioned table and the computer monitors mounted over the yellowed paint on two of the walls, she might. But in the hour or so since Quaide slipped upstairs with Dove, the team had rapidly transformed the place into Sentry headquarters.
Clay sat at one computer, his entire focus on his task. Lark hovered over his shoulder as an advisor. Or maybe the pair just couldn’t stand to be away from each other.
Quaide’s mind swung to countless stolen moments in the FBI office when Dove would come in with some matter for him to address and the longing would be plain in her beautiful eyes.
He snapped out of the reverie and walked the perimeter of the table to get a feel for the setup.
“This looks great.”
Clay nodded. “Julius is as good at tech as his brother, Jaren.”
Quaide didn’t personally know all the members of the WEST Protection team yet, but the things they protected their clients from often came under the notice of the FBI as well.
Jaren was the Abel brother in the cybersecurity division and was known for being a technology whisperer. All he had to do was sit down with a keyboard and the world was at his fingertips.
Julius entered the room with a sandwich in one hand and a bottled water in the other. Spotting Quaide, he said, “You’re out of lunch meat.”
He snorted. “I can see why.” The sandwich was stacked thick with ham and turkey. “No matter. I’ll have to get the place stocked up now that we’re all working here, and we have guests to feed too.”
From over Clay’s shoulder, Lark looked up. “I’ll do a food run this afternoon.”
Clay lifted a hand to touch the back of hers where it rested on his shoulder. “Actually, now would be a good time to go, Lark. When I got back from the old office, Ross got in touch. I expect a call from him any minute. We won’t be needing you for a while.”
“Okay, sounds good.” She leaned in and kissed Clay on the cheek.
Not being the person in charge made Quaide uncomfortable. Coming into Sentry as anything less than the leader gave him more of a complex than he ever thought it would when he agreed to Clay’s offer. Without that title of leader, he wouldn’t have the respect he received in the FBI. He held no clout with the Abels or even that young medical examiner.
Despite his misgivings on his position in Sentry, he was beginning to see the perks of not being at the top. Such as him going upstairs to pleasure Dove while decisions were made and meeting times were set without him. He only had to show up when he was told to, and that was freeing on some level, though now he felt marginally out of the loop.
“A meeting with WEST was set up?” he asked.
Julius swallowed the huge bite in one go and nodded. “I got Ross himself lined up, and that’s difficult these days. The security agency has exploded on a national level. They’re getting so many calls that they are turning people away.”
“That’s good and bad.” After years of handling a heavy load of FBI cases, Quaide knew that feeling of being overwhelmed. He’d been on the verge of burnout several times.
He took a seat at the table and realized the flaw in the setup. “We can’t hold meetings here. There’s too much crap on the table.”
Clay nodded in a distracted way, still glued to his screen. “Lark’s looking into desks and tables to put around the room, but I think we’ll need to move the conference room elsewhere.”
“The downstairs bedroom,” he said at once. “The powder blue one.”
Clay looked up. “Powder blue?”
