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“That’s everything,” Cody told her, and Keira knew from his eyes he’d seen—and approved—her reactions as par for the course for a good agent, which she was. He glanced over at Mandy, his eyes widening. Keira’s gaze followed his, her own eyes widening as she saw something she hadn’t seen before. The other woman was holding her baby with her left arm. Her right hand was holding a gun.
Where did that come from? Keira wondered, her admiration for Mandy growing.
“Going to shoot me again?” Cody teased, making light of the situation.
“Sorry,” Mandy replied, tucking the nine-millimeter beneath her thigh again. “I couldn’t be sure it was you, and I wasn’t taking any chances.”
Movement on the bed behind her made Mandy turn around, and Keira saw the younger boy stretching awake. Callahan had already dropped the load he’d been carrying beside the kitchen table. Now he moved to the bed and picked up his son.
He murmured something to the boy. Keira couldn’t catch the words, but the change in his tone was amazing. There wasn’t a trace of the hardness she’d noticed earlier. And the expression on his face betrayed him, too—he was completely vulnerable where his children were concerned. Where his wife’s concerned, too, she amended as she saw the private look that passed between Ryan and Mandy Callahan.
Keira had never loved anyone as much as Mandy obviously loved her husband and children, but a sudden yearning inside her caught her by surprise. She wanted to. And she wanted to be loved in return, the way Callahan wholeheartedly loved Mandy. To be loved like that, she thought, hiding her unexpected emotions behind the tough, professional mask she’d learned the hard way to assume years ago in the Marine Corps. What would it be like to be loved like that?
Involuntarily her gaze moved to Cody, standing with Trace by the kitchen table. The pain in her heart as she watched him was another shock. Cody would love like that, she realized. If he gave his heart, there would be nothing held back.
Some joke passed between the two men, and Keira saw Cody’s quick grin flash across his face. Cody wasn’t anywhere near as handsome as Trace, but there was something especially appealing about his angular features, something that spoke about the inner man. And Keira, who appreciated her partner’s excellent qualities as well as his darkly handsome movie-star appearance, had never felt her pulse quicken with him the way it did just being in Cody’s presence.
She couldn’t help remembering Cody’s rough treatment of her the night they’d met, the bruises he’d left on her body, but she knew that wasn’t how he normally was with a woman. No, something told her he would be gentle and caring, the seducer, not the aggressor. She wondered what it would be like to...
Keira dragged her gaze away from him and brought her thoughts under control. This isn’t the time to be thinking about that, she warned herself. Not with an op going down. You’ve got to stay focused.
She glanced back at the bed and saw the older boy was finally awake. Callahan was sitting on the bed now, a boy on each knee, holding them protectively in his arms as he talked softly to them and to his wife. Mandy was leaning close, holding baby Abby, and Keira realized from the other woman’s expression that Callahan was telling her something she didn’t agree with. Keira strained her ears to hear what they were saying.
“I’m not leaving you,” Mandy was saying fiercely.
Callahan just looked at her, and it was all there in his eyes, everything he wouldn’t say in front of the others. A pang of envy twisted through Keira, combined with compassion for what the other woman had to be going through. “Somebody has to be with the kids,” Callahan said in his deep voice. “Somebody has to make sure they’re safe. And that somebody has to be you. You know it and I know it. Besides, I’ll be stronger once I know you and our children are out of harm’s way.”
“That’s not fair,” Mandy said in a choked voice.
“No,” he agreed. “It’s not.” As Keira watched, he leaned over and brushed his wife’s cheek with his lips.
Keira turned away, shaken by the raw emotion she’d witnessed on the faces of Mandy and Ryan Callahan, and saw Cody and Trace walking toward them.
