A Breath Away. Wendy Etherington
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opted for a maintenance man’s gray jumpsuit. “You might wanna hold back lookin’ through the peephole, Chief. We coulda blasted you.”
“I recognized your voice,” Jade said with a trace of annoyance. Because of their sense of timing? She didn’t want to go there.
She supposed it was too much to expect these two to stop treating their cases like elaborate games. But of course, to men like David and Mo—and probably Remington Tremaine, as well—chasing the bad guys was a game. One they played with deadly seriousness at times, but one they still found humor and enjoyment in.
She wished she could say she still had fun. Somewhere she’d lost the fire and passion, though she never considered doing anything else. It was all she knew and all she had.
After she made introductions among the men, David asked Tremaine, “So, you’re NSA?”
When Tremaine hesitated to confirm, Jade said, “If you want our help, my people have to have information. I told them what was in your dossier.”
“What little you have?”
“Keep it up, Mr. Fancy-art-dealer, and I’ll find your would be assassin just so I can swear my allegiance to him.”
Mo and David gave her strange looks—she couldn’t recall a time they’d seen her banter with a client—so before their curiosity got the best of them, she said, “His trouble isn’t about a case. It’s about his former profession.”
Hell, she’d kissed the man and guilt—or attraction or weakness—already had her glossing over the fact that he used to take other people’s stuff for a living.
“Sit down, and I’ll fill you in,” she added.
“Over breakfast,” David said.
Jade glanced at the cart. “You brought food?”
Mo and David exchanged smiles. “Among other things.”
OTHER THINGS turned out to be computers, surveillance equipment and instruments Remy couldn’t begin to identify.
He was only marginally competent with computers, but he certainly recognized the weapons, ammunition clips, binoculars and communications devices—including headsets, microphones, cameras and bugs. But there were also black boxes that lit up or emitted a series of beeps, a control that looked suspiciously like a detonator and handheld wands that might be lasers.
If somebody had told him he was going to learn to swing a light saber, he wouldn’t have been surprised in the least.
While he used technology to his advantage on occasion, his strength was his ability to get personal, to read body language, to discern the significance of expressions and reactions. He liked touching things and people. Reading an electronic gauge or tracking some blip on a radar screen held no appeal for him.
Mo, however, was clearly in his element. As he checked out the information on the disk Remy had provided, his walnut-colored hands commanded a laptop keyboard the way the best teenage techno-geek could only dream of doing. Since he was extremely fierce-looking, the thought of him as a geek made Remy smile.
Remy’s amusement faded when his gaze slid to Jade, leaning over David’s shoulder as she pointed to one of the mysterious black boxes on the dining room table. His attraction—correction, his overwhelming need—was interfering with the case. As much as he’d looked forward to finally meeting her, he hadn’t anticipated that complication.
This case was about his life. And while there were many people who couldn’t care less, he certainly placed a high value on his own skin.
But when he was near her, he forgot about the shooting and old scores and professionalism and rules—though he was admittedly never big on those, anyway. She made him forget his goals and purpose, something no one had done for a long, long time.
“You could run a small war from this room,” he said in an effort to focus on the business at hand.
Jade glanced over her shoulder. Those intense green eyes focused briefly on his face. “We are. The bad guys want to take you out. We’re not going to let them.”
Direct. To the point. Where he knew the situation had layers of problems and complications—admittedly ones he hadn’t completely shared with her—she broke things down to their most basic pieces. “Do you always see things so simply?”
“Mostly. I have a simple job.”
He indicated the technology-strewn table with a sweep of his hand. “Seems pretty complex to me.”
“That’s because you still work for our blessed but flawed federal government.” She shrugged and turned away. “David, you want to tell Mr. Tremaine what our job is?”
“Get them before they get you.”
Remy laughed, moving around the table to sit across from them. “A good philosophy.”
“It works for us,” Jade said, frowning at him. “I thought you were going to get some rest.”
“I tried, but I can’t seem to relax. Probably too much caffeine.”
Actually, every time he closed his eyes all he saw was the two of them naked and tangled in the sheets of his bed.
Her eyes heated for a moment—with anger or maybe the same desire simmering in his veins. Probably an reluctant combination of both.
“You really need to sleep.”
“Trying to get rid of me?”
The yes was obviously on the tip of her tongue, but she swallowed it. “You’re a big boy. Do what you want.” She picked up an ammunition clip and checked it, adding, “You’ll be here for the next few days anyway. Plenty of time to recuperate.”
Even as he admired her I’ll-slip-this-in-when-he-won’t-notice strategy, he wasn’t complying. “I don’t think so, Agent Broussard.”
“I’m not an agent, and you’ll do what I say.”
“I’ll do what I please.”
“Not if you want my team protecting you.”
His body responded to her order by hardening like a rock. He wanted her when she was angry and defiant. He wanted her soft and vulnerable. Was there any situation where she couldn’t—literally—get a rise out of him?
He did realize that forcing his point would get him nowhere. She’d never back down in front of her team.
“Could we discuss this in my office?” he asked as he rose.
“Office? You don’t—”
“How about the room I’m currently sleeping and working in?”
She sighed—heavily. “David, continue to run the equipment diagnostics. Mo, keeping working on those names and background checks. I want the most likely suspect ASAP. I’ll be right back.”
She stalked toward Remy’s bedroom door, crossed the threshold, then stood at the end of the bed with her feet planted shoulder-width apart, her hands braced on her hips. She looked as though she planned to go ten rounds with the heavyweight champ.
He was tense, as well. It was both heady and annoying to have dreamed about being with her, to finally have her near him, only to have her constantly trying to distance herself.
But in contrast to her anger, he took great pains to move slowly, to close the door behind him with a quiet click and face her with a slight smile on his face. “Clients are a pain in the ass, huh?”
“Yes, they are.”
“And yet without them, you wouldn’t have a business.”
She narrowed her eyes. “I have agreeable clients. Ones who listen to me, ones who don’t question—”
“Ones who