What we did was never the same. We operated as assistants, instructors, contractors, everything from seeing someone through the first few days of an acrimonious divorce to checking on kids living across the country from their separated parents to overseeing a home renovation to plain-old standard protection. But the jobs were never long. Certainly one job never took a month, let alone two, and holy God, not out in the middle of nowhere. What my boss was asking me to do wasn’t even humane. “I’m gonna go tell him I can’t do it,” I announced, a headache starting because I’d had no opportunity to either caffeinate or hydrate yet.
Cooper’s brow furrowed as he stared at me—in a way he had that made me unsure of my life choices. “I had no idea you have a death wish.”
I let my head slump onto my folded arms.
“It could be worse.”
“How could it?” I whimpered.
“At least it’s not snowing there yet.”
“That you fuckin’ know of,” I grumbled into my desk. I had to think of something, anything, to change Jared’s mind.
“Oh, shit, look who’s back!”
Lifting my head, I saw Locryn Barnes and Nash Miller walk into the office, both all scruffy and tired from their month and a half away.
It was nice to see Nash. He was a good guy and would have sympathized with my current predicament and maybe even gone instead if he hadn’t just gotten back. The other man, the guy I had been secretly sleeping with since I started working at Torus five months ago, him I wanted to run over with my 1983 Toyota Land Cruiser. And yes, since there weren’t a lot of those still on the road, someone probably would have noticed when I hit Locryn and then reversed back over him for good measure. But truly, it would be a small price to pay for the supreme feeling of bliss I was certain to experience once Locryn Barnes was splattered all over the pavement.
If I were being honest with myself, I was the one who deserved to be run over for being such a fucking idiot. How stupid could I possibly be, thinking that a guy who was keeping me a secret—from everyone—wanted anything serious? I’d been there for sex, a booty call from the jump, and nothing more. When he left six weeks ago on a job with Nash, he didn’t even bother to say goodbye. I hadn’t heard a peep from him in all that time, and now here he was, back without warning. He hadn’t even asked me to water his plants or feed his fish, for fuck’s sake. Locryn couldn’t have made things any clearer, and suddenly, just like that, Montana sounded really good. So good in fact that I had to wonder if somehow, someway, though we’d been super careful about the affair, so secretive, so cloak-and-dagger, that maybe Jared Colter knew anyway. The man had been a spook with the CIA, after all.
After getting up, pushing in my chair, I took the folder, put it under my arm, and smiled at Cooper when he looked up at me.
“I’ll call ya from Montana, and when I get back from this stupid assignment, I’m gonna need you to take me for Thai at the good place with the beer I like, all right?”
“You got it,” he said, grinning at me. “Pack a parka. You’ll still be there in November.”
I groaned and turned for the door.
“Oh ho, pretty boy, can’t even say hello,” Locryn called after me.
Flipping him off over my shoulder, I could hear everyone laughing as I reached my boss’s door. I knocked softly on the glass before leaning in.
I noticed then exactly what I had when I first met the man—that the silver flecks in his dark charcoal-grey eyes, and the laugh lines accentuating them, were amazing.
I had never been one to notice older men, but his height and powerful build, the gray-and-silver strands in his thick blond hair, and the way he carried himself—commanding and not to be fucked with—had stolen my breath away once or twice. Really handsome man, and though I’d never understood what the term silver fox meant before I met him, I had a firm picture in my mind now.
Jared was on the phone and said something quickly before putting his hand over the handset. “Are you going home to pack?”
“And then get a plane ticket, yeah,” I told him. “I’ll start reporting once I’ve been there a couple days.”
“I would drive,” he suggested.
This was news. “Drive?” I almost gasped but caught myself in time, so it came out sounding a bit gruff and less like a squeak. He nodded. “Yeah. It’ll give you time to clear your head, and that way you won’t have a three-month car rental to deal with.”
Was he kidding? Drive to Montana? And what was I clearing my head from? “I… you know it’s probably like—”