The Omega Team: The Lion (Kindle Worlds Novella) (3 page)

“We mustn’t,” he’d said and pushed her away from him the night before she graduated high school. The two of them had been talking and kissing out back in the gazebo covered in climbing red roses that were his mother’s prized beauties. “You’re going to college and—“

“You don’t really want me, do you?” She’d been insulted and heartbroken.

“No. Not true!” he’d gripped her by the arms and kissed her with a quick claim.

She broke away. “You kiss me like you mean it, but then you won’t touch me.”

“You’re young.”

“Eighteen. You can’t tell me you haven’t had a girl as young as me? All those women hanging out at the gates of the Naval Academy, waiting for a midshipman? Come
on
.” She headed for the steps.

He grabbed her by the elbow and swung her around. “There is no one better than you.”

She sniffed. “How would you know?”

“Because you’re the girl I compare them all to.”

She rolled a shoulder. “Since you’ve never had me, what’s to compare?”

His eyes danced. He cupped her face, his thumbs stroking her cheeks. “I’m saving up for you.”

That had confused her impressionable, virgin heart. “What do you mean?”

He gave her a wicked half smile. “I’m learning how to be a great lover and then, when you’re older, we’ll do it. A lot.”

“Really?” She’d crossed her arms. “And in the meantime, do I practice, too?”

“No.” He’d gathered her close and left a trail of kisses down her throat to her nipples where he had teased her through her cotton dress. “Save it all for me.”

She had, too. For her four years at Boston College, she’d remained a virgin. And then what do you know? When she offered herself up again to him, he had refused, citing an impending assignment to Afghanistan. Furious and frustrated, she’d gone to France to train with one of the biggest art dealers in Paris. She’d devoted herself to cultivating Parisian lovers, all splendid. Inventive, too. But none of them were the man she really wanted.

That hadn’t been the job she’d really wanted either. And so she’d come home to Washington and been offered an operative’s job with the CIA. Her French connections were her calling card for Langley. She’d played them well, going back to Paris to work the shadows as a plant in the art world to sift out hazy financial transactions. That’s where Mike had reappeared last summer in her life, functioning as her bodyguard, pretending to be her lover while she ferreted out the money flow from her boss to
jihadis
. Sure, their affair had been work. It had been fun. It had been disastrous to her heart. And she had vowed to never let him near it again.

To ensure that, she’d even quit Langley and landed a job with a British company as an insurance investigator specializing in fraud. Her first assignment was this one with Baylor Dealers.

She took another swallow of her water and fingered the flash drive in her skirt pocket.
Forget the past. Focus on now. This drive
. What she needed from it. And whatever in the world he wanted from it.

Forcing herself to listen to his conversation, she had to know who had hired him. She hoped Grey Holden did a background check on all his potential clients.

“What’s the latest word on the shooting at M and Wisconsin?” he asked his boss as he paced in front of the kitchen island. “Yeah…Right…Okay if you can get a police band reading, call me back. I could call a buddy at the Pentagon, but he might not be able to share intel. I know. I will. By the way, I left the car in mid-lane on Wisconsin. When I ran north with Tierney, I noted the street is still blocked. No tickets or police boot on it yet. I’ll check it later if she’ll cooperate.”

He glanced at her.

She stuck her tongue out at him.

He rolled his eyes. “But that might be tough. Right. I might be able to leave her alone. Yep. Later.”

“Well?” she asked him as he put his cell phone on his belt clip. “What’s our status?”

“You and I are safe and sound. Three people at the corner of M are dead, four wounded. Perp had a semi-automatic that he fired at will. One eye-witness said he shouted that he was on a mission. But we have no details what kind of mission that was.”

“What did he look like?”

“Wore a black balaclava, white tee shirt, jeans, Nikes. Caucasian. Five-ten, one hundred forty or fifty pounds. That’s all.”

“Not much to go on,” she said, noting Mike’s precise rendering, all so stat for his six-year stint as a Navy SEAL. “But why did you say in the shop that the shooter might target me?”

“When things break like that, we take everything into account in a wide circumference. Holden had not told me anything definitive that made me think the shooter had you as a target. That was all me.”

Her jittery stomach rolled over once and relaxed. She took a deep breath. “Good to know.”

He stepped toward her. Towering over her by mouth-watering inches, he gazed down at her with a comforting smile. “Time to get better acquainted.”

She pursed her lips. “You go first since you’re the man on a job.”

“Sit.” He nodded toward a barstool. “I’ll even give you another Perrier to wet your whistle.”

“Sounds good. How is it that your refrigerator is stocked?”

“I have a housekeeper who maintains a certain level of readiness year-round.”

“Efficient.”

“Works for me. Means I can fly in on a whim and visit my grandmother with ease.”

She tipped her head toward the fully stocked wine refrigerator. “You’re even prepared to drink off duty, eh?”

He gazed at it for a very long minute. “That’s for guests. I don’t do alcohol anywhere, anytime. Not smart with the PTSD.”

“Ah.” Since his injury, she’d wondered how he coped with not being able to drink alcohol. So she took this news with pride in him. Despite the fact that Mike could always drink any two men under the table, he’d always been able to walk a straight line. He’d always been so controlled. His self-discipline had made him a superb scholar, second in his midshipman graduating class. He’d gone to sea, traveled the world, come home stateside to receive a promotion well ahead of his buddies. That’s when he decided he wanted to be the best-of-the-best and he’d gone off to BUD/s in San Diego to train to become a SEAL. Nothing stopped him. Not even the death of his parents in that same year. “I applaud your abstinence.”

He swung to face her. “Do you want me to crack a bottle for you? I know how you love a good Cote du Rhone.”

“No, thanks. Later maybe, huh?” Why did his remembrance of her favorite wine make her teary-eyed?
Damn.
She swallowed back her sudden fears.
“Why did you come and take me away like that? I have to know all you do about Omega’s client and why you’re here. It all just seems too uncanny that you’d show up and take me away if…if there’s something weird going on down on M Street.”

He took a seat opposite her at the counter and looked her squarely in the eye. “Whoever hired Omega wants their ID kept secure. They had specific instructions. They wanted you out of Baylor’s immediately, out of Mayhew’s reach and under protection of a bodyguard.”

“And did this person specify that my guard dog should be you?”

He nodded. “They did.”

“Anything else?”

“I was not to leave you alone for a second until—“ He paused. “This is the crazy part.”

“Okay. Ready for crazy. Let me have it.”

“Here it is, and I do quote. ‘Until the reason you were working at Baylor’s was moot.’”

“Wow,” she said with more awe than surprise. “This so-called client knows an awful lot about both of us.”

“So it seems.”

She shook her head. “Who do you know who would have that much intel?”

“On you and me?” he asked, wide-eyed. “Wild guess says it’s State and Langley.”

“Yeah,” she said barely breathing on that possibility. “That’s my thought, too. But supposedly, it’s not them. Do you think they’d lie to Holden?”

“Maybe. They wouldn’t get too far past his check.” He reached across the island and took her hand, squeezing hard. “Fraud experts in Foggy Bottom, the CIA and Special Ops know what we did together in Paris. How we worked. What your expertise is in tracking fraud. They’d figure that whatever jam you’re in, together you and I could get you out. Are you in a jam?”

She lifted both shoulders. ”I was doing just fine. Took me a while to gain Mayhew’s confidence but that’s normal. You can’t just walk right into a job and know precisely what to grab or how to sting them. And you coming in today introduces a new dynamic to my profile.”

“The Paris operation we completed was all about pretending we were lovers.”

“Me getting the intel. You checking it out, mirroring Molyneau’s computers and stealing his data. But honestly, I’m not certain you being my lover accomplishes the same objective as in Paris.” Molyneau had been gay. Mayhew was definitely not.

“You mean that Mayhew is interested in you romantically?”

“I might get him there. Yes.”

Mike widened his eyes and hot blue jealousy poured out of them. “Would you become his lover to get your proof?”

Shocked by his rare display of emotion, she sat stark still. She would never go to bed with anyone for success at a job. The idea was lurid, resembling an act her father would have committed. Ends justifying means was not her
modus operandi
. No. Her body was hers and she had learned over the years that she should give it only with the finest purpose. “I would hope it wouldn’t come to that.”

Silent, he examined her. Only his eyes spoke. They said decadent things about those two months they’d spent together when they hadn’t pretended their attraction. They had become lovers within two days of starting their assignment. The years spent together in grade school and high school, living side-by-side as neighbors had brought familiarity. The years they had danced around each other had brought unbearable tension, undeniable desire. The two of them easily fell into bed, she because she’d always loved him and he because…well, because she was there, she supposed. And she’d allowed it. She’d welcomed it. She’d told herself he did love her and that an extended Parisian liaison would prove to him that they were meant for each other.

Besides, what else was there to do but for her to go to work in the morning, leave him to do the computer searches, then at night go to cafes, stroll arm-in-arm down the Rue Caulaincourt in Montmartre and buy roasted chicken and potatoes from the
boulangerie
and
fromage
and
vin
from the grocer on the corner? They’d return upstairs to their fourth floor walk-up, shed their clothes and feed each other by hand the glories of French street food. Afterward, he nibbled her breasts and licked every inch of her while she cried out in abandon. In return, she had sucked his cock and learned how to make him totally lose it as he came in a rush.

“I’ve never forgotten how good we were in Paris,” he said, sorrow lacing his deep voice, his eyes darkly searching hers.

For what? Agreement?

She fumed. “Good? No. We were stellar.”

She swallowed, tasting again the bitterness of his rejection last summer. The reality of what they were now washed through her. Honesty was a devilish brute. They were friends, good friends, who happened to love what they did for each other in the sack.

He walked around the island and pulled her up into his arms.

If she admitted that she still cared for him, would she ever escape him this time with her pride intact?

Her track record was not good. She had failed three out of four times before. When she’d been eighteen, he claimed she was too young to take to bed. When she’d been twenty-two, she’d been a starry-eyed college grad thinking she could land the hunky Navy officer if she slept with him while he was home on leave. He’d refused her then, too, because he was off to war. When she’d been twenty-four, after his folks died, she thought she might show him that all the people who loved him were not dead. But he’d walked out on her then too, saying thanks and not a good idea. Then last year in Paris, when he’d been specifically assigned to the French Embassy on diplomatic duty because he spoke fabulous French, his job had been to protect her by dogging her every step. To the US government, she was performing a professional duty to track
jihadi
money-laundering by an art dealer. She was to foil the sale of a priceless painting by Claude Monet to a private Arab art collector who regularly funneled the proceeds to terrorist groups. Mike’s job was to find evidence of a two-way money conduit among dealer, collector and terrorist group while he gave Becka cover as her lover.

He had been successful. So had she.

And now?

She gazed up at him. “I haven’t forgotten, either. But I can’t do what we did last time.”

“I don’t want to hurt you.”

“Good.” She pushed away. “Then don’t.”

“There isn’t any special man, is there?”

The fact that he might be able to detect that just by holding her in his arms, irritated the shit out of her. “No.”

He winced, chewing on that a bit. Then he walked to the wine fridge, pulled out a bottle of red, a Rhone probably, and started to uncork it.