A Beautiful Lie (Playing with Fire #1)(33)

Even so, Garrett wanted her bare breasts in his palms and his hardness between her legs so badly it hurt to breathe. He needed to get away from her for a while and clear his head.

“Sounds good. Text me the information,” Garrett told Brady as he threw his own napkin down on the table and stood up. “I made arrangements for two rental SUVs. I’m going to take one and scope out the palace. Marshall, start digging into Fernandez’s financial records. I want bank account information, local and offshore investments, charity, real estate holdings, and anything else you can find on him.”

Parker listened to Garrett rattle off instructions to Brady as he backed away from the table. She stood up and followed him.

“Hey, you want some company?” she asked.

“Nope, I’m good. You can just wander around the resort and relax,” Garrett told her before throwing his hand in the air in a casual wave and quickly walking away.

Parker stood there squeezing her hands into fists in an effort to stop her from punch something, like the marble column next to her. She had to stop herself from running up behind Garrett and smacking him upside the back of his head.

“So, little lady,” Brady drawled, pulling her out of her murderous thoughts, “how about you sit down and tell us why the hell we never knew you were so bad ass you could accompany four guys on a top secret SEAL mission.”



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A few hours and several mimosas later, Parker made her way back to the villa. Against her better judgment, after a few minutes chatting with the guys after breakfast, she realized she liked them. A lot. She’d run into them several times over the years at different functions, but she never really sat down and talked to them. They were loud, hilarious, full of sexual innuendos for everything, teased her unmercifully, and they were easy to talk to. They made Parker wish she hadn’t been an only child and had been blessed with a few older brothers to watch after her and keep her safe

Not that Annabelle Parker needed to be kept safe. With her black belt in karate and taekwondo, her expert marksman status, lethal and non-lethal hand-to-hand combat training, and wilderness survival skills, Parker could take care of herself.

It was still a nice thought to have every once in a while when her defenses were lowered. She never asked for the life she'd been given. Sometimes she caught herself wishing for a normal one with parents and siblings—a group of people who cared about her well-being.

Parker dropped down on her side of the bed, dragged her laptop bag up from the floor, removed the computer from its case, and placed it on her lap. Garrett might be the computer genius, but Parker took a six month hacker course from Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook. He didn’t know it was a hacker course, per say, but hind-sight was twenty-twenty, especially when you were with the CIA.

Parker fired up the laptop, plugged in her mobile printer, and got to work.

Garrett spent the rest of the day doing surveillance on the palace and meeting up with Brady every few hours for updates on what he found, which wasn't much. Fernandez's information was one big jumbled mess of dead ends. His business ventures, companies, accounts—they all looked legit for the most part. There were transactions that could have raised a red flag, but Brady was never able to find anything even remotely illegal about the business he conducted. He got to a certain point in his search when he thought he’d find something, and then the trail would end, producing nothing illegal.

Garrett tried his hand at digging for a few hours while he sat at the bar in the lobby of the hotel and ate dinner. He told himself repeatedly that he wasn’t avoiding Parker. He just had a lot of work to do and didn’t feel like going back to the room just yet.

When the bartender began cleaning up and shutting the bar down, Garrett knew it was time to face the music. He tucked his laptop under his arm and walked to the villa.

As he let himself into the room, courtesy of the extra key he got that morning from the front desk, he saw Parker’s laptop in the middle of the bed surrounded by hundreds of sheets of paper. The bathroom door opened just as he started to walk over to see what was printed on them.

Parker came out of the bathroom surrounded by a cloud of steam, wearing her usual tank top and draw string pants, this time in pale blue. Garrett froze for a moment, taking in her wavy, damp hair, freshly scrubbed face, and the fact that she wasn’t wearing a bra. His face heated at the memory of that morning and how she hadn’t been wearing a bra then either.

Parker was still pissed at Garrett, but seeing him standing there after not being near him all day made her just want to throw her arms around him and pull him close. Waking up to him in the morning made her realize how much she missed being touched and how much she wanted to be touched by him. She resisted the urge to go to him, considering the morning’s events made him run away from her and disappear all day just so he wouldn’t have to deal with the embarrassment.

Parker turned and walked over to the bed, sliding some of the papers aside so she could crawl up to the pillows and lean back against the headboard. Garrett set his laptop on the counter leading into the kitchen and watched her cross her legs and pull her computer onto her lap. He realized just how stupid and immature he was being. Nothing that bad happened, nothing that couldn’t be easily forgotten about so they could move on and go back to the effortless friendship they always shared.

“It’s a good thing we got an invite to the palace tomorrow. Trying to break into that place would be impossible. I counted one hundred and forty-seven heavily armed guards there today,” Garrett shared, trying to get her to talk and hopefully forgive him.