Actual Stop (Agent O’Connor #1)(44)

“I’m in here,” Allison called back, shooting me another enigmatic glance.

“Where’s here?” The mild annoyance was apparent in the speaker’s tenor, and I chuckled, imagining the look on her face.

Allison made a noise in the back of her throat and patted my shoulder absently as she withdrew from me, leaving me to hurtle along the swirling rapids of my confused thoughts alone while she went to find our colleagues.

“This place is a f*cking maze,” I heard the voice grumble a moment later as Allison returned with two of the detail agents in tow.

The taller one was fairly typical of what one would expect of a Secret Service agent: dark hair, dark eyes, broad shoulders. The shorter one—the one who’d been yelling and cursing—had a wild mane of dirty-blond, shoulder-length curls, arresting gray-blue eyes, and a body that was unmistakably female, despite the suit. They both appeared slightly disheveled and a little tired. I could only imagine how I appeared to them, what with my surely nonexistent makeup and my negative-three hours of sleep. I didn’t even want to know how I looked to Allison.

I stood up to greet the new arrivals, my grin growing wider. I didn’t know the guy, Robert, so he only warranted the slightest nod and a halfhearted handshake. The girl, on the other hand, I knew well.

Jamie Dorchester answered my grin with a cocky one of her own and flew into my open arms, actually picking me up and spinning me around. I let out an uncharacteristically girlish squeak and laughed into the curve of her neck.

When Jamie finally set me down and pulled back, she took one of my hands in hers and my chin in the other. “You look exhausted.”

I rolled my eyes as I squeezed the fingers that held my own. “I look better than you.”

“Please. No one looks better than me.”

“I bet Joanna looks better than you.” I was teasing her, not feeling even remotely guilty about going for the low blow and trotting out the girlfriend. I grinned slyly at her and squeezed her hand again.

Jamie ducked her head, but I still caught the way her smile softened and her eyes danced. Robert, probably wisely, decided he needed to make a phone call and stepped out into the hall.

I’d known Jamie for a long time. We’d met a few years prior to her going to the detail during UNGA, and then we’d gone to rescue swimmer training together. We’d originally bonded over knowing what it was like to date someone on the job and then be unceremoniously dumped by them—although I’d carefully concealed the fact that Allison was the one who’d broken my heart—and since then, we’d become pretty good friends.

The two of us might’ve fallen into bed a couple of times, but that’d just been friendly, pass-the-time sex, simple and fun because we got along great, and we both knew it didn’t mean anything more than that. That had also been before Lucia and before Jamie had fallen in love with a hotshot ER doctor she’d met while at a party she’d attended with me. Now we had an easy, completely platonic friendship, and I was thrilled I’d gotten to see her, even if it was only for a couple of minutes.

“Yeah, well, Joanna looks better than everyone,” Jamie mumbled, seeming for all the world like a schoolgirl dreaming of her first crush.

“Careful, Jamie. Folks are going to start thinking you’ve gone soft. They might actually mistake you for a female! You know, with mushy feelings and stuff.”

Jamie ignored my quip and turned to give Allison a dark look. “What the hell are you doing to her, Reynolds? Did I or did I not explicitly tell you to take care of my girl? She’s not making any sense, and she looks like a zombie.”

“Hey!” I dropped her hand and took a step away from her.

“What? You do. Your skin is all pale—well, paler than normal—and you have huge bags under your eyes. You’re a mess.”

“I do not look like a zombie!”

“Ryan, you look terrible.”

“Thanks a lot.”

“No offense.”

“You’re an *.” I laughed, thoroughly enjoying the banter. “Hasn’t Joanna taught you that you’re always supposed to tell a woman she looks beautiful? You don’t have to say everything you think, you know. Filter, woman! Jesus!”

“I said, ‘No offense.’”

“How the hell am I not supposed to be offended by something like that?”

“I dunno. You’re just not. Look, I’m trying to yell at Allison for you. Do you mind? Stop interrupting. You’re distracting me. My tirade is losing some of its strength here.”

“I’m a big girl. I’m perfectly capable of yelling at Allison myself.”

At that declaration, I shifted my attention from our good-natured bickering to the woman in question. I opened my mouth to draw Allison into the fray but stopped.

Allison’s expression had shuttered completely, and she was holding herself stiffly. All business, she ignored our mock squabbling and retrieved the packets of paperwork we’d compiled. She handed Jamie one packet and stepped into the doorway to get Robert’s attention, so she could give him the other.

“Everything’s in there. You should be all set.”

Jamie blinked, obviously startled, and glanced at me, seeming puzzled. But when I shrugged, she merely accepted the offered paperwork without comment.

Jamie and Robert flipped through the surveys. They nodded, which I took to mean everything was in order, and relief flooded me.