Dominance Never Dies (Masters and Mercenaries #11)(74)

Life had been simple. Michael watched his back. Case watched his. They’d bonded because it had been the first time for them both to be away from their twins. JT Malone had stayed behind to run the family oil business and Theo had been miles away in Iraq with his own team.

Michael had become his best friend, the one he could count on.

“I can’t think when she’s around. She’s a distraction.”

Michael turned. “Do you even hear yourself? Do you understand what she’s thinking when you say that?”

“She should be thinking hey, I’m distracting the dude who needs to find his brother. Maybe I should go and wait for him to come home?” He was pretty sure that wasn’t the answer.

Michael groaned. “You have no idea how to deal with women.”

“Theo was the smooth one,” Case admitted. “I pretty much did what he told me to when it came to women. He could find the one woman in the room who didn’t want to have anything to do with him and a couple of drinks, some conversation later, and he’d be going home with her. I sometimes think he fell for Erin because she was a challenge.”

“He loved Erin. That was why he never gave up on her,” Michael replied. “He would never have shoved her away. He valued her in the field.”

“Erin spent years in the Army. Erin could take Theo out.”

“Yeah, well, Mia might not be able to take you out, but she has value. She’s smart. She’s totally cool under pressure and she follows orders.”

“She does not,” he shot back. “I ordered her to stay in the safe room on the plane. That lasted two minutes.”

“She wasn’t going to let them shoot us. I’m sure you gave her a bunch of BS about how they wouldn’t have, but you weren’t there. They were going to take one of us out. They had to. After they lost touch with the copilot, there were too many of us to deal with. It would have been me or Hutch dead and the other used to draw you out if Mia hadn’t bought us some time.”

Put like that, it was a reasonable way that day could have gone. “I don’t want her to get hurt. I can’t stand the thought.”

“Finally. Why didn’t you say that?”

“I did say that.” Mostly. “What did you think I meant by she’s a distraction?”

“I knew what you meant because I’ve spent the majority of my adult life speaking Case Taggart’s language. It’s mostly grunts and rude hand gestures and the occasional belch that really means it’s been a good night.”

“I’m not that bad.” He knew how to communicate, although he was good with rude hand gestures.

“Look, you think you’re being forthcoming, but that’s not what she hears. I grew up with a couple of girls around the house at all times. Cousins or daughters of family friends. They were like sisters to me, especially Dana.”

Michael didn’t like to talk a lot about Dana. She’d disappeared years before. If he was bringing her up, it had to be important. “All right. What should I have said?”

“It’s important to realize that women don’t always hear what we think we’re saying. When you called her a distraction, she thought you were talking about sex with her. Fucking her, having to deal with her was a distraction you didn’t want and the sex wasn’t good enough to make you want to keep her.”

His stomach dropped. He could hear Mia talking in one ear, her voice bright as she charmed the director. Had she thought that was what he meant? “I didn’t say anything like that.”

There was the sound of the door clicking open and Fain strode in.

“Ezra, you were there for the dissolution of Case’s relationship with Mia,” Michael began.

Whoa. “There was no dissolution.”

Fain took a seat in front of Hutch’s computer. “You mean when he told her he was done f*cking her and she should go home?”

He felt his skin flush. “That is not what I said.”

Fain started typing on the keyboard. “That’s totally what you said. You were pretty cold about it. Can we cut out the touchy-feely shit and deal with the security cameras? I thought Hutch was supposed to leave me instructions.”

Should he keep Mia close? He dismissed what Fain had said. And what Michael said, too. Mia was smart. She didn’t need some f*cking translator. He’d been in her bed for days. He couldn’t keep his hands off her. She could plainly see that. He’d talked about her moving to Dallas. That wasn’t the talk of a man who wanted to get rid of a woman. He just wanted to keep her safe.

She was being a brat, trying to get her way.

Yes, because staying in a shitastic motel room he wouldn’t allow her to leave without a guard had been so much fun for her so far. She’d been stuck in that room for days. He wouldn’t let her out without Fain or Hutch. Her only excitement had been talking to her contact—which she’d done as he’d asked her to. With a guard.

And every night she welcomed him enthusiastically.

What had it taken for a woman as independent as Mia to sit on her butt while he did all the work? She was used to being in the thick of things, but she hadn’t once complained.

He was doing the right thing. He had to choose his brother this time. Nothing could keep him from saving Theo, not even Mia.

“This is awesome. You should try the little cake thingees. They’re good.” Hutch sounded slightly enthusiastic for the first time that night.