Hell for Leather (Black Knights Inc. #6)(45)
Or had she been the one to start it?
Honest to God, he couldn’t remember. His recollection surrounding how his lips initially met hers was a little fuzzy. In fact, his thoughts seemed to be flitting around his head like the honeybees used to skim around the meadow flowers on the east pasture back at the Lazy M. But one thing he was sure of was that an unpleasant sense of…he supposed he’d label it doom had settled in the center of his chest.
He felt as much as saw Delilah hop down from the dresser. And when she skirted around him, his eyes darted down to her jean-clad ass and that little roll of delectable flesh at the tops of her thighs just below the curve of her butt. The sight nearly had him going cross-eyed. Not to mention the fact that the exercise did nothing to dissuade Little Mac who was still beating persistently against his zipper.
But then, like a lightning strike from the clear blue, Mac remembered why he should never have let things get so far out of hand. Why he should never have allowed himself to kiss her. And why he should be falling at Ozzie’s feet and thanking the guy for barging in when he did.
Jolene! Jolene, come back!
And, goddamnit! Where was that recollection ten minutes ago when he needed it? The night when that broken voice yelled out in the dark, and the long string of days that had followed it when he’d mourned so much he thought he’d die? The one time, the one time, he could’ve really used the memory as a good ol’-fashioned kick-in-the-pants, it’d abandoned him.
“I, uh.” Ozzie tugged at his ear, still grinning and glancing back and forth between Mac and Delilah. “I wanted to tell you to come downstairs. Because I think Zoelner’s about to kill the adorable little CIA agent who just arrived on our doorstep.”
Huh? CIA agent? Well that was just what the doctor ordered, the perfect prescription to jerk Mac from his troubling thoughts.
The CIA? What the hell do they want?
Chapter Eleven
Life is a serious shit sandwich sometimes…
That was the thought that flitted through Dagan Zoelner’s brain when Chelsea Duvall cocked her head and, with one small finger, pushed her glasses up the length of her nose. Because imagine his surprise when, after escaping downstairs, he dialed her number only to hear the sweet sound of a Dolly Parton ringtone—Chelsea’s favorite and don’t get him started on that—emanating from just beyond the front door. Without a second thought, he’d wrenched open the ruined slab of oak, only to immediately start arguing with her as if it’d been mere moments since they’d last seen each other instead of a handful of years.
And, to top it all off—add the olive to the shit sandwich, if you will—how was it possible to be unaccountably pissed and unfathomably delighted all at the same time? The state should be a biological impossibility. Unfortunately for him, it wasn’t. Because, despite everything, she looked good. And it was good to see her. Even if her inauspicious arrival set his internal gyroscope twitching.
Taking in the black sedan parked out by the curb, an obvious government issue job, he narrowed his eyes and demanded, “How the hell did you find us?”
She rolled her eyes. “Seriously? You do remember who I work for, right?”
Yes. He remembered. Which made it worse. She accurately read his expression, because the next words out of her mouth were, “Come on, Z.” That low, rusty voice of hers was so familiar it almost felt like a part of him. “I’m just here to help.”
Uh-huh. Sure. “You’ll excuse me if I call bullshit,” he said, crossing his arms, staring down at her as she continued to stand on the threshold of Sander’s house.
The early morning light filtered into the decrepit old neighborhood and glinted off her pixie-cut black hair and the warmth of her café au lait–colored skin until it glowed around her like a halo. He wouldn’t have been surprised if the heavens opened up with a chorus of angels singing awwwwww. Of course, in reality her sudden appearance should’ve been accompanied by the dum, dum, dummmm sound effect of a thickening plot. Because, baby, her being here meant the plot had definitely thickened.
“Why is it,” she asked, narrowing her copper-colored eyes and mirroring his stance, crossing her arms over her plain white, button-down shirt, the strap of a big, black carryall bag tightening against her shoulder, “that special operations and federal agencies tend to attract a certain kind of man?”
Annnnddddd, here we go. Let me put on my boxing gloves. Because no matter what else had changed between them in the years since he’d left The Company, it appeared their tendency toward, not to mention love of, verbal sparring hadn’t diminished.
“I’ll play,” he said, vaguely aware that Ozzie, Mac, and Delilah were tromping down the stairs behind him. “What kind of man is that?”
“A dog. A stubborn, unruly dog that tries to bite the hand reaching out to feed him.”
“Nice.” He nodded, marking up one point in her favor on his mental scoreboard. “So then what kind of women do those fields attract, Miss CIA Agent?”
She grinned. The dimples in her cheeks winking at him. “Why, bitches, of course.” She uncrossed her arms to give him a shove. When he stumbled back into the house, she followed him inside, allowing the front door to slam behind her. “It’s all in the tail-wagging family.”
And point number two for the lovely Agent Duvall…