Hot Secrets (Tall, Dark & Deadly #1)(21)

Royce’s hand slid to her leg under the table, and her gaze met his. Her chest tightened at the understanding in his expression, at the awareness that somehow, she’d let emotion seep into her reply to Shannon in a way she normally would not, and he’d noticed. The sincere concern she saw in his eyes touched her, while the contrast it held to the insincerity of her father’s gift clawed at her.

“Well it’s spectacular,” Shannon said wistfully and glanced at Royce. “Give me one of those as a gift and we’ll talk about me working at Walker Security.”

Royce chuckled. “None of those in my arsenal, but I have a desk and sturdy chair with your name all over them.”

She snorted. “You really don’t know the way to a girl’s gun, I can promise you that.”

A waitress appeared with a bottle of wine. “From John,” the woman said, and set two glasses in front of Royce and Lauren.

“I’ll leave you two to enjoy,” Shannon said and smiled at Lauren. “Nice to meet you, Lauren. Maybe next time we can chat more.”

A few minutes later, Lauren and Royce sipped a rich, sweet red wine, each having ordered a pasta dish. “What was all that about Shannon’s gun and your desk and chair?” Lauren asked.

“The restaurant is really John’s baby. Shannon’s an FBI agent I used to work with, and a damn good one, at that. We’d be lucky to get her for Walker Security. And it would be a safer job for her too, which is why John wants her to leave the agency. I can control what jobs she gets and watch her back. And I can make sure the job doesn’t destroy her family. The Agency won’t do that.”

“Do you ever regret leaving the Agency?” she asked, sipping her wine.

“Not once in two years,” he said, but she didn’t miss the sudden flex of his jaw muscle or the tightness of his voice. “I had some bad stuff go down at the Agency and by the time it passed, I was one foot out the door.” He sighed and tapped his fingers on the table, as if drumming out tension. “Right about the time I was contemplating leaving the agency, Blake lost his fiancée in an undercover ATF mission. He was ready to go vigilante and there’s no good in that. I needed something to distract him, a way to keep him under thumb, and Walker Security was born. Truth be told, I suspect Blake’s walk through hell was the real reason Luke went civilian. Otherwise, I think he would have been a career Navy, like our father was career Army.”

“Did they ever catch the person who killed Blake’s fiancée?”

“No,” he said. “That particular Mexican drug cartel leader is still alive and well, and deep underground, but not ever out of Blake’s mind. If he finds him, he’ll go after him. I never kid myself about that.”

She studied him a moment. “And you and Luke will be there with him.”

He gave a sharp nod. “Making sure he doesn’t end up dead or in a jail cell for taking the guy out.”

Heaviness settled in her chest. “And your father?”

“What a lifetime of combat couldn’t do, cancer did. We buried him three Christmases ago. My mother lives in Jersey and is thrilled to have her boys nearby. She was yet another reason Walker Security made sense.”

“I was a teenager when breast cancer took my mother,” she said, emotion thickening her voice. “Seventeen when my father married Sharon.”

He didn’t say he was sorry or ‘oh how horrible’ like most people and she knew why. He knew it didn’t help; he knew from experience that “I’m sorry’ sometimes managed to open a raw nerve. “And Sharon has been like the Energizer Bunny. She just keeps on staying.”

She smiled. “The evil Energizer Bunny.”

John appeared at the table with a cordless phone in his hand. “There’s a call for Lauren.” Her gaze went to Royce’s, her stomach suddenly rejecting the few bites of bread and the wine she’d just enjoyed. “No one knows I’m here. I didn’t even know where we were going before we got here.”

John arched a brow and covered the receiver. “Muffled voice, and car horns in the background. Sounds like a payphone to me.”

She sighed. “It’s probably a reporter.” She reached for the phone. “They’ll just keep calling if I don’t take it.”

John handed her the receiver and she immediately put it to her ear. “Hello, this is Lauren.”

The sound of a clock ticking echoed through the line for a mere few seconds, before a dial tone replaced it, and Lauren felt a chill race down her spine. Her hand began to tremble with the understanding that these feelings she’d been having of being watched weren’t her imagination, nor were the calls pranks. Which meant someone had watched her tonight, followed her to Eden.

Royce reached for the phone, and Lauren let him take it from her hand, barely aware of him listening to the dial tone or disposing of it, until his hand slid to her face. “Tell me what just happened.”

She wet her lips. “The clo… ” She swallowed the dryness in her throat, her hand going to his wrist. “Ticking clock.”

He studied her several long seconds, then pressed his forehead to hers. “You’re okay. We’ll take care of this. I’ll take care of it.” He leaned back and looked at her, trailing his fingers down her cheek. “Give me a second.” He pulled his phone from his pocket and dialed, then snagged the cordless and looked through the call log.