Too Hard to Handle (Black Knights Inc. #8)(15)
He coughed. “Roger that. That sounds like Becky.”
And he supposed he shouldn’t be all that surprised his friends and teammates had jumped at the chance to send Penni his way. Until ten minutes ago, he hadn’t been up to much—to his everlasting dismay. And all those *s back home had been pushing him to start living life again, to start seeing women again. They probably thought Penni’s arrival on their doorstep was a gift sent straight from heaven. A sign that maybe all their good-natured ribbing and nudging and heart-to-hearts had finally paid off.
In his mind’s eye, it all became clear. He saw them hustling her onto a jumbo jet headed to the Southern Hemisphere before she could pack an extra bag or think twice or—
“Dan,” she whispered, laying a hand on his wrist. The muscles beneath her touch jumped, and it took everything he had not to press her back against the wall and claim her mouth in a kiss he knew would leave them both breathless. It seemed almost unnatural…this attraction he had for her. Or maybe it was the most natural thing in the world, because it was instinctive and intrinsic. “I…”
She hesitated. Was it because, despite his best efforts, a low growl sounded at the back of his throat? He played it off with a cough. Like he’d had a tickle on one of his tonsils.
“What is it, Penni?”
She opened her mouth. Then closed it again, frowning.
Her uncertainty had him relenting. “I think I know what it is,” he told her.
She blinked up at him, her soft brown eyes huge and sparkling in the setting sun shining over the mountain peaks and between the buildings. “You do?”
“It wasn’t just adrenaline and lust and…and whatever back in Kuala Lumpur, was it?”
Her mouth fell open, an invitation that was almost impossible to resist. She shook her head slowly, searching his face.
“You told me then you’d decided you had to stop letting the job be your life. That you were looking to start making real, human connections,” he continued, watching her watch him, trying to see if what he was saying was on target or if he’d missed the mark by a mile. “You and me”—he wagged a finger between them—“we made a connection, didn’t we? A real one.”
“Yes,” she hissed, a whisper of sound that held so much meaning.
“And you came all this way to see…what? If I felt it too? If I thought so too?”
She snapped her mouth closed and nodded, so much hope shining in her eyes that he didn’t dare tell her about all his doubts, all his misgivings. He was a bad bet when it came to relationships. For many, many reasons. But she’d find all that out for herself. Eventually. For now, he gave her the simple truth. “I felt it, Penni. I still feel it.”
She bit her lip and took a step toward him, her gaze focused on his mouth. And like a caged beast that’d been starved for days, he leaped at her, taking her in his arms, intent on tasting her. Then a husky voice that was not hers sounded in his ear.
“Uh. Sorry to interrupt,” Chelsea said.
A lightbulb blazed to life over Dan’s head. A bright, shiny reminder that he and Penni weren’t alone in this conversation.
Sonofabastard! How could he have forgotten about the tiny microphone hidden behind the top button on his jacket, or the earpiece lodged in his left ear? But he knew the answer to that. Two words: Penni DePaul. When she was near, nothing else seemed to matter.
With no small measure of regret or embarrassment, he stepped away from Penni, pointing at his ear and widening his eyes so she’d know Chelsea was talking to him. The delightful woman clued in to the same thing he’d just realized and turned cherry red. Her cheeks were the exact color of the 1978 Camaro he’d fixed up and cruised down Eight Mile Road when he’d been a seventeen-year-old punk who thought he was a cool mofo.
“What’s up, Chels?” he asked.
“You, I suspect,” Chelsea said, her voice full of innuendo.
“Can it,” he told her, feeling his own cheeks heat.
“What? There’s no shame. I mean, she’s a hottie. Way to go, Dan Man. Get down with yo bad self.”
Lord save me. “Get to the point, Chels,” he demanded. “You know who or what Skinhead is?”
“Bad motherfriggin’ news, that’s what. Z,” Chelsea said. “Where are you? I lost you when you turned down that alley between…” She rattled off a couple of streets whose names Dan recognized from the map of the city he’d studied.
“I followed Skinhead into what I suspect is his hotel,” came Zoelner’s response, clear as a bell. Technology. You gotta love it. Or hate it. For example, when you were trying to have a private conversation. Cock and balls. Zoelner was never going to let Dan live down the things he’d just said to Penni. “I’m sitting at a table at the downstairs restaurant waiting to see if he comes out or if Winterfield comes in,” Zoelner finished.
And even though Dan couldn’t see him, he knew Zoelner had his phone raised to his ear, pretending to talk into it. Dan couldn’t imagine running ops before the cell phone had been invented, when a guy or gal had to deliberately drop something and duck under a table in order to respond to an order or a question.
“Which hotel is it?” Chelsea asked.
Zoelner named one of the ritziest boutique joints in town.
“Stay there,” Chelsea commanded. “I’m going to land the drone and come to you. Dan, you and Penni meet us. Two couples sharing a meal will look less conspicuous than one guy loitering alone. I’ll fill you all in on what I know then.”