Too Hard to Handle (Black Knights Inc. #8)(26)
What the hell, he figured. Nothing ventured, nothing gained.
“Do you still want to help us?” And even though he didn’t say it, they all knew he was really asking if she still wanted to go upstairs and discuss the reasons why she’d come all the way to Cusco to talk to him.
She lifted that cute, kissable chin of hers, and with her dark eyes still searching his, she hesitantly asked, “Do you still want my help?”
Once again, and despite the fact that it made him sound a bit desperate, he gave her God’s honest truth. “I do.”
Chapter Six
Palacio Mario Hotel, Suite 402
Friday, 8:02 p.m.
She was a prize ass.
Like, seriously. Take her to the county fair, pin a blue ribbon on her, and name her Best in Show. Because she could not think of a worse way to respond to someone admitting they had a drinking problem than with a brilliant muttering of Oh…oh well.
I mean, who in God’s name does that?
Penni answered her own question with, Me, apparently. Prize Ass Penelope Ann DePaul.
But she’d been so…shocked, she guessed was the word. The Dan Currington she knew was not only confident and sexy as hell, but also the most self-controlled, steadfast, and disciplined man she’d ever worked with. To find out he struggled with sobriety stunned her, quite frankly. Stunned her straight into idiocy apparently. Because if her brilliant muttering of Oh…oh well hadn’t been bad enough, her extreme embarrassment over that far-less-than-stellar response had caused her to act all stilted and weird during dinner. So much so she wasn’t entirely sure she wasn’t the one who’d taken that awkward pill Chelsea spoke of.
And to make matters worse—oh yes, they got worse—the whole time she’d been checking into the room next to Kozlov’s, the whole time she’d ridden the elevator up to the fourth floor, the whole time she’d fumbled with the key in the door, Dan had stood silently beside her.
Which wasn’t the worse part.
The worse part was the way he’d stood silently beside her. Close but not too close. Maintaining his distance instead of crowding her like he usually did, like he was a magnet and she was metal and it took everything in him not to slam into her until there was nothing left between them but a paper-thin sliver of electrically charged air.
You bet your ass she’d felt that distance the way one might feel the loss of a limb. Like something she depended on had suddenly been stripped from her, leaving her raw, shocked, and completely off balance.
She was still feeling that distance as she sat on the bed in the lavishly appointed suite with its colorful Incan-inspired textiles, watching Dan pull out all manner of things from his backpack. But for the life of her, she didn’t know how to bridge the gap.
How about you jump his bones? This time the voice in her head was definitely her own. Thank God! She couldn’t imagine her father offering her that advice.
And sure, if she wrestled Dan onto the big four-poster bed and had her way with him, that might make up for her prized assedness. But she hadn’t traveled all the way to the Southern Hemisphere to knock boots with him. Or at least she hadn’t traveled all the way to the Southern Hemisphere just to knock boots with him. She’d come here to talk to him about…so many things. Some of which he’d already guessed, but some of which he hadn’t.
Then Kozlov had happened. And dinner had happened. And the plan for her to check into the suite had happened. And now she found herself in the midst of a very important mission, which meant knocking boots or taking the time to sit down and have a good ol’ fashioned heart-to-heart were both pretty much out of the question.
“Huh,” she said, watching him pull a bug detector from his backpack. He set the instrument to vibrate instead of beep. Can’t have our neighbor overhearing our little search, now can we? “We used that same model in…” She caught herself before she said the Secret Service. “…my job,” she finished lamely.
And lame responses seem to be my stock in trade today, don’t you know? Geez!
“That’s because it’s the best model out there,” he said. His matter-of-fact tone seemed to echo across the gulf that had formed between them.
Checking a hotel room for listening devices was the first thing anyone working in the wide world of espionage did, be they Secret Service agents, tattooed motorcycle mechanics/clandestine operators, or others. Sort of like the first thing people in their line of work did upon clandestinely appropriating a vehicle was to disable the interior light that comes on when the door opens.
Tricks of the trade. Learned through trial and life-ending error. She shuddered.
Dan ran the bug detector all around the room, taking special care with the wall that connected their suite to Kozlov’s. He paused here and there, flattening his hand against the plaster. And near the corner, he leaned in to put his ear to the wall.
Penni almost quipped, When Chelsea and Zoelner talked about getting ears inside Kozlov’s room, I think they meant something a little more high-tech. Har-har. The joke fell so flat inside her own head that she didn’t dare send it out into the world for fear of the resounding splat it would make.
Then Dan bent to press his hand to the floorboard and the move caused his sweater to pull up while his Levis pulled down. The gap created was enough to give her a peek at the tan muscles in his lower back. Enough for her to see the waistband on his black boxer briefs. Enough to have her remembering another hotel room in another foreign city and the way he’d held her, kissed her, touched her…