Too Hard to Handle (Black Knights Inc. #8)(8)

Dan glanced over at his teammate only to discover that the f*ckhead was checking Penni out, letting his eyes drift down her lean, delicately curved frame. Even dressed in jeans, boots, and an open parka—the highs in Cusco hovered around seventy degrees Fahrenheit, but the lows in October dipped close to freezing—she was obviously a long, tall glass of water, just as Ozzie had once described her. It wasn’t jealousy Dan felt as he watched Zoelner drink her in. Because jealousy would be ridiculous; he had no claim over her. But it sure as shit was something. A close cousin to jealousy maybe. One that prompted him to revert to his middle-school self and say, “Take a picture, asswipe. It’ll last longer.”

“And that’s what I wanted to hear!” Chelsea crowed. “The drone is on its way!”





Chapter Two


“I gotta admit, I imagined I’d see some crazy shit in Cusco.” A deep voice with a familiar habit of smashing two words together sounded over Penni’s shoulder. It vibrated through her, liquefying her bones from the marrow out. And her heart decided to go ahead and switch places with her stomach. “But the craziest thing I’ve seen so far is you.”

Sonofa… Her bones might have turned to liquid, but her muscles hardened to stone, jerking her shoulders up around her ears. She hadn’t been prepared to see him. Not yet. Not for a couple more hours, when she planned to knock on his door and invite him out to dinner so she could ply him with wine and food before she laid her heart open and—

“What the ever-lovin’ f*ck-all are you doing down here, Agent DePaul?”

Agent DePaul? Surely after everything they’d been through, they were, at the very least, on a first-name basis. Or maybe, just as she’d feared, she’d read more into their time together than she should have. And that did not bode well for the reason she’d come…

She swung around, preparing herself for the sudden impact of his eyes. Yep. Just as she remembered, they were the exact color of the climbing vines that grew up the back of her childhood home on Hancock Street. She was also ready for the punch of his handsome face—his square jaw seemed perpetually dusted by light-brown beard stubble, and his broad forehead tended to support a whorl or two of his wavy, sand-colored hair. What she wasn’t prepared for was his expression. To put it mildly, it was about as welcoming as a roadkill dinner.

In response, her heart—indecisive organ that it was—decided to change places with her toes.

“Well, hello to you too, Dan,” she said, congratulating herself for pulling off nonchalant, considering she was dealing with liquid bones, stonelike muscles, and organs that refused to stay in their proper places.

“Cut the bullshit, Agent DePaul,” he growled. Coming out of any other man, that low, grumbling sound would’ve seemed ridiculous. Coming out of him? Well, it sort of fit. Because even back before she knew what he really was, she’d noticed the way danger seemed to drift around him like smoke above dry ice.

He looked around as if he expected someone to be with her. “I don’t believe in coincidences,” he said…er, growled. He really was very growly. “I’m here. You’re here. And if the Secret Service thinks it has a dog in this pony show ’cause of what went down in Malaysia, then I’ve got news for you, honey.”

Honey? Honey? Oh, no he di-int! “Skirt” she could handle. “Broad” was okay too. But “honey”? Well, not when it was said in that tone! She hoisted her purse higher on her shoulder and thought, for a whole two seconds, how satisfying it would be to smash her ice-cream cone over his head.

In the end, she couldn’t make herself do it. Damn my mad love for chocolate double scoops!

“It took us turning some serious screws before the CIA dipshits would agree to pull back and let me and Zoelner handle this on our own. If you think I’m gonna let you guys come in here and pick up where they left off, loitering around every corner, making Winterfield afraid to poke his head out of his hole, you’ve got another think coming. And, just so you know, I’m not an idiot. For the last two days I’ve known someone was watching us and—”

“Dan?” she interrupted, making sure her voice was syrupy sweet despite the fact she was hard-pressed not to smack him upside his wonderful, ridiculously handsome head. This was not going at all according to plan.

“Hmm?”

“How’s about you shut your piehole.” When she got worked up, the Brooklynese really came out in her. “Because I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about. And I haven’t been here two days. I just got in two hours ago.” And then pieces of what he said sank in. “Wait…you’re here to apprehend Winterfield? Winterfield’s in Cusco?”

Just the mention of the man who was ultimately behind the deaths of her colleagues made her blood run with gunpowder and her heart beat to the rhythm of a death march.

“We think so,” Dan said. “But we’ve thought he was a lotta places before, only to find out he wasn’t, Agent DePaul.”

Agent DePaul. Agent DePaul. If he Agent DePauled her one more time… “I’m not Agent DePaul anymore,” she informed him. “So you can drop the formalities. I’m just plain Penni now.”

“Huh?” His chin jerked back like she had smacked him upside the head. She supposed there was some satisfaction there.