Barefoot with a Stranger (Barefoot Bay Undercover #2)(31)

“Who’s following you?” he demanded.

Chessie almost laughed. “Damn, you’re good.”

“Good enough to hear you guys nattering up with the housekeeper and then whispering like a couple of teenage girls ten feet from where I was. And good enough to laugh my ass off at you two thinking I’m crying when I’m doing my last set of dead lifts.” He jerked around to Mal, who was getting to his feet. “Good enough to know you’re hiding something very important from me.”

Chessie could have kicked herself. Of course he hadn’t been crying. This was Gabe.

“Who the f*ckity f*ck is following you, Harris?” he demanded.

Mal stared at him, then reached into his pocket and pulled out the bug, turning it over in his palm. “I don’t know, but Chessie found this.”

Gabe took it, frowning. “Where was it, and why the hell weren’t you going to tell me?” Gabe demanded.


Chessie took a shallow inhale, the sun beating down almost as furiously as Gabe’s relentless fury. Which was only going to get worse. “It was in a hotel room in Atlanta.”

“Whose?”

“Mine,” Mal said.

“Then how did she…” He let out a breath. “Fuck.”

Neither Mal nor Chessie spoke, letting Gabe’s razor-sharp brain put the puzzle pieces together and come up with a picture of how he’d kill them both.

“I planned to help you find another way to handle your mission without involving Chessie,” Mal finally said.

“Why?” Gabe asked. “Conflict of interest?”

Mal didn’t respond for a second, and Chessie waited for the expected answer. I thought you’d kill me. “I thought I’d somehow let you down. Even unknowingly. And I never want to do that.”

Chessie’s heart slipped a little, hearing it wasn’t Gabe’s wrath he was afraid of, but something that seemed more honorable.

Gabe turned away, no sign of any anguish in his expression, just that look of a raw, ingrained protective streak that had smothered Chessie for most of her life. And protected her, she admitted. But right now? It smothered. Right now, she wanted to breathe and not be watched or judged or saved from her own mistakes.

She took a step forward. “Gabe, listen to me.”

“I don’t want to hear a word you have to say.”

“Well, you’re going to anyway,” she fired back, scooping up a heaping dose of righteous indignation. “I’m thirty years old, damn it, and a grown woman whether you like it or not.” When he didn’t reply, she forced herself into his averted gaze. “I met a guy I had no idea you knew. He was hot and nice and funny, and we were stranded in a hotel overnight.”

Gabe blinked at her, stunned into uncharacteristic speechlessness.

“Look, we talked and had a beer and…” She glanced at Mal. “The attraction was mutual,” she continued. “We ended up in his room. I went there on my own, to be honest. I liked him and he liked me and…” She stopped long enough to take a breath, barely aware that her pulse was slamming now, her chest tight, and that Mal had come to stand next to her. That silent support egged her on. “And guess what, Gabe? It was great. Best sex of my life.”

Finally Gabe held up his hand. “TM-f*cking-I, Chess.”

“Well, I’m sorry, but you have to stop treating me like I’m the teenager you left at home when you went off to save the world. This happened. Get over it. Nothing has changed because of it.” Maybe she’d slipped off her Little Sister Pedestal, but that had to happen sometime. “And nothing will change because of it.”

“Are you kidding?” Gabe thrust the listening device in her face. “This changes everything.”

“Then it’s a damn good thing she found it,” Mal said.

“We didn’t reveal anything,” she added. “We’ve been over our conversation.”

“Replayed the whole thing for old time’s sake, did you?” Gabe snarled the question, his look far darker than any obscenity-laden diatribe he could fling at them. Instead, he turned to Mal. “What the hell were you thinking?”

Mal closed his eyes. “I thought she was…with the agency,” he said.

He did? Chessie’s heart stumbled at the admission, but Gabe’s eyes sparked with raw fury. “And you threw her on her back and plowed her to make sure?”

Mal was in his face in a second. “Shut the f*ck up.”

Gabe brushed him off, his nostrils finally flaring with the anger Chessie expected. “You’re defending her?”

“Hell yes, I am. She did nothing wrong, and I—”

“Took one for the team.”

Mal grabbed Gabe’s T-shirt collar so fast, Chessie sucked in a shocked breath. “Not another word, Rossi.” He had Gabe by an inch in height and more trips to a real gym. “Not one more word about your sister and not one more idiotic middle-school comment about what we did.”

Gabe stared at him, his laser-blue eyes slicing through Mal. “What kind of a bottom-feeder screws the woman he thinks might be following him?”

Good question. Chessie could feel herself backing away, this news pressing hotter and harder than the sunshine. He’d thought she was a spy and—