Beyond Limits (Tracers #8)(45)

She tasted so fucking good and felt so perfect he couldn’t believe he’d waited so long to do this. He should have come during his last leave. He should have just shown up at her door and forced her to look him in the eye and tell him she wasn’t interested. Because the way she was kissing him now told him the opposite. She was hot and willing and felt like maybe, just maybe, she’d been thinking about this as much as he had.

She jumped back like she’d been scalded.

“What?” he asked.

She stared at him wide-eyed as his heart pounded in his chest, and he couldn’t believe she was putting the brakes on.

More pounding, but this was behind him. He turned around as she crossed to the door. If it was Jimmy Torres, he might have to punch the guy.

But it was a woman in jeans and a T-shirt. Her jogging buddy, the FBI agent.

“Hi.” She shot a glance over Elizabeth’s shoulder and lowered her voice. “Very sorry to bug you, but we have a meeting.”

“Now?” Elizabeth sounded frustrated but not nearly as frustrated as he was.

“Gordon’s suite, five minutes. It’s important.”

She ran her hand through her hair. “What is it, do you know?”

“We recovered the phone.”





* * *





Luke pulled open the lobby door, and they swept inside with a gust of air. Hailey was laughing. Laughing. Over some dumb joke he’d made as they’d come in off the beach. And he tried not to think along his normal lines—that a woman laughing at his jokes was a good sign he might be getting laid tonight. Because he wasn’t. No way, no how. Not tonight or any night ever as far as Hailey Gardner was concerned.

She unzipped her jacket as they crossed the lobby. “Wow.” She glanced back at him over her shoulder. “It’s chilly out there. Is it always like this in the summer?”

“Not usually. Lows are typically in the sixties,” he said. Holy shit, were they actually talking about the weather? Maybe she was trying to distract him from the fact that they were once again standing near the elevators. Her hotel room was just a short ride away. And his frog sense was going haywire now, because every instinct told him she was going to invite him upstairs.

She tipped her head to the side. “You want to come up?”

God help him. Only it wasn’t the sexy, come-hither You want to come up, sailor? but more of an innocent You want to come up and hang out and, I don’t know, watch Glee reruns? It sounded totally innocent, and the look on her face seemed innocent enough, too. But there was nothing innocent about what was going through his head right now. In fact, if she knew, she’d probably be out of here in no time. He had to remind himself that this was a woman who’d been through a severe trauma recently. As in recently. As in her arm was still in a freaking cast. She had PTSD and all kinds of psychological problems to recover from. Luke wasn’t superstitious, but there wasn’t a doubt in his mind that if he went up to that hotel room right now, he’d get struck by lightning within twenty-four hours.

But damn, she was beautiful. Her cheeks were flushed from the chill, and her hair was all windblown, and little strands of it had fallen out of her ponytail. And a minute ago, she’d been laughing. That was the most amazing part.

He’d mustered the cojones to take her out to talk, like she’d wanted, only when they’d gotten to the bar, she hadn’t talked about A-bad at all. She hadn’t even talked about the job that sent her over there. Instead, they’d talked about growing up in Boston and Nashville. They’d talked about siblings and parents. They’d talked about hockey and baseball and pretty much everything in the world except what was really on her mind.

It had been surprisingly easy. The hard part was now, looking down at her, wanting to take her upstairs so badly his skin burned, but knowing that was the very last place on earth he should be. When it came to women, he had an extremely crappy track record for resisting temptation. Typically, he not only didn’t resist it, but he went after it full-throttle.

He thought about lying to her. He could make something up about early-morning PT or a visiting relative or some other lame excuse. But something about the way she looked at him made it impossible for him to lie.

“I should get home,” he said. It was the God’s honest truth.

“You sure?”

“Yeah.”

She smiled slightly, but her eyes looked sad. “Well, good night, then.”

She reached up and hugged him, gently squeezing his neck, and by the time he reacted, she’d stepped away.

“Thanks for the beer,” she said.

“Sure.”

She moved toward the elevators, and he forced himself to walk away.

“Luke?”

He turned around, and she smiled.

“Thank you for talking.”





* * *





Lauren was waiting near the vending-machine alcove on the way to Gordon’s suite.

“Where’d we recover the phone?” Elizabeth asked.

“Oh, no, no, no, no.” She caught her arm. “Not so fast. Is that the friend from Houston? Breakfast Booty Call?”

“It wasn’t a booty call,” Elizabeth said. “I told you—”

“He’s that SEAL you’ve been talking about in the meetings.”