Lost and Found (Masters & Mercenaries: The Forgotten #2)(36)

Owen rolled his eyes and looked at his partner for this op. “What’s got you in such a bloody good mood? Last night you were all prissy and today I’m getting the Big Tag treatment from you.”

Robert shrugged. “I’ve decided to go with the flow.”

Tucker sank down to the couch. “Ariel showed up at the bar last night and they made love eyes at each other for three hours.”

Robert frowned. “We did not make love eyes. What the hell are love eyes?”

Tucker’s baby blues went wide and he looked utterly ridiculous as he put his chin in his hand and batted his lashes Robert’s way. “‘Oh, Robbie, it’s so lovely to see you again and to let you creepily stare at me when you think I’m not watching but I really am because the truth is I love you, too, but I have a degree in psychology and that means I can’t sleep with the crazy ones. Oh, cursed fate!’”

He’d said it all in a terrible impersonation of Ariel’s upper-crust British accent, but he was probably dead on when it came to everything else.

Robert’s eyes rolled. “She’s not in love with me. It would be ridiculous for her to be in love with me.” A grin tugged his lips up suddenly. “She likes me, though. I think she likes me a lot.”

“Yeah, she does,” Tucker said as Nina strode up with a mug of coffee in hand.

“You are worse than any group of teenaged girls, you know that, right?” Nina gave them a judgmental stare.

Tucker merely shrugged. “We never got to be teens so we don’t know how to do it. And Big Tag is right. Gossip is super fun.”

“Gossip can kill a career. I should know,” Nina said before winking Robert’s way. “But she does fancy you. Quite a bit. Make sure you take care of her. She’s my friend. I know how to take a man’s balls off seventeen different ways, and they all hurt.”

Tucker leaned over as she walked away. “I heard she used to be Interpol. Damon hired her after she got fired for sleeping with the wrong dude, like a dude who was spying on her. She does not like the idea of fucking for information.”

“Ah, that’s why she was so upset when she found out Owen slept with the lovely Dr. Walsh,” Robert mused.

“She’s lovely now?” He knew it was perverse, but he didn’t like Robert talking about Becca like that. Robert should see her as smart and even attractive maybe, but only in a theoretical sense. “Just yesterday she was nothing but the target.”

That slightly feline smile Robert got from time to time when he relaxed enough to be mischievous took over his face. “Well, she’s way hotter than she is in her professional pictures. And she was incredibly hot last night. She kind of glowed. I thought it was because the elevator was hot or something, but now I know the truth.”

Tucker set his mug down. “So when are you seeing her again? The dude I work for is practically in love with her. Carter. He’s kind of an asshole. He’s a prick to the female interns, but you would think Dr. Walsh walks on water when he talks about her. I can’t wait to watch him implode when Owen walks in with her.”

Before Owen could ask about Carter—because he thought that was the man she’d walked out with moments before—Robert was speaking. “The impending implosion will have to wait. It looks like Dr. Walsh has excellent instincts. She’s like the mouse that got the cheese and was smart enough to get out of the trap.”

“She liked my cheese. Why wouldn’t she want more cheese?” It didn’t make sense. She’d been happy with him the night before. He’d been able to feel it. Robert was right; she had glowed.

“She might be one of those mice who knows going back for a second bite of cheese is never the same as the first,” Robert offered with a sigh. “She also might view you as a gorgeous muscular himbo, and she got what she wanted from you and now she’s going to go find someone with like five degrees to settle down with.”

It was what he’d feared. She was smart, genius-level smart, with a prestigious job, and he was a bodyguard who hadn’t exactly showed off his intellectualism with her. He’d talked about taking bullets and being a solider.

Neither of which he actually remembered.

It hit him hard, the scent of sweat and the rat-a-tat sound of gunfire all around him. For the merest second he could feel heat on his face and he’d known, oh, he’d known he wasn’t going to make it.

“Owen?” All amusement had fled Robert’s expression now. “Are you all right?”

He hadn’t talked to any of them about the strange flashes he’d started getting. But then he didn’t talk to them about much anyway. It wasn’t that they weren’t his mates, but he wasn’t sure how much right he had to be among them. They’d all been victims through no fault of their own. But he…

“I’m fine.” He shook it off. There was no need to worry anyone. He was fairly certain they all got a flash from time to time.

God, he wished he could get a flash of his mum, of his sister. He wanted even the merest hint of what it had meant to love them so he could make sense of the wrong he’d done in their name.

“You didn’t look fine,” Tucker said. “Are you feeling all right? Is it physical or is it the pure horror of actually having a woman blow you off? That’s not the same as blowing you. It’s kind of…”