impatiently, taking the earpiece. “I’ve heard the spiel before. I’m not a special snowflake, Archer. If I was, I wouldn’t be here—you wouldn’t allow it.”
All true. But he could no more curb his insane need to keep her protected and safe than he could stop breathing. It’d always been like that for him with her.
She put in the earpiece and give him a little nod.
“Okay,” he said. “So—”
“I’ve read the file you emailed me,” she interrupted. “I’m going in as Candy Cunningham, the girl Chuck swiped for and thinks is tonight’s hookup. I’m to get in, ID him, hold his attention until you guys do your thing with the laptop that’s hopefully in his briefcase, and then get out.”
“And get out fast, Elle. I don’t want him to know you’re—”
“Not Candy,” she said. “I think I know what I’m doing by now. You ready to do this or do you need to freshen up your lipstick?”
Since she was now wired for sound and so was Archer, he heard the snickers and snorts from his men in his ear. He didn’t bother to respond. He could and did demand their respect. But he was under no such illusions when it came to controlling Elle.
They took the elevator in silence. Elle stared at the doors. Archer stared at Elle. He had no idea how the dress was containing her full breasts with that low, plunging vee. Every move she made, they strained to escape.
What felt like a year later, the elevator doors finally opened. He caught Elle’s hand and waited until she met his gaze. “You’ve got fifteen minutes to gain his attention or walk out,” he said. “After that we go to Plan B.”
“Which is?”
“A plan that doesn’t involve you.”
“In that dress, she’s only going to need one minute,” Joe said in Archer’s ear from his vantage point in the courtyard.
“I’d put money down on fifteen seconds,” Reyes said.
“Shut it,” Archer said.
Radio silence followed this directive.
Elle snorted and walked off, her heels clicking over the cobblestones as she passed the fountain in the center of the courtyard and entered the pub.
Archer took a moment to shake it off—around her he had to do that a helluva lot—and followed. He was going in as a patron and would be guarding her sexy ass.
O’Riley’s was one-half bar, one-half seated dining. The walls were dark wood that gave an old-world feel to the place. Brass lanterns hung from the rafters and rustic baseboards finished the look that said sit your tired ass down, order good food and spirits, and be merry.
Catching sight of Elle heading toward the bar wasn’t difficult, people parted like the Red Sea for her, making room. She settled herself on a barstool right next to Chuck Smithson and nodded to the bartender.
Finn.
“Nonalcoholic,” Archer murmured.
Finn, also wired, nodded even though they’d already gone through all this. On the job there was never any alcohol allowed.
Elle waited for her drink and then took a sip, all without looking at their guy.
Chuck sat on the stool next to her. He was five foot four, wiry, and with his wrinkled academic-looking clothes and thick black-rimmed glasses he was either a hipster wannabe or making a play for imitating a slightly grown-up Harry Potter. His feet didn’t touch the floor, instead they were hooked into a rung of the barstool, his messenger bag settled between his boots. He’d swiveled to watch, actually stare, at Elle, and when she slowly turned as if eyeing the room, he straightened, pushed his glasses higher on the bridge of his nose and sent her a hopeful smile.
She gave him one in return, a sugary sweet smile that Archer sure as hell had never seen aimed his way before and which had Chuck nearly falling off his stool.
“Man, she’s something,” Joe whispered in their ears.
“You’re drooling,” Max said.
“We’re all drooling,” Lucas said. “She’s a walking boner.”
“Silence,” Archer ordered quietly and they all shut the hell up.
Still looking sweet and somehow demure despite the sexy-as-hell getup, Elle leaned into Chuck. Archer watched closely, fascinated because he knew she could pick a pocket in a few seconds flat right in front of his eyes and he wouldn’t even see it.
“Chuck?” Elle whispered.
Her pic had been on her bio but the guy swallowed hard and nodded, his eyes lit like he’d just discovered it was Christmas morning. “Candy?”
Elle bit her lower lip, managing to look a little shy. “Would you mind showing me your ID?” she asked. “You wouldn’t believe the number of creepers I have to weed through.”
“I bet,” Chuck said sympathetically. “It’s because you’re so beautiful.”
This guy was eating out of the palm of her hand. She wasn’t even going to have to use her skills. Archer found himself smiling at her cleverness and shaking his head in awe. He loved watching her in action, which he didn’t get to see often.
She hadn’t made a secret of the fact that she didn’t like him all that much. Not that he blamed her. She associated him with a very bad part of her past, plus he knew she thought he was too bossy and a control freak—both of which happened to be true.
But it took one to know one.
Chuck hopped of his stool and pulled a wallet from his back pocket.
Elle, smart enough to kick off her high heels to cut her own height down before standing up too, gathered her shoes by the strap, hanging them off a finger. She then leaned into Chuck to look at his ID, letting her hair fall into his face and, Archer was pretty sure, also letting her breast brush against the guy’s arm.
Chuck swallowed hard, blinking when Elle lifted her beaming face to his. “Nice to meet you, Chuck Smithson,” she said.
“ID confirmation,” Max said into his comms from where he sat at the bar two spots over, appearing to be lost in the basketball game on the TV behind the bar. “I’m in place to move in.”
Now all Elle had to do was keep Chuck distracted from his messenger bag while he did.
“Can we dance?” Elle asked, shy. Timid.
Archer didn’t have a type when it came to women. He liked them in all shapes and sizes and in a wide variety of personalities. But shy and timid had never done much for him.
Until right that minute. Even knowing it was a damn act, knowing that Elle didn’t have a shy or timid bone in her body, he wanted to go over there, haul her in tight, and comfort her. It was such a shocking urge he nearly missed what came next.
“Uh.” Chuck blinked up at Elle, still several inches shorter than she. “I’m not much of a dancer—”
“Oh, no worries,” she said sweetly, “everyone’s got a dancer deep inside him.”
“But—”
“Please?” she asked softly, batting those baby blues.
Chuck downed his drink. “For liquid courage,” he said, gesturing to Finn for another.
“Make it a double,” Archer instructed Finn.
“I’ll lead,” Elle promised Chuck as he tossed back the second drink. Winding an arm in one of his, she pulled him away from the bar.
“But my stuff . . .” Twisting back, he eyed his messenger bag on the floor.
“It’s safe here.” Elle looked at Finn behind the bar. “Right?”
“Absolutely,” Finn said.
“But—”
But nothing. The poor dumb fucker never knew what hit him. As Elle led him by the balls to the dance floor, keeping Chuck’s back to the bar, Joe moved in, smoothly grabbed the briefcase, and vanished.
On the small, crowded dance floor, Elle began to move, shimmying that body of hers, dazzling Chuck—and every other man in the place—into an openmouthed stupor.
Not Archer. No, he was in heart failure because if she wasn’t careful she was going to come right out of that dress. “Joe, report,” he said, rubbing his left eye, which had started to twitch.
“We’re an inch from a nipple-gate situation,” Max said in a reverent, hopeful wh
isper.
Archer made a mental note to kill him later. “Joe.”
“Need three more minutes.”
Shit. The seconds crawled by, while on the dance floor Chuck had moved up against Elle and was grinning ear to ear as he tried to keep up with her.
As if anyone could.
“Done,” Joe finally said, and Archer breathed for the first time in the longest three minutes of his life.
“Copied the hard drive,” Joe said, and then in the next beat Archer watched as he smoothly replaced the messenger bag beneath Chuck’s barstool.
Not two seconds later Chuck turned from the dance floor, his gaze seeking and finding his messenger bag, still under his barstool.
“All done, boss,” Joe said. “Oh and the guy’s got a handful of different IDs on him as well as the laptop. Scanned everything.”
Score. “Elle,” Archer said. “Make your exit.”
The music was loud, so was the pub. People were having a great time. And apparently Chuck was one of them because his liquid courage had clearly kicked in. Some confidence too because he kept trying to get his hands all over Elle as they moved together to the beat.
“You’re so pretty!” Chuck yelled up to Elle’s face.
She smiled.
“No, I mean like . . . porn pretty!” He was still yelling. “I’m kind of a connoisseur, so I’d know! Have you ever thought about it? You’d make millions!” He grinned. “Usually when I get drunk, I talk loud, like really loud! But I’m not doing that now because you don’t even look scared!”
“You ever miss being a cop in moments like this?” Max asked conversationally in Archer’s ear. “Cuz then you could go arrest that fucker.”
No, Archer didn’t miss being a cop. As for what he did miss from that old life—his dad for one, no matter how hard-assed the guy had been—he’d shoved it deep and moved on. The real question was why the hell was Elle still dancing? He’d given her orders to move out. Making his way through the crowd, he hit the dance floor and tapped Chuck on the shoulder.
The guy turned and looked up, up, up into Archer’s face. “Erm—” he squeaked out. With a gulp, he relinquished his hold on Elle like she was a hot potato and scampered off like a rat into the night. After stopping for his messenger bag, of course.
Elle bent to slip back into her heels.
Apparently she needed the armor with Archer. Slipping an arm around her waist to give her the support she needed to buckle herself into the FMPs, he waited until she straightened then said, “What the fuck was that?”
“Me doing my job,” she said in a duh voice.
“Since when is dirty dancing with a felon your job?”
She narrowed her fierce eyes. “You told me to get close to him. You told me to ID him and then keep him distracted, whatever it takes.”
“Okay, no,” he said. “I absolutely did not say whatever it takes.”
She glared up at him.
“What?” he asked.
“Nothing.” Her voice was ice.
“Oh boy,” Joe muttered in Archer’s ear. “When a woman says ‘nothing’ in that tone, it most definitely means something and you should be wearing a cup to finish that conversation. Just sayin’.”
Archer put a finger to his eye before it twitched right out of his head. “I told you to make your exit,” he said to Elle with what he thought was remarkable calm while ignoring Joe, who was a dead man walking anyway. “When I tell you something, Elle, I expect you to listen.”
He heard a collective sucking in of air through his comms and ignored that too.
“Wow,” Elle finally said.
“Okay,” Max piped up. “I have a girlfriend now so I know this one. When Rory says ‘wow’ like that, it’s not a compliment. It means she’s thinking long and hard on how and when I’ll pay for my stupidity.”
“Agreed,” Joe said. “She’s simply expressing amazement that a man can be such an idiot. Abort mission, boss. I repeat. Abort. Mission.”
Shit. Archer ripped out his earpiece and then did the same to Elle’s, stuffing both in his pocket.
She shrugged and walked away, leaving him on the dance floor. Watching her go, an odd feeling cranked over in his chest. Irritation, he decided. Frustration. The woman got to him like no one else.
And yet he’d kept tabs on her, watching her back. He couldn’t explain why, but apparently old habits died hard.
Did she ever think about that night? She’d never made a single reference to it, not once. And he’d never brought it up, not wanting to bring her back to a bad place.
When he walked off the dance floor and headed toward the bar, she was there, right there, picking up the wrap she’d left. Something fell from it and hit the floor.
They both crouched low at the same time but Archer beat her to it. When he realized what he held, he lifted his head and stared at her in shock.
It was the small pocket knife he’d given her all those years ago.
Which meant she did think about that night.
Chapter 3
#TrainWreck
Elle made a move to snatch the knife from Archer’s fingers but the bastard held firm. She started a tug-of-war with him before remembering that she no longer let anyone see her sweat and forced herself to go still.
Not that Archer let go. “You still have it,” he said, a whisper of surprise in his voice.
The equivalent of a full-on double take from the man who was all but impossible to shock.
And yes, of course she still had the knife. Did he really think she wouldn’t? She didn’t blush very often but she felt heat rush to her face now. Regret, partly.
Mostly full-blown mortification.
She’d very carefully taught herself to be strong and confident and to never look back.
Ever.
Sentimentality didn’t have a place in her life. Or so she told herself. So why then had she been carrying the small pocket knife Archer had given her the night he’d saved her all those years ago? Especially since the thought of how she’d tried to repay him—and God, the humility of how she’d actually offered him the only thing she’d had, that being her body, which he’d turned down flat—still made her face flame. The worst part had been when he’d vanished like it’d been nothing to him, when to her it’d been everything.
She might not know why he’d done what he had but she still wasn’t leaving here without that knife. It was a badge. A reminder of who she’d been and who she was now.
Neither of them had moved. Around them the night life in the pub went on. Laughter, conversations, more dancing . . . all oblivious to this tight, little cocoon of just the two of them crouched in front of the bar. They might as well have been completely alone for all the attention anyone paid them.
Balanced with apparent ease on the balls of his feet, Archer leaned in even closer if that was possible, close enough that his knees touched hers. Close enough that she could see every single gold spec in his hazel eyes. Every single black-as-ink eyelash framing those eyes. He was hours past a five o’clock shadow and a muscle ticked in his square jaw.
A rare tell from a man who could be a stone when he wanted.
The rest of him was as big and bad and intimidating as ever. His large body blocked out everything behind him and although he could be terrifyingly scary when he wanted to be, he never was with her. With her he was careful. Cautious.