She laughed. “They’re great guys, honestly. How lucky you are to have such a character for a grandfather.”
“What are your grandfathers like?”
She took another sip, delaying the response, then thought of another. “Do you think a mural of the plane with the pinup girl would be appropriate for kids?”
“Were you born in Miami?” he asked.
Her eyes shuttered closed. “You won’t quit, will you?”
“Never. They called me Tenacious Tuck in the Coast Guard, and any of my family or friends will tell you the word quitting is not in my dictionary.” He looked down for a moment, as if a thought had taken hold, then took a slug of beer.
“I noticed your impatience.”
“It’s not impatience, it’s just focus. Determination. Tenacity, yes.”
“When did you discover that?” she asked, happy he’d just handed her a subject change.
He gave a hearty laugh. “Your ability to deflect a personal question is absolutely masterful.”
“Thank you.” She added a smile, which was easy while sitting this close to him and hearing him laugh. “When did you discover you were Tenacious Tuck?”
“Okay, okay. You win. Let’s see.” He dropped his head back, maybe not aware that his fingers had settled on her hair, very lightly threading it as he thought. But Jane was aware. Far too aware of the tiny sparks of attraction and tension flicking all over her body. Very aware that they were close, touching, and sharing secrets.
All too aware of how good that felt.
“I was the oldest, you know,” he said.
“You’re a twin.”
“Born first by four minutes. Name starts with an A, while the other one got a Z.”
“What’s the deal with that, anyway?” she asked. “Any special meaning? The beginning and the end? The first and the last?”
“The whack job who is my mother?” he suggested.
“Is she really that bad?” Because, as whack job mothers went, nobody could touch Susan McAllen.
“Yeah,” he said simply. “I mean, I told you she chose a fake family over a real one. She picked fame and fortune over a simple life with a man who loved her. She gave up on us. So I guess the answer to your question about when my tenacity issues started? Probably the day she walked out with promises she never kept and a little too big of a smile on her face.”
Jane’s heart cracked a little, the impact of his words hitting home hard enough for her to set the wineglass down so it didn’t slip out of her hand. “I understand that.”
He whipped his head around to face her, his eyes flashing like gas flames of hot blue. “You’re defending her?”
“No, actually, I was saying I understand how that could gut you.”
His expression softened. “It did, I won’t lie. Still does, at times.”
“Do you talk to her?”
“As little as possible. Bailey does, I think, although she doesn’t share it with me.”
“How does Zane feel about her?”
“About like I do, I guess. We don’t discuss her. Ever. And she’s remarried to some rich dude with grown kids, and they travel and live the life.” His fingers tangled a little tighter in her hair. “It’s not important.”
“I’d say something like that is very important,” she replied, reaching for her wine. She took a sip and leaned back, and his hand went right back to her hair. Somehow, it was natural and comforting. And irresistible.
“You still haven’t told me a thing about your childhood,” he said. “Your mother. Your life. None of that would go against the FBI rules, would it?”
“No,” she answered simply.
“Jadyn…” He shook his head like he was shaking off the name. “Jane. I want to know.”
“I know you do, but why? I’m doing a job for you and leaving when it’s safe. You don’t need to know anything about me.”
A little anguish pulled his brows together as he threaded her hair and stroked her neck. Could he feel the goose bumps that was causing?
“But I want to. I want to hear your story and know what makes you tick.” He inched a little closer, holding her gaze with one that was so heated and intense she felt it burn right through her.
“Why does it matter?” she asked again.
“Because I have this little rule. Archaic, maybe. Old-school. But I like to know something about a woman before I…” He didn’t finish, and she didn’t breathe.
“Before you kiss me?”
“That’s where I’m going.” He closed the space but didn’t kiss her, and Jane felt her whole being slip a little. Dangerous slope, this one, but so, so tempting.
“You really want to complicate things, don’t you?” she whispered.
“No. I really want to kiss you.”
She didn’t answer but felt her eyes shutter closed as his lips lightly brushed hers, shocking her with the initial touch of his mouth. His lips were smooth, surprisingly so, but whiskers rubbed her chin and upper lip, the sensation so intense a whimper escaped her throat.
He took that as a sound of pleasure, she guessed, as he held her face tenderly in his hands, angling her head a bit, deepening the kiss. He broke it reluctantly, then pressed his lips against her cheeks and jaw and gave the softest, sexiest moan that came from deep in his chest.
“What happened to the rule?”
“Tell me your last name, and we’ll call it”—he trailed some kisses over her throat and went back to her lips—“covered.” And he did just that, covering her mouth and opening his lips.
“No.” She eased back.
“No, don’t kiss you, or no to the last name?”
She wanted to say both. She should say both. “No to the last name.”
“So you have no problem kissing?”
Looking at him for a long time, she stroked his cheek with one finger, loving the roughness of those burnished-gold whiskers. “I have plenty of problems, but kissing you isn’t one of them.”
He didn’t answer, but still stared into her eyes. “How about where you were born?”
“No.”
“Siblings?”
“No.”
“College?”
“No.”
He shut his eyes. “You’re making me go against my kissing principles, because I don’t want you to be a stranger.”
“That kiss wasn’t strange. It was—” She jerked back and looked around after a soft digital ring she rarely heard sounded in the room. “That’s my phone.” She was up instantly, looking for her bag, which she’d left by the front door.
Lydia. It had to be Lydia. Darting to the bag, she yanked open the side pocket, but her fingers fumbled a little. “I can’t miss this call,” she said, more to herself than to him. Finally, she snagged the phone, tapped it, and pressed it to her ear, only at that moment realizing he’d hear everything she’d say. “Yes, hello?”
But the line was dead, or silent.
“Hello? Hello? Lydia?”
Nothing.
“Oh!” She fisted her hand and grunted as frustration whipped through her. “It only rang twice. How could that happen?” She looked at the phone, which was painfully simple and certainly not “smart.” There was no number, and the display just said Unknown Caller. Still, she could hit Call Back.
“I’m going to try and call,” she said to Adam. “Could I have some privacy, please?”
He blew out a breath. “Who’s Lydia?”
She gave him a look she hoped he’d understand.
“That would be another ‘no,’” he said, proving he most certainly did read her non-verbals. “Jane, this is my ‘no’—no, you can’t do this.”
“Do what? I didn’t kiss you, Adam. You kissed me.”
“You can’t take my help in bailing you out of a possible run-in with the police, tell me just enough for me to not know if you’re really in danger or yanking my chain for fun, and then send me out of the room for privacy.”
“Yanking your chain for f
un?” She choked the last two words. “Are you kidding me? You think this is fun for me? Lying to people, looking over my shoulder, living in the dark, waiting for a call from an undercover FBI agent, and then when it comes, she hangs up on me? It’s not fun. Designing your boathouse is fun. Kissing you on the sofa is fun. Lying is not fun.”
“Okay, okay.” He held his hands up as if the fury of the speech had finally gotten through to him. “It’s just that you need help. And I want to help you.”
“I thought you wanted to know me.”
He shrugged, taking a step closer, reaching out a conciliatory hand. “That’s part of helping you.”
For a moment, she almost cracked. Almost stepped into his arms, pressed her body against his chest, and let it all out. Her ugly past, her name, her life, and the fresh, hot need in her body to take comfort from him.
But that wouldn’t be fair to him. It would make a not-so-great situation worse. And that’s not what Jane McAllen did. She made things better. The best they could be.
Very slowly, she shook her head and one more time uttered the word he didn’t want to hear. “No.”
She saw the steel curtain drop over his expression, his blue-green eyes glinting with a mix of anger and challenge. “Fine.”
“Is it?”
“It’ll have to be.” He backed away. “I’m going to take a sleeping bag to the boathouse so you can stay here. Eat, drink, talk on the phone all night if you want, okay?”
No, it wasn’t okay. She didn’t want to be alone, but she didn’t want to let anyone get that close, either. “Sure. That’s great.”
“If you need anything, just call. I’ll give you my cell.”
“Okay.”
He was gone in a few minutes, leaving Jane to sit on the sofa and hit redial. Over and over again, until she finally gave up when no one answered.
After a while, she lay down on the bed and tried to imagine what she would add to the décor to make this apartment the best it could be.
But, really, the only thing missing was the man who lived here.
* * *
As Adam walked to the boathouse, doubt pricked at him, making the low-grade frustration that burned even worse. That wasn’t the only thing burning, either. The achiness that had started low in his belly early in the day only grew worse the more time he spent with her. Jadyn—shit, Jane—was not merely beautiful.
That combination of tough and vulnerable wrapped around his chest and magnetically drew him closer. Made him want to help her. Made him want to believe her. Made him want to kiss the hell out of her and so much more.
But…that call.
Adam fished his phone from his pocket and checked the time, doing a quick calculation. It was a little past midnight in DC, not too terribly late to call an old friend. Of course, the chances that Noah Coleman was home were slim. More likely, the badass Navy SEAL was up to his eyeballs with underwater explosives or detonating devices that would crumble a mountain but save a village.
Or so Adam thought, because anytime he asked Noah what he did, the only response was a silent headshake that meant classified.
But every once in a while, Noah was at his crash pad in DC, one he shared with an FBI agent.
It was worth a try. Once inside the boathouse, he tapped the contacts and called, smiling when the phone clicked and he heard a familiar voice.
“Adam Ant,” Noah said with a tease in his voice. “You drunk-dialing me, honey?”
Adam laughed. “Not quite that desperate, yet. How ya doin’, Noah?”
“Alive. Always.” He cleared his throat, and Adam could’ve done a 3-2-1 countdown to the subject change. “What’s happening in Eagle’s Ridge? You get that stupid boathouse finished yet?”
“Working on it.” Slowly. “But I have a favor to ask.”
“Not a chance I’m coming back to help you, too.” He added a good-natured laugh.
“You talked to Ford,” he guessed. He knew that Ford was in DC frequently enough that the two of them threw back beers on a regular basis.
“Yeah. He said you’re in way over your head with hammers and nails.”
“I might be in over my head, but not with the tools.” He threw a glance in the direction of the boathouse door, half worrying she might walk in. Half hoping, too. “No, I have a different kind of favor, which you can feel free to ignore.”
“Got me curious. What’s up?”
“Didn’t you say you share that apartment with a guy who’s pretty high up in the FBI?”
“Yeah. Kenny Murphy’s a maverick adept in the art of favors, and with supervisory special agent on his badge, he gets shit done. What do you need?”
A lot more than he should be asking for, but Adam went for it anyway. “I need to know if, hypothetically speaking, an undercover operative would take a third party employed by the target but not criminally involved and move that third party out of the picture and tell them to stay off the grid.”
Noah was silent for a minute. “So, let me understand, hypothetically.” He slathered enough sarcasm on the word that they both knew nothing was hypothetical. “Undercover op. What? Drugs? Money laundering? White collar? What kind of hypothetical operation is this?”
“Drugs. FBI infiltrated a large drug ring.”
“Well, if that person is an asset that can help the operative, it doesn’t seem logical that they would.”
“She’s not.” At least, she’d said she wasn’t. “She says she was in the wrong place at the wrong time and got on the wrong radar, and they’re protecting her.”
“Yeah, they’d do that, I think. It’s not officially witness protection. Kind of surprised they’d send her to Eagle’s Ridge, but who knows?”
“They sent her to Seattle and told her to basically get lost. She came here on her own.”
Noah was quiet, thinking about that. “I’d definitely run that one by Kenny. Can you be a little more specific? He’ll dig, but he has to know what for and where.”
Adam huffed out a breath. She hadn’t really told him anything but her first name and a thin story. Should he break that fragile bit of trust, or just believe her straight out and let it go?
“Trust him,” Noah added. “Because you trust me.”
“I don’t know much,” Adam said. “But there’s an alleged undercover operation in Miami targeting a Bolivian drug dealer, and the agent is named Lydia, or that’s her undercover name. I think.”
“No last name?” Noah snorted. “Lots to go on, dude.”
“I know, I know. But this woman…”
“Yeah, woman. I got that much.”
“I hired her to help me design the boathouse. Decorate it, you know?”
“Decorating is out of my area of expertise,” he joked.
“Mine, too, which is why I hired her. But she’s got this story that the FBI ‘whisked’ her out of Miami because this baddie wants her dead. Simple question, really. Is that something they’d do?”
“I’ll find out,” Noah said. “We have an agent’s name, a type of crime, US location, and country of origin. That’s enough to get started.”
“Good,” Adam said.
“How about this hypothetical woman?” he teased. “She have a name?”
“Several, but I’d rather not say. I’m already overstepping my bounds.”
“You want to help her or not?”
“I want to believe her,” Adam admitted.
“And you want to help her. I know you, Adam Ant. If there’s a rescue in sight, you gotta make it.”
He gave a soft laugh at how well his friend knew him. “Jane. Her name’s Jane. She’s going by the name Jadyn McAllister.” He gritted his teeth at what felt like a betrayal of her trust, but if she wasn’t going to tell him everything, he damn well was going to do his best to find out. And help her. “Anything you can find out, and keep it on the DL.”
“You got it, man.”
“Thanks. When are you coming back to Eagle’s Ridge?”
“Pffft. Neve
r. Okay, maybe to see Lainey,” he said, referring to a local nurse who’d been like a sister to Noah as long as Adam had known him. “But permanently? Not happening. I could no sooner live a normal life in a small town than I could give up my SEAL team with a casual adios. What would I do? You all have something there, and me?” Noah chuckled. “Maybe the Ridgeview Community College TV station needs a tell-it-like-it-is military analyst to report between the cherry pie bake-offs and the latest change in tourist tax.”
Adam laughed. “Yeah, you’d suffocate here.”
“No shit.”
“Not enough white water in the state of Washington to meet your adrenaline needs.”
“You know it, bro.”
They talked for a few more minutes before hanging up. He couldn’t even think about sleeping, so he dragged out the tools and went to work on the bunk beds, getting one finished not too long after midnight.
So he wasn’t that in over his head. Not with construction, anyway. Jane-not-Jadyn was a whole ’nother story.
Chapter Eleven
“Adam?” Jane tapped on the boathouse door at eight a.m., ready to start the day. She’d slept remarkably well after crawling under the covers of Adam’s bed and had awakened with a plan to head straight to the woman named Hildie who kept all the town memorabilia. “Are you awake?”
After a moment, he opened the door and stared down at her with sleepy, sexy blue eyes. His sun-tipped hair was tousled, and scruff the color of whiskey had grown on his cheeks and jaw overnight. He wore…little. She stole a look at the cuts and slopes of a magnificent chest and the gorgeous symmetry of well-defined abs. The boxers hung low, showing more muscles, veins, and a golden-brown trail of hair.
She looked up, trying to swallow. “Good morning.”
“What time is it?” he asked, blinking as if the cloudy skies were shining a klieg light on him.
“Time to visit Hildie Fontana. Can you take me to her?” She slipped by him to enter, trying to ignore how warm his skin was when they brushed. Then her eyes fell on the bunk bed in the middle of the room, made of black metal rails that looked exactly like…like something from a jail cell. “Oh, Adam. It’s hideous.”
He muttered what sounded like a really dark curse, marching around her and stabbing his fingers in his hair and drawing it back, which only made it messier. “Thank you.”