Too Hard to Handle, page 8
Chelsea cleared her throat and shoved her black Buddy Holly–style glasses up her nose before sliding her phone back into her ginormous purse. “Ozzie was able to find out which room Kozlov is staying in even though, apparently, he was using an alias.” She lifted her eyebrows meaningfully. If they needed a second reason, besides the T/C Contender, to suspect Kozlov was in Cusco on nefarious business, registering under a false name was it. “As chance would have it,” she continued, “the suite next door was vacant. Ozzie booked the room under Penni’s name, using Penni’s passport number.”
Chelsea let her eyes swing back and forth between Dan and Penni. “He also, er…” She had the grace to scrunch up her nose. “Well, he checked Penni out of the other hotel. Her bag is waiting at the bellman’s station for her to pick up.”
“What?” Penni choked at the same time Dan muttered, “Sonofabitch.”
Besides being their in-house computer geek, Ozzie was also their in-house matchmaker. And he’d been trying to get Dan together with Penni since Malaysia. In fact, it’d been Ozzie who’d insisted Dan go up to her in the bar that night before the bombings. It’d been Ozzie who’d shoved him out on the dance floor with her. And it’d been Ozzie who’d tucked the condom in Dan’s pocket—the one he never got the chance to use. Apparently, the asshole was still attempting to play the part of Cupid, even from nearly four thousand miles away. Determined to keep Penni in the middle of their operation whether she wanted to be there or not.
“Sorry.” Chelsea winced. “But, you know, maybe this is for the best.”
“How do you figure?” Dan demanded, sliding Penni a glance he hoped conveyed two things. One, I’m sorry. And two, Ozzie is a no-good, interfering, grade-A douche nozzle.
To his surprise, Penni reached over and squeezed his thigh. But just when he’d begun to think maybe he was imagining her emotional retreat, she hastily removed her hand, brushing a finger over the bridge of her nose.
Annnnd, so much for wishful thinking. Then, sonofabastard! There it is again!
The sensation of his skin trying to crawl off the back of his neck was becoming as familiar as it was annoying. He turned in his seat, scanning the restaurant and bar. Nothing but tourists and the locals who were serving them and—
Wait a minute… Did he recognize the guy in the brown flat cap over at the bar? The hat was the kind golfers and hipsters liked to wear, and surely was not all that common in Cusco. He narrowed his eyes, studying the man’s profile, but save for a bit of beard stubble and a receding chin, there wasn’t much to see. Then another man walked by wearing an almost identical cap, and Dan shook his head.
So much for “not all that common in Cusco.” Man, he was losing it.
“It means she has to stay in the suite if she wants a soft place to lay her head tonight,” Chelsea said. Dan swung back around, rubbing a hand over his neck. “And since you’re our resident jack-of-all-trades gear-wise”—she hauled the backpack out from under the table and handed it to him—“you need to be in the suite too. Which will be the perfect opportunity for you two to discuss…uh…whatever it is you two need to discuss. Just as long as you remember to turn off your mic this time.” She glanced pointedly at the top button on the jacket he had draped over the back of his chair. “We’ll stay in touch by cell.”
Which sounded good in theory. In reality? He figured the only thing Penni probably wanted to talk about was how soon she could catch a flight back to the States.
“Jack-of-all-trades gear-wise?” Penni slid him an intrigued glance, and he realized that even though they’d gotten pretty chummy in Malaysia, truth was, she didn’t know much about him.
“Yeah, I was a Navy mechanic before I…got into more specialized work,” he told her, foregoing mention of the Navy SEALs and Black Knights Inc. out of habit. “Which means if it has moving parts or wiring, it’s right in my wheelhouse.” With a tilt of his head, he indicated the backpack he’d taken from Chelsea and tucked beside his chair. “And that thing’s chock-full of all the goodies we need to get ears inside Kozlov’s room.”
“Pfft.” Chelsea waved a hand through the air. “Don’t let his humble act fool you. He’s a real-life MacGyver. Give him a paper clip, a rubber band, and some C4, and he’ll build you a rocket ship to the moon.”
One corner of his mouth twitched. “That mighta been pushing it.”
“Seriously.” Chelsea nodded, looking at Penni while jerking her head in Dan’s direction. “He’s awesome. A good man to have around.”
Okay. And now Chelsea was being beyond obvious, trying to convince Penni that even though he was a lowdown, no-account drunk, he still had some redeeming qualities. He closed his eyes and prayed for the floor to open up beneath him. Luckily, Zoelner came to the rescue.
“Not to interrupt this Dan’s Great and You Should Give Him a Chance Fest”—So much for the rescue. Jesus!—“but if he and Penni are up in the room getting ears on while discussing personal issues, then what the hell are you and I supposed to be doing?” He wagged a finger between himself and Chelsea.
“Well, I’m headed back to the room above the bakery,” Chelsea told him. “Ozzie is supposed to send me everything he can find on Kozlov.”
Zoelner glanced pointedly at her purse and the phone that had disappeared somewhere inside it.
“Silly rabbit.” Chelsea tsked. “He can’t very well transmit the docs to my cell.”
“Why the hell not?” Zoelner asked. “It’s encrypted out the wazoo.”
The look she gave him said she suspected his IQ fell far to the left of the curve. “True enough,” she admitted. “But there’s encrypted and then there’s encrypted. My laptop has air-gap networking. My cell phone does not.”
Zoelner raised a brow.
“One is completely secure,” Chelsea explained. “One is not. Do I have to say it again?”
“What?”
“Silly rabbit.”
Zoelner shook his head. “You and Ozzie.” He snorted. “You two would make quite a pair.”
“I know.” Chelsea grinned. “And so does he. Which is why he keeps asking me to marry him.”
Zoelner made a rude noise. “Like I’ve told you a million times, that guy is nothing but hot air and hormones.” He turned to Penni. “How many times has Ozzie proposed to you, may I ask?”
“Including the even dozen times he managed it while booking my flight here?” A smile as bright as a Roman candle curved Penni’s beautiful, kissable, irresistible mouth.
Of course, thinking about Ozzie flirting with her dulled the impact of the expression a bit. And something inside Dan, whatever that something was that wasn’t jealousy but a close cousin of the emotion, once again reared its ugly head. Ozzie was too handsome for his own good, and too charming for the good or safety of all womankind.
Inexplicably, Dan imagined himself punching the bastard in the peanut pouch. The fact that he found the fantasy so satisfying probably called into question that whole “close cousin” of jealousy thing he was trying so hard to convince himself of.
“See, Chels.” Zoelner jerked his head in Penni’s direction, his tone smug. “Told you.”
Chelsea rolled her eyes. Something she always seemed to do whenever Zoelner was winning one of their unending arguments.
“But back to the point,” Zoelner said, his tone self-satisfied.
“Do you even remember what the point is?” Chelsea asked with false sweetness.
Ignoring her question, Zoelner reiterated, “So they’re going to go upstairs to get ears on Kozlov.” Dan opened his mouth to remind Zoelner that Penni had not agreed to any of this. There was probably still time for her to rebook the room in her original hotel. Come to think of it, he hoped she would. He didn’t like the idea of her staying next door to a Russian packing a Thompson/Center Contender. But before he could say anything, Zoelner continued. “And you’re going to go back to the bakery to geek out with Ozzie over your air-gap network. So what the hell am I supposed to do?”
“Well,” Chelsea said, “first you can go take a flying leap. Second, you can pay the bill.” She ticked the items off on her fingers. “And third, you can hang around here until Dan can wire Kozlov’s room. Just in case Kozlov decides to leave the premises beforehand and you need to follow him. Sound like a plan?”
“Uh…parts of it,” Zoelner said, rubbing a hand under his chin. Dan couldn’t tell if Zoelner wanted to strangle her or strip her naked. It was definitely one or the other.
“Good.” Chelsea batted her lashes. “So should we all put our hands in the middle of the table and yell Break?”
And Dan finally saw his chance. “Wait a goddamn minute here. Penni hasn’t agreed to any of this.”
He didn’t want to look over at her. He didn’t want to see pity or regret or…who knows what in her face. But he’d spent quite a long time hiding from the hard things, the things guaranteed to hurt him. And by God, he was hell and done with being a yellow-bellied coward. He turned to face her, girding himself for whatever awful expression she wore.
And there it was. That look. But inexplicably, and despite the fact he’d always prided himself on being able to read people, he hadn’t the first clue how to decipher it. It certainly wasn’t awful. It was…contemplative, maybe? Sort of…curious? He felt the movement of her eyes across his face like a physical touch, hesitant and warm. Goose bumps erupted up his arms and across his back.
What the hell, he figured. Nothing ventured, nothing gained.
“Do you still want to help us?” And even though he didn’t say it, they all knew he was really asking if she still wanted to go upstairs and discuss the reasons why she’d come all the way to Cusco to talk to him.
She lifted that cute, kissable chin of hers, and with her dark eyes still searching his, she hesitantly asked, “Do you still want my help?”
Once again, and despite the fact that it made him sound a bit desperate, he gave her God’s honest truth. “I do.”
Chapter Six
Palacio Mario Hotel, Suite 402
Friday, 8:02 p.m.
She was a prize ass.
Like, seriously. Take her to the county fair, pin a blue ribbon on her, and name her Best in Show. Because she could not think of a worse way to respond to someone admitting they had a drinking problem than with a brilliant muttering of Oh…oh well.
I mean, who in God’s name does that?
Penni answered her own question with, Me, apparently. Prize Ass Penelope Ann DePaul.
But she’d been so…shocked, she guessed was the word. The Dan Currington she knew was not only confident and sexy as hell, but also the most self-controlled, steadfast, and disciplined man she’d ever worked with. To find out he struggled with sobriety stunned her, quite frankly. Stunned her straight into idiocy apparently. Because if her brilliant muttering of Oh…oh well hadn’t been bad enough, her extreme embarrassment over that far-less-than-stellar response had caused her to act all stilted and weird during dinner. So much so she wasn’t entirely sure she wasn’t the one who’d taken that awkward pill Chelsea spoke of.
And to make matters worse—oh yes, they got worse—the whole time she’d been checking into the room next to Kozlov’s, the whole time she’d ridden the elevator up to the fourth floor, the whole time she’d fumbled with the key in the door, Dan had stood silently beside her.
Which wasn’t the worse part.
The worse part was the way he’d stood silently beside her. Close but not too close. Maintaining his distance instead of crowding her like he usually did, like he was a magnet and she was metal and it took everything in him not to slam into her until there was nothing left between them but a paper-thin sliver of electrically charged air.
You bet your ass she’d felt that distance the way one might feel the loss of a limb. Like something she depended on had suddenly been stripped from her, leaving her raw, shocked, and completely off balance.
She was still feeling that distance as she sat on the bed in the lavishly appointed suite with its colorful Incan-inspired textiles, watching Dan pull out all manner of things from his backpack. But for the life of her, she didn’t know how to bridge the gap.
How about you jump his bones? This time the voice in her head was definitely her own. Thank God! She couldn’t imagine her father offering her that advice.
And sure, if she wrestled Dan onto the big four-poster bed and had her way with him, that might make up for her prized assedness. But she hadn’t traveled all the way to the Southern Hemisphere to knock boots with him. Or at least she hadn’t traveled all the way to the Southern Hemisphere just to knock boots with him. She’d come here to talk to him about…so many things. Some of which he’d already guessed, but some of which he hadn’t.
Then Kozlov had happened. And dinner had happened. And the plan for her to check into the suite had happened. And now she found herself in the midst of a very important mission, which meant knocking boots or taking the time to sit down and have a good ol’ fashioned heart-to-heart were both pretty much out of the question.
“Huh,” she said, watching him pull a bug detector from his backpack. He set the instrument to vibrate instead of beep. Can’t have our neighbor overhearing our little search, now can we? “We used that same model in…” She caught herself before she said the Secret Service. “…my job,” she finished lamely.
And lame responses seem to be my stock in trade today, don’t you know? Geez!
“That’s because it’s the best model out there,” he said. His matter-of-fact tone seemed to echo across the gulf that had formed between them.
Checking a hotel room for listening devices was the first thing anyone working in the wide world of espionage did, be they Secret Service agents, tattooed motorcycle mechanics/clandestine operators, or others. Sort of like the first thing people in their line of work did upon clandestinely appropriating a vehicle was to disable the interior light that comes on when the door opens.
Tricks of the trade. Learned through trial and life-ending error. She shuddered.
Dan ran the bug detector all around the room, taking special care with the wall that connected their suite to Kozlov’s. He paused here and there, flattening his hand against the plaster. And near the corner, he leaned in to put his ear to the wall.
Penni almost quipped, When Chelsea and Zoelner talked about getting ears inside Kozlov’s room, I think they meant something a little more high-tech. Har-har. The joke fell so flat inside her own head that she didn’t dare send it out into the world for fear of the resounding splat it would make.
Then Dan bent to press his hand to the floorboard and the move caused his sweater to pull up while his Levis pulled down. The gap created was enough to give her a peek at the tan muscles in his lower back. Enough for her to see the waistband on his black boxer briefs. Enough to have her remembering another hotel room in another foreign city and the way he’d held her, kissed her, touched her…
Her blood grew warm at the recollection of his lips, his big hands, his hard body against hers. Moving. Brushing. Rubbing. Liquid heat bloomed low in her belly and between her thighs. She crossed her legs and squeezed, chastising herself. Really, Penni. You just convinced yourself that now is not the time.
Right. She had done that, hadn’t she?
“Looks like we’re in luck. No electronic creepy crawlies to worry about,” he said, pushing to a stand. Whew! Not seeing his broad back and underpants helped to return her focus. Sort of. Okay, not really. “He won’t be able to say the same for too much longer.” He hooked a thumb over his shoulder and crossed back to the bed.
The way he walked, all sinewy coordination and fluid movement, reminded her of a wild animal. Something big and sleek and powerful. The ache to touch him, to hold him, to harness all that power for herself was incredibly strong, tempered only by the silence in the room as he selected a few things from the stuff on the bed, reloaded his backpack with the rest, and sauntered back to the adjoining wall.
For a few seconds she watched him run his hand along the plaster again, the quiet growing, growing, growing until it was almost deafening. Almost…crushing. Like a hundred pounds of pressure pushing against her eardrums.
She couldn’t stand it!
“I’ve noticed there’s some…er…tension between Chelsea and Zoelner,” she finally finished. Okay, and all things considered, that wasn’t a bad start. Neutral ground on which to begin a tentative conversation that would hopefully help close the distance between them.
“Ha!” His bark of laughter echoed around the room as he taped something to the wall that looked like the round electrodes used in hospitals to hook up a patient to the machines that charted their vitals. He stuck some wires into the electrode and then twisted the opposite end of the wires around themselves before threading them into a metal tip. He then inserted that metal tip into a handheld digital recorder.
Setting the recorder on top of the dresser, he moved to the other end of the wall and said, “Tension. I guess that’s one way of putting it.” He repeated the procedure with the electrode and the wires and the recorder. This time he set the device on the seat of the plush crimson chair pushed into the corner. “But I’d say it’s more a case of mutual lust or mutual loathing. Hard to tell the difference sometimes.”
Indeed. Although that’d never been their problem. Pretty much from the start it’d been mutual lust and mutual liking. Then again, that was before she’d made such a fool of herself at dinner. Before the Grand Canyon had sprung up between them. She ventured, “And do you know why there’s so much tension?”
He shrugged, and she totally did not notice the way the hem of his sweater rode up to reveal his belt buckle. All right already. So maybe she did notice that it was the same belt buckle she’d fumbled to unhook three months ago when—
