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Ruby stared at him a moment, her gaze slipping to his phone that he was still holding. Yeah, she hadn’t bought that lie about nothing being wrong, but she didn’t press him on it.
“Good job, Angel. Now, go home and take care of whatever that is.” She motioned to the phone again.
“Thanks,” he muttered, wondering when the hell he’d lost his ability to plaster on a poker face.
Once, he’d been good at it. Damn good, in fact. After all he’d been a deep undercover cop for six years and in covert military special ops before that. Poker faces were necessities for both jobs, and they’d saved his ass too many times to count. He should have been able to convince one woman that the text hadn’t knocked the breath right out of him.
Cursing himself and the text, he said his goodbye to Ruby and headed out, threading his way down the stairs of the massive complex for Maverick Ops Headquarters. Only after he was inside of his van, did he send a reply to the text.
“Where r u?” he messaged.
He got an almost immediate response. “Outside the gate at Maverick Ops.”
Angel glanced in that direction, and he spotted a white compact car parked on the layby lane of the private road. It was a space normally used for those visitors or delivery drivers who were waiting to be cleared for entry. He couldn’t actually see the driver from this distance, but he knew who it was.
Mia Sawyer.
Once, she’d been the love of his life, but that’d been when they were sixteen, when love and lives had felt as if they’d go on forever.
Mia had learned some hard lessons about that, too.
He drove toward the black wrought iron gate, using a voice command with his code to open it. As soon as he was on the other side, she got out of her car to come to him.
And the gut punch came, hard and fast.
It always did with Mia. Whether he wanted it or not, and he definitely didn’t want it.
Angel hadn’t seen her in a little over two years. That had been a chance meeting in a restaurant in downtown San Antonio. She’d been there on a blind date. He’d been there with friends. He’d gotten that gut punch then and was certain she had, too, but they hadn’t acted on it. The past created way too many barriers and held way too many memories for them to even consider reclaiming that whole “love of their lives” deal.
Dreading every bit of this, he got out and walked to the front of his van, where he waited for her to join him. No immediate conversation started up. Just a whole lot of long, studying looks. Maybe she was getting the same kind of kick he was.
“Angel,” she said, and for some reason—probably because he was thinking with his dick—it sounded as if she’d doled out his name as like a breathy kiss.
Yeah, dick thinking.
That came with the territory since Mia had been his first lover. And vice versa. Apparently, that had created a forever and ever amen bond. Well, one of them anyway. The other “bond” that they had wasn’t nearly as pleasurable.
They found the body.
Nope. No pleasure in that whatsoever.
With her gaze fixed to his, she stopped directly in front of him. The years hadn’t just been kind to her, they’d given her a damn blessing. She’d been pretty as a teenager, but Mia was downright beautiful now. With that slightly mussed black hair, cool blue eyes, and willowy body, she looked like some exotic fairy goddess.
Well, a sort of disorganized, couldn’t care less about her looks kind of goddess anyway.
She had on well-worn jeans, flipflops, and a snug black Guns N’ Roses t-shirt that probably didn’t hit the fashion status mark. Angel found her choice of clothing far more intriguing and attractive than he would have if she’d been wearing a modern-day goddess get-up.
Since he hadn’t been able to prevent himself from keeping tabs on her over the years, Angel knew she worked for a private security agency as their IT person. At least that was her official title. But because of those tabs, he knew she was a hacker, digging out data from the internet for the investigators. She didn’t quite have black hat status, but she wasn’t squeaky clean either.
Mia offered him a tentative smile that in no way made it to her eyes. “You look…” She paused as if trying to figure out how to finish that.
“I’m wearing my poker face,” he grumbled.
Her smile became a little more genuine. “I was going to say hot. Really, incredibly hot, but, you know, inappropriate. And unnecessary. You’ve no doubt got mirrors, so you’re aware of how you look.”
Angel frowned, uncertain how to take the compliment. But flattered. Yeah, really flattered. Which, of course, was the most ill-timed response in the history of such things.
“Sorry, I’m babbling,” she went on. “I babble when I’m nervous.”
