Page 31 of Deep Cover

Walking into the war room to find Caryssa in his seat nearly took him out at the knees.

She sat primly at the conference table, fingers folded in front of her in a pose meant to appear relaxed, but he knew better.

He knew her.

As he walked in, she turned her head slightly, enough to catch a glimpse of him from the corner of her eye. In an instant, any semblance of ease left her body. Her spine snapped straight and she twitched her face aside.

Her blatant rejection made him stop in his tracks, and all of Sierra saw it. By the time he forced himself to keep moving, a few guys smirked and several wore shit-eating grins at seeing him so rattled.

He took the open chair two down from his usual and carefully avoided looking at Caryssa. Just being in the same room with her had his cock stiffening and his arms aching to hold her.

Two grown adults, deliberately not looking at each other across a conference table. It would be funny if it didn’t hurt so much.

Cannon was already at the head of the table, arms crossed. His tense jaw told them all that somebody was about to catch hell. He sent a glare around the table. “Where’s Rorke?”

Rivers caught Rome’s eye, and a silent this ought to be good passed between them just as the door swung open and Rorke shouldered his way in, arms stacked with cardboard boxes up to this chin.

“I’m here.” He dropped the pile onto the table with a thud that rattled every coffee mug. “Took a little longer than usual. There was a big haul today.”

Cannon’s brows lowered into jagged lightning strikes over the bridge of his nose. He reached for the top box and whipped out a huge knife to slit the top. He peered inside, going stone still.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake. Who ordered curtains?”

From the hallway just outside the room, where the ladies were definitely not supposed to be, Jolie’s gasp carried clear through the door. Without looking up, Cannon tossed the package toward the opening as though it were a live grenade.

“We don’t even have a curtain rod,” he muttered, tearing into a second box. When he lifted the flaps, he withdrew yet another box showing a clear diagram of how to piece together a curtain rod.

He shook it, making the pieces rattle, and groaned even louder. “What the hell do we need curtains for? We don’t have windows.”

Caryssa lifted a hand and pressed it over her mouth to hide her smile, but Rivers caught it in the tiny creases of amusement around her hazel eyes. The sight he’d missed so damn much it left a hole in him smacked him hard in the chest. How long had it been since he’d seen her smile?

He wished he had put that smile on her beautiful face instead of Cannon’s misery.

Stina rushed in and snatched the second box out of Cannon’s hands before he could hurl it too. “This is going to look great! You guys are going to love it!”

Cannon glared after her. “I doubt that.”

Stina was already gone, the box tucked under one arm.

Cannon muttered something under his breath Rivers didn’t catch, but Rorke tossed back something with an equally sharp tone.

Everyone else in the room probably heard nothing more than light banter. But every single eye was on the pair as they picked up the edge in their tones.

It was no secret that Cannon and Rorke had some beef between them, but none of them had ever been able to figure out what was behind it. In the past two months since Rivers had been gone, their grudge seemed to have built.

Rome caught Rivers’s eye and gave a small nod.

Rivers reached into his back pocket and extracted a folded bill. He threw Cannon a glance to make sure he wasn’t seen before he slid the money across the table toward Rome to make good on the bet he just lost.

“I saw that,” Cannon said without looking up from the third box he was tearing into.

Rivers slipped the cash back into his pocket to hand over later.

Cannon reached into the box and pulled out a ring of keys. Dozens of them, tagged with faded labels. Caryssa let out a noise, and Rivers’s gaze flew to her.

She stuck out a hand, reaching for the keys. “I think, sir, those were sent to me.”

He continued looking through them methodically, checking each tag.