“Do I look like I’m laughing?” Her eyebrows arched in inquiry. “I can assure you, I wasn’t trying to be funny.” At his look, her full, lush lips curled, pursed. “Well, so, all right,” she conceded. “Maybe I was a bit. Your hotshot intelligence group made a big mistake. Left you with egg all over your face. Not to mention I was waiting for you.”
Mack snatched up the frying pan lying beside the sofa. “I suppose you thought you were going to bean the entire team with this.”
A low rumble of laughter swept through the room. Jaimie smirked at them.
“Laugh all you want, hotshots. If I’d been your enemy, you would be dead or wounded right now.”
“She has a point.” Mack’s glittering eyes swept the room. “We’re lucky this isn’t the place.”
Kane watched Mack watching Jaimie. It looked like trouble to him, but then, it always had been trouble when the two of them had been in close proximity.
Combustible. Like a match to dy***ite. He found himself grinning. “Did you provide the anonymous information?”
“Not a chance,” Jaimie denied staunchly. “I’m sort of doing my own thing here and wouldn’t call attention to myself. Nor do I want an angry neighbor torching the place with me in it if I set the hounds on them.”
“Why all the security?” Paul demanded, unconvinced. “And what’s with all the electronic equipment?”
“I’m a spy for Russia,” Jaimie snapped. “Where’s your search warrant? This is still the United States, whether you have an invisible badge or not.”
“He’s new, Jaimie,” Kane said softly. “Cut him some slack.”
“He’s a hothead.” Her hands were still trembling. Jaimie felt her stomach lurch uncomfortably. “And he’ll get one of you killed.” She pressed one hand to her midsection hard.
“Take them out of here,” Mack ordered Kane, frowning at her action.
“You can go down to the first floor. There’s heat, but little else,” Jaimie said.
“I wouldn’t mind looking at your equipment on the second floor,” Javier said.
“Looks like a sweet setup.”
“I’ll just bet you’d like a look. It’s my new business, Javier.” She flashed him a smile. “And I’m not letting you anywhere near those computers. I don’t need the competition.”
“Maybe you don’t want us to look at them for a reason,” Paul said.
Jaimie shrugged, her gaze cool as she looked the man up and down. “Maybe.”
“I’ll take them to the first floor,” Kane said. “And contact the sergeant major to see where our information went haywire.”
Jaimie switched off her elaborate security alarm to speed things up. Mack waited until they were alone. He followed her into the kitchen area and watched as she reached for the teakettle. Tea. Of course. She always made tea when she was upset.
“Are you all right?” he asked gently.
“You took ten years off my life,” she admitted.
He leaned one hip against the cupboards, drinking in the sight of her. “What are you doing here? What is with all the equipment?”
“Just something I’m working on.”
She refused to look at him. Her shoulders were stiff. Her body posture screamed at him to go. “I’ve missed you, Jaimie.” Stubborn, he wasn’t about to back off from a confrontation. She’d taken his heart and soul when she’d left. He’d been a zombie, a machine without a direction. He couldn’t take his eyes from her. He knew there was accusation in his voice, in his expression, but damn it all, she deserved it. “You disappeared without a trace.”
“You had a choice, Mack,” she reminded. “You made it very clear to me where your priorities were. They weren’t with me. With us. It’s called self-preservation.”
“That’s bullshit. You knew I had no idea you’d just disappear.”
“As I recall, you said in no uncertain terms you weren’t ready for any kind of commitment. I took you at your word. What did you think I’d do?”
Weep for him. Wait for him. Crawl back and beg his forgiveness. Not f**king disappear. Never that. She’d taken his life. She’d taken everything he was from him.
“I expected you to realize I was busy.”
She kept her back to him; her hands shook as she lifted the whistling teakettle.
“Busy? You mean your drive to make the world right? Your need to save everyone?
You walked out on us, Mack. If you want to pretend you didn’t, if that makes it all good for you, it’s all right with me. I survived. You survived. You have the life you want. I’m good too. I moved on, so I’m guessing we’re both good.”
“Is that what you’re guessing?” He waited until the kettle was safely back on the stove before gripping her arm and spinning her around to face him. “Guess again, Jaimie.”
She didn’t struggle as he’d expected her to. She simply went very still and looked down at the fingers circling her wrists like a steel vise. Her gaze flicked up to his face, lingered on his mouth for a heart-stopping moment before her eyes met his. He had the curious sensation of tumbling forward.
“Mack, let go of me.”
He nearly didn’t. He nearly jerked her against him and took possession of her mouth. That perfect mouth that could drive a man out of his mind, take him to paradise. He knew she’d melt into him. He knew she belonged to him—every last inch of her—but he wanted more than her body. He’d had something precious and didn’t know it until he’d lost it. He dropped his hand and was annoyed when she rubbed the mark of his fingers from her skin before turning back to her task.
He stared at her back for a long moment, trying to find a way to reach her. Anything.
The rage and pain of his loss were too close to the surface, rendering his quick brain useless. This was his Jaimie, yet not.
“Jaimie,” he said softly. “Talk to me.”
She kept her back to him. McKinley. She’d never called him McKinley, even when they’d been best friends. Cannon, McKinley, and Fielding. Where one had been, there was the other, but he had been Mack, always Mack.
“Was this really an accident? A coincidence?”
His fist tightened until his knuckles turned white. “Of course it was an accident.
What else?”
She turned around then, her large eyes luminous, beautiful. Eyes a man could get lost in. “It’s a bit far-fetched, don’t you think? You just happen to get the wrong warehouse and find me in it.”