Aiden
Jessi zipped up her coat,tugging a knit cap over her hair. I handed her a to-go mug of coffee. “You ready for this?” I asked.
She sipped her coffee, and her eyes flashed with anticipation. “I can’t wait. I’m so tired of people named Rigsby bringing trouble to me. This time, I plan to bring some trouble to them.”
“Couldn’t have put it better myself.” I nodded as I grabbed my own infusion of caffeine. That fire in her eyes made her even sexier. And Jessi was averysexy woman.
It was after midnight. I went through the back door first, glancing around to make sure that all was quiet. The only sign of life was Owen’s truck idling in the alley. Jessi and I piled into it, shutting the doors carefully so the noise didn’t echo over Main Street. I had taken the backseat, leaving Jessi shotgun.
“Bring any of that coffee for me?” Owen asked. He was using an unmarked vehicle tonight, rather than one emblazoned with the sheriff’s department logo. He’d also dressed in plainclothes rather than his uniform, though he’d worn his usual cowboy hat.
“You bet.” I dug into our picnic cooler, where I’d carefully stowed an insulated travel cup. I handed it over. “Does this buy me forgiveness for trying to choke out your cousin earlier?”
Owen snorted. “Already forgotten.”
Jessi and I had spent the afternoon cooking. I’d made roasted chicken with a bearnaise sauce, and Jessi whipped up three different flavors of tarts, feeding me tastes of each filling. That had led to an animated make-out session, during which my sauce nearly separated on the stovetop.
I’d enjoyed having Jessi by my side. Fighting over burners, teasing me, arguing about the proper techniques and seasoning levels. We’d been able to ignore the rest of the world for a while. As if we could suspend time, create something magical together that would last and last beyond any expiration date.
But cooking wasn’t like that. Life wasn’t either.
Now, we were scheduled to rendezvous with my brother’s friend in about twenty minutes for the surveillance op. We’d packed a roasted-chicken sandwich, chips, and as many tarts as Jessi could fit into the cooler for the retired DEA agent we were about to meet.
“I heard from the drone operator,” Owen said. “She sent me the coordinates of where she wants to set up. Apparently, she was all over Google Earth. I made a few suggestions for where we would be safely out of sight, but she’s very particular.”
“She?” Jessi asked.
“Yep,” I said. “Just wait till you meet her. Jake said she’s a character.”
Owen took the road into the national forest. We’d long since left the streetlights behind, and the moon was just a sliver in the sky. The truck’s headlights lit up a pair of glowing yellow eyes. Maybe a bobcat. The animal darted away, back into the darkness of the trees.
Though Jessi was in the front seat, she’d stuck her hand around the side so she could grasp mine. We’d been touching almost constantly since our sexy session on her couch and through our joint cooking efforts in the afternoon. I wasn’t a possessive guy by nature. That feeling had snuck up on me with Jessi.
The thought of having only one more full day with her was making something go haywire in my brain.
Maybe it was the sexual tension. Usually when I hooked up with someone, my mind dove straight for home base. I wasn’t the type to play up the romance and the anticipation. But Jessi had set the rules, and I had given her everything she’d wanted right up to the edge. I’d forgotten how hot it could be to have some limitations in place.
Not that I viewed her as a challenge, like we were playing some kind of game. It wasn’t that. It was more like Jessi had created a multi-course menu, and I’d been enjoying each dish, even if some people might’ve called them appetizers or starter courses. I was hungry for more, but I could make a meal out of what she’d given me so far. And if that was all I’d get, I wasn’t complaining.
A single kiss from Jessi, a single touch, sent my world spinning. It was going to be hard to leave.
We pulled off onto a side-spur of the road. An Expedition was already here, the massive SUV mostly hidden by a grove of aspens.
“That’s her,” Owen said. “License plate matches what she gave us. Right on time.”
As Owen put the truck into park, a woman jumped out of the SUV, waving. Jessi and I got out and went to meet her. Owen was just a few seconds behind us. Ice crunched beneath our boots.
“I’m Shonda,” the woman said. She grasped my hand and pumped it. “Which one of you is Aiden?”
“That would be me.”
“Your brother said that the next time you leave the state and go off the grid, you might want to inform your family.”
Shonda was in her sixties, barely tall enough to reach Jessi’s shoulder, much less mine or Owen’s. She had ebony skin, and her gray hair was cropped close to her head. A pair of wire-rimmed glasses perched on the edge of her nose. Her eyes were as sharp as the santoku knife I’d left back in Jessi’s kitchen.
“You can tell Jake he’s not the boss of me.”
Jessi snorted a laugh, while Owen shook his head.
