“Me? I’m not the one who’s injured. I’m just here doing my job.” And figuring out how to prove I deserve a promotion.
“Yes, but this is Jayden we’re talking about. It’s never easy hearing that the man you care about is hurt.”
True.
Also true is how I get antsy whenever the guys are gone on what is expected to be a dangerous mission. There’s a reason the offices are dust-free, and it has nothing to do with the cleaning staff.
“I feel that way about any of the guys,” I explain. They might not be my best friends in the way that Jayden is, but Landon, Connor, Adam, and Liam are like brothers to me.
Ava nods, a secretive smile on her lips.
Before I can ask her what that’s all about, Connor exits his office and approaches my desk. “Hey, Ava.” He gives her a friendly nod, and Cassie reaches out for her favorite “uncle.”
He passes me the file he’s carrying and takes Cassie from Ava. “As far as I can tell,” he tells me, “there are no red flags with this man.”
The office door opens again, and Liam enters…with Jayden right behind him, his left arm in a sling. Liam rolls his eyes at us. Message clear. It wasn’t his choice that Jayden is with him.
He goes straight to his wife and kisses her as though they haven’t seen each other for several months.
While my heart sighs longingly at how sweet those two are together, I stalk over to my best friend. “Aren’t you supposed to be in bed?”
A dopey yet sexy smile spreads on his face. “Your bed or mine?”
At the suggestion of my bed, an unexpected heat rushes to my lower belly. I open my mouth to say something witty, but an image of him in my bed, poised over me, pops into my head.
Damn. Where the hell did that come from?
Fortunately, Mojo rescues me from my wayward thoughts. He barks, thrilled to see his beloved owner, and ambles over to him.
“Just how drugged up is he?” I ask Liam. He and Ava have momentarily stopped kissing, his arms wrapped around her from behind.
“Not enough so he can’t walk—unfortunately. Enough so that he’s not responsible for what he says.”
“Will he remember anything he says?”Or anything we tell him?
Liam shrugs. “I have no idea. And I’m not about to test him to find out. If I had a choice, I would’ve left him at his house. But I needed to come here, and I had a feeling it wasn’t a good idea to leave him alone.”
“He’s not planning to work, is he?” Connor asks.
“I think he just wanted his dog. I figured since you were going to take Mojo to him,” Liam says to me, “you could drive both dog and owner home.”
“Sure, not a problem.”
“If you want, we can put him in his office and unplug the phone and computer, so he can’t get into any trouble in the meantime. We’ll have to confiscate his cell phone, too.”
“Or we can leave him on the couch.” I nod toward the tall, muscular man who is now sitting there, fussing over Mojo. His dog certainly isn’t complaining about his owner’s attention.
I grin at the goofy man and his equally goofy dog.
“That’s always an option too.”
“Do you want me to keep looking into Bernard Bradshaw?” Connor asks.
This naturally gets Liam’s attention. “Who’s Bernard Bradshaw?”
“He’s my grandmother’s ex-boyfriend from back in the sixties, before she became famous. He asked her to talk to me because some information was possibly stolen from a guest staying at his resort. He wants to hire Jayden and me to pose as a married couple and help him find out if he has a security issue. That’s all she could tell me. He’d rather talk to us face-to-face because of the sensitive nature of the information that might have been stolen.”
“Which resort?”
