His Toughest Call

by Joss Wood

  “Maybe.” Seth took her hand and felt the hair on the back of his neck rise.

  He looked down and goose bumps peppered his skin and he knew, he simply knew, someone was watching him. He tugged Leah to his chest, banded his arm around her and turned slowly, his eyes scanning the quiet road, the houses around them. The road was empty of parked cars and while there were people around, no one looked suspicious.

  Was he overreacting? Was he seeing shadows when there were none? Was it because this was about his father and anything to do with that waste of DNA human being colored his thoughts? He didn’t know but he needed to find out, soon.

  Seth felt his phone vibrate within its cover attached to his left bicep and he pulled the device out, swiping his thumb across the screen. He greeted Stone and he grabbed Leah’s hand and started to walk. The sooner they got home, the happier he’d be.

  “How’s it going, Seth?” Stone’s deep voice reverberated in his ear.

  “It’s going. I’m meeting with the Khans again later this morning,” Seth answered him.

  “The Khans?” Leah asked.

  Seth ignored her.

  “I’m concerned that your focus is fractured and you can’t do justice to either investigation,” Stone said, worry in his voice.

  “Stone, I routinely juggle more than a couple balls in the air, I can handle this,” Seth replied, his tone terse.

  Leah tugged his hand to get him to look at her. When he did, she frowned. “What’s going on? Who are you talking to?”

  “Sounds like you have your hands full.” Stone drawled. “It that Leah?”

  He wished his hands were full of her. Focus, Halcott. “Yeah,” Seth sourly replied.

  “Interesting.” Stone drawled. “Oh, before I forget, I’m sending someone to help you. He’s a new hire. An ex-Marine with some serious sniping and hacking skills.”

  “I don’t need help.” Seth growled.

  Stone ignored his statement. “He’ll be with you in a couple of days.”

  There was no point in arguing, Stone had made up his mind. And it was his prerogative to send his employees wherever the hell he wanted to. Dammit.

  “Name?” Seth demanded.

  “Jett Smith-Jones.”

  Well, that was interesting. He instantly recognized the name. After a series of particularly audacious rescues of hostages from extremist camps in south Yemen and Syria, JSJ and his team were well respected in the spec ops community. Seth wondered why he’d left the military. It could be as simple as wanting to extend his life expectancy or as complex as PSTD. His brow furrowed. Yes, Stone had the right to hire whom he wanted but the agents took their orders from Seth and he liked having a say in the process. Not knowing who was on his team made him feel antsy and out of control.

  “Trust me, Seth,” Stone said, reading his mind.

  Seth sighed. He did. He just trusted himself and his instincts more. “We said we needed more people and you found one. I can live with that.” He told Stone.

  “Liar,” Stone cheerfully replied. “You hate the idea of someone being on the books, under your control, who you haven’t met and vetted.”

  “Yeah, well...Look, I don’t need him here,” Seth said as he and Leah approached the gate to her house.

  “You might in the future,” Stone replied as Leah pulled out the remote that opened the wrought iron gate “I’ve got another call coming in. I’ll let you know Jett’s ETA.”

  The electric gate to Leah’s property opened and they walked up the driveway. Leah pulled her hand out of his and his instantly felt empty. What the hell was wrong with him?

  Apart from being horny, tired, stressed, and frustrated?

  He didn’t have a clue.

  Chapter Four

  “Yo, Lee!”

  Leah was about to run up the stairs to shower and change when she heard a familiar voice shouting a greeting from the kitchen. Hell, Milo. She needed to explain about last night, explain why he had the bad end of a gun pointed at his head. Leah’s shoulders slumped. Milo would be shocked and then he would go into protective mode and dealing with Seth, who took protectiveness to art form, was hard enough.

  Milo was her business partner and best friend and he knew her inside out. He would instantly pick up on the tension between her and Seth and would quickly realize their attraction was off the charts. Then Milo would get in her face, demanding answers to questions she didn’t want him to ask, telling her to man up and girl up and do something to, with, the hot man who’d landed in her metaphorical lap.

  Milo had no understanding of the word “discreet” or the phrase “minding his own business.”

  Leah stepped through the door into the kitchen and walked up to Milo and placed her arms around his waist, lifting her lips to kiss his cheek.

  Milo placed his big hand against her face and pushed her away. “Ugh, stop with the affection.”

  “Are you okay?”

  Milo squinted down at her. “Well, on the plus side, I don’t have any bullet holes in me but I’m still a bit freaked out.” Milo stepped back to look down into her face. “Okay, what’s going on? And why is sexy Seth here?”

  Leah darted a look behind her and sighed. Seth was still in the hallway on his phone and looking tough and hot—dear Lord, so hot!—and perfectly pissed.

  “Long story,” Leah said, keeping her voice low.

  “You sleeping with him?”

  Leah, her hand still on his waist, grabbed some skin and twisted. Milo yelped like a girl.

  “No.”

  Milo rubbed his side. “But you want to. Since that night in jail you’ve wanted to get jiggy with him.”

  Leah wrinkled her nose. “Gross.”

  Milo grinned. “It shouldn’t be, not if you do it properly and he looks like a dude who knows his way around a woman’s—”

  Leah slammed a fist into his arm. “Shut up!”

  “Are you really telling me that the dildo I bought you as a sorry-your-wedding-night-sucked present is preferable to him?”

  Well, no. Leah blushed as Milo cocked an eyebrow at her and waited for her response. Leah wanted to lie, wanted to act casual, wanted to dig a hole in the sand and bury her head in it but she couldn’t. Milo wouldn’t let her.

  “It’s not like that,” she muttered.

  “Oh, it’s so like that and you so want to. Good. Discounting the fact that he pointed a loaded weapon at me, he looks like he could be a perfect rebound guy. Someone to get you back into the saddle.”

  And, as she’d expected, there it was.

  “I’m not sure I want to get back in the saddle!” Leah hissed.

  “Sure you do.”

  Milo put his arm around her shoulders as Seth walked into the kitchen. Seth lifted his eyebrows at the intimate gesture and within seconds Milo dropped his arm and, to his credit, thrust his hand in Seth’s direction and introduced himself. They were so different. Both were tall but Milo had the long, wiry body of the rock climber and distance runner he was while Seth was just big, everywhere.

  Leah remembered the feel of his big “everywhere” plastered against her stomach and swallowed, trying to get some moisture back into her mouth.

  “Sorry about last night,” Seth said to Milo before frowning at Leah. “Leah forgot to mention that she rented the guest house.”

  “Yeah, we just sold my flat so I’m staying here while I look for a new place. Leah and I partner on certain projects and I run the accounting side of her business.” Milo, being Milo, headed directly for her fridge. He opened the door and sent Leah a baleful look. “Leah, there’s food but none of it is organic. Can you please buy decent food?”

  Milo nagged her continuously about her eating habits and Leah silently thanked him for this little piece of normality. She needed normal.

  Leah pointed a finger at Milo. “If you’re making breakfast do not make me drink one of your super healthy, super yuck smoothies. They are disgusting.”

  “Yeah, but good for you.” Milo retorted and s
napped his head around to narrow his eyes at Seth. “Do you believe in eating healthily?”

  “I believe in eating,” Seth said, the twitch at the corner of his mouth indicating that he was amused.

  “Heathens,” Milo muttered, pulling a pack of bacon out of the fridge. After looking at Seth, he pulled out another. Eggs and mushrooms followed the bacon onto the counter.

  “So, do you often come over and cook Leah breakfast?” Seth asked, his tone casual but Leah could feel the tension radiating off him.

  Why? What was his problem?

  Milo smiled as he grabbed a pan from the cupboard beneath the expensive gas stove. “Sure. Sometimes I just stumble down the stairs and cook breakfast.”

  Seth stiffened and Leah sighed, finally catching on. “Stop making trouble, Milo.” She turned to Seth. “Milo and I have been friends since school.”

  Seth relaxed a fraction and Leah couldn’t tell if he’d asked the question because he was jealous or because he was trying to make sense of their relationship. Probably, the latter. Seth, with his shuttered eyes and implacable expression, didn’t seem the type to get jealous. Annoyed that she was allowing him to get to her, she walked around the island counter and headed for the coffee machine.

  She pulled cups down and lifted one in the air. “Who would like a cup?” she asked.

  Seth and Milo nodded. Leah busied herself at the coffee machine, wishing she could forget about the kiss she and Seth shared. It had been, unfortunately, equally amazing, perhaps even more panty-melting than the jail kiss. She really wanted to explore his amazing body. He’d taken his shirt off on their run and she nearly ran into a light post because she’d been so busy gawking. He had the most perfect build, not overly muscled but immensely fit and powerful. Fast.

  Leah was familiar with the aboriginal tattoo around his bicep but she’d caught another glimpse of the top of a tattoo on his hip and wished she could lower his pants to discover what it was.

  Oh, who was she kidding? She was curious about his tattoo but it wasn’t why she really wanted to drop his pants. He didn’t... no, that wasn’t right; he wouldn’t take her to bed and fulfill about a hundred fantasies. Because he thought she was too vulnerable, heartbroken, damaged.

  How could she tell him, without actually telling him, that all she could think about was how loudly he could make her scream?

  “Lee?”

  Milo’s fingers snapping an inch from her nose made her jerk back.

  She slapped his hand away. “What?”

  Milo held her bright blue phone out to her. “Philippe sent you a text message confirming your date at Minx tonight.”

  “It’s not a date-date.” Leah snatched her phone from his hand. “And will you please stop reading my text messages?”

  “I’m nosy, you know that.” Milo shrugged, not in the least apologetic. “You might not think it’s a date but he’s hoping he can get lucky.”

  Leah glared at her friend. “What are you talking about?”

  “He’s hoping to comfort you, to help you move on. And by moving on, I mean that he wants to take you to bed.” Milo’s lips twitched as he sent Seth a side look. “I’m not morally opposed to you having a rebound fling but not with him.”

  “Shut up, Milo,” Leah said, blushing furiously.

  “I’d like you to cancel your dinner arrangement.” Seth’s words were low and while his words suggested he was making a request, she heard the command in his voice. She looked at him and saw his eyes on hers. He lifted a hand. “I can see that you want to argue but let’s not, okay? Will you postpone this arrangement? Just until we have a better handle on the situation?”

  Dammit, why did he have to sound so damn reasonable?

  “What is the situation?” Milo asked. “What’s going on?”

  “Leah? You willing to postpone?” Seth asked her, folding his big arms against his chest.

  “I’m not trying to be difficult but what you”—she pointed at Milo—“are forgetting and what Seth doesn’t know is that Philippe is a client, an influential client. My refusing to have dinner would be a slap in his face. I can’t afford to do that.” She looked at Seth. “I’ll ask him to collect me and I’ll take a taxi home. I promise I’ll be fine.”

  Seth shook his head. “You are a part of whatever is going on here and I can’t be sure if you have a target on your pretty ass or not.” Seth drawled, his eyes not leaving her face. He nodded to the phone still in her hand. “Please call him and cancel.”

  Cancel not postpone. She was so damn tempted. “Seth, I really can’t. I need to do this.”

  Seth pinched the bridge of his nose. “I get that this is frustrating for you...”

  “You have no freakin’ idea,” Leah muttered and their eyes clashed and his heated. Did he know she wasn’t only referring to his fake father and the mannequin in the pool?

  “Will someone tell me what’s going on?”

  Leah drilled Milo with a “not now” look. “Seth, I genuinely believe that I will be okay.” Leah insisted. “I’ll be in a public place. I’ll find an excuse to leave early—”

  Seth shook his head and looked resigned. “You go, I go. You’ll have to meet him there and you’ll leave with me. Are we clear on that?”

  Leah thought about challenging his terse statements, considered arguing but she quickly realized she’d won a major argument. She thought she should quit while she was ahead.

  “Deal,” she quickly agreed before Seth could change his mind.

  “Will someone tell me what is going on?” Milo demanded.

  Seth sent Leah another hot look before picking up his coffee cup and heading for the hall. “Leah can fill you in. I’m going to shower and dress. Yell when breakfast is ready.”

  Seth looked across the expensively decorated room to where Leah was sitting between Fayed’s mother and sister, looking down at the photo album on her lap. Fatima Khan had a tissue in her hand and frequently wiped the tears from her eyes and Fayed’s sister stared at the Persian carpet with a blank-eyed stare. Leah was rubbing big circles on her back.

  After breakfast, Seth explained where they were going and why and Leah was, initially, shocked. After she’d asked a couple of intelligent, salient questions about Fayed’s disappearance, she’d asked him how she could help.

  He’d asked her to engage with the mother and sister and she’d done that with warmth and unforced empathy. She’d pulled them over to the couch and asked to see pictures of Fayed, which Fatima had been happy to show her. Leah’s presence had allowed him to pull Ismail Khan into the study for another question and answer session. Unfortunately he didn’t have any new information to add to the little he had.

  Fayed was obsessed with computers. Then why didn’t he take his laptop with him? Fayed was a loner with no friends. He had friends; his family just didn’t know them. He loved his family; he would never hurt his mother like this. Except he was doing exactly that.

  Seth took a cup of coffee from Ismail and nodded when the still dignified gentleman asked to be excused to take a call. He’d done all he could here; Seth decided, he had tracers on the phones, a couple of illegal listening devices placed in high traffic areas in case there was something the family wasn’t telling him and Cracker was monitoring all the computers and tablets in the house. If something happened in the house, the alert would go to Seth’s phone.

  He’d made contact with a local operative, the same man who’d supplied him with his weapons and his bag of tricks, and he was using his contacts to source intel. On both Fayed and Seth’s fake father.

  After this meeting, he would leave Leah at her office, with strict instructions not to leave, and visit the local mosque and meet the Imam. After that he’d canvas hotels and B&Bs, looking for where fake-Ben had stayed while he was in Cape Town. In a tourist town, that was going to be a long and tedious process.

  Maybe he’d get lucky but he wasn’t holding his breath. Wearisome but it had to be done.

  Leah was handling all of this w
ell, he realized as he walked back into the formal lounge. Then again, she was the daughter of one of the highest ranking officers in the US military and her brother was a kick-ass operative. It was in her genes; he’d dropped into her life, flipped it upside down, yet she was rolling with the punches.

  Oh, she wasn’t wholly convinced she was in danger but she was smart enough to respect his training and his experience. Because she was a civilian, she kept forgetting that someone had gone to a lot of effort to snag his attention, had risked their life—or at least the limb Seth would’ve ripped off had he caught them—to play a nasty trick by dropping a mannequin in her pool. The UNSUB’s actions should tell her, warn her to be cautious but the sexy woman preferred to look on the bright side of life.

  He wished he could get a handle on her, put her into a box, work out what made her tick. He thought he’d figured out a little—losing her mother at such a young age would have had a massive impact on her and that being left with an austere father and a strong-willed brother, both determined to look after her, would be smothering. No wonder she’d run straight into the arms of the one person who was, in a million ways, different from her arrogant, strong, and conservative male relatives. She’d subconsciously chosen someone completely opposite to the men in her life... and a fat lot of good that had done her.

  Subconscious choice or not, what had she seen in Heath with his preppy suits and soft mouth and hands? His pretentious accent and manicured fingernails? Yet what was Seth? An embittered ex-soldier with blood on his hands, a questionable bloodline, and a cynical outlook on life? Someone destined to be alone and to stay alone, someone obsessed with using his wits and brains, and sometimes his brawn, to extract people and stuff from sticky situations? Someone who knew that not all wrongs could be righted and not all justice could be found and that life frequently didn’t make sense.

  It wasn’t like he was the catch of the century.

  Even if could imagine a relationship with anyone—which he couldn’t—Leah was way out of his league. Ignoring the fact that she was sliding out of a relationship, that she was hurt and confused and trying to find her feet...Ignoring all that as well as the fact he wasn’t relationship material, would he be any better for her than asshat Heath? Oh, he wouldn’t lie to Leah, or cheat on her, but he believed he wasn’t a prize. He didn’t communicate well, preferring to keep all his emotions bottled up inside. Work wise, he carried an enormous amount of responsibility and he often made decisions that changed lives. Those decisions could affect the lives of his agents, a community, a village, a city. A country. His work was important and he mostly enjoyed it. But parts of it stained his soul.