“Only ninety-nine percent of the time,” I said in a sarcastic tone.
He grinned. “Then you admit that I occasionally eat healthy?”
“Hardly ever.”
“Like you should talk,” Jett joked. “Half the time you eat on the run and do protein drinks. We could both use some protein and carbs right now.”
“Fine. I’ll order pizza,” I conceded.
It wasn’t that I didn’t like pizza, burgers, fries, and all of the other things guaranteed to give me early heart failure, but I tried to avoid them, and I worked out as often as possible. I was in my mid-thirties, and I wasn’t getting any younger. With all the traveling and CIA business I had to do, I needed to be able to keep my body in the best shape possible.
“I want it loaded,” he insisted as he walked toward my office.
“As much grease as possible?” I asked.
“You got it,” he answered with a laugh as he disappeared through the door leading to my sophisticated computer system.
My stomach growled, and I realized that I was hungry, too. Usually I’d send George out to find me a healthy meal. Instead, I found myself looking up pizza joints and calling in a very large order.
Dani
“Touch that last piece of pizza and you’re a dead man,” I warned my brother, Jett, as I snatched the last slice of the heavily loaded pie and slapped his hand away.
Generally, I wasn’t the type to invite myself over to somebody’s house, but when I heard that my brother was in town, I’d hightailed it over to Marcus’s place. Luckily, I’d arrived just as the pizza was delivered.
I had impeccable timing when it came to food.
“I’m certainly not going to fight you for it,” Marcus commented drily.
I chewed and swallowed a heavenly bite of the greasy pizza before I answered, “You didn’t eat much.”
“He’s a food snob,” Jett informed me. “He doesn’t like junk food.”
“I didn’t say I don’t like it,” Marcus argued. “It’s just not healthy.”
We were all sitting around the dining room table at Marcus’s condo. Of course, I made sure I was closest to the food. “What is healthy anymore?” I asked.
“Certainly not a ton of grease and cardboard,” Marcus answered stuffily.
I couldn’t argue with the fact that the man was in prime condition. But he was way too regimented. “So no chocolate?” I asked.
“Rarely,” he confirmed.
“And I suppose you don’t eat food from street vendors?”
“Never.”
Good Lord, he really needed to lighten up. Yeah, I probably ate way too much fast food or things that I got on the go. I was usually too impatient to cook, and being on the road all the time made it difficult to grab anything except fast food.
“How do you eat when you’re traveling?”
Marcus shrugged. “I usually have one of my assistants find me something decent.”
“So where are your assistants now?”
He shot me a disgruntled expression as he answered, “I didn’t have time to get somebody to meet me here, and it was personal. I had to chase down some crazy female. And since it wasn’t business, I came alone.”
I kind of liked the fact that Marcus had done something spontaneous and specifically because he was concerned about me, even though he had just called me crazy.
“So none of them know about your assistance to the government?” Jett chimed in.
“Nobody knows except you two outside of my own family.”
“How do you manage that?” Jett asked.
“I don’t let my employees get involved in my personal life.”
I finished off my slice of pizza and washed it down with one of the sugary sodas that had come with the delivery. I usually preferred diet, but I made do. A woman had to save on calories somewhere, and I preferred to sacrifice my drinks rather than my food.
I watched silently as Jett and Marcus became involved in a discussion about cyber security, one of Jett’s favorite subjects. I couldn’t help but notice how closed off Marcus seemed, even though I knew he could be thoughtful when he wanted to be. I’d always seen him as arrogant, but some of his overconfidence probably came from being so self-contained. He’d spent most of his time traveling, so he’d only had himself to rely on, and he hadn’t shared much about his personal mission to keep our country safe. It had to be hard to be unable to share so much of his life.
I knew exactly how he functioned because I’d spent so much of my own life exactly the same way. Maybe I hadn’t been hiding the fact that I was some kind of roaming spy, but I knew what it was like to have to keep everything inside myself. Except for my brief affair with another correspondent who was more like a casual friend and acquaintance, I’d always been lonely. I’d just been too busy and focused to recognize those emotions. Or maybe I’d just never met anyone I really wanted to talk to about my travels except my siblings, and they had their own lives, their own interests.
I knew that the last person I should be attracted to was Marcus, but I couldn’t seem to shake off the chemistry and emotional draw that I felt whenever I was with him.
He was actually dressed casually today, and the look suited him. His butt filled out a pair of jeans like I’d never seen them filled before. Marcus was hot, but there was so much more than just his physical appearance that made me want to fly close enough to his heat to get myself burned.
He might be here now, but he’ll be gone soon. He’s an international businessman who travels most of the time. I can’t even think about getting involved with him.
My body wanted to say yes, but my common sense was screaming at me to ignore how much I wanted him.
I was still trying to figure out who I was after everything that happened to me during my kidnapping. Marcus was guaranteed to mess with my newfound sense of peace.
Maybe I wasn’t the woman I’d been a year ago, but I was okay with that now. Life was full of heartache and change, and I was going through a period in my life where I just had to search for something new.
My first priority was to put away the man who was funding a group of terrorists so they couldn’t hurt anybody else. My sense of justice wouldn’t let me rest until I did.
“Dani?” my brother said in a loud voice.
I heard him, and I suddenly brought myself out of my own thoughts. “Yeah?”
“Did you hear me?” Jett asked, his voice concerned. “Are you okay? I asked you twice what you thought about Becker’s motives for funding the rebels.”
“Sorry,” I answered. “I was thinking about something else.”
I was busy daydreaming about crawling up Marcus’s amazingly hard body and begging him to do me.
“What were you thinking about?” Marcus inquired.
“Nothing important,” I said hurriedly. “So what did you want to know?”