Chapter Thirteen
“Then you just attach the wire to the battery,” Morgan said, tightening the last screw top over the exposed copper wire. “And—ta-da!—you’ve got yourself a robot.”
Morgan lifted the collection of metal parts and rubber wheels off the floor of the common area of the warehouse and held it up for Ty to see.
“That’s amazing,” Ty said, but his soft green eyes weren’t on her hastily put together creation. They were on her.
“Do you want to give it a try?” she asked.
Ty shook his head. “I have far more experience disarming wires than attaching them.”
Morgan laughed. She didn’t doubt it. She could see him clearly in her mind, bent over a bomb, calmly cutting the blue wire instead of the red. “It’s never too late to learn.”
Ty stretched out his legs on the concrete floor and leaned back on his straight arms. “I’d rather watch you do it.”
Morgan felt a blush creep into her cheeks, but she didn’t dip her head to try and hide it. She found she liked being the focus of Ty’s attention. Just like she enjoyed looking back at him.
She scooted closer to his side.
“That sounds a little boring,” she said.
“Not at all.” He reached out with one hand and lazily flicked one of the tires. “You get a glow when you’re doing something you love. You should do it more often.”
Morgan’s smile faltered as a swift rush of shame sliced through her.
He was right. She should. How long had it been since she’d gotten down and bolted parts together? Over a year. Not since the day she’d agreed to go into business with Gregg. After that, she’d poured every bit of spare time she had into making their business a success.
But even with all the satisfaction that had come with success, she had never once in the whole year felt the same surge of joy that she had in the last few hours. And it wasn’t just because her hands were busy.
It was where she was. It was the people around her, the feeling that she was right where she should be.
In a way it didn’t make sense. She had armed hit men after her. She should be cowering in a corner somewhere, afraid to even move like she had been yesterday. But she wasn’t. She wasn’t hiding anymore. She wasn’t pretending to be someone else. She was herself here. She was happy.
Sure, she knew that any moment it could change. She still flinched when sirens passed by, certain they were coming for her. She jumped at every bang and bump believing for that half-second that it meant that a Bratva hit man was about to shower the place with bullets.
But none of those things had happened. Instead, she’d spent the day with Ty, giving him a tour of the warehouse, introducing him to her friends and showing him how their various gadgets worked. He asked a lot of questions—most of them ones Morgan was pretty sure he wasn’t interested in the answers to.
Just like he didn’t really care about the simple remote controlled robot she’d just made. She could see right through his attempts to keep her busy and distracted…and she appreciated the hell out of them.
Especially, since he didn’t have to. He didn’t have to be doing any of this—not entertaining her plan to stop Barinov, not bringing her to Michael’s warehouse, and definitely not trusting these people the way she did.
She couldn’t remember the last time someone had believed in her the way Ty had. Not Gregg. Not even Michael.
They’d depended on her, sure. They’d even trusted her with important stuff. But they hadn’t really believed in her, not to the extent that they gave her opinion as much weight as their own.
And that was just what Ty was doing.
“And what makes you glow?” Morgan asked as she leaned against his chest.
“Stopping the bad guy. Saving the day.” He lifted his hand to her shoulder and gave it a little squeeze. “The usual James Bond stuff.”
Morgan tilted her head back so he could see her roll her eyes.
“You asked,” he said with a grin.
“Fair enough.” Morgan put the wheels down on the hard floor and picked up the remote. She tucked her bottom between Ty’s outstretched legs and flicked the on switch. The robot twitched as power surged through its parts. She pushed the toggle forward and the machine began to roll. “So what made you want to be a secret agent anyway?”
“Same thing that makes you want to build robots, I guess. It’s just in our blood.”
“Yeah, but it gets there somehow.” Morgan maneuvered the wheels into a seamless figure eight. “I got into this after Gregg teased me for believing that C-3PO was a real robot and not an actor in a metal suit.”
“That sounds like a good reason.”
“What about you?”
Morgan felt Ty stiffen behind her. She didn’t press him. She just played with the switches on her remote, turning the robot this way and that, hoping that he’d trust her with the answer.