Almost as badly as she wanted to take a shower. “Sure. He should be here soon—I left him sitting in a mud puddle in front of the burned house with that Nikolas guy. They can’t stay there forever.”
“I like Nik,” Glory said. “He seems quiet but, I don’t know, competent. And then, of course, there’s—”
“Ro-bin Ash-ton.” Mirren drawled out the name, and Melissa would swear he almost smiled. “What a fucking menace.”
“F-word. Show me the money.” Glory held out a hand and Mirren, grumbling, pulled a roll of bills out of his pocket and handed her a five. “That leaves me with four credits. Fuck-fuck-fuck-fuck.”
“Funny, foul mouth; this is buying me a car.” Which was ridiculous, because Mirren had as much money as God. He and Aidan both did, thanks to Mark’s investment genius. He could buy her a dozen cars—but Glory wouldn’t take what she hadn’t earned.
“Mel, I’m guessing you haven’t met our other new Omega team member yet?” Glory smiled, too.
No, but now she was intrigued. “Not yet, why?” Melissa reclaimed the corner of the adjacent sofa. “Something about him I need to know? Or, wait, Robin, you said? The other Army person is a woman?”
“Not Army,” Glory said. “She’s a shape-shifter recruited to be part of the Omega Force team in Houston, although I think the colonel made them go through a special version of Ranger training, right?” She looked at Mirren, who nodded with that unsettling half smile.
Mirren distrusted newcomers on principle; Melissa had never known him to find one vaguely amusing. In fact, only Glory—and Will Ludlam, although Mirren probably wouldn’t admit it—consistently amused him. “She’s some kind of eagle,” Glory said. “Weird, huh?”
Not as weird as they were acting. “What are you not telling me? Mirren Kincaid, come clean.” Melissa had seen through the big guy’s rough exterior a long time ago, and thanks to being Aidan’s familiar, had mostly gotten to know him through Aidan’s eyes. He didn’t intimidate her for a minute. “What’s so funny about Robin Ashton?”
Mirren made a big show of stretching before standing up, a broad spread of long arms and packed muscle beneath his short-sleeved T-shirt—there was a lot of him to stretch. “She’ll show up here soon enough and you can draw your own conclusions. Maybe you can train with her.” He held out a hand to Glory. “Come on, woman.”
Glory’s face came alive when she looked at Mirren, and Melissa’s sense of emptiness returned as if on cue. She missed the easy intimacy she’d had with Mark before she was turned. Funny how she had forgotten it until now, when he wanted to move on. Now that she’d pushed him away until she no longer had to push, it came back to her.
Glory wished Melissa a good daysleep before heading down the hallway to the back door, but Mirren remained a second longer, looking at her with an expression she couldn’t interpret.
“What is it, Mirren? I swear, you’ve been acting weird since I got here. Weird even for you.”
One side of his mouth quirked up—the normal version of the Kincaid smile. “Decide what you want, Mel. And that’s all I got to say on the subject.” He turned and disappeared down the hallway. In a couple of seconds, Melissa heard the back door open and then click shut again.
Well, that was oblique.
Except the more she thought about it, the more sense his comment made. She hadn’t discussed with them the conclusions she’d reached about her relationships, so Mirren and Glory probably thought she still was torn between Cage and Mark.
That question, she’d finally answered. The one that remained was whether she could get over Mark. Until tonight, when he’d hinted that he and Britta were getting close, the possibility that he might love someone else hadn’t occurred to her. Until tonight, she’d taken for granted that if she ever decided to try again with him, he’d be there. It had been unfair to him and naive of her.
Until tonight, she’d thought she could walk away from Mark first to spare herself the agony of his eventual rejection. Now, she wasn’t so sure. The thought of him with someone else tangled her heart in knots. He was still a part of her; she’d just been too fearful to admit it.
Melissa shuffled down the hall into the back bedroom on the left, pulled out clean jeans and a sweater, and stopped at the drawer of lingerie. She usually didn’t bother with the sexy stuff anymore; it wasn’t like anyone saw them. But tonight . . . well, tonight everyone was tired, but at dusk tomorrow, maybe she and Cage could figure things out and lingerie might help.