Under Fire (Love Over Duty #1)(30)

"If you don't mind waiting, I could pick up takeout, or order pizza or something."

Just the thought of him joining her for another evening felt  …  everything.

"Shelves and pizza," he said, without giving her time to respond. "Not a big deal, Lou. Don't overthink it." Why did he have to sound so thoroughly  …  breezy  …  about it? Probably because he did this kind of thing all the time.

"Fine. Thank you," she added quickly.

"No worries, Lou. See you later."

She hung up the phone as she attempted to process what the hell just happened. In the relatively short space of a week, she'd lost a sample and gained a male friend. A male friend who happened to be built like one of those Calvin Klein models she'd seen on billboards.

With the thought of Six posing reclined in his underwear, she needed cooling off. She slipped into her swimsuit, grabbed a towel from the closet, and headed out of the sliding door in the kitchen toward the pool.

Several hours later, Louisa deadheaded the fresh herbs she grew on the large kitchen windowsill. Not that they really needed pruning, but it gave her something to do with the nervous energy buzzing through her. All of her crockery and glasses were stacked on the counters, leaving the wooden shelves empty. She'd wiped the nonexistent dust from them and had begun the process of running some of the dishes she rarely used through the dishwasher. 

The closer she got to Six's arrival, the more she felt like calling to cancel. The shelves were fine. Heck, she could even head over to her mom's and borrow the tools that belonged to her father that her mother hadn't been able to get rid of after his death. There had to be time in her schedule to attempt some handiwork herself, in between her research and bed each day.

She heard a bang outside and leaned toward the window to see if Six had parked in her driveway, but nobody was there. Probably one of the neighbors closing a car door or taking out the trash. The scent of mint filled the air as she finished pruning and dropped the scissors into the sink.

The same noise came again, quieter this time but accompanied by the sound of glass clinking against glass. The sound was coming from inside her house.

She wanted it to be Six. Wanted him to be playing some stupid prank that she could be mad about later. Part of her thought about calling out to him to be sure. But she knew it wasn't.

She heard glass hitting glass again. Somebody must have slid her dining room window open, because the sound of glass tinkling was coming from her collection of antique insulators that sat on shelves beneath the window. Louisa's heart raced as she thought through her options. Her phone was still charging in the office, and running upstairs away from exit doors didn't feel like the smartest thing to do. She could escape through the patio doors in the kitchen and scream in the hope someone would hear, realize it was her, and then run to help her. Given that the key to the lock on the rear gate was hanging on a hook in the hallway, the odds of it being a successful strategy were low. Or she could creep toward the front door. It would require walking past the archway to the dining room, but she could grab her car keys and run to her car. That felt like the best option.

Gingerly, she picked up the rolling pin she kept on the counter and the large carving knife from the knife block and crept toward the entrance.

* * *

It was a little after nine o'clock when Six pulled slowly onto Louisa's street. The truck could be noisy, and the last thing he wanted to do was aggravate or wake the neighborhood. Six yawned. He'd spent the last few hours with Cabe in communication with Mac to go over all of the final details for the extraction of the little girl in the custody case. They'd located her and had spent several days trailing the family to establish a pattern of life from which they could deduce the best time to grab her. The location for the pickup had been decided. It would take place early Sunday morning from the girl's grandmother's home, before she was returned to her father's home. It would take them approximately eleven minutes to get from the collection point to the helicopter and the beginning of her return to US soil. Hopefully they'd be in the air before the police had made it to the scene. Thanks to a former SEAL with the right connections, they'd be landing at a private airport about twenty miles outside of San Diego. Cabe was to collect the mother once the plane was wheels up out of Mexico.

The details were still buzzing around in his head. It felt odd being purely on the logistics end of an op when his heart belonged in the action of it. It was even harder when his mind kept drifting to Louisa. Lack of focus had never been his problem. In fact, his clarity had been one of his enduring traits. But despite the significance of this first op, he was worried. For some reason, he could sense how much it had cost her to come ask him for help, and the way she'd accepted what Cabe had said and had disappeared so quickly made it clear that she hadn't expected them to help her anyway. Now, after spending time with her midweek, he was more committed than ever to keeping tabs on her. He was certain that some people would find her abrupt, standoffish even, but he could see the person beneath all that, and he had a sneaking suspicion she didn't have anybody to lean on. He wanted to check on her again, and the shelves were a good excuse.