Hungry Like the Wolf(9)

She watched in silence as police officers and EMTs rushed into the room to take custody of the bank robbers and give first aid to the hostages. Dixon’s team fell back, disappearing out of the camera’s view.

Only then did Dixon take off his headset and turn to face her. “So, Ms. Stone. Did you get what you were looking for?”

This was the first time Mac had seen Gage Dixon this close up. Saying he was gorgeous didn’t even begin to cover it. With his dark hair, chiseled jaw, and sensuous mouth, he was downright devastating. She was especially captivated by his eyes. They were the color of dark honey. Or maybe fine whiskey. Either way, it was too easy to get lost in their depths.

She gave herself a mental shake and forced herself to look away, if just to catch her breath. “What are you talking about?”

He smiled at her in a way that made her wonder if he knew how off balance he had her. That bothered her—she was used to being the one who put other people off balance.

“It’s obvious you’ve been snooping around for a story,” he said.

“When your man grabbed me, you mean?” She shrugged. “That was a complete accident. I got turned around and ended up back there.”

He chuckled. “Right. Just like it’s a complete accident that your unmarked news van has been parked outside my SWAT compound for the last two days?”

She tried not to let her surprise show, but failed miserably. Mouth twitching, he turned and switched off the monitors.

How the hell had Dixon made her so easily? She and Zak weren’t that sloppy, were they? Dixon turned off the monitors, then picked up a cloth and wiped down the whiteboard.

“Okay, you caught me,” she said. “But I only resorted to that because the department turned down my request for an interview and a ride-along.”

He stopped wiping and turned to her, his brow raised in a way that did interesting things to her tummy. Damn, the man had quite the smolder. “Most reporters would be able to infer from that answer that they should go after a different story.”

Mac knew it was crazy, but if she didn’t know better, she’d think Dixon was teasing her—if not outright flirting. Well, she could play that game, too. But while she wasn’t above using her feminine wiles to get a story, she needed to make sure she was right about him first.

She moved a little closer. If he backed up, she’d assume she read him wrong and would retreat accordingly. If he didn’t, she might be able to work him a little bit.

Dixon did neither. Instead, he took a step toward her so that they were standing even closer together. She hadn’t realized how big the SWAT officer was until that moment. He towered over her by almost a foot, and his shoulders were nearly twice as wide as she was. She decided she suddenly liked really big men.

Damn, it was going to be hard remembering this guy was the target of her next in-depth investigative article.

“I’ve never been very good at picking up subtle hints.” She gave him her best award-winning smile—the one she used on her editor when she wanted a really juicy story—and moved a fraction of an inch closer. He smelled nice. “I was simply waiting outside the compound so I could talk to you and straighten out the obvious misunderstanding the department had.”

“Of course.” He returned her smile with one of the sexiest grins she’d ever seen. “Because it must have been a mistake. After all, what cop wouldn’t want to talk to the ever-insightful Ms. Mackenzie Stone, right?”

“Exactly.”

Mac gave him a real smile this time. It was hard not to. He was one of those rare men who could be charming with a few carefully chosen words. And he seemed attracted to her—at least she was pretty sure he was.

She was just trying to figure out how to use that attraction to weasel an invite for an in-depth interview with the hunky SWAT commander when the door to the operations vehicle opened and two of his men climbed in. They hesitated for a moment when they saw her, as if surprised to find their superior alone with a woman in the back of the operations vehicle. She wasn’t sure why. It wasn’t as if they could know she was a journalist looking for a story.

One of the men was Senior Corporal Michael Taylor—the man who’d saved her life before. The other wasn’t one of the three she’d ID’d earlier, but she recognized him from the files anyway—Senior Corporal Xander Riggs. He must have been the one who’d slipped into the building before she and Zak got there.

Dixon took a step back, putting some space between them as Taylor closed the door behind him and Riggs.

“This is Mackenzie Stone from the Dallas Daily Star. Ms. Stone, meet Mike Taylor and Xander Riggs, two of my senior team members.”