His chuckle is warm. “I understood about half the words in that sentence, but my advice is not to worry. It’ll all work out in the end.”
Now I do look at him, because my curiosity is overwhelming. The sunlight treats him differently than it does other people, caressing him in a hazy, lover’s glow, gleaming the tips of his hair and burnishing his skin to gold. Before I met him, I never even considered a man could be pretty, but he’s beyond merely pretty. He’s mind-meltingly beautiful.
Yes, that’s it. He’s melted my mind. No wonder I’m having trouble thinking.
“You’re an optimist,” I say flatly.
“You say that like you’re accusing me of murder.”
“Have you always been like this?”
He glances at me sideways, the flash of dimples in his cheek annoyingly adorable. “Like what? Awesome? Amazing? Unbearably cool?”
“Guess you weren’t kidding when you said you were conceited,” I mutter.
“The only difference between me and you, Angel,” he says, squeezing my hand again, “is that you’re a plotter and I’m a panster. You sweat every detail, and I live by the seat of my pants. We both get where we want to go in the end, I just don’t waste time fussin’ over what-ifs.”
I suffer a brief but violent pang of jealousy that he doesn’t have the worry gene, but then am insulted that he’d refer to all my careful planning—for instance, on a job like stealing the Hope—as “fussin’.”
“I don’t fuss. I deliberate. I consider all the options. It’s called being professional.”
“It’s called bein’ anal.”
“It’s called being an adult!”
He sighs like every man has ever sighed when dealing with a woman who doesn’t agree with him. That “here we go” sigh. That “maybe it’s PMS” sigh.
I’d like to hear the sigh he’d use if I stabbed him in the neck.
“You’re awful dramatic for someone who’s so anal.”
“I bet your brain feels as good as new, seeing as how you never use it,” I grit out.
His shoulders shake silently. While I’m over here steaming, the bastard is trying not to laugh! When I try to extricate my hand from his, he just holds on tighter.
“Nope,” he says with infuriating cheer, “you don’t get your hand back just ’cause you’ve got your panties in a twist.”
Instead of trying to force it or argue, I just smile sweetly. “Okay. But when you get your hand back, it might be missing the rest of your arm.”
“We’re here anyway, so there’s no need for violence, darlin’.”
Pulling up to a solid steel gate, Ryan winks at me, then rolls down his window. He punches a code into a black box, then he grins up at a camera pointed down from the top of the brick wall that flanks the gate, and flips it the bird.
“Were you in a fraternity?” I wonder aloud, watching him in all his cocky, Captain America football-hero glory as he makes lewd gestures at a piece of electronic surveillance equipment.
“In?” he scoffs. “No. I was a founding father of the Kappa Alpha Delta fraternity, the coolest frat on campus.”
“It’s all starting to make sense now.” I shake my head as the gate swings open.
We pull into a large lot similar to the one at Ryan’s home and park near a building similar to his, too, only much bigger. It looks like a converted industrial warehouse. All the windows are blacked out and there’s only one entrance, a huge hammered steel door that’s at least ten feet tall and about as wide. A fleet of hulking black Hummers lurks on one side of the lot, windscreens and chrome rims gleaming. They look like a group of metal sharks ready to feed.
The whole effect is über-masculine and weirdly threatening.
“Is this your other bachelor pad?”
“This is Metrix Security’s headquarters.”
“Oh. Yes, I guess it makes good sense to keep the diamond at the headquarters of a security company. This place must be as impenetrable as Fort Knox. Or your tooth enamel.”
His only answer is a smile as he exits the car. I undo my seat belt, but before I can open the door, Ryan is holding it open for me, his hand extended to help me out.
“Thank you.”
As we walk hand in hand toward the colossal door, he says, “The camera at the gate has facial recognition software—so nobody who isn’t supposed to get in doesn’t, even if they have the entry code—but there’s also a guy watching the camera who mans the submachine guns set into the walls on either side of the gate.”
“Machine guns?” I repeat, astonished. “Who’re you expecting, the Terminator?”
“Never know who’s gonna come knockin’,” he says darkly. “Better armed to the teeth than caught off guard.”
Our eyes meet. I think of acrid clouds of smoke over avocado fields, the rank, rusty smell of blood on dirt, and shudder. “I couldn’t agree more.”
His gaze sharpens, but he doesn’t comment further because the steel door is silently sliding open. It reveals a beast of a man, dressed all in black, a gun strapped to his waist.
“Hey, brother,” Ryan says, breaking into a grin.
In a rumbling baritone, the man replies, “Hey yourself.” His eyes, dark and flinty as obsidian, flick toward me. “Lady Danger. Nice to see you again, sweetheart. Stolen anything since I last saw you?”
“Yes. Bought any clothes that aren’t black since I last saw you?”
Ryan laughs, and so does Connor. They look at each other, something silently passing between them.
“Nope,” says Connor, glancing back at me, his eyes warm. “Don’t hold your breath for it, either. C’mon in, kids, everyone else is already here.”
My brows shoot up. Everyone else?
Seeing my look, Ryan sheepishly explains, “They kind of insisted.”
“They? Who’s they?”
“You didn’t think the crew would let this opportunity pass by to say hello, did you?” Connor throws over his shoulder as he walks away into the gloom of the warehouse.
I stare at his retreating back with rising panic, then I stare at Ryan. “Who are we talking about? The FBI?”
“Worse. Come on, the sooner we go in, the sooner it’ll be over with.”
When I balk, he adds, “I have one word for you, Angel.” He lowers his head and looks at me from under his brows.
Regretting I ever mentioned it, I exhale heavily. “Trust.”
“Bingo. Now loosen that Vulcan death grip you’ve got on my hand. You’re cuttin’ off the circulation in the right side of my body.”
He turns and drags me inside. As soon as we’re over the threshold, the steel door slides shut behind us. We’re swallowed in shadows. It’s cool and dim inside, the cement floor polished to a subtle sheen. As we walk farther, my eyes adjust. I glimpse black computer towers extending the length of one wall in blinking, softly humming rows. Dozens of cubicles on the east wall house hard-jawed men wearing headphones, staring at computer screens. Another wall has a huge collection of weaponry displayed behind glass cases.
“Wow,” I murmur.
“Impressive, isn’t it?”
“Yes. There’s enough free-floating testosterone in this place to get a convent of nuns ovulating in sync.”
Ryan wrinkles his nose. “Don’t be sacrilegious. Nuns don’t ovulate.”
When he doesn’t smile, I say, “Please tell me that was a joke.”
“What do you mean?”
“God, you’re serious.”
“Why would they ovulate if they don’t ever have sex?” His voice rises. “Hey, Connor. Back me up, here, brother. Nuns don’t ovulate, right?”
A few steps in front of us, Connor stops short. He turns and looks first at Ryan, then at me. He points to his own face. “You see how I don’t look surprised by that question?”
“I’m guessing these little gems of his aren’t that unusual.”
“It’s not that he’s dumb, don’t get it wrong,” Connor says. “The man’s got an IQ of 156, which, by any standards, is way above genius level. Einstein himself clocked in at about 160.”
“Funny you should mention Einstein, I was just thinking about him on the way over.”
“Uh, guys? You realize I’m standin’ right here, right?”
We ignore him. “It’s just that he has no idea—literally, none—about the inner workings of the female body,” Connor says.
Ryan extravagantly rolls his eyes. “Excuse me for not bein’ a gynecologist!”
“Don’t they teach sex education in schools in the United States?” I ask Connor, genuinely curious.
“Oh yeah. But this one gets weirdly squeamish at any mention of menstruation, so his mother had to write him a note to get him out of the days in class where the teacher covered it.”
My brows lifted as high as they can go, I look at Ryan.
He’s glaring at Connor. “Bro,” he says accusingly.
Smiling, Connor replies, “It’s one of my favorite stories.”
“You’re not supposed to tell anyone!”
“She’s not anyone.” He glances at our clasped hands. “She’s your girl.”