Chapter 7 Grayson
GRAYSON
Brandon, with sharp and attentive eyes, steals my focus from the bathroom door. “Are you sure you want to do this now? It seems like you have more pressing matters to attend to.”
I wet my lips before shifting my attention back to the stack of files. “Sorry. My mind is elsewhere.”
I give him a look as if to say get the fuck out of my head when he asks, “Is Macy okay?”
“Yeah.” I slouch back on the couch before running a hand over my head. “I think.”
As my eyes roam over the book I plucked from the shelf without Macy’s knowledge while we were getting groceries, I recall how white Macy’s cheeks went when flicking through it.
I thought What to Expect When You’re Expecting was a good book to steer Macy toward the role she’ll be taking on within the next six weeks.
Regan is fierce as fuck, but she’s also a woman who loathes the sight of blood, so when I remembered how she breezed through that book as if it were a graphic romance novel, I hid it under a loaf of bread and then acted clueless when Macy’s eyes zoomed in on it as the checkout clerk scanned and bagged it.
Macy’s drained face and wide eyes seconds before she announced she needed to use the bathroom have me second-guessing my decision.
Not thinking, I grab the book I’m referencing instead of the report Brandon forwarded to my tablet. Some pages are dog-eared, but none provide an immediate indication of Macy’s scared response.
“Have you read this yet?” I twist the book’s cover to show Brandon. Melody is due a couple of weeks after Macy, so I’m expecting Brandon to jerk up his chin. You can picture my shock when he does the opposite. “You should. Alex read it word for word.”
I snap my eyes up from a diagram of how the cervix dilates during the stages of labor when Brandon scrubs at his dark-rimmed eyes. “If you find anything of interest, pass it on, and I’ll thumb through those pages. I’m snowed under right now.”
“I’m not reading it.” You can’t miss the disgust in my voice.
Brandon arches his brow, wordlessly calling me out as a liar.
“I’m not. I am just striving to work out what made Macy’s face as white as a ghost while reading it. Excluding the redness her cheeks got when Jordan pissed her off, she maintained a normal complexion the rest of the day.”
“Jordan?” Brandon asks, lost.
I scoff, still angry about how that woman treated Macy.
Jordan would never get out of Macy’s shadow even if they were the only two women left on the planet.
“She was the salesclerk at the baby store we visited earlier today.” Brandon inhales sharply, but I’m so caught up in my irritation that I ignore his telltale sign of shock.
“She was so rude to Macy. She looked down at her and gave her grief about being a single mother. It pissed me off so much that I almost wanted to pretend I’m not a federal agent. ”
“People can be so judgmental. How did Macy handle it?”
“She tried to stay calm, but I could tell it was getting to her.” My voice softens as I recall how I stepped in to support her.
“I pretended to be the father-to-be.” When Brandon brows shoot up high, stunned, I blurt out any excuse I can find.
“I couldn’t stand the way Jordan was treating her, and I refused to watch Macy be belittled by a woman with less grace in her whole body than Macy has in her pinkie finger.
Macy is an agent, a damn good agent, and she will be an even better mother.
She just needs to ignore the naysayers…” And stop feeling guilty about living.
I’ve never met Kendall, but I can still confidently declare that she wouldn’t want Macy to live a miserable existence. As much as I hate to admit this, I know Cameron would want this for me too.
As assurances ring continuously in my head, I stare at the bathroom door before directing my attention back to Brandon. I feel guilty, though you’d never believe that for how fast I deliver my reply. “I’ll call you back.”
He winks, wordlessly approving of my decision, before he disconnects our call.
I drag my hand over my hair to flatten its spikes before I leave the couch and head to the bathroom. I only need a handful of steps to close the distance between us. That’s how compact this apartment is.
After a quick exhale, freeing a bit of the anxiety on my chest, I rack my knuckles on the beachy white wood door of the bathroom. My brows shoot up high when the voice that comes through the door isn’t weighed down with despair.
“Just a minute.” Three point five seconds later, the bathroom door flings open, and Macy flashes me a playful grin. “Sorry for hogging the only bathroom. I’m almost done.”
My eyes track her as she moves back to the vanity sink.
I don’t speak. I can’t. I’m too busy taking in how smoking hot Macy looks out of her “work” attire.
Concealer hides her tired bags but keeps her freckles in full view; her cheeks have regained the flush of color they achieved when we cooked and ate together hours ago, and she has painted her lips fire-engine red.
Don’t get me started on her dress. It is black and tight and has an in-fucking-decent hem. The entire ensemble screams sex, but the lace top stockings peeking out from beneath her dress’s super short skirt make it downright dangerous.
“Your date…” I murmur to myself, suddenly cluing in as to why she’s dressed to the nines, and my tongue is hanging out of my mouth.
I completely forgot about her confession earlier today that she has a date tonight.
Macy and I make eye contact in the vanity mirror.
She looks confident, yet uncertain. “Yeah. He’ll be here shortly to pick me up.
” Her expression augments as her head flops to the side.
“Unless you need me to stay.” Hope flares through her eyes, removing the suspicious glint they’ve not been without today. “Did Brandon’s report show anything?”
“No. Nothing yet,” I half-lie. We haven’t gone through the report yet because I was more worried about her fainting from graphic images of birth than the women I traveled across the country to help. “But you’ll be the first person I tell if we unearth something.”
Confident that I am now telling the truth, she mouths her thanks before she returns to running mascara over her already coated lashes.
I make out that I can wait for her to finish applying her makeup before using the restroom, and then I pivot on my heel and stalk away.
The glossy cover of What to Expect When You’re Expecting mocks me when I return to the living room. I believed I was racing in to save Macy from the fear of childbirth. I had no clue she was anxious about dating while pregnant.
“Bathroom’s free,” Macy says seconds later, practically skipping out of the room.
With my earlier lie forgotten, I slump onto the couch and pull across the laptop sitting left of the book responsible for another gray hair. It is a bureau-issued laptop, and it shows an email from Alex commending me for the speed with which I placed Macy on maternity leave.
His commendation isn’t far off the mark. She’s going on a date only hours after leaving her apartment after a long hiatus. That sounds like vacation time to me.
I mark Alex’s email as read as Macy returns to the living room. Her lips are super glossy with a recent sheen of lip gloss, and she boosted her height with four-inch stilettos.
“How do I look?” She twirls, making even me dizzy.
I shut down the initial wave of praise that forms in my head, settling for a comment more appropriate for a fellow agent. “Good.” I wet my suddenly bone-dry mouth. “You look good.”
Air rushes from her nose as she bobs down to gather a gun taped to the underside of the entryway table. “I was going for hot, but good works.”
Her eyes flick between her gun and her sparkling clutch purse. It will never fit, so with a sigh, she fetches her holster from the bedroom and then alters it until it’s the size of a garter.
I groan when she hikes up the skirt of her thigh-hugging dress far enough to expose that the lace on top of her stockings isn’t the only article of lacy clothing she’s wearing. She is also wearing black lace panties. Then I shift my hooded gaze to the floor.
Though I shouldn’t, my position as her superior officer frees me to say, “Do you often weapon up for a date, Agent Machini?”
Macy’s eyes shoot to mine. “Oh. No. Um. I just figured better safe than sorry.”
Her high tone piques my suspicion and gives me free rein to interrogate her like my cross-examination isn’t fueled by jealousy. “What’s the name of the man you’re going out with again?”
“Again?” She shoots me a riled look, her lips tugging into a salacious smirk.
“I didn’t say his name.” A knock saves her from further interrogation by an agent skilled at making anyone slip.
“But I promise to be back before curfew, Dad.” She marks the cleavage almost spilling out of her dress with a cross. “Scout’s honor.”
Unable to ignore her pleading look to accept the white flag she’s waving, I murmur, “Naughtiest-looking Girl Scout I’ve ever fucking seen.”
My mumbled comment brings back the smile she’d deprived me of for the past hour, and it sees Macy extending an olive branch. “I wrote the restaurant we’re attending, his name, and his social security number on the notepad in the kitchen.”
“Thank you,” I say, appreciative of the reprieve she’s giving my worry. I’m not usually overbearing with my friends, but Macy is one of the rare few female friends I have, so she gets the brunt of the burdens Cameron’s abduction dosed me with.
While she ensures the hem of her mini dress covers her gun but keeps her lace-top stockings visible, excitement blazes across her face.
“Thank me when this date greases the rusty cogs of this...” Lines sprout from her nose as her words trail off, and then she waves her hand at a part of her body that I pretend not to know is covered by only tiny black scraps of lace.
“No one wants to give birth with… it untouched.”
Her hand freezes halfway to the doorknob when a trickle of jealousy makes me speak before thinking. “They have oils for that, freckles. You don’t need to settle for a man’s company.”
She stares at me for several long seconds, her chest thrusting, before she briskly shakes her head. Then she pulls open the door, exposing her date to my unrequested judgment.
In less than a nanosecond, I can tell that he isn’t Macy’s type. He’s tall, his head the height of the door, but he’s overweight and has dark hair and sleeves of tattoos.
Macy has never gone for dark and brooding men.
I thought I was more her type.
A villainous sneer crosses her date’s face when he mistakes my shock at my inner monologue as disapproval, and it makes his appearance even more brutish.
Since his dart didn’t entirely miss the board, I wink at him, doubling his snarl before Macy’s abrupt closure of the door steals his retort.
As fast as Macy ushers him down the corridor, I enter the kitchen to scan his handwritten credentials. As expected, Macy’s background check is thorough, but it won’t stop me from saying, “Get me everything you can on Samuel Newark from San Diego.” His social security number ends my reply.
Brandon remains quiet, not wanting to out himself for spying on me.
It is a pointless endeavor.
“I know you’re watching, punk. I’ve felt you scrutinizing me since you disconnected our call.”
A huff rustles through the speakers of the television before Brandon banishes any theories that he isn’t a snoop. “Good? That was the only word you could come up with? Let me guess, you’re also one of those people who fish without a worm on the hook?”
I narrow my eyes before shifting them to the now switched-on TV. Brandon winks with the same arrogance I used on Macy’s date before he asks me to recite Samuel’s social security number again.