Chapter 3
CHAPTER 3
“… t hen, with a simple twist of the device, the carotid easily separates from the…” Burke paused mid-sentence. At the back of the room, Georgie’s wide eyes told him she’d heard at least part of his presentation.
Ribs, who sat in the front row like a model pupil, raised his hand. “Did you forget what the carotid attaches to? Should we sing you the song to help you remember? The carotid attaches to the skull bone…”
“I don’t think it’s called the skull bone,” Elyse interrupted his off-key song. “And I don’t think it attaches to that.”
“Yeah, but the rhyme scheme fits, and I’m not up enough on my anatomy to know what the carotid actually attaches to,” Ribs answered. Everyone faced Burke, anticipating his input, but he remained fixated on Georgie, suddenly and intensely uncomfortable with the conversation in front of a civilian. Women like Georgie shouldn’t hear about things from his world.
“Take five,” Burke muttered and shifted through the room toward Georgie, who stood at the back with an actual picnic basket in her arms. Like Dorothy and Toto.
“Were you talking about…” she began, but he cut her off.
“No.”
Her gaze narrowed. “You’re telling me I didn’t overhear you describe how to remotely kill someone? Was my lip reading that far off?”
His scowl narrowed impressively because he could imagine a thousand different instances where someone used that line on her. You misheard. You got it wrong because you can’t hear. “I’m telling you that context is important.”
To his surprise, she seemed all too ready to accept that answer. With a little shrug, she brushed off what must have been an odd conversation to overhear and turned instead toward the table, removing muffins from her basket and setting them on a delicate China platter. Burke watched her curiously a few minutes, realizing as he did so that she was probably as odd to him as he was to her. It was blatantly clear that Georgie did not encounter a lot of spies—current or former—in her little corner of Maine. What bugged Burke was how long it had been since he encountered a non-spy. To him, a woman setting out a plate of freshly baked muffins on a decorative plate was such an oddity that it was almost surreal. Any minute he half expected an insurgent to run in with a gun and overtake the place, taking Georgie—the softest and most vulnerable asset—hostage.
As he gazed around the room, though, he realized he was the only one on alert. The big guy, Tristan, had cop eyes, wary and suspicious and guarded. But Elyse and Ribs, who’d seen almost as much action as Burke had, were casual and relaxed. Ribs even had his back to the door, an impossible feat for Burke to accomplish.
His astonishment grew when he felt soft hands fold around his. His disbelieving gaze shifted downward, only to realize that Georgie had placed a muffin in his grasp. What was more astonishing was that it was warm.
“It’s blueberry,” Georgie said, when Burke stared at the muffin like it might be a live grenade. “I picked them myself.”
Burke stared at the muffin, now nestled in their conjoined hands. “You can’t be here,” he heard himself say. After he said it, he was certain it was the correct thing.
“What?” Georgie said.
It was the kind of “what” that said she didn’t understand, not that she’d misheard. “You can’t be here,” he repeated, more slowly and emphatically this time.
“In my inn? Or on earth?”
He winced. Apparently she’d heard more of his presentation than he realized. Did she actually think he might kill her? After she gave him a warm muffin and everything? He wasn’t that much of a monster. Was he? His finger circled the room. “This information is classified.”
“Gaines made me sign a non-disclosure agreement,” Georgie said, dismissing him. She faced toward the table again and continued arranging her muffins, along with fruit and a few carafes of coffee and tea.
“Yeah, but…” she wasn’t facing him and couldn’t hear his protest, which was fine because he had no idea how to finish it. Why didn’t he want her there? Why did it bother him for Georgie to hear this presentation, but not Elyse? Even Jordan, Gaines’s wife, had poked her head in during a particularly gruesome sentence and Burke hadn’t winced. Georgie, though, was much too soft and gentle to learn what went on in the world’s underbelly. She was an inn owner, completely unconnected to the world of espionage and private security. Maybe that was it. Even though Jordan was technically a civilian, she’d been spy adjacent long enough to know things. Georgie was a baker from Maine, and a baker from Maine she should stay.
“I can’t focus when you interrupt,” he said, which was also true.
She gave him a helpless shrug. “I have to feed people. What do you want me to do, turn off my hearing aids every time I enter a room?”
“Could you?” he said.
“You’re serious,” she said, which was his first realization that she hadn’t been when she made the suggestion.
He nodded.
She sighed. “Fine, but it’s going in my notes that I think you’re mental.”
“What notes? Am I being rated as a guest?”
“Yes, for my blog, Difficult Guests of New England. Right now you’re tied for first with that guy who insisted on wearing his pants as a hat instead of, you know, pants.”
“Seriously?”
She nodded.
“He walked around the inn wearing no pants,” Burke clarified. This entire conversation might be the oddest of his life, and that was saying something because he’d seen a lot of things.
Georgie nodded.
“I don’t like that,” Burke said, scowling.
“Neither did I. I told him he had to wear pants and he said there was no written policy, so I wrote a clothing policy. It was a wild time,” Georgie said.
“What did your brother have to say about that?” Burke demanded.
Georgie finished arranging her muffins and waved a hand. “I didn’t tell him.”
“What? Why not?” Burke demanded.
“If you met Brody, you’d know. He takes big brothering to a whole new level.”
“You say that like it’s a bad thing.”
Her nose crinkled. “It’s stifling.”
Burke studied her, feeling a thousand different things he couldn’t name. He had traveled the entire world, met people from every walk of life, and become so weary of humanity that the last few months he’d reached Howard Hughes level of reclusive eccentricity. To him, Georgie was like a spring bouquet, fresh and sweet and lovely, and so totally unexpected that he couldn’t stop staring, trying to make sense of her. Burke had grown so used to villains that it shocked him to realize there were still people like her in the world, innocent and untouched.
“Are you going to eat that muffin or continue to pet it?” she asked, forcing him to realize he still cradled it in his hands, cupping it protectively like a baby animal.
“I don’t know,” he said. At this moment he didn’t know anything, except that it felt like his entire world had been turned upside down. Why, though? Because he’d been locked away in his house for months and his first taste of the outside world involved a hearing-impaired woman who gave him muffins? Objectively, he could understand why he was disoriented. What he didn’t know was how to resolve it.
“Muffins,” Ribs exclaimed, coming up behind him on his right.
Georgie beamed at him, but that was nothing unusual. Most people beamed at Ribs, who was almost supernaturally affable and pleasant, especially for a former SEAL and spy.
“They’re still warm,” Georgie told him.
“Jordan and I have been so anxious to get here, Georgie. Elyse did not overhype, at all. We might have to add in some workouts to the weekend.” Ribs tugged on his belt and eyed Burke, including him in the remark.
“Just because it’s good doesn’t mean you have to overindulge,” Burke replied. It was the sort of thing that sounded reasonable to him but usually involved a bad reaction from the hearer. Not Ribs, though, who shrugged and reached for a muffin with a smile. It was that reaction that had coaxed Burke from hiding in order to attend the weekend. Ribs was more likeable than most people he’d encountered, and he and Elyse, while not close, similarly also got along well. Their team, when they were still in the spy game, had been one of his favorites to work with, the only time he hadn’t dreaded the job.
“Do you guys need anything else?” Georgie asked.
“No,” Burke said, and he must have snapped it because she gave him a look, tossed up her hands in exasperation, and strode from the room.
“You have a way with women,” Ribs noted.
“She shouldn’t be in here, when we’re talking about sensitive things,” Burke said. Surely Ribs, with all his old-school sensibilities, would see that.
Ribs, however, shrugged, nonchalant. “Elyse cleared her. I trust her judgment.”
Burke turned his disapproving scowl on Elyse, who caught his look and gave him an amused little salute in return.
“Let’s get this over with,” he muttered. Annoyed, he strode to the front of the room.