EPILOGUE
Brock crossed his arms, glaring at Corbin as he leaned over Callie and laughed, all in the name of “helping her” loosen a bolt when he just wanted to be a damn pervert.
The pissy French brat had complained about her car making a noise and not trusting the mechanic she normally took it to. Since they babysat the house for us for months, of course Callie volunteered to take care of it instead.
Now, Brock had to watch as Corbin got handsy and whispered cheesy flirtations in her ear. He wanted to go over there, grab her jaw, and make her meet his gaze then stare into his eyes with that smile dancing on her lips.
The French brat pulled out the chair beside him. “You’re grunting more than usual.” She followed his line of sight. “Trouble in paradise?”
“Mind your own business, Bernard.”
She leaned back, mocking him by folding her arms across her chest. “Oh, are you in caveman mode today, Brock? You can call me Yolo. Our teams are practically family.”
“Fuck off.”
One of the twins, probably Jace, since one was already seated at the long picnic table with his nose buried in a beefed up computer, snuck up behind them and sprayed them with a hose.
Callie squealed and laughed as Corbin took off in pursuit of their attacker.
Doc glanced up from the grill. “Hey, don’t get my patient’s bandages wet!”
Brock scrubbed a tired hand over his face. It’d only been three days since she’d been shot, and she was out here helping change the damn oil on a car.
She gave him gray hair.
“Relax, you big brute, before you snap the armrest off your chair,” Yolo drawled.
“She hasn’t healed enough to be out here doing this shit,” Brock grouched, though he eased up his hold when the flimsy plastic creaked beneath his clenched fists.
“He only sprayed her back. If your resident doctor was concerned, he would have stopped grilling and beat the twin himself.”
Brock folded his arms. “He’s not an actual doctor. He’s a fucking vet.”
“Oh, ho, so now you don’t trust your own teammates?”
Brock rolled his eyes. “That’s not what I said.”
“Food’s done!” Doc yelled.
“Finally!” Yolo leaned into her exaggerated French accent. “I thought I was going to starve.”
Doc Scott pointed his tongs at her. “Hey, no complaining. I don’t even know how I got roped into manning the grill. It’s my birthday.”
The Russian ogre clapped Doc on the back. “Because you are best cooking on outside stove.”
Brock’s eye twitched. He just knew Aleks butchered English on purpose to piss him off.
“Still doesn’t seem fair,” Doc grumbled.
Callie twirled onto the scene, tucking herself into Doc’s side like a fucking fairy princess there to soothe the masses. She kissed his neck, since that was all she could reach, until Doc hunched over and she could press her lips along his jaw. “It smells delicious, Duane. Thank you for doing this.”
The vet wrapped his arm around her waist and pulled her closer, whispering things into her ear that had blossoms of pink heating her cheeks.
Brock shifted in his seat, doing his best to stop his mind from recalling the ways he’d made her red like that. “Come here, du?o.”
Doc Scott frowned. “Hey, man, it’s my birthday.”
“And you’re getting her later tonight.”
Callie brushed her hand over Doc’s chest and murmured something too low for Brock to hear, but she’d woven her magic spell and calmed the fires that had been stoking to life in the vet’s eyes.
He nodded and gave her another kiss before releasing her.
“Hi, Brock,” she whispered as a wash of her vanilla lavender shampoo enticed his senses.
He’d wanted her over here to keep the others from defiling her at a goddamned family cookout, but he hadn’t considered how fucking difficult it’d be resisting temptation too. His fingers itched to grab her hips, pop her up on the table, and drive into her—company be damned.
Luckily, a voice announced itself as everyone was taking their seat. “Hey, am I late?”
Mr. E went to welcome the Italian man who had worked his way into their lives. “You’re right on time. We were just sitting down.”
“Hi, Paride,” Callie greeted, but she stayed seated beside Brock.
She seemed to have a sixth sense when it came to reading her boyfriends’ needs.
“Callie,” Coppola replied before doing a double take. “Huh, you’re a natural brunette?”
Brock scowled at the man for his ignorance. Even the nosy Frenchy hadn’t brought up the fact that Callie had broken out the dye and reverted to her normal hair color. It was too sensitive of a topic. None of them wanted her to feel self-conscious for taking a step in the right direction for forgiving herself for Natasia’s death.
As much as he hated to admit it, since he loathed the thought of Callie being near more insane Russians—two was plenty e-fucking-nough, especially when they lived with one—Petrov had worked miracles, helping her believe that the bomb was not her fault.
Callie’s fingers reached for the tips of her curly strands, playing with the ends, but she accepted the paper plates being passed around without disappearing into the vast recesses of her mind. “Yeah, I am,” she replied as she handed Brock the platter of meat.
He put a second hotdog on her plate, one of the blackened ones since she preferred hers crisped to just this side of charcoal.
Coppola tilted his head, and Brock seriously considered ramming his steel-toed boot into the Italian’s shin and giving him a glare that projected, “Let it go, you dumb fuck, before I make you.”
Callie reached over and placed her small hand on his, and his shoulders unhunched. He turned, catching sight of her hazel eyes that always punched through his armor and straight to his troubled soul with just one glance.
“Well, it looks great. Way better than the platinum blo—shit!” Coppola shot to his feet, his front drenched in lemonade.
“Oops,” the French brat gasped. “Oh, mon ami, I am so sorry! I deed not see you thay-ahr.”
For the first time since… ever, her exaggerated French accent didn’t bother Brock. In fact, he had to fight back a smirk.
Coppola blotted the excess drink with a pile of napkins. “No, no, it’s fine. I’m sure it was an accident.”
“Hm,” was Yolo’s noncommittal answer, probably because it’d been the furthest thing from an accident.
The brat had totally done that on purpose. Maybe he could overlook her bringing over her dumb car and allowing Callie to work on it before she was healed.
Natasia had been her teammate too, more so than Callie’s.
Aleks jumped up from the table, dragging Coppola along with him. “I am only one you fit inside. Come in me. We get you dry shirt.”
“Come in with. With, Aleks. That’s a very important word you need to add in there, pal,” Jace called.
Brock glanced at Callie and slashed his hand in Aleks’s direction. “You see what I mean?”
She grinned, kissing the underside of his jaw. “He doesn’t do it on purpose.”
Brock’s eyes narrowed because as she was soothing him, the annoying Russian turned and tossed an antagonizing wink at him over his shoulder.
Brock made a mental note to get him back for that later, maybe something to do with mice, or a pet rat. Surely Doc had a pet rat at the office that he could borrow for an hour.
For some reason, the overgrown dickhead was terrified of them, like a quaking Russian elephant.
When they returned, Brock dismissed any plots for revenge. Aleks had given Coppola one of the most gaudy, Hawaiian print patterned shirts possible. He didn’t even know Aleks owned something so garish. It looked like a tropical forest threw up on the uncomfortable Italian.
“Rainbow looks good on you, Parade Day,” Corbin quipped like the smart-ass he was.
“I’m your team liaison, so you better watch it.” Coppola paused before glancing up at them. “That is, if you still want me.”
Even Mr. E deferred to Callie on this one. They really were the King Team now.
Callie tilted her head. “Are you done with the CIA?”
“One thousand percent done, and even if I wasn’t, Director Greg Miller called, a little concerned that my resume had come across his desk since he was under the impression I was already employed by Delta. That was a fun conversation.”
“Wonder how that got there?” Callie teased.
“I’ll give you three guesses, and the first two don’t count,” Coppola groused, obviously rankled by the CIA director’s underhanded tactics.
Bryce drawled, “Not too fun when the shoe’s on the other foot, is it?”
“No. It’s not.”
“Well, in that case, yes, welcome to our team,” Callie murmured.
Coppola nodded. “CIA Director Madam Rollins” —he scowled as he said the name, so he must have been pissed as hell for having the same CIA mind fuckery games played on him— “said they’d be back tomorrow. She’s giving her agents another day beyond that to compile everything and determine what questions they have before we come in to debrief. So, are you guys good with heading to Langley on Monday?”
Since the Italian had assigned them their two weeks of paid time off, the question was a formality. He knew their schedule was wide open.
Still, Mr. E pursed his lips in thought before nodding. “I think we can manage that.”
“Great. We’ll leave from here.”
Brock tuned into the conversation Corbin was having with Callie. Apparently not finished with his flirting, he’d claimed the seat on her other side.
“Do you know how cool it’d be if you changed your middle name to Fornia?”
“The fuck you talking about?” Brock blurted, his brows drawn down heavy over his glare.
“Think about it.” Corbin sat back, relishing the attention Brock’s outburst had gathered. “Callie Fornia King.”
Coppola snorted and then guffawed, surprising more than one person at the table. “I’m making sure Delta makes one of your false identities say that.”
Bryce rolled his eyes as he accepted the tray of watermelon. “Right, because that doesn’t sound fabricated at all. Are you wanting her to fly under the radar or get thrown in some third world jail?”
“Hey,” Corbin defended. “It’s just crazy enough to fit in this broken world. North West ring any bells? No? How about Daisy Bloom? Oh, and my personal vote for craziest, X and Y Musk?”
Jace, who liked to stir the pot when Corbin got on a roll, shrugged. “Honestly, he has a point. Callie Fornia King sounds like some spoiled trust fund heiress.”
The debate devolved further from there as the large gathering broke into sub-conversations.
Amidst the clamor and eating, Callie looked at Coppola. “I meant it, you know? You helped us out more than you can understand. I’m glad you’re our liaison.”
“Me too. You guys aren’t half bad.” Coppola glanced between Jace, Corbin, and Bryce, who were now in a heated argument about the fictional Callie Fornia King’s cover story. “Though I might live to regret those words. I feel like your team is going to keep me on my toes and give me a lot of gray hair.”
“Probably,” Callie admitted, her eyes shining with love as she watched the same conversation before circling her gaze around the table. Her smile stretched farther until Brock wondered how it still fit on her small face, and then she paused on him.
God, he loved how she looked at him. People shied away and feared him, but she glowed with the same happiness and sappy feelings as she did when looking at the others.
He blinked in realization.
He loved her. He loved Callie King.
Now he was smiling back at her like a sap.
He itched to kick out the Italian and Cardinal so he could bask in this new revelation with her. In a bed. For hours.
Heck, his mind even revisited his earlier mini fantasy of throwing her down on the table and fucking her to within an inch of her life. Since there was food here now, he’d have to lick every bit of creamy skin clean until she was begging for round two.
As if his thoughts were as transparent as a wet piece of paper, Callie kept her eyes on Brock as she continued her conversation with Coppola. “Do you still want the job?”
Coppola laughed. “Yeah, I think I’ll stick around.”
Brock frowned and shifted his attention to the Italian, making sure his look warned that Callie King’s dance card was already full.
Coppola only smirked in response and held his gaze as he bit into his corn on the cob.
Brock must have been too obvious with his glare, because Callie elbowed his ribs, waited for him to hunch over, and murmured a low warning. “Behave.”
Brock nodded. “Yes, du?o.” As he sat up straight, his eyes sought Aleks. The Russian was already looking at him, and he gave a slight nod.
In fact, Brock realized that all of their team, including Mr. E, were on the same page.
Maybe they could sic Jace and Corbin on Coppola, as a nice “welcome to the crew but keep your hands off our girl.”
He shuddered at the thought. Jace and Corbin with free rein wasn’t something he’d wish on his worst enemy, but as Coppola continued to smirk at him, Brock couldn’t give a fuck.
Desperate times called for desperate measures.
Paride Coppola was taunting a sleeping dragon. He wouldn’t know what hit him by the time Corbin and Jace finished.
It was for Callie, after all, and there wasn’t anything the eight of them—hell, even the four Cardinals, wouldn’t do for that pint-sized brunette.