Chapter 15
She’d asked Cole how long he thought it’d take for the first of the neighbors who’d been blatantly staring into their house since they arrived to come over and introduce themselves. He said one day. He was wrong.
It only took them three hours.
Hadley had just finished reorganizing the kitchen cabinets (what idiot had put the glasses so far away from the sink?) when the doorbell chimed.
She glanced over at Cole, who’d been studiously ignoring her since that impulsive kiss on the porch.
He met her wide-eyed look with an exasperated one of his own, setting down the black box that looked like an internet router but wasn’t.
(He’d explained what it was to her twice already, but it’d been so technical that she gave up trying to understand and dubbed it a spy thingamabobber.)
“Show time,” he muttered. “You ready for this?”
Hadley smoothed her hair and brushed some schmutz off her yoga pants. Weirdly enough, she was totally ready. This was the only part of the mission she wasn’t nervous about. She was great at socializing. “Ready,” she told him.
Cole, on the other hand, looked like he was in the middle of a colonoscopy prep and just realized he’d run out of toilet paper.
That’s when he plucked a pair of wire-rimmed glasses off the kitchen counter and slid them on like Superman donning his innocent farm boy persona.
This shouldn’t have taken her by surprise.
After all, Franklin had suggested the glasses, which were outfitted with the tiniest camera Hadley had ever seen.
But—and she couldn’t stress this enough—nothing could’ve prepared her for how unbearably sexy Cole Clayton looked in a pair of slutty little glasses.
He looked like he’d just stepped out of a dark-academia forbidden romance. And while that wasn’t normally her reading vibe, it was working for her.
Like, really working.
“Remember, we don’t know who the target is yet. Everyone is a target until they’re not.”
She gave herself a sharp mental slap across the face to shift her focus from his unnatural hotness back to the mission at hand. “Got it. Schrodinger’s targets.”
His brow furrowed. “What?”
“Never mind.” She gestured to the foyer. “Let’s go be normal, hubby.”
He muttered something that sounded like a curse as they headed to the door. When the doorbell rang again, Hadley pasted on her best friendly-neighbor smile and pulled the door open.
The couple on the porch looked like they’d been grown in a lab where HOA board members engineered their perfect citizens. Like, The Stepford Wives meets Gattaca.
The woman was petite and blonde with a glossy bob, flawless makeup, and a pristine white athletic dress. She could be boxed up as is and sold in stores as Tennis Pro Barbie.
The man behind her was also blond and tall with the classically handsome features of every jock villain in every teen movie ever made.
Polo shirt, chino shorts, leather boat shoes…
yep. If Hadley was playing stereotypical suburbs bingo, this dude would’ve just filled out her whole card and made her a winner.
“Hi,” the woman chirped, already stepping forward like she was coming into the house with or without an invite. “We live right across the street. I’m Mitzy Granville, and this is my husband, Mike.”
Hadley was reeling from their combined…blondness when it occurred to her that it was her turn to talk. “I’m Emma,” she said, silently congratulating herself on remembering her fake name for this mission. “This is my husband, Clark.”
Cole gave a stiff nod. “Hi.”
That was it. Just hi. Said like a put-upon introvert who’d just been forced to make a phone call, and just a smidge friendlier than if he’d told them to get off his lawn.
Mitzy’s smile flickered for a second, but she recovered quickly. “We just had to come over and introduce ourselves. The whole neighborhood’s been dying of curiosity since the moving trucks showed up and delivered your furniture, and I wasn’t about to let any of them get to you first.”
She had to laugh at the woman’s willingness to call herself out as a nosy bitch. She respected the honesty. That’s when she noticed the enormous charcuterie board Mitzy was holding. “That looks like it weighs a million pounds. Is it for us?”
She brightened. “Of course!”
Hadley had to elbow Cole out of the way to usher their guests inside before taking the tray—holy fuck, it really did weigh a million pounds. How often did this chick work out?—and hustling it over to the coffee table.
“That’s my signature welcome board,” Mitzy said, helping herself to a seat on the sofa.
She gestured for Mike to sit next to her.
Mike, seemingly resigned to his fate and about as happy to be here as Cole was, did as he was told.
“It’s prosciutto, brie, honeycomb, dried apricots—Mike, tilt it toward them.
You can’t even see the salami rose from that angle. ”
Mike obediently rotated the board like Vanna White revealing a vowel. Cole frowned at him, seemingly judging the other man’s life choices.
Hadley offered a polite smile. “It’s gorgeous.”
Mitzy preened. “Oh, it’s nothing. Just a little something I whipped up after Pilates.” Her gaze flickered past Hadley, sweeping the entry and living room like a laser. “I’d never know you just moved in. Your décor is fabulous. In fact, I have that same end table.”
She glanced around at their aggressively neutral surroundings as she took a seat on the loveseat across from them.
Cole, she noticed, didn’t sit. Just stood next to her, arms crossed over his chest like he was Kevin Costner and she was Whitney Houston in The Bodyguard.
“I wish I could take credit for it.” Like hell.
“But the relocation company handled everything. Clark works for Sims Pharmaceutical. He’s taking over the pet care division.
We have about two weeks to get settled in before the gig starts.
” She reached for his hand. “Isn’t that right, honey? ”
Without hesitation, he laced his fingers through hers. “Right,” he muttered in a strangled voice that sounded like he’d been gargling broken glass.
She could only hope she looked like a normal wife instead of an obsessed teenager who couldn’t stop noticing how strong and hot and huge Cole’s hand was compared to her own.
Mitzy beamed at Cole like he’d said something charming instead of uttering one syllable.
Hadley imagined it was the confirmation of his earning potential that really did it for her, because it sure as shit wasn’t his charm.
“We’re having a little barbecue tomorrow.
The whole neighborhood will be there. You must come. ”
Well, hell’s bells. Maybe this spy thing wasn’t as hard as it seemed, because they hadn’t even been here twenty-four hours and they already had an invite to an event that’d put them in contact with all the neighbors, er, suspects. “That sounds amazing. What time?”
“Four,” Mike said. Hadley was glad to know he was in charge of something in his life.
“We’d love that.” She squeezed Cole’s hand. He made a noncommittal sound that could be mistaken for agreement if you really wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt.
Mitzy, thankfully, didn’t seem to notice. “We’re keeping it low-key. Burgers, hot dogs, salad. Nothing fancy.” She paused. “Probably only one or two themed cocktails.”
Mike snorted in a way that made Hadley think Mitzy wasn’t joking. There would definitely be themed cocktails. To which Hadley could only think…yikes.
After a few more minutes of small talk that felt more like two hours, Hadley and Cole saw their new neighbors to the door.
As soon as they made it past the threshold, Mitzy turned and pointed her index finger at them sternly.
“Tomorrow at four. If you’re not there, I’m coming over here and dragging you both back to our place. ”
Hadley held up her hands in supplication. “Yes, ma’am. Four. Can we bring anything?”
“Just yourselves.”
“Looking forward to it,” she said, almost managing to sound sincere. “Aren’t we, honey?”
Cole didn’t miss a beat. He slid an arm around her shoulders. “Sure.” The expression he made could pass for a smile if you squinted at him really hard. “Thanks for the invite.”
Mitzy smiled at him warmly. “Aw, you two are just adorable.”
Hadley forced a laugh, because the alternative was snorting. “See you tomorrow.”
Goodbyes and phone numbers were exchanged (by some miracle, Hadley managed to remember the number to her new burner phone) before Mike pulled Mitzy back toward their house. And the second the door closed, Cole exhaled hard. “Jesus,” he muttered. “That was exhausting.”
Hadley turned to face him, leaning her shoulder against the door. “You were a super-secret spy doing Jack Reacher stuff for years and that was exhausting?”
“The physical stuff is easy. It always was for me. But any socializing and pretending to fit in I ever did on the job was with bad guys. I rarely had to interact with normal civilians.”
“I’d be hard pressed to call Mitzy and Mike normal,” Hadley said. “Unless you grew up with access to a polo pony and/or a yacht.”
“I did not,” he said dryly.
“Me neither.”
“I’ve also damn near been a hermit for the past year. Talking to anyone is hard.”
Her lip twitched, but she somehow managed to keep from smirking at him because duh. “I can see the appeal of hermit-ing.”
His gaze softened a little before he added, “Socializing seems pretty easy for you, though.”
She shrugged. “I mostly like people. Even potential sleeper agents. What can I say?”
He scoffed. “Those two aren’t sleeper agents. They liked you, though. We wouldn’t have gotten that invite otherwise.”
Her inner teenage girl wanted to ask if that meant he liked her. Like, liked her, liked her. Not just liked her. “Well, maybe it’s a good thing you got stuck with me on this mission after all.”
He stepped closer. Not much. Just enough that she had to tilt her head back to maintain eye contact. His hand lifted, fingers hovering for a moment, before gently brushing a loose strand of hair off her cheek and tucking it behind her ear.
His fingertip barely grazed her skin. It was enough to charge the air and make her long to close the distance between them.
“I can’t imagine doing this with anyone else,” he said on a ragged whisper.