Chapter Three #3
“Give me a break.” The corners of his lips lifted. “That doesn’t exactly read like ‘someone tried to kill me. Answer the phone.’”
“No.” She held up her hand and then pointed at Sawyer. “I would send you a message like that. But him?” She shrugged. “That would be a little over-dramatic.”
His brow furrowed. No wonder she hadn’t asked Jane, Amanda, or Chelsea. Their response would be far less diplomatic than his. “To say to your boyfriend? After someone tried to kill you? Is there a better time to throw on the theatrics?”
“He’s…” She bit her lip. “A little more buttoned-up than us. And he’s busy.”
“You’re about the most buttoned-up, closely controlled person I’ve ever met,” he muttered. “If we’re being honest.”
She elbowed him. “Not in all circumstances.”
Sawyer chuckled. Angela wasn’t a stick in the mud.
Last night was proof of that. The ladies hadn’t even bothered with a glass of wine.
They danced. Played trivia. Goofed around.
All in all, Angela seemed to let the assassination attempt disappear from her mind.
And he never saw her checking her phone for a missed call or text message from Paul. “All right. Not in all circumstances.”
“Sawyer, scroll up.”
He thought twice, took a shallow breath, scrolled, and read Paul’s messages, which asked when she would come home.
Sawyer cleared his throat and swallowed hard.
He ran his hand into his hair and then shrugged.
“That’s pretty self-explanatory, Ange.” He offered her phone back. “He wants to see his girlfriend.”
“Not-uh.” Angela scoffed. “The only time I’m asked to go somewhere is for some kind of political reason, something or other that my mother needs to trot out her stolen-and-returned daughter for. He’s asking as her staffer, not as my boyfriend.”
Sawyer shifted and repositioned his legs. Angela wanted an honest assessment. He didn’t have any context about the boyfriend or know her to be unreasonable. Still… “That’s kind of harsh.”
“It’s not. It’s—” Just as suddenly as she’d thrown this conversation onto his lap, she tried to back away. “It doesn’t matter anyway.”
His eyebrows cocked. “Why’s that?”
“I can’t show up in the US without a proper plan and lots of planning. He knows that. Besides, I’m not returning to the US until I have to testify.”
His chest tightened at the idea of Angela walking around without him to keep her safe.
But there was a US-based team that was more than capable.
Boss Man would put Angela inside an armored bubble and not let her out until the risks were erased.
That should have been a small comfort, but now it was one more thing needling Sawyer.
“Maybe I am being harsh. I don’t know. This is why I need your perspective.” Angela pushed her phone back. “But you have to read the whole thread,” she pleaded. “Please.”
He frowned. “I don’t know, Ange.”
She pressed her lips together. “This will drive me crazy if I don’t hash the whole thing out with you. Once you read the thread and I get this out of my system, I won’t ask again.”
Sawyer took the phone and read Angela’s most recent messages after those asking for a good time to connect.
Can you call me when you have a chance? Today was a lot.
The time stamps on the two messages were about an hour apart. Sawyer pinpointed them as having been sent after he had deposited her safely in her suite following Jared’s briefing. He hadn’t asked her if she wanted to talk. He should have.
Sawyer gave her a quick side glance. “You said yesterday was ‘a lot’? That’s a bit of an understatement.”
“I already explained how Paul and I are. Besides—” She gestured to her phone. “I’m not interested in what I said. I want your thoughts on what he said. Scroll up.”
Sawyer returned his attention to her phone and scrolled for a moment but paused. “Did you touch base with your mother about what happened?”
“Not in a million years would I bring that up to her. Someone else will tell her.”
“But it’s not going to be you?” he laughed.
“No way, it’s not going to be me. Someone else.”
That someone would most likely be Boss Man—if he hadn’t already, which might relate to his radio silence. Sawyer turned the possibilities over and watched Angela to see if she had made that connection.
“We can figure my mother out later. Can we focus on this first?”
If she’d connected Jared’s absence with telling her mother, Angela wasn’t sharing. He returned his attention to Paul’s messages.
Babe. What would you think about coming home?
Babe? You never got back to me.
I think you should come home.
Move home.
Babe?
We’re all busy, Angela. The Senator agrees with me. You should come home.
I need you to call.
Angela. Pick up the phone.
Never mind, babe. We’ll talk this out very soon.
Sawyer smirked. “Babe?”
Angela mirrored his smirk. “I hate that.” Her lips pressed together. “Luckily, I don’t have to hear it very often.”
“You should tell him that.”
She shrugged as though she didn’t want to invest the effort. “What do you think about his messages?”
When she’d mentioned several messages, this sort of thread wasn’t what Sawyer had envisioned. “The messages are… a little pushy. Especially when you said you’d call him later in the week.”
Angela nodded. “It’s also out of character.”
All right. He could now understand why she wanted an opinion on Paul’s messages. “Are you thinking about going home?”
“This is home.”
He’d never thought about her leaving. Joining Titan felt like Titan for life. Once you were in, you didn’t walk away. “You like working here, right?”
She stared as though he’d sprouted a third arm and another head. “Of course I do. I’m not going anywhere, Sawyer.”
He chewed the inside of his cheek. “You might want to when the trial is over with.” Things might change once Pham was in prison for the rest of his life and no longer a threat to Angela.
Jared had built the ACES team to function together in perpetuity, and Angela, in her administrative position, was part of that team.
They worked together seamlessly. But she arrived because of trauma and danger.
“Your family’s back home.” He lifted her cell phone and handed it back to her.
“Your boyfriend is seven thousand miles away.”
“Boyfriend?” She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “We write subject lines in our text messages, and he calls my mom the Senator.”
“That’s a little kinky—”
Angela smacked his arm. “We’re having a serious conversation, Sawyer.”
“Right, right. Okay, so the Senator? That’s weird, but ya know…” Sawyer shrugged. “Respectful?”
“We’ve been dating for the greater part of the last decade. He can call her Samantha.”
Sawyer laughed. “Apparently, I don’t know that he can.”
“Maybe he could try calling her Sam?” Angela suggested, stifling a laugh. “Mom?”
“Do you even call her Mom? The Senator doesn’t seem very mom-like.”
Angela smacked his arm again. “Don’t call her that.”