Chapter Nineteen #3
“Kissing you.” She shook her head and avoided meeting his eye. “That was the exact opposite of Paul or anything in my past. And I don’t—I can’t—”
“You sure as hell did something earlier.” He finally caught her gaze. “You can do that again.”
“I don’t know what I did. It was nothing like with—”
“We’re not talking about the past, remember?” That was one of the reasons this arrangement would work so well for him too. “We’re talking about a here-and-now situation that’s…” Mutually beneficial? No, he wanted more than great sex.
“Exploratory,” she offered with an endearing mixture of nervous energy and excitement. “Experimental—”
His eyebrow arched. “Fun.”
Angela inhaled and squared her shoulders. “Fun.”
He grinned. “You suddenly look terrified.”
“I kinda think I’m going to pass out or puke.”
He couldn’t stop from laughing. “That’s the way to get into my pants.”
She smacked his arm. “Sawyer Cabot.”
He didn’t miss his moment. Sawyer tugged her out of her chair and into his lap.
Just like in the ocean, her arm slid behind his neck as though they’d fallen into bed a hundred times before.
Sawyer was acutely aware of his heartbeat.
It drummed slowly and heavily in his chest, mismatched with his breathing, which now felt like a tornado in his throat.
He had to think to breathe, which was a hell of a problem. “All jokes aside. Do you trust me?”
Her breath hitched. “Without question.”
So neither of them could take a steady breath.
He liked knowing that what was happening to her was the same as what was happening to him.
Sawyer wanted to be back at the beach house and carry her off to bed.
He wanted to overwhelm her world so that all she could do was think of him.
But something in her eyes told him they weren’t there yet. “What is it?”
She closed her eyes and kept them shut while she sighed. Finally, she refocused on him shyly. “I don’t want to disappoint you.”
“Ange—”
“Or bore you—”
“Angela—”
The piercing ring of a cell phone made her jump. She sucked in a quick breath and pulled out of his arms to retrieve her ringing phone from her bag. “It’s Parker.” She answered the call. “Hey.”
Sawyer studied her switch from curious and uncertain to the no-nonsense woman who set agendas for fun. He liked both sides of her. Just then, though, he really wished she were back in his lap.
Angela pulled her notebook and pen from her purse and scribbled as Parker peppered her with information. Finally, the call ended.
“What’s Parker have to say?” Sawyer asked, suddenly uncomfortable with the possibility that this trip could wrap up quickly.
“Well,” she said, still in business mode, “he confirmed what we already knew about my mother blowing my cover. Pham didn’t know I was working for Titan.
They only found out because Pham’s network had been trailing her for years.
When she arrived in Abu Dhabi without a public agenda, they put two and two together and posted people all over the city. ”
Senator Sorenson should’ve known better. But Sawyer didn’t have to say that. Angela knew. “What else?”
“Mylene’s and Mark’s family still live in the area. We could go talk to them.”
Talking to relatives? That wasn’t Sawyer’s bailiwick. No one wanted a heartbreaking past to knock on the door without warning. “What else?”
“Parker has learned more about Pham’s public-facing business network. There are several shell companies semi-associated with his network in the area. They follow the Interstate 95 corridor from North Carolina to Delaware.”
“What do we do with that?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know. Parker’s trying to find any real estate associated with them that might raise red flags.”
Sawyer frowned. What constituted a red flag?
They didn’t have the resources to check everywhere, and even if they did, red flags were often red herrings.
Angela had been rescued from a commercial warehouse in a run-of-the-mill industrial complex.
Titan had rescued many people from locations that would not raise red flags.
Pham’s people could hide Mylene Hathaway in the backroom of a burger joint or the basement of an office building. “I guess that’s a start.”
“Parker has his ways,” Angela said, sounding like she needed the encouragement as much as Sawyer did. “We could go talk to Mylene’s parents.”
Back to dredging up people’s pasts. What would the two of them learn that wasn’t in the investigative reports they’d yet to comb through? “What are our other options?”
“We could try to find Mark’s family?”
Sawyer bristled. “Talk to the family about their dead child? Not unless we have to.”
“Yeah,” she agreed. “Back to the paperwork?”
Or the beach. The ocean. Seclusion… But Angela’s attention was focused on Mylene. His was stuck on the conversation prior to Parker’s call. “That’s probably best.”
Angela adjusted her hat and gathered her trash. The only redness left on her cheeks was from the sun. He tossed the car keys in the air and caught them, deciding to bring that heat back as quickly as possible.