She turned her head and found him watching her, his jaw tight as if he waited for her reaction—verdict, fallout or whatever else was coming next.
For a few seconds, neither of them spoke. The silence should have felt awkward.
Instead, it felt fragile. One wrong word might crack whatever bubble surrounded them and send them falling to the floor.
Stina caught his smirk.
“You look pretty pleased with yourself.”
A smile tugged harder at the corner of his lips. “You look pretty pleased with me too.”
She snorted. “Cocky.”
He only gave her a self-satisfied grin that echoed on her own face. His stare never left her, and the intensity of it made her pulse trip faster.
The man was impossible.
Unfortunately, impossible lookedreallygood naked.
Suddenly, he gripped her hip and rolled her to her side. When he looked at her backside, she wiggled. “What are you doing?”
“Your tattoo. It’s flowers.”
“My birth flower. They’re cosmos.” The daisy-like flowers seemed to sway on slender stems.
“Month?”
“October.”
He gave her another satisfied look, and she turned her gaze back to the ceiling before he could see her expression. The last thing she wanted him to see was that she liked that he knew her birth month.
Then his arm came around her, cradling her against his body.
She told herself she’d move in a minute.
She didn’t.
EIGHT
Rome was discovering there were drawbacks to having an excellent memory.
The Sierra meeting was in five minutes. He had files to review on the investigation involving Jolie and Stina.
He forced his attention to the laptop, scanning the first page for the third time. None of the words stuck.
Instead, his brain supplied entirely different images.
Curly hair spread across his pillow.
Green-gold eyes flashing at him.
The way Stina shook apart in his arms.
He dragged a hand down his face and snapped the laptop shut. Grabbing it, he shoved away from the desk.
It was an old piece of furniture that had been stored in the tunnels below the ski resort, like so many other pieces. But at some point, one of his teammates had moved it out of the way.
For a couple years, it sat in a dark niche set into the wall, something they walked past every day and didn’t bother to notice.