Page 27 of Dangerous Secret

“There’s something she wants to tell me about him that according to her is really bad. I’m going to move the car to a visitor’s space and slip up to her apartment to talk to her.”

“Want me to stick around, make sure Pressley doesn’t come back?”

“No, nothing you can do even if he does.”

“’Kay. Hope you meant it about this Jag, ’cause I’m coming to get it tomorrow.”

Grayson tossed him the key. “Take it now. I’ll drive your car home.”

“Cool.” Liam removed the key to his SUV from his key ring and handed it over. “Mine’s parked a few spaces over.”

“Yeah, I saw it.” Grayson left Liam drooling over the Jag and went to Harlow’s apartment.

She must have been standing at the door because she opened it as soon as he knocked. She’d changed into shorts and a loose top that fell off one shoulder. He tried not to drop his gaze to her long legs and bare feet, but his eyeballs apparently weren’t so great at obeying. He’d never had trouble before keeping his eyes where they belonged when with a woman, but this woman was playing havoc with his mind. And his eyeballs.

She locked the door behind them. “Would you like something to drink? I have wine, water, tea, or I could make coffee.”

“Coffee would be great.”

He followed her to her kitchen. She twirled a pod carousel that was on the counter next to a coffee maker. “What flavor?” She shrugged. “I’m a coffee snob.”

“What flavors you got there?” He scanned the labels. “Will you think less of me if I told you I’ve never had flavored coffee?”

She laughed, a sound he found himself wanting to hear more of. “No, I won’t think less of you. Here, try the hazelnut. That’s a good one to start with.” She put the pod in the machine and pressed a button, then selected one for herself. “I think I’ll have this one.”

“Chocolate raspberry lava?” he said, reading the label. He gave an exaggerated shudder, making her grin. “That’s just wrong.”

“Don’t knock it till you try it,” she said, playfully nudging him with her elbow.

Her eyes were bright and filled with amusement. She took a sip of her coffee, humming a noise that he was sure she didn’t intend to sound sexy but was. “Try it,” she said, holding out the cup. “It’s so good.”

Although he had no desire to try chocolate raspberry coffee, he took the cup from her. He could see from her expression that she wanted him to like it. He didn’t like the thought of disappointing her, so he was glad that it wasn’t as awful as he’d expected. “Okay, not bad, but a little too sweet for me.” He handed the cup back, then picked up his own and tried it. “This is more to my liking. Actually, it’s pretty good.”

She smiled, her eyes crinkling at the corners. “I thought you’d like the hazelnut.”

Thrown off-balance from feeling a strange sense of connection to this woman he barely knew, he just nodded. He couldn’t explain it, but he was drawn to her. Maybe it was the way she laughed, or the way she loved weird coffee. Maybe it was something else entirely.

“Come,” she said. “I’ll show you my favorite place to drink coffee.”

She led him through the living room and out to a balcony. Two chairs were in the small space, and he frowned, wondering if she’d ever brought a date out here. Had she even had a date since leaving her ex? Although, based on the way she dressed and how timid she’d been when he’d first met her, there was no way she’d dated since leaving Pressley.

Something eased inside him… He didn’t do jealousy, so that hadn’t been the cause of the tightness in his chest. It was probably just that he worried about some douchebag taking advantage of her.

After they were seated, he took in the view and imagined that like the beach was his, this was her happy place. The lake shimmered under the three-quarter moon, and white ribbons of light danced over the water’s surface. It wasn’t his ocean, but it was peaceful here.

“Where are Homer and Marge?” he asked. He needed to know what secrets she held, but he wasn’t in a hurry to spoil this moment. He’d like to know a more about her.

“I’ve never seen them at night, so I imagine they’re sleeping.”

He sipped on the hazelnut coffee, which was growing on him. What could he ask her that didn’t seem like prying? He settled on, “If you could only live on one food forthe rest of your life, what would it be?” It was the kind of question someone on his team would ask when they were on a mission and bored while hunkered down, waiting for orders to move.

His team had been the best. He’d put them up against anyone and anything.What-ifquestions had become a game between them, and the more outrageous the question and the answer, the better. There’d been that one time when the question was, if you could only keep one extremity, which one would it be? Sometimes they got morbid, because who knew, you might be the one blown to bits the next day, so they embraced black humor to diffuse tension and stress.

Stetson—a.k.a. Tex—had said in his Texan twang, “My hand, ’cause I sure ain’t gonna wanna use my foot to rub one out.” They’d always been able to count on Tex for laughs when they needed them the most.

“Lobster drenched in butter. What about you?”

It took a second to remember what they’d been talking about. “Depends on the season. When I was sitting under a blistering sun with seventy pounds or more of gear on my body and sweating buckets, I’d imagine eating a big bowl of salted caramel ice cream. In the winter when temperatures would drop to zero-butt freezing, I’d try to convince my brain that my MRE was really a piping hot bowl of spicy chili. I could seriously live on ice cream and chili.”

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