Page 30 of Exposing Adonis

I looked over at Leo for a reaction, but his face remained stoic. Nothing but a clenched jaw. I was surprised that I couldn’t hear his teeth grinding. But he wouldn’t confirm his knowledge of German.

“I’m going to say that there’s a distinct possibility.” I sucked in air through my teeth and shrugged. “You can trust him, you know.”

“How can I trust a man who has pretended to be someone else?” She whined, sounding like the same little child she had been years ago. “I don’t know him at all.”

Leo did not react except for the slightest flare of his nostril. There was a slight twitch of his index finger. Otherwise, he was a robot.Like brother, like sister…

“Maybe we should stop talking about him like he’s not here, Chloe,” I said in a stage whisper. “It’s a bit rude.”

“I’m used to it,” Leo finally snorted, looking at me with a roll of his eyes. “You’ve met my sister.”

“His sister is… one of yours as well?” Chloe’s eyes bugged out. “She was lying this whole time, too?”

Leo sucked in a heavy breath, his chest rising and falling and he shook his head.

“We weren’t lying, Doc.” Leo removed his hand from the gearshift and wiped it down his face. “We graduated from the California State University at Northridge with our Bachelors of Science in Nursing. With Honors, in fact. We are licensed, registered nurses. It just wasn’t all we did …”

“You’re not what you pretended to be!” She countered, her voice rising to an angry pitch. I don’t think I had ever seen Chloe shout at anyone before. I looked between the pair. Or were they a couple? No. She would have told me. Or, at the very least she would have gossiped to Pippa about it, who then would have told me.

“And now, you show up, like this.” Her voice was betrayed and broken-hearted. “In fatigues like a brute!”

“Cabbage,” I said, slightly offended, but still keeping my voice gentle. She was under a lot of stress. “Is that what you think of me?”

It had been. When I was in the Circus, I had visited her in Switzerland. She grabbed my face and told me I looked different - colder. She said that I frightened her. It was the beginning of the end of my career in MI-6.

“No, Cally,” she rushed to say, her hands shaking in her frustration. “It’s just that I thought he was one thing, and he isn’t. You’ve always been …”

“A brute?” I said with a tilt of my head and a chagrined smile. “It’s okay if that’s what you think, Cabbage.”

I reached out a hand and ruffled her hair, the way I had when I first met her two and a half decades ago. That was the thing about old friendships and long relationships. We fall into old habits like a faded pair of joggers that you can’t get rid of.

“You know I don’t think that,” Chloe whined. “But you’ve never lied to me.”

Oh, I absolutely had. I never told her I was in MI-6. I certainly never told her what my job had been. My cover was bureaucratic research, and she had believed it with a sweet innocence that I wanted to preserve forever.

“She should have her seatbelt on,” Leo said to me, still not taking his eyes off the road and desert ahead.

“Don’t talk about me like I’m not here!” Chloe struck the back of his headrest with her fist.

I jumped back, surprised by her show of temper.

“Well, payback’s a bitch, Doc.” Leo retorted, matching her petulant tone.

I didn’t want to be amused. I really didn’t. But they were cute. The electricity between them sizzled with pent up frustration, and despite myself, I was rooting for Leo.

“Why did you bring him?” Chloe looked at me like this was all my fault.

“I couldn’t walk into that place and blend in, you know that,” I tugged at my ginger hair and beard. “A redhead would draw too much attention. He didn’t. He waltzed right in, like a cock of the walk.”

If I scored him points with Chloe, maybe he’d help me out with his sister.

I watched a small rise and fall of Leo’s chest, his shoulders coming back. He tried to hide a small smirk.

“Come off it, Chloe.” I shook my head as if I was an older brother lecturing a little sister. “I needed him to rescue you. You should be a little grateful.”

She looked down at her hands, duly chastised. She looked out the window to her right, at the landscape that moved past the window.

“I knew you’d come.” She whispered to me, but still not looking at me. “I knew that my sister would not pay and that if anyone did, it would be you and Pippa.”

---