Page 11 of Hot Pursuit
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Nate
“You going to come up for air, Parker?”
Nate jerked upright. The sudden movement caused a lump of dough to lodge in his throat, so he thumped his chest and coughed a few times to clear his airway. “What?”
A spew of crumbs may or may not have been released along with the word.
Nate wiped his mouth and spun to face his partner, resisting the urge to slap the grin from Leo’s lips.
“You’ve had like five of those things in ten minutes.”
Nate dropped his gaze to the table, noticing that the bag of cookies was half-empty and he himself was feeling a little light-headed from all the sugar. But he’d always been stubborn until the end, so he just shrugged. “I’m hungry.”
Leo’s lips twitched. “I see that.”
Nate clenched his teeth and turned back around, lifting his binoculars to his eyes. Jo and Ryder walked down the dock, looking rather cozy. He had one arm draped across her shoulders, holding her close as he leaned down to whisper something in her ear. Jo’s head dropped back as her entire body shook with unabashed mirth, auburn hair cascading over her shoulders, a trail leading down the curve of her spine all the way to that bright-red bikini that barely covered anything at all.
“Jolene Carter,” Leo murmured with an appreciative sigh.
Nate banged the binoculars back on the table—a little too hard—and lifted his fingers to the bridge of his nose, rubbing at his skin.
“Do we know if she’s going to New York with Ryder and Carter?” Leo continued, unaware of the way his words grated like nails on a chalkboard, making Nate’s shoulders writhe. “I wouldn’t mind tailing her for a couple of days. Not at all. Might be—”
“She’s a wanted criminal,” Nate interrupted.Suspected of hacking into a government database, a private security firm, a museum archive, and probably a million other places we don’t know about yet.
“She’s a fine piece of—”
Nate shot a glare over his shoulder. “Of what?”
“Of a woman, Parker,” Leo finished. “You’d have to be blind not to notice. Or, you know, a straitlaced stickler who only sees the world in black and white.”
Leo pointedly lifted his brows.
Nate ignored the teasing jibe, because oh, he saw it.
He saw it all right.
“She’s beautiful, and she knows it,” Nate admitted, keeping his voice even. “A woman like that can be…” He paused, drawing out the syllable as he searched for the right word. “Tricky, in our line of work. She knows how to muddy the waters, how to blur lines you thought were drawn with steel.”
“I was trained to withstand torture,” Leo argued with a laugh. “I think I’ll be okay.” And then his eyes narrowed. He focused on Nate, one brow lifting as his lips puckered, holding back a grin. “Unless I’m not the one you’re worried about. What exactly happened up here, Parker, while I was busy puking my guts out in the bathroom downstairs?”
“Nothing,” he grumbled, turning around in time to see Jo disappear behind the tinted windows of the house. Ryder followed close behind.
“Hmm…nothing?”
“She jumped back on her jet ski and took off.”
“Leaving her, uh, cookies behind?”
“Apparently.”
There was a distinct pause in the conversation.
“Did that red bikini leave an impression, Parker?” The words carried an unmistakable undertone of laughter.
“Leo.”
