Leverage

by Janie Crouch

  “I know.” A flush crept across Shelby’s cheeks with the adorable freckles. “I know my discomfort is stupid and ridiculous. But I can’t help it.”

  “Hey, everybody’s got their own demons. Yours aren’t any less real than mine just because I don’t fight the same ones.” Dylan couldn’t help himself, he dipped his lips down and kissed her. “We’ve come this far. Don’t give up now.”

  A tiny little sigh escaped Shelby. “I won’t give up. I’ll do it. I know how important this is.”

  “You are what’s important,” Dylan murmured against her lips. “And I will be with you the entire time. We’ll all be there to help you and run interference where needed. Especially in the chitchat department. That’s dangerous stuff.”

  “I’m sorry I threw a fit.” Shelby’s crooked smile was perhaps the most adorable thing Dylan had ever seen. “My mom never knew what to do with me growing up when I would get so hysterical about being around new groups of people. She was a social butterfly and loved interacting with everyone and trying to show me, and my ability to remember numbers, off.”

  “I can’t imagine that went over well.”

  “Yeah, I could never be the socially adept daughter she wanted. Our relationship is pretty strained even to this day, although she doesn’t like to admit that.”

  Her mother’s pressure that Shelby be gregarious around crowds probably had only complicated and multiplied the discomfort she had about being around people. Dylan had such a loving, supportive relationship with his family, it hurt him to think of Shelby never having something like that.

  “I know you haven’t had a great experience with family, but you can trust, unequivocally, that my family has your back. Okay? If you get into a situation at Omega and you’re panicking, you let one of us know and we’ll help you get through it.”

  Shelby reached her arms up around his neck and pulled his lips down to hers. “Thank you,” she murmured.

  “For what?”

  “For not calling me crazy. For not writing me off. For having faith in me.”

  There were things Dylan wanted to tell her, but they got lost as Shelby walked forward, forcing Dylan to step back until his legs were against the edge of the bed.

  Dylan wrapped his arms around her hips and brought them both down to the bed. Their hands became more frantic, removing clothes as quickly as possible. Their lips only separated from each other when they had to in order to remove clothes. Dylan peeled Shelby’s jeans down her legs, careful of the one that was still tender.

  Oh, holy hell, she was wearing that black-and-red thong. And a very wicked grin.

  All thoughts of the dangers and risks they would take later that night disappeared. All Dylan could think about was Shelby and this moment.

  And that thong.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Dylan walked into Cameron and Sophia’s kitchen to make a pot of coffee. It was just two o’clock in the morning, but they were all going to need the caffeine to get through the next few hours. Evidently most of his family had headed back to their own homes for a few hours of rest, since the living room was empty.

  But his sister was sitting at the kitchen table.

  “Got any more of that?” Dylan asked Juliet, pointing to the mug of coffee in her hands.

  “I think the pot is just about empty.”

  Dylan nodded and began to make more. “Everybody head out?”

  “Yeah. Megan needs as much rest as she can get, so Sawyer took her home. Evan wanted to be at Omega already, to make sure everything looked clear.”

  Evan and Juliet had both been known for keeping highly irregular office hours at Omega, even before they’d become a couple. Security wouldn’t bat an eye at seeing either of them there in the middle of the night. After all, bad guys didn’t work just nine to five, so good guys couldn’t either.

  “This is a pretty good plan you’ve come up with, sis.”

  Juliet handed Dylan two cell phones. “Here’s a couple of phones for you and Shelby in case you need them.” She took another sip of coffee. “Let’s hope my plan is enough. It’s hard to hide when you don’t know exactly who you’re hiding from.”

  “My money is on Dennis Burgamy as the mole.”

  Juliet shrugged. “Burgamy is a general pain in the ass and perhaps the greatest kiss up who’s ever been involved in law enforcement. But a traitor? I just don’t know, Dylan.”

  Dylan shrugged. “Well, whoever it is, we’re going to need to be ready. Once they figure out we’ve got Shelby and her numbers into the system, it’s going to cause them to move into action quickly.”

  “Where is Shelby, by the way?” Juliet asked.

  Dylan didn’t quite meet his sister’s eyes. “She’s in the shower. She’ll be out in a minute.”

  “She seemed a little overwhelmed earlier. She going to be okay?”

  “Shelby doesn’t do well around a lot of people. Tries to avoid it as much as possible. So the thought of going into an entire office building full of people is a little traumatic for her.”

  “Because she’s afraid they’ll attack her or arrest her or something?”

  “Um, no. Actually, I think her greatest fear is that they’ll all want to talk to her.”

  “Talk?”

  “Yeah, like chitchat.” Dylan smiled and poured himself a cup of coffee. “Honestly, I think she’d prefer it if they were chasing her or shooting at her.”

  “Okay, then, we’ll be sure to protect her from all the dangerous talking.”

  “She’s not crazy, Jules.”

  “I’m not mocking, I promise. You’re talking to the woman who slept on a closet floor for a year and a half because of the terrors I had built up in my mind. Fears are fears whether they seem legitimate to other people or not.”

  Dylan knew Juliet understood fears all too well.

  “Shelby will be all right. Once we get her in with the computer system, it’ll be like a playdate for her and Megan.”

  Dylan smiled just thinking about Shelby with access to the technology Megan had created at Omega. Dylan hoped he was around to see the pure geek joy. He smiled into his coffee.

  Dylan looked up to find his sister staring at him. “Oh, my gosh, Dylan, you’re falling for her.”

  The statement totally caught Dylan off guard.

  “No.” Dylan used his best this-discussion-is-over tone, but Juliet just ignored it the way she always had.

  “I would warn you off, but the way she was looking at you this evening—like you were her lifeboat and she had no idea how she would survive without you—I think she’s falling for you, too.”

  Had Shelby really been looking at him like that? No. Juliet had to be mistaking Shelby’s panic for something more romantic. “Look, Shelby and I have had a traumatic couple of days. Yeah, it’s led to a little sex, but that doesn’t make it something serious.” And if it did, Dylan definitely did not want to talk about it with his little sister.

  Juliet laughed, obviously enjoying Dylan’s discomfort. “Are you kidding? You guys were all over each other with the little touches here and there all evening long. You even carried her dishes over to the sink for her.”

  “She has a hurt leg, Juliet. I was trying to be a gentleman like Mom raised me to be. Besides, you guys were touching each other all night, too. You’re like the poster children of PDA.”

  Dylan saw the trap he’d set for himself as soon as the words were out of his mouth.

  “Because we’re all in love, Dylan. It’s just natural. And notice how you and Shelby just fit right in with the rest of us.”

  Dylan shook his head. Hoping his silence would clue his sister in. It didn’t.

  “Is this about Fiona and the baby?” she asked.

  Dylan groaned. “No. It has nothing to do with her.” />
  “Dylan, I’m going to say this because it’s time. I know Fiona was your wife and I know what happened to her was a tragedy and that we’re not supposed to speak ill of the dead...”

  Dylan raised his eyebrow when Juliet hesitated. He couldn’t remember Juliet ever talking about Fiona before. “Yes?”

  “Well, Fiona was kind of a shrew.”

  Dylan barely avoided spewing the sip of coffee he’d just taken.

  “I know what happened was sad, especially because of the baby, but you can’t stay frozen in that place any longer, Dylan. You don’t want to do law enforcement anymore because of what happened, that’s fine. We all support you and none of us blame you. But you’ve got to stop closing yourself off from the rest of the world.”

  “You’re one to talk, Jules.”

  “Look, don’t throw how I handled the rape back in my face. Yeah, it took some time, but I had to come to the same place you’re going to eventually have to come to—I could choose to let one moment control the rest of my life, or I could decide my own destiny. I chose Evan. I chose love.”

  Dylan was so proud of the corner Juliet had turned lately in her personal life. She’d struggled for so long and Dylan was glad she’d found happiness. But... “It’s not the same, Juliet. This is just a casual thing between Shelby and me. We’ll both be going our separate ways in a couple of days when this is all over.”

  “You keep telling yourself it’s a fling, big brother. And when you wake up a few months or a year or whenever from now and you realize you let the perfect woman slip through your fingers because you were too blind to do anything about it, well, then you remember this little cup of coffee we had tonight.”

  Something in Dylan’s heart clenched at Juliet’s words. Because yes, Dylan could very clearly picture himself waking up in the middle of the night and reaching for Shelby and her not being around. And that frightened him more than anything else had for a long time.

  But Dylan didn’t have time to think about this right now. There were other much more important things that needed to be done tonight. Sorting out his feelings for one tiny, gorgeous, quirky, freckled female was not one of them.

  So Dylan didn’t care if both his tone and his words were a little harsh. He just needed to shut his sister up—damn her for always being able to see too much anyway—so he could focus on the mission at hand. Dylan set his coffee cup down with a resounding thump on the table and told his sister the exact opposite of what he was feeling.

  “Whatever, Jules. I have no plans to ever see Shelby Keelan again when this is over. There’s nothing real between us. Nothing special. She’s just another woman.” There, that should shut Juliet up for a while.

  He’d expected an angry or annoyed look from her, but when Dylan glanced up he saw his sister look over his shoulder into the doorway of the kitchen and cringe. Dylan didn’t have to turn around to know.

  Shelby was there and had just heard his statement.

  * * *

  IT WAS ALWAYS good to have things spelled out for you with utter clarity just to make sure you didn’t have any delusions of romantic grandeur for the man you’d just had sex with. Shelby would’ve said made love, but that evidently was too strong a phrase for what she and Dylan had shared.

  And whatever real connection she’d felt with Dylan, whatever passion and tenderness she thought she had seen in his eyes earlier? Those were evidently figments of Shelby’s overactive imagination.

  Shelby would’ve eased back out of the kitchen, but Juliet had already seen her. Had already given her that oh-I-am-so-sorry-men-are-such-jerks look. Which Shelby would’ve appreciated more if said jerk wasn’t two feet away from her.

  “Shelby—” Dylan turned toward Shelby with an arm outstretched.

  Shelby left a large distance between his hand and her body. If he touched her now—if anybody touched her now—she would shatter into a million pieces.

  “Is that coffee? Thank goodness. There was no way I was going to make it through this night without coffee.” Her voice sounded tight even to her own ears.

  But she wasn’t sobbing on the floor as she really wanted to do, so she’d just call that a win.

  Not that she had any reason to be sobbing. Dylan hadn’t promised her anything. The opposite, in fact. He had told her that he didn’t do serious relationships. Had basically announced he was still in love with his dead wife.

  Everything that had happened between them had been based on adrenaline and their hazardous circumstances. Fate had thrown them together, they’d been attracted and they’d acted on that attraction.

  No harm, no foul.

  It wasn’t until Shelby actually heard Dylan say that what they had was nothing real or special that she realized she’d been hoping for something different when this crisis was all over. Maybe not a ring and promises of forever, but definitely not “no plans to ever see each other again.”

  Ouch. But it was better to know, right? To know that Dylan thought so little of her, of what was between them?

  Shelby realized she’d been staring at the coffeepot without moving for an unreasonable amount of time. The silence at the table behind her was deafening. She picked up the pot and poured some into her mug. Damn it, now she was going to have to turn around.

  And look at Dylan. And not cry.

  Shelby would give ten years off her life for some sort of witty, socially acceptable thing to say right now. Why hadn’t she listened and learned from her mother?

  “Good, everybody’s up. I’m leaving to go to Omega in a minute. Everybody good?”

  Shelby closed her eyes briefly in relief and turned around. It was Cameron, with no knowledge of the awkward situation floating around the kitchen. He came over to get a cup of coffee, giving her shoulder a friendly squeeze.

  “You ready for this, Shelby?”

  “More ready than I was five minutes ago, that’s for sure. Time to get this done so you all can stop some bad guys and we can all move on with our lives.”

  “Shelby—” Dylan stood and began walking toward her.

  “I’ve got to get my Dr. Wonder outfit on that Juliet provided for me. It won’t take long.” Shelby grabbed her coffee mug and began to leave, giving Dylan a wide berth.

  “I’ll come with you,” Juliet said.

  “No, that’s not necessary.” Shelby did not want to talk about what Dylan had just said.

  “Just in case you have any questions about tonight, Dr. Wonder, that’s all.” Juliet linked her arm with Shelby’s, brooking no refusal.

  In the bedroom, Shelby turned and locked the door. She didn’t think Dylan would come in, but wanted to make sure.

  “I mean this strictly professionally, although in undercover work personal matters definitely come into play. Are you okay?”

  Shelby looked over at the bed where she and Dylan had just been an hour before. No, she wasn’t really okay. She deliberately turned her back to the bed.

  “I’m going to get the job done. That’s what really matters, right?” Shelby got the trousers and blouse out of the closet.

  “It does matter. But it’s not the only thing that matters, Shelby.”

  “Look, your brother never promised me anything, Juliet. We’ve only known each other for forty-eight hours, for goodness’ sake, so what he said in there—”

  “He didn’t mean.” Juliet was quick to cut Shelby off. “He was irritated with me and was trying to shut me up, so he said something obnoxious.”

  Shelby snuffed out the tiny piece of her heart that wanted to grab hold of Juliet’s words. It didn’t matter why Dylan had said the words, he’d still said them.

  “You don’t have to defend him, Juliet. Like I said, how involved can two people be after just two days?”

  It sure felt a lot longer than that to Shelby, but she wouldn’t
mention that.

  “Getting these numbers in my head into Megan’s computer, figuring out what the countdown is leading to and where it will happen, that’s the most important thing now. Hurt feelings between Dylan and I are pretty insignificant in comparison.”

  Juliet grinned at her. “Are you sure you’ve never worked undercover before? You sound like a seasoned pro.”

  Shelby slipped on the outfit to make her into Dr. Wonder. The blouse was a pale tan and the pants were a darker tan. They were as nondescript as you could get. “You probably won’t still think that the first time I actually have to talk to people.”

  “You’re going to do fine. Just let Megan or whoever you’re with do most of the talking whenever possible,” Juliet told her.

  Shelby ran an exhausted hand through her hair before pinning it up in a bun to look like the professional PhD she was supposed to be.

  Somehow she was afraid saving the world from a terrorist attack was going to be the easy part of the next few hours.

  Chapter Twenty

  “I see it’s on the schedule, but I don’t know why you’re working this late at night, Dr. Fuller-Branson. You should be home getting your rest.”

  Shelby had been both completely ignoring Dylan and watching sweet, pregnant Megan charm the four guards at the front entrance of the Omega building for the past five minutes. Except she wasn’t really charming them, she was just being herself. She knew each guard by name, asked each about their families and any ailments they may have ever mentioned.

  Shelby was in awe of her friend. Having gone to MIT with Megan, she knew the woman was a genius, but Megan was able to interact and talk with people—put them at ease and make them feel important—in a way that was totally foreign to Shelby.

  And it wasn’t an act. Megan genuinely cared about others. Shelby cared about others, too, but was always so awkward and stiff that interchanges rarely went the way she intended.

  “Michael, I went home and rested all afternoon,” Megan assured the guard. “You know there’s no way Sawyer would stand for it otherwise. I wouldn’t be surprised if he showed up in a little while anyway.”