Read Online Stolen Vengeance: Slye Temp book 6 by Dianna Love - Free Book Online Page B

observe the entire lot, but prevented anyone from seeing them together. He did it for her benefit and she tried to appreciate the gesture.
    He wore black jeans and a long-sleeved T-shirt, so unlike his agency suits. His chestnut brown hair was shorter than last time, but still thick enough to run her fingers through if she lost control of her hands. That was always a possibility with this man. He didn’t pull a string of suave pickup lines out of his hat or try to dazzle a woman.
    He was raw power, coiled and ready to unleash on a threat faster than the snap of a whip. His face would never be seen in a magazine, not even with the combination of distinctive hazel eyes and a square chin.
    He had a man’s face. Rough and natural.
    She still found him to be the hottest male she’d ever seen in–or out–of pants. She’d never been drawn to charmers, never trusted a man who handed out compliments like business cards. Gage had been demanding, critical and adversarial. The two of them should have been a worse combination than oil and water, but all that passion had combusted one night and she thought she’d found her soul mate.
    That’s when she realized he got her.
    He loved the woman she’d become.
    She wasn’t cut out for a normal life and he hadn’t cared. She’d trusted him with her body and her heart.
    Then it all went to hell three years ago when she dragged her bloodied team out of the UK where she’d risked her life, and the lives of the men she considered brothers, to extract a captured CIA agent. Len Rikker.
    Someone in the agency had tossed her team to the wolves, but no one was about to own up, and Gage refused to hand over the names of everyone who had been privy to her mission.
    Josh and Dingo would go ballistic knowing she was sitting here with Gage, and she wasn’t up for that, not when she was already pissed at Dingo.
    She had no time for guilt on this trip. “What’s up, Gage? The agency having a slow week or what?”
    “The agency doesn’t know I’m here,” he quipped, putting the SUV in park.
    That sounded like the agency didn’t know Gage was in LA, but she’d learned to interpret Gage talk early on when he’d first become her handler.
    Her translation?
    The agency didn’t know Gage was stateside since the CIA couldn’t operate on US soil.
    Or so most Americans believed.
    “Did you come bearing gifts?” she asked, trying to stick with casual when her insides were knotted up. As difficult as it was to keep her distance and sleep alone at night, sitting this close to him was far worse. Her body could sense him being near and complained at the open space between them.
    “Sure, I brought gifts.”  Gage reached over the console separating them and pulled out two waters that were perspiring from being in a cooler.
    She took hers and muttered, “That wasn’t what I had in mind.”
    “That isn’t your gift.”  Gage said, “I have information for you that the agency doesn’t have. Is that worth a few minutes?”
    That sent her antennae shooting up. She lowered the bottle from her lips and propped it on her lap.
    Would this be the moment that he handed her the lead for finding Rikker–or whoever held Rikker’s chain?
    Probably not.
    She took another drink of her water, refusing to say anything more than she had to in this verbal game of chess.
    Gage’s failure to hand over names connected to the UK mission had stood in the way of every effort he made to get back into her good graces.
    Or in her bed.
    She finally gave in first, only because she was too exhausted to walk an emotional tightrope. “I can’t keep doing this, Gage.”
    “Can’t we just have a moment without arguing over that ?”
    That being Rikker and the UK mission that stood between them, squeezing any chance of happiness out of the air.
    The desire to give up the fight and climb over the console into his lap pounded her skull and her heart, but she owed a debt to the men who had stood by her when the CIA screwed