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She curled her toes in her sneakers and stopped breathing all while marbles shot around in her head.
His breath fanned across her skin a moment before he pressed his lips to hers in a gentle, sweet kiss—that was over too damn soon.
That was okay.
Just because she was a jump into the deep end kind of girl didn’t mean that was how he operated. Pumping the brakes was a good idea, all things considered. What mattered was that from here on, they were together. In every sense of the word. Because if she were truly honest with herself, she’d fallen for Samuel before meeting him. She just needed to bide her time and tell him later. Much, much later.
Chapter Eight
Friday. Undisclosed, London, UK.
Maxwell pressed the phone to his ear. He’d already wanted to reach through the phone and rip out the man’s throat for keeping him waiting a whole damn day. During their briefing, Maxwell had been pretty fucking clear about what he wanted and expected from the team he’d hired to handle this issue with the nosey woman poking into his business. He’d laid out his expectations, so by all accounts, he had the right to be wholly pissed off because this phone call should have happened yesterday. Not today. Bloody yesterday.
“Explain to me why it has been twenty-four fucking hours of silence?” he demanded.
“I’m sorry, sir,” the American on the other end said in his thick, muddy accent.
“Sorry? Sorry? How is that a reason? I want a fucking reason!”
“There were problems, sir. We wanted to handle them before we briefed you.”
Maxwell’s stomach knotted up. “What does that mean? What problems?”
Silence.
He pulled the phone away from his face to make sure the call hadn’t dropped.
“Well?” he snapped.
“The targets are missing,” the man said.
“What?” Maxwell roared.
“They’re missing. We moved in just like we told you, using the storm for cover. We blindsided their security detail and proceeded into the recovery facility, but there was only one woman there.”
“What did she say? Did she know where they were?”
“She died before we could question her.”
“She—what? You dumb cunts fucked this all up? How? It was such a simple bloody job.”
Maxwell was wasting precious breath.
These mercenaries weren’t worth what he’d paid, and he was sure as hell not making the second payment.
He hung up without another word.
What was the point?
At best, they’d tried and failed to find the woman nosing about in his business. If she were dead, they’d have led with that to appease him.
Damn it.
He set the phone down on his desk and stalked to the windows to stare out over the city.
This was one, minor hiccup. Honestly he should have left it up to someone else, but given how much of a pain the Americans were being he’d wanted to take a personal approach. Not that he was going to make Daar’s mistake and go to the US himself. Hell no.
In the grand scheme of things, one woman didn’t matter all that much. It was the chaos of the world playing him like a fiddle, as the saying went. It was time to take a page out of Daar’s book.