Page 55

No fucking kidding.

Gideon cannot imagine the uproar if a Were got a load of Finn, let alone sexed-up Nix.

Jay already smelled slightly of vanilla-sex, and he’d been in the room for five minutes.

So, they need a plan and they need it stat.

“Leo, let’s call your mommy.”

A grimace distorts Leo’s face at the mention of his mother. Who he hardly knows, apparently.

No one had been as surprised as Leo when Nix had dropped the bomb last night.

Turns out she’d spilled all kinds of secrets to him, including that her acting and modeling years were a cover for the WBCIA.

The fucking Were Branch of the Central Intelligence Agency.

Gideon is grudgingly impressed.

Combat training? Check.

Ammunition and Demolition training? Check.

Interrogation Techniques? Check.

The same woman who complained about his cooking and who can handle a knife better than he can in the kitchen was an international, peak-level spy.

Well, maybe that last one should have been a sign, because knife skills like that should have been a dead giveaway.

There’s an entirely different desk clerk looking at her phone when the elevator doors slide open into the lobby, and she smiles her welcome in that vague way hospitality workers have.

It’s not something Gideon has ever mastered, but Jay certainly has it in spades.

“I’m going to see if there are any messages or if we can borrow a phone.”

They leave Jay to it and take an uncomfortable seat in the small seating area in front of the windows.

The bright Florida sun fills the lobby, grating over Gideon’s last nerve, which means he’s a lot less tolerant of the desk clerk’s big eyes and hair-twirls as Jay leans one muscular arm on the top of the registration desk.

Gideon has been the object of that focus often; she doesn’t stand a chance.

“He’s got that charm turned up to eleven,” Leo mutters, with a nod of hischin toward the front desk, where Jay has moved on to theHow you doin’portion of the morning’s events.

“This is usually fun to watch, but right now all I can think about is how those smiles belong to us, and Finn—this is too hard.”

“You’re just riding the tail end of Finn’s pheromones. It’ll get better.”

“I’d rather be riding something else,” Leo grumbles.

Ditto,Gideon thinks, but he keeps it to himself.

“Thank you, Jenny. That’s so nice of you.”

Jay takes a seat beside Gideon on the tiny love seat offering the desk clerk a last wave.

“You made that look easy,” Gideon gripes and crosses his arms.

The second he says it, he feels his face go red, because that sounded a lot like Luca.