Page 15 of Isolated (Harper Security Ops #21)

Landen

In all the years that I’d been working as a private investigator, I hadn’t ever wanted to demonstrate just how good I was at my job until now. Until I had the opportunity to do something to help her.

Iris Gibson.

Gorgeous, funny, and sweet Iris.

I’d waited years, whole entire years, to find this woman. And though I’d had moments when I’d attempted to impress her as we worked out together at the gym, I realized there was a very big difference between being able to astound someone with your body versus astonishing them with your mind.

While I didn’t think it hurt my case to have some physical prowess, Iris seemed like the kind of woman who’d be far more amazed by my mental capabilities. Being wildly successful herself, I didn’t think she’d ever want someone who wasn’t as capable in their own career .

And now, after all this time of wanting to have the chance to see and spend time with her outside of the gym, I finally had the perfect opportunity.

But it didn’t matter.

Despite having all the skills necessary to uncover some weird technical glitch with her emails, I wasn’t going to be able to do anything but leave Iris disappointed.

Grimacing, I rubbed the back of my neck. As I sat there, staring at the computer screen while willing something to present itself, my stomach dropped.

If what I had to tell Iris now was going to be any indication to her of my skills, I didn’t think I’d be scoring any points.

God, what an embarrassment. What an epic failure.

I had this little window of opportunity, and I bombed it.

Not because I couldn’t do what I told her I would, but because I couldn’t deliver results.

“What does that mean?”

At the sound of her sweet voice, I tore my attention away from the laptop and glanced up at her. There was a concerned but hopeful look in her eyes, which only made me feel worse.

After having spent months and months of wanting nothing more than a moment like this, I was going to be the man to crush that hope for her.

“What does what mean?” I countered.

Iris, sitting across the table from me in her farmhouse, swept her hand out in my direction. “Your face.”

My brows shot up, confused and questioning. “My face?”

A soft giggle escaped from her, the sound causing something deep in my gut to clench.

What I would have given to hear her laugh like that every day.

“I’ve had plenty of time to witness different facial expressions from you, and I’m certain I know what all of them mean, but this is new.

I’ve never seen you wearing the look you’ve got on your face now. ”

I should have felt some small sense of relief. Maybe, to a degree, I did. Because Iris had just admitted that she’d paid enough attention to me to know what my different expressions meant. It would have been impossible to ignore the way that bolstered my hope—my ego—in a situation like this.

“How do I look?”

Those beautiful green eyes roamed over my face, and as she leaned her forearms on the table and shifted her leg beneath her, a lock of that shiny auburn hair I itched to run my fingers through fell in front of her face. She tucked the rogue strand behind her ear and sent an uncertain look my way.

“You… Well, you’ve been staring at that computer for a long time with such concentration,” she began.

“Even when I was out in the kitchen working on putting dinner together, I glanced over and could see the focus from that distance. But the attention you had on what you were doing has transformed over the last several minutes. You seem… I don’t know.

Horrified, maybe? Like your entire body has been hollowed out.

Or maybe that’s a sense of despair. I guess it’s— Oh, God. ”

“What? What’s wrong?” My body tensed at the abrupt change in her.

She gulped and fidgeted with her hands. And when she spoke, her voice was unsure. “It’s bad, isn’t it? You found something, and you don’t want to tell me about it. Is that what that look means? ”

And here I thought it wouldn’t be so difficult to let her down if she could already sense some shift in my mood. This was worse. “Unfortunately, Iris, that’s not what this is about.”

Iris licked her lips and sat back. “What is it? What did you find?”

“That’s just it.” I sighed audibly and closed the laptop.

“There’s nothing here that would offer an explanation as to why you aren’t getting some of your emails, why you never received some of those important ones.

Short of the possibility of whoever is sending them to you having something wrong in the email address itself, everything looks perfectly fine on this end. ”

Her shoulders fell. “Really?”

I dipped my chin, clasping my hands together on the table between us. “I know you were hoping for better news. I’m sorry I couldn’t be the one to give it to you.”

Quantifying how much I hated that I didn’t have a good answer for her was an impossibility. I didn’t like that I was leaving her with no explanation, and I loathed to think Iris would see me as nothing more than a disappointment.

Almost as soon as that thought went through my mind, Iris covered my hands with hers.

It was an effort to keep my eyes open and not succumb to the softness of her touch.

She’d curled her fingers around my arm during lunch today, and the move had caught me off guard completely. I loved the way it felt.

“Oh, Landen, it’s okay. Honestly, this was far more than I could have done on my own.

Even though I would have loved an explanation as to why I didn’t get those emails, I’m also relieved to know there’s nothing I did that would have prevented them from coming through.

As frustrating as this is and has been, it’s also a bit of a relief. It’s still something.”

Her fingers absentmindedly drifted over the backs of my hands, and even though she might not have realized what she was doing, it was close to being the only thing I could concentrate on. My sheer determination not to appear as an even bigger fool was what kept me engaged in the conversation.

“You’re not upset about this?”

“Well, I won’t say I’m not frustrated,” she confessed, her hands halting their movements and simply covering mine.

“It’s not like you didn’t warn me ahead of time that you might not find something.

As much as I would have loved for it to be this simple and to have a quick explanation, I didn’t necessarily expect that would be the case.

This just seems to be my luck lately, and I don’t think that’s something you, or anyone else, can fix for me. ”

There was no logical explanation for why I’d spent the last couple of minutes berating myself over this. Even if I was disappointed with myself, I thought I had a good sense of the woman Iris was. And she wasn’t a woman who’d ever go out of her way to make someone feel bad.

Of course, that didn’t mean I hadn’t wished I could have done something to make her day.

“I realize it’s not my fault, nor is it something I can just fix, but I do wish I could have helped you with this.”

A gorgeous smile spread across her face. “And I can’t tell you what that means to me, Landen. Honest. I feel such immense gratitude for everything you’ve done for me today when you didn’t have to.”

That was it .

That right there was one of the things I liked most about Iris. She had such a bright personality and a happy spirit. No matter what she’d endured today, despite what happened in her boss’s office before she showed up in mine, she still found a way to smile and look on the bright side.

“If there’s something else that I can do at any point now or in the future, I hope you won’t hesitate to ask me for help.” I returned a smile. “I promise I’m good at my job. Sadly, it’s hard to locate things that aren’t there.”

Iris gave my hands a squeeze. “I didn’t once doubt your ability as a private investigator, Landen. Is that what you think?”

I shrugged. “I just wish I could have had a better outcome for you. That’s all.”

“But it’s like you said.” Her hands traveled away from my hands, over my wrists, and settled on my forearms. Blood rushed through my veins at the way her touch moved over my skin.

“You can’t find things that aren’t there.

I’m sure this was all just some weird glitch, and I’d hate for you to feel bad about it. ”

This woman had been the one to have a trying day, yet it felt as though she was attempting to comfort me. Given her response, I was almost tempted to wallow in self-pity for just a bit longer. Maybe she’d crawl across the table and settle herself in my lap.

Reminding myself that I had no intention of taking advantage of her vulnerability, I decided against doing that. “If you promise to let me know if anything else pops up with this situation, I’ll promise to let it go.”

She beamed at me. “Deal. ”

As though on cue, a timer went off in the kitchen, indicating that dinner was ready.

Iris sat back and pulled her hands away from me. “Time to eat. I hope you’re hungry.”

I was starving, but the longer I sat here with her, the clearer it became that my hunger had nothing to do with food. There was little I wouldn’t give to get my mouth on hers. “It’s been a while since we had lunch, and I haven’t had anything since then, so I’m starved.”

Iris rose from her seat. “Perfect. I just need a couple of minutes to get it plated.”

I stood. “Can I help?”

She took me in, her eyes roaming over my face before dipping briefly toward my shoulders and chest and back again. “If you want to grab some drinks and utensils, that would be great.”

Following her into the kitchen, I allowed my own gaze to wander over her figure. I clenched my jaw and balled my hands into fists as thoughts flitted through my mind of how good it’d feel to hold her hips in my hands. This was easily the best kind of torture.