Page 16 of Too Guarded to Love (Project VIPER #3)
She glanced at Nic. He stood at the foot of the conference table, his gaze transfixed on the pretty blonde-haired reporter with the death date under her name.
Olivia shivered as an image of her face on the screen with a death date under her name swam in her vision. “I know it sounds absurd because I’m just a doctor. Why would anybody care what I do or want to sabotage my career?”
Nic rubbed the back of his neck with his steel fingers. She’d noticed him do that a few times. A nervous tic like her brother’s jittery leg? A bug bite? He dropped his hand. She followed the movement as his black fingers squeezed into a fist against his leg.
She stared at his profile for a heartbeat, willing him to look away from the image and shoot her the devilish smirk that had melted her in the rain. She didn’t want the connection, the chemistry, or whatever drew her to him, but the maddening desire to hold his attention wouldn’t relent.
Chris sat back in his seat and splayed his steel fingers on his black pants. “Never say that a gut feeling is absurd, Olivia.”
Apparently, she couldn’t trust her gut. The damn thing had told her to throw herself at the worst possible choice of men on the planet.
Yet, according to Patience, Nic had stayed at the hospital with her while Kane raced off after he’d gotten the call about Gran.
But now Nic didn’t seem to want anything to do with her besides being polite.
She didn’t want polite. She wanted the beast she sensed inside .
Gran had better wake up fast and tell her that what she felt for Nic was nothing but scorching lust and to ignore the urge to venture into its depths and explore.
For the first time in Olivia’s life, she’d welcome a lecture from Gran about guarding her heart against impulses.
This world of agents, admirals, and real-life heroes who looked like they stepped out of a movie poster already felt too tight, let alone terrifying.
Kane’s leg jittered under his pants. “You should have told me as soon as this bullshit started instead of waiting weeks. We could have figured it out by now.”
“You’re all kind of busy protecting the country from bad guys. And you’re getting married soon. I didn’t want to bother you with something so inconsequential.”
“Your career is not inconsequential. And those mistakes don’t sound like you. You’re annoying and stubborn, but you’re one of the most competent people I know.”
“Thank you.” She hadn’t realized how much she’d needed her brother’s support, and not just the technological skills he and his buddies could provide, until now.
“Jonathan thought I made those mistakes, though. So did my director. He said he couldn’t waste the technology department’s time looking for a network breach based on my paranoia.
” She shrugged, forcing out what she hated to admit. “For a while, I believed them both.”
Kane held up his hand. “Back up. Who’s Jonathan?”
Nic perched on the edge of the conference table and folded his arms over his chest. “Her alleged well-known, well-respected neurosurgeon fiancé.”
Olivia jerked her chin to Nic so fast it hurt more than her arm. “My what? Where did you hear that?”
“Straight from his lips when he showed up at the hospital claiming you two were engaged and demanded to see you.”
Olivia brought her good hand to her mouth. Not only had Nic thought she was a liar because she hadn’t told him who she was, but he thought she’d been engaged while she’d licked his cock. “Why in God’s name didn’t you tell me Jonathan was at the hospital?”
“Kane left instructions that nobody but me was to have access to you.” Nic shrugged. “So I got rid of him.”
The spacious room shrank around her to the size of her little town. “That wasn’t your call to make.” She pointed to Kane. “Or yours.”
“You were just shot, and I got the call that Gran had collapsed. I had to go, and you were out of it. I knew Nic would make rational decisions.”
“Because you think I’m only capable of making impulsive ones?
” All it had taken was for her to land on the same coast as her brother for her every move to be monitored and judged like she was a child.
“At no point was I unconscious, just kind of loopy.” Forget loopy.
Foaming anger had her in a wild frenzy. “You had no right.”
“And you let another asshole break your heart.”
“He didn’t break my heart. Just pissed me off.” Olivia cringed as she looked at Bradley. “Sorry for all the cursing, Mr. President. I swear we were raised better than that.” She glared at Kane. “At least I was.”
“And Dad raised me to take care of my family.”
“Don’t bring Dad into this. Nobody asked you to be my guardian after he died.”
Kane clapped his hand on his steel leg. “I did what I thought was best. If you had told me about Jonathan?—”
“Stop talking.” Seething, she looked around the faces in the room.
Even Ryan had torn his gaze from his computer to watch the sibling rivalry sideshow.
She jiggled the charms on her bracelet so they separated and recounted the locations her father had sent them to her mother from.
She got through five countries and six states before she felt calm enough to speak without spitting fire.
“I was never engaged to Jonathan Garrity. He asked me to marry him. Twice. But I made a rational decision, all on my own, and said no. Twice.”
She caught Nic’s slight smile in her peripheral vision. She looked for other signs he was happy she wasn’t engaged, but the clenched steel fist he rested on his knee didn’t offer any.
“Did Jonathan say how he knew I was at the hospital? I didn’t tell him I was going to the beach. I didn’t even tell him I was coming to DC.”
Nic turned his full attention to her. “He said he figured you’d gone to a friend’s house. When he couldn’t find you, he thought you’d been in an accident because of the storm and checked the ER. He wasn’t happy about not getting any information, but he left quietly.”
Even though she’d ended their relationship, his easy abandonment still stung a little. Shaking off his callousness that shouldn’t have surprised her, she heard Chris excuse himself to take a call from his wife.
The president followed him to the door. “I’m headed out too. The missus will be wondering where I am. I’ll see you all soon at my birthday party. I’m looking forward to the little surprise VIPER has planned for me.” He stopped in front of Olivia. “Get well soon, so you can come.”
She smiled. The normal day-to-day things like husbands and wives and a birthday party, even if it was for the president, grounded her enough to think rationally.
If someone was following her, or sabotaging her, or—she couldn’t believe she was even thinking this—trying to end her life, they weren’t getting anywhere near this room.
She looked over her shoulder, slowly twisting as much as she could without causing too much discomfort, hoping Jonathan would appear. Watching the VIPER boys, as Patience had called them, interrogate him about his lies would be entertaining.
“Olivia.”
She jerked toward Nic’s deep, clipped voice. The sharp movement speared a jab of pain through the injured side of her body. Sweat erupted on her forehead as the crackers she’d eaten before she’d left MedLab curdled in her belly.
She’d heard Kane say her name, but her attention remained on Nic. The alertness in his posture and gaze equaled the intensity of the Secret Service agents, but she’d caught the slight twist in her direction.
Kane knelt by her side. “Get back to your room. We can finish this discussion tomorrow.”
Olivia accepted the can of ginger ale Linc offered her. “I’m fine. I just moved too fast.” She took a sip of her drink. Closing her eyes, she let the bubbles fizz down her throat and douse the acid in her belly. “I’m okay now.”
She waved her brother away as she chanced a look at Nic again, this time slower. “Did you have a question?”
“Yes, lots of them, but they can wait. You need some rest.”
“Stop siding with my brother, or I’ll shove my boot up your…” She looked down at the ugly beige slippers Patience had given her. Were her boots still at the beach bungalow? Her feet already missed the soft leather. Would VIPER make their retrieval a priority?
You own a dozen other pairs. Focus.
But she couldn’t. The pain and fatigue she’d brushed off clamored to be taken seriously. She still wanted answers about who shot her. Still wanted to know how Jonathan had found her, and oh crap, she needed to let Harlee know why she hadn’t made it to her condo.
Olivia moaned. That was going to be difficult since the unknown number Harlee had called her from was on the smashed cell phone at the beach.
She opened her mouth to explain all that, but the contents in her belly pitched up her throat. Doubling over, she swallowed it back as the room spun around her ugly beige slippers.