Trust Me (Paris Nights #3)(2)
“You know, I’ve always wanted to meet a woman who could slay her own dragons,” Jake said quietly.
She’d always wanted to be that kind of woman. What no one had warned her about was that most dragons were hydras.
“Here.” Lina dropped the head into his hand. “I even brought you back its head as a trophy.”
Jake considered the ice dragon's head a long moment. “I’m overwhelmed.”
The weird thing was that he really sounded as if he was.
“Did you need something?” She made her voice brisk.
An odd expression flickered in those hazel eyes, as if he was considering whether he should just go ahead and tell her exactly what he wanted.
More leads on her cousins’ friends? To sweep her away to some secret CIA prison for further interrogation? She was pretty sure her sudden international heroine status would mean the Americans couldn’t get away with that one, but all she had known about it until a week ago was what Americans got away with in their own Hollywood films, and that was pretty scary stuff.
Merde, had her life ever been f*cked up and turned on its head. Kind of like that time she’d spent thirty-six hours, no sleep, constructing the most fantastical, wonderful sugar and chocolate structure for the international pastry title and, as they transferred it to its base, her sous-chef tripped, and the whole thing went crashing upside down to the ground. Like that, only in this case, the sugar structure was her life, and she’d been working on that for the past twenty-six years. Beautiful, ambitious…and it turned out, a lot more fragile than she had thought.
“I just wanted to check on you,” Jake said. He still blocked the doorway, gazing down at her. “Vi worries, which makes Chase worry, and both of them are stuck in hospital beds. So here I am.”
Okay, that was all plausible, in fact she knew quite well that Vi was climbing the walls, but somehow it didn’t ring true. He wasn’t telling her something.
Probably his secret orders to lure her into compliancy or something. Even though she’d been as compliant as she could be, but her grandparents had immigrated from Algeria back in the sixties, so she was never going to be just French. She was always going to be Arab-French. And a little bit suspect.
Although given that her own cousin was an actual terrorist, she supposed she should cut them some slack on that one. Damn Abed. What a way to prove to the family she was right when she insisted he was a creepy little turd.
Well, nothing for it. It wasn’t as if she could start giving up in challenging circumstances now. When that sugar structure had crashed, she’d picked up the pieces and started over with the thirty minutes she had left before the bell.
She walked on past Jake as if she could walk right through him, which was pretty much the only way to deal with a man twice your size who carried himself as if a crazed woman wielding a chainsaw wouldn’t even ruffle his nerves. She’d been asserting her space around and eventually imposing her will on over-macho men since she was…well, born, really, but definitely since she was first apprenticed at fifteen. She knew how to do it. But even she had never run up against a will quite so firm and controlled as Jake Adams’.
He wasn’t flamboyant about it, like his friend Chase. Not cocky and flashy with his confidence. It was just there, bone deep inside him, as if he didn’t give a damn how much people noticed it because it was so solid and sure in him he didn’t need that attention.
He stepped back so she could leave the cold freezer. Really stepped back—leaving her a perfectly respectful amount of space, far more than she was used to in crowded, busy kitchens.
So either she could still assert her space, or he was just fundamentally courteous and had only needed a little nudge to realize he’d been blocking her. Or maybe both were true? Her strength and his courtesy.
“You can tell them both I’m fine,” she said. “Although I stopped by already today. They can see for themselves.”
“Maybe they worry you’re putting on a good face for them at the hospital,” Jake said. “And that the truth will show up better in your natural environment.”
Lina threw him a sharp glance. Was that, maybe, something that the counterterrorist team thought? That some other truth would show up if they just watched her until she let it slip? Or was she just paranoid?
It was so hard to tell. Like, Yes, you are paranoid but quite possibly because your own cousin, the one your family always claimed you were being over-paranoid about, did just try to kill you.
And kill all your team. And your best friend.
Yeah, if she could get her hands on Abed again, she’d dip his freaking dick in liquid nitrogen and watch him scream.
“I’ve told all the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth,” she said wearily. But her skin was golden, so Jake and his ilk were probably never going to believe that.
“You’re really fine?” He had come to stand on the other side of the counter that was her workspace. Courteously leaving that barrier between them. Not crowding her, as if he understood the crazy edge of paranoia that kept her awake at nights and tried to crawl its way into the light of day.
“My own cousin just tried to kill me and my best friend and everyone who helped us get where we are because he hated us so much for being successful, happy women,” she said very lightly. “Of course I’m fine. Who wouldn’t be?”