Her head shot up before she could get her reactions under control. “That’s good.”
Lucas grabbed her low on her waist and swung her around so her back was to the window and lowered his mouth so it was only a fraction of an inch away from her ear, no doubt for cover just in case her stepfather spotted them lingering in the garden outside his office. “How?”
Adrenaline and desire had her strung out and feeling like the only thing anchoring her to the earth was Lucas’s hand on her hip. She inhaled a shaky breath and focused not on the vivid blue-green of his eyes but on the security and honesty he represented despite being the last man on earth she should trust.
“He may not be Rolf’s second-in-command, but the Sparrow still knows everything that happens on Fare Island and a lot of what happens off of it.” Her words came out in a rush. “We need to get to his cabin.”
This could be it.
If the Sparrow still kept his paper notes tucked away under the false bottom of his desk drawer like he did when she was a kid, then they’d have all the information they needed to stop the arms deal and end this fake engagement. Slipping her hand into Lucas’s and leading him through the hedgerow maze leading to the Sparrow’s cabin should have been like taking the final exhilarating steps in a marathon. Instead, it felt like taking a running leap off one of the fjords and hoping like hell she wouldn’t break apart on the rocks below.
…
Lucas did a double take. The Sparrow’s cabin was located behind a green door secreted in the leafy wall of the hedgerow maze that opened to reveal a quiet courtyard with a small stone house in the middle. It looked so quiet and serene it set off every one of his warning sirens. Keeping one hand on the door handle and one wrapped around Ruby’s arm to stop her from rushing forward, he scanned the perimeter and found…nothing. Not a single closed-circuit camera, guard dog, or security system.
Following Ruby inside the courtyard, he took a second look, trying to locate anything that either looked out of place or too perfect.
“You won’t find it,” Ruby said, smirking.
“What?”
“The surveillance equipment.”
He may work for the good guys, but he wasn’t one of them. Isn’t that what the Sparrow and Jasper had been trying to warn her about? They were right, and when it came to thinking like the bad guys, no one was better at it than he was. He’d find whatever security the Sparrow had no matter what Ruby thought.
“Why’s that?” he asked.
Her full lips turned that half smile into a full one that lit up her entire face. His girl loved giving him his comeuppance. “He doesn’t have any.”
That couldn’t be right. He turned in a slow circle, taking in the high hedges, the manicured landscaping, and the stone cabin with its red door and cutesy flowerpots with bright yellow tulips. The whole place was bizarre, and he couldn’t spot a telltale glimmer of surveillance anywhere.
“Why wouldn’t he have surveillance?”
“Because he doesn’t keep anything here that he doesn’t care about anyone seeing.” She gave him a conspiratorial wink. “Unless you know exactly where to look, which I do. Come on.”
The inside of the cabin was as pin neat as the outside. There was a living-kitchen-dining room area that housed a bistro table, small desk, twin recliners, and a small television. There was a backdoor in the kitchen, giving them a second way out if necessary. He peeked through a door into a sparse bedroom featuring a twin bed and not a damn thing else. The only other door in the place led to a tiny bathroom.
Instead of stopping in front of the desk like he’d expected, Ruby walked over to the island dividing the kitchen area from the dining area. She moved the potted plant in the center of it to the counter and then ran her hand under the island’s overhang.
“I thought any information would be in his desk.” He pointed toward the small desk with its orange cup of pens and stack of blank notepads.
She jerked her chin at the desk. “That’s for show. This is the real thing.” She tugged her bottom lip between her teeth and rolled her gaze up toward the ceiling
in obvious concentration as her hands moved along the underside.
It shouldn’t have turned him on, but there was so little about her that didn’t. He adjusted his stance to accommodate his thickening cock as he tried and failed to stop memories of watching those lips swallow him up and the sharp prick of her teeth as she nibbled along the column of his throat. All of that was bad enough, but the real killer was the look of triumph that lit her beautiful face up from the curve of her bottom lip to the glimmer in her gray eyes that made her seem brighter than the rainbow highlights in her hair.
She beamed at him. “Got it.”
There was a soft click, and the entire top of the island swung upward on silent hinges. Ruby did a little shimmy, hip-shaking dance move that sent all of the blood in his body rushing south.
Smart. Sexy. Fun as hell. If he were any other man, he would be dragging her off to the nearest bed, or figuring out how to sweet-talk her into making the wedding a real one. But he wasn’t any other man, and there was no way the head of the Silver Knights could ever be with a crime boss’s daughter, even if he was falling for her, hard. And that could be as effective as a double tap between the eyes. He couldn’t afford to get distracted or have his loyalties divided, not if he was going to stop the exchange.
Shoving everything except that realization into a cold, dark hole, he strode to the secret desk and ignored the smell of her perfume, the tease of being so close to her, and the urge to get her the hell off this island and somewhere safe. They shuffled through the three neat stacks of papers in silence. There were copies of shipping orders, dossiers on crime figures from across Northern Europe, and jotted down notes about deals. It was a fucking treasure trove of intel and not a damn thing about the deal with Henriksen.
“I don’t like it.” The Sparrow’s voice came in through the cracked-open kitchen window.
He froze with sheaf of paper in his hand, the manifest for a shipment of black market antiquities, for half a heartbeat before training took over. Each sheet went back into place exactly where it had been before as the voices got closer. Sparing enough time to glance over at Ruby, he had his mouth half open to tell her what to do when he realized she was already doing it. She wasn’t freaking out. She was putting everything back into position, quickly, and with the tight line of her lush mouth being the only giveaway that everything could blow up in their faces in about twenty seconds.