Then again, perhaps that was the whole point. A spy wasn’t supposed to look like a spy, right?

Mac’s knuckles brushed the back of her hand when he stepped up to get a closer look at the screen on Chelsea’s iPad, and Delilah would swear she felt the touch somewhere much more intimate. A slight shiver convulsed her muscles, and she just barely held back a gasp as she glanced into his big, square, unfairly attractive face.

Oh, goody-goody-gumdrops. So the Mask of Inscrutability has returned!

And how he could manage to look completely unfazed when mere minutes ago he’d been sucking her nipple and grinding the hard, hot length of his erection against her she’d never know. For her part, she couldn’t seem to come down from the high. Her body was still piano-wire tight, the blood rushing through her veins as sharp and warm as the hot toddies she liked to serve when a nor’easter blew through Chicago.

She now knew what it meant when those historical romance novels she liked to read claimed the heroes “ravaged” the heroines. Because, really, considering the way Mac had held her, stroked her, kissed her, tongued her, there was no other way to describe it. And if she was going to call it a ravaging, then she also had to call Mac completely, deliciously beastly. He’d been growling and groaning and—for the love of tequila—to say it’d been hot would be like calling lukewarm bathwater hot. Because enigmatic, self-disciplined, Bryan “Mac” McMillan losing control of those reins he usually kept such a tight hold on had been way beyond hot. It’d been volcano-hot, surface-of-Mercury-hot, exploding-star-hot. So hot she was still feeling singed, and he was…

Well, he was ignoring her and watching the CIA agent’s screen with concerted interest.

Ugh. She didn’t know if she should be depressed or impressed.

“Yorp!” Fido sang from his position by the back door, wagging his tail enthusiastically. Obviously, he had no interest in what Agent Duvall was showing them, and Delilah sort of envied the big yellow dog. How nice would it be to have no worries except for when your next meal or game of fetch would be?

Then again, that wasn’t necessarily true. Because poor, sweet Fido had lost his master as surely as she’d lost her uncle. And, okay, so that was one way to take the edge off the lust still zinging through her system. Thoughts of Uncle Theo…

“Check that out,” Ozzie said, pointing a finger at the screen. “Why are there four people in that building downtown?”

Delilah couldn’t help herself, she moved in closer so she, too, could see what Ozzie was motioning toward. To her utter consternation, she couldn’t understand the information on the agent’s iPad. It just looked like vague gray outlines in a series of geometric shapes with four green dots moving around inside one of them.

“Squatters?” Mac supplied. “Or kids in there havin’ a toke?” When her arm brushed against his, he took a small step back. She glanced up at his face and was rewarded for her effort with an expression that was no longer the Mask of Inscrutability. That was the good news. The bad news? Well, now he’d reverted back to his second most favorite look. Disapproval.

Oh, you’ve got be kidding me! Her feelings must’ve been evident on her face because disapproval quickly morphed into dismissal.

Wahoo! We’re three for three, folks! And, oooh, where was a rock when she needed one? Something small and hard that she could zing toward his stubborn head? Just whack! Knock some sense into him with one blow. She was stopped from glancing around the room in search of a serviceable item when Ozzie replied, “Mmm. Yeah, you’re probably right. Ask for the next scan, Agent Duvall.”

Chelsea repeated the request into her Bluetooth device, and the screen dissolved to black a second before another image appeared.

“Yorp! Yorp!” Fido caught sight of his own wagging tail and decided to chase it.

“That dog is a wonder of stupidity,” Mac observed.

“Yorp! Yorp!”

“Oh, for Christ’s sake.” Irritation was evident in his tone. “Delilah, will you let the damned dog out so he’ll stop makin’ that racket?”

A part of her—a larger part than she’d like to admit—wanted to tell him to take his orders and shove them somewhere extremely uncomfortable. She deserved to stay here and look at these scans just as much as they did. It was her uncle they were looking for, after all. At least that’s what the petulant, ego-sore, just-got-summarily-rejected-by-way-of-a-glance woman in her wanted to shout. But then logic, that little bastard, intervened and reminded her that for one thing, she didn’t know what the heck she was looking at. And for another thing, they were here helping her, so a little patience and forbearance, not to mention cooperation, on her part wasn’t too much to ask.

“Fine,” she hissed before spinning on her heel. She marched through the kitchen toward the back door, and all along the way, beneath her breath, she called Mac unsavory—if somewhat creative—names. Her favorite was booby-licking, jerk-faced bastard. But shit-talking, lug-headed butt-monkey came in a close second.

“Yorp! Yorp! Yorpyorpyorp!” Fido sang happily, spinning in delight upon her arrival.

“Okay, okay,” she soothed as her shins took a beating from his tail. She bent to grab hold of the thick, whip-like monstrosity lest she need a set of crutches, and Fido took this to be a wonderful new game. He nipped at her fingers playfully, stepping on her bare toes.

“Geez, you’re a menace,” she laughed when he panted up at her happily.

“Yorp!”

“Yes, you are,” she crooned, unable to stop herself from using that sing-songy voice. “You’re just a big ol’ pain in the patoot, you know that?”

“Yorp!”

“Delilah! Goddamnit!” Mac thundered from the living room. “We can’t hear ourselves think!”

Turning, she placed her hands on her hips and made the supremely wise decision to stick her tongue out at him. His adorably dimpled chin jerked back. Then he blinked and shook his head in exasperation.

Yeah, okay. So, that wasn’t necessarily my smoothest move. But, goddamnit! He irritated and confused the hell out of her, all while making her so hot under the collar she couldn’t think straight.

Sighing dejectedly, she pushed the back door open and watched Fido shoot out of the house like a rocket. The yellow dog launched himself from the top of the steps, barking excitedly all the while.

Daring one final glance over her shoulder, she was amazed to discover Mac’s eyes not on the iPad screen as she’d expected, but instead glued to her butt. When his gaze jumped to her face, she curled her lips in a grin that was the facial equivalent of caught ya! Feeling instantly better, she followed Fido into the yard…

Chapter Twelve

“Who’s a good boy?” Delilah called to Fido, skipping down the three steps leading from the back porch to the fenced-in yard. The hungry look on Mac’s face when she busted him ogling her booty was clear in her mind’s eye. And, considering everything she was dealing with right now, it made her unaccountably happy.

She did a little victory dance complete with a hip shake and finger snaps while watching Fido thunder down the long expanse of lawn—Delilah would bet it was thirty yards if it was an inch. He latched on to something behind the whitewashed doghouse near the back fence. She could see his furry butt protruding from the little structure, his hind legs bent forward as he growled and tried to wrestle out whatever he’d found.

“Ow!” she cursed as she stepped onto the lawn, lamenting the fact that she hadn’t taken the time to put on her biker boots when the sharp blades of dry grass poked into the soles of her bare feet. Hopping over to a patch of dirt, she called out, “What is it, boy? What’ve you got?”

Oh, and brilliant. What did she expect? The dog to stand up and start talking? Sheesh. She glanced around, glad for once that the neighborhood was empty as the proverbial drum. “Grrrr! Yorp!” Fido intensified his struggle, his back legs scrabbling against the dry lawn, kicking up little puffs of brown dust.

Please don’t let it be a squirrel or a rabbit, she thought as she once again hopped from her relatively safe patch of dirt onto the needle-like lawn. She may be the ass-kicking, Harley-riding, shotgun-toting beer-slinger-from-hell, but she was also a big softie when it came to fuzzy things. She didn’t know what she’d do if Fido was mauling something—

Uh, was that a shoe clamped between Fido’s jaws? She broke into a run, uncaring now about the blades of grass stabbing into her feet. She drew closer. Ten yards. Twenty.

Yes, yes, that’s definitely a shoe.

For a moment, she thought perhaps she’d found the infamous pot-growing Charlie Sander. Maybe Mac had been wrong. Maybe the guy hadn’t been attacked and dragged from his kitchen but instead had a heart attack out here in the backyard. But, then…no. Because she thought she recognized that shoe, or boot, actually. It was a brown Timberland and—

“Arp!” She saw the blade on the big hunting knife flash in the rays of the rising sun and could do nothing but watch helplessly as it imbedded itself into Fido’s furry chest. She stumbled back when the dog’s yelp of pain and confusion echoed in her ears, a scream of gut-wrenching anguish building like a tidal wave at the back her throat. She opened her mouth to let it loose, but in that instant the dark-skinned man launched himself at her, hands curled into claws, an ugly snarl plastered on his face.