No, goddamnit! He was not okay! Because somehow he’d allowed himself to fall, despite everything, despite knowing better. And he was a damned fool. A glutton for punishment. Doomed to follow the path of—

He shook the half-formed thought from his head. “Did you, uh, think any more about that offer to work on the Winterfield case?” And, yeah, that was good. Work. He should be focusing on work.

Now that the “powers that be” had proof Luke Winterfield had, indeed, sold state secrets to the highest bidder, he was officially listed as a traitor to the United States of America, persona non grata extraordinaire. And POTUS himself had tasked The Company with finding the guy in his South American hideout. Considering Delilah’s unparalleled expertise in following the convoluted path of money trails and given her close ties with and personal stake in the case—much to Mac’s surprise—the CIA had actually had the good sense and foresight to try to bring her on board as an asset. Will wonders never cease?

“I did.” She nodded. He couldn’t help but notice the way it caused a lock of auburn hair to drift over her shoulder. It reminded him of how she’d looked atop the dresser in the Noel Motel, head back, breasts lifted, her long hair playing hide-and-seek with her rosy, delicious nipples. Jesus Christ! And now Little Mac, good soldier that he was, was standing at full attention. “The…um…” She glanced around to make sure no one was listening in, before leaning in close. Her sweet-smelling breath tickled his chin. “The Company is installing a secure server back at my place as we speak. As soon as I get Uncle Theo settled, I’m going to start digging.” She cocked her head. “I…I think it’ll be…sort of…cathartic, I guess would be the word.”

“Yeah.” Mac swallowed.

“Mac?” Her soft palm landed on his arm, reminding him of how it’d felt when it was wrapped firmly around his erection, tugging, stroking, bringing so much pleasure.

He couldn’t take it anymore. “I gotto go,” he blurted, causing her wonderfully piquant chin to jerk back. Piquant? Okay, and could a chin even be piquant? Or was that just his silly, fanciful, ridiculous obsession with her—and every single, itty-bitty part of her—coming out?

“O-okay?” She blinked. And, yeah. He could go on about her lashes for a while, too. About how long they were. About how he loved that the tips glinted blond in the light when she wasn’t wearing any mascara, like now. Fuck…

“There are…” He had to stop and clear his throat. Someone, at some point, had shoved a big ol’ wad of cotton down there. “Uh…things back at the shop that—”

“It’s okay, Mac.” And there it was again. That goddamned smile. He barely resisted lifting a hand to his chest in an effort to stymie the ache of his heart. “I understand. You’ve been playing nursemaid and right-hand man to the both of us,” she hooked a thumb toward her uncle, “for long enough. We’re good now. Really. Go take care of what you need to take care of.”

What he needed to take care of? He needed to take care of the idiotic, ill-timed, ill-fated love he’d developed for her. That’s what he needed to take care of.

“Delilah, I—” He stopped. Unsure of how to go on. Uncertain, even, if he should. How did he tell her all the things he felt, all the things she meant to him now and couldn’t mean to him in the future? How did he tell her about—

“What is it, Mac?”

He swallowed. Damn, were those tears burning the back of his nose? “I’ll…uh…I’ll see you later, darlin’.”

And with that, he turned tail and ran like the yellow-bellied coward he was.

Chapter Twenty-three

Red Delilah’s Biker Bar

Three weeks later…

I’ll see you later, darlin’…

Whenever it was quiet and empty in the bar, like now, Mac’s last words echoed through Delilah’s head, taunting her.

For the first week, those five words had filled her with hope. Hope that he would walk through her door at any moment. Hope that he would take her in his arms and tell her he’d been crazy not to give her, give them, a chance. Hope that he would see that what they had was too precious and rare to let slip away before it was ever given an opportunity to really start.

But one week slid into two, and he’d done none of those things. Her hope had been replaced with disbelief. Disbelief and hurt. She couldn’t understand why he was avoiding her. That had never been part of their bargain. And if it had been, she wouldn’t have signed herself up for it. Because she’d never, never been prepared to give up everything. To give up his friendship. To give up the chance of seeing his dazzling smile or his adorably crooked nose. To give up ever hearing his slow, Texas drawl.

And then it’d occurred to her that perhaps he wasn’t avoiding her at all. That perhaps he was simply out on a mission somewhere, deep in a jungle or sweating in some desert. He was a super-secret spy-guy, right?

But she’d quickly been relieved of that little misconception when, one night after a handful of the Knights came in to enjoy some peanuts and brews, she’d oh-so-casually let slip a question to Ozzie about Mac’s “secret” whereabouts. Ozzie had frowned and informed her that there was nothing secretive about it. Mac was back at the shop, cleaning out the fuel lines on Siren.

Uh-huh. And there’d gone that little glimmer of optimism, crushed beneath Ozzie’s words as surely as Roscoe Porter—one of her most loyal patrons—crushed beer cans against his big, wrinkled forehead.

Which brought her to today. Three weeks into what she’d come to call The Great Disappearing Act. And even though the words I’ll see you later, darlin’ still accosted her from time to time, they no longer brought with them hope or disappointment or hurt. Nope. Now they just pissed her off.

What the hell is wrong with him? The man doesn’t even have the decency to—

“You’re going to slice off a finger the way you’re handling that knife,” her Uncle Theo observed. She was behind the bar, cutting up lemons and limes to be used in cocktails. When she glanced at him—he was sitting on a stool across from her, the Chicago Sun-Times in one hand and a cup of coffee in the other—she couldn’t stop the little sigh of relief that whispered from between her lips. He was healthy. And alive. And save for a little scar near his temple and the crutches he still had to use, no one looking at him would know what a harrowing ordeal he’d been through.

But she would never forget. Never forget the fear in his eyes. The tears streaming down his face. The blood. God, there’d been a lot of blood…

No, she’d never forget. Not if she lived to be a hundred years old. She wiped her hands on her apron and reached across the bar, squeezing his hand.

He made a clucking noise, his bushy, white mustache drooping at the corners. “How long until you stop needing to touch me every thirty seconds to assure yourself I’m really here?”

She swallowed the lump in her throat. “I don’t know. It might be a while yet.”

He opened his mouth to respond, but a sharp knock on the front door sent Fido scrambling out from under her feet and racing around the end of the bar. His doggy nails scraped against the hardwood floor, alerting her to the fact that it was probably time to take out the clippers. Dog ownership had its own learning curve, one she was enjoying immensely. And besides seeing her uncle healthy and happy—well, as happy as he could be considering he’d watched one of his oldest acquaintances die at the hands of terrorists. She knew he was still struggling with that—nothing gave her more pleasure than to know Fido had completely recovered. The dog had nothing to show for his close brush with death except for a six-inch scar furrowing through the yellow hair on his chest.

“Yorp! Yorp! Yorpyorpyorp!” he sang happily as both Delilah and her uncle yelled toward the door, “We’re closed!”

“It’s Zoelner!” came the reply from outside, and Delilah’s hand jumped to her throat when her heart tried to escape from her body via that route.

Mac…. Something had happened to Mac and—

She hopped over the bar, not bothering to use the hinged ledge at the end. Hurdling a barstool, she was across the room in two seconds, twisting the locks and throwing open the door. Zoelner stood on the threshold in jeans and a leather jacket, his expression unreadable.

“Mac,” she said, or at least tried to say. Her throat was so restricted by the presence of her heart that it came out sounding more like a wheezing Mahhh. She swallowed and tried again. “Is he okay? Is he hurt? Do you—”

“Relax,” Zoelner said, grabbing her elbow and steering her back into the bar. “Mac’s fine.” A whooshing sigh of relief gushed from her, and it was then she realized her knees were shaking like the overhead fixtures tended to do on Wednesday nights when a troop of local line-dancers took over the place. When Zoelner spotted her uncle sitting at the bar, he dipped his chin. “Theo. You’re looking well. I can’t tell you how glad I am to see that.”

“Thanks to you and the boys of BKI,” her uncle said.

Zoelner waved off his comment. “No need for thanks. Just doing our jobs.”

And Delilah still couldn’t quite believe how blasé her uncle had been when she explained to him in the hospital—after getting the go-ahead from Frank “Boss” Knight, of course—what exactly the Black Knights were and why exactly they’d been there assisting in his rescue.