Protecting His Pregnant Lover - Leslie North Page 0,31

but drowned. Levon isn’t anything to you besides an old friend... and the father of your child. Okay, so maybe that is something. But he’s definitely not your boyfriend. She used her fork to move aside the top few soggy pancakes for the less soaked ones beneath before prompting him, “So... you were thinking?”

“I think you should stay here until the gang is dealt with.” Levon rested his forearms on the table for a long moment, his direct gaze holding hers. “It’s safer, and it’s more efficient for exchanging information. Besides, with you assisting me, it shouldn’t take long.”

Olive opened her mouth to argue again, but darn it, maybe he was right. She was an asset to his case and with his brawn and her brains, the whole thing should be over quickly. Finally she exhaled slowly and nodded. “All right. I can agree to that,”

“Good.” Levon tucked into his pancakes with relish. “Now that’s settled, we need to discuss our stakeout later.”

“I’m sorry. What?” Olive’s fork squealed across her plate as she blinked at him. “You’re taking me on a stakeout? What happened to your whole ‘Me Tarzan, you Jane’ alpha guardian thing?”

Levon gave her a look and patted his mouth with the corner of one of last night’s pizza delivery napkins. “It’s not ideal to have you there, but you’re safest when you’re by my side. If you need another reason, which I know you do, then I’d like you to help I.D. some of the faces I might see. If you see any of your students or former students entering or leaving the hideout, you can tell me in real-time.”

“‘Hideout’?” Olive repeated, her analytical mind turning over that new information. When the realization dawned on her, she sat back and crossed her arms over her belly, annoyance and a bit of pride at his skill niggling inside her. “You already know where it is, don’t you?”

His slow grin made her pulse trip. “Of course.”

While he devoured his stack of pancakes, she nibbled on her first one, trying to work out exactly how he was able to leap so far ahead of her on this case in such a short time. “What were you doing last night?”

He looked up at her, mid-bite. “Reading through the data you compiled.”

She should have known. Olive took a sip from the mug of tea he’d set beside her plate earlier. “And that’s how you figured all this out?”

“That plus what I received from my SSoF team.” He shrugged and swallowed another bite of breakfast. Olive could only be impressed. Where he put all that food, she had no idea, since there wasn’t a spare ounce of fat on him. Just muscle. Sleek, smooth, sensational muscle.

Down girl.

Irritated with herself for falling into the smutty pool again, Olive took a huge bite of pancakes and stared down at her plate, speaking around the food in her mouth. “Do they contact you often?”

“At least once a day. More if they find something important about the case I need to know about.”

Olive swallowed, then sipped more tea. One thing was for certain. Levon Asher was an excellent pancake maker, on top of all his other talents. As the sugar slowly entered her system, her curiosity grew. “Do they call or text you or email?”

Levon raised a brow at her. “Are you always this nosy?” She started to answer, but he held up a hand, laughing. “Wait. No. I know the answer. Yes. You are. That’s something else I remember about you from all those study sessions. You were never content to just let things sit as they were. You always wanted to dig deeper, always had to understand how things work and why.”

Her lips compressed and her teeth ground together. Some people considered that curiosity a negative, but for Olive her persistent need to ask questions was a good thing, especially as a scientist and teacher. If you didn’t wonder about things, you never learned. Asking questions was her way of solving problems. But that Levon might see it as a nuisance stung, way more than she wanted to admit. Just when she thought they were turning over a new leaf, when she thought he might see her, the real her, and appreciate who she was. Ugh. She’d thought Levon was different, but maybe he was just like all the other men she’d dated. Intimidated by her big brains and eager to assert their testosterone-laden dominance over her. Well, if that was the case, he could