Walker (In the Company of Snipers #21) - Irish Winters Page 0,62
another operation?”
“Just moving out and making room for Mother. Guess she’s finally coming back. Took her long enough.”
Persia had to ask, “I’m sorry, who? Your mother?”
“No, Mo-ther,” he enunciated clearly. Like that told Persia anything. “You know, Mother. Sasha Kennedy. The real genius techie behind this TEAM.”
“I heard that,” Ember called out from her usual location.
A wave of red crept up Beau’s darkly tanned neck and spread over his cheeks, turning them candy-apple red. “Damn it, woman,” he called out in her direction. “You know you’re the best there is. Don’t go making me have to choose between you and Mother.” To Persia he muttered, “Because I’ve never even met the woman, but everyone here says she’s a genius and—”
“I’m waiting,” Ember taunted loudly. A lot of tapping was also coming from behind her customer service counter.
Persia smiled at the banter between this easily riled-up guy and the bombshell blonde he’d been working with since Persia’s first day on the job.
“Damn it. You!” he bellowed over his desk. “You’re better than Mother any day of the week! Is that what you want to hear? I’m in love with you! Just you!”
“Easy, Beau. You do know you’re professing love to my wife, right?” Rory Dennison, Ember’s hubby, chimed in. His desk was to the immediate left of Beau’s.
“Yeah, big guy,” Zack teased from the cubicle behind Beau’s. “You don’t want to make Rory mad. Last guy who did that is still looking for his teeth.”
“And his left eye.” Izza couldn’t resist adding from the other side of Ember’s counter.
“Excuse me?” That question came from Doc Fitz who was now standing at the open elevator door. “You’re in love with who, sweetheart?”
Beau’s bushy brows slammed over his equally dark eyes, turning them black. The veins in his neck bulged, as did the single vein that ran across his forehead when he was about to lose his temper. Which he did regularly. It didn’t take much to push this guy’s buttons, and apparently, everyone in the office knew it. Even his wife.
He exploded to his feet. “Shit! I don’t even know Mother, damn it! I’ve never met her. She was gone for months before I ever…” His gaze landed on McKenna’s pretty face.
As usual, she smiled in that I-could-just-eat-you-alive way she had.
Ember giggled.
Rory grunted like a pig.
Zack just stood there. Crossed both arms over his chest, and grinned. Why hadn’t he made senior agent yet? He had all the makings of a great leader, yet there he sat in the work bay with the junior agents, as if he were their equal instead of, well, Alex’s.
Persia’s gaze strayed back to Doc Fitz, still standing at the now closed elevator and watching her out-of-control husband. There was a perfect example of opposites attracting. Persia had never seen McKenna upset or her feelings hurt. But Beau? He could flip a switch from smiling to nasty at the drop of a hat.
As if to prove the point, he sucked in a breath and growled, “Why’d you have to hear that, huh? What do you want?”
“You,” McKenna replied evenly, her hand outstretched and her fingers fluttering for him to hurry and join her. “I need a ride into the District, remember? I have an early meeting with FBI Special Agent Duff on the forensic evidence we’re working. But if you’re too busy—”
Beau all but jumped over his desk to get to her side. “No! ’Course I remember. Let’s go.”
The moment he was at her side, he gave her a quick peck on her cheek and the starch went out of his shoulders.
“Excuse me?” Ember had come around her counter by then, both hands on her hips. “Where do you think you’re going, Junior Agent?”
The dreaded junior agent ploy. Ember could be such a brat. The one and only eclectic dresser in an office of casual black, today she’d shown up in what looked like a Catholic school girl’s uniform. Complete with a short-sleeved white blouse with Peter Pan collar, pearl buttons that complemented her full bustline, a short, red and black pleated plaid skirt, and, of all things, saddle shoes with bright-yellow, rolled ankle socks.
“You’re going to walk out on me? Just like that?”
Persia wasn’t sure who Ember was taunting, Beau or her husband. Rory hadn’t taken his eyes off his wife, and the glitter in his dark eyes spelled L. U. S. T. in bright flashing neon blue.
McKenna had already called the elevator.
“I, ah—well, err, yeah.” Beau looked so damned confused, as if he really had