Nori's Delta (Delta Team Three #1) - Lori Ryan Page 0,55

her recovery was going. If her career had been hurt by what had happened out on the mission.

Not that it was her fault that the analysts back home had decided Demir couldn’t be trusted. Not that she could have known Demir’s team would somehow get tipped off to the fact a Delta team was watching the bunker, ready to raid and rescue the hostages.

But still, technically her negotiation had been a failure and that left a sour pit in his stomach knowing that he’d been part of that.

He stood, grabbing his beer as Jangles and Zip looked up at him.

Jangles looked like he was about to say something when Duff entered and wove through the tables to the booth at the back where they sat.

“PT tomorrow.” Duff was as stingy on the words as he always was.

Zip was the first to respond. “No Code of Conduct?”

Duff shook his head. “Merlin needed a few personal days so Roe gave him the time, pushing back our Code of Conduct Certification. We get a reprieve for a few days.”

Rouvin “Roe” Turano had been their commanding officer for the last eight years. He was a good guy most of the time so it wasn’t a surprise he’d give Merlin time if he needed it.

“Mer ok?” Zip asked.

Duff gave a nod and went to the bar.

Heath didn’t need to be told twice.

He drained the rest of his beer and put the empty on the table, heading for the exit. He would go back to the base and spend a few hours on the obstacle course before he turned in. He could beat himself to a bloody pulp on that thing if he tried hard enough. And he planned on it.

Chapter 34

Eleanor looked at her computer screen, not really seeing it for the second day in a row. She had been working remotely a few hours a day from her private room at the rehab center. Not that she was expected to. She was on medical leave.

But she needed to keep her mind busy. Needed to keep herself from having to think about Heath. She had been thinking they might somehow work out a way to stay together even with her career and home being in Washington and his in Texas. She’d wanted that so damned much it made her heart ache.

But she had seen what being in his life again had done to him and she couldn’t handle that. She wouldn’t bring him back to the place he’d been when they were teens where he second guessed himself.

He was a confident elite forces special operative and he deserved that. Deserved all he’d earned the hard way.

A nurse stepped into the room.

“Eleanor, you have a visitor.”

Eleanor’s heart flipped, doing a somersault right there in her chest. She wanted to see Heath walk through that door. Wanted to see those sea green eyes look at her again. Wanted to somehow have it work out between them.

“It’s Merlin—says he’s one of your boys.” The nurse was fanning herself. “He’s hot!”

Eleanor forced down the disappointment that it wasn’t Heath and put her computer on the side table.

The door opened and Heath’s teammate walked in wearing dark BDUs and a tight-fitted T-shirt that should have merited some appreciation from her. The man was good-looking, to say the least. Tall, broad, and muscular with a smattering of gray hair that only made him sexier.

He did nothing for her. Not that she wasn’t happy to see him. She would always be grateful to the men who made sure she and her team got in and out of Kazarus safely. There would always be a special place in her heart for those men.

She wanted to ask how Heath was. But part of her didn’t want to know. If he wasn’t missing her the way she was missing him, that would gut her in a way she didn’t think she could handle.

“I hope it’s okay that I interrupted your day.”

She smiled. “Any time. Having a break from rehashing the Kazarus disaster isn’t something I’ll complain about.”

They were still going over the events that had led to her injuries at her office, as much as she and her boss tried to argue there was no other way things could have gone.

They hadn’t known about Onur Demir’s son and his illness. It was something that changed the entire landscape of the negotiations. They were still trying to figure out who had been gunning for her to stop the negotiations and how the forces inside the bunker