if they wanted something. “I’m busy.”
Zy’s eyes could be warm blue velvet when they touched her with care. With her answer, they turned as cold as the Arctic Ocean. “It wasn’t a question and it’s not a date. Be in the conference room at noon.”
“Anything I need to be aware of this morning? Are Valeria and her son all right?”
“Why do you ask?”
Tessa shouldn’t be surprised. She’d been evasive and dismissive to Zy for twenty-four hours. She’d dodged him, his texts, his calls, and his affection. What else could she possibly expect? She’d do almost anything to make talking to him easy again, to have their camaraderie be as breezy as it had been before.
Almost anything…except sacrifice Hallie.
“She’s a mother worried about her safety and her child. I relate to her.”
“She’s someone we’ve been hired to protect, and that’s all you need to know.”
As Zy turned away, Tessa reared back. He wasn’t merely upset or angry; it was as if he’d turned off his human valve—at least around her. Across the office, he exchanged a fist bump and a joke with One-Mile. He got someone on the phone a few minutes later and seemed to have a perfectly cordial chat.
The second he hung up, he looked at her as if he could look through her.
Tessa jerked her gaze away and went back to clandestinely checking her phone. Still nothing new. She was getting antsy. When would she hear from the asshole who had taken her daughter? What if Hallie wasn’t okay?
God, she couldn’t think that or she’d lose her mind.
She did her best to pretend to work for the next few hours, copying, filing, answering a few calls, all of which she sent back to Zy.
Finally, at a few minutes before noon, he approached, stopping beside her. “Change of plans. Come with me.”
Alarm zipped through Tessa. “Where are we going?”
“Not your problem, but I can’t do this alone.”
“All right.” She didn’t have a choice. If the kidnapper contacted her, she’d just have to hope he understood. “Where are we going?”
“The baby store.”
Tessa’s heart stopped. She couldn’t have heard him right. Certainly he didn’t mean they’d be going someplace where she’d bought lots of Hallie’s favorite things and brought her along a million times, cooing how much she loved to shop with her favorite little girl. It would be torture. “The baby store?”
“Yeah, wherever you buy Hallie’s stuff. Valeria needs a few things. I have a list. I don’t know what half this shit means.”
“All right.”
It pained her to grab her phone and tuck the device away, then follow Zy outside.
He held out his palm. “Keys?”
“I’ll drive. It’s my car.”
“And it’s company business, so what I say goes. Keys,” Zy insisted.
With a sigh, she handed them over. He helped her into the passenger’s seat, hovering so close she could feel his body heat at her back and his warm breath caress her neck. She shivered as she sat and watched him come around to the side of the car before slipping into the driver’s seat.
He shoved the key in the ignition. “We’re alone now. Are you going to talk to me?”
“About what?” She blinked at him wide-eyed, pretending confusion. But she was quaking with terror. She was terrible at keeping secrets, especially from people she loved. Not telling Zy what was going on in her life was damn near killing her.
“Whatever’s crawled up your ass in the last twenty-four hours—”
“I-I had a headache, and I still don’t feel good.”
Zy raised a brow at her.
He clearly didn’t believe her. “And you don’t want to tell me what I’ve done that made you push me away?”
“It’s not like that.” But that must be what it felt like to him.
And his acidic smile said so.
“You still don’t want to talk? Fine. Let’s just get this done.” He tore out of the parking lot and shot down the road.
The silence between them felt oppressive.
“Zy…” she ventured, then set a hand on his taut arm. Tessa remembered that arm around her, his hands skimming her body as his lips worked up her neck to cover her own before he sank deep and gave her scream-worthy pleasure.
“What?”
She didn’t want to upset him and she didn’t want to lose him. Maybe it was time to take a different approach…
“Please try to understand. It’s not you. There’s…something going on.”
“I figured. Tell me what. We’ll fix it.”
Tessa shook her head. “This is something I have to work out. I know you want to help me, but—”
“Hell yeah, I do. I