There were times he spent months on a rig just to get some damn sleep.
God, he’d thought he was going to lose his father, and then his father wouldn’t ever know his wife or his kids. He shook it off.
“Good. They would love to see you, but I’m in Dallas and I’ll be here until I head out to the island retreat.” It was why he was here instead of at home, probably cursing at his dad because he would try to be active long before he should.
Unfortunately, corporate espionage didn’t care that his father couldn’t get on a plane anytime soon. The asshole who wanted to sell Malone Oil’s revolutionary tech to a foreign government didn’t give a shit that JT Malone hated the very idea of a corporate retreat. If they canceled it, they lost the opportunity to catch a spy in the act. At least that was the way the CIA had explained it. He really did hate the bullshit that came with corporate retreats. He couldn’t imagine how much he was going to hate one where he had to deal with the CIA, too.
Though it might not be so bad if he was able to get to know that gorgeous redhead. At least if his father was leaving him with a big problem, he’d also handed him a beautiful distraction.
“Whoa, we’re going through with that? I thought the retreat was Dad’s thing.”
“It was Dad’s thing and now it’s mine.” Like most of his world. That was what happened when a person was the heir to a multi-billion-dollar oil company. When his twin had decided to evade his fate by joining the military, it had all fallen on JT’s shoulders. All of it. The business. His parents. The properties. The employees.
If his father had died…
There was a pause over the line. “I’ll talk to Big Tag. You don’t have to do this. I don’t care what the Agency is saying. There will be another chance. You don’t have to do their job.”
Of course he did. If he didn’t, the spy would set another drop location and they might not know where it was, might lose decades of innovation, and all because he didn’t like to socialize. “Look, Mike, Dad’s fine and we can’t reschedule this retreat. Even if we did there’s no guarantee the drop won’t happen somewhere else.” There was a throaty laugh and he glanced back at the bar. She was grinning from ear to ear as she laughed at something Sandra had said. Likely something very inappropriate. He’d only met the woman once before, but he’d heard tales from his brother of how she sometimes gave the big boss a run for his money in the sarcasm department.
“Then I should go. I can go in as you,” Mike argued.
It wasn’t anything he hadn’t already thought of. He wasn’t a spy. He hadn’t spent years perfecting a poker face. He was known for speaking his mind. The last thing he wanted to do was play games.
Unless he was playing with her. Yeah, he could think of some games to play with her. They would involve rope and long hours of worshipping every inch of her skin.
He sighed and turned away again because he also wasn’t the kind of man who fantasized about a woman he didn’t even know. He was a realist. At least he was trying to be since being a romantic had gotten him nowhere. He would love to throw this all into Michael’s lap since his brother had spent a decade learning the spy game.
But there was a major problem with this particular twin switcheroo. “It’s a leadership retreat. Do you honestly believe you can fool people I’ve worked with for over a decade? We’re going to be talking about work and new tech. These people know Malone Oil as well as our father, and you haven’t been interested in a very long time. You can’t conduct those meetings.”
“You’re also going to be hunting a spy,” Michael countered.
He bit back a groan. He shouldn’t have picked up the phone. All he and his brother seemed to do lately was bicker. “You didn’t have a problem when it was Dad going in.”
“Dad isn’t reckless. Dad won’t try to take down an international spy on his own.”
He didn’t seem to remember who their father was. “I assure you he’s going to have a few things to say to whoever is selling out our corporate secrets.”
“Yeah, but I trusted that Dad wouldn’t go rogue in the middle of the investigation. He knows when to sit back and let the experts do their jobs.”
Naturally his brother was ready, willing, and able to give him grief. “I assure you I’ll let the lady bring down the bad guys.”
“The fact that you call Nina a lady and not an operative is exactly what I’m worried about. You have to think of her as an operative. She doesn’t need you to protect her, and that’s what you tend to do. You’ll like her. You’ll be attracted to her, and that means you’ll go into full-on protect-the-woman mode,” his brother explained.
He couldn’t help it that he was protective of the women in his life. It wasn’t that he didn’t think they were competent. They were. They were incredibly smart and he relied on them. But he knew what a man could do to a woman. “I can mind my manners.”
“I wasn’t criticizing. You know your manners are impeccable, and it’s
