Lytel waited. The call came just as he expected.
His team was needed.
A fellow agent’s home had been bombed. Someone needed to guard the perimeter and all those cute little scientist pets of the director’s.
Duty called.
Lytel was laughing the entire drive.
He pulled up in front of Anderson’s engulfed home and studied his handiwork.
Damn, he loved his job.
8
The next morning when he woke, Max heard the sound of his daughter’s laughter. There was no better alarm clock than that, and it had him smiling before he was fully awake—and cognizant of where he actually was.
Jac.
He followed the sound of laughter to the small kitchen of the house Jac had bought a month ago. He hadn’t seen the place before.
She’d been searching for the house she wanted for a good eighteen months. Max had promised that when she found it, he would help her move. She’d told him she wanted it to be absolutely perfect as it was where she planned to spend the rest of her life. Or until they transferred her out of St. Louis.
She had never said it, but he understood. He’d profiled her thousands of times over the years they’d known each other. Max had spent a lot of time trying to figure out how Jaclyn Elise Jones thought.
He had once thought he understood her almost as well as he understood himself. Jac wanted a life outside of PAVAD, but she was too afraid to go for it, yet.
Jac wanted to put down roots more than anything. Her stepfather’s diplomatic position had meant their family traveled frequently. When they were stateside, they had stayed at the colonel’s home in Virginia.
He suspected those times had been extremely dark for Jac.
She had never said. But she had nightmares; and not just when she was sleeping. There were parts of that woman she kept so close to her chest, he doubted she’d shared them with anyone other than her younger sister Natalie.
He had wanted to be there to help her celebrate the milestone of buying her own home.
Max was sorry he’d missed it. A quick look around him told him the place reflected the beautiful, feminine woman that she rarely showed at the office. The softer side.
The side Max adored.
There were floral accents everywhere. Jac could take a broken twig and turn it into a beautiful flower with just a touch, it seemed.
That was something else she kept hidden from the world. That and her love of the piano. She’d started teaching Emery to play years ago.
He found Jac at the stove, cooking breakfast. She had on thin little pink shorts that revealed tanned legs. He’d never really been into legs, but Jac... Jac was beautiful. Every inch of her.
The tank top she’d slept in was soft yellow and dotted with tiny pink flowers. Perfect.
She was summer bright in the midst of November gray. His hands actually trembled. There was a thin pink bra strap just visible on one shoulder. Out of place. He wanted to touch, right there. To slide his fingers along the satin, along the silky skin beneath. His gut tightened at the thought.
There was no woman on the planet he’d rather touch more than this one.
Max kept his damned hands to himself before he screwed things up between them even worse than he had weeks ago.
He hadn’t meant to kiss her and run.
She hadn’t had to help him out with Emery last night. Jac was well within her rights to have told him to take a leap for the way he’d acted after that kiss. But she hadn’t.
He should have known she wouldn’t. Not when it came to Emery. “Hey, Jones ladies.”
They both looked over at him.
He liked calling them that. It made it sound like Jac was a Jones because of him, instead of random coincidence. He had never analyzed why he liked those simple words—until the weeks after he’d ruined everything between them.
Now, he knew why that coincidental connection between them mattered to him so much.
His inner Neanderthal was rearing his head again. Saying, “Claim your mate. Now!”
Her being a Jones made the subconscious part of him think she was his. That she was meant to be his in some odd way he hadn’t yet defined.
Primitive, but true.
He knew exactly how he felt about the quietly beautiful redhead currently teaching his little girl how to flip pancakes at just the right moment.
They were the ones who mattered to him more than anyone else in the world.
“Hi, Daddy!” Emery finished her task carefully, then bounced over to him for morning hugs. “Jac said you spent the night here, too. I made three baskets last night, including my free throw. Abbie fouled me. We’ll have to update my chart at home from last season. Livy made two baskets. Tabby puked, though, so they had to stop the game for like twenty minutes to clean it up. She had to go home. That’s why the coach let Livy play most of the game this time.”
“It was close to the half-time mark.” Jac said, amusement in her tone. “I think her friend had too many hot dogs before the game.”
“She only had two hot dogs, but bunches of cotton candy.” Emery hugged him again. Jac gave him a tentative smile over his daughter’s head. Emery was extremely tall for her age—both Max and his ex-wife were over six feet—and only about eight inches separated Emery’s height from Jac’s five six.
They looked perfect together. Like they belonged together, right down to the red in their hair.
He’d always thought so.
Jac was more of a mother to his daughter than his ex-wife had ever been. Even Pamela had said that on the occasions she breezed through town and had seen Jac and Emery together.
Part of the reason he’d flipped so badly after the kiss had changed their relationship had been because of that very thing. The last thing he had ever wanted to do was screw up the relationship his daughter had with Jac. But he’d done just that, to the point that Jac
