This was what he’d been afraid of. That, once they were together, he’d never be able to stop wanting her.
Hell. They weren’t even together yet, and he couldn’t stop wanting her.
She was already his life. Her and Emery. He could give up anything else in the world—his house, his career, anything.
But to lose Jac and Emery...would be to lose his everything. Max wasn’t going to be stupid anymore. He pulled her closer. His fingers cupped the back of her head. She gasped. He caught the sound with his mouth.
Then he was kissing her. The way he had wanted to for a long, long time.
100
This felt different than it had that night. This...there was no hesitation in his embrace. Not now. Now, it was hungry man with the woman he wanted. Jac knew more than enough about human nature to sense that.
Her fingers tightened on his shirt. Her other hand was trapped between them. She shifted, just enough so she could work her hand to the buttons on his chest.
Come to think of it, she wanted his clothes out of the way too. And her own.
She wanted to feel alive with him.
Even if just for tonight. She made a sound in her throat when he pulled back. One of frustration and demand—on some level she was aware the sound was one that would have embarrassed her if she’d been with anyone else. But she wasn’t. Jac was far too focused on Max to care.
She was with Max now. Was going to be with him in every way that really mattered.
His hand slipped around her side, his fingers spread out over her stomach. “I want to take these off of you, Jaclyn Jones.”
She almost thought he emphasized her last name, but she didn’t stop to wonder why. “I think I would like that very much.”
It didn’t matter about the scars he would no doubt see. What mattered was that she wanted to feel that connection to him.
To him.
Because with Max, that mattered.
No man had ever mattered to her more than the one she was with now.
No man ever would.
Jac stopped hesitating. Her fingers went to the buttons of his shirt.
She popped the first one through the opening.
Then the next. And the next. To reveal the plain white T-shirt beneath. Because Max was a creature of order. Nice and neat and well put together in everything.
That was oddly comforting.
She’d have to figure out why later, but tonight was for this. Not analyzing or anything else. Tonight was about connecting and feeling alive.
Because tomorrow would come soon enough for them both.
101
Ed stared at the paperwork in front of him, trying to make sense of it. There was no real explanation for the pattern he was seeing. Burner phones.
Andy Anderson had died because of a connection between fourteen burner phones.
The next step was to locate those phones. Try to figure out who had purchased them and how they connected to PAVAD.
Paul Sturvin had had one of those burner phones. He had been that close to Ed’s family. Ed hadn’t even seen the snake in their midst. Fury from that had his hands almost shaking.
He couldn’t continue to live like this. He was five years past mandatory retirement age. He wouldn’t be working another five.
Ed stepped out of his office and walked the halls of the very building he had been instrumental in designing. His heart was in this building. His soul.
But his world—his world was a beautiful blue-eyed woman currently in the basement lab, their seven children, his daughter, her two children. Ana McLaughlin and the child who was his granddaughter by choice. Jasmine, his assistant who had worked just as hard as he had over the last five years to make PAVAD happen. She was another daughter of his heart, and he’d freely admit it.
Julia, down in the morgue, he’d loved her for almost a decade now. Yet another child of his heart.
Ed Dennis was a very rich man. And he knew that. He didn’t mean the fortune he had amassed from investments. Investments made from the money he had inherited from his parents so long ago. That money mattered very little.
It wasn’t how much gold or silver a man had that mattered.
Wealth was measured in love. In family.
The friends he’d made over the last ten years were in this building. The agents he had taught, and trained. Guided.
Ed walked down every hallway, on every floor. Just making note of the people who were there because of him.
He had a destination in mind. Marianna. She would always be his direction. He loved that woman more than words could ever say.
His daughter’s department was his next-to-last stop. He just wanted to look at her for a moment. She had been through so much—much of it because of him. No parent could ever accept that easily.
Ed leaned over the rail next to the open stairs and looked down into the bullpen, right there outside his son-in-law’s office. Hell was inside, his desk phone to his ear, in an intense conversation by the looks of it.
They had had a rocky relationship for fifteen years. Until Hell had fallen for Ed’s only daughter.
Now…Ed would kill to protect that man. For his daughter, for his grandchildren. For the baby they would have in a few months.
Ed turned back toward the CCU bullpen. Someone below him laughed.
One of the Lorcan brothers, though he was too far away to see if it was Seth or Sebastian. It wasn’t Sin. Sin was busy at the moment, digging into Sturvin’s connections and contracts and those damned burner phones.
Sin…Sin could run PAVAD someday. So could Georgia, though he knew she didn’t want that. Not with the children so young.
There were many in PAVAD who could run it someday. It would be in good hands when Ed stepped down.
He could rest assured with that.
His legacy for the bureau would live on.
There. He saw her. Georgia was coming out of her office—waddling out
