“Oh, right,” Ethan muttered, as if embarrassed. “Sorry about that.”
“Nothing to be sorry for,” she laughed. “I had the time of my life! How else would I end up in the middle of a mob fight than by tagging along with you?”
“Well, I promise that this week will be free of gunfire,” Ethan said quickly. “We’ll just have a quiet time figuring out what’s going on with this museum, and then maybe some fun along the way.”
“Don’t speak so soon,” Tessa warned him. “I don’t think I’ll ever get a quiet time with you. And that’s a good thing, don’t get me wrong.”
“I guess not,” Ethan chuckled. “But this one won’t involve you getting shot at.”
“Well, don’t take the fun out of everything,” she teased. “What else would I bother hanging out with you for if not to have bullets shot right at me?”
“Alright, alright, it’s not that frequent that I get you into those situations, now is it?” he asked, and Tessa detected another hint of apprehension in his tone now. More than a hint, if she was honest with herself.
“No,” she said quickly, though this wasn’t entirely true. “Not at all. Well, not quite, anyway.”
“Alright, I’ll have to take your word on that,” Ethan said dryly. “I should probably warn you about something else, though. I tried to get in touch with the museum this morning, and… well, the manager wasn’t exactly accommodating. She was kind of threatening, actually.”
“What else is new?” Tessa asked with a humorless laugh. “That woman’s been giving me the runaround for weeks. I swear, I can’t wait to get face-to-face with her and give her a piece of my mind.”
“Well, don’t be too hasty,” Ethan said quickly. “Threats are nothing to balk at. I mean it, about keeping you safe this time. And you’re not wrong about trouble having a tendency to follow me wherever I go, even if I’m technically on vacation.”
“Even from a little old lady?” Tessa asked. “Please. I know you’ve spent as much time on that website as I have, Ethan, and that woman looks harmless as can be.”
“Yes, well, I don’t like to take any chances,” he said, almost sternly.
“You? Chances?” she asked, having to laugh at this. “All you’ve done is take chances since I met you, Agent Marston, and might I remind you that they usually pay off.”
She emphasized his formal name and title, gently teasing him some more.
“Well, I won’t be taking any chances with you,” he assured her. “You can count on that.”
Tessa couldn’t help but feel a little flattered at this, and she felt a slight burning sensation in her cheeks.
“Worried that my uncle would have your head, aren’t you?” she asked, covering up his flattery with her own dry humor.
“I can’t say that doesn’t factor into the equation,” he laughed. “But no, I have more selfish reasons for wanting to keep you from being shot at, if I might say.”
And so the flattery continued. Tessa’s cheeks were really burning now, but not exactly in a bad way.
She glanced up at the list on the large flatscreen hanging above some nearby passengers’ heads at the list of flights and saw that hers had just changed to boarding.
“I think my flight is about to board,” she told him quickly. “But I can’t wait to see you tonight.”
“I’m looking forward to it, too,” he told her, and then she hung up the phone.
She got up to board her flight with the altogether pleasant sensation of butterflies in her stomach.
6
Ethan
I’d called Tessa when I was still standing in the lobby of my office building, not wanting to wait to send her the news that I was for sure going to make it on our trip, at least for now.
I couldn’t wait to see her again either, and our conversation had only cemented that in my mind. Every time I thought that maybe I’d overblown our connection in my mind, I was reminded over and over again that she was just as amazing as I thought she was.
I looked around at the surrounding lobby, just an elevator and some post boxes, and headed out toward my car.
When I got there, I found that Holm was parked right behind me, and he was exiting his car on the way into the office himself.
“Oi!” he called, waving to me when he saw me. “Where you headed? That dull today already?”
“Oh, no,” I said quickly as I approached him, shaking my head. “I’m taking some of that time off after all. Tessa called me last night. She has some time to head to Virginia to deal with the journal thing. I was just letting Diane know I would be gone and making sure that she could spare me.”
“Ah, I think we’ll manage without you,” Holm scoffed, waving a hand in the air dismissively and cracking a grin. “You don’t think you’re that important, do you?”
“Well, Diane did put Birn and Muñoz on desk duty,” I pointed out with a half-grin of my own.
“Desk duty?” Holm repeated with a grimace. “Man, after all that they’ve been through, they come back, and she puts them on desk duty? That’s got to hurt.”
“It’s for their own good,” I chuckled. “Birn’s still a laundry list of injuries, and I doubt Muñoz is much better. They both should’ve taken more time.”
“You’re one to talk,” Holm said, arching an eyebrow at me, and I laughed. “You got shot in Haiti and went on another mission without sitting still for all of two days.”
“Fair enough,” I relented. “Though my injuries weren’t nearly as bad as theirs. And I am taking some time now.”
“Taking some time to go on a mission of your own design,” my partner said dryly. “Just like the last two times that you took time off.”
“That first one didn’t count,” I said, holding my hands up and shaking my head. “We were actually trying to go on
