Free On the Line (Special Ops) by Capri Montgomery Page B

doesn’t appreciate what she has.”
     
    He laughed. “Yeah, where were you when I needed to hear that?” He chuckled playfully as he drove to his home in Hill Country. “Anyway, the other lady, Carissa…well, that just didn’t work out too well. I thought we might make something of us, but she seemed to side with my family more on what I should want for my life. They liked her though. She’s a successful business woman so of course they liked her.”
     
    She laughed. “Well at least you were able to move on.”
     
    “I’m not seeing anybody, Zahara.” He turned up a long drive. She hadn’t been to his home since he bought it. She knew he had bought one because her mother had let that little detail slip over one of their phone conversations.
     
    “You’re still pining over her?”
     
    “No. I’m over it. Enough time has passed, for me anyway, and I’m over it. Next time I’ll be smarter about it.”
     
    “Yeah,” she mumbled. “Next time.” Next time probably wouldn’t be with her, no matter how much she wanted it to be.
     
    “I can’t go to Egypt in this.”
     
    “Natalia has you covered; trust me on that. She’ll get you something to wear. The two of you aren’t the same height, but I’m sure she can either find you something in her closet or get Micah to take her by the mall to get you whatever you need before the mall closes.”
     
    She grinned. “Thank you. I’ll have to pay her back for this. My wearing this outfit to Egypt could get me killed.”
     
    “Anybody wants to get to you they’ll have to go through me,” he said seriously—so seriously it sounded lethal—maybe it sounded so lethal because it was a threat of finality. He wouldn’t let anything happen to her. “You should remember that about me, Zahara. Nobody messes with my friends and gets away with it.”
     
    Friends …that’s what they were, and that’s what she should get used to being. Why couldn’t he look at her the way those other men Ariana told her about looked at her? Ariana had sworn that her beauty attracted men. Why couldn’t it attract this man? She wanted him to notice. She was wearing such a reveling costume compared to the way he had seen her before and still he didn’t notice. Maybe she just wasn’t his type.
     
    “Home sweet home,” he said as he pulled into the garage. He got out the car and jogged around to open her door, but she had already opened the door, got out the car and closed the door before turning around to find him looming over her.
     
    “What?” She stammered. He didn’t look happy.
     
    “I was going to get the door for you, Zahara.”
     
    “Oh,” she smiled at him, but he didn’t smile back. “I don’t know any men who do that.”
     
    “Then you don’t know the right men,” he said dryly as he moved closer to her. She took a step back and felt the coolness of the steel caress her spine. She took an immediate step forward because she didn’t want any of the decorations on her clothes to scratch his car. She wasn’t wearing the traditional noisy coin belt, but that didn’t mean the few beads on her hip scarf wouldn’t scratch up his vehicle. Her movement forward brought her extremely close to him. She tilted her head back to look up at him.
     
    “Maybe I should have a talk with your boyfriend,” he stretched one arm out, placing the palm of his hand on the car and bringing his body closer to hers. “Maybe I need to teach him how to treat a lady.”
     
    “I don’t have a boyfriend,” she whispered. “We broke up.” They had broken up before she left Alaska, when he realized her heart wasn’t into their relationship because she had already given it to somebody else. She didn’t know why she had gone out with Dennis. He wasn’t her type. She didn’t like him. He hated astronomy, science and anything else dealing with nature, and he liked to hunt which she hated. She hated the entire process of people killing animals for sport. Food was one