Free The Omega Team: Love: Classified (Kindle Worlds Novella) by Liz Crowe Page B

training bringing him fully awake in an instant. He sat on the edge of the guest bed, reliving his decision to sneak into Paige’s room the night before and finding that he didn’t regret it, not one bit.
    The phone that had woken him made another loud buzz from the side table. He grabbed it, recognizing the “No ID” immediately.
    “Preston,” he answered.
    “Please hold,” a robotic, vaguely female voice intoned.
    “Joey.” Grey sounded out of breath. “I’m really sorry, man. But I need you.”
    “When and where,” he said, his heart clenching at the thought of bolting out of here.
    “ASAP. You know I wouldn’t do this to you. Athena isn’t talking to me right now because I’m calling you in on this one.”
    “It’s fine. Email me the info, as usual.” He stood and stretched, relishing the pleasant, post-sex, full-body lethargy. His throat closed up at the memory of Paige’s last words to him before she dropped off to sleep. 
    “Yeah, I will. Listen, Joey, it’s a nasty one. Cartel.”
    “Okay.” He was puzzled. Grey usually didn’t talk this much about a job on the phone. They used an encrypted email server for details.
    “I’m pulling almost all assets in, which is why I’m calling you. I want you to lead on it. You know this asshole better than anyone.”
    “Fine.” He was already concocting his excuses for leaving on Paige’s sister’s wedding day, none of which sounded feasible in any way. “Can it be tomorrow? I really need to finish something up here.”
    “As long as you’re here by oh-seven hundred tomorrow.”
    “I can make that happen.”
    “Fine. Emailing you now,” Grey said before ending the call.
    Joey spent the hour between five-thirty and six-thirty reviewing the case—a not so simple assignment involving the delicate extraction of a compromised double agent—and made his flight arrangement for early the next morning. Then he took a long, hot shower, trying to do another extraction in his head, the one where he concocted some kind of a breakup or something to allow him to leave the next morning, no worse for wear.
    But Paige DiFerrari was deep under his skin, and he knew it.
    With a sigh, he stepped out into the hall, a towel around his waist, and came face to face with Caroline DiFerrari, dressed for the morning’s brunch, her eyes puffy and red as if she’d been crying.
    “Oh, sorry, ma’am,” he said, clutching the towel tighter. “Uh, are you all right?”
    “Yes, yes, of course. Go on now, get dressed. We need to get to the country club.”
    He nodded, mortified at his mostly naked condition, knowing his preoccupation with Paige was making him careless. He slipped into his room and put on khakis, a no-wrinkle blue button-down shirt, and a pair of loafers.
    He opened the door of his bedroom at the exact moment Paige opened hers. He sucked in a breath at the sight of her, dressed in a fresh sundress, her damp curls bouncing around her shoulders, her skin flushed from a shower and, he hoped, his efforts the night before. He grinned and held out his elbow. He’d break the bad news to her later, he figured. She needed him to help her through the rest of this day first.
    The summer morning heat baked down on their heads as they made their way to the country club. Paige stayed silent, chewing her lower lip and threading her fingers together in her lap. At one point, he put his palm on her clenched fist.
    “Chill, DiFerrari. It’s just a brunch. What’s the worst that can happen? Burnt omelets?”
    She exhaled and kept her gaze trained out her open window. “Something else is going on, I can tell.”
    “What do you mean?” He turned left where she told him and pointed the convertible down an empty stretch of road that begged for a lead foot. So he used one, hoping to distract her. She gripped the armrest and grinned at him as the motor roared and the car sailed up and down the rolling hills.
    When she tapped his leg, he slowed and turned into the already