“And I think they are,” Hutch countered. “Who do you think your father is going to believe?”
He had her in check, but she still had a move to make. She turned to Charlotte. “Mrs. Taggart, I will do whatever you want me to do. I’ll be a good girl and follow every protocol you think I need, but I would like another agent to work with. Kyle said there’s a woman on the team. I would feel safer with her.”
“Don’t. I haven’t done a damn thing to make you feel unsafe,” Hutch argued. “I might have hurt your feelings, but don’t push that shit on me.”
“I’m feeling a little unsafe now because you’re being very aggressive.” He wasn’t really. His words were, but she didn’t feel physically threatened. He was, however, threatening her peace of mind because her heart was pounding, and she wondered what would happen if they were alone.
“Ian, do you remember that year of my life I spent being tortured so you could get your brother back?” Hutch said the words to his boss, but his eyes were steady on her.
Tortured?
“I do,” Taggart said evenly.
Hutch’s jaw went tight, straightening to a razor’s edge. “I’m calling that in now. This op is mine. I am in charge. We do this my way or you get on the phone with Sheriff LaVigne because one way or another she’s not going home alone tonight.”
“I thought the cotton candy machine was the trade-off for a year in hell,” Taggart said.
Hutch finally turned that stare his boss’s way.
Taggart sighed and focused his attention on Noelle. “Ms. LaVigne, Hutch is the only agent available to work your case. In light of what he’s found, I’m going to assume he’ll want close cover, and he’ll probably need to get into your office at some point. You’ll have to decide how to integrate him into your life. And pretty quickly.”
What did that mean? “Kyle has to come with me to the office?”
“No. I do. Kyle is strictly muscle, but he does have to stay close.” Hutch straightened up, seeming to relax a bit. “You recently went home. Does everyone know you went home to visit your family?”
“Yes.” She wasn’t completely sure what was happening, but she was almost certain she’d lost control in a big way. “I mean they know I went home. I’ll be honest. I’ve only been there for a year. I’ve got a couple of people I consider work friends, but I don’t talk to them about my family. We talk work stuff.”
Hutch seemed to relax a bit as though he knew he had her where he wanted her. “Good, then when you came back with a boyfriend, no one will question it. We worked out our relationship and we decided I should come to Dallas with you. Kyle is my slacker brother who needs a place to stay while he’s looking for work.”
Every syllable from his mouth horrified her. “No.”
Kyle snorted. “Because I look like the slacker.”
Taggart stood, helping his wife to her feet. “Excellent. It’s all settled then. Come along, my love. It’s lunchtime. Noelle, thank you for the muffins. They were delicious. I leave you in Hutch’s surprisingly authoritative hands. Unless you’d like me to call your dad.”
She was staring at Hutch like she could move him with pure willpower. “No. That won’t be necessary.”
“Hutch, see me before you go to check out Ms. LaVigne’s apartment,” Taggart ordered.
And then she was left with the man she would have to put up with. Well, and Kyle, but he seemed incidental at this point. Hutch had every bit of her attention.
Check and mate.
But their game was far from over.
Chapter Two
“Do I need to buy you a box of condoms?” Big Tag asked as Hutch closed the door behind him.
Unfortunately, they weren’t alone in Tag’s big corner office or he would have given the boss his happy middle finger. It looked like they were having a lunch party with Charlotte, Alex, and Eve all sitting around with takeout containers on Ian’s sofas.
Like the security team version of the Big Bang Theory. He would bet Noelle liked that show as much as he did.
Their babies would be smart and beautiful.
Nope. They would be nonexistent because Noelle would barely look at him now. He’d felt her pull away and close in on herself, but he rather thought it wasn’t in the obvious way. She wasn’t protecting herself from the Big Bad Wolf. She was trying to figure out a way to take him down. She wasn’t some wilting flower who would cry because a guy challenged her. No. She would retreat and rethink her battle plans.
He could offer her several scenarios that would have him on his back, but he was smart enough to keep quiet about that. “I don’t think that’s happening any time soon. I don’t know if you noticed but the woman doesn’t like me.”
He’d dug a huge hole, and he wasn’t sure he could climb out of it. He’d lost it in that conference room. He’d lost it by taking control in a way he almost never did. Except at Sanctum. He was careful around women because he’d seen how poorly it could go. He’d watched his father abuse woman after woman. He’d taken many a beating because he couldn’t sit by.
But something about Noelle LaVigne brought out the beast in him.
“She might not like you, but she’s aware of you, and sometimes that’s just as telling as instant attraction.” Charlotte put down her lunch. “I thought the two of you would get along. I didn’t think you’d nearly set the conference room on fire.”
“So this was a setup.” He knew it. At least he could still trust his instincts. “And it was definitely me and not Kyle.”
“Oh, she would not be good with Kyle. Kyle needs someone…well, Kyle needs to spend some time with Kai before he thinks about a relationship.” Eve closed her takeout container. “He’s hiding a lot of pain, and it’s going to come out in some not healthy way if he doesn’t deal with it. But that’s not a professional opinion. I haven’t had a session with him. It’s merely observation.”
They were all worried about Kyle, and now Hutch would be spending days, maybe weeks, undercover with the man. Noelle would be with Kyle, too. “Do you think he’s a danger to others?”
“If she thought that, he wouldn’t be working here,” Big Tag said with a frown. “He’s had a couple of sessions with Kai. Everyone has to in order to work here, but he turned down continuing on when it was suggested he should. I’ll be honest. If he wasn’t family I probably would have passed. He’s good at his job, but I’m worried. Something happened to him during his time in the military. I can’t figure it out, and my buddies who are still active tell me there’s nothing in the records that make them think he’s hiding something. That tells me one thing.”
Kyle had been Special Forces. Unless a mission had been classified it should all be out in the open. Or… “How long did he work for the Agency?”
Alex sighed and sat back. “We don’t know, and honestly, it’s only a suspicion at this point. Sean thinks so, but we pretty much cut ties with anyone who would help us figure it out.”
McKay-Taggart had cut ties with the Agency years before, and only recently they’d reupped that firm rejection after a CIA operative used Big Tag’s teenaged daughter to spy on them all. Big Tag had not been amused.