Uncommon Pleasure by Anne Calhoun Page B

for her dog. She couldn’t have come up with a better way to rub his nose in what he went to great lengths to avoid.
    But he’d pay a price for a need suppressed. Ty was edgy, restless, and his hold on the facade he used like a shield was fragile and easy to disrupt. His pain was so vivid to her, shifting under the surface of his skin in waves of anguish and shock, and the emotions only grew with each encounter. Sex seemed to provide a release he could accept, but he hadn’t gotten sex the last time he saw her. He’d gotten Gretchen, and a neighborhood, and an elderly couple with a rickety, rotted porch.
    Yet he’d agreed to help a woman in distress, and she couldn’t help but think that was the real Ty under the sharp, spiny attitude he so frequently projected. A walking, talking contradiction.
    Something was going to blow. Soon.
    These thoughts occupied her mind while she sat in interminable meetings for the second straight week, this time with a different prospective business partner. The conference room windows looked out over the lake, and during dull spots in the week of strategic planning meetings she’d watched the surveillance operation taking place on the business park’s campus. At least three men were involved, including Ty, and they seemed to rotate shifts and spots but always watched the main exits and entrances between about seven a.m. and five p.m. It was likely that they arrived based on when their targets left home, and left when the person or people they were watching left. The duration of Ty’s stay was unpredictable, a tactic that made sense. Sometimes he stayed for an hour, and if he arrived earlier in the day he stayed longer, opening a laptop to make it look like he was working outside in the sun and breeze. Maybe regular meetings with a woman who worked at the business park would help with his cover.
    Today the senior executives were at an off-site team-building exercise with the leaders of the newly acquired company, and Ty was on the bench at lunchtime. He lifted the ball cap, smoothed back his long blond hair, and something about his solitary position, the slant of his shoulders tilted her heart. She collected her sunglasses, phone, and lunch. “I’m going to lunch,” she called to Danelle.
    “So early?”
    It was odd. She usually ate around one, but there was no telling if Ty would be sitting outside at one. “I want to sit outside before it gets too hot.”
    She hurried down to the nearly empty cafeteria and bought two bottles of water from the lone cashier. The smell of tuna casserole hung in the air as she walked through the seating area and out to the lake. When the door opened Ty looked up from the folder openon the seat beside him. He had one elbow propped on the back of the bench, fingers tapping a rhythm against the middle slat.
    The fingers stopped midtap when she walked down the path. His face, what she could see of it, was expressionless, but after a moment he shuffled the papers together and closed the folder, making room for her. She held out the bottle of water and when he took it, sat down, crossed her legs at the ankle, and tucked them under the bench.
    “Hey,” she said as she unzipped the cooler.
    He got out his phone. Thanks .
    “It’s hot out today.” A hint of a smile, no more, as she opened her Tupperware container filled with leftover Chinese. She got a forkful of rice into her mouth without spilling it on her dress and chewed while she considered her next move. “How’s the operation going?”
    Can’t talk about it.
    “What happens when you go back out on a rig? Someone else steps in for you?”
    He nodded.
    “Does that disrupt the team’s cohesiveness?” At his lifted eyebrow, she added, “Daughter of career Army intelligence officer, remember? It matters. People aren’t interchangeable engine parts. Teams develop a rhythm together.”
    Another moment when he just looked at her, then down at his phone.
    A text appeared on hers. They make it work.