Operation: Endeavor (When The Mission Ends) (27 page)

Penelope gave a harsh laugh. “Out of place? Seriously? I think you’d be better off looking for something that’s in its place.”

“You may be right, but you’d be surprised what kind of clues these guys might leave. I know it’s hard to tell in this state, but have you noticed anything missing?”

Penelope shook her head. “But I haven’t gone anywhere besides here. Would you like me to walk through the apartment?”

Brian nodded. “Yes, but make sure you don’t touch anything.”

An hour later, the police were through and they couldn’t see that anything was missing.

Colton kissed Penelope on the top of her head. “Come on. Let’s pack a bag. We’re going over to spend the night at Cassie’s for tonight. We’ll deal with this tomorrow.”

“We can’t just drop in on her this late. It’s after 11:00.”

“Of course we can. She’s my sister,” he grinned at her, “but I called her while you were going through the apartment with the police officer. She’s expecting us, so don’t worry about it.”

She started down the hall, but Colton stopped her to give her a kiss. “I know it looks bleak, but it’s going to be okay. We have to go on the motorcycle so if you have a backpack, it will make it easier to carry on the bike.”

“Okay, thanks, Colt. I’m so glad you’re here.”

* * *

When they arrived at Cassie’s house twenty minutes later, she gave them both huge hugs. “Thank goodness you were gone when this happened.”

Penelope’s eyes filled with tears. She couldn’t answer. She could only nod. Overwhelmed, her emotions were definitely getting the better of her. She turned to Colton and he immediately drew her against his strong chest. She just needed to cling to him and feel safe within his arms. Tonight she wasn’t ready to leave that safe haven and he must have sensed that because he had kept her within inches of him all night.

She liked it. Her heart stuttered. She
liked
being able to lean on him. She
wanted
to lean on him. This went against everything she thought she knew about herself. She gingerly explored the idea within her psyche. Was she falling in love with him?

He pulled her out of her stupor when his lips touched the top of her head as he drew his hand soothingly up and down her back. He turned back to Chris and Cassie. “Thanks for letting us crash here tonight.”

“Of course.”

The twins had beer and pizza waiting for them, despite the lateness of the hour, and they all settled out on the patio. As they ate, Colton pulled Penelope down into his lap. He seemed to want her just as close to him as she wanted to be. She closed her eyes and laid her head on his chest while she listened to the siblings chat. So far, no one discussed the break-in although it was definitely the elephant in the room. Penelope was fine just listening to the steady, strong rhythm of Colton’s heartbeat for right now.

Before she knew what happened, Colton picked her up, like a damsel in distress being rescued by her White Knight. She must have fallen asleep on his lap. He kissed her gently on the forehead as he walked down the hall. “Hey, Sleeping Beauty, let’s go to bed.”

“But Chris and Cassie…” she started.

“We’ll talk to them in the morning. For now, let’s just go to bed.”

She snuggled into the warm strength of his arms. Yeah, she liked being here. She murmured a sleepy, “Okay.”

* * *

The next morning, Penelope was still snuggled into Colton’s strong embrace and she had no desire to be anywhere else. She’d been awake for twenty minutes and from the bulge growing against her belly, she’d guess Colton was waking up, too. Unfortunately, she could hear Cassie moving around in the kitchen already so there would be no finishing what they’d started in the parking garage the night before.

Colton’s arms tightened around her as he nuzzled his face against her hair. “G’morning,” he mumbled. “You smell and feel so good.” He continued to explore down the side of her face and to her ear and neck as he reached up underneath her t-shirt to cup her breast. What he was doing felt so good and he was already so hard against her stomach. Tingles erupted throughout her body and settled low against his hardness.

She groaned low. “Colt, we can’t do this. Not here. Cassie’s just in the next room.” Unfortunately the room they were in backed right up against the kitchen wall.

“You’re right.” He whispered as he lifted her shirt and closed his lips around the hard nub of her nipple. Her eyes rolled back into her head and she threw her leg over his hip to bring him closer to her. Her breathing was quickly becoming gasps.

Suddenly the crash of a breaking dish came from the kitchen, followed quickly by Cassie’s curses. They’d both stiffened at the sound, but now Colton was grinning at her as he leaned over her, caging her with his body. “I guess that was our wake-up call. Get up, sweetheart, before I ravage you with both my brother and sister within listening distance. And I will work to get this,” he grimaced down to his straining erection, “back under control.”

She gave his shaft a slow stroke which had him moaning low. He pressed into her hands.

His voice lowered an octave when he said, “You’re really not helping the situation here.”

She withdrew her hand. “I’m sorry. I’ll see you in the kitchen in a little bit.” She slid out from underneath him.

He sat up and watched her with gleaming lust-filled eyes as she put on her robe. When she was fully covered, he glanced back down at his lap. “It may be a few minutes before I’m presentable.”

Penelope just grinned and winked at him as she shut the door behind her. She was still grinning when she walked into the kitchen. On the other hand, Cassie was on the floor, cleaning up the remnants of some sort of a casserole and cursing a blue streak.

She looked up at Penelope’s smiling face and scowled. “You should not look that happy with everything going on with you.” But then she smiled at her, “But I forgive you for it, since that obviously means things are going well between you and Colt.”

Penelope couldn’t help the smile that became even wider. “Yeah, things are good with us. What about you? Jake gets in tomorrow, right?”

Cassie’s eyes lit up. “Yeah, he’s driving in from Arizona tonight. He should be here early in the morning. I can’t wait. I’m so ready to have him here permanently. This long-distance thing is for the birds.”

“Any idea when the wedding’s going to be yet?”

“Not yet. We’ve discussed a few things, but haven’t settled on a date. We wanted to get him here before we decided for sure.”

“That makes sense. I know there’s still a lot to get settled with setting up Mad Rob and the house and all.” She looked down the hall. “Speaking of guys, where’s Chris?”

“He had an early PT appointment. He told me to tell you guys that he can help later today if you need some help cleaning up.”

“Thanks. We should be able to handle it. Chris seems to be doing better lately.”

Cassie nodded. “He is. He still has his moments, but being able to focus on Mad Rob has been good for him. It’s given him something else to concentrate on, besides everything that he’s lost.”

Colton walked in and immediately wrapped his arms around Penelope’s waist from behind. He settled his chin on her shoulder. “Are we talking about Chris?”

Both girls nodded.

“He’s gonna make it back to us. He’s doing better, so now it’s just a matter of time.” He sounded so confident. Colton was a force to be reckoned with when he set his mind to something. She just hoped he wasn’t disappointed. There was so much more healing that Chris needed to do, both body and soul. Penelope had a feeling there’d be a few more setbacks before Chris was truly on his way to a full recovery. Honestly, after all he’d been through, she wasn’t so sure he’d ever be completely healed.

Cassie looked at them both before asking quietly, “So how bad is the loft?”

Colton grimaced. “Pretty bad. We’ll get in there and see what’s salvageable.”

Penelope gasped and searched around the room for the clock. “Aww damn. I’m supposed to meet with a reporter this morning about the signing next week and I also need to pick up the Bus. I wasn’t even thinking about all that last night.” She looked at the clock again, then Colton. “We need to get going.”

He nodded. “Go take your shower and get ready for work. I can drop you off at the bookstore. Chris should be done by then. He and I can pick up the Bus and we’ll work on the loft until you’re off. I didn’t have anything important going today.”

“Okay.”

* * *

When Colton and Chris entered the loft, Colton was struck again by just how bad it was. He’d been hoping his memory of it was worse than it actually was. Wrong.

“Man, this sucks.” Chris was good at stating the obvious.

Colton looked over at him on his crutches and the mess scattered all over the floor. He hadn’t really thought this through. He started clearing paths through the living room, simply so Chris could move through the room. “Yeah, it does.” He gestured to the piles of books that were shredded and tossed everywhere. “What do you think? If you sit there on the floor, can you sort through and figure out which books are salvageable and make piles of the ones that aren’t? That pile of books was the thing she was most devastated about last night.”

“Sure, I can handle that.” He lowered himself to the floor and started piling up the miscellaneous books. “I’ll just re-shelve the ones that look okay. She’ll have to reorganize it again later, but at least it won’t look so bad.”

“Thanks Chris. I appreciate you helping with this. I think it would be completely overwhelming to stand here looking at this mess by myself. Not that it’s not overwhelming anyway, but it’s nice to have company. Thanks.”

“No problem. I’m glad to be able to help…at least as much as I can.”

Colton worked on hauling out the large pieces, like the shattered TV’s, to the trash while Chris worked through the books. After the eighth trip to the dumpster, Colton stopped at the fridge for a beer break. He looked up to offer one to Chris and started grinning when he noticed Chris’s nose buried in one of Pen’s erotica books.

He popped the top on the second beer and walked over to see which book had caught Chris’s attention. When he caught sight of the Celeste DeMarco cover, he smirked. He and Chris must have more in common than he thought. He inserted the beer between Chris and the book pages. “Find something interesting?” he asked innocently.

Chris looked up at him with a slightly stunned look in his eye. “I had no idea girls actually read this stuff.” He looked back down at the text again and then looked up to Colton with a speculative look. “So, does she just read them or does she also…?” He left the question hanging as he grabbed the beer from Colton.

Colton felt himself flush. He rubbed the back of his neck. “Man, I can’t tell you stuff like that.”

Chris just smirked at him knowingly. “Just tell me this…does she tie you up or do you tie her up?”

“Shut up, asshole.” Colton stalked back down the hall, ignoring his brother’s laugh that followed him. He needed to tackle the mess in Penelope’s room. He sure didn’t want his smug bastard of a brother going through the lingerie flung throughout the room.

Just as he entered the doorway, he heard a final mutter from Chris, “Lucky bastard.” As he took in the wisps of lacey red, black, and pink scattered throughout Penelope’s room, he had to nod. He really was, wasn’t he?

It took about an hour to get Penelope’s clothes and shoes back into a reasonable order. Most of them hadn’t been damaged. They’d just been flung all over the room. He really didn’t understand the reasoning for all this. Why would someone break in to simply make a mess? They had to be searching for something, but what?

The note in the Bus had said ‘the gift’…were these the same guys? Were they still looking for that elusive gift? He thought back to Pen’s theory about Damon’s dig site, El Regalo. Could it have something to do with that? He didn’t know as much about the dig as Penelope did. He thought back to the flowers Damon brought her. They’d long since died, but she kept the golden one in a bud vase by her bed. He looked around the room, but he didn’t see it anywhere in this mess. Was that maybe what they were looking for?

There was another bookcase in this room. Like the living room, the books were opened, scattered, and in wild disarray. These guys had too much fun scattering Pen’s precious books. He gathered them up, sorting them as he did so. There were several notebooks here which Penelope obviously kept stored on the bookshelves. He’d picked them up and started putting them in their own pile, trying to straighten the bent and ruffled pages as he went. He was doing this when some of Penelope’s writing caught his eye. Phrases like ‘Rocking M’ and ‘ranching’ combined with ‘Dom’, ‘roping’, and ‘bondage’ made him start to think about their trip to the ranch the day before.

Penelope said she met the Martin family through the bookstore, but what would a family ranch have to do with a bookstore unless one of the Martin’s was an author? Penelope hadn’t mentioned anything like that the day before. As he flipped through the notebooks, a thought occurred to him that seemed impossible. Surely not, but then he found a list of names in one of the notebooks. He rushed back out to the living room carrying the notebook and looked frantically at the bookcase trying to find it.