“So what now?”
Cody went to the window and shoved aside the drapes. While his strongest instinct was to race to the hospital and shake Lara until her teeth fell out, he needed to get his head on straight first.
“Out to the ranch.”
“In this weather? And why not go back and talk to Lara? Seems to me she has some explaining to do.”
“Oh, believe me, she does. And she will, just not tonight.” He handed J.J. her coat.
“But if Lara did give away my location, isn’t it a little dangerous to go to the ranch?”
He paused, frustration settling in the pit of his stomach. “It’s as secure there as anywhere else. Seth has a unit doing drive-bys—”
“It’s freezing and snowy, Cody. It’s inhumane to send people out in these conditions. Surely there’s another alternative.”
“There’s an Inn a couple miles up the road. Denise already scouted it out. We could have a hot meal, get a little sleep.”
“A meal is good,” she told him enthusiastically. “A meal delivered by room service is even better.”
He gave her a challenging glance. “When did you turn into Pamper-Me-Princess?”
“When I missed three meals in a row and so much sleep that I couldn’t possibly muster the energy to cook for myself.”
“Okay, but we do this my way.”
It took almost an hour and all his skills to drive the short distance to the Inn. The good news was that he doubted even a paid killer would venture out in this storm. The bad news was the Inn wasn’t the secure kind of location he liked.
He pulled around to the back of the A-framed building, then down a rutted roadway.
“You did say at the Inn, right?”
“Just checking things out,” he assured her. Swallowing a string of colorful curse words, he started to second-guess his decision. Between skiers and early arrivals for the wedding, the place was packed. Hard to secure an area when half the license plates were obscured by snow and the ones he could see included no fewer than seven different states and stickers from twice that many counties.
Looping back around, he cruised the parking lot again, hoping a brilliant idea would fall into his lap. None did.
“Are you going to drive around until you wear out the tires or is there an executive decision in your future?”
Pulling his cell phone out, he pressed one of the speed dial buttons and waited impatiently until the call was finally answered.
“Hello?”
“Sorry, Chandler, but I need a favor.”
“When don’t you need a favor?” came the smart-ass reply.
“How many rooms did you block at the Mountainview Inn?”
“A dozen, why?”
“I need one.”
“They’re full of wedding stuff. I’ve got—”
“I need one.”
“Right,” Chandler said. “I’ll call the front desk right now.”
“Thanks, bro.”
“You okay?”
“Working on it.”
“Need us?”
“Hope not.”
“I can have everyone there inside an hour,” Chandler promised.
It wasn’t an empty offer. Cody smiled, knowing full well that any or all of his brothers would walk though the storm if he asked. “I’m good, Chandler. Just need a place to crash for a while.”
“You’ll be here in the morning, though, right?”
“I’m planning on it.”
“I hear you’re bringing the leggy blond FBI agent.” Chandler exaggerated his sigh into the phone.
“I hear you’d like to get married with all your teeth.”
A sharp, piercing whistle came across the line. “That was very snippy, Cody.”
“Snippy? When did you turn into a girl?”
“A minute after I thought I was going to call the desk at the Inn as a favor to you.”
“You aren’t a girl,” Cody relented good-naturedly. Then he muttered, “Much.”
“What?”
“I said I’ll be in touch,” he promised, then broke the connection.
“That Landry shorthand?” she asked.
He shrugged, tapping his fingers on the wheel as he watched the guy at the front desk. “Not really. We’re men of action, not words.”
“You gotta pound your chest when you say that, fella.”
He grinned at her, and at the sight of the desk guy on the phone. “Thank you, Chandler.”
A few minutes later, it was J.J. who was saying, “Thank you, Chandler.” The suite was the most incredible thing she’d ever seen, with a sitting room, two large bedrooms, a powder room and her personal favorite—a master bath with every possible toiletry. It was as if someone dropped a little slice of Vienna in the middle of Montana. Not that she had ever been to Vienna, but she’d watched The Travel Channel enough to know that this was European-style luxury at its finest.
The sofa and a couple of large easy chairs in the living room were covered in rich, textured sage-green fabric. An ornate coffee table—complete with high hat and champagne glasses at the ready—and twin end tables were piled with beautifully wrapped wedding gifts, as was every flat surface.
“Can I live here forever?” she said.
“First hotel?” Cody teased, his dark eyes watching her as she went from room to room, item to item, enjoying herself immensely.
“First first-class hotel,” she readily admitted. “This room is bigger than my apartment. And my apartment doesn’t smell like—what is that?”
“These things,” he said, holding out a dainty glass dish filled with potpourri as if it was a urine specimen. “Molly’s idea, I’m sure. I hear she’s into candles and stuff. Shane says he can always tell when Chandler’s been with Molly, ’cause he comes home smelling like a florist’s shop.”
She blinked. Twice. “This is their suite?” she asked, horrified. “The bridal suite?”
“Eventually, yeah.” Cody sat down, kicked off his boots and relaxed on the sofa.
“But the wedding isn’t until the day after tomorrow. Why is their stuff here now?”
“Because as much as I love him—and I do—Chandler plans everything to death. He’s probably got a second suite rented just in case this one…I don’t know…has a leaky faucet or some other imperfection.”
J.J. chewed her lip to keep from laughing. “How did he manage growing up on a ranch if he’s so…particular?”
“Because he grew up on a ranch he’s so particular,” Cody corrected. “He’s more organized than the National Archives. Which—” he jumped up, disappeared into a bedroom, returning a second later with a small satchel in his hand “—will work to our advantage.” He rummaged through the bag and pilfered a T-shirt for J.J. to use as a nightshirt.
“I shouldn’t take this,” she resisted. “He might need it.”
Cody grunted. “Right. What guy needs three T-shirts on his wedding night? Besides, he has all day tomorrow to replace everything so it’s just the way he likes it. Red or green?” he asked, holding two brand-new, still-in-their wrapper toothbrushes up to her.
“We can use the ones the hotel provides,” she said, recalling the fully stocked bath.
Cody’s broad grin was infectious. “We could, but it wouldn’t be as much fun.”
“You can be very childish,” she told him as she snatched the red one, grinning back at him.
“Only occasionally,” he assured her. “And usually only when one of my brothers is involved. I figure it’s the payoff for all those years of getting my tail kicked on a regular basis.”
“But you’re all so close.”
“Now,” he agreed. “Growing up was a different story. We fought like crazy when we were kids. Someone was always pounding on someone else. My mother spent a lot of her day refereeing. By the time Pop got home, we quieted down. You didn’t want any part of making my father mad.”
She saw fear—quick, real and palpable—flash in his eyes. “Was he harsh?”
Cody chuckled. “Harsh? Detergent is harsh. My pop was the law in our house.”
“You make it sound horrible.”
He shook his head, then raked his dark hair back into place. “It wasn’t. I’m giving you the wrong impression. Pop was just firm. Had to be. Especially when we reached our teens. If Pop hadn’t kept us in line, we’d probably all be in jail by now. He was tough, but he was always fair. Almost always,” he relented. “He was roughest on Shane. I guess by the time he’d had his seventh son, he was tired of parenting period. The two of them were like oil and water, too. That didn’t help the situation.”
“I know what that’s like.”
“Really?” he asked, genuine interest in his tone. Patting the seat next to him, he said, “Sit down with me, J.J. I know a whole file of facts, but I don’t really know much about you.”
Reluctantly she sat down beside him. “Not much to tell. Nothing like Life with the Landrys.”
“I bet there are a milliner stories you can tell me.”
She elbowed him. Hard. “Again with the hat jokes?”
“Sorry, I just cap help myself.”
“You know,” she began, trying to sound affronted, which was almost impossible when he was wearing that sexy smile he probably didn’t even know was sexy. “Hats don’t just fall from heaven. Someone has to make them.”
“And my hat’s off to that person.”
“Landry!” she warned, hitting him with a tasseled pillow. “Do you hear me making cow jokes? Have I mocked your family’s heritage in any way?”
“No. I’m sorry, J.J., really.”
“You should be. My father happens to be an honest, hardworking man.”
“I’m sure he is. Must be proud of you, too.”
That made J.J. laugh. “Are you crazy? He hates what I do. Thinks it’s dangerous and completely unsuitable for his only child to be off chasing bad guys.”
“He’s got a point there.”
She swatted him again. “I’m good at what I do. I put bad people in jail. He should like what I do.”
“I’m sure he’d like grandchildren more.”
She’d heard that chorus before. “I bought him a dog. That should keep him for a while.”
“What about your mother?” he asked, reaching out to play with her hair. He twirled a few strands gently around his index finger, then let them slip away before repeating the action.
“She got sick right before I started the Visnopov assignment.”
“Is she better now?”
“She died a year ago. Cancer. My father didn’t allow them to tell me while I was undercover with the Visnopovs. Said she didn’t want me to know how sick she was and he didn’t want me distracted after she died.”
“That’s rough.”
“Yes, well, unlike your family, mine was not very open. It took three months for my folks to get around to telling me that my dad had lost his business. And then they only said something because we had to move.”
“I’m sure they were only trying to protect you.”
Suddenly feeling as if every cell in her body was made of lead, J.J. stood. “That’s a justification for lying by omission,” she said grimly. “Look, I’m flat-out exhausted. All I want right now is a hot bath and a solid eight hours of sleep. Night, Cody.” She headed for the smaller of the bedrooms.
“J.J.?”
She turned and found his brow deeply furrowed and his mouth drawn into a taut line. “What?”
“I just want to—”
The last thing she wanted was to plan strategy or talk shop. Neither did she want to discuss the past. Walks down memory lane were exhausting. “Can we do this later?”
Cody gave her a look she couldn’t interpret. He rubbed his hand across his jaw, looking as wiped out as she felt. “Sure,” he told her. “Later it is.”
“Night, then.”
“Yeah. Night.”
J.J. closed the bedroom door, trying not to wonder what he’d been about to tell her.
THE NEXT MORNING dawned quietly. In the wake of the huge, powerful storm was a vast, beautiful sky smeared with the pastel colors of a new day, and piles of soft pristine-white snow on the ground.
J.J. left the window and slipped back under the blankets, not in any great hurry to abandon the soft comfort of the best bed she’d had in days. But the aroma of coffee called to her.
Slipping on a heavy terry cloth robe with the hotel’s logo embroidered on the front, she padded into the sitting room and found Cody dressed in what appeared to be a freshly laundered version of the clothing he’d worn yesterday.
Glancing around, she saw her clothing on a hanger over the closet doorknob, wrapped in plastic from the hotel cleaner.
He offered her a smile and passed her a folded sheet of paper. “Morning. This came for you.”
She was about to accept his kiss on her cheek when she realized what he’d handed her. “This is a confidential fax.”
“Stephenson ran down the license plate of the guy Denise was with,” he said as he moved to pour her some coffee from the white carafe that dominated a large silver tray with assorted fruits and pastries on the coffee table.
She met and held his gaze. “Confidential. Cody, you do know what that word means, right?”
He didn’t even try to look apologetic. “When he couldn’t reach me, Stephenson sent it to Seth. Seth brought it to me. What’s the harm?”
“The harm is, it’s mine. Not ours. In fact, there is no ours when it comes to stuff like this.” She rattled the page for effect. “I probably would have shared this with you, but the decision should have been mine.”
“Don’t get all bent out of shape. It isn’t like it’s the launch codes for our nuclear arsenal, J.J. If it was really private, I’m sure Stephenson wouldn’t have sent it through Seth’s office.”
Crumpling the paper in her fist, she tried to control her simmering anger. “The content isn’t the point, Landry. I’m explaining to you how much I resent you perusing a message addressed to me.”
“I’m sorry. Want me to pretend I didn’t see the name of the guy Denise met in the parking lot?”
“I want you to remember that as far as the FBI is concerned, you’re a security risk. If Associate Director Andrews ever so much as suspected that I’ve been sharing information with you, he’d fire me in a heartbeat.”
“You think he doesn’t know already?” Cody challenged.
She hadn’t expected the small flash of anger from him. Nor, in her opinion, was it something he was entitled to. After all, he was the one who’d read her mail, not vice versa. “I didn’t tell him. Did you?” she shot back.
“Oh, wait.” She sarcastically smacked her own forehead. “You can’t tell him. You’re not FBI. We play on different teams.”
“I didn’t know that,” he tossed back. “I was under the impression that it didn’t matter what version of the alphabet we worked for. That this was a joint effort. We may have started out differently, but I thought we’ve been on the same wavelength lately…am I wrong?”
She opened her mouth, then shut it abruptly.
“No,” she finally said. “I am. I overreacted. I’m just not used to people being in my space. Thanks for getting my clothes cleaned.”
“No problem. We won’t have time to swing by the cabin before we have to be at the ranch.” He shoved the coffee at her. “Can you be ready in twenty?”
“I can do it in ten.”
Could she ever, he thought when she emerged from the bedroom ten minutes later. How could a woman who didn’t even carry a purse manage to look so stunning in record time. If he ever figured that out, he’d sell the secret and make a mint.
“Is there a problem?” she asked, tucking her weapon into the waistband of her jeans.
“You look nice. Really nice. My brothers will be envious.” He could have kicked himself for that one. He braced himself, sure she would give it to him with both barrels for making it sound like he was taking her along for show-and-tell.
Instead she surprised him by offering a sincere, almost shy smile. “Thanks to the foresight of this fabulous hotel, I found enough products to keep from looking completely scary.”
“You’ve never been scary a day in your life.” He meant it.
She cocked one brow and shook her head. “Lots of days, actually. Grades five through twelve, to be exact. I was taller than most of my teachers. I was all legs and teeth. Not a pretty sight.”
Draping his arm around her shoulder, he kissed her temple and said, “It worked out, though. Quite well, if you want my opinion.”
“So what’s our plan?”
He grabbed their coats, then headed for the door. “First, we do the wedding thing with my family. Then it’s time to kick some serious ass.”