Page 7 of The Agent
Chapter 3
When Natalie opened her eyes on Sunday morning, she was shocked to see that it was after ten o’clock and the sun glowed brightly around the edges of her window shades. Most days she could barely sleep until eight.
Something about Tully’s thorough inspection of her house had made her feel safe and secure enough to rest.
She threw back the sheets and stood up, stretching and yawning. When she padded into the bathroom, she thought she caught a whiff of Tully’s woodsy soap still lingering, so she inhaled more deeply. A tiny shiver rippled through her.
“Stop it!” she said to her reflection as she finger-combed her angled blonde bob into some semblance of order. She’d cut off her long curls about a year before on her fortieth birthday and it was amazing how liberating that had been. She had realized she’d only been keeping it long because her ex liked it that way.
Craving coffee, she threw on jeans and a white T-shirt and headed down the stairs to the kitchen, barefoot and braless. Once the coffee maker was up and running, she started to open her email app but stopped before touching the envelope icon on her cell phone screen. Looking out at the soft spring light slanting through the pale green leaves of the woods behind her house, she decided not to risk ruining her peace quite yet. Instead, she fixed herself a cheese-and-veggie omelet, which she ate at her sun-dappled dining table while she tried not to remember how it felt to be so perfectly in sync with Tully on the dance floor. Or the flare of heat in his eyes as she lay across the solid bar of his thigh in the final dip.
She took a long swallow of orange juice and pushed her plate away. Might as well face the realities of today. Bracing herself, she tapped the email icon. She skimmed down the list but saw no unfamiliar email addresses. The knot of tension in her neck eased.
She was scrolling through the wedding photos friends had shared on social media when the doorbell shrilled through the silence, making her nearly drop her phone.
She walked to the door and checked the video monitor that the alarm guy had recommended she install.
“Oh my God!” Her hands flew to her hair to smooth it when she saw Tully standing on her front porch, holding a corrugated cardboard box and staring straight at the video camera. She realized how ridiculous she was being since she had on no makeup, no shoes, and—oh, hell!—no bra.
Disarming the alarm, she pulled the door open. As a cowgirl might say, Tully looked like one long, cool drink of water in a black T-shirt, faded jeans, and well-used brown cowboy boots. She wanted to drink him in to slake the heat sizzling through her veins.
“Mornin’,” he said. “I brought security bars for your sliders.” He held up the box as his gaze skimmed over her casual attire, making her nipples tighten under the thin cotton of her shirt. “I should have called. My apologies. I was worried about you.”
“No need for apologies. It’s nice of you to be concerned.” She stepped back to let him in, and there was that faint hint of the woods again as he moved close to her. It stroked over her nerve endings like a touch, and his sheer size made her feel fragile and feminine. “I was being lazy after all the excitement yesterday.”
“Weddings are harder on the ladies than the gentlemen,” he said with a twinkle in his eyes. “Let me just install these bars and you can get back to your lazing.”
“Can I offer you breakfast? Or maybe that would be brunch by now.” She followed him into the dining area, enjoying the way the worn denim hugged his tight butt and muscular thighs. A girl could look, after all.
“Thanks, but I ate earlier.” He flipped open the end of the box and pulled out the hardware. “I’d take a cup of that coffee I can smell, if you have extra.”
“How do you like it?”
He knelt in front of the sliders. “Straight-up black.”
That didn’t surprise her. He was a straight-up kind of man. She filled a mug and carried it over to the dining table behind him. As he worked on attaching the hinged bar to the door frame, the muscles of his back bunched and released in a display that made her want to lay her palms against them.
“Your coffee is on the table behind you,” she said, forcing herself to back away from the unsettling view. She perched on the sectional sofa so the table was between her and Tully.
“Thank you kindly,” he said with that faint cowboy drawl of his.
“Where are you from originally?” she asked.
“Western Pennsylvania,” he said, still working. “Why?”
“Because you sound like you’re from Wyoming or something. And you wear cowboy boots.”
He chuckled. “I worked on a cattle farm after school, so I got in the habit of wearing boots back then. Maybe I picked up some of Farmer Hollinger’s speech patterns since I spent a lot of time with him. He was a real live cattleman.” His tone was nostalgic and admiring.
“I’ve noticed that FBI agents and pilots often sound a bit like they’re from the West.”
“My boss at the FBI sometimes called me a cowboy but he didn’t mean it as a compliment.” His tone was dry.
“I see.” Her curiosity got the better of her. “Is that why you decided to start your own consulting firm?”
She heard a metallic click and a small grunt of satisfaction. “No, that decision came after I spent a summer working for a large international security firm between my first and second year at business school. Starting at the bottom again was not to my taste.”
“I can’t see you sucking up to the boss, I have to admit.”
