Page 55 of Her Three Rangers
“Okay, thank you.” Grace looked up at me. “Happy now? Now can you please tell me what’s going on here?”
I grimaced. There was really no way to sugar coat this, sensitive or not. She was either going to be worried or pissed. Or maybe both, considering my track record.
“Ty, Cody, and I have to… observe… an operation today.”
She gave me a blank look. “An operation? Like… surgery? I don’t have anything scheduled for today, but…” Grace ran a finger along the calendar on her desk, scanning the dates.
I couldn’t help but grin. A surgery. Dammit, why did she have to be so effortlessly sexy?
“Not a surgery,” I said, interrupting before she paged Jenny again to ask her. “A sting operation. Out at Garrick’s place.”
Her eyes went wide, then narrowed again, a hard look coming over her face. “Take me with you.”
Of all the responses, of all the scenarios I had let play out in my head on the way over here, that one hadn’t even made the list.
I’d expected her to say she didn’t want us to go. Or that she would be busy later and one of us would have to stay anyway.
The last thing I’d imagined was that she would want to go with us.
“You can’t,” I said, forgetting all about being sensitive in my surprise. “I mean… no. You just can’t.”
“Why not? If you’re going to observe, then I want to observe, too. He’s made this personal with me, Jaeger. You can’t expect me to just sit back here and wait around while you guys go out and watch… whoever… take this monster down. I need to see it with my own eyes.”
I still didn’t know what to say. Especially since her argument actually made a lot of sense to me.
But even if Sam would have given the okay for another person—a civilian, no less—to join us, I knew damn good and well that Ty would never go along with it.
“It’s too dangerous,” I said, channeling my inner Ty. “And it’s too late to alter the plans now. We almost didn’t even get to go, so it’s not like we have a lot of pull in this operation, Grace. I’m sorry.”
That last bit was a mix of things I knew to be facts and things I assumed were. I didn’t know for sure that it was too late to change the plans, but I felt like I could reasonably predict just about anyone’s response if I asked permission for our girlfriend to come along on the operation.
A big, fat hell-to-the-no.
For a moment, she wouldn’t even look at me. Then she didn’t speak again until several long seconds of silence had stretched out between us.
“Okay,” she said, finally.
I waited for the rest.
“Okay?” I prompted, when the rest never came. “Okay, what?”
“Okay, fine,” she frowned. “I don’t like it, but I’m not going to argue. I can’t see Ty or Cody agreeing to let me go, either. Especially if you’re already against it. So… okay.”
“Okay,” I repeated, dumbstruck again for the second time in as many minutes. “Thank you for not arguing with me.”
“Please be careful, though,” she said, coming around the desk and closing the distance between us.
I took her into my arms and kissed her, softly at first, then deeper, more urgently, only breaking away to look into her eyes again.
“We will,” I said. “I promise you all three of us will be careful. Ty is like a drill sergeant with these kinds of things. He takes our safety very seriously. Just as seriously as we all take your safety.”
“Thank you,” she said, softly, finally giving me a hint of a smile. “I appreciate that. Truly.” She huffed out a short breath and took a step back, swallowing hard. “I guess you should probably get back, then.”
“Yeah,” I nodded, my feet still rooted to the floor for a moment. “I should.”
“Okay. Come back to me in one piece.”
“I will,” I said, finally moving back toward the door. “We all will. I promise.”