Stirling glared at Grace. “Would have been great if you’d let me bug the box, Grace. In fact, that would have been spectacular.”
Grace’s face heated. He’d been… discombobulated. Trying to prove himself to Hunter. Make absolutely sure everybody knew he didn’t need coddling.
“I can fix that,” he mumbled, setting his pad thai down to ply his little knife again.
“Finish your dinner first,” Hunter told him, and Grace picked up his food again automatically.
“Why do I do that?” he asked, not loud and demanding, but puzzled.
Hunter studied him underneath the hubbub and the expectations of activity that always came with an op. “Because you want to please me,” he said, one corner of his mouth quirking up.
Grace’s jaw dropped gently, and he had to force himself to pay attention when Hunter pitched his voice for the entire room to hear.
“So we’re going to take positions around the hotel—Josh, outside; me, inside low; Molly, inside high. Molly, no wig, but put your hair up and out of the way—it’s gorgeous, darlin’, but we want you to go unnoticed.”
“Where do I go?” Grace asked.
“You are across from wherever Molly is, with easy access to stairs or elevator. Stirling, does that bug have a—”
“Grace, give me your cell phone,” Stirling demanded, cutting Hunter off, probably because he could read his mind.
“Hand tracker,” Hunter finished, smiling slightly. “Excellent.”
Grace pulled out the phone and handed it over without being told, looking at Hunter expectantly.
Hunter didn’t roll his eyes, which was—and Grace hadn’t realized this—some sort of a test.
“Good job, Grace,” Hunter said softly.
Oh, he was a tricky one.
“Thank you?” Augh! He’d handed over his cell phone.
But he’d done it quietly, without production and without snark. And why did that have to be a thing?
Because you’re an attention whore, Grace. And he’s recognizing how good you’re being, and he’s not being an asshole about it. And he smells good and you’re wearing his sweatshirt.
Hunter acknowledged him with a lift of his eyebrow and went back to planning the op.
“So this is simple,” he said. “We loiter—bring a book or something—and keep an eye on who picks up that package. Grace, you follow the package, we follow you, splitting off if necessary. Grace, steal it or track it to a place where we can steal it. They need to get it and confirm it’s there or they’ll be on Artur like a bad rash.”
“So easy,” Grace said. “Jazz shoes, though. Nice and broken in.”
“On the street?” Artur objected.
Grace gave him a radiant smile. “Not my only pair, Dance Master.” In fact, soft-soled dancing shoes were his best thief couture.
“Which brings us to clothing,” Hunter said, looking around. “Molly, Josh, jeans and sweaters. Casual and boring. Grace, you do you. With your hair, black looks like a signature and not an announcement that you’re a cat burglar. We can’t have too many of us wearing it, though. It looks like a uniform.”
Grace and Josh snickered, catching each other’s eyes.
“What’s so funny?” Molly demanded.
“Just a thing,” Josh said, winking at Grace. “Whenever Grace and I had… well, as my father would say, an adventure planned, we wouldn’t call it a job or whatever. Grace would say, ‘I’m coming over to your house tonight.’”
“And Josh would say, ‘Wear black.’” Grace grinned at him. It was good to have a bestie.
Hunter’s smile was a bare slash of lean lips, but Grace still liked to see it.
“In covert ops, we’d wear tactical gear if the occasion called for it, but mostly found it’s easier to blend in if you look like someone’s dad or husband or girlfriend. If you walk into a place and it’s nothing but goons wearing black, you usually turn around and walk out of that place.”
Josh smirked. “But black makes my ass look smaller!”
There was universal booing, because Josh was a slender little diva and they all knew it. And the rest of the dinner chatter was just that—chatter.
Because if they thought too long and too hard about an op, they’d be thrown off when things went sideways. Even though Grace had never played for the life-and-death stakes that Hunter obviously had, he still knew that.
But he was unprepared for Hunter to take his empty plate during cleanup and say, “Grace, I need to see you move. Out in the hallway. Grab the shoes of your choice. I can’t send you in there if you can’t run fast enough to get out.”
Grace opened his mouth to protest, but Josh got there first. “I’ll join you,” he said, looking evenly at Grace. “I’m not quite as good as you are, but I know when you’re in pain too.”
Grace stuck his tongue out. Traitor.
He sucked it up, though. Putting on his jazz shoes, he walked up and down the hallway, then ran up and down the hallway, the ache in his feet pleasantly numbed by the ibuprofen but also suppressed by years of dancing injured. It was a skill, like anything else. After his second lap, Josh nodded briefly and slipped back into the hotel room, but Hunter remained, arms crossed.
“What?” Grace asked, defensive.
“You’ll let us know, right? If things hurt?”
Grace wrinkled his nose. Of course not. “Sure.”
Hunter shook his head as if Grace were that transparent. “Dylan?”
Oh hell. His real name.
“Uhm, Hunter? Is Hunter your real name or—?”
“I was christened Scott Hunter Rutledge. If it makes you feel better to call me Scott, that’s fine.”
Grace opened his mouth to say “Scott! Scott! Scott!” but Hunter kept going, making petty revenge seem, well, petty.
“Dylan, you need to tell us if it gets to be too much. And not just because it would compromise the op if it does.”
And Grace knew what Hunter meant—he’d said it in the bathroom. It was the thing Josh and Artur had been trying to tell him after that shitty moment when he’d ended up in the hospital with a Narcan hangover.
Grace wasn’t sure he was ready to hear it now any more than he’d been ready to hear it then.
He looked away.
“Sure,” he said, his voice remote.
Hunter cupped his jaw then, the gesture somehow more intimate than a kiss.
“Look me in the eye when you say that,” he commanded, and Grace….
Grace did.
Look him in the eyes, that is. He opened his mouth to say “Sure,” again, but the word shriveled up and turned to dust in his throat, leaving him speechless, which didn’t happen often.
The thing in Hunter’s eyes….
Grace had seen something like it before—a lot. One quick fuck and a used condom later and it went away. But those looks had never been like this. Those looks had never been crystalline and deep. And maybe it was because Grace was a thief and he loved sparkly things, but the glitter in Hunter’s eyes reminded him of tourmaline or opals, gems that looked opaque but had mysteries and flaws and tiny surprises of color and beauty locked deep inside.
As with any gem, Grace wanted a better, closer look. He wanted to touch.