When he grabbed his trusty lint roller, she smiled and moved to join the rest of the team, but the look of panic in his eyes stopped her again. He’d run the thing along one half of one thigh and then pulled the strip of sticky paper off the roller—only to find it was the last one! Pure, unadulterated panic flooded his handsome face.
For the first time since she’d started working there, Dyrk rushed up to her with a pleading expression. “Do you have a lint roller?”
He sounded desperate, and she could understand why. For Tessa, kitten fur all over her clothes brought smiles, but not so much for Dyrk. She didn’t have to understand his discomfort to honor it.
“Um, I’m not sure,” she said, knowing full well she’d never owned a lint roller in her life. But she didn’t want to let him down, especially when he’d come to her for help for a change.
Dropping back into her chair, she rifled through the mess of paperwork, files, and sticky notes that littered her desk. She wanted to put on a good show, after all, despite Dyrk’s growing impatience. He probably hated that her desk was such a free-for-all, considering how neat and tidy his was. Finally, she turned a worried look on him.
“I’m really sorry, but I can’t find one.”
Instead of growing irritated, Dyrk simply seemed panicked. Could he possibly be that upset about some cat hair? It wasn’t her place to question the why of his anxiety, just to do her best to alleviate it.
“Wait!” she cried as he started to move away. She pulled a roll of strapping tape from a desk drawer, wound a gob of it around her hand, and began patting down his legs with it.
Wherever she saw kitten hair, her hand followed. From his ankle, all the way up his ridiculously cut thigh, she patted him down, only vaguely wondering why he stiffened at her touch. But she was too focused on her task to worry about that, though the firmness of his well-defined muscles certainly didn’t escape her notice. Tingles started zipping through her system as her movements smoothed out and slowed down so she could feel every ridge, every ripple.
“That’s enough!” he finally burst out, turning around and rushing toward the conference room.
Tessa watched him walk away, more than a little disappointed, before gathering up her laptop and mumbling under her breath. “Not for me.”
Dyrk’s cheeks burned faintly as his crisp, uniform strides carried him to the conference room. He knew Tessa meant well, but the tension that had erupted between his legs had hit him out of nowhere when she touched him. He certainly didn’t need a sexual harassment suit brought against him. Thankfully, the rest of the team were embroiled in a conversation about the ongoing, collaborative investigation with the Shifter Bureau of Investigation, so they didn’t notice how flustered he was when he entered the room.
To cover for his lateness—if you weren’t early, you were late—he adopted his usual habits. The same stiff nod at Charlie, straightening his tie until it was just so, sitting in his usual seat. He practically did it on autopilot, even though nothing felt normal at the moment.
He wasn’t used to having his personal space invaded, much less by that beautiful ball of sunshine Charlie had hired as the receptionist. Dyrk had taken one look at her and just knew he would have deal with a long string of forgotten messages and mis-scheduled appointments until she decided to bail so she could go to Burning Man.
To his eternal surprise, she’d proven him wrong, at least so far. Her messages might have been overly wordy and circuitous, but he always got them. Not once had someone shown up for an appointment he wasn’t aware of. And despite her consistent tardiness, she was a hard worker and seemed all too eager to please the rest of the team.
The image of her warm hand running up his leg popped into his head unbidden—and unwelcome.
“Dyrk?”
He jumped at the sound of his name, snapping him out of his trance. The entire Wildridge team sat around the table watching him with curiosity.
“Huh? What?” he stammered.
“Got kittens on the brain?” Thrett Lacerta asked with a mischievous wink.
Elektra nudged Thrett with her elbow. “Give him a minute for the caffeine to kick in. He’s been burning the candle at both ends lately.”
“Lately?” Elektra’s mate, Grizz said pointedly. He’d often told Dyrk he needed to take a vacation, or at the very least, a day off.
“We were just giving updates on the investigation,” Ragan DeFever explained helpfully. As the firm’s newest specialist, Ragan still had that new-job excitement.
“You know,” Thrett added, “the one where you were assigned to the joint task force with the SBI to figure out what’s up with these crazy-dangerous shifters and then got pulled off it before you even started?”
Dyrk’s teeth felt like they might be ground to dust as he clenched his jaw. He’d been so honored when Charlie had selected him to join the task force, only to have the rug pulled out from under him with one silly call from Wyntir Ignis. The firm’s personal security specialist was on vacation Down Under with her new mate, Stark Bradford, when her boyfriend had some trouble using one of his credit cards. Naturally, Charlie had made it Dyrk’s only priority to figure out what happened.
As if he didn’t know instantly. A too-rich-for-his-own-good Hollywood leading man had blown through is money and was too embarrassed to admit it to his new lady. Seemed pretty obvious to him, but Charlie was the cautious sort. It didn’t do any good to argue with him, even when he was wrong.
“I asked for an update on Mr. Bradford’s financial issues,” his boss said tersely. “I’d hate for his and Wyntir’s vacation to be ruined because all of his credit cards have been canceled.”
Dyrk thought it was tricky to focus on some celebrity’s money problems when they were in the middle of investigating a prisoner experimentation program. One that churned stunningly powerful shifters out of the Los Angeles prison system. These shifters could do things like stun dragons—or worse.
But he kept that thought to himself.
“Unfortunately, I don’t have much of an update to give. I haven’t been able to access Stark’s financial accounts.”
“Can’t you just call Wyntir?” Ragan asked.
“As it turns out, the middle of the Tasman Sea doesn’t have terrific cell phone reception,” he answered coolly. “They were boarding a yacht for a cruise around Tasmania when she called me. I have no idea how long she’s going to be out either.”
“Jealous,” Elektra muttered.
Dyrk shrugged. “My first choice of vacation spots would be Glastonbury, England.”
Tessa gasped softly. “Me too!”
Dyrk felt a wave of warm tingles run through his body at the sound of her voice. He hadn’t even noticed her come in, but he suddenly remembered that thick, rusty brown hair so close to him, and the faint scent of patchouli and kombucha. He blinked in surprise at her admission.
“You’re a fan of the King Arthur legend too?”
“Not in the slightest,” she said. “I have no interest in the colonizing traditions of the British patriarchy, but I would kill to go the Glastonbury performing arts festival!”
And there it was.
“Anyway…” he said, using every ounce of self-control he possessed to not roll his eyes. “I’m stalled.”