Nobody Does It Better (Masters and Mercenaries, #15)

by Lexi Blake

The man could be deadly when he wanted to be, but then she’d found there was a certain type of operative the Agency liked to hire. There were always the worker bees, the ones who kept their heads down for years and years, mining for information and never once doing anything to bring attention to themselves. They were like nondescript sedans. Nothing to look at but those suckers were on the road forever. Levi Green was a Maserati. Showy and gorgeous, he would bust down the walls others would quietly and carefully dig under. She was always wary of the Maseratis of this world. They were stunning and powerful, and sometimes spun out of control when you least expected them to. Fain was more like a Jeep. Sure, he was hot when he smiled, but he could also put a baseball cap on and no one would notice him. He would take the hard trail around a problem and no one would see him coming. Gosh, Fain sometimes reminded her of Bishop. It was probably the reason she trusted him the way she did.

She couldn’t leave Tucker high and dry. He would need to talk about what happened in The X-Files. When she’d left him, he’d been binging, and no one else would listen to his crazy theories.

“Because we hate the Agency shit,” Dec reiterated. “And Big Tag’ll kill us if this turns into a FUBAR situation.”

nomenclature,

“Funny, I think Ten Smith is pretty happy now.”

Dear JR Ward, Please forgive me for my last email. You should write as quickly or slowly as your muse leads you, and you probably know your characters better than I do. So forget that small threat about Butch and V. I didn’t really mean it. You know who best they should be mated with, not me. No one’s coming for you in the middle of the night and while I do know your address, I promise to respect boundaries.

After you read fourteen books in someone’s world, you kind of find yourself forgetting it’s not real. You start talking like the characters, talking to the characters.

“I’m Ian Taggart,” the biggest of the men said as he settled into a chair opposite Josh. “Yolo McSwaggins here is named Adam Miles, and Sleeping Beauty is my business partner, Alex McKay. Don’t mind Alex. He recently adopted a second child and then his sperm totally went on a hyper salmon run and his wife turns up pregnant. They went from no kids to looking at having three under the age of five. Welcome to my world, buddy. I’m pretty sure he’s here because he thought he could get some sleep.” Alex McKay’s middle finger made an appearance and he sat up and stretched. “I’m here because I don’t trust you to not piss off the dude who could sue us. This is going to require some subtlety.”

“Sometimes bravery isn’t about slaying a dragon. Sometimes bravery is about getting out of bed every morning and going to work even when the pain is so bad you can’t stand the thought of going on.

That was love. Wanting more for someone even when she couldn’t be the one to give it.