Page 4 of Last First Kiss
Annie pushed her chair back, the bottom scratching against the beautiful stained concrete floor. “You’re kicking me out of the meeting now?”
“No one’s kicking anyone out,” Jax whisper-yelled, pointing for Annie to sit back down onto the chair. “We need her here. What’s up with you, Josef?”
But then Joey turned his anger on Jax. “Since when is my sister needed at a consultation?”
Annie didn’t give Jax a chance to answer, cutting right to the chase. She was the backbone of ICS. While they were out in the field playing superheroes, she was in the office holding everything together. “Since you opened the doors to ICS. Since I’m the one who organizes you two. Since I’m the only one who can properly secure our clients’ computers or hack most government agencies. That’s when.” She was pissed. When had her brother become a misogynistic asshole? He’d been fighting her for a week about this meeting, adamant that she not attend.
“Screw you, kid. I’m the computer guy. Jax is the muscles.”
She hated—hated!—when the guys called her “kid.”
Jax rolled his eyes. So did Annie. “So where the hell does that leave me? I’m not a fucking secretary.” She was seething. Joey refused to let her out to do fieldwork. But she was ready. She’d been ready. She needed to get out of this office. Being behind a desk all day was slowly eating away at her soul. It was true that Jax did most of the hands-on security matters, including bodyguard jobs, but it was Annie and Joey, who had a ridiculous high IQ, who handled most of the IT-related jobs. Annie was capable of doing both; they just needed to give her a chance.
Her life involved coding and algorithms and binary codes . . . rinse and repeat. She was so bored these days, she wanted to scream. “You are an important member of ICS, Annie. We need you handling things when they come in and helping me with the cases here in the office. Most of the shit that comes in these days can be resolved with a computer,” Joey said, a bit more calmly.
She didn’t want to handle things behind the safety of a computer. Eight years in the Army had toughened her up—not that she hadn’t been tough already. She’d seen and experienced things that Jax and Joey couldn’t even begin to imagine. Anything Jax and Joey could do, she could do too—maybe better. But since Joey was already pissed off, inserting that little fact would be adding fuel to the fire.
Jax, the voice of reason, slammed his palms on the table. “Both of you. Shut up. I want you both here to meet Rocco Monroe. So you’ll both sit there, smile, nod, and let me do all the talking. You got it?” He eyed them both until Joey and Annie looked at each other, blew out a breath, and reluctantly agreed.
“You don’t need to keep using both names,” Annie mumbled. “Rocco Monroe. Rocco Monroe,” she chanted in a whiny childlike voice. Jax glared at her and Annie swiped her fingers over her mouth and pretended to throw away a key. Fine, she’d be on her best behavior.
“You couldn’t shut up if your life depended on it, kid.”
Annie whipped her head to the side and again glared at her brother. “And you couldn’t—”
“Oh my God, would you two stop it. I’m getting tired of it. You know you’re both getting worse every day, right?”
“Mom’s driving me crazy,” Joey added.
“Don’t be such a momma’s boy. And stop tattling on me.”
“I’m not tattling on you. You keep bitching to everyone who has a goddamn ear that you want fieldwork. Mom thinks it’s just a matter of time before you nag it out of me or him.” Joey pointed to Jax. “Every single day, she calls and gives me shit about your safety. And Will, who’s incommunicado, every time he has one moment to reach for a phone, all he asks is about you. Don’t even get me started on Eric—”
“I don’t need the entire rundown of the family. I got the picture, thank you very much. But mom worries about us all,” she said. Her mother didn’t want any of them putting themselves in harm’s way. The difference was, Joey normally didn’t go out. He seemed perfectly content not to leave the sanctuary of his nerddom—he loved coding—and could sit in his office all day every day. Annie needed the mental and physical challenge that came with fieldwork. It was what she was used to, what she was good at. “Algorithms don’t give us all a hard-on, Joe.”
“Oh my God. What is wrong with you?” Joey huffed as Jax chuckled. “I want peace and quiet. It’s why I love coding, you disgusting woman.”
“She’s right, man, I’ve seen the way you look at your computer screen . . .” Jax teased.
A buzz from the intercom shut them all up.
The infamous Rocco Monroe was on his way in.
From the moment Annie had heard about Rocco being a potential client, she’d been secretly doing her research. She was a huge fan of all six-three, two hundred and ten pounds of lean muscles and tan skin. His shiny, black, slicked-back hair had started to gray around the temples, making him look mysterious and worldly. Rocco’s ethnicity was ambiguous and regularly speculated about in the media. He’d played everything from the all-American baseball player in Ballers and Dreams to a sheik in The Desert Warrior. But his signature feature were his cobalt blue eyes highlighted by thick inky eyelashes. The kind of eyelashes women paid hundreds of dollars to have. And the man knew how to work them. There were pictures of him with most A-list starlets as well as a number of models and singers. He’d dated just about every woman in Hollywood, and recently, he’d been named Most Eligible Bachelor and the Sexiest Man Alive by People magazine.
Annie knew why Joey was so hell-bent on keeping her away from him. Yes, part of it was her safety, but the other part was his charm. Joey was stupid enough to think she’d succumb to him like all those poor lovesick idiots Rocco’d seduced.
No, she wasn’t that kind of woman.
The arrogant playboy wouldn’t fuck up her concentration by batting his lashes at her. She would never jeopardize her reputation by swooning over any man.
That had happened once, and she wouldn’t bear that loss and humiliation ever again.
CHAPTER TWO
Things are getting heated. Reports from Villavincencio, Colombia—where Gabriel Mendoza’s illegitimate son is purported to reside—has banned El Traficante from playing in any cinema.
Rocco ran his fingers through his hair and straightened the seven-hundred-dollar Charvet shirt. Surely someone would miss the exorbitantly priced clothes he’d essentially stolen from his photo shoot that morning, but he was already running late for his early afternoon meeting because the crew had been ill-prepared and the female model had been a world-class diva on set. He’d left the matching silk tie thrown somewhere in the backseat of his car, undone the top two buttons of the shirt, and didn’t even bother to remove his Aviators from his face. This was a ridiculous meeting and he did not want to be there.
