She was drying her hands when he finished. “Where do you want to eat?”
He didn’t really care and said so.
She blushed and looked off to the side. “Um, there’s a new show about a superhero family I’ve been wanting to watch. The dad is one of my favorite actors.”
“So, we’ll watch it.”
“Really? You don’t mind, after all the work you put into dinner?”
“Nope, don’t mind a bit.”
It was so worth the grin that entirely lit her pixyish face. And the show wasn’t bad. Even better, though, was her reaction to it.
She blushed. “With my family, can you blame me?”
“I’d say they’d all consider you more the superhero than them.”
“Superbrain maybe, but Elle got the whole package. She’s beautiful, smart and she can kick ass too, just like Electra. Then there’s Matej. He’s not a secret agent like the others, but he’s doing such important work, he might as well be Dr. David Banner without the whole Hulk side-effects thing. Mykola has got the superspy thing going on too and then there’s Roman.”
“A scientist for the Army.”
“Tchya.” The look she gave him told Max Danusia didn’t buy the long-held cover story for a minute.
“Let me guess. You think being a military scientist has some superhero quality to it too?”
“Maybe, maybe not, but you and I both know Roman doesn’t work for the Army—at least not as a scientist. Nope, he’s no more a scientist than I am a cover model.”
“Why not a scientist? He’s got the degree and the brains.”
“And he carries himself like a soldier, a real soldier, not a lab rat. Roman’s too tanned to spend his days in the lab. And he’s got this scary aura, almost as scary as yours.”
“You think I’m scarier than Roman?” That would be a first.
“Yes, but maybe that’s because I see him through the eyes of a baby sister. I know he’d never willingly or knowingly hurt me.” The way she said it made Max wonder if Roman had unknowingly hurt his little sister.
“Who do you think he works for?” The Chief was going to shit kittens when he found out his baby sister wasn’t taken in by his cover.
Not one little tiny bit.
“He told my parents he was speaking at a symposium on polymer sciences in Europe. Funny thing, he’s not listed as a speaker.”
“Maybe they didn’t get his name up in time.”
“Maybe he’s on assignment somewhere else. My guess is out of country, or he would have told them he was going to be somewhere in the States. And he’s not in Europe, because he would never give his real destination.”
Hell, she should be working for the Atrati. “Maybe you’ve got an overactive imagination.”
Hurt flared in her eyes. “Maybe I’m not as dumb as my family seems to think. I realized Elle was some kind of government agent before her first husband died. I didn’t tell anyone else. Little sisters find secrets, they don’t share them. I knew when Mykola was working undercover on that drug case. I even knew where he was living, but I’m not about to tell him that. When he couldn’t save everybody, I knew he’d be broken up and when he showed up at Elle’s company, it was obvious there was more going on than anyone wanted to admit.”
“What the hell?”
“I use my brain for more than studying.”
“I think maybe you’re the scary one.”
She shook her head. “I’m just a little sister who wants to know more about her siblings than they’re willing to tell her.”
There was pain in Danusia’s voice he understood all too well. He’d heard it often enough in his mother’s tone when his daddy had refused to talk about his weeks on the road, saying that when he was home he didn’t want to think about his timen truck.