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  He reached out to touch a pen that had a microcomputer and phone in it.

  Vannie, the head of the lab, smacked his hand. “Don’t touch. We’re still testing that one.”

  Alan yanked his hand back and grinned down at one of their best developers. “Hi, my name is Alan Hyatt. I’m the new recruit.”

  “I’m Vannie and I’m busy.” She looked at Beth. “You got that supply thing worked out with the chip manufacturer?”

  “They’re working on it, but we’re probably going to be getting our product from Kulim. Is that a problem?”

  “I need it now. How long is that kind of shipping going to take?”

  “They can get here the day after tomorrow.”

  “Good.” Vannie turned to go.

  “She’s surly.”

  “I heard that,” floated over her shoulder as she disappeared in one of the lab cubicles.

  “Watch it. Vannie isn’t just one of our best developers, but she’s in charge of assigning gadgets for field operations.”

  “In other words, don’t piss her off or I’ll be carrying last year’s technology into battle.”

  “Something like that.”

  “She’s cute.”

  “I heard that,” came out in a growl over the cubicle wall and sounding ten times more menacing than Vannie’s reaction to the surly comment.

  “She may be diminutive in stature, but she makes up for it in attitude and she’s too shy to be comfortable with comments on her looks.”

  “Her? Shy?” Alan asked in disbelief as Beth led him from the lab before he really annoyed the other woman.

  Beth just laughed, but she wasn’t kidding. Not really. In the lab, Vannie was a fire-breathing dragon, but out of it, she was quiet and definitely wary of men.

  “I always wanted to be 007 when I was a kid,” Alan said as they walked back toward the main office and her desk.

  “I think most of the agents here did.”

  “Even the women?”

  “Hey, don’t knock Jane Bond…when they run out of movies to make on James, they’re going to start on her.”

  “Is there such a thing?”

  “In someone’s imagination and in our department…yes. We’ve got a couple of female agents that would make Old James look like a has-been.”

  “I believe it. I’m looking forward to meeting them,” he said with a wink.

  They were both laughing when they reached her desk.

  Ethan was standing beside it, his six-foot, three-inch frame towering over her empty chair. His sandy hair looked like he’d run his fingers through it and his green eyes were watching her with barely concealed impatience. “There you are.”

  “Um…yes.”

  She was used to his impatience, but not the unnerving way he was looking at her. Like he was really seeing her. She’d been noticing him for over two years, but the reverse…well, it was a totally new sensation, and not altogether pleasurable.

  Those feelings zinging along her nerve endings weren’t pleasure, they were trepidation. Right. Of course they were.

  “I was helping Alan to settle in.”

  “For over an hour?”

  “What? Have you been buzzing my desk every five minutes, or something?”

  His lips flatlined, but color scorched his sculpted cheekbones, confirming her teasing suspicion.

  She stared at him in shock. “I’ve got my cell phone on me. All you needed to do was call it.”

  “It wasn’t that important.”

  It had been important enough for him to come and hover over her desk, waiting for her return.

  “I didn’t think you’d be gone that long,” he added.

  “She was just giving me a tour of the facility,” Alan said, measuring the other man with an indecipherable expression.

  “Impressive, isn’t it?” Ethan asked, with some pride, his tone and expression as if the antagonism had never been there.

  “Very,” Alan replied.

  Ethan had been recruited for TGP right out of special agent training and had been with the organization for nine years already. The possessive pride made sense…the antagonism did not. Unless he saw her as an extension of the agency and thereby as belonging to him first and the new recruit second. Strictly in a professional capacity, of course.

  But she’d never seen this kind of territorial behavior in him before. It was really odd…and just a little exciting. Even if she knew it had nothing to do with her as a woman, or even being a person really.

  Too much about this man excited her.

  In her opinion, he was the best operative they had. Which also made him the worst candidate for her sexual fantasies imaginable, but she couldn’t stop thinking about him that way. She was just glad he didn’t have any idea about the thoughts that went through her head when he was around…or when she was alone in her bedroom at night.

  Ethan fixed his attention on her and her whole body tightened with primal anticipation she fought to hide. “I need some things from you.”

  Now why all of the sudden did that very frequent and very normal request sound so indecent?

  It was all she could do to bite her tongue and hold back an offer of anything he wanted.

  “I’ll see you later, then,” Alan said, drawing her eyes back to him.

  He saluted her with two fingers like he used to do before saying good-bye. She nodded distractedly and scooted around her desk to take her chair. Ethan was back to watching her with that strange, inner-shiver-inducing expression. And he was standing much, much too close.

  “What?” she finally asked in exasperation after several seconds of silence.

  “What’s going on between you and the new recruit?”

  “Nothing.”

  “I don’t think so. Earlier, you could have cut the under-currents with a knife and just now he was looking at you intimately.”

  “Intimately? I don’t think so.” She knew Alan’s intimate look and that hadn’t been it. It had been more his “just friends” look. She was pretty sure. Three years was a long time…his looks could have changed.

  “You’re wrong. He was looking at you like he knew you intimately.”

  She rolled her eyes, putting on a good show of humored indifference, but inside she was gasping for air. Where was all this personal interest coming from? She couldn’t afford for Ethan to start to notice her as a person. Her feelings for him were precarious enough as it was.

  “You’re imagining things,” she dismissed.

  “I’m a good operative, Beth.”

  “The best.”

  He smiled in acceptance of the compliment and leaned back against her desk, his strong thighs only inches from where her hands had automatically gone to rest on her keyboard. “I got that way by relying on my instincts. I’m not imagining anything.”

  She pulled her hands from the keyboard and pushed her chair away just a little bit, but the move did nothing to diminish the impact of his nearness. She could smell his expensive aftershave, the crisp clean scent of his designer T-shirt and signature black jeans, even the faint fragrance of boot leather so close to her. He was surrounding her with his presence as effectively as if he’d touched her and her heart wasn’t going to bear the strain. Neither were other, more demanding parts of her body.

  She took a deep breath and nearly cried out at how dumb that had been as every sense went up a notch in awareness of his masculine appeal. “Even if you aren’t, and I’m not conceding anything, it’s none of your business.”

  She was really proud of how calm and firm she sounded.

  But he looked totally unmoved by her declaration. “Maybe, but I’m curious. And when I’m curious, I always find out what I want to know.”

  “Curiosity killed the cat.”

  “Not any cats I’ve known. You can tell me, or I can find it out for myself. I’m good at that sort of thing, baby.”

  He’d never called her baby before and he said it so seductively that the word went through her like a five-alar
m fire, sending every nerve ending clamoring for things she could never allow. How she maintained her composure, she had no idea, but she managed it. Years as the daughter of a mostly absentee father and mother who made Machiavelli look like a political novice had been good for something, she guessed. She’d learned to hide her emotions early and had to draw on every scrap of that ability now.

  “I don’t know why you’d waste the time bothering, but whatever floats your boat. Be my guest.” She waved her hand in the air as if it didn’t matter to her one way or another.

  It did though. She didn’t need her public humiliation rehashed around the water cooler. But she wasn’t all that worried, even though she knew Ethan was an extraordinary agent. He could only find out her past from two people and she didn’t think either of them was going to talk. At least they’d better not.

  He reached out and touched her. Just a light brush with the back of his fingers along her jawline, but it sent the desires inside her careening out of control. “Don’t worry, little Beth, I intend to.”

  “Why?” she asked, meaning more than his determination to know her past. But why had he decided to start treating her like a flesh and blood woman now? Why did he care about her past? Why had he touched her?

  He shrugged. “Like I said. I’m curious.”

  The words hit her like a smack in the forehead. Curiosity. Nothing else. He wasn’t touching her sexually. He didn’t feel the sensual pull toward her she felt toward him. If she wasn’t careful, she was going to make an idiot of herself.

  She surged up from her chair, stepping toward her filing cabinet as if there was something in it she wanted. “You said you needed something.”

  “Yes, Beth, I need something all right.”

  The words were like dark sorcery, filtering through her mind and wreaking havoc with all sorts of connotations she knew he didn’t mean. But with a superhuman effort, she managed to maintain her professional façade and answer the question that had him so impatient to begin with.

  Chapter 2

  Ethan saved what he was working on and closed down his computer system, his movement precise and controlled. Frustrations rode him hard though.

  He’d come back from his last assignment with a name. Arthur Prescott. An information broker and the man responsible for the deaths of two foreign agents Ethan had considered his friends. The information broker was American and working out of a small town on the Oregon coast. His home was like a fortress overlooking the ocean, but he managed to keep his thumb on the pulse of high-tech discoveries nationwide.

  That wasn’t so surprising, considering many of the nation’s top minds in the computer industry could be found in Oregon, Washington, and California. But the man did not limit himself to brokering deals on pirated computer technology. He had his fingers in pies all over the country and Ethan was determined to see that those fingers got burned. Badly.

  But he couldn’t find any way into the bastard’s house or network of contacts. External attempts to crack Prescott’s computer system by TGP’s best hackers had proven fruitless, and for a rich man, the guy hired few employees, even domestics. There should be openings in his organization. There always were with men like this, but nothing was showing up. Anywhere.

  Prescott was one careful SOB, but Ethan was determined to find a way in and when he did, he was going to shut the man’s operation down. Completely. Ethan had no tolerance for people with no loyalty but to their own desires. Even mobsters could be patriotic but not this guy. He was in it for Number One and to hell with his own country and everyone else in it.

  He wasn’t even a spy for the opposition. Hell no, he sold information to anyone with enough money to pay for it. Prescott showed no favoritism and he had few friends, but then men like him rarely did. He didn’t have a lot of enemies either, though. He was a broker and the people who bought his information knew that he brokered deals with their enemies and they didn’t care. There weren’t a lot of scruples in the world of espionage.

  And this man had even fewer than most. Ethan was damn sure he was responsible for the deaths of more than just the foreign agents. Which gave him all the more reason to want to take Prescott down, but for right now he was hitting one brick wall after another.

  Time to go home and let his subconscious work on it while he focused on something else. Maybe he could set up a jump. Isaac had said he wanted to go skydiving. Maybe they could even invite the new guy. Get to know him a little better, find out how much metal he was made of.

  Ethan finished buttoning up his office before he stepped into the corridor.

  Beth was still at her desk, her curly brown hair falling out of its clip, her lower lip caught between her teeth while she closed her system down. Her movements were hurried and her expression almost furtive.

  “Got a hot date tonight?” he asked as he reached her. The possibility that she was going out with the new agent dispelled all thoughts about his current case from Ethan’s mind more effectively than if he’d taken a bungee leap into a three-hundred-foot ravine.

  Her slender shoulders jerked like he’d surprised her and she looked up, her soft brown eyes not focusing on him immediately. It was the kind of look a woman gave a man after they’d made love and she was still off in the never-never land of satisfaction. His gut tightened with something he’d worked very hard to sublimate for going on two years.

  It shouldn’t be so difficult. She was not his type. He went for sophisticated and usually glamorous…the type of woman who knew the score and didn’t mind the tally.

  With doe-brown eyes that sparkled behind glasses she was forever fiddling with, gentle features, and a figure that landed somewhere between Uma Thurman thin and Mae West curves, Beth looked and acted more like the girl next door. She was friendly and warm to everybody, a little stubborn, and a lot innocent. She was the kind of woman who expected marriage and a white picket fence on the other side of hot and sweaty sex, if she imagined getting down and dirty like that at all.

  He gave an internal shudder at the thought. Of the marriage…not the sex. His gut told him sex with her would be mind blowing, which made no sense. But he couldn’t shake the feeling. Nevertheless, he wasn’t even sort of ready to start settling down. Free climbing a sheer rock face didn’t make him break out in a sweat, but the idea of getting married would have him breaking out in hives all over if he let it take root.

  Beth was a committed kind of woman and he was a no-commitments-but-his-job kind of man.

  She was also the boss’s daughter and Whit could be a mean son when riled. He might be out of the field, but he still maintained an aura of hardness an agent of his caliber never really lost. Beth’s refusal to date agents was a well-established fact as well, but that didn’t stop Ethan’s libido from surging in her presence. It was getting damn annoying…not to mention physically uncomfortable.

  She had this way of looking incredibly innocent and enticingly sexy at the same time. All the internal reminders in the world that she was not an Ethan Crane type of woman were about as helpful as a taser against an automatic weapon.

  “Oh, it’s you.” She adjusted her glasses and made an obvious effort to focus on him. “Hi, Ethan. No hot date…just dinner with my folks.”

  If he knew the old man, dinner wasn’t for another couple of hours. “You’re leaving early tonight.”

  She sent a furtive glance to the corridor behind him. “Quitting time is five o’clock.”

  Was she hoping Hyatt was going to show?

  “Not for you. Not usually.” He’d teased her about it a few times, saying she couldn’t have much of a social life if she spent all of her time at work.

  She’d always replied that there was plenty of time for socializing after seven o’clock. His lips quirked now at the memory. That was one of the things he liked about her. She might not be sexy in the conventional way. She didn’t exude confidence like a lot of the female agents, or even what he might expect for the daughter of the old man and his politically well-connected wi
fe, but Beth always gave as good as she got.

  And watching her with her dad was like seeing two peas in a pod, though he didn’t think either one of them noticed the resemblance.

  “Even I like to get home on time once in a while.” She was grabbing her purse and locking her desk as she spoke. As if she was in a real hurry to leave.

  Like he’d told her earlier, the one bane of his existence was his curiosity and this woman, as much as she was so not his type, sparked more curiosity in him than most. She was too private. Which he should understand, being the same way…but it made him want to peel away the layers.

  He’d refrained up to now because he knew it was dangerous to get to know her better. With some women, familiarity bred contempt, but he had a feeling that learning more about Beth would just lure him in further. It didn’t make a lick of sense, but then hormones and the male psyche rarely did.

  Hadn’t his mother and older sister always said so?

  He leaned against her desk, blocking her exit. “You meeting someone before dinner?”

  She stared at him like she couldn’t comprehend what he was asking. Then, her dark eyes narrowed. “I am not, not unless you count my two new kittens.” She bit her lip, frowning. “But if I were, that would not be any of your business.”

  He shrugged.

  “Do I ask you about your personal life?”

  “You don’t need to. You have access to my voicemail and e-mail and take a lot of my messages.” She probably knew more about his social life than he did.

  “That is not the point. The point is, I’m not nosy and I don’t ask. I would appreciate the same level of courtesy.”

  “I wouldn’t mind if you asked.”

  “That’s not the…” Her voice trailed off when she realized she was repeating herself and she glared at him like it was his fault. “Well, I do mind. Can we just leave it at that?”

  “You sure are prickly for a woman who doesn’t have plans later.”

  She made a sound like steam escaping a safety valve. “I am not prickly.”

  “Of course not. In fact, she’s rather sweet,” Hyatt said from behind Ethan.