Praise for the novels of New York Times bestselling author
SUZANNE BROCKMANN

“Zingy dialogue, a great sense of drama, and a pair of lovers who generate enough steam heat to power a whole city.”

—Romantic Times BOOKreviews on Hero Under Cover

“Brockmann deftly delivers another testosterone-drenched, adrenaline-fueled tale of danger and desire that brilliantly combines superbly crafted, realistically complex characters with white-knuckle plotting.”

—Booklist on Force of Nature

“Readers will be on the edge of their seats.”

—Library Journal on Breaking Point

“Another excellently paced, action-filled read. Brockmann delivers yet again!”

—Romantic Times BOOKreviews on Into the Storm

“Funny, sexy, suspenseful, and superb.”

—Booklist on Hot Target

“Sizzling with military intrigue and sexual tension, with characters so vivid they leap right off the page, Gone Too Far is a bold, brassy read with a momentum that just doesn’t quit.”

—New York Times bestselling author Tess Gerritsen

“An unusual and compelling romance.”

—Affaire de Coeur on No Ordinary Man

“Sensational sizzle, powerful emotion and sheer fun.”

—Romantic Times BOOKreviews on Body Language

Hero Under Cover
Suzanne Brockmann

www.millsandboon.co.uk

MILLS & BOON

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For those fabulous Kuhlmans—

Bill, who’s been trying to teach

me simply to be happy, and Jodie,

who’s been showing us all how

to be happy for years

CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER ONE

“YOU’RE GOING TO DOwhat!”

“A strip search,” the FBI agent said, heading for the door. “Please follow me.”

Dr. Annie Morrow crossed her arms and planted herself firmly. She wasn’t going anywhere, that was for damn sure. “You’ve gone through my luggage with a fine-tooth comb, you’ve X-rayed the hell out of my purse, and now you want to do a strip search? This is harassment, plain and simple. You’ve held me here for nearly five hours without letting me contact an attorney. My civil rights are being violated, pal, and I’ve had damn near enough.”

On the other side of the one-way mirror, CIA operative Kendall “Pete” Peterson stood silently, watching Dr. Anne—nickname Annie—Morrow, renowned archaeologist and art historian, professional artifact authenticator. According to her file, she was thirty-two years old, and one of the world’s foremost experts on ancient metalworkings—coins, statues, works of art, jewelry. The daughter of two archaeologists, she’d been born on a dig in Egypt. She’d lived in thirteen different countries and participated in nineteen different excavations, and that was before she’d even attended college.

What the file didn’t tell him was that she was filled with a seemingly limitless supply of energy. During the course of the five hours he’d been watching her, she had sat still for only a very short time. Mostly she paced; sometimes she stood, she leaned, she tapped her foot, but generally she moved around the small interrogation room like a caged animal.

The file also didn’t describe the stubborn tilt to her chin, or the way her blue eyes blazed when she was angry. In fact, the photo included hadn’t managed to capture much of anything out of the ordinary, except maybe her long, shining brown hair, and her almost too-sensuous lips.

But in person, in motion, she was beautiful….

“So that’s our little Dr. Morrow,” came a voice at his shoulder.

Peterson turned to look at Whitley Scott, the man in charge of the FBI side of the investigation. Scott smiled at him, his eyes crinkling behind his thick glasses. “Sorry I’m late, Captain,” he said. “My flight was delayed.”

Peterson didn’t smile back. “We’ve been holding her for hours,” he said. “She’s pretty steamed.”

Through the speaker system, he could hear Dr. Morrow still arguing with FBI agent Richard Collins.

“I’ve told you nine million times, or is it ten million now? I was in England to pick up an artifact—a gold-cast death mask from the nineteenth century—for a client. I wasn’t out of the U.S. long enough to do whatever illicit crimes you’re trying to accuse me of. The shipping papers for the death mask are all in order—you’ve admitted that much,” she said. “What I’d like to know is when you intend to let me leave.”

“After the strip search,” Collins said. He was a good man for this job, Peterson thought. Collins could outargue anyone. He was solid, steady and extremely patient. And he was absolutely never fazed.

“She’s just your type, Pete,” Whitley said, with a sideways glance at the taller man. “Something tells me you’re going to enjoy this job.”

Peterson didn’t smile, but his dark brown eyes flashed in Scott’s direction for a microsecond. “She’s too skinny,” he said.

In the interrogation room, Annie Morrow had had enough. She slammed her hand down on the table, pulling herself up and out of the chair she’d recently thrown herself into. “You want to strip-search me?” she said. “Fine. Strip-search me and let me get the hell out of here.”

She shrugged out of her baggy linen jacket, tossing it onto a chair as she kicked her sneakers off. A quick yank pulled her loose red shirt over her head, and she quickly unbuttoned her pants.

“Umm…” Collins said, rattled. “Not here…”

“Why not?” Annie asked much too sweetly, her eyes bright with anger as she stood in the middle of the room in her underwear. “Oh, relax. I have bathing suits that are more revealing than this.”

A slow grin spread across Peterson’s face. Man, she’d managed to faze Collins. She knew darn well he had wanted her to follow him to a private room where she’d be searched by a female agent. Yet she’d undressed in front of him, simply to upset him. He felt a flash of something, and realized that he liked her—he liked her spirit, her energy, her nerve. He frowned. She was a suspect, under investigation. He wasn’t supposed to like her. Respect, admire even, but not like. But, man, standing there, looking at her, he found an awful lot to like.

Annie turned and gestured toward the mirror, hands on her hips. “Don’t you think the rest of the boys want to get in on the fun?”

She knew they were watching her. She was really something, really sharp. Her file said she’d had a 4.0 average throughout college, graduating with a Ph.D. in half the time it normally took. He liked smart women, particularly when they came wrapped in a package like this one.

Her bra and panties were both black and lacy, contrasting the smooth paleness of her fair skin. Her breasts were full, her waist narrow, flaring out to slender hips and long, beautiful legs. “I take it back,” Pete said to Whitley Scott. “She’s not too skinny.”

She seemed to be looking directly at him. He could see the pulse beating in her neck. Each ragged, angry breath she took made her breasts rise and fall.

“Do you intend to harass me every time I leave and re-enter the country?” she said.

Pete glanced at Whitley. The older man shrugged. “She’s looking right at you,” Whitley said.

“You know she can’t see me,” Pete said, but he motioned for the mike to be turned on. “The Athens investigation,” he said, raising his voice so the mike would pick him up, “hasn’t been closed.”

Annie threw up her hands and began to pace. “Well, there we go,” she said. “We’re finally getting somewhere. You are trying to harass me. You don’t give a damn about this death mask. You still think I have something to do with the jerks that bombed and robbed that museum.”

Pete tried to keep his attention on her words instead of her body. But it wasn’t easy. She moved like a cat, the muscles in her legs rippling….

“How many times do I have to tell you that I am not a thief?” she continued. “Shoot, I wish I were. It would make this a whole hell of a lot easier. But I’m not about to confess to crimes I didn’t commit.”

She stopped pacing, coming back to stare directly up at him again. It was eerie, as if she really could see him through the glass.

“There was an explosion and a robbery at the gallery in England two hours after you left it,” Peterson said, his voice distorted over the cheap speakers. “This time, people died.”

Peterson watched Annie’s face carefully as a range of emotions battled through her. Anger finally won.

“So, naturally, you believe I was involved. That’s great, that’s really great. Innocent people die, and the best you guys can do is to give me a hard time as I get on and off planes. You should be over there chasing the creeps that did the bombing, not playing peekaboo with somebody who gets queasy when she cuts her finger, pal.”

“Doesn’t it seem a little strange that you should go to European art galleries twice in five months, and within hours after you leave, each of them is hit by a bomb and a robbery?” Peterson had been in this business long enough to know that when there was smoke, somebody was trying to hide a fire. He wasn’t buying the indignant act. “How do you explain the fact that you left the Athens convention hours before anyone else?”

“I don’t!” Annie countered, eyes aflame. “I’ve already told the FBI, and the CIA, and everyone else who’s asked, that I left because I’d seen everything at the exhibit and I wanted to catch an early flight home.” She was pacing the floor now, clearly upset. “What ever happened to innocent until proven guilty? Huh? Just what the hell is going on here?” she shouted, right through the glass at Peterson.

There was silence. Big fat silence. It disarmed her as Pete knew it would. Dr. Anne Morrow was low on patience, and impatient people didn’t like being made to wait. She turned, gathering her clothes. “If we’re through…” she said pointedly.

“But we’re not,” Pete said. “It’s called a strip search for a reason.”

What little remained of her patience snapped. “Oh, give me a break,” she said, throwing down her clothes and striding over to the mirror. She came up really close—close enough for Pete to see the details of her thick, dark lashes and the streaks of lighter color in the deep blue of her eyes. Close enough for him to see that her skin was as smooth and soft as it looked. If the glass of the window hadn’t been between them, he could have lifted his hand and touched her.

Peterson felt Whitley watching him, and somehow he managed to remain expressionless. But, man, it had been a long time since he’d looked at a woman and wanted her this badly. It had been a real long time.

“I assure you that everything I’m hiding in my underwear is attached, pal,” she said. “No removable parts.”

“Sorry,” he said. “I’m being paid a lot of money not to trust you.”

“What exactly are you looking for?” she asked. “Maybe if you tell me, I can check and see if I’ve got it on me somewhere.”

“You ever hear of mules?” Pete asked.

She froze.

He’d managed to shock her, but somehow he didn’t feel triumphant about it. “Mules are people who smuggle illegal substances into the country inside their bodies,” he said.

“I know what a mule is,” she said. “Tell me honestly, do you really think I’ve swallowed the crown jewels? Whole?”

“Not swallowed,” he said, and then was silent, letting her figure it out for herself.

“Oh, Christmas,” she said. Her face paled slightly beneath her tan, and her freckles stood out. “We’re really trying to go for total humiliation here, aren’t we?”

“Just going by the book,” Pete said. “And the book says that you’ll be searched—completely. We have a physician waiting in another room.”

“Oh, you mean you don’t want to do it right here?” Annie said. She was furious. He could almost see her pulse accelerating as he watched the vein in her neck. “You sure you trust this doctor to do it right, pal? I would’ve thought you’d want to watch.”

“I’d love to watch,” he said, his voice coming out low and intimate, even through the tinny speakers. “And by the way, the name’s not pal.”

“I prefer to personalize the disembodied voices that talk to me,” she said. “It helps me feel more human. But you wouldn’t know about that, would you?”

She turned away from the window suddenly, but not before he saw the glint of tears in her eyes.

Pete felt ashamed of himself. What was wrong with him? Why did he have to be so rough on her?

He was rough on her because he felt for her, because he found himself believing her. And he had absolutely no facts to back him up, just gut instinct. Gut, thought Pete, yeah, right. Aim a little lower…. He couldn’t let himself forget that Dr. Anne Morrow was a suspect, quite possibly a thief, connected to people who wouldn’t think twice about killing to satisfy their greed.

He watched her pull on her pants and then her shirt as the female agent led her from the room. With a nod, he ordered the microphone connection cut.

Whitley Scott was watching him.

“She’s gutsy,” Pete said to him. “You’ve got to give her that much.”

“I think she’s hiding something,” Scott said. “We’ve got to find a way to get closer to her. But how?”

“Good question.” Pete leaned against the back wall of the room, crossing his arms in front of him. “I’m not exactly qualified to work in her laboratory. Or even on one of her digs.”

“Client?” Whitley asked. “You could bring her some rare artifact to authenticate. One thing leads to another—a little dinner, a little who knows what, and she’s telling you her deepest, darkest secrets.”

“Perfect,” Pete said expressionlessly. “Except she never dates her clients as a rule. No exception.”

“Next-door neighbor?”

“She lives over her lab in a restored Victorian house up in Westchester County,” Pete said. “Expensive neighborhood. Way out of our budget. It would cost us close to half a million to buy one of the houses next door—provided someone was even willing to sell. And I’ve already checked—no one wants to rent.”

Whitley nodded, turning toward the door. “Well, keep thinking,” he said. “We’ll come up with something sooner or later.”

CHAPTER TWO

ANNIE PULLED HER LITTLE HONDA into the driveway and turned the engine off. Damn, she was tired. Damn the CIA and damn the FBI and damn everyone who was working so hard to make her life so miserable.

Five months. The harassment had been going on almost nonstop for five months. And now, after the bombing in England, it was only going to get worse. Already everyone in town knew that she was the subject of an FBI investigation. The agents had talked with everyone she knew, and probably a lot of people she didn’t know. Her college roommate had called last month to say that even she’d been questioned about Annie. And it had been five years since they’d last gotten together….

Damn, damn, damn, she thought. And particularly damn that horrible man who’d spoken to her from behind the one-way window. Somebody had referred to him as Captain Peterson. If she ever ran into him, she’d let him have a good swift kick where it counted. Except she didn’t have a clue what he looked like. She wouldn’t even be able to recognize him from his voice, not from hearing it over those awful interrogation room speakers.

She stepped out of the car and went around to the other side to pull the package from England from the passenger seat. Damn these gold artifacts, too, she thought, as she barely lifted the crate. They always weigh a ton.

Her assistant’s car was still in the driveway, so instead of going up to her apartment on the top floors of the house, Annie went into the lab. She could hear the sound of the computer keyboard clacking and followed it to the back room, where the office was set up.

Cara MacLeish was inputting data at her usual breakneck speed. She didn’t even stop as she looked up and grinned.

“Welcome back,” she said. Her short brown curls stood straight up in their usual tangle, and her eyes were warm behind her horn-rimmed glasses. “I thought you’d be here sooner. Like six hours ago.”

Annie lowered the crate holding the gold death mask onto her desk top, then brushed some strands of hair back from her face. “I was detained,” she said simply.

Cara stopped typing, giving her boss her full, sympathetic attention, swearing imaginatively.

“Took the words right out of my mouth,” Annie said, smiling ruefully.

“FBI again?” Cara asked.

“FBI, CIA.” Annie shrugged. “They all want a piece of me.”

“Well, look on the bright side,” Cara suggested.

They both fell silent, trying to find one.

“They haven’t been able to make any charges stick,” Cara finally said.

Annie pulled a rocking chair closer to the computer console and sat down.

“And you haven’t lost any business because of this,” Cara said, warming up to it now. She stretched her thin arms over her head, then yawned, standing up to get the kinks out of her long legs. “In fact, I think business has picked up. We had a ton of calls while you were away.”

Annie watched her assistant cross to the telephone answering machine. Next to it, a stack of little pink message slips were held by a bright red wooden duck with a clothespin for a mouth.

“Jerry Tillit called,” Cara said. “He’s back from South America, and he’s got some Mayan stuff for you to look at.”

“Did you talk to him, or get the message off the machine?” Annie asked.

Cara blushed. “I spoke to him.”

“Did he ask you out again?” Annie grinned.

“Yes.”

“And…?”

“We don’t date clients, remember?” Cara said.

Annie corrected her. “Jerry’s not a client, he’s a friend.”

“He’s also a client.”

“So he’s also a client,” Annie admitted. “But just because I don’t want to date clients doesn’t mean you can’t, MacLeish. Will you please give the man a break?”

“I did.”

“You…What?”

The taller woman grinned, pushing her hair back from her face and sitting down on top of the desk. “I told him I’d go out with him. He’s coming up to drop his finds off this Saturday. We’re going out after that.”

Annie glanced around the cozy office. The room was really quite large, but with two desks, two computers, a fax machine, a copier and all sorts of chairs and bookshelves, there wasn’t much room even to walk. But Cara MacLeish was an essential fixture here. “Don’t you be going and getting married, MacLeish,” she said sternly. “No running off to South America with Jerry Tillit.”

Cara grinned. “I’m only going to the movies with him,” she said. “The next logical step might be a dinner date. Not marriage.”

“You don’t know Tillet as well as I do,” Annie muttered. “And that man has a definite thing for you….”

“Speaking of marriage,” Cara said, flipping through the phone message slips. “Nick York called—five different times. Something about a party down at the Museum of Modern Art sometime this month.”

Annie released her hair from its ponytail, letting it swing free in a gleaming brown sheet. She leaned back in the rocking chair, resting her feet on top of the computer desk. “Shame on you, MacLeish. You know the words marriage and York cannot be uttered in the same sentence,” she said. “York wants only two things from me. One of them is free lab work. And the other has nothing to do with marriage. Who else called?”

“The freight guy at Westchester Airport said a package from France will be in Saturday.”

“Great.” Annie sighed. “Like I’ve got any chance of getting to work on it in the next decade.” She closed her eyes. “Okay, so I pick it up on Saturday. What else?”

“A guy named Benjamin Sullivan called,” Cara said. “Ring any bells?”

Annie’s eyes popped open. “Yeah, of course. He’s the owner of the piece I just picked up. What did he want?”

“He left a message on the machine, saying that we should ignore Alistair Golden if he calls,” Cara said. She laughed. “I didn’t recognize Sullivan’s name, but it seemed kind of mystically, cosmically correct to get a message from a stranger telling us to ignore Golden. I always ignore Alistair Golden. Ignoring Golden is one of the things I do best.”

Golden was Annie’s chief competitor, and he usually handled all the U.S.-bound artworks and artifacts from the English Gallery.

“And sure enough,” Cara said, snickering, “the little weasel called. He was in a real snit, whining about something—I’m not sure exactly what, because I was working very hard to ignore him.”

Annie laughed. “I think I know what the bug up his pants was,” she said. “When I got to the gallery, Sullivan’s package was already crated and sealed. Golden had assumed he’d be doing the authentication job, so he’d already done the packing work.”

“Golden packed the crate for you?” Cara said with great pleasure. “No wondering his whine was set on stun. He wanted you to call him back, but unless you want to subject yourself to a solid forty-five minutes of complaining, I wouldn’t. I give you my permission to use the ‘scatterbrained employee didn’t give me the message’ excuse for the next time he catches up with you.”

Annie smiled. “Thanks. Did Ben Sullivan want me to call him back?”

“He said something about going out of town,” Cara said, glancing back at the phone message slip. “Who is he? How do you know him? Come on, fill me in. Height, weight, marital status?”

“As far as I know, he’s single,” Annie said, then smiled. “But he’s also seventy-five years old, so get that matchmaking gleam out of your eyes.”

Cara made a face in disappointment.

“Ben’s an old friend of my parents.” Annie leaned back in her chair, breathing deeply. “I don’t think I’ve seen him since, wow, since I was about fifteen. Apparently, he was talking to Mom and Dad recently, and they told him about me—you know, that I opened this lab a few years ago. When the offer to buy came in on this death mask, he requested that I do the necessary authentication.”

“Instead of Golden,” Cara said.

Annie grinned. “Instead of Golden.” She sat forward, stretching her arms over her head. “Anyone else call?”

Cara nodded. “Yeah. I saved the best message for last. It came in on the answering machine. Let me play it for you.”

Cara slid off the table, handing Annie the message slips, then pushed the message button on the machine. The tape rewound quickly, then a voice spoke.

It was odd, all whispery and strange, as if the caller had deliberately tried to disguise his voice. “The mask you have gained possession of does not belong to the world of the living. It is the property of Stands Against the Storm. Deliver it at once to his people, or be prepared to face his evil spirit’s rage. The doors to the twilight world are opened wide, and Stands Against the Storm will take you back with him.”

There was a click as the line was disconnected. Cara punched one of the buttons on the machine and the tape stopped running. “So, okay.” She grinned. “Which one of your weirdo friends left that message? And who the heck is Stands Against the Storm?”

But Annie wasn’t laughing. Swearing softly under her breath, she stood up, hoisted the crate containing the death mask off her desk and went down the hall toward the lab. Cara followed, her grin fading.

“What?” Cara asked, watching as Annie locked the front door. “What’s the matter?”

“We’ve got to put this in the safe,” Annie said, gesturing to the package in her arms.

“Annie, who was that on the tape?” Cara asked, eyes narrowing.

“Some crackpot,” Annie said, heading back to the sturdy vault that sat directly in the middle of the house, surrounded by the lab in the front and the office in the rear. It was secure, impenetrable. She would feel a lot better after she locked the gold death mask inside.

“If it was just some crackpot,” Cara demanded, “why did you rush across the room and lock the door?”

Annie opened the innocuous-looking closet door to reveal the combination lock of the big safe. She spun the red dial several times before entering the numbers. “Because it would be foolish not to take precautions, crackpot or not.” She looked up at her assistant. “You must not have had a chance to read the background info I left you on this project.”

Cara shrugged expansively. “I cannot tell a lie. I had about an hour of free time last night, and I spent it watching ‘Quantum Leap’ instead of reading about nineteenth-century Indian chiefs.”

Setting the package on the top shelf of the vault, Annie swung the door shut, locking it securely. “Native Americans, not Indians,” she corrected Cara. “In a nutshell, the artifact we’re testing for authenticity is supposedly a gold casting of a death mask of a Navaho named Stands Against the Storm. He was one of the greatest Native American leaders. He was a brilliant man who truly understood Western culture. He tried to help the white leaders understand his own people as thoroughly.”

Cara followed her back into the office. “How come I’ve never heard of him?” she asked. “I mean, everyone knows Sitting Bull and Geronimo. Why not this guy?”

Annie sat down behind her desk, frowning at the chaos on its surface. Why was it that paperwork seemed to multiply whenever she went away for a few days? “Sitting Bull and Geronimo were warriors,” she said. “Stands Against the Storm was a man of peace. He didn’t get as much press as the war party leaders, but not from lack of trying. In fact, he was in England, trying to drum up support for his people among the British, when he died.” She shook her head. “His death was a major blow to the Navaho cause.”

“If Stands Against the Storm was such a peaceful guy,” Cara said, “then why would he have an evil spirit?”

“The Navaho believe that when people die, they become ghosts or spirits,” Annie said. “It doesn’t matter how nice or kind a person was during his life. When he dies, he becomes malevolent and he gets back at all the people who did him wrong during his lifetime. Chances are, the nicer the guy was, the more evil his spirit would be—the more he’d have to avenge. You know, nice guys finish last and all that.”

“But if Stands Against the Storm died in England,” Cara said, “then how could his spirit come after you? Assuming for the sake of this discussion that the Navaho are right about this spirit stuff,” she added.

“Death is a major problem for the Navaho,” Annie said. She smiled. “Actually, I can’t think of too many cultures that look forward to death, but the Navaho really don’t like it. In fact, if someone dies inside a house, even today, that house will sometimes be abandoned. See, the Navaho believe that the place a person dies in, and the things he touches before dying or even after he’s dead, can contain his bad spirit. Making a death mask would be a real invitation to disaster. The Navaho would never make something like a death mask. But it was the custom at the time in England, you know, to make a mold of the dead person’s face and then cast a mask from it to get a likeness. I guess Stands Against the Storm was something of a celebrity—and certainly a curiosity, a Red Indian from the Wild West—so when he died, they made a death mask.”

Annie looked over at the answering machine. What she couldn’t figure out was how it had become public knowledge that she was working on authenticating Stands Against the Storm’s death mask. Unless Ben Sullivan, or Steven Marshall, the purchaser, had leaked something….

“Hey, Annie?”

She met Cara’s worried brown eyes. “It just occurred to me,” the taller woman said. “That message on the answering machine is basically a…Well, it’s a death threat.”

“It was just some nut.” Annie shrugged it off. “Besides, I don’t believe in ghosts.”

“You gotta admit, it’s creepy,” Cara said. “Maybe we should, I don’t know…Call the police?”

Annie groaned, dropping her head onto her arms on the desk top. “No more police, no more FBI, no way. I’d much rather be haunted by the spirit of Stands Against the Storm.”

ANNIE SAT UP IN BED, WIDE-EYED in the darkness as the burglar alarm shrieked.

Her heart pounded from being awakened so suddenly. She clicked on the light and grabbed her robe. Oh, Christmas! This damned alarm was going to raise the entire neighborhood.

She ran down the stairs two at a time and turned on the lights in the foyer as she crossed toward the alarm-system control panel.

Oh my God, thought Annie. It wasn’t a malfunction! The alarm schematic showed a breach in the system on the first floor. A window in the lab was marked as the intruder’s point of entry.

Suddenly she was very glad for the shrieking alarm. Across the street, she could see the neighbors’ lights go on, and she knew they’d call the police—they always did. She ran back up to her room and opened the drawer on her bedside table. Oh, damn, damn, damn, where was it?

She pulled the drawer out of the table and emptied it onto her bed. There it was.

She grabbed the toy gun, unwinding a stray piece of string from the barrel, and headed toward the stairs. She ran down and kicked open the door to the lab. She flicked on the light switch with her elbow and the bright fluorescent bulbs illuminated the room.

No one was there—either human or inhuman.

But the window had been broken.

Feeling just a little silly, she put the plastic gun down on the lab counter and stepped carefully toward the large rock that had been thrown through the window. There was a piece of paper attached to it with a rubber band.

Spinning lights from two police cars caught her eye as they pulled into her driveway. She went to the front door and keyed into the control panel the code to cancel the alarm. The shrill noise stopped instantly. Taking a deep breath, she opened the door to the town police officers.

They came inside and looked at the broken window. One of them made a quick survey of the house, checking to make sure all the windows and doors were still locked, while the other radioed in to the station.

Big doings in a small town. Annie sighed. She went into the kitchen and put on a pot of coffee. Something told her this was going to be a long night.

PETERSON WOKE UP INSTANTLY and answered the phone after only one ring.

“Yeah,” he said, looking at the glowing numbers of his clock: 3:47. He ran one hand across his face. “This better be good.”

“It’s Scott. Can you talk?” Whitley Scott said in his flat New Jersey accent.

“Yeah, I’m awake,” Pete said, sitting up and turning on his light.

“No, I mean…are you alone?”

“Yeah, I’m alone.” Pete rubbed his eyes. “If you check my file, you’ll see that I haven’t been involved with anyone since last March.”

“I’ve already checked your file,” the FBI agent said easily. “And it says you’ve got something of a reputation as a tomcat.”

Pete was silent, thinking about that new administrative assistant in the New York City office. Carolyn something. She had curly brown hair and legs a mile long. And eyes that made it more than clear that she was interested in him, no-strings-attached. She’d invited him out for a drink last night. If he had gone with her, she’d probably be lying here right now, next to him.

But he’d turned her down.

Why? Maybe because, regardless of the fact that he’d be using her the exact same way, he was tired of being the flavor of the month for ambitious, upwardly mobile women.

Even though he wasn’t overly tall, he knew that with his black hair and his dark brown eyes, he had the dark and handsome part down cold.

For years, he’d used his good looks to his advantage, but recently it had been rubbing him the wrong way. His relationships, which usually lasted a month or two, were getting shorter and shorter. And when he’d looked at that administrative assistant last night, he hadn’t felt the usual heat from knowing that she wanted him. If he’d felt anything at all, it had been disdain.

More than once over the past few months, the thought of retiring from the agency had crossed his mind. The closer he got to his fortieth birthday, the more aware he seemed to become of an emptiness in his life.

He couldn’t figure out what he was looking for. He was far too jaded to believe in true love—hell, he was too jaded to believe in any kind of love. And if he stopped having relationships based on animal attraction, on sex, he was in for a whole lot of cold, lonely nights….

“You still there?” Whitley Scott asked.

“Yeah.”

“We’ve found a way for you to get close to Anne Morrow,” Scott said. “She practically handed it to us on a platter.”

Pete listened intently as Scott explained. It would work. It would definitely work.

After he hung up the phone and turned the light off, Pete stared up at the dark ceiling, feeling a wave of anticipation so charged that it was almost sexual. In a sudden flash of memory, he saw black lace against pale skin, and a pair of wide, blue eyes….

“THE NOTE SAID WHAT?” Cara’s voice rose sharply.

“It was stupid,” Annie said, clearing some of the clutter off her desk. “I can’t believe the police took it seriously.”

“When someone bothers to send a message via a rock through a window,” Cara said tartly, “it should probably be taken seriously.”

“But, God, did they have to notify the FBI?” Annie said. “You know, the Federal agents got over here really quickly. I’m wondering if they weren’t somehow responsible. I mean, they’ve been hassling me every other way imaginable. Why not a rock through a window?”

“With a note saying ‘Prepare to die’?” Cara asked. “I doubt it, Annie.”

“And I seriously doubt that a Native American group, no matter how radical or fringe, would resort to this kind of petty threat,” Annie said. “The FBI can go ahead and investigate, but they’re just wasting their time.” She sat back in her chair, her normally clear blue eyes shadowed with fatigue. “I just don’t need the FBI’s garbage on top of everything else. You know, they wanted to provide me with round-the-clock protection. Surveillance is more like it. I told them I could protect myself perfectly well, thank you very much.”

“I don’t suppose you told them that the likeliest suspect is a ghost called Stands Against the Storm,” Cara said. “Maybe we should’ve called Ghostbusters instead of the police.” She sang the familiar horn riff to the original movie theme.

Annie laughed, searching for something on her desk to throw at her friend. She settled for an unsharpened pencil.

Cara dodged the pencil and grinned. “Of course, if a ghost isn’t a freaky enough suspect, there are always Navaho witches.”

Annie tiredly closed her eyes. “I see you finally read the background information I gave you.”

“‘Quantum Leap’ reruns weren’t on last night,” Cara said. “So I had some free time. Fascinating stuff. I particularly liked the part that said the Navaho believe some people—who appear to be normal during the day—are really witches. And if plain old witches who can cast spells and wreak havoc aren’t bad enough, these witches can transform themselves into giant wolves at night and roam the countryside. Very pleasant.”

“Most cultures have some version of bogeymen that stalk the night,” Annie said. “Werewolves are nothing new.”

“Yeah, but these werewolves are neighbors, relatives even,” Cara said. “And they start doing their witchy business when they get jealous of another person’s wealth or good luck or—Hey, that’s it.” Cara grinned. “Call the FBI off. I’ve figured it out. Alistair Golden is really one of these witches, and he’s cast horrible bad-luck spells on you because you’re starting to steal away some of his business. Although, actually he’d make a better weasel man than a wolf man.”

“There’s a big hole in your theory,” Annie said. “Golden’s not Navaho.”

“Good point.” Cara’s eyes narrowed, taking in the pale, almost grayish cast to her friend’s face. “The guy fixing the window won’t be done for another hour or so,” she said. “Why don’t you go upstairs and take a nap? I can hold down the fort.”

The phone rang.

“That’s got to be my call from Dallas,” Annie said. “I called Ben Sullivan but he’s out of touch for a while. He’s on a dig in Turkey, so my contact for the death mask is the buyer, Steve Marshall.”

Cara picked up the phone. “Dr. Morrow’s office. MacLeish speaking.” She listened for a moment, her eyebrows disappearing under her bangs. “One moment, please,” she said. She covered the speaker with her hand as she gave the handset to Annie. “What, are you clairvoyant, now, too? It’s Steven Marshall. Calling from Dallas.”

Annie smiled wanly as she took the phone. “Hello?”

“Dr. Morrow,” came the thick Texas drawl. “My secretary tells me you’ve been trying to reach me?”

“Yes, Mr. Marshall,” Annie said. “Thanks for getting back to me so quickly. We’re having a little problem.”

Briefly she described both the threatening phone call and the follow-up note that had come through her window.

“I don’t think there’s any real danger,” Annie said. “But I felt I had to notify you and give you the opportunity to have the artifact authenticated by an establishment with higher security.”

There was a moment of silence. Then Marshall said, “But…you’re the best, aren’t you, darlin’?”

“Well, yes, I like to think so,” Annie said.

“I’m more concerned with your personal safety,” he said. “Are you frightened? Do you want to get out of this contract?”

“Not at all. It’s just that I may not be set up to provide security at the level necessary to protect the piece,” she explained.

“Oh, that’s just a little bitty problem,” Marshall said with the easy nonchalance of the very wealthy. “We can solve that, no sweat. I’ll provide the security, darlin’. I’ll send a man over later this afternoon. He’ll be responsible for the safety of the death mask. He’ll also act as your bodyguard.”

Oh, great, just what she needed. A pair of biceps following her around. She took a deep, calming breath. “Mr. Marshall, that’s not necessary—”

“No, no, darlin’, I insist.”

“But I’m backlogged,” Annie protested. “It’s going to be weeks before I even get a chance to look at the artifact. And the tests I need to perform will take that much time again. My contract states an estimated completion date of mid-December. That’s over two months—”

“I’ll tell the guy to be prepared to stay for a while.”

“But—”

“I gotta get back to work now,” Marshall said. “Nice talking to you, darlin’. I’ll be in touch.”

“But—”

He hung up.

“But I don’t want a bodyguard!” Annie wailed to the buzz of the disconnected line.

“A what?” Cara asked.

Annie hung up the phone with a muttered curse. “I’m going to take a nap,” she said, stalking toward the door. “Maybe when I wake up, this nightmare will be over.”

“Did you say bodyguard?” Cara’s voice trailed after her.

Annie didn’t answer.

Cara’s face broke into a wide grin. A bodyguard. For Annie. This was going to be an awful lot of fun to watch.

CHAPTER THREE

ANNIE STRETCHED, LUXURIATING, enjoying having spent the day in bed. It was a real self-indulgence, particularly since she had so much to do in the lab.

But she wouldn’t have gotten a whole heck of a lot done if she’d tried to work. Her concentration would’ve been way off because of her fatigue, and she would have ended up having to do everything over again. So instead she’d slept hard, and now felt much better. And hungry. Boy, was she hungry.

She pushed back the covers and went into her bathroom to wash her face, deciding against a shower. Why bother? Cara would be leaving for home in an hour or so. And the artifacts Annie had to run tests on didn’t care if she worked in her pajamas. She brushed the tangles out of her hair and put some moisturizer on her face.

The sky outside the window was dark, she realized suddenly. It must be later than she thought.

She went down the stairs barefoot, calling, “MacLeish! Are you still here?”

“No, she went home.”

Annie stopped short at the sight of the stranger standing in the shadows of the foyer. How did he get in? What was he doing here? Fear released adrenaline into her system and, heart pounding, she stood on the stairs, poised to turn and run back up and slam the door behind her.

He must have realized that he had frightened her, because he spoke quickly and stepped into the light. “Steven Marshall sent me,” he said, his voice a rich baritone with a slight west-of-the-Mississippi cowboy drawl. “My name’s Pete Taylor. I’m a security specialist. Your assistant let me in. She didn’t want to wake you….”

He was not quite six feet tall, with the tough, wiry build of a long-distance runner. His hair was black, and cut almost military short. His face was exotically handsome, with wide, angular cheekbones that seemed to accentuate his dark eyes—eyes of such deep brown, it was impossible to tell where the iris ended and the pupil began. His lips were exquisitely shaped, despite the fact that he wasn’t smiling. Somehow Annie knew that this was not a man who smiled often.

He held out his wallet to her, opened to reveal an ID card encased in plastic.

Annie couldn’t keep her hand from shaking as she took the smooth leather folder from him, and she saw a flash of amusement in his dark eyes. He thought it was funny that he scared her. What a jerk.

She sat down on the steps as she looked at the ID. Peter Taylor. Age 38. Licensed private investigator and security specialist. The card gave him a New York City address, in a rather pricey section of Greenwich Village. Across from the ID card was a New York State driver’s license. She lifted the plastic flaps and found an American Express Gold Card for Peter Taylor, member since 1980, a MasterCard, a Visa and a Sears credit card. He was carrying over five hundred dollars cash in the main compartment, along with several of his own business cards.

She tossed the wallet back to him and, as their eyes met, she saw another glint of humor on his otherwise stern face.

“Do I pass?” he said. As he tucked the wallet into the inside left pocket of his tweed jacket, she caught a glimpse of a handgun in a shoulder holster.

Annie nodded. “For now,” she said, working hard to keep her tone formal, polite. “But just so that it’s out in the open, I think you should know that I don’t want you here. I consider your presence an imposition, and I intend to speak to Marshall about it tomorrow. So don’t bother unpacking—you’ll be leaving in the morning.”

“When I spoke to Mr. Marshall this afternoon, he was adamant that I remain,” he said. “Apparently he’s concerned for your safety. Somehow I don’t see him changing his mind so quickly.”

Annie stared at him. His feet were planted on the tile floor, legs slightly spread, arms crossed in front of his chest. His jeans were tight across the big muscles in his thighs. His belt buckle was large and silver and obviously Navaho in origin. Annie couldn’t see it clearly, but there was a silver ring on his right hand that also looked Navaho. He wore a necklace, but it was tucked into his shirt. She would bet big money that he was at least half Native American, and probably Navaho.

“Where did you grow up?” she asked.

He blinked at the sudden change in subject. “Colorado,” he said. “Mostly.”

His shoulders stiffened slightly. So very slightly, he probably didn’t even realize it. But Annie noticed. Something about the question had made him feel defensive, wary. Was it that she’d asked a personal question, or did his wariness have something to do specifically with Colorado, or the “mostly” that followed it?

She was instantly fascinated. It wasn’t because he was outrageously handsome, she tried to convince herself. Her attraction toward him—and she was attracted, she couldn’t deny that—was more a result of his quiet watchfulness, spiced with a little mystery. He had something to be defensive or at least wary about. What was it?

“You ride horses, don’t you, Taylor?” she asked, head tilted slightly to one side as she looked at him, hooked into trying to solve the puzzle, hoping for another clue from his reaction.

She was watching him, Pete realized, studying him as if he were an artifact, memorizing every little detail, searching for his flaws and weaknesses.

Her hair was down around her shoulders, parted on the side and swept back off her face. It gleamed in the light. She wore a too-large pair of men’s pajamas, with the legs cuffed and the sleeves rolled up. There was no makeup on her face, and instead of giving her that naked, vulnerable look most women have without cosmetics, she looked clean, scrubbed and fresh.

Her eyes were a brilliant blue, and she met his gaze steadily, as if she were trying to get inside his head.

“Yeah,” he finally said.

“I figured it was either horses or a bike,” she said. “Don’t you feel odd, carrying around a gun?”

“No.”

“What do you know about death masks?” she asked.

“Not much.” She was firing off questions as if this were some kind of interview. He decided to play it her way. It might make her start to trust him. It certainly couldn’t hurt—he wasn’t going to tell her anything he didn’t want her to know.

“How about art authentication?”

“Ditto.”

“A Navaho leader from the nineteenth century named Stands Against the Storm?”

“Only the information that Marshall faxed me this morning,” he said.

“Have you read it?”

“Of course.”

She watched him thoughtfully. “Where did you go to school?”

He shifted his weight. While most people would have been loath to admit their ignorance, it hadn’t bothered him one little bit to tell her he knew next to nothing about death masks and art authentication. But this question about himself, about his background, made him uncomfortable, Annie thought. Now, why was that?

“NYU,” he said. The bio the agency had created for Peter Taylor had him attending New York University from 1973 to 1977. Truth was, he hadn’t even set foot in New York until 1980. But he’d been Pete Taylor so many times, on so many different assignments, he almost had memories of the imaginary classes….

“Are you aware that I’m currently under investigation by the FBI and the CIA?” she asked, her blue eyes still watching him.

He was caught off guard by the directness of her question and had to look away, momentarily thrown.

“They think I’m involved in some kind of international art-theft conspiracy,” she said.

He glanced up at her and saw that her lips were curved in a small smile. “Are you?” he asked.

He made a good recovery, Annie thought. He had known about the investigation. She was willing to bet he had done a full background sweep on her before coming up from New York City. It didn’t surprise her one bit. Marshall wouldn’t have hired anyone who was less than outstanding.

“Are you hungry?” she said, standing and stretching, arms pulled up over her head, ignoring his question. “I haven’t eaten all day, and if I don’t have something soon, I’m gonna die.”

Pete found his eyes drawn to the gap that appeared between her pajama top and the loose bottoms that rode low on her slender hips. “I ate already, thanks,” he said. “Besides, I have an expense account that Mr. Marshall is covering. It’s not fair that I should cost you money. After all, you don’t even want me here.”

“It’s nothing personal,” Annie said, climbing up the stairs, heading for the kitchen.

“I know,” he said, following her.

She turned on the light in the kitchen and opened the refrigerator. She pulled an apple from the crisper drawer and took it to the sink, where she washed it quickly, then dried it with a towel.

The kitchen was a small room, just barely large enough to hold a table in one corner and a counter with a sink, stove, refrigerator and dishwasher in the other. It was decorated in black and white, with a tile floor that reminded Pete of a chessboard.

“I’d like to do a complete walk-through of the building,” Pete said, watching her take a healthy bite of the apple. “I checked out the first floor and the basement while you were asleep. Your safe location is good. It would take a significant explosive charge to blow it open. But your general security is—” He broke off, shaking his head.

“Bush-league?” Annie supplied, leaning back against the counter, ankles and arms crossed, watching him as she ate her apple.

It didn’t rate a smile, but there was a flicker of amusement in his dark eyes. “Definitely. A professional could get into this house without triggering the alarm system—no problem. Don’t you read Consumer Reports? The system you have is known for malfunctions. It’s unreliable. It’s easily bypassed, and it goes off spontaneously.”

Annie shaved the last bit of fruit from the core of the apple with her teeth, licking her lips as she looked up at him. “I’ve noticed.” She opened the cabinet door beneath the sink and tossed the apple core into a compost container, then rinsed her hands.

His expression changed slightly. Most people might not have picked it up—it was just a very small contraction of his dark eyebrows. But Annie was trained to pay attention to details, and on a face as expressionless as he kept his, the movement stood out. “What?” she asked.

He blinked. “Excuse me?”

“Something’s bugging you. What is it?”

She was standing only a few feet away from him, and he breathed in her natural fragrance. She smelled sweet and warm, with a little bit of baby shampoo, some rich-smelling skin lotion and tart apple thrown in for good measure. Although her pajamas were boxy and made of thick flannel, he was well aware of the soft, feminine body underneath. He felt his desire for her sparking, and he tightened his stomach muscles. Man, his entire office believed that she was a thief….

“I was wondering if that’s all you’re going to eat,” he said levelly. Through sheer force of will he stopped his desire for her from growing. He forced it back, down, deep inside of him, willing it to stay hidden. For now, anyway. “It doesn’t seem like very much, considering that you were so hungry. You should eat something more filling.”

Annie laughed, her white teeth flashing. “This is great,” she said. “A bodyguard who gives nutritional advice. How appropriate.”

He smiled. It was actually little more than the sides of his mouth twitching upward, but Annie decided it counted as a smile. Shoot, with a full grin, he’d be as handsome as the devil. More handsome…

“Sorry,” he said. “But you asked.”

“You’re right,” she said, leading the way onto the landing, “I did. Look, I’ve got to get some work done.”

She flipped her long hair back out of her face in a well-practiced motion, and hiked up her pajama bottoms. Pete wished almost desperately that she would put on some other clothes. It wasn’t like him to be so easily distracted, but every time she moved, he had to work hard to keep from wanting her.

For a long time now, he’d gone without sex. Not because it wasn’t available, but because he simply hadn’t wanted it. Didn’t it figure that his libido should suddenly come to life again out here, in the middle of nowhere, while he was alone in this big house with this beautiful woman? Man, as soon as he got back to the New York office, he’d have to look up Carolyn what’s-her-name, the administrative assistant with the long legs….

“It would help if I could take a look at the top floors of the house,” Pete said.

Annie shook her head. “Taylor, I don’t mean to be rude,” she said, “but I’m already two days behind in my work schedule. Frankly, there’s no point in my showing you around, because after I talk to Marshall tomorrow, you’re going to be catching the next train back into the city.”

“I drove up,” he said expressionlessly.

“I was speaking figuratively,” she said.

“It’s going to be hard for me to do my job without your cooperation,” Pete pointed out.

She started down the stairs to the lab. “Why don’t you use my phone to call your answering machine,” she said, not unsympathetically. “Maybe someone called with a different job for you. You can work for them and get all the cooperation you could possibly want.”

Annie stayed in the lab until shortly after two-thirty in the morning. She finished all but the last set of purity tests on a copper bowl that had been found at a southwestern archaeological dig site, believed to have been left by early Spanish conquistadors. That last test would take another two hours, and the thought of spending that much more time under Peter Taylor’s unwavering gaze was far too exhausting. Besides, even if she finished the testing, she wouldn’t have any conclusive evidence until the sample results came back from the carbon-dating lab.

She switched off the equipment and put the bowl back in the safe, turning to find Taylor still watching her.

He was sitting in a chair by the door. He didn’t look tired despite the late hour. He didn’t look uncomfortable or put upon or…anything.

Christmas, he was making her nervous.

She thought about just breezing past him, out the door and up the stairs, but her conscience made her stop.

“There’s a spare bedroom upstairs,” she said. “You can sleep—”

But he was shaking his head. “No.”

“Oh,” she said. “I suppose you want to stay down here, to be near the safe—”

“The safe’s secure,” he said, pulling himself out of the chair in one graceful, fluid motion. “You’d need a crane to move it, and a ton of dynamite to get into it. If I sleep at all, it’s going to be in your bedroom.”

Annie stared at him, shocked. In her bedroom…But his words had been said matter of factly, expressionlessly, without any hint of sexual overtones. Either he had no idea of his physical appeal, or he was so confident, he didn’t doubt that any woman would be grateful to share her bed with him. “I don’t think so,” she said.

He raised one eyebrow, as if he knew exactly what she’d been thinking. “I meant, on the floor.”

Annie willed herself not to blush. “You’d be much more comfortable in the guest room,” she said.

“But you would be much less safe,” he countered. “Your alarm system is nearly worthless—”

“I’ll be fine,” Annie protested. This was starting to get tiring. Why wouldn’t he just accept his defeat and sleep in the guest room?

He was blocking her way up the stairs, his arms crossed stubbornly in front of his chest. “Will you please let me do my job?”

“By all means,” she said. “Do your job. Just do it in the guest room tonight.”

He wasn’t going to move, so Annie pushed past him, starting toward the stairs.

But he caught her arm, stopping her. His fingers were long and strong, easily encircling her wrist. The heat from his hand penetrated the flannel of her pajamas.

Her heart was pounding from annoyance, Annie tried to convince herself, not from his touch. She tried to pull away, but his grip tightened.

“I am going to protect you,” he said. His face remained expressionless, but his eyes were like twin chips of volcanic glass.

He had pulled her in so close that she had to crane her neck to look up at him. “Maybe so,” she said, and to her chagrin, her voice shook very slightly. “But who’s going to protect me from you?”

Pete dropped her arm immediately.

“I don’t know you from Adam,” Annie said, stepping back, away from him, rubbing her arm. “For all I know, you’re really the guy who’s been making the death threats. For all I know, you’ve done in the real Peter Taylor.”

“My picture’s on my ID, and my driver’s license.”

“Everyone knows picture IDs are easy to fake—” She broke off, staring in fascination at his necklace. She’d noticed earlier that he wore silver beads around his neck, but until now she hadn’t caught a glimpse of the necklace. It was clearly Navaho, with small coin-silver hollow beads, and five squash blossoms decorating the bottom half, along with a three-quarter circle design pendant, known as a naja.

Ignoring her trepidation, she took a step toward him, lifting the naja in her hand. “This is beautiful,” she said, glancing up at him before studying it more closely. Two tiny hands decorated the ends of the naja. “Navaho. It’s quite old, too, isn’t it?”

All of her anger, all of her uneasiness was instantly forgotten as she was caught up, examining the carefully worked silver. She looked at the necklace with real interest, real excitement sparking in her eyes.

Pete laughed, and Annie looked up at him in surprise. It was a rich, deep laugh complete with a grin that transformed his face. She had been right—with his face unfrozen, he was exceptionally handsome.

“Yeah,” he said. “It’s Navaho.”

She was standing so close to him, mere inches away, holding the naja, but looking up at him. As he gazed into her wide blue eyes, he could feel the heat rising in him. What was it about her that made his body react so powerfully? He wanted to pull her into his arms, feel her body against his. He could imagine the way her lips would taste. Warm and sweet. Man, it would take so little effort….

Pete shoved his hands deep into the pockets of his jeans to keep from touching her.

“Your belt buckle is Navaho, too,” she said. “And the ring on your hand, I think…I didn’t really get a good look at it.”

He pulled his right hand free from his pocket, glancing down at the thick silver-and-turquoise ring he wore on his third finger.

“Do you mind?” Annie asked, letting go of the pendant and taking his hand. She looked closely at the worn silver of the ring, at the delicate ornamentation. “This isn’t quite as old as the necklace,” she said. “But it’s beautiful.”

Her slender fingers were cool against the heat of his. She kept her nails cut short but well-groomed, and wore no jewelry on her hands.

“I thought you were a specialist in European metalworks,” he said. “How come you know so much about Native American jewelry?”

She turned his hand over, looking at the other side of the ring. “When I was a kid, I spent about six years at sites in Utah and Arizona, one year in Colorado. Out of all the places we ever lived, my favorite was the American Southwest. When I went to college, I even considered specializing in Native American archaeology.”

“Why didn’t you?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “I mean, there were a lot of different reasons.” She looked down at his ring again. His hand was so big, it seemed to engulf both of hers. He had calluses on his palm, and two of his fingers had healing abrasions on the knuckles—as if he’d slammed his fist into a wall. Or a person, she realized. In his line of work, it could very well have been a person.

He was looking down at her, making no attempt to take his hand away. Their eyes met, and for the briefest of instants, Annie saw the deep heat of desire in his eyes. Fire seemed to slice through her as her body responded, and she dropped his hand, noticing with rather horrified amusement that he had let go of her with as much haste. What had he seen in her eyes, she wondered. Was her own attraction for him as apparent?

She looked away, taking a step back from him, once again heading for the stairs. “Good night,” she said, her voice sounding strange and breathless.

But he was in front of her, leading the way up to the second floor. “At the very least, I want to check out your room,” he said. “Make sure all the windows are locked—”

“I can do that,” Annie protested.

“Yeah, I know,” he said as he went into her bedroom. “But I have to see it for myself.”

The bed was still unmade from Annie’s afternoon nap, and she saw him glance at her bright blue and green patterned sheets before crossing to the bay windows on the other side of the big room.

He pulled back the curtains and looked at each window carefully, checking to see that the locks were secure and the alarm system was working.

Annie stood in the middle of the room, arms crossed in front of her as she watched his broad, strong back. With his conservatively short black hair, she wouldn’t have expected him to be wearing jeans with his tweed jacket, but somehow it didn’t look out of place. The jacket was well tailored, fitting his broad shoulders like a glove. His jeans were loose enough to be comfortable, yet managed to show off the long, muscular lengths of his legs. Legs that went all the way up to—

She pulled her eyes away, not wanting to be caught staring at Taylor’s butt. It was exceptional though, she thought, grinning, glancing back at him. Even with his hair cut so short, Taylor would have no trouble qualifying for one of those hunk-of-the-month calendars….

“What’s so funny?” he asked, pulling the last of the curtains closed again and walking toward her.

“Nothing,” Annie said, backing away.

“Look,” Pete said. “I’d really feel a whole lot better if I could sleep in here tonight.” He paused for a moment. “You won’t even know I’m here,” he added.

Oh, sure, Annie thought. And they’re expecting heavy snow this year in the Sahara desert. She forced herself to stay in control of what was rapidly becoming a ludicrous situation.

“No,” she said. “Maybe I’d feel different if I thought I was in any kind of real danger. But I just don’t buy it.”

She walked him to the door. He hesitated before stepping out of the room, but finally he did.

“Feel free to use the spare room,” Annie said. “It’s across the hall. The bed’s already made up.”

He didn’t say anything. He just watched her from behind his expressionless mask.

“See you in the morning,” she finally said, closing and locking the door.

Pete stood out in the hall, listening as Annie got ready for bed. The water ran for a while in the bathroom, the toilet flushed and finally the lamp clicked off.

And still he stood there, just listening and waiting.

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