He winced.
“The name Jude was familiar to her,” she went on, “and she recently realized that's because it's the name of Felix Camden's second son. She dug around and found a picture of you online as a child and she called me to say that she thinks the child in the picture is you.”
“How did you respond?”
“I told her she was wrong, that you’re Jude McConnell from Rhode Island and that the internet would verify that. She promised me she wouldn’t share her suspicions with anyone else in my family.” She scratched behind her ear. “Should I go ahead and tell her the truth about what’s going on with the operation?”
“No. We'll need to depend on her promise that she won’t tell anyone else. If she brings up this subject again, please continue to say that she’s mistaken, that the boy in that picture is not your boyfriend.”
A pause unwound like a spool of thread.
“Okay.” Gemma had no plans to leave now that they'd gotten that behind them. “While I’m here, I wanted to say sorry again. About Chaz showing up to surprise me the way he did that night at my house. Because I haven't seen you since, now's my chance to tell you that it felt weird to me and maybe a little demeaning to you that I had to pass you off as a label maker.”
“Pretending to be your label maker was just part of my job.”
“Huh.” He was never going to budge off the company line, was he? He was never going to discuss real, not-FBI things with her unless she forced him to do so. “Part of your job.”
“Yes.”
“How much of what's between you and me is business and how much is personal? Because you were very quick to cut me out of your life when our operation was suspended. I wouldn't have cared that you'd cut me out if everything between us was business. But I did care. Idocare. I've missed you.”
Some of his composure cracked and she saw raw yearning beneath. “I didn't cut you out of my life, per se. I stopped communicating with you because there was nothing left to say after our op was suspended.”
“I think there's a lot more to say.” She placed her fists on her hips. “I no longer have a boyfriend and so I'm now free to tell you I like you.”
He didn’t move. Just studied her, unblinking. “You no longer have a boyfriend?”
“No. I broke up with Chaz.”
Jagged quiet expanded. “Why?”
“Because I realized that I didn't care that much about him. It became clear to me that I wanted to date my fake boyfriend a lot more than I wanted to date my real one.”
Muscles braced all the way up Jude's frame.
“So,” she went on, “do you see me only as a work colleague? Or as more?”
“I see you as more,” he said, hoarse. “But I can’t act on that. Doing so would be strictly against FBI policy.”
“And you highly value your reputation and career.”
“Highly.”
“You've made that clear every step of the way. But our operation was suspended. Did Shannon Bailey tell you that you couldn't be with me even though we're no longer, technically, working together?”
“She doesn’t have the power to prevent us from being together now that we’re no longer working together. She did warn me against it, though. Strongly.”
Gemma studied his serious lips. The defined nose. The thick, dark blond hair. She began to smile. “You know what that sounds like to me, Jude?”
“What?”
“A loophole. To my way of thinking, loopholes are meant to be exploited.”
“To my way of thinking, they're meant to be avoided. Too much gray area.”
“I'm no longer dating Chaz. We’re no longer working on an operation. I'm free. You're free. Not much gray area there.”
“You came over here to make me crazy, didn’t you?”
