Did he?
They’d worked together for years, but he’d never shown a hint of interest in her. Not that she encouraged it from her coworkers. It was hard enough being a woman in a man’s field without being a walking set of boobs. Unless she was going undercover—like this morning—she dressed to play down her figure, and to be comfortable. Her beauty routine started and ended with lip balm.
She studied Jay. As far as she knew, he was still hung up on Priya, even though the woman had moved on to a tech company exec who actually came home at night.
He finally looked up. “Nothing’s wrong. I’m just exhausted.” He gave her a weak smile. “We both could use some rest before the briefing that Hollowell’s sure to call.”
Rest? She was amped up right now. And she had work to do. “You go. I’ll start updating the client report while I’m still coherent.”
He buttoned his jacket and looked at her with a slight frown. “Promise me you’ll go home before the meeting.”
She nodded. No, he wasn’t attracted to her, but he cared.
An hour later, the adrenaline—and her bag of candy—were vapor, and she was dragging ass. Finally admitting defeat, she logged off her computer. Donning a thick parka to ward off the colder-than-normal November chill in northern Virginia, she gathered her purse and long-empty lunch tote, and said goodbye to Harry.
Even the fatigue couldn’t dampen her mood. Maybe after the meeting with Duncan, she’d go buy herself something to celebrate. Like a new pair of rock climbing shoes she’d spied in the latest REI catalog.
She waved to the guard in the lobby, swiped out through the security turnstile, and pushed through heavy doors into the frigid pre-dawn air.
Her blue Prius sat by itself under the streetlamp, one of only five cars in the lot. Someone had scrawled “I’m saving water” in the grime on the back window.
“Ha ha,” she muttered, unable to suppress a smile.
As she approached the curb, a man emerged from a dark Jeep. He hunched against the bitter wind, his jacket collar flipped up. She halted and glanced back at the building. From her position, the guard wasn’t visible.
Her adrenaline spiked as the man’s pace increased, and he headed straight for her. She held her car key between her thumb and finger and stepped back.
The man looked up. “Hey, Valerie. Are you just now leaving?” he asked, the words punctuated by puffs of his breath, visible under the overhead lights.
Her heart thundered against her ribs even as recognition dawned.Scott Kramer. She put her hand on her chest and blew out a little laugh. “You scared me.”
His handsome face turned serious, and he stopped right in front of her. “Sorry.” The moonlight brought out pale highlights in his dark blond hair and sharpened the angle of his high cheekbones. He chafed his bare hands together. “What are you doing here so late? Or, early.” He smiled.
Now her pulse stumbled for a different reason. Why was it that she—a perfectly intelligent woman—always turned into an imbecile around this man? He wasn’t tall, broad, and intimidating like most of the field operators at Aggressor—he looked like a California surfer with his casually mussed hair, three-day stubble, and ocean-blue eyes—but she’d seen him in a T-shirt. He was lean and muscled, not an ounce of fat on him. Positively ripped.
She cleared her throat. “I was head down in a hacking run. Lost track of time.”
His eyebrows rose. “Are you getting close?” Scott wasn’t privy to the details of her targets—just like she never knew much about the ops teams’ missions—but he knew the type of work she did.
“No, we’re in.” She couldn’t hold back a grin. It was great to have someone else to share her triumph with, though she probably shouldn’t be so happy that one of America’s biggest defense companies was vulnerable. “I was sure we would crack them eventually—no place is one hundred percent secure—but we got lucky.”
“I doubt it was luck.” He stared at her for a moment as if seeing her for the first time. And maybe he was. Aggressor was small, so they had already run into each other a few times since Duncan showed him around, but they’d rarely talked. She was surprised he even remembered her name considering how many people he must have met in the three days since he joined the company.
Something in her stomach took a dive.Fool.A guy like him would never, ever be interested in a nerd like her. Saying more than two words to him had probably sent him into shock. Usually her tongue imitated a pretzel when he was around. She wasn’t outgoing under the best of circumstances, but he brought her to new lows of reticence.
Sure, she could fake her way past the lobby guard at Westgate or Janus, but that wasacting.
Scott blinked, and his posture closed down somehow so that he seemed to shrink away from her without actually moving. “Well, I better get inside before we both freeze. Hollowell’s on his way in. We’re doing a practice recall.”
She nodded. “I’m sure I’ll be back in a few hours to brief him.”
“Have a good night,” he said. “What’s left of it, anyway.”
Tearing her gaze away, she made short work of the distance to her car. She slid inside, tossing her bags on the seat next to her, and started the car as the cold settled into her bones.
When she looked up, Scott stood with his hands in his coat pockets, watching as she backed out of the parking space.
Scott waited to enter the building until Valerie’s car left the parking lot. He ran his card over the RFID reader and pushed through the turnstile. In the cavernous lobby, he stopped for a second to soak up the heat.
