From there it was simple. She was charmingly graceless and bumped against him, looking at him with breathless anticipation so he was watching her lips while her hands slipped inside his pocket and she transferred the thumb drive to the hidden pocket in her evening gown. She would have to tell her cousin Devi how well it worked in the field. Lou was their gadget guru, but Devi designed and made clothes, and there was nothing wrong with that.
“Why don’t we…” the target began.
“And here comes the drama,” Lou advised.
Ben was right there as though he’d been watching and waiting for the chance to extract her. Or he simply wanted to get it all over with. “Maggie, what the hell are you doing? I told you to wait for me. I didn’t tell you to plaster yourself all over another man.”
There were suddenly eyes on them, and the target stepped back, disappearing into the crowd. Coward. She hoped he got his ass kicked for losing those files.
Ben’s hand was on her elbow as he led her off the floor. “You okay?”
“Perfect,” she whispered back. “My team is one block over. I’ll meet you at your hotel.”
He huffed as they walked past the line waiting to get in. “Not on your life. You don’t leave my sight until I have a copy. Do you think I forgot how you walked off with the Mongolian intel?”
Again, that was her sister, but she couldn’t point that out. “Fine,but we should move.”
They made it outside and started walking toward the small building a block away where they were set up. The townhouse was a CIA safe house complete with all the gadgets Lou could ever want to play with.
And a lonely twin bed for Kenzie to sleep in. She didn’t even have Bud Two to cuddle while she was here.
“You’re safe. I’ve got her in lockdown since you’re bringing the boy back after your date,” Lou promised. “She’s locked up good and tight if you want to bring him upstairs.”
She wasn’t about to do that because while her sister might hide, her father wouldn’t. He would be right there with judgmental eyes and sharper than a stiletto sarcasm. “Meet me in the lobby and I’ll pass it off.”
“Or I could come up to your room,” Ben replied, his eyes on the cobblestone street in front of them.
It was a warm night, and the tourists were out in droves. There was soft lights and music coming from the cafés and clubs around them, but they simply moved as quickly and quietly as they could.
“I don’t think my handler wants you up there.”
“I don’t think I care what your handler wants,” he shot back, his face in a deep frown. “Maggie, we should talk. This is bullshit.”
She took him around to the garden entrance. It looked all perfect and normal unless one caught the signs that there were like twelve cameras on them. It didn’t matter. She needed to get through the next couple of minutes and he would go away and she would be alone again with her righteous anger.
The evening hadn’t gone the way she’d hoped.
What had she hoped for?
The gate closed behind him, and she saw the shadow of Lou moving from one of the upper floors toward them.
“Tell me what I’m missing, Maggie.”
He was half hidden in shadows, the willow tree behind him and the moon above.
Damn, but she should have taken him to the front porch. It was bland. It didn’t look like a place where the hero and heroine of her latest romantasy obsession would talk about their dragons or the vampire nation rising. “It doesn’t matter.”
She turned, and he caught her elbow. “It does to me. Maggie, tellme one true thing.”
Her heart constricted. “I’ve told you lots of true things, Ben.”
“And have you lied?”
“Of course I have. We’re spies, and we don’t work for the same agency. We’ve both lied and we’ll continue to lie.” Which is why it would never work no matter how much her heart wanted him. They might be able to have a brief affair, maybe hook up when they were working together… Except that half the time he was working with Kala, and wouldn’t her twin lose her shit if Ben reached out and grabbed a boob because he thought she would respond to him?
Kala would respond with a bullet.
Why the hell couldn’t she fall for one of the guys at The Hideout?
