Page 22 of Hidden Attraction

“ATF. Three years.”

If she was ATF, the organization that monitored alcohol, tobacco, firearms and explosives, she knew how to handle a weapon. He tried to picture her toting a firearm and found that the picture in his head appealed—a lot.

Dangerous and deadly.

Damned hot.

“You look surprised.” Her voice had softened, as did her body language. She no longer sat with a steel rod in her spine but rested her elbows on the table and leaned toward him, a smile toying at the corners of her lips.

“You’re not what I expected,” he admitted.

She blinked. “What did you expect?”

“Soft skills, the gift of gab. Suits and security details.”

“Hey, I’ve been known to wear body armor under a ballgown.”

Interest kindled inside him. His gaze washed over her hair—thick and silky, floating in waves that hung a little below her shoulders. A few threads of silver glinted against the dark strands, which only appealed to him more, as he had a few years on him too.

But her eyes were what really captured his attention. They were fringed with long black lashes that dipped to conceal her expressive black eyes.

And her mouth—

He snapped his gaze back to hers. He shouldn’t be thinking about her mouth even though the vision of its plumpness pursed on the rim of her glass had been playing on repeat through his head all during their discussion.

Their food arrived—a simple spread of grilled meat, chickpeas, rice and roasted vegetables. They dug in, eating in companionable silence, but he was still on high alert. Looking to the window, always watching. Always aware.

“The food is good. Will we be coming back here?” Alyssa’s question took his focus from the street he had a clear view of behind her.

He nodded. “We have to spend some time in the city.”

“It might help if we play the happy couple. Eat, wander the markets, blend in.”

He pitched his voice to a murmur. “And find out what the hell happened to that chopper and at the Red Cross.”

“Now that sounds like happy couple territory. Are you always this charming?”

Her teasing question caught him off guard and he rumbled a laugh.

“Sorry, I can’t tell you. That’s classified.”

They shared a smile, gazing into each other’s eyes for a beat too long.

He couldn’t help but feel like they were both testing, measuring, assessing.

His questioning disguised as curiosity had gotten him further than he expected when it came to digging up details about Alyssa Vargas, but it didn’t tell him definitively if she’d been compromised.

Her eyes twinkled up into his, and he felt a strange slice across his chest.

He twisted his stare away first. Suddenly, the restaurant seemed too busy, the air between him and Alyssa too charged.

He pushed back from the table. “Let’s walk.”

* * * * *

The scent of spices clung to their clothes as they stepped out from the bistro into the warm evening. The crowd on streets had thinned since dusk enveloped the city, but life still lingered in the corners—voices from a second-story balcony, a boy dragging a wooden crate down a narrow alley, the faint clatter of shutters being drawn.

Julian fell into step beside Alyssa. She gave a start as she realized that some switch had flipped over the course of their meal and now she thought of the special operative differently.

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