Page 25 of Live a Little!

Relief washed through him, while the nagging fear turned to annoyance. That woman had wasted enough of his time and mental energy. He was going to make certain she quit Oceanic once and for all.Tonight.

He didn’t let any of his emotions show on his face, just said, “Well, she gave me a key to her house.” He waved his own key at the elderly woman. “Might as well getstarted.”

Mrs. Lawrence beamed. “She certainly is a luckygirl.”

Guilt smote him. An old lady would need his help a lot more than a young one. “If there’s anything you want done around the house, Mrs. Lawrence, give me ashout.”

“Why, thank you, dear. I’ll remember that. Goodnight.”

“‘Night.”

He sauntered to Cynthia’s door in full view of the neighborhood, knowing he’d just been stamped with the Rodonda Drive Seal of Approval. If he’d learned nothing else this week, he’d confirmed that nobody sinister was watching Cynthia’s house—just him and the rest of theneighbors.

Five minutes later, he was inside. With a good forty-five minutes until she returned home, he marshaled his arguments and settled down towait.

He snapped on a lamp, and had to admit he kind of liked the color of the walls, Grape Kool-Aid or Châteauneuf-du-Pape, or whatever the hell color she called it. The room was an intriguing mixture of old and new. Some of the stuff he remembered from before—fancy antique-store knickknacks and so on—but she’d added some new, ultramodern looking cushions, an abstract picture on the wall and a chunk of rock on the mantel. Maybe it was supposed to be a sculpture. He shrugged. Looked like a hunk of rock tohim.

Also new were a few additions to the library. An “inside the FBI” exposé, and a book about money laundering. Great. All he needed was her thinking she was an expert because she’d read a book about the bureau by some guy he’d never heard of, and an academic study on moneylaundering.

With a groan of frustration, he flopped to the couch and picked up a magazine from the stack on the floor. Her accounting association magazine. He made it through three pages and his eyes started to driftshut.

He flicked through the pile looking for Gourmet or Bon Appétit. Found Accounting Today, Time, Newsweek,Raunch…

Raunch?

He flopped back on the couch, taking the magazine with him. First thing he noted was this magazine was a lot more thumbed through than her accounting periodical. The second thing he noticed was that the saucy dominatrix on the front cover had breasts like twinHindenburgs.You could hang on to her ankles and float toAustralia.

Raunch’s annual fantasy issue pretty much ran the gamut, he noted, from the traditional to the, well, out there. He’d never found space aliens attractive, hmself, but then, he was definitely more of a down-to-earth kind ofguy.

Boudoir Beginners?He snorted. Who wrote thisstuff?

Somebody, no doubt Cyn, had highlighted a few of the fantasies in yellow marker. Pretty much all of them were in the beginnersection.

He paused to read one highlighted passage, then rolled his eyes. What was it with women and sheiks? No way he’d stick a damn towel on his head and dress up his bedroom like a silk tent.Jeez.

He flipped the page to the next fantasy. Not only was this one highlighted, it was starred—triple starred, actually. “Helpless Virgin Ravaged by a Dark Dangerous Stranger.” His mind flipped to the way he’d found her. So that’s what that was all about! She’d been enacting a magazine fantasy. The joke was on her, though. She must have just about had a heart attack when a gun-wielding stranger crashed her private party. She’d got her fantasy, all right—well, he hadn’t ravished her, of course, but to Cynthia he must have looked mighty dangerous. She’d appeared terrified, not a bit turned on by the whole situation. Which just showed why fantasies should remainfantasies.

Wait a minute.He snapped his fingers. That was the answer, staring him right in the face. He knew just what Cynthia would do if a dangerous stranger tried to ravish her. She’d run a mile, that’s what she’ddo.

He read the setup more carefully, a slow smileforming.

WITH A SIGH Cynthiastepped into the hallway in her stocking feet and froze, dropping the canvas bag with her swimsuit and towel on the floor. There was a light on in the living room. One she certainly hadn’t left on this morning. Another furtive step forward revealed a lean and dangerous man sprawled on her new floral tapestry couch—one who also hadn’t been there thismorning.

“What are you doing here,Jake?”

“Waiting for you.” Those doll-blue eyes with the fringe of impossibly dark, curly lashes set in a face of stone gave her the usual shiver of apprehension, and the same unwanted tug ofattraction.

“My security system is supposed to be foolproof.” The way her pulse went all jumpy when he was around annoyed her as much as his casual entry past herdefenses.

“But I’m no fool,” he said, both arrogance and amusement dancing in his eyes. He sat up and replaced the accounting magazine he’d been reading on the stack on her mahogany coffeetable.

With a start of pure horror she recalled thatRaunch Magazinewas somewhere in that pile. Too embarrassed to put it in recycling, in case any of her neighbors peeked, she’d planned to burn the thing, but with her new duties as the most boring spy in the world, she hadn’t hadtime.

The pile of magazines looked undisturbed, and she figured Jake would have chosenRaunchoverAccounting Todayif he’d come acrossit.

“What do youwant?”

“A statusreport.”

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