by Anne Stuart
“I didn’t lie to you.”
“Right. When was it you changed your name from Jack Ryan to Davis Sloan?”
“Okay,” he conceded with a half shrug. “One small lie. Otherwise you never would’ve talked to me.”
“Damn straight. So instead you made up a whole person?”
“I didn’t lie.”
“You didn’t grow up in foster care, Jack,” Mia said, tiredly leaning her head back against the plush seat. Jack had always enjoyed the finer things in life. He had a magnificent condo overlooking the city, hot and cold running domestic help and several very nice cars.
Even in something as important as money they’d been opposites. He spent it like water, she hoarded and invested it.
“You grew up in Beverly Hills,” she said, her voice flat. “Remember Gloria and Samuel Ryan, your loving, wealthy parents? I got a card from them last Christmas. Won’t they be hurt to know you’re dismissing them out of hand just so you can make points with a woman?”
“All fabrication. There aren’t any parents, Mia. Loving or otherwise.”
“Oh, Jack.”
“I’m telling you the truth.”
“Who sent me that sweet Christmas card? And the flowers for my birthday last year?”
“I did.”
Mia stomach knotted when she realized that once again he was all smoke and mirrors. Everyone knew of or about Jack Ryan. If nothing else the fact that his name was that of a fictional action hero was enough to have people talking. Some people jokingly called him Harrison. His status as one of DC’s eligible bachelors, his wealth, his old money background…all of it was public record. Countless articles had been written about him. He’d even been People Magazine’s Bachelor of the Year two years in a row.
“So poor little you grew up in a series of foster homes?” Mia said, annoyed either way. If it was true, she was furious that he’d lied to her before. If it was a lie, she was furious that he was lying to her now. “And just to make it even more poignant, you were arrested at thirteen for breaking and entering and stuck in juvie because there was no one who cared enough to bail you out. And then you worked your way through college and turned your life around? Right?”
“Yes.”
Mia glared at him in the dark. She must have been getting used to the dim light. She could almost make out his eyes. Narrowed, boring into her with the strength of a power drill.
“All of that was true?”
“I said so, didn’t I?”
He sounded sincere. Mia didn’t know what to make of this information. Or if she should make anything of it at all. Of course, if he’d finally told her some small truths about himself…
No. It was too little too late. “And I’m supposed to believe you?”
He sighed. “Do what you want. You usually do.”
“Damn it, Jack, I’m not the bad guy in this.”
“Why does there have to be a bad guy?” he demanded. “You used to bug me for information. Now you know why I never told you.”
Mia sat back, leaning into the butter-soft leather and staring at him in fascination. “You’re saying you never told me the truth because I couldn’t take it?”
“Because you wouldn’t believe it.”
The way I felt about you then, I’d have believed anything and everything you could’ve told me, Jack. Maybe if you’d tried telling me the truth then— “Well, why would I? All you’ve ever done is lie to me.”
Jack shook his head. “Not always, darling.”
His voice caressed her like a mink glove against warm, bare skin.
“You should have told me it was you I’ve been talking to for the past two weeks.”
“You should’ve recognized it was me.”
He actually sounded hurt. Mia snorted. Yeah, right. “How could I? You sounded normal and charming.”
“I am normal and charming.”
“No, Jack, you aren’t.” He wasn’t even close to normal. Jack Ryan wasn’t just a large man, he was larger than life. He was a flesh-and-blood comic book hero. Thank God she’d managed to dump him, and her job, before one or both of them had killed her.
It hadn’t been easy. She’d missed the adrenaline rush.
“I’m charming when I need to be.” That voice of his went deeper, darker.
“Believe it or not, that’s not a positive character trait.”
“You never minded before.”
There were a lot of things she hadn’t minded—or pretended not to mind—because the thought of living without Jack had been unthinkable. Well, that was then, this was now. “This is not amusing. I want to go home.”
“You were going to have sex with Sloan, weren’t you?”
She sorta kinda had, and the thought that Jack knew her that well made her face hot and her temper rise. “Since you and Sloan are one and the same, I think it’s safe to say I’ve changed my mind.”
His other hand slid under their bound wrists before she realized what he was doing. He ran his warm palms over her hip. “You were going to sleep with the guy. Damn it, Mia. How could you?”
“That guy was you. Jack, how could you?” She never realized how cold she was until Jack put his hands on her. Then she’d always wanted to curl into the furnacelike heat of him. Not now. Not tonight. Not ever again. She tried to shift out of reach. But it was impossible. Mia gritted her teeth. The limo had to stop sometime.
“You’re wearing my lucky thong, aren’t you?”
Ah, that thong. They’d both gotten lucky every time she’d worn it.
“No, Jack,” Mia said coolly while her blood heated and accelerated through her veins. Could a person die if their internal body temperature went over two hundred degrees? The thin silk over her hipbone where Jack’s hand rested heated up as if under a solar blanket. “These are my unlucky panties. Get your hand off me.”
“Jesus darling, my body’s hardly cold and you’re ready to sleep with somebody else?”
“It’s been eight months.”
“Feels like longer.”
Yes, it did. “I asked you very nicely to leave me alone. I wish you had.”
His fingers tightened briefly on her thigh, as though staking his claim.
“This is business, Mia.”
“That makes the subterfuge even worse. And how did you get my mother to help you set me up?”
“I told her your country needed you one more time.”
“I quit.”
“You’ve been reinstated for this job.”
A flush of interest, even excitement, swept through her, but she squashed it fast. “I don’t want to be reinstated. I want to go back home, take a nice warm bath and grab an early night.”
“This despite donning your lucky panties?”
Mia sighed. Jack Ryan was like a junkyard dog with a bone. He was the most annoyingly persistent man she’d ever had the misfortune of falling in l—of ever knowing. “What do you want, Jackson?”
The car crossed the bridge and turned onto a traffic-clogged avenue. A couple in a red sports car pulled up beside them at the light. As the dark-haired girl leaned her head on her boyfriend’s shoulder, he wrapped a beefy arm about her and dropped a kiss on her waiting mouth. The car behind them honked a split second after the light changed. She and Jack had been like that once. They hadn’t been able to keep their hands off each other. One time a bum in the park had yelled at them to get a room for Chrissake.
But that was a long time ago.
“I don’t work for Uncle Sam anymore, Jack, remember? I’m a translator.” She worked for Dysart International Bank. A nice quiet, uneventful job. Jack didn’t need to know that she was bored out of her ever-loving mind every day from 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. And lonely from 5:05 p.m. to 8:55 a.m. She was just starting to kick the lethal Jack Ryan habit.
She’d gone cold turkey, and had been doing just fine, thank you very much, without him.
“Yeah, I know,” he said, sliding his thumb back and forth on her thigh in an absentminde
d and annoying caress. “But I—we—need you for this job, Mia. You’re the best. Nobody can—”
“Too bad.” Mia shoved at his marauding hand. It didn’t budge. Fine. Stroke away. It didn’t affect her in the slightest anymore. She relaxed against the plush leather seat. Outside she projected calm, inside mooshy, adrenaline racing. With annoyance, she reminded herself. “My cat-burgling, safecracking days are over,” she told him flatly.
“You’re back in, darling, whether you like it or not. Orders from the top. We go in, get the disk and leave. You’ll be back home in no time. Tops.”
“What disk?” Mia demanded. Hell, she couldn’t even keep herself from asking. She felt the familiar rush of anticipation. Damn it. Damn him. She had to remind herself that it wasn’t Jack who needed her tonight. This was for her country, she had to remind herself. She felt the zing of energy she’d always felt when she was embarking on a gray ops assignment. As partners, she and Jack had been unbeatable.
“You ready to listen?”
No. Mia sighed. “Brief me. And make it…brief.”
CHAPTER TWO
JACK UNLOCKED THE CUFFS as the limo pulled up in front of the embassy. They’d been to several parties here in the past. Knowing the layout of the house made tonight’s job that much easier. Too easy, Mia thought suspiciously, shooting Jack a glance.
The disk they were there to retrieve was probably in the safe in the library. First floor, and just beyond the downstairs bathrooms. They’d never heisted anything from here before, but they’d certainly scoped out what was where. Just in case.
Their job description was—had been—gray ops retrieval. If something needed to be copied, or replaced, Jack and Mia were sent in to do the job. If specific information was required, Jack could set up a program to trap key strokes and send the info back to the agency’s computers without the user being any the wiser.
While Mia’s nimble fingers could open just about anything locked, Jack’s expertise was anything computer related. He was brilliant. He could ferret around to his heart’s content, change, tweak or copy without leaving a whisper of a fingerprint, not a breath of evidence that he’d tromped all over their hard drive.
But this job was nothing that intrusive or complicated. In this case they were to retrieve a disk with the names and addresses of the people funding the arms race in one of the ever name changing nations north of South Africa.
It was suspected that not only were there thousands of wealthy individuals contributing, but also a good number of American corporations. And of course millions of dollars in funding was being funneled to the cause from certain weapons manufacturers who benefited from the continuing war.
American weapons were killing thousands of American soldiers sent there to protect the nation’s citizens from the bad guys. Anyone possessing the list of contributors was in the position to halt the war. Or escalate it.
They were there to retrieve the disk.
Piece of cake, Mia thought as she waited for Jack to round the car to her side and then for the driver to pull away to a predesignated spot in case they had to make a hasty departure.
And she would be hasty. She’d be in and out in ten minutes or less.
And this blind date from hell would be over.
Ten minutes with Jack, using their usual cover, was about all she’d be able to take.
With any luck at all, tonight wouldn’t even be a blip in her memory this time tomorrow.
She took a deep breath of cold night air. It hadn’t snowed in the past couple of days, and gray sludge was banked against the shrubs lining the driveway. She’d be home before the arrival of the predicted snow flurries.
“Still don’t bother to wear a coat. Stubborn woman.” He didn’t remove his own thick, black wool overcoat because he knew from experience she’d never wear it. Not even for the few minutes it took to traverse the driveway and climb the front steps.
She was allergic to wool, wouldn’t wear fur and hated to be in anything bulky in case she needed to run like hell. “I’m warm-blooded.” She made a grab for the wrought-iron banister as her foot slipped on the ice-crusted sidewalk.
Jack rested his hand on the small of her back to steady her. The heat of his touch sizzled right through the flimsy fabric of her dress and just for one, tiny, ridiculously small, infinitesimal, eensy moment, she enjoyed the feel of his hand on her again.
God help her.
“Hot-blooded, you mean,” Jack murmured in her ear.
He was right. She was hot-blooded. Ordinarily, she could ignore the cold, but somehow she couldn’t quite manage to ignore Jack. He was the matchstick to her dynamite. The gas to her flame. The—oh, stop it, she thought crossly.
Jack hadn’t needed a cover. He was a wealthy playboy dilettante who couldn’t stand a too bright light shone on his activities. He had an…edge to him that was irresistible. Women dropped at his feet like flies and men were intrigued by just a hint of deep, dark secrets behind his midnight eyes. Men and women alike wanted to stand close to Jack’s dangerous flame. He was invited everywhere the rich, famous and powerful of DC gathered.
Jack Ryan had never been the right man for her, Mia reminded herself grimly. No matter what her body told her, he was not the right man for her. He was commitment-phobic for one thing, and for another he had no respect for hard-earned money. And she’d always know that there was something he wasn’t telling her. She’d always been waiting for the proverbial shoe to drop.
While she’d never starved, or been homeless, she had a healthy respect for the security of a decent bank balance. Her father had split when she was six. The classic—gone out for cigarettes and never come back. She’d seen just how her mom had struggled to support herself and two kids.
Mia wasn’t prepared to jeopardize her own hard-earned savings, or the stability and happiness of her future children, on a man who threw his money away, and kept secrets.
She’d kept her head, and systematically gone about searching for the father of those children for years before she’d met Jack.
And for several months she’d lost what was left of her brain.
She’d worked in intelligence at the agency for five years before they’d agreed to put her in the field. Her first assignment with Jack, heisting a briefcase from a foreign diplomat at Grand Central station, had been a onetime thing.
The job had gone so well, her nimble fingers so quick, the agency had made them a team. Jack had guarded her back and planned the jobs. Mia had been his “hands.” Her long, magic fingers could caress open any lock in less time than it took to say Uncle Sam. All those years in the trailer park playing marbles and, later, five card stud had given her dexterity. It had also given her a mistrust of the wealthy, and a healthy respect for her own self-preservation.
They’d never discussed their pasts, Mia had realized when it was all over. They’d both thought their lives had started the first time they’d been intimate. A clean slate, a new start, a fresh beginning. For both of them. Boy, had she been wrong.
She was already working at the bank, her cover, when she finally quit the agency. The transition had been relativity painless. Relatively.
Light spilled from the open front door down the snow-cleared steps. The house was enormous, imposing and filled with the crème de la crème of Washington, DC society, many of whom Jack and Mia knew from the round of social events they’d been invited to over the past couple of years. Washington was unlike any other city. Power was the ticket here, not money. A five-term senator had more clout than a five-generation family fortune. Because the Washington power brokers all lived on expense accounts, money had long ago become subservient to position and connection.
The foyer was crowded, filled with the fragrances of expensive hothouse flowers, pricey perfume and the scrumptious smells of the savory hors d’oeuvres waiters carried discreetly through the crowd of party guests.
“I have to use the rest room,” Mia told him quietly, stepping away from the warmth of his palm, which wa
s resting possessively on the small of her back. “Will you wai—”
He stepped in closer, divested himself of his overcoat to the coat check girl, and wrapped a muscled, implacable arm about her waist, all without missing a beat. “Not yet. You know the game.”
Of course he’d known immediately she wanted to go in after the disk alone. Annoying man. “Just let me get on with this.”
“Not on your life. It’s too soon and you know it.”
“The sooner the better as far as I’m concerned.”
“Liar,” he said with a knowing smile. “Your blood’s pumping. Hot and fast.”
“It is not.”
“You can’t fool me, Mia. You never could.” His hand slid up and down her arm and tongues of flame danced on her bare skin. “I know you too well. You love the game. The excitement. The danger. That rush of adrenaline that jolts your system.”
She really did. Which was just another reason why she’d had to leave the business. Loving the danger was as unhealthy as loving Jack.
“Maybe I’ve changed.”
“Yeah? And maybe I’m a priest.”
She laughed in spite of the situation. The very thought of blatantly sexual Jack Ryan being a priest was enough to make a statue break out in a grin.
“It’s good to have you back, darling.”
She stiffened against his casual assumption and then forced herself to smile at the deputy mayor and his wife as they passed. Jack dipped his head and whispered in her ear and she tried her best not to turn into a gooey puddle. His warm breath fanned her skin and it didn’t seem to matter that all he was talking about was business. Her blood pumped and she was suddenly, acutely aware of the tiny thong she wore beneath her dress. For an outing with a blind date, it had felt naughty, a little dangerous. For an outing with Jack, it was an invitation to disaster.
Deliberately, she shifted away from him, but didn’t get far. He stayed glued to her side. She used her elbow to shove him away. Useless of course. The man was as immovable as a mountain.
Her stomach growled.
“Too nervous with anticipation to eat before your date?” he whispered in her ear. “Didn’t I always tell you to at least eat a piece of cheese to settle that stomach of yours.”