The Impossible Alliance

This time, she swallowed an entire string of curses.

And then she nodded.

She didn’t have much of a choice. She knew what he was thinking. What any agent who knew Samuel Hatch as well as Jared Sullivan knew him would be thinking.

She was on a first-name basis with the director of ARIES. A director who’d just risked an international incident to free her from that damned makeshift hospital cell. A director who’d risked the life of another agent—an agent Sam loved and trusted more than he would his own son if he’d had one. But he obviously didn’t trust that agent enough to tell him she was a woman. He had to suspect that she’d slept with the man. She didn’t care.

It was better than the truth.

She sealed her fate with a single, telling shrug and damned herself to hell in the process. “Since Rita died, Sam and I have become…close.” It was the truth. But she also knew Jared would misconstrue it. Especially when she felt his gaze drop to the yawning gap in her shirt and linger there.

He dragged it up. “I’ll just bet you have.” His shadowy shrug was pointed. Insolent. “Too bad Sam has chosen to ignore your desires—and passed you off to me.”

Damn him.

Alex sucked up her pride as each of her forbidden fantasies about this man crumbled beneath reality. She should have caved in to temptation and engineered another meeting with Jared months ago, that one as herself. It would have saved her far too many sleepless nights. As it was, she still had to deal with this night. With him. The real Jared Sullivan and not some erotic figment of her imagination.

The silence between them thickened until it succeeded in deafening the constant nocturnal cacophony ringing through her ear. She should wait. Force him to break it.

To her astonishment, he did it on his own.

He reached up and pulled the knit cap from his head as he sighed. “Look, I was out of line. I have a lot of respect for Samuel Hatch. He’s a good director. A good man. What he does on his down time is his own business. Let’s just say I’m a little pissed to find out he sent me on a job without giving me all the facts. But I shouldn’t have taken that out on you. It’s not as if you knew I was coming.”

But she had concealed that same damning fact from him, hadn’t she? Not tonight, but three short months ago. Though she now knew this man would never, ever, bring up that brief, piercingly uncomfortable meeting, she could feel the accusation hanging between them—thrumming with betrayal.

With disappointment.

He might not know that she’d overheard half that call, but he did know she’d come out of that bathroom in time to discover tears trickling down the face of the Man of Stone himself, just before she’d dared to offer her own awkward sympathy. Never once mentioning that she was a woman.

Maybe it was the convoluted effects of that blasted coma. Maybe it was the escape. Maybe it was the constant, distracting racket in her ear. Hell, maybe deep down she was really just a coward at heart. Because she’d just discovered that she didn’t have the nerve to address that night at Hatch’s house out loud, either. Much less confess that she knew why he’d been so devastated. So she addressed the only part she could. “You’re right. Sam is a good man.” The best. But he was also more.

At least to her.

Unfortunately, if Sam hadn’t confided their relationship to Jared, then it wasn’t her place to share it, either. To do so would shatter the bargain she and her uncle had struck years before and, whether or not she believed Sam, would also risk both their careers, as well as her life. A life Sam had entrusted to the man waiting patiently to see if she’d accept his apology.

She should. Truth be known, she owed Jared an apology, as well, for her behavior when she’d regained consciousness in his arms. Behavior she still didn’t understand. She knew full well the man hadn’t been copping a feel. From the few but telling comments Sam had dropped regarding this particular operative through the years, Jared Sullivan was not a rutting stag. The opposite, in fact. Hadn’t she overheard proof of that herself?

She sighed. “Look, Agent Sullivan—”

“Jared.”

Alex stared into the dark, searched the shadows shrouding the man’s imposing body, especially the ones obscuring the equally imposing planes of his face. She finally gave up. He was just too far away. What she’d have given to have superhuman sight to go along with her souped-up hearing. Or at the very least have the nerve to snag that flashlight and shine it on that razor-sharp gaze. To know for certain if those eyes were glowing from the extension of an honest-to-goodness olive branch—or gleaming with open speculation.

He’d offered his real first name. What was hers?

She reached for the branch—and ignored the guilt. She extended her hand. “Dr. Alexandra Morrow.”

Even a detailed check into her background from someone at his level would support her claim. Whether or not he believed her, he extended his hand as well, the hard warmth engulfing hers. Heat slid up her arm. Her breath came out in rush.

He frowned. “You okay?”

“I’m fine.” She tugged her hand from his grip as quickly as she dared and forced a smile. “Still a little woozy, I guess.”

How long could she abuse that excuse?

His frown cleared as he nodded. “It’s because of the coma. I’m surprised you’ve held up as well as you have. You’re one for the medical books, you know that?”

She might. But he didn’t know the half of it.

She returned his nod, anyway. “I admit there was a moment there when I didn’t think I’d make it. If you hadn’t slung me into that harness…” She trailed off, wincing in memory—and then in reality as the magnified screech of a hoot owl somewhere overhead ripped through her skull. Even so, that owl had nothing on that thundering iron bird. “You saved my life back there. I’d like to thank—”

He shook his head, cutting her off. “It’s not necessary.”

“Yes, it is.” She risked the dizziness and captured his hands, squeezing them quickly. “Thank you.” She breathed her relief as the roiling vertigo remained at bay—until an unmistakably erotic pull replaced it as he squeezed back.

“You’re welcome.”

She swore she could feel the air between them warm. Thicken. She did not want to know if he felt it, too.

Leave it to her blasted hyperactive hearing aid to pick up the masked whoosh of his own breath. This time, it was his hand that executed a discreet retreat. His entire body withdrew several steps, too. He turned and dropped his stethoscope, flashlight and black knit hat beside the rucksack and machine gun he’d left at the base of a tree. He unhooked his web gear next, adding the nylon harness to the pile. His first-aid kit followed. Moments later his massive chest blocked her view as he hunkered down. It didn’t matter. The vibrations from the zippers at the legs of his jumpsuit ripped across her eardrum as he released the rows of metal teeth just above his boots. They died out as he stood to peel the insulated coveralls down and off his boots, boots that until that moment she hadn’t realized were more lumberjack than Airborne Ranger. A second later the jumpsuit joined the pile of gear. She watched, intrigued, as he tugged the rubber band from his hair. The shadows obscuring his features deepened as the thick silk slipped past his shoulders to settle around his face.

“Well?”

She nodded approvingly as he stepped in front of her. Evidently she wasn’t the only quick-change artist around. With his hair flowing freely and that matching cable-knit turtleneck toning down his massive chest and arms, in addition to his dark jeans and nondescript jump boots, Agent Sullivan looked more like a local woodsman out for a midnight stroll than a finely honed ARIES operative on the prowl in the backwoods of…

“Where are we?”

He stilled. “You don’t remember?”

Before she could answer, he turned back to the pile of gear, leaning down to retrieve something. She stared at the disk of that gleaming scope as he returned.

Great.

She steeled herself as he moved in close, determined to ignore his scent and his warmth as he tucked the cool disk into the curve of her upper breast. “I don’t have a blessed clue where we are. The last I remember, I was attending a conference in Holzberg. I’m not even sure how long I was out. I woke up a couple of days ago…I think. It’s hard to say, since I kept falling back under. Twice I saw someone else. A man. He’d been beaten severely. I think he was a doctor or at least a nurse assigned to treat me.”

He slipped the scope from the gap in her shirt and tucked it beneath her collar, sliding the disk far enough down her back to listen to her lungs. “Why?”

“He was wearing a white lab coat.”

“I don’t suppose—”

“No. I didn’t see a name. I didn’t hear one, either. Except for my own.” She breathed easier as he withdrew the scope and hooked the tubing around his neck—until he lit up the face of his watch. The dial glowed softly as he captured her wrist and timed her pulse. She willed it to slow.

“Hmm.”

Was that a good “hmm” or a bad “hmm”? She decided on the former, easing out her breath as he withdrew his fingers altogether, then headed for the pile of gear. He headed back, sans scope—but with a mini flashlight in his right hand.

Oh boy.