Crossing the Line

Mark shook his head. “No, no, we’re going to lunch in Austin with Covey and Butler. You can’t wear scrubs.” Mark eyed the width of Dante’s shoulders. “We’re still about the same size. You can wear one of my suits.”

“You keep extra suits at the office?”

“Don’t you?”

“You forget,” Dante said, following Mark into his office. “I’ve been working for a county hospital.”

That was the phony cover the FBI had provided for his résumé. And he’d worked at enough county hospitals as both an intern and resident that he knew they were as different from Confidential Rejuvenations as Park Avenue was from the streets of Baghdad.

Mark stepped to a mahogany wardrobe in the corner of his massive office and threw open the door. Inside were four suits, all much more expensive than the one Dante was wearing. “Long way from our UT dorm days, huh?”

“You’ve done very well, Mark.” Dante selected a navyblue suit from the wardrobe and looked over at his colleague. They’d shared a dorm room and the football field, but they hadn’t been the best of friends, mainly because Dante never let anyone get that close. Still, he couldn’t help feeling like something of a traitor.

If Mark’s involved in this mess, he’s going down. You have no reason to feel guilty.

No, he shouldn’t feel guilty, but lying didn’t come easily. “Thanks for the loaner,” he said. “I’ll go change.”

After returning to his office, Dante closed the blinds on his window before changing into the clean suit. As he reached for the string on the louvered blinds, he found his gaze drifting to the edge of the forest and his memory flashed back to Elle.

He thought about how she’d looked with her auburn hair curling up around her face in the rain. She really could have been a water nymph with her dewy skin, mischievous lips and womanly figure.

The setting hadn’t been sexual, but he’d gotten aroused. It had taken every bit of the self-control he possessed not to kiss her. When Dante had touched her hair, he’d come so damned close to falling into the abyss.

It scared him.

Not only because she was just as much a suspect as anyone else at Confidential Rejuvenations, but because she made him feel things he had no business feeling.

He wanted to take her to bed.

Bed? Hell, he’d wanted to take her right there on the forest floor.

And she’d looked at him as if she wouldn’t resist.

Then he thought about how tender she’d been with the baby deer. A true earth mother. That thought made him feel something else entirely. Longing, sadness and a bittersweet loneliness he hadn’t experienced since his mother had taken off when he was a kid.

He smiled, remembering about how flustered she’d gotten over her sister-in-law’s matchmaking attempts. Clearly Elle was still touchy on the subject of marriage, not that he could blame her. From all accounts, she’d been through a rough time with the divorce.

Dante shook off thoughts of Elle along with his muddy suit. He was a professional, an undercover FBI agent. These emotions could only trip him up. There were only two feelings he could afford to indulge in.

One was justice.

The other was revenge.

Elle Kingston was Mark’s Achilles’ heel. No one knew more about a man than his wife. And no one could flip faster than an ex-wife scorned. She was Dante’s route to Lawson’s downfall.

He knew then what he had to do. He must capitalize on the chemistry between them. Get closer to her. Find out exactly what secrets she was keeping about her exhusband. He would have to use her, manipulate her and then, in the end, he was going to have to walk away.

It was a dirty job.

But he’d been assigned to do it and Dante Nash never shirked his duty.

TWO DAYS AFTER ELLE’S strange encounter in the woods with Dante, she met her two best friends, Vanessa and Julie, at Stevie B’s, a popular blues bar down by the marina, not far from Confidential Rejuvenations. They met once a week, usually on hump day, to blow off steam and offer each other moral support. It was a weekly ritual Elle had come to rely on since her divorce. She had no idea how she would have made it through such a rough patch if it hadn’t been for her friends.

Elle was the last one to arrive. Vanessa and Julie were already sitting at a casual picnic style table in the back overlooking the Colorado River. Catamarans glided majestically through the water, the setting sun cast golden lights over the sails. It was early, the crowd was still light. The band wouldn’t start playing for another hour.

Vanessa and Julie weren’t watching the boats. Instead, they were engrossed in a game of “Sex or Dinner” and they hadn’t seen her come in.

“Jerry Seinfeld,” Julie said to Vanessa with a toss of her ash-blond hair.

Julie was one of those petite women who men seemed to instantly gravitate toward and want to take care of. Even dressed in the pink scrubs of the newborn nursery where she worked as a registered nurse, Julie looked incredibly feminine. She had a certain romantic naiveté about her that didn’t jive with the earthy, nononsense personality shared by the majority of nurses. If Julie weren’t so darned sweet, Elle would have been jealous of her.

“Strictly dinner,” Vanessa answered. “Jerry’s funny, but sexy he’s not. How about Colin Ferrell.”

“Seriously, you have to ask?” Julie blushed.

“I gotcha, chica.” Vanessa flashed a sly smile. “Sex all the way with that delicious Irishman.”

“Sex sounds fabulous,” Julie said, “but you know I’d be too shy to see it through. Good thing Colin is just the stuff of my midnight fantasies.”

“What about that cowboy sitting over there on the bar stool underneath the Coors sign?” Vanessa nodded at a lean-muscled, good-looking man in a Stetson at the end of the bar. “Sex or dinner?”

“Hmm,” Julie said. “This game makes me nervous when it leaves the realm of celebrity fantasies.”

“Please, you’ve been working at Confidential Rejuvenations long enough to know that celebrities are no different than the rest of us. They just think they are. I mean come on, Mark managed to snag Cassandra Roberts.”

“But Mark is rich and good-looking and a doctor.”

“So sex or dinner with Mark?”

Julie shuddered. “Neither. Besides the fact he’s Elle’s ex, there’s something about him that’s just…”

“Hi, guys,” Elle said, rushing to let her friends knowshe was standing there before they kept talking about Mark. She plunked down beside Julie and hooked her purse over the back of her chair. “I had to restock the crash cart before I leftwork.We had a code at the end of the shift.Ateenager.”

“Oh gosh, it’s especially awful when it’s a kid. Survivor?” Julie asked, nibbling her bottom lip.

Elle nodded and smiled triumphantly. It was always a good day when they saved a life. “We got her back.”

“That’s great news,” Vanessa said.

Because of patient confidentiality, Elle couldn’t discuss the case with her friends, although she longed to tell them what had happened and get their opinion on the odd turn of events. The daughter of a high-ranking local political official had collapsed at her private high school. The school had called an ambulance and they’d rushed her to the E.D., but by the time she rolled through the doors, she wasn’t breathing. A few seconds later, the girl had gone into full-blown cardiac arrest and they had to call a code.

One of the girl’s friends, who’d been escorted to the hospital by the police, had confessed that she’d taken a pill they’d bought the weekend before from some guy they’d met at a rave. The lab had drawn blood samples from the victim, but they’d been unable to detect any drugs in her system, so they’d sent the samples out for more rigorous testing at a specialized lab.

According to the victim’s friend, the pill was supposed to make you feel sexy and floaty and in love with everyone. It was a lot like Ecstasy, she’d said, only sexier.

“We ordered a pitcher of raspberry beer and chicken nachos for appetizers,” Vanessa said.

“Sounds great.” Elle slipped out of her cardigan. “Because of the code, I missed lunch. I’m starving.”