Risky Engagement

“No! I don’t—”

“You heard the lady. Beat it, kid.”

The deep growl spun both Nina and the pint-size vendor around. She looked up—not a common occurrence for someone who measured five eight in her bare feet—and felt her stomach do a flip.

Whoa, momma! Not two minutes ago, she’d been thinking of Angelina Jolie. Now here was James McAvoy, Angelina’s sexy costar in Wanted. Same dark hair, same blue bedroom eyes, same chiseled chin.

Only this version was tougher. Leaner. Definitely not into Hollywood chic. His boots had collected almost as much dust as Nina’s sandals. His wrinkled khaki trousers and the gaudy tropical shirt he wore over a black T-shirt, looked as though he’d just pulled them out of a suitcase. And the man needed a shave. Badly.

Nina was no stickler for protocol. Well, maybe a little. Okay, a lot. She expected her employees to present a neat, businesslike appearance at all times. That applied equally to everyone, from her division heads to the medical data-entry clerks.

She was fair about it, though. She held herself to the same strict standards. She dressed well, if conservatively, and worked out regularly to maintain both her health and her trim figure. She was conservative in her makeup, too. A few swipes of mascara was all she needed to enhance her brown eyes. Peach lip gloss did the trick for her mouth—which she now forced into a polite smile.

“Thanks for the assistance,” she said as the kid who’d dogged her footsteps scampered away. “The boy was nothing, if not persistent.”

“You have to learn how to shake ‘em off. Must be your first time in Cabo.”

It was a statement, not a question, but she answered it anyway. “Yes, it is.”

Those blue eyes made a slow descent from her wide-brimmed straw hat to her designer sunglasses to the lips her ex-fiancé had described as all too kissable.

That was before she’d handed the conniving rat his walking papers, of course. During their last, somewhat less than cordial meeting, Kevin had flung other descriptive phrases at her. “Hard” and “stubborn” and “a real ball-buster” came immediately to mind.

“I was just going to have a beer.” The dark-haired stranger hooked a thumb at the open-air bar behind him. “Care to join me?”

Thirst battled with common sense. If Nina hadn’t been thinking of Kevin, odds were she would have turned down this casual invitation, just as she had that of the silver-maned hacienda owner. She never cruised bars, much less let strange men pick her up. But her parched throat and the remembered sting of Kevin’s insults overcame caution.

“Sure. Why not?”

The Purple Parrot looked much like the dozens of other bars in the harbor area. Square tables topped by chipped formica crowded its railed-in veranda. Red and green-plastic chairs added a colorful air, as did the plastic pennants strung from corner to corner. Inside the bar itself were shelves lined with a staggering array of bottles.

“Over there.”

Grasping Nina’s elbow, the stranger steered her toward a just-vacated table with an unobstructed view of the marina. The sudden and totally unexpected sizzle that radiated up her bare arm flustered her so much she barely took in the sea of gleaming white sailboats.

“I’m Rafe,” he said by way of introduction. “Rafe Blackstone.”

“Nina. Uh, Grant.”

Oh, for pity’s sake! The heat must have gotten to her more than she’d realized. Bad enough she’d given in to the impulse to have a drink with a man who looked like a cross between a movie stud and a hood. One touch, and said stud came close to finishing what the sun had started. She was practically melting under her linen sundress.

It had to be that dark stubble on his cheeks and chin. Or the way his black T-shirt stretched across a taut, flat belly when he leaned back in his chair and unfolded his long legs. Or the slow, considering look he gave her through a screen of ridiculously thick lashes that any woman would have killed for.

Whatever it was, Nina responded in a way she’d never responded before to any male, Kevin included. A delicious spark of heat licked at her veins, and she could feel the muscles low in her belly tighten. Surprised and not a little flustered by her reaction, she removed her sunglasses and tipped the man seated across from her another polite smile.

“Where’s home, Rafe?”

“Here and there. Mostly San Diego these days.

You?”

“Albuquerque.”

“What do you do there?”

Before she could answer, a waiter materialized at their table. She ordered a margarita on the rocks, her companion a Dos Equis.

“I own and operate a company that digitizes medical data,” she said when the waiter retreated.

“That so?” He arched a brow. “Given the president’s push to computerize the medical profession, your business must be thriving.”

“It is … now. We had some lean years when we first started out,” she admitted wryly. “Hospitals weren’t exactly anxious to share patient data. Plus, we had to make sure we didn’t violate privacy laws. We got our foot in the door by trending data from local sources and providing it to medical facilities and research facilities across the state.” A touch of pride crept into her voice. “We now harvest information from more than three thousand sources, analyze the input, and supply trends to a host of private and governmental medical research centers across the U.S.”

“Only the U.S.?”

His slouch was the epitome of lazy relaxation, but his obvious interest reassured Nina. She always worried about boring folks with her passion for what she did. Or worse, lapsing into so much technical jargon that she lost her listeners completely.

“We still have to work within privacy laws,” she said, “but I’m hoping to go international soon.”

The seemingly casual comment put a sudden kink in Wolf’s gut. The woman wanted to go international, did she? With the help of Sebastian Cordell, aka Stephen Caulder, aka a half-dozen other aliases?

Or was she after the sensitive, top-secret information Cordell had stolen and intended to auction to the highest bidder? Had she staged her vehicle’s breakdown? Used it as an entree into Cordell’s heavily guarded compound? Was she that good?

Wolf was still trying to decide when the waiter delivered their drinks. The man placed two frosted glasses in front of Grant and earned a surprised look.

“I didn’t order two drinks.”

“This is happy hour, señorita. You order one, I bring two.”

“But …”

“Same price. No problem.”

She gave in with a shrug and a smile.

Wolf had to give her credit. She had that polite half smile down pat. Friendly, but with just enough reserve in it to keep a man at a proper distance.

Nina Grant didn’t know it yet, he thought grimly, but the two of them were about to get up close and very personal.

The muscles low in his belly tightened at the prospect. This is what he did. What he’d done now for almost ten years. Why he kept to himself and trusted no one outside his immediate circle of friends and fellow agents. Over the years, he’d locked horns with too many men and women who’d crossed the line. In more than one instance, it was kill or be killed.

In this one…

He didn’t have a fix on Nina Grant yet, and the uncertainty scraped on his nerves. Extracting the lime wedge from the neck of his beer, he tipped the bottle in her direction.

“Here’s to international cooperation.”

She clinked her frosted glass against the bottle. “I’ll drink to that.”