Mr Right Next Door

Older sister. Impossibly practical until she fell in love inside of six weeks herself. Would Kate think it was impossible to do in a week? Kim wasn’t sure.

“Hey, you didn’t even tell me his name,” her brother said.

“No, I didn’t.”

“You’re not even going to tell us his name?”

“Why? So you can run him through the FBI’s computer?”

Her brother shrugged, like there was nothing unreasonable about him doing that to everyone she dated.

“Then no, I’m not going to tell you his name,” she said, just to annoy him even more.

“Looks sweet as can be, doesn’t she?” a tinny voice quipped through what looked like an ordinary, blue-tooth headset that agent Nick Cavanaugh wore, as he followed the woman through the Atlanta airport.

“Find out yet how the guy got through security to meet her at the gate?” Nick said, speaking into the mike of the headset.

It was a really nice break, everyone using those little wireless receivers to talk into their cell phones these days. No more needing to hide a mike and an earpiece discreetly on his body. He just had to look like a guy who was always on the phone.

Technology was absolutely grand.

“Come on, Nick. Don’t tell me you haven’t noticed how fine that woman looks. Eye candy of the sweetest variety. I mean, yum,” Harry said, his voice piped directly into Nick’s ear. “You’re not dead yet, are you?”

“Not yet,” Nick admitted, although his right shoulder was killing him from a nasty little mishap on the ship.

“Don’t tell me you didn’t even notice how she looks. Somebody said you were surveilling her in a bikini for hours on the ship. Man, I don’t know if my heart could have taken it.”

“What can I say? That’s why they pay me the big bucks,” Nick said.

Because he could supposedly handle the sight of sweet little things like her in a bikini and still keep his mind on his job.

“So…how’d the guy with her get through security to meet her at the gate?” Nick asked again.

“Claimed he was a cop.”

“She’s got a local cop waiting to pick her up as she gets off the plane?” What had the woman done before she’d left town to go on her expensive vacation?

“Yeah, but you didn’t see the greeting the cop got as she got off the plane. He did not show up to arrest her.”

“Oh,” Nick said.

“Yeah. Give us a minute. We’re checking right now to see if he’s really a cop or not.”

“Okay,” Nick said and kept walking.

“So maybe she’s not as sweet and innocent as she looks, huh?” Harry said. “She’s got the guy on the cruise who was just a little vacation fling and her regular guy waiting for her at home?”

“Don’t know, Harry.”

It was certainly not what they hoped to find when they’d decided at the last minute to tail her as she’d left the ship.

She and the blond guy with a badge stopped dead in the middle of the busy corridor filled with travelers and their luggage, the move so abrupt that Nick had no choice but to keep walking. He’d go pick up a newspaper at the store fifteen feet down and to the right, wait for them to move on and then…

He slipped right past them and…

Ahhh.

It was a sound a man might make when he’d accidentally touched a hot stove. Like he’d been burned.

That’s how it felt. Burning.

He’d gotten a little too close.

And with her, it mattered.

He’d actually touched her, brushed past her right shoulder as she’d turned her hair at just the right moment. A wave of pretty, blond curls had teased their way past his nose, just out of reach but leaving him with a giant whiff of her.

And she smelled really good.

He’d found that out on the ship, too.

The woman smelled great, looked… Well, it was scary what that woman could do to a little, yellow bikini. It was downright unfair. Criminal, even.

He had indeed been forced to watch her for hours sunning herself in a bikini. She’d rubbed lotion on herself and he’d watched. Drank a silly, fruity drink, licking her lips when she was done, and he’d watched. Rolled over onto a perfectly toned tummy and then reached behind her back to untie the strings of her top, baring a completely naked back, while he watched and another agent had been whispering in his ear, speculating about how much Nick and the rest of the crew would pay him to dump a cup of ice water on her back and make her jump up, leaving the top behind.

Nick had watched it all.

There’d been a secluded deck on the ship reserved for nude sunbathing. He would be forever grateful she hadn’t gone there and taken any more of her little suit off.

But now he’d gotten close enough to smell her hair, actually brush past her shoulder, and every other thought—except what torment she’d already caused him—had simply vanished from his head.

“Hey, what did she say?” Harry asked.

Nick had no earthly idea.

Damn.

“I think it was something about being in love,” Harry said.

Nick frowned. Love was not an emotion he wanted involved in any of his cases. Lust was trouble enough, especially when it was him lusting after a pretty woman in a bikini, but love… Love was bad. It was awful. People who thought they were in love did completely unpredictable, illogical, often incredibly stupid things. They got mad. They got hurt. They set out for revenge, ruining their lives and often the lives of people around them, all in the name of that foolish thing called love.

God save him from another woman in love.

“Did you get that on tape?” Nick asked. “Can you play it back?”

“Yeah, hang on. It’ll be up in a second or two. We’ll up the volume on the playback for you. Here it comes.”

There was a lot of background noise, but he knew her voice by now, just as well as he knew how she smelled.