Proof Read online

He stared at her, and slowly a smile curved his mouth. She didn’t know if it was amused or amazed, but she couldn’t doubt it was genuine.

  “They grow them tough at Athena,” he said softly.

  “Keep it in mind.”

  The smile faded. His expression was solemn when he spoke again. “I want us to work together.”

  “On?”

  “You know what I mean, but if you insist I’ll spell it out. What happened to my sister and what happened to your friend are related. I’d stake my life on it.”

  “At a guess, you’ve already staked your career.”

  “As,” he said, “have you.”

  She couldn’t deny that. “What do you mean by work together?”

  “Coordinate. Share information. Not sneak around each other, tripping over each other, with any one of us maybe having the one bit of information or evidence that could break it wide-open if it was combined with the rest, but not realizing it.”

  She couldn’t argue with that. And he had a point. A good one.

  “Not to mention,” he said, his tone wry, “you and I being able to maybe space out asking for time off so neither one of us ends up on the carpet.”

  “There is that,” she said, for the first time unable to resist a smile.

  As if sensing he was wearing her down, he reached into an inner pocket in his suit coat. He pulled something out and leaned forward to put it down on her desk. She looked down at it.

  It was a photograph. Slightly dog-eared, as if it had been taken out and looked at often. It was of a laughing, beautiful young woman with Justin’s eyes. And in front of her, with her arms around him protectively, was a boy who was unmistakably Justin himself. But this Justin was also laughing, his face free of the tension and grimness it carried now. She’d seen a flash of this boy when he’d grinned just now, but only a flash. And she felt a sudden wish to have known this boy then.

  Or to restore that joy to the man he was now.

  “I will find out what happened to her. And I will not stop until I do.” She looked up, met his steady gaze. And had no doubt that he would do exactly as he said. “And I believe none of you will stop until you find out what really happened to your friend.”

  “No, we won’t.” He had the measure of the Cassandras, all right.

  “Then let’s work together. We can do more, cover more ground, save time that might be wasted duplicating effort, and avoid antagonizing people who might get tired of being questioned twice.”

  “And avoid alerting those who might let something slip once, but would be suspicious about twice.”

  “Precisely.”

  Alex leaned back in her chair with her elbows on the worn arms, and steepled her fingers in front of her. He didn’t hammer at her. He’d presented his case, now he waited for her decision. She appreciated that. Too many men would march in and start giving orders. Nothing was more guaranteed to get a Cassandra’s back up than that.

  “I can’t speak for the others,” she said.

  “But you can speak to them.”

  “Yes.”

  “And your opinion will carry a lot of weight.”

  “Yes,” she said, not bothering to deny the truth. “I’ll talk to them.”

  “That’s all I want.”

  “I can’t guarantee how they’ll feel about it.”

  “I understand. But what about you, Alex? How do you feel?”

  She didn’t comment on his use of the nickname that had been an issue between them before. They were beyond that at this point, she thought.

  “I think we can probably work together,” she said. “And that it would be beneficial to learning the truth about both Rainy and your sister.” If I can keep my head where it’s supposed to be, she added to herself.

  He let out a relieved breath as he nodded, as if the entire issue was decided. As perhaps it was; he’d been right when he’d said her word would carry a lot of weight with the others. She knew if one of the others came to the group and said “We need to work with this guy,” she and the rest of the Cassandras would trust her judgment.

  Even, Alex realized, Kayla, whose judgment about men had once been highly suspect. And she realized thankfully that she was thinking she could really let go of that past now. Everyone made mistakes—she’d almost married Emerson Howland, for heaven’s sake—and Kayla had obviously learned from hers. And as she’d said, if it wasn’t for that big mistake, she wouldn’t have Jazz, the best thing in her life.

  Alex stood up. “I’ll discuss it with those I can reach—we’re all kind of scattered right now—and let you know what they decide.”

  Justin nodded. He turned to go. Took two steps toward the door. Alex had come out from behind her desk, intending to go out the door behind him, when he turned again. She nearly ran into him.

  He didn’t move out of her way. He just stood there, looking down at her. Alex was tall enough that she noticed when that happened. When he spoke, his voice had that rough edge that had sent a shiver up her spine.

  “Remember when I said that was all I wanted?”

  Almost numbly, she nodded.

  “I lied,” he said, and lowered his head.

  She could have dodged it, could have stopped him, but she was so startled she didn’t move. And the moment she realized what he was going to do a raging curiosity filled her. It was only in part fueled by the childhood imaginings of what it would be like to be kissed by the Dark Angel. The rest was purely and simply the man here before her now, darkly handsome and fiery with deeply felt passion. That he would have that same strength of passion in other areas was something she hadn’t consciously thought about—perhaps hadn’t dared—but she knew it had to have been there in her mind somewhere, near the surface, because when his mouth came down on hers, her first thought was one of recognition.

  There it is.

  It was also the last coherent thought she could muster. It was as if every nerve in her body awoke at once, some that had apparently been sleeping her whole life. They awoke and began to carry the heat he was generating with his mouth. She couldn’t believe it was happening like this, it was just a simple kiss, he wasn’t even pressing for more, wasn’t pushing the kiss to a more intimate level. He was simply kissing her as if trying out the taste, lingering as if he liked what he’d found so far but was in no hurry to devour.

  When he finally pulled back, Alex simply stared at him. He was breathing as though he’d run the FBI 10 point, six minute mile. She was pulling for air a bit herself. She thought he might do it again, thought in a rather scattered way that this was not the best place for this, but couldn’t think for the life of her how to stop him. If she even wanted to.

  “I’ve learned a lot of patience in the past twenty-one years,” he whispered. “And right now that’s a damned good thing.”

  This time he did go. Alex stared at the back of the office door he’d closed behind him, as if he’d known it was going to take her a moment to recover. She hoped it was because he’d been feeling like this himself, shaken and stirred, and a little stunned.

  She couldn’t remember where she’d been headed. So instead she went back to her desk and sat down. For a long time she stayed there, her mind racing in so many directions she gave up trying to clamp down on it. The only thing she could remember clearly was her own thought on the day he’d followed her at Athena, before she’d known who he was. She’d thought then that whoever he was, he was a threat to someone or something she held dear. She never would have guessed it was she herself he would threaten, and that he’d do it with a single kiss that would about knock her socks off.

  When she finally reached for the phone to call the other Cassandras, to tell them that they were no longer alone in their hunt, she was smiling.

  And somehow she thought Rainy would have approved.

 

 

  From.Net