• • •
Two o’clock in the morning and no pounding rain to mask his footsteps. Cruz paused at the top of the stairs in the semidarkness. He listened to the sounds of the house settling. A creak in the wall a few feet from him to the right. A groan somewhere near the window. The warm breeze added to the hushed night sounds. A tree branch skritch-skritch-skritched as it rubbed against the siding in the warm breeze. The rustle of leaves of the live oak outside her bedroom window.
While looking for her computer that afternoon, he’d taken care of the two creaking top stairs and the loose board outside her bedroom door. Mia had been down in the kitchen studying a Cajun cookbook as if it held the answers to the universe. She looked damned adorable in dark-framed reading glasses.
He could’ve driven a tank past her and she wouldn’t have glanced up to ask him where he was going. The woman had a laser-intense focus. She was like that with sex as well. Totally immersed, totally focused. Having that single-minded intensity directed at him had been an incredible turn-on.
If this were a normal world, he’d be looking forward to another cooking demonstration soon. But normal it wasn’t. He had a job to do. And he was here to fulfill his contract and move on. She’d be just one more household accident statistic.
So, no more sex with the mark, he decided resolutely as he reached the top step—the one that had creaked so loudly that afternoon—and set his weight down carefully, no sound. Moonlight streamed through the window at the end of the long corridor, making a white runner of light down the long hallway.
The woman turned him on at a level he’d never experienced before, which made her far too distracting, when he, too, had to be completely focused. Sex didn’t usually muddy the waters, but in this case . . . yeah, it did. Big-time. It muddied already opaque waters. His dick had to stay in his pants.
Decision made.
He still wanted to ascertain the verisimilitude of his report so he could do his job, receive the balance of his payment, and disappear.
It was a sound decision, and one he’d stick with.
In the meantime, the more time he spent with her, the fucking less he knew her. Seeing was not believing. Hell, Cruz Barcelona was an affable, easygoing guy. It was a mask. A persona he donned like an old coat.
Amelia Wellington-Wentworth’s coat was just a hell of a lot prettier.
He needed her computer.
No more sex.
For the next few days, he’d eat her culinary efforts, not fuck her, and find her damned cyber secrets.
The gumbo-style chicken creole she’d fixed for dinner hadn’t been bad. She’d primly informed him, blue eyes alight with satisfaction, that his shock and amazement was damned rude. All it took to produce a decent meal was to read the recipe and follow directions. It was sort of like chemistry, and not brain surgery.
She’d been a lot more talkative at lunch in the local coffee shop than she’d been alone with him in her kitchen over dinner. There was something a lot more intimate with just the sounds of their cutlery on the plates, and darkness encroaching against the windows, than sitting in a bright diner with curious eavesdropping locals.
It was pretty damned remarkable to Cruz that they could have so much to talk about when neither was who they pretended to be. Their alter egos liked each other. Wasn’t that a fucking kick in the head.
Unprecedented.
Propinquity, that was all it was.
Lust, more like it. He wanted to strip her bare and take her on the kitchen counter again. Or on top of that virginal white comforter, wrists bound to the metal headboard.
A decision had been made. He had four days. He’d never taken more than twenty-four hours to fulfill a contract since he began this business fifteen years ago. His gut yelled one thing, but thus far he’d seen nothing to repudiate what his research made no bones about. Just because she was a good lay didn’t mean she was a good person. Just because she amused him with her intensity as she tried to drive that big-ass truck, or had self-deprecating humor, it didn’t mean she wasn’t responsible for the deaths and exploitation of thousands of children a world away.
She could not blame those deplorable conditions on ignorance. She’d personally visited those factories several times in the past year alone. In fact, she’d been to Blush’s manufacturing plant in Guangzhou just three months before she disappeared from public view.
Cruz fucking knew she was guilty as hell. Knew it. And yet—God damn it. He couldn’t put his finger on what the hell wasn’t right with her, the situation, some damn thing. And what the hell did it matter, really? Hundreds of kids in her care were dead. Directly due to her greed. It couldn’t be any clearer than that.