He wanted this over. One way or the other. The woman was preventing his retirement. Holding the promise of long stretches of sugary beaches and swaying palm trees hostage with those big blue eyes, firm ass, and quirky sense of humor.
And the remote possibility that she wasn’t anything like the woman he’d researched before accepting the hit.
He’d searched upstairs while she’d been downstairs, then, when he returned to the kitchen, watched her typing away on the very computer for which he’d been looking. She’d closed it and shoved the laptop aside to bake a batch of cookies, then to prep dinner. Cruz had circled that damned computer all afternoon. But she hadn’t left it on the table. When she went upstairs, she’d taken it with her. The middle of the night was his only chance to retrieve it.
The house still smelled of garlic, onions, tomatoes, and sweat-inducing spices as he made his barefooted way into her bedroom. The scent of tuberoses, as faint as it was, assaulted his senses the moment Cruz stepped through the door, making him instantly hard.
He could hear her soft, even breathing as he padded closer to the moonlit island of her bed. Mia was a small, curled-up ball beneath the sheet, just her dark head exposed, facing away from him.
There weren’t a lot of places to hide a laptop, and he did a visual scan of the large room. Bed. Two bedside tables indicating she liked symmetry, two easy chairs in the far corner, a futuristic standing lamp and a small table. A couple of doors. Bathroom. Closet.
Since she had no reason to hide her computer, Cruz slid open the top drawer of her bedside table. He’d seen the fraternity house–size box of condoms there earlier and had choked back a laugh seeing them in three sizes. She was expecting to have a lot of sex, with several different partners.
He liked sex, so why shouldn’t she? And why the fuck did the thought of her having it with a whole fucking platoon of partners piss him off?
He didn’t have the goddamned time for all this mental masturbation. The computer was in neither of the drawers in the bedside tables. He headed for the bathroom. Here he needed the light. Shutting the door, he ran the small Maglite over every logical surface. No computer. Exiting the bathroom, he hit the closet. By today’s standards it was tiny, but she didn’t have much in the way of clothes. Jeans, T-shirts. He checked her underwear drawer again. He’d had a boner after searching it earlier that day. Skimpy, sexy, gossamer thin. Wearing this underwear would still leave her practically naked.
No sign of the damned computer, but he commandeered some interesting toys on his way out. He moved silently across the room to stare down at her for a moment. Half her features were limned by stark white moonlight now, the other half dark and shadowed, hidden, secret.
She was a study in black and white.
He had very few rules in his life: Meet a client face-to-face. Hit only those who absolutely deserved to die. Never get emotionally involved with someone he’d been paid to kill. Hell. Never get emotionally involved. Period.
He liked his privacy. In every aspect of his life. He preferred observation to participation.
He wasn’t involved with Mia Hayward–slash–Amelia Wentworth, but everything about her intrigued him on a purely physical level. She looked sweetly innocent and vulnerable as she slept, nothing like the quick-witted smart-ass she was when she was awake and on the ball. This woman wasn’t vulnerable. She was confident, self-sufficient, and so fucking sexy that she made his dick salute just watching her sleep.
Why was she hiding in this backwater? What was going on in her life that someone was paying almost a million bucks to have her forever silenced?
He knew why he’d taken the job. The business in China. She was the woman who imprisoned children in deplorable working and living conditions a world away, where no one could see how she made those obscene profits for the Blush company.
But was that all she was? Wasn’t she also the personality she showed to the world? The woman whose personal foundation donated millions to various charities every year, who’d built a breast cancer wing at a San Francisco hospital? All PR?
Either, either, or.
One hundred percent trouble.
He looked at the elegant line of her slender back, her skin milky pale in the moonlight. Her choppy hair tumbled around her head, parting erotically on her neck. Cruz wanted to put his mouth there, wanted to slide his hand over her narrow shoulders and fill his hands with her breasts, then take her from behind.
He wanted to fuck her without seeing her eyes. Without imprinting her features onto his synapses.
He did not want to have to touch her. This was where a sniper had the advantage. A shooter didn’t have to touch soft, supple skin or smell warm female flesh. He wouldn’t feel the tickle of her hair, or have the overwhelming urge to bury his face in fragrant curve of her neck.