Melissa Cutler - Secret Agent Secretary

Taking care to keep his face in the swath of shadow created by the enormous lobby Christmas tree, he tipped his head around the corner until he had a clear view of the bar.

No two ways about it; the woman in pink was Avery Meadows.

With her lips on the rim of her martini glass, she glanced around anxiously, as though she was waiting for someone. Him, he assumed. What a dangerous move, to waltz into the middle of the undercover op she knew full well was happening here. She looked like a pink bull’s-eye, standing in plain sight dressed like she was, as though she had zero concern for her personal safety.

Then again, if she was working with Vincenzo Chiara, maybe safety wasn’t a concern. Maybe, instead of looking for Ryan, she was meeting up with Chiara’s men to ensure they’d followed through on their job to off him.

But why the dress and the drink—to blend in with the New Year’s Eve party crowd? Why would she bother? Nothing made sense.

He strained his brain to remember what she’d been wearing when he’d left the office but couldn’t pull it up from his mental files. Maybe a charcoal-gray dress and a sweater...or was it a pantsuit? He’d pretty much been avoiding eye contact with her since arriving at the San Diego office. Mostly because she wouldn’t stop looking at him in that sly way women did when they were making plans for a man.

Watching her watch him gave him the willies, as though maybe he’d been right to suspect her of misdeeds. But even if she hadn’t been on his short list of corruption suspects, he wasn’t in San Diego to get involved in a relationship or even have a bit of no-strings-attached fun. He was there for only one purpose: to bury Chiara along with the secret Ryan had dedicated his life to protecting. He couldn’t afford to get distracted—not even by his office’s sweet, cute secretary.

She certainly didn’t look sweet and cute tonight. More like trouble wrapped in a pink hourglass. And Ryan already had plenty of trouble.

He smoothed a hand over his hair and straightened his tie. Whatever dirt Avery was mixed up in, it was time for her to come clean.

He skirted the room along the wall. She hadn’t noticed his presence, so he took advantage of the element of surprise and walked around the far side of the bar to approach her from behind. She looked even sexier the closer he got. His eyes traced the line of her calf to the skin on the back of her knee. And that butt—how had he never noticed it before?

When he was near enough to see the movement of her teardrop pearl earrings as she fished the olive from her drink, he double-checked his body language. Just a guy meeting his date at the bar.

He wrapped his hand around her elbow and ducked his lips close to her ear. “You know what they say about people who eat the olive before finishing the drink, don’t you?”

Startled, she stiffened and sucked in a sharp breath. The martini sloshed over the rim of the glass. “Agent Reitano, thank goodness. I was starting to think I’d never find you.”

She tried to face him, but he maintained his position of power with an unyielding grip on her arm. “Ryan,” he corrected. No need to advertise he was an undercover agent. “What are you doing here?”

“I left you a voice mail and texted you that I was coming.”

“I tossed my phone.”

“What? Why?” She tried to turn again, so he pressed against her back, pinning her between the bar stool and his hips.

“My question first.”

She fiddled with the base of her glass. “Okay. The answer is no. I don’t know what they say about people who eat the olive first. That we’re hungry?”

Huh? “Avery, what are you doing here?”

She angled her head over her shoulder and whispered out of the corner of her mouth, “There was a problem with the document you asked for.”

Damn it. Now what was he supposed to think? Avery definitely wasn’t giving off a double-agent vibe, but her actions were suspicious as all get-out. Once upon a time, Ryan had valued his intuition first and foremost, but ever since the betrayal that had broken up his black ops crew and turned Ryan into a lone hunter, he knew better than to trust anyone or anything— including his own instincts.

And wasn’t that a royally jaded thought? When had he become such a cynic? Actually, he could pinpoint the exact day and time he’d turned into a cynic, not that it made the transformation any less jarring.

He shook off his regret and frustration about the past. There was nothing he could do to change the way things went down with his crew.

“What sort of problem?” He leaned in for a view of her facial expression when she answered.

“The office’s computers crashed, so I searched for the hard copy, but the file was missing. I didn’t know what else to do but come find you.”

Scowling, he shook his head. “You expect me to believe that?”

“Uh, yeah. Why wouldn’t you?”

Another loud, beat-heavy song drifted into the lobby from the second-floor ballroom as the New Year’s Eve ball went into full swing. Regardless, the ground-floor lobby bar was not an ideal place for an interrogation.

From his research on the hotel, he remembered a row of conference rooms on the third level. Taking the service stairs would be quicker, but with Avery’s dress, they’d stand out too glaringly to anyone on the lookout for incongruous movement. Staying with the horde of revelers attending the ball was the best camouflage he could manage under the circumstances.

After dropping a twenty-dollar bill on the bar, he slipped his arm around her waist, working to ignore the heat of her body and the provocative curve of her figure. “Let’s walk.”

Hip to hip, they strode in pace with the impenetrable crowd lining up at the base of the escalators. Well, Avery didn’t so much stride as teeter along in a pair of black stiletto heels that looked downright torturous.

As soon as they shuffled onto the escalator, Ryan turned their backs to the lobby and looked out the wall of windows at the sea of cars and pedestrians on the packed downtown street. Chiara was out there somewhere nearby. Ryan could feel it.

Times like these, constrained by the rules of his job, he didn’t feel like the man with the advantage. Especially given that he was locked in a deadly game of cat and mouse with a man of no scruples and no loyalty but to himself.

Avery shifted, reclaiming his attention. She tilted her mouth toward his chin. “Where are we going?”

“Somewhere to talk.”

She nodded, the worry lines on her face easing. “Good. Because I think I can help you with the Lassiter transcript.”

Her words threw him off-balance again. The LM1204 document was top secret. There would be no way for her to know the names involved in the wiretap unless she’d read the file. Even if she was lying about his computer breaking down, she couldn’t have opened the file, because it was individually passworded. Lassiter was a rogue computer hacker and a known associate of the Chiara brothers. His connection to the current investigation into Chiara was highly classified intel that she had no business knowing.

He gave her body a calculated perusal. “I’m curious—why the costume and the drink?”

He’d chosen the word costume purposefully and injected some venom into his tone to lob that off-balance feeling right back at her, but he still felt a twinge of regret when she smoothed a hand down her dress in a self-conscious gesture. He touched his shoe to his ankle holster, a reminder of the dangerous mess he was in.

“There are a lot of women here in cocktail dresses holding drinks,” she answered. “I think I blend in rather well, thank you very much.”

He ran his tongue along the backside of his teeth, fighting the urge to break it to her that her rationale was flawed. Sure, there were a lot of fancy-looking women in the lobby, but a hot blonde in a skintight pink dress standing alone at the bar? He’d bet the contents of his safety-deposit box that every male in the room had taken note of her.