Merline Lovelace - Hot As Ice

“The betting is you’ll be back within a month,” a lean, lanky operative with the code name Cowboy predicted. “One or the other of you. Hunting terrorists or illegal arms dealers is a lot easier on the nerves than raising kids.”

“You should know,” Maggie retorted. “Most couples would have the sense to stop after two sets of twins.”

“What can I say?” Nate Sloan grinned. “This ole boy doesn’t shoot blanks.”

Amid the hoots and groans that followed, Elizabeth Wells calmly made the rounds to refill champagne glasses. The gray-haired, grandmotherly woman had served as personal assistant to the director of OMEGA since its inception. She was loved and respected by all for her many talents, not the least of which was her deadly skill with the 9mm SIG Sauer pistol she kept within instant reach at her desk downstairs.

Maggie waited until Elizabeth finished topping off the glasses to step forward. The irreverent grin that had both irritated and inflamed her one-time boss tugged at her lips as she tipped him a quick look.

“I’ll admit I’m looking forward to spending more than two nights in succession in the same city, not to mention the same country, with my husband.”

The answering gleam in Adam’s blue eyes was for Maggie alone. She melted inside, and the muscles low in her belly clenched in delicious anticipation.

“As the president stated when he approved my successor,” she said a little breathlessly, “I’m leaving OMEGA in good hands.”

Her glance shifted to the operative standing quietly to one side.

“Nick is one of our own. Adam and I would trust him with our lives. We have trusted him with our lives.”

Nick Jensen, code name Lightning, strolled forward and lifted Maggie’s hand to his lips with a charm that fluttered every female heart in the room.

“It was my pleasure, Chameleon.”

Straightening, Nick included her husband in his glance. Despite the differences in their ages and backgrounds, the camaraderie between the two men showed clearly in the smiles they exchanged.

“I’ll never forget that breakfast on the veranda of the Carlton Hotel.”

“Nor will I.” Grinning, Adam clapped a hand on the younger man’s shoulder. “I believe the bill for that journey of gastronomic discovery ran to three figures.”

Maggie caught the curious looks the other operatives traded. Only she, Adam, and the couple who’d adopted Nick knew that this cool, imperturbable agent had once roamed the back streets of Cannes.

Surveying him now, Maggie found it hard to believe that a skinny, half-starved pickpocket with the improbable name of Henri Nicolas Everard had once graciously offered to serve as her pimp. Or that the bone-thin street tough kid would grow into such a hunk!

His boyish shock of red hair had softened over the years to a burnished gold. The wide, muscled shoulders covered in whisper-soft gray cashmere could have belonged to a linebacker. In fact, he’d traded his shorts and beat-up soccer shoes for a football uniform when Page and Doc Jensen had brought him to the States.

Fiercely loyal to his adopted country, Nick Jensen had been educated at UCLA and Stanford. After graduation, he’d parlayed his early, ravenous hunger into a string of world-class restaurants that had made him a millionaire many times over. The outrageously expensive watering holes attracted movie stars and princes. They also allowed Nick to roam at will between the glittering world of the superrich and the dark underworld of terror and intrigue.

Which, in Maggie’s rather vocally expressed opinion, made the tall, wickedly handsome operative the perfect choice for acting director of OMEGA. Happy to be leaving her team in such capable hands, she lifted her glass.

“Bonne chance, Nick.”

“Thanks, Chameleon,” he said in the rich baritone that gave no hint of his French roots. “I’ll need more than luck to manage this crew.”

“You’ve got that right.”

Nick’s gaze traveled over the small crowd. He’d gone into the field with most of these operatives at one time or another, had depended on their unique talents to get him out of some decidedly uncomfortable situations. Now he’d be the one to send them into harm’s way.

He rolled his shoulders under his hand-tailored jacket. Nick hadn’t asked for the director’s job, wasn’t sure he wanted it. He’d been his own man for so long that he’d balked at the idea of assuming responsibility for the dozen or so highly skilled and very independent OMEGA agents. But as Maggie so bluntly put it, the order to put your life on the line went down a whole lot easier when it came from someone who’d done just that countless times.

“Just don’t take too long to write your book,” he urged. “I’m opening a new restaurant in Lima in a few months, another in Acapulco later this year.”

“Strategically placed to cover the Pacific drug routes,” Adam murmured approvingly.

“Among other activities.”

Maggie’s brown eyes sharpened. She might have one foot already out the door, but the other was still planted firmly in OMEGA’s control center.

“What kinds of activities, Lightning?”

He’d opened his mouth to relay the rumor of a high-seas pirating operation based in the Chilean capital when a shrill buzz cut through the air. Everyone in the control center spun around. In a room crammed with the latest in high-tech electronic wizardry, only one device broadcast that particular signal.

“I’ve got it!”

Mackenzie Blair, OMEGA’s chief of communications, leaped for the central console. Slapping her left hand down on a flat surface, she snatched up a receiver with her right. Instantly, a complex double helix appeared on the screen above the console. Like colorful snakes performing some exotic mating ritual, the two strands writhed and danced for several seconds before confirming Mackenzie’s DNA signature. Only then did the unscrambler built into the receiver activate.

“OMEGA control.” Shoving a strand of her thick, unruly sable hair behind her ear, she listened for a moment. “Yes, sir. She’s right here.”

Turning, she offered the receiver to Maggie. “It’s the president. He wants to speak to the director.”

Maggie caught herself just in time. With a wry grin, she gestured to Nick. “It’s for you, Nick.”

“So it is.”

He strolled across the room. OMEGA’s chief of communications hesitated for the merest fraction of a second before handing him the receiver. Hiding a frown, she stepped aside.

Maggie Sinclair, code name Chameleon, had hired Mackenzie fresh out of the navy over the objections of some of OMEGA’s older heads. Even more to the point, Chameleon had given her new Communications chief a blank check to procure the latest in high-tech gadgetry. She’d even sent Mackenzie into the field to experience first-hand the challenges of communicating with headquarters while dodging bullets or burrowing into burning desert sand to escape detection. Mackenzie considered Maggie her mentor, her role model, her friend. She still hadn’t recovered from the shock of hearing that her idol was turning over OMEGA’s reins for an indeterminate period.

And to Nick Jensen, of all people. An unabashed, unapologetic sensualist. An epicure, whose sophisticated palate demanded the finest wines, the freshest delicacies, the most glamorous dinner companions. In Mackenzie’s mind, those qualities tended to blur the fact that Nick, code name Lightning, was also one of the most experienced operatives in the agency. She’d wasted two years of her life on a man with similarly varied, if decidedly less discriminating, appetites. Her ex had forever turned her off too-handsome, too-charming rogues.

Still, when OMEGA’s new director pinned her with an intent stare, it took her a moment to get her breath back. And to realize he wasn’t looking at her, but through her.