Stefanie London - A Dangerously Sexy Affair

She uncrossed her arms and fiddled with the hem of her dress. “Oh.”

“I’m partially deaf in one ear and...it’s permanent.”

He remembered delivering the news to his father. Rather than asking how Aiden was coping with the change, his dad had immediately set about ordering the FBI to provide him a new job somewhere. Anywhere.

The perks of your father being the head of Intelligence. Too bad he’d never put that kind of effort into being a good dad.

“But my injury won’t affect my job here,” Aiden said. “I do my best work with computers and one-on-one interviews.”

Quinn shifted in her seat. Not many people knew about his hearing problem outside his family and the people he’d worked with at the FBI. Certainly no one he’d taken to bed. It wasn’t that he was ashamed of it, but he didn’t draw attention to it, either. He didn’t want sympathy, and he certainly didn’t want people thinking he was weak.

So he’d learned to cope, always taking a seat first—as he’d done with Quinn last night—so he could use his good ear. In groups or in noisy venues, he relied on his other senses for context. He read lips, analyzed gestures, listened to pitch and tone if the words themselves were hard to make out. For the most part, he could be around someone every day and he or she wouldn’t realize anything was wrong with him.

But even his father hadn’t been able to bend the FBI Police’s hearing rules. The audiometer test was an unforgiving SOB.

“Thanks, Aiden.” Jin nodded and fired up the large screen at the head of the room.

An hour later they were all up to speed with the plan for the Third Planet Studios assignment. Quinn would go undercover as a game designer—since she was the only one on the team who’d actually studied game design and had enough knowledge to pass muster with the employees—and Aiden would go in as himself. He would rattle the cage by interviewing staff and asking questions. Meanwhile, Quinn would keep her ear to the ground to observe the fallout.

They would work together. Closely.

“Is this your first time going undercover?” Aiden asked Quinn as they wrapped up the meeting.

“Yeah.” She pushed up from her chair and snapped her laptop closed. “I’m not all that adept at lying. Maybe you could give me a few tips?”

Rhys walked toward the door with Jin. “Excellent idea, Quinn,” he said, clearly missing the intended sting in her words. “Take Aiden for a coffee and get to know one another. I’m sure he could give you a few pointers.”

A blush flared across her cheeks, lighting up her porcelain skin. Her jaw clenched, the muscle twitching enough that he could tell she was grinding her teeth. “I’ve got a meeting scheduled with Addison about the new password requirements.”

“I’ll take care of it.” Rhys paused in the doorway for a moment. “Unless you’re having second thoughts?”

She steadied herself. “I’m not.”

Rhys and Jin left them alone in the room, and the air stilled. Tension rippled across his skin, heightening his senses. Firing up his brain. This was the calm before the storm.

“You...liar,” she spat, her eyes flashing. “I can’t believe I fell for your bullshit story. Game designer, my ass. Did you know I worked here? Were you following me?”

“Whoa.” Aiden held up a hand. “For starters, I tried to give you the truth last night, and you stopped me because it was ‘just sex.’ Second, I wasn’t following you. I’m not a goddamn stalker.”

“I stopped you,” she scoffed. “I thought you were going to lay down ground rules, not tell me you’d been pretending to be someone else. You didn’t try that hard to set the record straight.”

“When we stopped outside the hotel room, I was going to tell you.”

“So you say.” She tugged her denim jacket closer around her small frame. “How can I believe anything that comes out of your mouth?”

“You weren’t exactly up-front about where you worked, if memory serves me correctly.” He walked around the table to cut the distance between them.

“Keeping my private details to myself is not the same as lying.” Her fists clenched at her sides. “You flat out lied to me. Did you think you’d have a better chance with me if I thought you were a gamer?”

“No.” He shook his head, a dull ache spreading out from his temples as the ringing in his ears from his tinnitus started up. “That’s not why I lied.”

“Enlighten me, then.” Her small pink lips pressed into a flat line.

This was going downhill. Fast.

You can lie to protect a life and you can lie to protect your country, but you cannot lie for personal gain.

His father’s words swirled around in his head. He was the only man Aiden had ever met who managed to break the gray areas of life into fragments of black and white, assigning rules here and there so that he always had a framework for making decisions. The habit had stayed with Aiden, and while his moral code might not match everyone else’s, he stuck to it.

No matter what.

“I was there doing research for this assignment. I wanted to see if anyone was talking about Third Planet Studios or the leak about their new engine.” He rubbed at his temple. “I had a suspicion that Alana Peterson might have been involved since she has such a grudge against them.”

Quinn reeled as if he’d slapped her. “So you approached me because Alana’s my friend. You acted like you had no idea who she was.”

“I was doing my job.”

“Your job started today, not last night.” There was a slight shake in her hands as she fiddled with a button on her jacket. “Did you sleep with me to get information?”

The horror on her face made his stomach churn. He was a lot of things, but he didn’t use women in that way. If Quinn had given any indication that she knew what was going on with Third Planet Studios, he would have kept talking to her until he got what he needed. But he wouldn’t have slept with her to do it.

“That was all real, I promise. I was attracted to you. I wanted to sleep with you. And you seemed pretty into it, as well.”

“I can’t believe this.” Her fingers fluttered at her throat as if searching for something that wasn’t there. “You tricked me.”

“I didn’t trick you into staying the night.” He ground the words out. “You were there because you wanted to be.”

She swallowed and sucked in a deep breath. “You’re right. I did want to be there. But it sure as hell won’t happen again. If we’re going to work together, you can keep your hands to yourself.”

“Fine.” He held his hands up, palms facing her. “Does that mean we have a truce?”

“I wouldn’t go that far.” She narrowed her eyes at him. “I’ll work with you on this one assignment because I want something out of it. But I don’t trust you, and the second it’s over, I’m going to steer clear of you.”

“At least you’re honest,” he muttered.

“It’s more than I can say for you.” She tucked her laptop under her arm and headed for the door. “Come on, I’ve been told to take you for coffee.”

5

TODAY COULD HAVE been everything she wanted, but instead it was a pile of stinking irony and bad luck. The universe hated her, she was sure of it. But what could she do, cut off her nose to spite her face? She wanted this promotion, and she wasn’t going to let some lying phony take it away from her.

Some superhot, crazy-skilled-with-his-mouth phony. Ugh.

A little voice in her head reminded her that she had, in fact, stopped Aiden from talking about himself. She told that voice to shut the hell up. Instead, she found a free table in the far corner of the café, but even the familiarity of her favorite coffee spot didn’t soothe her nerves. Normally, the Brunswick Café was her safe haven, a place where she could bring her laptop and get away from the drama of the office. The guy behind the bar—who had long hair, tropical-fish tattoos and a broad Australian accent—knew her order by heart.