both of them, had gradually dissipated. The wine they’d consumed while he’d watched her cook and during the course of the meal might have had more to do with that than any relaxation of the strain their long separation had caused.
After all, he rarely drank, and Elizabeth had never had a head for alcohol. It was one of the small, endearing cracks in the facade of absolute control she’d assumed while she was with the CIA.
It must have been hard being one of the few women on the team. Not that she’d ever had any reason to apologize to any of them for her femininity.
“This and that,” he said aloud. “Consulting mostly.”
“Privately?”
“Of course.”
He had no desire to be at the government’s beck and call. In his opinion, what the agency had done to Griff’s people had bordered on the criminal, which was why the idea that Steiner had been the one who had passed on the information about Jorgensen nagged at him. He didn’t buy altruistic motivations from anyone at the CIA. Not any longer.
“How about you?” he asked, lifting his own glass to finish the remaining swallow of wine it contained.
“You know what I’m doing. Why pretend that you don’t?”
He looked at her over the rim before he lowered the glass, allowing his lips to slant into a smile.
“Convention,” he suggested. “It’s not considered polite to spy on people.”
“Unless you are a spy, of course.”
“Of course,” he agreed calmly.
“So why spy on me?”
“I told you. Griff wanted you to know that the company thinks Jorgensen’s alive.”
“But you weren’t totally sure I needed to know that.”
“Because I’m totally sure he’s dead.”
“Did you kill him?”
No one else on the team would have asked him that question. Not even Griff. For a split second he considered refusing to answer it, but in some oblique way she was the one person who had a right to know.
“Yes,” he said calmly, setting his glass back on the table.
She nodded as if that confession were only what she had expected. “Did it help?”
Had it? At least the bastard wasn’t blowing people to shreds anymore.
Except, according to Steiner, he was. Or someone using his methodology was.
“There’s always someone willing to take their place.”
With the change in pronouns, he had broadened the discussion to include not only the German-born terrorist he’d killed, but all those who preyed on innocents to advance their various and sundry political causes.
“Or yours.”
“That has occurred to me.”
It took her a second, but then she had always been very bright. “You think Griff is using you? Because you were their expert on Jorgensen?”
“I think Steiner is using him.”
“Griff isn’t anyone’s fool. Not even the CIA’s.”
She put her glass back on the table without finishing her wine. Then she stood, the movement abrupt. She laid her napkin down and picked up her plate and flatware. As she reached across the table to remove his, she met his eyes.
“You aren’t going after whoever this is, are you?”
“It isn’t my job,” he said.
She completed the motion she’d begun, stacking his plate atop hers before she looked up at him again.
“There was a time when it wouldn’t have been ‘a job.’”
There had been, he thought, but it had been almost too long ago to remember what that felt like.
“There was a time when we wouldn’t be sitting here acting like a couple of strangers forced to have an uncomfortable dinner together,” he said. “Things change.”
She held his eyes a few seconds before she nodded. Then she turned, carrying the dishes into the kitchen.
When she disappeared through the doorway, he leaned back in his chair, taking a breath to relieve the sudden tightness in his chest. It wasn’t the only constriction he was aware of. Although his jeans were well worn, their fabric thin with age, they were suddenly uncomfortably restrictive.
The strength of his erection was unexpected. And unwanted. There could be few things as embarrassing as the undeniable physical evidence of how much you still wanted the woman you had walked out on.
There was a time when we wouldn’t be sitting here acting like a couple of strangers forced to have an uncomfortable dinner together.
That had been a hell of an understatement. From the day they’d met, they had both been aware of the sexual pull between them. They had later admitted knowing even then that it would eventually lead to intimacy. What neither of them had suspected was how strong that attraction would prove to be. Or how powerfully addictive it would become.
Which was why he hadn’t trusted himself to see her in all these years. If things had been different…
They hadn’t been. They weren’t now.
“I could make coffee.”
He glanced up to find her standing in the doorway. They had eaten by candlelight, something that was ritual. She had turned on the light in the kitchen when she’d carried the dishes there, and she was now silhouetted against its glow.
She had lost weight, he noticed again, although there had always been something about her figure, at least when clothed, that hinted at the slim, almost boyish fitness of a well-conditioned athlete. The short sun-streaked hair now emphasized that quality without making her seem any less feminine.
With their history, there was probably nothing that could do that. Not for him.
“I have to go,” he said, pushing up from the table before he remembered the too revealing tightness of his jeans.
Perhaps it wouldn’t be obvious if he stayed in the candlelit dimness of the dining room. Of course, that wasn’t the only reason he should resist the urge to close the distance between them.
During dinner he had occasionally caught the faintest hint of her perfume, its fragrance released by the warmth of the sultry Mississippi night’s humidity against her skin. It had been evocative of nights when that same scent had filled his nostrils while his lips trailed kisses over the silken smoothness of her body. There was no need to add the temptation of physical nearness to the potent force of those memories.
“Thank you for bringing me Griff’s warning,” she said formally.
She raised her hand, pushing back the hair that had fallen over her forehead. The gesture was quick, hinting at nervousness. It seemed that the earlier strain was back, although her voice had been perfectly level.
Then she held the same hand out to him. He might have been amused at her offer to shake hands with him if he hadn’t still been dealing with all those other emotions. Ones that didn’t lend themselves to amusement.
It would be far better to stay on this side of the room. To ignore the proffered hand.
Better perhaps, but not possible.
He pushed his chair back and took the four or five steps that would bring him to stand directly in front of her. There was enough difference in their heights that she had to tilt her head to meet his eyes.
As she did, he took the hand she held out to him. After dealing with the assault of his own emotions, it should have been gratifying to find that her fingers were both cold and trembling.