has been my home for thirteen years.”
Carmody sat back in his chair and narrowed his gaze the way a wise old father would. “Get to the point, Logan.”
Logan hooked his leg over the corner of the desk and sat, leaning in toward the commander. “Commander—Sam,” he began, using the gentlest, most rational voice he possessed. “I don’t deserve to be saddled with a newbie. I’ve earned the right to pick and choose my assignments.”
“She has experience.”
“Experience?” Doing what? Typing memos?
Logan glanced over his shoulder. The instant Grace Lockhart realized she was the focus of his attention, her fingers moved to her face and adjusted her glasses. Then she busied herself writing something in her notebook while her cheeks flooded with color.
Interesting, he thought. So quick to blush. He wondered if anything else about her reacted as quickly.
Logan blinked and mentally shook off the speculation. She radiated virginal innocence in a way that piqued his jaded, world-weary curiosity. Nothing more.
He stared at the shapeless bag of femininity and absently wondered if Grace Lockhart had ever been laid. If she even knew what the words meant. If she had any idea what he was thinking right now. She looked so clueless. Full of theory and stratagems learned in a classroom, without a day of real-world experience, much less experience working undercover with real criminals.
Had she ever ventured out of her shell? Let her hair down? Smiled? Why would an obviously mature woman in her twenties get up in the morning and deliberately put on a bulky suit that made her figure look like a sack of potatoes?
Didn’t she know that a man liked to see a woman’s curves? That she could look professional without resorting to the two-sizes-too-big routine? Whether she was skinny or chunky or somewhere in between, there were tricks to dressing that most women knew.
But obviously not Grace Lockhart.
As the color in her cheeks crept down to her neck, she cleared her throat and looked up at him, finally responding to his scrutiny. “Is there something I can help you with, Agent Pierce?”
The tone of her voice pulled him up short, dashed water on his original assessment of her sexual experience.
Her voice was deep, husky. Sultry as sin. With that voice, she could call men on the phone, read something as unerotic as a grocery list, and still make all their fantasies come true.
“How much field experience do you have?” he asked her.
“None. I’ve been working in research. This is my first assignment.”
Logan swore. He got up off the desk, jammed his hands into the pockets of his jeans and stalked to the far end of the room before turning back to her. She was serious!
How could she stand up to a notorious crime lord if she didn’t even know how to dress?
“Oh, this just gets better and better.”
Her fingers flew up to adjust her glasses, a nervous gesture brought on by his rich sarcasm, no doubt.
Maybe he could teach her a thing or two about making herself attractive to a man. That would be the place to start with Grace Lockhart. Yeah. Teach her a few of the basics about her sexuality before she tackled anything like threats and guns and people dying.
Logan swept his gaze from the top of her bun to the soles of her sensible black shoes and was surprised to discover that the idea actually intrigued him. Maybe he had seen too much of the world’s darker side. Why else would he be contemplating the notion of investigating whether she might be hiding any more delightful secrets like her voice beneath her dowdy appearance?
How long had it been since he’d made love to an inexperienced woman? Had he ever?
“Agent Pierce.” Her soft voice trickled down his spine like a lover’s caress, commanding his attention. “Why do you keep staring at me? Is it that my appearance has something to do with whether or not you plan to accept this assignment?”
“Hell no.” He turned his anger on Carmody. “You have no business putting her in the line of fire.”
The commander refused to budge. “She’s been studying Harris Mitchell for almost a year. She came up with the plan herself. I think it’s brilliant.”
“Book smarts and street smarts are two different things. I won’t be her partner.”
He could almost visualize her body, lying battered and bleeding on the docks of New York. He could see the life draining out of her before she ever really had a chance to live it.
Just like Roy. Logan squeezed his eyes shut as imagination turned into memory. He should have saved him. He should have saved the kid.
No, he wasn’t about to partner up with any neophyte agent who wanted to mix it up with the big boys and get herself killed.
He opened his eyes and drilled Carmody with his final offer. “I’ll go after Harris Mitchell myself, if you want me to. But I won’t be her partner.”
Logan strode to the door, putting an end to this ludicrous conversation.
“Pierce, there’s no use making this unpleasant.” Commander Carmody stood. Logan paused, respecting the rank, and the man himself, even if he didn’t agree with his current ideas. “We’re working on a narrow time frame with this case. Mitchell’s about to go bicoastal with his operation. He has contacts in Los Angeles already. I want to stop him in New York before that happens and bring in every connection he has.”
Logan puffed out a frustrated sigh. Carmody had planned this takedown on a grand scale. “Then you want your best agents on the case. Men with experience in the field. It shouldn’t be a training mission.”
“I want you to work with Lockhart because you are my best agent. You know all the ins and outs of undercover work. You can handle that end of the assignment, and Lockhart will handle the technical aspects. Together, I know you can get the job done.”
“I appreciate your confidence in me, Sam. And I know I owe you for saving my butt and bringing me to the Bureau in the first place.” Logan spared one more glance at the mysterious, myopic Miss Lockhart. “But I work alone.”
He pulled his keys out of his pocket and doffed a salute to Carmody. “My report’s on your desk. Get McCallister or Anderson to work with her. I’m gettin’ some shut-eye.” Then he headed through the door.
“Pierce! Get your butt back—”
“Excuse me, sir. Let me have a word with him.”
LOGAN WAS A GOOD TEN paces down the hall before Grace was out the door. “Agent Pierce?”
He didn’t answer.
She’d spotted him immediately. He didn’t look like anybody else milling through the administrative end of the FBI training center. He seemed an anachronism to the tradition of discipline and routine radiating from the walls around her.
Exactly what she needed. Someone different. Someone who could teach her to be a different person.
She pushed her way through men in three-piece suits and women dressed in similar fashion and called his name again. Either he was going deaf or purposely ignoring her. She had a feeling it wasn’t the former.
Logan Pierce was tall, with broad shoulders emphasized by the bulk of his black leather jacket. His lean hips and long legs seemed naturally built for clinging to hardware-heavy motorcycles. He wore his dark brown hair short, like most of the other agents he passed. But the day-old scruff of beard clinging to the jut of his jaw and angular planes of his face altered any air of respectability.
He rounded the corner and headed toward the elevator, pausing to wink at the leggy blonde who passed by. Grace opened her steno pad and jotted down the woman’s reaction to his flirtation. The woman’s eyelids dropped a fraction