Codename: Romeo (14 page)

Daniels grunted and grabbed his coat from the back of the sofa. “I’m leaving, but I’ll be back for dinner. I’m not gonna eat a cold burger in a van while you pig out on a feast.”

After his partner left, Erik walked to the kitchen. As if the morning episode never happened, she began the food preparation. She transferred several bowls from the refrigerator to the kitchen counter. It appeared she planned to make the full, traditional Thanksgiving meal, from soup to nuts. He stood off to the side and watched.

She pushed a bowl and the large turkey toward him. “If you’re going to hover, make yourself useful. Stuff your brother.”

He chuckled despite his less than amused mood. “In a second. I want to talk to you first.” “About what?”

“This morning.”

“Forget it.”

A blast of guilt ripped through him. He’d failed to keep her safe. “I can’t.”

“Then go wallow somewhere else. I assure you, I’m not about to curl up into a fetal position and regress into a pre-adolescent state. Despite the popular stereotype, most geniuses aren’t walking a thin line between sanity and madness.”

“That’s not what I meant. I never should have let you—”

She cut him off with a wave of her hand. A hand holding a very threatening looking knife. “Oh, bite me. You didn’t let me do anything. I walked away from you.”

“Bite me?” He shook his head. What happened to the soft-spoken, ladylike professor? “Where did you learn to talk like that?”

“From my students. And you know what? It feels liberating to let it out. Not to mention it’s a very versatile phrase that fits a multitude of situations. It gets right to the point.”

“I’ll say.” She’d probably wanted to say it to him from the moment she’d discovered the truth.

“If this experience has taught me anything, it’s that life is too short. I’ve wasted too much time guarding my words and actions. I’ll say whatever I want, and if someone doesn’t like it, then they can just … well … bite me.” She punctuated her words with stubborn determination.

She put up a brave front. Could she maintain it? He doubted it. But if she needed to act in control for now, he’d go along. When reality set in, he’d be there for her. In a purely professional manner, of course.

He took on the challenge of stuffing the turkey, a thankless job. That wasn’t the kind of flesh he wanted to have his hands on. His mind wandered to a more silky kind of skin, preferably attached to a warm, brown-eyed woman who stood a few feet away from him. Damn, the kitchen was getting hot. Purely professional? Yeah, right.

* * * *

Once Erik finished stuffing the turkey, Victoria quickly ushered him out of the room. “Go watch the Macy’s Parade.”

“Are you sure? I’m pretty good in the kitchen.”

She’d bet he was good in any room in the house. If he stayed, she would spend more time wondering just how good, instead of cooking.

She opened the back door. Cool air filtered in, giving her a small measure of relief. She couldn’t blame the oven for the sudden raise in temperature. Only Erik could cause a heat wave in November.

She didn’t need a man on a guilt trip. If he felt duty bound to inform Steven about the threats, her brother would send out the National Guard. Then he would proceed to lecture her about the foolishness of her actions. Despite her Ph.D., men treated her like an idiot. And maybe today, she deserved it.

She never stopped to consider that her little excursion put her life, or Erik’s career, in jeopardy. He obviously didn’t carry a gun for Freudian reasons. He calculated the danger and prepared accordingly. Why hadn’t he stopped her from going? She exhaled slowly. No matter how many hypotheses she came up with, only one made sense. He took a huge risk because he knew it would make her happy.

Chapter Ten

Victoria glanced at the long dining table loaded with enough food to feed a small third world nation and the three place settings dwarfed by the other platters. Granted, she could have cooked less food, but each one of the dishes had a family history attached and she couldn’t decide which ones to forgo. She debated changing into an elegant outfit. She didn’t want Erik to get the wrong impression. However, if she made Grandma Jansen’s candied yams because of tradition, then she should respect her grandmother’s other tradition of dressing in her Sunday best for the holidays. Had she gone overboard by choosing a silky, red, form fitting dress with a sequin bolero jacket?

All right, I do want to impress him. Her heart was already involved. She might as well let her body go along for the ride.

When she returned to the living room she received a couple of wide-eyed, jaw slack stares. She shrugged innocently. “What? Is my slip showing or something?”

“I’d say. Where’s your dress?” Erik grumbled and received his partner’s elbow in the ribs for his comment.

“You sure clean up nice, Professor.”

She smiled at the compliment. “Why, thank you, Agent Daniels.”

“Just Daniels.”

“And you were supposed to call me Victoria. Professor makes me feel like an old, stodgy spinster.”

“Brains, beauty, and you can cook,” he said. “I don’t know why some lucky guy hasn’t snapped you up yet.”

“Probably because the NSB didn’t have enough money in their budget.” She turned her gaze toward Erik, running her tongue provocatively across her lips. A frown marred his handsome features. “What’s the matter? Cat got your tongue?”

“No, ma’am. I’m just admiring the view.” His smile reflected a raw hunger but lacked any amusement.

“You don’t think it’s too….”

“Revealing?” he finished for her.

She self-consciously tugged at the fabric, wondering if she’d gone too far. “Loud is what I was thinking.”

“It does draw a man’s … undivided attention.”

The older man cleared his throat. “While you two are playing a mental game of ‘chicken’, the turkey is getting cold.”

A warm flush crept up to her cheeks. “Why don’t you both have a seat? I’ll get the wine.”

Daniels happily complied, but Erik hung back and followed her to the kitchen. As she reached for the handle on the refrigerator, he came up behind her. Before she could turn around, he pinned her against the door.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

His solid frame tensed in anger. “Exactly what you asked for when you put on that dress.”

A denial hovered on her lips, but the words remained unspoken. His body radiated heat, contrasting with the cold metal of the refrigerator. The simultaneous sensations made a delightfully sensual combination.

He splayed his hands across her stomach then traced the contours of her hips and waist, with slow, provocative movements. His sensual exploration set off nervous impulses that traveled to parts of her he hadn’t even touched. Warm breath fanned her shoulder as his tongue drew erotic circles over her neck. She leaned into him and sighed. She couldn’t say much for his timing, but the technique was certainly perfect.

He exhaled a grunt and urged her forward with unyielding pressure from his hand. The loss of physical contact left her aching for more, but Erik steadfastly held the distance between them. Force and resistance. The two most basic components in the physics world. When one experiment failed, she searched for a stronger, more effective force to counter the resistance.

Erik locked his hand over her elbow and turned her around to face him. The sudden movement startled her, and she let out a small gasp.

“If you provoke a man, you’re bound to get a response. You might want to remember that next time you decide to play chicken.”

His warning had no effect on her. She tugged her arm free, smoothed the wrinkled fabric of her dress, and then reached into the refrigerator for the wine.

When she turned back, she raised a broad smile. “I knew exactly what I was doing, and I got exactly the response I wanted. And you might want to remember that the next time you think you can teach this professor a lesson.”

* * * *

Victoria possessed a unique operating procedure for dealing with stress—torment the nearest man. More accurately, she’d singled out Erik. He couldn’t recall Daniels nearly choking on his wine because her playful, stocking clad foot found a slow, seductive path to his lap.

Obviously, the woman was in shock from her morning ordeal. Nothing else would explain her radical personality change. What happened to the shy, easy to control woman who’d covered him in fruit punch? The woman who blushed furiously when merely trying to ask him to dinner? He couldn’t say he minded the new and outgoing Tori. He only wished he could retaliate in kind.

After dinner, she insisted on taking care of the dishes herself and spent the better part of an hour filling aluminum pans with the leftovers. His gaze kept returning to her despite the exciting football game on television.

“What are you doing?” Daniels asked.

Erik straightened in the chair and focused on the game. “What do you mean?”

“Don’t play stupid. The professor. If you ask me, you’re guarding that body a little too closely.”

“I wasn’t asking you.”

“Erik, I’m telling you this as your friend, not your partner. Stay away from her. She’s more dangerous than the one that shot you. This one comes with strings attached.”

“There’s nothing going on,” he lied. Something was going on. Something he didn’t want to acknowledge.

“Then keep it that way. Take it from a man who pays alimony to two ex-wives. Marriage and the agency don’t mix.”

“You’re way off base there.” Right. He could con his partner but he couldn’t con himself. Victoria got to him like no woman before.

“I hope so. Because you aren’t the suburban type. Shit, you won’t even sign a lease on an apartment. You’d never be able to settle down to a mortgage and a wife.”

“A wife?” Erik shuddered. His partner was way off the mark. Victoria’s attachment to him was borne of fear rather than love. A classic case of the victim forming a dependency on her protector. “She has more sense than to want me, anyway.”

“You don’t think she’s putting on the freaking Betty Crocker act because she wants a fling. Don’t you recognize a domestic noose when you see one?”

His partner might be right, but the noose was made of velvet, and damned if he wasn’t feeling like being hung lately.

“And don’t forget about her brother, Sanders.”

As if he could. He also realized that her behavior stemmed from confusion rather than emotions. Two valid reasons to heed the older man’s advice and keep it professional.

Once Daniels left, Erik joined Victoria in the kitchen. She appeared more subdued than earlier. Perhaps reality had finally settled in.

“Erik. I wanted to clear something up.”

He leaned against the counter. “What’s that?”

Her fingers traced the edge of his collar. “You can tell Daniels not to worry so much. I’m really not interested in landing you as a husband. I was just planning to use you for the sex.”

Her declaration knocked the wind out of him. He never expected to hear that from the demure Ms. Jansen. “You heard?”

“I’m distracted sometimes. I’m not deaf.”

“He didn’t mean any disrespect. It’s not a good idea to get involved while on a case. It’s not uncommon for a woman to imagine feelings for a man who is protecting—”

“Is this some line of dribble they taught you at the academy?”

“It doesn’t make it less true.”

She squared her shoulders and drew in a deep breath. “I’m thirty-three years old, and while I haven’t racked up a number of lovers equal to my I.Q., neither have I lived in a convent. I have a Ph.D. in physics and I know a variety of ways to make parts of your body defy Newton’s law of gravity. I’m neither vulnerable nor unaware of what I’m doing. Contrary to what you may have read in my file, I walked away from a lucrative government job on principle, not because I couldn’t hack the work.”

He clasped his hand on her arm. “Tori.”

“No, you listen. I happen to know the difference between transfer of affection and real emotions. I also know that in the long-term, this is going nowhere. But I would rather have the memory of something wonderful than a lifetime of regret. In other words, I know what I can handle.

“If you’re not interested, I’ll understand. I haven’t reached the level of emotional desperation you seem to think. But do not give me that sanctimonious line of bullshit that you’re making a noble sacrifice for me. Quite frankly, I know what I want. Maybe you ought to figure out what you want.”

She spun on her heel and walked away, leaving him with a gaping jaw and no clever comeback. Didn’t she understand that he had her welfare at heart?

Right, Sanders. You don’t buy that anymore than she did.

He built a career exposing the manipulative and dishonest nature of people. Some used that talent for good, some for evil. Victoria didn’t fit his preconceived mold. She was the antithesis of everything he knew. Shit. She even had him thinking with words like antithesis. He reveled in his solitary lifestyle, and wanted no personal attachments. At least he believed that until Tori decided to take up residence in his heart, despite his best efforts to evict her.

* * * *

Victoria slipped off her shoes and put them in the closet. So much for making a point. She’d taken a stand and somehow ended up in retreat in her room. What should she do now? Even though she’d gotten up early for the football game and then spent most of the afternoon cooking or cleaning, she wasn’t tired. A pile of test papers needed grading, but she couldn’t concentrate.

Get a grip.

She understood Erik’s desire to maintain a professional relationship. Apparently, she’d lost her common sense along with her heart. At least her bad luck was consistent. She’d managed to fall for an NSB agent with a conscience.

Feeling restless, she prowled around the room. She spent all her nights sleeping alone and had never felt lonely before. Tonight, the brass bed with the feather mattress looked empty and unappealing. She sat on the edge and glanced out the window at the starry sky. She’d survived just fine before Erik barged his way into her life and she would go on after her left.