Most Eligible Spy (12 page)

He opened the door and pulled the guy out, pushed him against the vehicle and patted him down as he protested and yelled about racial profiling.

He wasn’t carrying a weapon, but Mo did notice a pretty fancy semiautomatic in a holster behind the passenger seat, which he’d missed earlier because it was blocked by the door frame. Since the weapon was now in plain sight, it was fair game.

“I own factory in Mexico. You make big mistake.” The man swore at him first in Chinese and then in Spanish as Mo cuffed him and put him in the back of his SUV.

Then he called Jamie. “I got someone here. Armed, without papers. Money to burn from the looks of it.”

The region was pretty hard hit by the economic downturn. Not many people ran around in cars like his. Some of the ones who did made their fortunes in illegal smuggling.

“He claims to be some big-time businessman.”

“Legal or illegal?”

“Exactly. I wouldn’t mind having prints run through the system, if you could come get him.”

“On my way.”

While he waited for Jamie, he pulled over another couple of cars. He hit pay dirt when he shone his flashlight into a beaten-up green pickup.

The driver handed over his papers with his left hand, then turned his swarthy face from the light, his right hand in his lap.

His driver’s license said Garcia Cruz. Same name as the guy killed with the knife that had slashed Molly’s tires. Then again, there had to be probably a hundred Garcia Cruzes in the state. It was a common name. Still...

“Hands on the steering wheel where I can see them.” Mo didn’t want him to try to go for a weapon.

The guy put his hands up, trying to cover one with the other.

What was he trying to hide?

Mo went for his gun. “Step out of the vehicle, sir.”

And then, as the man did, Mo saw the bandages.

“What happened to your hand?”

The man shrugged, looking at his feet. He wore scuffed work boots, dirty jeans and a sweaty muscle shirt. “Fingers got cut in the reaper.”

“How many?”

“Three.”

A man who just happened to be missing three fingers. What were the chances? They’d need a DNA test to match him up to the fingers found on the border, but Mo was pretty sure they’d found their guy. That put him in a much better mood.

By the time Jamie got there, he was damn near smiling. Progress was a beautiful thing.

Jamie took in Garcia and Yo Tee, who was still yelling for his cell phone and his lawyer. Mo stayed the whole night, stopped every car that went through. They were mostly locals, but he did catch two illegal border crossers, teens, with nearly forty pounds of weed. Looked like an amateur operation, small-time fish swimming way below the notice of the big-time smugglers.

Jamie came for the entrepreneurial teens, too. Everyone who was taken in would get printed, questioned, then turned over to Customs and Border Protection when Mo’s team was done with them.

Keith called him at seven, just as he’d headed inside Molly’s house to get some coffee and breakfast. He was pretty much starving by that point. Molly’s lasagna tasted even better than it looked. Not being the type to cut corners, she packed all the wholesome goodness into it that she could.

The house seemed empty without her. The ranch missed her. Oh, hell,
he
missed her. He had to figure out why she was mad at him.

“Just got back,” Keith was saying. “Got nothing. Everyone’s sitting tight. Want me to go out to the ranch and stay with the Rogers woman while she does her thing? I can do that before I turn in.”

“I’m out here already. Thanks.” He needed to go back to his place for a shower and a clean set of clothes. Might as well bring Molly back with him.

He finished his breakfast, locked up, then drove into Hullett.

He ran into her in the lobby.

“Where’s Logan?”

“I just put him on the school bus.” Her smile was strained. “It’s a different bus for him. Different driver. Different students. That’s a big deal for kids.”

“Was he nervous?”

She looked away. “I was. He thought it was great to be picked up at a fancy hotel. And he couldn’t wait to tell the other kids about your gaming setup.”

They went up in the elevator together. She smelled like his shampoo. He wanted to pull her closer, but she definitely kept her distance.

“Long night?” she asked as they got off on the top floor. “Any trouble?”

“I don’t mind trouble.”

She stared at him as if he was crazy.

“Looking for trouble is my job, kind of.”

She nodded. “I’ll be out at the ranch for a while. You can have your place to yourself to get some rest.”

“I’ll just shower and change,” he said. “I’ll take you back and stick around while you finish up.”

For a second she looked as if she would protest, but then she simply nodded and thanked him.

By the time he’d showered—trying hard not to think that she had been in his shower already this morning, naked—she had breakfast ready for him in the kitchen. And he found he was hungry again. Hey, how often did he have someone cook for him?

Might as well take advantage of it while he could. He pretty much inhaled the bacon and eggs, slowed down for the pancakes that were covered in something red and gooey and tasted like heaven.

“What’s that?”

She looked up from the counter, where she was writing something in a notebook. “Prickly pear jelly. I make a few dozen jars every year. I brought some over. Logan likes it.”

He licked his lips. “I appreciate this. Best breakfast I’ve had in a long time.” Then he added, “The lasagna was great, too.” He could definitely get used to eating like that on a regular basis.

He went around her to rinse his plate and put it in the dishwasher, turned around just as she turned back to reach for something. He knocked her off balance and wrapped her in his arms so she wouldn’t be knocked against the counter. “Sorry.”

Their gazes locked.

Under the scent of the soap, he could smell her soft skin.

He’d wanted her from the moment he’d first seen her, and had spent half of last night thinking about her.

He wanted to taste her lips so badly he thought he’d go cross-eyed from desire. He needed to romance her. That was what women wanted, wasn’t it? He knew he should say something, compliment her on her hair or her clothes or whatever.

“Listen, I—” But then he just pressed his lips against hers.

This time, the wave of blinding need didn’t catch him by surprise as it had at their first kiss. This time he knew what to expect, and yet the sensation still nearly knocked him off his feet.

They had some instant chemistry that made him want to pick her up and carry her off to his bed like a caveman. As bad as he was around women, even he knew that wasn’t acceptable. Women needed courting. And sweet words.
Romance,
he thought again. The very word struck fear into the heart of most every man. God help him.

So he kept on kissing her before she could start missing any of that.

“This is not wrong,” he said when they came up for air.

His body grew hard. He didn’t want to scare her, so he tried to move back a little. Instead, he somehow ended up pushing her against the counter.

* * *

S
HE
HAD
ABOUT
as much brain as a weather vane. She’d done this before, allowed herself to become a rich man’s plaything. It had ended badly. “Yes, it is.” And yet she couldn’t make herself push Mo away when he leaned in for another kiss.

The first words out of his mouth when he’d come through the door downstairs had been to ask after her son. He always did that. And each time he did, it melted a little bit of her heart.

He was probably faking interest in her and her son just to get into her pants. Other men had done that before. She was such a terrible judge of men, just really bad at making big decisions altogether.

If she were smart, she would run right now.

Instead, she let him lift her up onto the counter.

Instead of protesting, she opened her knees so he could get closer. His hardness pressed against her, and she reveled in his thorough kiss, in his obvious need for her.

Heaven knew she wanted him. He woke up every one of her dormant desires.

Stop. You can still stop. Stop now
, a small voice of sanity said in her head.

He ran his fingers up her arms, his touch on her naked skin sending delicious shivers through her. Heat grew inside and flooded her body. Need pulsed in her blood.

“Beautiful,” he whispered as he trailed kisses down her neck.

She felt safe with him. She really, really liked him—the way he was nice to Logan, that he cared about her safety and her animals, down to the last scrawny chicken.

The temptation to fall headfirst into something here was overpowering. But as her eyes fluttered half-open, her gaze caught on the granite countertop and the ten-thousand-dollar stove.

And she couldn’t ignore the stark truth, that she didn’t belong in this place, with this man.

She pulled back. “I shouldn’t be doing this. None of this is real.”

“Why?”

“Because life is unfair. Why couldn’t you be a plain cowboy? Why do you have to be a millionaire playboy G.I. Joe or whatever you are?” She held up a hand. “Please don’t protest. You and your team are definitely not some desk-jockey administrators.”

A smile hovered over his sexy lips. “Millionaire playboy G.I. Joe?”

“Seriously, how many of those are running around in the average Texas small town? And I have to hook up with one? I don’t have to do this just because I like it so much. I like chocolate, too, and I don’t eat it for breakfast, lunch and dinner”

“So you like it?”

“More than chocolate,” she said on a sigh.

He grinned and brushed his lips over hers again, and she lost all ability to protest.

Her luck was nothing if not rotten.

Even if right now, this part seemed okay. Better than okay. Pretty good.
Great
.

He cupped the back of her neck with one hand and her breast with the other as he deepened the kiss. Pleasure shot through her, straight to her toes. She’d gone without passion for so long. What was wrong with taking a little of this? Just once?

After an eternity, he pulled back, banked fires burning in his gaze. “I didn’t plan this.”

“I know. It’s okay.” She closed the distance between their lips. She needed just one more kiss.

She expected nothing from him, was fully aware that this could go no further. She would be his temporary entertainment. As long as she kept that fixed firmly in her head, she would be okay.

She was no starry-eyed schoolgirl. She no longer believed in happily ever after. When Mo walked away, she wouldn’t be heartbroken like before. And she wouldn’t be left pregnant. He had to have a maxi-pack of condoms somewhere in this apartment. He was rich and sexy. He probably had women in his life who were classy and sophisticated.

And they probably had lots of fabulous, even scandalous, sex, things she didn’t even know how to do. Self-doubt tore into her suddenly. Because she was just a country bumpkin pretty much. She had to face it.

And that was as far as she got with thinking.

His thumb flicked over her nipple and it drew into a tight bud. Moisture gathered between her legs.

She gave up trying to form coherent thoughts and gave herself over to the pleasure of being seduced by Moses Mann. If he thought she was hopelessly unsophisticated and inexperienced, let that be his problem.

He reached for the top button on her shirt. Fumbled.

Ha!

She found it incredibly flattering that he was as affected as she. That he wanted her so badly his fingers trembled.

Her knees were so week, if she was standing, she would have probably folded.

The top button yielded at last.

Then the next.

His warm, seeking lips moved down her neck, leaving a tingling trail of desire.

She shrugged out of the shirt before he was half-done with the buttons. He gave an appreciative sound in the back of his throat as he took in her simple cotton bra.

Then he looked pained. “I don’t know what to say.”

Who wanted to talk? She reached to the back to unclasp the bra. Heat flared in his eyes. He put his hands on her and drew the flimsy material away inch by inch, revealing her breasts with agonizing slowness.

“I want—” he started, but then just dipped his head and drew a nipple between his lips.

As pleasure spiraled through her, for a second she thought she was going to go over the edge right then and there.

Modest country girl, mother and all that.

Having sex in a fancy hotel, on the kitchen counter!

She was wicked, wicked, wicked.

He took her other nipple, drew on it gently, and her body shivered in delight. A strangled sound escaped her throat, halfway between a sob and a moan.

He pulled back. “Did I hurt you?”

She couldn’t answer. She just shook her head.

“I want you.” He held her gaze. “I wish I knew some romantic way to say that.”

He looked concerned, as if he was afraid that what he did say wouldn’t be enough.

She felt a smile stretch her lips. “I like plain and honest. I’m not exactly a big-time player.”

“I want to pick you up and carry you back to the bedroom.”

She slid an inch forward.

His lips tightened. “I don’t have protection. I don’t suppose you’re...”

She stared at him. The millionaire playboy G.I. Joe didn’t have protection?

She could have cried as she shook her head. Her entire body ached to finish what they had started. A few long seconds passed before the haze cleared from her mind.

And then she drew her shirt closed and took a deep breath.

Maybe tomorrow she’d be happy that nothing happened between them, but right now, she was awash in disappointment. She tried to remind herself that they weren’t in the same league. That he was just playing here.

“Probably for the best,” she forced herself to say. She avoided his gaze as she slid off the counter. “My animals are waiting. I usually feed them pretty early.”