by Julie James
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw John watching. Like her, he was ready to act if need be, despite the fact that he hadn’t outwardly changed his relaxed position against the cubicle.
Blair stopped just inches from her, the edge of his briefcase rubbing against her leg. His voice dipped lower, turning coy. “If I didn’t know better, I’d think you were trying to see me again.”
Mindful of her obligations to play nice as part of the sting op, Jessica feigned a smile in return. “That’s just a bonus, Mr. Mayor.”
He boldly held her gaze before turning and heading toward the door, as if this were all part of some cat-and-mouse game between them. Which it was, of course.
Except the mouse hadn’t yet realized who was who.
• • •
“Leavitt and Todd seemed pleased with how things went,” Jessica said as she steered the Mercedes away from the abandoned warehouse that served as their rendezvous spot with the Jax agents.
“As they should be,” John said, next to her in the passenger seat. “When this investigation goes public, the media’s going to jump all over Blair’s ‘I’m the mayor’ speech. You have a knack for getting great sound bites out of the guy.”
“We have a knack for it,” she corrected.
He gave her a pointed look. “Come on. It’s clear Blair responds better to you. I’m basically the undercover cock-blocker at this point.”
Jessica laughed hard at that, thinking she wouldn’t have put it quite that way. “Well, that is a very key role.”
“Sure, it is.”
She smiled at his self-deprecating tone, although she wasn’t entirely joking. With John present during the meetings, she was free to act impressed and intrigued by Blair’s braggadocio—which, in turn, got him to talk more on the record. If the two of them were alone, on the other hand, Blair very well might be tempted to take his flirtation up a notch and create some awkward situation that Jessica would have to finagle her way out of without (a) blowing her cover, (b) making Blair suspicious, or (c) rejecting him in a way that left him so pissy he clammed up and stopped giving her all these great one-liners the U.S. Attorney’s office would undoubtedly use in their case against him.
Not that she couldn’t handle herself in such a situation, if need be. But it was handy to have John around so it didn’t come to that.
Actually . . . it wasn’t so bad having him around, period.
She glanced over. The evening sunlight brought out the deep gold of his hair, hair that she’d sunk her fingers into just five nights ago, as they’d kissed against the wall of his hotel room.
The memory made her feel compelled to say something. “Obviously, it’s just acting. It’s not like I enjoy having to flirt with Blair.”
He seemed amused by her comment. “You mean you’re not secretly crushing on the corrupt, egomaniac politician who soon will be going to prison for the next fifteen to twenty? Yeah, I think I got that.”
She smiled, because of course that should’ve been self-evident. But she had a feeling, had she still been married to Alex and he’d learned that she was flirting with a man as part of an undercover assignment, that his reaction would not have been so matter-of-fact.
Not that she was comparing the two men. She and John weren’t romantically involved—heated, hair-gripping kiss notwithstanding—and the fact that he was an undercover agent, too, meant he should understand the position she was in.
But still, it was nice to be with someone who just got it.
Jessica turned from I-95 onto Butler Boulevard, the freeway that would take them to the beach.
Out of the blue, John broke the silence that had settled between them. “I still don’t like the way he looks at you, though.”
Hearing the low, almost rough tone of his voice, she looked at him. He held her gaze for a moment, then turned and stared at the road ahead of them.
• • •
After dropping off the car with the valet, she and John headed inside the hotel. Slowly, they came to a stop by one of the lobby’s white-marble columns.
“You’re heading up to your room, then?” he asked.
“I think I’ll order a glass of wine and dessert from room service. It’s kind of a thing I do, after a job.” Undercover work always left her a little wound up from all the adrenaline. “You?”
He shrugged. “I’ll probably go for a run.”
She nodded, as an image popped into her head of John running along the beach at sunset, getting sweaty in the warm evening air, his T-shirt clinging to his muscular chest.
She cleared her throat, her mouth having gone a little dry. “Should we meet here tomorrow morning, then? Say, seven o’clock?”
“Sure. Seven o’clock,” he agreed.
A silence fell between them, neither John nor her moving to leave. Finally, she gestured in the direction of her room, not sure why she was hesitating. “Well. I guess I should get going. Good night, Dave.”
He gave her a nod, his voice husky. “Good night, Ashley.”
As she walked back to her room, she told herself that she was being silly for feeling oddly unsatisfied with that good-bye. Yes, she supposed she could’ve suggested they grab a drink together—she’d certainly done that with other undercover agents after a job, to blow off steam—but she remembered in vivid detail what had happened the last time she and John had been together, in this very hotel, with all the post-undercover adrenaline running through them.
Better not to tempt fate.
So instead, tonight she would unwind with a hot bath, a nice glass of wine, and dessert, and curl up with her book. And if that suddenly seemed boring in comparison to her last night at this hotel, when she’d kissed John and had nearly climbed the man like a tree . . . well, that was just fine. She was an undercover FBI agent, traveling halfway across the country and staying in a beachfront hotel as part of a sting investigation into a high-profile politician. Probably, a little “boring” wouldn’t kill her for one night.
Once in her room, she took off her dress and heels and threw on a tank top and yoga pants. Grabbing the room service menu, she flopped onto the bed and was debating between the cabernet and the pinot noir when her cell phone pinged with a new text message.
She stretched across the bed, grabbed her phone off the nightstand, and saw that the message was from Tara.
Have you seen this? Call me. Attached to Tara’s message was a photo of the People magazine with Alex and his pregnant fiancée on the cover.
God, that. Jessica had completely forgotten about her ex-husband and his possible affair.
She sprang off the bed and grabbed her laptop out of her briefcase. Taking a seat at the desk, she settled in to do some down-and-dirty research. Alex’s fiancée was a fairly well-known actress; somewhere on the Internet—TMZ, Perez Hilton, Us Weekly—there had to be more gossip about her pregnancy and engagement.
But just as she began to type the actress’s name into the Google search engine, John’s voice popped into her head.
You don’t want to know.
But really she did, sort of.
Trust me . . . all you’ll end up with is a lot of needless self-doubt.
With a sigh, Jessica sat back in the chair.
As soon as she’d spotted that magazine in the airport, she’d started racking her brain for any signs that Alex had been cheating on her. But maybe John had a point. Would it truly give her any sort of “resolution” if she had confirmation that Alex had been unfaithful? Their marriage was over, she’d moved on, and so had he, obviously. At least, unlike John, she still had the option of choosing to believe that someone she’d once trusted and loved hadn’t betrayed her in that way.
Last month, I walked in on my girlfriend having sex with one of my friends.
She cringed at the thought. It was bad enough having to deal with the possibility that Alex
had been cheating on her; she couldn’t imagine having actually seen it.
As an aside, who the heck cheated on John Shepherd, anyway? And she wasn’t even taking the stupid-hotness into account, although—hello—did his ex-girlfriend have eyes? Sure, he had a well-developed ego, and he definitely could be too cocky and sarcastic. But, having gotten to know him better these last couple of weeks, she had to admit that there was a lot more going on underneath the surface of the all-American, GI Joe exterior than she’d originally given him credit for.
He was funny, in a dry-humored way. Smart, too, and very thorough when it came to work. Not a bad listener, either. In fact, he’d been surprisingly easy to talk to during a very personal moment, after she’d seen her ex-husband on the cover of People magazine. He could’ve easily avoided the conversation, but instead he’d opened up about his own personal life and had even given her some pretty good advice.
And talk about being capable. She’d heard enough about HRT tryouts to know that the Bureau really put those guys through the wringer, but John had made it through. Of course he had. He’d dominated on the firing range and in every physical and tactical challenge at the Academy, and he’d been breathing down her neck in the academic portion. And if she was being honest with herself, even back then she’d found that kind of confidence, ability, and know-how actually quite . . . sexy.
Her phone suddenly chimed with another text message.
Jessica blinked at the sound, coming out of her reverie. Spotting the actress’s name on her computer screen, still waiting in the search line, she deleted it and shut her laptop. Maybe, on second thought, it was better not to go down that road.
I told you, she could practically hear John saying.
Yeah, yeah. Apparently, even in her imagination, the man just had to be right.
She grabbed her phone off the desk, expecting the new text message to be from Tara again, checking up on her.
But instead, it was from John.
Can I come to your room?
Well, then. Jessica’s heart skipped a beat as she tried to recall how cute the underwear she had on was.
Not for that, he quickly added.
Pfft. Well, obviously. Of course she’d known he hadn’t been referring to that.
Moving on.
Not sure what was going on, she typed back her room number. She did a visual sweep of the room, making sure it was presentable, and scrolled through the possible reasons John would want to see her. Maybe Leavitt had called about something that had come up in the investigation? Although that didn’t seem likely; the Jax agent had always conferenced in both of them whenever he’d called in the past. Maybe a problem in Chicago? Something personal, perhaps, and John had to jump on a plane tonight and get back home?
Worried it might be something like that, she wasted no time answering the door when he knocked barely two minutes later.
“Hey,” John said, standing on her doorstep. He’d changed into jeans and a navy T-shirt, and his cheeks looked a little flushed, as if he’d literally run right over after texting her.
“Hey . . . is everything okay?” she asked.
He glanced sideways, checking out the hallway. “Can I come in?”
“Of course.” She held the door open for him.
He stepped into the room and waited until the door shut. “So. There’s been a development.”
She cocked her head. “With Blair? What happened?”
“It’s not about Blair.”
Jessica waited. He had a very odd expression right then—one she couldn’t read. “Okay . . . what is it about, then?”
His mouth curved into a slow grin. “I made the Hostage Rescue Team.”
Oh.
Wow. Jessica felt a sharp twinge in her chest, which she quickly shoved aside. “You made it? Oh my God, that’s incredible! Congratulations!” She threw her arms around his neck and hugged him.
When his hands slid to her waist, she closed her eyes, feeling little butterflies in her stomach as she pressed against him.
“Thanks,” he said huskily in her ear.
After lingering in his arms one moment just shy of getting-awkward-now, Jessica slid out from his grasp and put on a bright smile. “You must be over the moon about this.”
He ran a hand through his hair. “I haven’t really wrapped my mind around it yet. I just got the call a few minutes ago.” He exhaled and then grinned. “Crazy, huh?”
She teasingly dismissed this with a wave. “Eh. I’m not that surprised. Remember, I was there at the beginning, when you were running circles around me on the Yellow Brick Road and barking orders about the quality of my sit-ups.”
“I keep telling you, I was being motivational.”
“Sure you were.” The inside joke hung in the air between them, and for a moment he just looked at her.
Feeling oddly exposed under his gaze, she glanced down at her clothes. “Well, clearly, I need to change.”
He cocked his head at the non sequitur. “Actually, I’m digging the yoga pants, but if you feel a sudden need to start shedding clothes after hearing that I made HRT, by all means proceed.”
She gave him a look. Ha ha. “I meant that I need to change before we head down to the bar to celebrate.”
His expression softened. “Jessica . . . you don’t need to do that. You’re already settled in for the night.”
She stepped closer, peering up into his eyes. “I just found out that my partner made the most elite counterterrorism team in all of federal law enforcement. I think that merits a drink or two. Just give me five minutes.”
19
Their options, John discovered, were limited.
The resort’s more casual bar, located on the beach, stopped serving drinks at sunset, which—as the bartender pointedly informed him—was in about five minutes. He directed John up a spiral staircase to the Seahorse Grille, the hotel’s signature restaurant.
At the hostess stand, a fifty-something woman in a black pantsuit greeted him warmly. “How can I help you?”
He asked for a table for two, then did a quick survey of the place: white linens on the tables, a vaulted ceiling with exposed beams, and floor-to-ceiling windows that showcased a sweeping view of the Atlantic Ocean. He gestured to his jeans. “Am I okay dressed like this?”
The hostess looked him over. “Darlin’, you could walk in here wearing a barrel and I don’t think anyone would mind.” She grabbed two menus and smiled. “Right this way.”
She led him toward an open table along the window, in the center of the restaurant. John spotted another table in the far corner, where no one else was currently seated. There, he and Jessica would be able talk without being overheard.
“Could we have that one instead?” he asked, pointing.
She nodded graciously. “Of course.”
After being seated, he texted Jessica to let her know about the change in venue, then ordered a bourbon on the rocks when the waitress came by. It was one of the rare nights he wasn’t carrying his Glock, and he wasn’t driving, which meant he was free to drink and celebrate with abandon, should the mood strike.
While waiting, he took in the view of the Atlantic Ocean, still trying to process everything.
The Hostage Rescue Team.
Holy shit, he’d made it.
“Hope you saved room to finally put ‘badass’ on your résumé,” Piser had said, when he’d called to deliver the news. “You’re on the team, Shepherd. Welcome to the best job in the FBI.”
In some senses, John probably shouldn’t have been so caught off guard. This was, after all, what he’d been recruited for. Then again, being recruited for HRT was no guarantee that one would actually make the team; only about ten percent of agents brought in to the FBI via the Tactical Recruitment Program actually ended up being HRT operators. In fact, in the thirty-plus years since HRT’
s inception, fewer than three hundred men total had been selected for the team.
And now he—the “grunt” with the mere bachelor’s degree from Wisconsin—would be one of them.
Heady stuff.
It wouldn’t be an easy lifestyle; he knew that. HRT operators understood that the team always came first—before, even, their own individual needs. He would be gone from home for extended periods of time and could be called away with little notice. But having no girlfriend, wife, or kids made him the perfect candidate in that regard. The upside of Alicia’s cheating was that it had freed him up to seize this opportunity without worrying about uprooting anyone else to Virginia, or about the strain the HRT lifestyle would put on his personal life. He’d been free to think about just himself, probably for the first time since his mom had gotten sick and he’d transferred to the Chicago field office.
Our motto, servare vitas, means to save lives—and that’s exactly what we do.
John could still hear the pride in Piser’s voice that first day they’d met at Fort Benning to discuss HRT, pride that had been there for good reason. Despite John’s show of cockiness that day, even he had to admit that HRT operators were an entirely different level of badass than Rangers—they were special agents whose only counterparts were Navy SEAL Team 6 or U.S. Army Delta Force. No other law enforcement SWAT team was its equal; they were an exclusive unit uniquely trained to handle terrorist and other high-risk incidents both in the United States and around the world. As part of HRT, he would be on the cutting edge of the FBI’s capabilities, his every day focused on firearms, tactics, preparation, and specialized skills such as close-quarter battle, fast-roping out of helicopters, and parachuting.
“So? What do you say?” Piser had asked, when John had gone momentarily quiet after hearing he’d made the team.
He enjoyed working undercover—actually, he enjoyed it a lot. But this was the chance of a lifetime, an opportunity to do something few people could do. He’d proven himself during HRT selection, he was proud and honored to have been chosen for the team, and he knew, logically, that if he ever planned to take this step in his career, the time was now.
