Packing Heat
Page 32
Their eyes met, held, and then Cole reached out and pulled her against him, hugging her so hard she could barely breathe. She didn’t care.
They stood there like that for a minute or two, just holding one another, oblivious to the staff and guests of the hotel. Harmony lifted onto her toes and kissed him. Cole took it deep, shifted his arms, and dragged her up until her feet were off the ground and he was her entire world. The taste and heat and scent of him enveloped her, and he became the one pillar of strength in a maelstrom of emotion and sensation.
When he put her down, she stumbled. And then she heard catcalls and applause, and realized they both needed to get some control before they gave the tourists a real show. She stepped back a little but she slipped her hand into Cole’s and held onto him while her head stopped spinning.
Cole swiped his other hand over his face, and when he met her eyes, she saw the intensity that always made her body tremble and her heart stutter. But he was grinning.
“God, I love you,” she said.
He squeezed her hand. “I must be crazy because I love you, too.”
She reared back to glare at him. “Crazy! I waited in agony for you to tell me you love me, and you qualify it?”
“You’re an FBI agent.”
“Ex-FBI agent, as in ex-con. I quit, remember?”
He gathered her into his arms and kissed her again, a long, deep kiss she felt everywhere, but mostly her heart.
“I’m glad you quit,” he said when they came up for air. “Getting fired would have a negative impact on your credibility. You won’t be much good to me without it.”
“You know, you could hire someone. You can afford the best.” He’d been paid enough to hire all the legitimacy he could ever want.
“I could hire someone,” he agreed. “Even if the FBI doesn’t give me a dime, there are kids coming out of college who’d jump at a chance to get in on the ground floor of the kind of enterprise I intend to start. But they’d be employees. I was thinking you and I would be more like partners.”
“And I’d be the front man.”
“Front woman,” he said with a smile. “Believe me, you’ll be working hard, going to companies and selling the system. And someone has to make recommendations about the physical security: motion detectors, video surveillance, that sort of thing. You’re better qualified for that, just like I’m better at the computer end.”
“I’d get to tell very powerful men what to do?”
He laughed. “It’s not as exciting as being a field agent for the FBI—”
“True, no car chases or flying bullets—”
“—but at night we get to come home to each other, and god knows we’ll fight often enough.”
“And then we’ll get to make up.” Harmony turned into him, snugging her arms around his waist and lifting onto her toes. “Making up sounds really good.”
He held her off. “So it’s just the sex you’re interested in.”
“It’s the sex and the job.”
“I don’t know . . .”
“Maybe we should do a trial run.”
Cole pretended to think about it for a minute, then said, “Okay, how about the next fifty years or so?”
She smiled, her heart beating wildly as he wrapped his arms around her. “Some men would call that a prison sentence.”
“Well, I know the difference, don’t I?”
Penny McCall lives in Michigan with her husband, three children, and two dogs, whose lives of leisure she envies, but would never be able to pull off. Her children and husband have come to accept her strange preoccupation with imaginary people. The dogs don’t worry about it, as long as they’re fed occasionally and allowed to nap on whatever piece of furniture strikes their fancy. Come to think of it, that pretty much goes for the husband, too. Visit her website at www.pennymccall.com.