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  “I can’t.”

  “What can’t you do, Adam?”

  He pushed up his glasses. “Uh, sleep on the floor. I have…I have a bad back. While my chiropractor told me I need firm support, he nixed the idea of me sleeping on the floor.”

  The flicker of something in his dark eyes distracted Eva. Something that wasn’t fear…wasn’t quite regret…. She sighed, telling herself she was imagining things.

  “Oh,” she said absently. For reasons of her own, her sleeping on the floor was out of the question, as well. She looked from Adam to the bed, then back at Adam again.

  “We could share the bed,” he said quietly.

  Eva stared at him. It was out of the question. Completely unacceptable. Insane, even. “Yes, I suppose we could try,” she found herself saying instead. “We’re both adults, right? And we’re not in the least bit attracted to each other.”

  “Not in the least,” Adam agreed with a wry smile.

  “Right,” she said, drawing the word out as if trying to convince herself.

  She urged her attention back to her suitcase. Why had she thought one thing and said the other? And why did Adam look flatteringly pleased by her agreement?

  She opened her suitcase to find it empty. “Yaya must have unpacked for us,” she said, saying something, anything to break the charged, expectant silence in the room.

  She opened the top dresser drawer. Her clothes were neatly folded inside. She sensed Adam’s presence next to her before she saw him. He grasped her arms and roughly turned her toward him. She gasped. But instead of the passion she secretly hoped for, his expression was one of dark scrutiny.

  “Somebody went through my stuff?”

  5

  DAMN, DID SHE FIND my gun?

  Adam’s gaze bolted to his open duffel bag on the floor next to her carryall, then down to where he still held Eva’s upper arms. She blinked those green eyes of hers.

  “Yaya didn’t go through your things, Adam. She merely unpacked them, that’s all.”

  He spotted his closed briefcase nearby and nearly groaned in relief. It would take a safecracker to get past the deceptively simple locks there. A vision of Eva’s grandmother with a butter knife zipped through his mind, then vanished as he reminded himself he wasn’t in the presence of hostile company. No matter how ill at ease he had felt when Eva’s mother had hugged him when they first arrived. They were a normal, flesh-and-blood family. At least insofar as he believed such a thing existed. In fact, he found that the Mavros family were some of the nicest people he’d ever met, if you excluded Eva’s crusty father. His own tension when he was around them, well, he’d just have to deal with it.

  “Adam? Will you let go of me now?”

  Eva’s voice sounded strangely raspy and he looked down at her again. From this vantage point, he had a clear view of the deep V that formed the neck of her dress. Like him, she wasn’t immune to the muggy climate. A dewy sheen covered her skin, a thin line of perspiration disappearing into the sweet valley between her breasts. Definitely not a view he got of her at work. He dragged his gaze up past her slightly open, tempting mouth to her eyes. The surprise, the touch of fear and the struggle for control he saw there were enough to make him bite back a curse.

  Dumb move, Grayson. He berated himself for his brusque actions as he released her. First you accuse the woman’s grandmother of something just this side of stealing. Now you’re making no secret you’d like to push her onto the fantasy bed across the room and ravish her, starting with those luscious breasts. Not very geeklike behavior.

  Eva leaned against the dresser for support, her flushed skin telling him she wasn’t invulnerable to the sensations their touching had caused, either. Not very ice queen-nlike behavior. The image of her in that naughty bikini flooded back to him.

  “Sorry,” he said. Along distance separated Belle Rivage, Louisiana, and his boat docked in Delaware Bay off the coast of New Jersey. Not to mention the huge stretch between how he’d act as himself and as Adam the geek. “I just don’t like anybody touching my things, that’s all. Excuse me.”

  “What?”

  He gestured toward the dresser to indicate he wanted access, and she slowly moved away. Which was a good thing, because if she hadn’t, he would have touched her again. And this time, he wouldn’t have stopped.

  He opened the drawers, expending some of the sudden energy coiling in his muscles. Damn. How in the hell was he supposed to maintain his cover if this maddening woman could almost undo him with one unguarded glance?

  He needed to get back into character. Now. Regardless of his personal fantasies, he had to stay focused on the fact that his presence here was strictly professional. He was here to find out what Eva knew about her boss’s illegal activities. And to determine what she knew about Oliver Pinney’s disappearance. While he didn’t make it a rule to separate business from pleasure, he got the distinct impression that pleasure with Eva might obliterate his business intentions. And for him, that would be a first.

  In the dresser he ignored the red boxers stacked on top and took out his usual underwear before shoving the drawer shut again. He wanted to check his briefcase, but didn’t dare add suspicion to the emotions plainly visible on Eva’s flushed face.

  She cleared her throat. “Do you suffer from one of those phobias where you’re afraid of picking up diseases from everything you touch…or that touches you?”

  “What?”

  Eva gestured toward his clothes. “You said you don’t like people touching your things.”

  She seemed genuinely concerned, but he noticed the way her back was a little too straight, her chin a little too jutted forward.

  Get a grip, Grayson. Think geek.

  “I like my things a certain way, that’s all,” he said a little too roughly.

  Eva rested her right hand against the elegant curve of her neck, then turned toward the window that overlooked the front yard. “Oh.”

  “Do you want the bathroom first, or should I go?” He shoved his fake glasses up more out of frustration than the need to keep in character. The truth was, he wanted to take the damn things off and give Eva an undiluted view of the man he really was. The man who was on the verge of blowing his cover—and the whole damn assignment—just for a taste of her lips.

  No, he couldn’t show her that man. If he did, she would likely throw him out. Then, not only his assignment would be shot to hell, but his ego would take a hell of a dent as well.

  Still, he thought, eyeing how her pretty, yet innocuous dress clung to her figure, just because circumstances weren’t the way he would have preferred, it didn’t stop him from wanting to seduce her…even as Nerd Adam. The idea lingered in his mind, growing more appealing. He bit back a curse. Sure, up until now the challenges he allowed himself had been connected only to his job. Maybe he was missing out on a whole different ball game by resisting personal challenges. But seducing Eva was out of the question. No matter how much he wished differently.

  “Mm, you go first,” she said finally, turning from the window and dropping her hand to her side.

  The suggestion that they could shower together drifted through Adam’s mind, but since that idea fell under the heading “unsuitable,” he moved toward the bathroom door.

  “Adam?”

  He glanced over his shoulder as he gripped the handle. “Yes?”

  She gestured toward the door as he opened it. “That’s the closet.”

  Adam stared at the plastic-covered garments hanging from a pole and bit back another curse. Not a shower in sight. He closed the door, wondering if impersonating a geek for too long could actually turn him into one.

  THE LOCK on the connecting bathroom door slid home and Eva resisted the urge to lean against the white-enameled wood. She flushed anew. What did Adam think? She would walk in on him while he was taking a shower? Then again, this was the same guy who blew a gasket because her grandmother put his clothes away. She rested her hand against her burning cheek. She might even have
smiled, if only the thought of walking in on him didn’t appeal to her in a never-explored corner of her psyche. A corner she didn’t want to explore.

  She moved away from the door. What was it with her tonight? First she had reacted to his touching her in a way that completely baffled her, and now she was entertaining thoughts of voyeurism. It must be the hormones, she rationalized. Still, she couldn’t help wondering what the broad-shouldered, rock-hard-thighed Adam would look like without clothes.

  Closely monitoring the sound of the shower, she took her silk kimono-like robe out of the closet, then slipped out of her dress and put it on. Pulling the sash tight, she turned toward the bed. It’s only for one night, she told herself. Besides, she was so exhausted, Mel Gibson could be lying beside her and she wouldn’t know the difference.

  Even as she tried to convince herself that she had nothing to fear from Adam, her attempts fell far short of the mark. Then she realized it wasn’t Adam she was worried about at all—it was herself. Suddenly, she was overcome by odd feelings that gave spark to some interesting ideas she would never have considered twenty-four hours ago. The most shocking of which was the temptation to introduce the inexperienced Adam to the wonderful world of sensual sensation. To take off those glasses of his, muss the perfect part in his hair and guide his lean hands down her sweat-slick body. Show him exactly how a woman—how she—liked to be touched. Then there was the matter of touching him….

  She climbed on top of the bed, and flopped across the firm mattress, fighting off the flash of yearning that accompanied her erotic thoughts. Of course, none of this made any sense whatsoever. She wasn’t a seductress. She’d never given thought to doing anything near what was going through her mind. She’d worked with Adam for the past three weeks and had never thought of him as a…man.

  She clamped her eyes shut. That wasn’t entirely true. The quiet moment she’d first spotted Adam Gardner in the hall of Sheffert, Logan and Brace, when no one else was around, something unaccountable had stirred in her. Then he’d seen her, pushed up his glasses, his posture had slumped, and he’d smiled in a sheepish way that had wiped all interest from her mind.

  Until now.

  The shower switched off in the other room. Eva slid off the bed and smoothed the white coverlet. Rushing across the room, she hauled her briefcase to the desktop where she’d spent many a teenage night studying. Behind her, the door opened.

  “I hope I didn’t take too long.”

  Eva waved her hand. “No, no, you’re fine. I was just going over some work things anyway.”

  “It’s all yours,” he said.

  Not daring to look at him, she turned away, collected her nightgown, then practically dived into the bathroom without so much as a glance at him. She pulled the door closed so quickly that a puff of humid air blew her hair from her face. But that slight breeze did little to cool her overheated body.

  ADAM UNDERSTOOD Eva’s refusal to get involved again—with anyone. It was a natural defense mechanism considering she was recently divorced. And her lunge for the bathroom without a glance in his direction verified his assessment.

  In hindsight, he wished he had done the same, and kept his gaze away from her. Instead, he presently stood in the middle of her childhood bedroom, an erection painfully pressing against the fabric of his briefs, and wondered at the exact cause of his reaction to her. Both earlier and now.

  Oh yeah, he had admired, even mildly fantasized about, Eva Burgess’s legs. But that had been at work, with her wearing panty hose, shoes and knee-length skirts. Seeing those same legs bare, silky smooth, tanned and seeming to go on forever, he had been sorely tempted to cross that line between business and pleasure, attraction and undercover flirtation, to find out exactly how high up those legs went. Satisfy a sudden hunger to explore the soft, warm flesh that lay where her legs ended.

  His response to Eva was unexpected not because she managed to get him so worked up, and certainly not because of his job-imposed abstinence. It was because his reaction wasn’t the kind that just any woman could satisfy. No. He strongly suspected his response was uniquely tailored to Eva Burgess. And it would be only Eva Burgess who could satisfy it.

  He stepped to the window and stared out at the dark night, trying to make out the road. He tried harder still to sort out the tension that filled him. Ever since that guy broke into Eva’s car, he’d been on edge. And the feeling had only increased throughout the evening.

  Crossing purposefully to the closet, he yanked open the door.

  “I’d better find something to put on,” he muttered to himself, cursing the short time between Eva’s bizarre request at work, and her picking him up at his apartment, leaving him no opportunity to buy pajamas. Hell, normally he didn’t even wear briefs to bed. But Eva didn’t know that. And she wouldn’t unless he wanted to spend the night on the floor.

  Jerking through the plastic-protected clothes hanging in the closet, he told himself Eva would expect him to wear something—anything—to bed. But in truth, he didn’t want to be vulnerable to the unfamiliar emotions significantly attached to his attraction to the woman in the other room.

  He drew in a deep breath then released it with a low hiss. Nothing. Not one single thing that was long enough to stretch over his six-foot height, much less wide enough for him to get into. He touched what looked like a quilted winter robe he guessed—he hoped—belonged to Eva’s grandmother, then closed the closet door.

  His gaze settled on the desk in the corner and the laptop that sat on it.

  His mind slowly shifted gears. Glancing at the closed bathroom door, he stepped toward the desk and flicked up the laptop’s LCD screen. A brief search for the Honeycutt diskettes came up short. Holding down the button to switch on the computer, he clicked his way out of the menu driver and started a global search of the hard drive.

  He glanced at the bathroom door again. Still closed, shower still running.

  There were many of what appeared to be business-related files, but Eva’s file names were ambiguous, a bunch of letters and consecutive numbers. When he tried to view them, the computer’s operating system told him they were password-protected.

  “Adam, what are you doing?” Eva said quietly.

  He didn’t move. Didn’t bat an eye. Experience had taught him never to start at a surprise. To offer no outward sign that he’d been caught doing anything suspicious. Especially when he could easily explain away his actions. That training worked perfectly as Adam covertly touched the keys that would put him back into the main menu driver, then looked in Eva’s direction.

  She stood in the bathroom doorway, her dark hair even darker wet, the sound of the shower coming from the open doorway.

  Damn. He offered a sheepish smile and pushed up his glasses. “This is some laptop. I hope you don’t mind, but I couldn’t resist seeing what power that baby…er, it has.”

  For long moments she stood there, looking at him, glancing at the computer, looking as if she didn’t know whether to believe him.

  “I’ve been shopping for one for myself. I mean, I have a PC at home, of course….”

  “Of course.”

  He was going to have to come up with more than that. “Well, since I got this job, I can finally afford a new one. But there are so many of them. I can’t seem to decide which one to get.”

  Adam noticed she’d changed from the skimpy, all-too-sexy robe and now wore what he could only describe as the nightgown from hell. An opaque white-and-rose print material, tentlike and stitched up the whazoo with pink piping and virginal lace that covered every piece of her tantalizing flesh.

  “Damn” was what he wanted to say.

  “I…I hope you don’t mind my taking a look.” He motioned toward the laptop that was still on. He frowned and pushed up his glasses again. “I mean, I’m sorry if you thought I was invading your privacy or anything, because I wasn’t.”

  What would she say if she knew at that moment, even with her wearing that…that thing she had on, he wanted
to invade far more than her privacy?

  She crossed the room and closed the screen of the laptop. “I’d have appreciated it if you’d asked first.”

  The tantalizing smell of perfumed soap and clean female flesh teased his nose.

  “Would it be too forward to ask if I might use it this weekend? For work purposes, of course.” He offered a grin he hoped would push her right past the wariness painted all over her face. “And to see if it can handle me, you know, if I decide I want to buy a similar one.”

  A reluctant smile turned up the side of her magnificent little mouth. “Sure, go ahead. You can probably communicate with it better than I can anyway. Maybe you can explain a few things to me about what it can do.”

  Good. He’d have free access to her laptop. That would certainly make his investigation easier. If there was anything in that computer about Sheffert’s dirty dealings, he’d find it. He only wished that finding such proof wouldn’t mean she was in on it.

  “Uh, Eva, didn’t you forget something?” he asked, pointing toward the bathroom. Why had she left the shower on, anyway?

  “Oh.” She passed him again and he nearly groaned at her enticing scent as she hung the dress she’d been wearing earlier on a hanger, put it in the bathroom, then closed the door. “I want to steam the wrinkles out,” she explained.

  Leave it in here and in a few minutes I’ll generate enough heat to iron the wrinkles out of a sharpei.

  Finally her expression shifted as she eyed him. And Adam suddenly realized he’d completely forgotten about putting something on.

  FROZEN, yet, strangely, feeling as if she was suffering from heat exposure, Eva’s gaze began at Adam’s feet, then worked its way up. Past lean, golden hair-ncovered calves. Over delectable thighs. Dragging in a breath, she skipped up farther to a hard, well-toned stomach she could do laundry on. Over pecs as defined as any weight lifter’s. Past arms that could protect a woman from storms and muggers alike.

  Then, unable to resist, her gaze slid back down. Her breath choked off altogether. He wore the athletic type of Jockeys that stretched down to his hard thighs, the top band firmly around his waist. But that they covered more than others didn’t much matter; what did was the snug way they fit around his…manhood. And the thin cotton did little to conceal the long, solid ridge of an erection.