She was a wimp. She’d fallen asleep—and stayed asleep for hours—while on the job.
And Joe…Joe hadn’t kept his promise to wake her up.
She’d been starting to…like him. She’d been attracted from the start, but this was different. She actually, genuinely liked him, despite the fact that he came from an entirely different world, despite the fact that they seemed to argue almost constantly. She even liked him despite the fact that he clearly wanted to make their relationship sexual. Despite all that, she’d thought he had been starting to like her, too.
Her disappointment flashed quickly into anger. How dare he just let her sleep the day away? The bastard…
Veronica fumed as she tucked her blouse back into the top of her skirt and straightened her jacket, thankful her suit was permanent-press and wrinkle-proof.
Her hair wasn’t quite so easy to fix, but she was determined not to emerge from the bedroom with it down and flowing around her shoulders. It was bad enough that she’d been sleeping in Joe’s bed. She didn’t want it to look as if he’d been in there with her.
Finally, she took a deep breath and, single shoe in her hand and head held high, she went into the living room.
If the FInCOM agents smirked condescendingly, Veronica refused to notice. All she knew was, Joe was not in the room. Good thing, or she might have lost even more of her dignity by throwing her shoe directly at his head.
“Good afternoon, gentlemen,” she said briskly to West and Freeman as she gathered up her briefcase. Ah, good. There was her missing shoe, on the floor in front of the sofa. She slipped them both onto her feet. “Might I ask where the lieutenant has gone?”
“He’s up in the exercise room,” one of them answered.
“Thanks so very much,” Veronica said and breezed out the door.
Joe had already run seven miles on the treadmill when Veronica walked into the hotel’s luxuriously equipped exercise room. She looked a whole lot better. She’d showered and changed her clothes. But glory hallelujah, instead of putting on another of those Margaret Thatcher suits, she was wearing a plain blue dress. It was nothing fancy, obviously designed to deemphasize her femininity, yet somehow, on Veronica, it hugged her slender figure and made her look like a million bucks. Her shoes were still on the clunky side, but oh, baby, those legs…
Joe wiped a trickle of sweat that ran down the side of his face. When had it gotten so hot in here?
But her greeting to him was anything but warm.
“I’d like to have a word with you,” Veronica said icily, without even a hello to start. “At your convenience, of course.”
“Did you have a good nap?” Joe asked.
“Will you be much longer?” she asked, staring somewhere off to his left.
That good, huh? Something had ticked her off, and Joe was willing to bet that that something was him. He’d let her sleep. Correction—he’d been unable to wake her up. It wasn’t his fault, but now he was going to pay.
“Can you give me five more minutes?” he countered. “I like to do ten miles without stopping.”
Joe wasn’t even out of breath. Veronica could see from the computerized numbers lit up on the treadmill’s controls, that he’d already run nine miles. But he didn’t sound winded.
He was sweating, though. His shorts were soaking wet. He wasn’t wearing a shirt, and his smooth, tanned skin was slick as his muscles worked. And, dear Lord, he had so many muscles. Beautifully sculpted, perfect muscles. He was gorgeous.
He was watching her in the floor-to-ceiling mirrors that covered the walls of the exercise room. Veronica leaned against the wall near the door and tried not to look at Joe, but everywhere she turned, she saw his reflection. She found herself staring in fascination at the rippling muscles in his back and thighs and arms, and then she started thinking about their kiss. Their fabulous, heart-stoppingly romantic kiss. Despite his nonchalant attitude, that kiss had been laced with tenderness and laden with emotion. It was unlike any kiss she’d experienced ever before.
Veronica had been well aware that Joe had been holding back when he kissed her that way. She’d felt his restraint and the power of his control. She had seen the heat of desire in his eyes and known he wanted more than just a simple, gentle kiss.
Veronica couldn’t forget how he’d searched her eyes as he’d leaned toward her and…
Excellent. Here she was, standing there reliving Joe’s kiss while staring at his perfect buttocks. Veronica glanced up to find his amused dark eyes watching her watch his rear end. No doubt he could read her mind. Of course the fact that she’d been nearly drooling made it all the easier for him to know what she’d been thinking.
She might as well give in, Veronica admitted to herself. She might as well sleep with the man and get it over with. After all, he was so bloody positive that it was going to happen. And after their kiss, despite her best intentions, all Veronica could think about was “When was he going to kiss her again?” Except he hadn’t woken her up, which meant that he probably didn’t even like her, and now she was mad as hell at him. Yes, kissing him had been a royal mistake. Although at the time, when she’d said those words, she’d meant another kind of mistake entirely. She’d meant their timing had been wrong. She’d meant it had been a mistake to add a romantic distraction to all of the other distractions already driving her half mad.
Then, of course, he’d said what he’d said, and…
The fact that Joe saw their growing relationship as one based purely on sex only added to Veronica’s confusion. She knew that a man like Joe Catalanotto, a man accustomed to intrigue and high adventure, would never have any kind of long-term interest in a woman who worked her hardest to be steady and responsible and, well, quite frankly, boring. And even if that wasn’t the case, even if by some miracle Joe fell madly and permanently in love with her, how on earth would she handle his leaving on dangerous, top-secret missions? How could she simply wave goodbye, knowing she might never again see him alive?
No, thank you very much.
So maybe this pure sex thing didn’t add to her confusion. Maybe it simplified things. Maybe it took it all down to the simplest, most basic level.
Lord knew, she was wildly attracted to him. And so what if she was watching him?
Veronica met Joe’s gaze almost defiantly, her chin held high. One couldn’t have a body like that and expect people not to look. And watching Joe run was like watching a dancer. He was graceful and surefooted, his motion fluid and effortless. She wondered if he could dance. She wondered—not for the first time—what it would feel like to be held in his arms, dancing with him.
As Veronica watched, Joe focused on his running, increasing his speed, his arms and legs churning, pumping. The treadmill was starting to whine, and just when Veronica was sure Joe was going to start to slow, when she was positive he couldn’t keep up the pace a moment longer, he went even faster.
His teeth were clenched, his face a picture of concentration and stamina. He looked like something savage, something wild. An untamed man-creature from the distant past. A ferocious, barbaric warrior come to shake up the civility of Veronica’s carefully polite twentieth-century world.
“Hoo-yah!” someone called out, and Joe’s face broke into a wide smile as he looked up at three men, standing near the weight machine in the corner of the room. As quickly as his smile appeared, the barbarian was gone.
Odd, Veronica hadn’t noticed the other men before this. She’d been aware of the FInCOM agents lurking near her, but not these three men dressed in workout