Special Agent's Seduction. Lyn Stone

at home and raided the cookie jar. She munched rather contentedly as she leaned against the counter and waited.

      Within ten minutes Ben reappeared with a travel bag. He had changed out of his suit into cords, a brown pullover and boots.

      “How L.L. Bean,” she remarked, grinning up at him over her cup. Her hormones revved like a souped-up Harley. Ben Michaels was a hunk, no doubt about it. She raised her mug. “Coffee?”

      He wore a steady nonexpression. Great poker face. Great face, period. But unless he wanted you to know what he was thinking, you never would guess.

      “Let’s go,” he said.

      She was ready, full of the pilfered chocolate-chip cookies and not at all averse to hitting the road. But in spite of his words, Michaels seemed fairly reluctant to travel. “Aren’t you going to say goodbye to your parents?”

      “I did. It’s snowing harder. If we don’t leave soon, we might not get a flight out.”

      Goodness, he sounded almost hopeful. Mommy must have read him the riot act or hit him with another dose of guilt. At least he hadn’t caved completely and told Dani to go on to Grand Cayman by herself, as she had half expected to happen.

      She shrugged and set her cup in the sink. Maybe she shouldn’t judge him so harshly. So what if he lived at home and was under Mama’s thumb? Maybe he needed his folks. Maybe his experiences in the service had caused a bad case of posttraumatic stress or something.

      Dani doubted that, though. When it came down to performing in a life-or-death situation, he had proved himself more than capable. No hesitation and apparently, no bad aftereffects. She could work with him. And so she promised herself she would not get personally involved with this guy, no matter how he physically cranked her tractor. One trip down that road was quite enough. After that one, she had decided her next boyfriend would be an orphan with no mother around to mess things up. She had held to that decision, but, as it happened, her second relationship had turned out even worse than the first. Her luck with men was awful.

      When Ben took her arm going down the steps outside, Dani pulled away. She marched across the icy yard and opened her own car door. Self-sufficiency had become her credo these last few years. She had leaned on her last man and sure as heck didn’t want one leaning on her.

      Ben wondered what had set her off. Her sudden pique annoyed him. Maybe she resented his coming along on her mission. Well, that was just too bad. She could just deal with it.

      “Messy day all around, isn’t it?” he asked as he got in and buckled up.

      “The rest of it certainly was, but I love the snow,” she stated. Her tone was defensive, even argumentative.

      “Me, too,” he admitted. He recalled having dreamed about it while traipsing across burning desert sands and crawling through scrubby hills in Afghanistan. He liked drifts of snow four feet deep, covering everything with its pristine whiteness.

      He felt a sense of urgency mixed with dread that he had not felt for nearly two years. But that threat had been up close and personal. It had been immediate. This one could have far-reaching effects across the world.

      His world had already blown up once, a private disaster, nothing as earth-shaking as a globe vulnerable to terrorists.

      Maybe he was wrong about the robbery. He sure hoped so.

      He pinched the bridge of his nose then ran a hand over his face. Strange how it still felt as though it belonged to someone else. The nerves and muscles were obviously working. He could smile, frown, whistle, raise his brows. But the nose was wrong, too straight. The cheekbones, a bit high. Whenever he looked in the mirror, he wondered how much of his character had disappeared with his real face.

      The surgeons had done a bang-up rebuild and he had nothing to complain about. It was better than having no face at all, which was pretty much where he had been eighteen months ago. They had given him the closest thing to a face transplant possible without actually using someone else’s tissue. A total transformation. A miracle, really.

      The only thing that looked remotely like the old Ben Michaels was his eye color and the line of his jaw. He had to deal with the strange new mug and get on with his life. Up to now, he thought he had been adjusting really well.

      Today’s events had held up a mirror he hadn’t looked into before. With the new face, he had taken on a new personality and a new job. Now Ben saw very clearly that his life had become all pretense. A necessary pretense, he reminded himself, one he had to embrace.