He’s going to have a hard time sending you to the bathroom alone. All those sharp edges.’
‘I am not suicidal.’
‘Tell me what you want done in Belarus and I’ll put someone on it. Discreetly. You can run them from here.’
‘I don’t work that way.’
‘No? Maybe you should.’
She stood and headed for the door, but he wasn’t ready for this interview to be over, and he hadn’t yet let go of the rough edges he’d acquired after two years playing thug for Antonov.
He shot out his hand to keep the door closed and got up in her face.
Up close, he saw her eyes had little flecks of chocolate-brown in amongst the amber. He could smell the fresh lemon scent of her hair, feel the puff of her breath against his lips, and he knew that he was too close, that his lips were far too close to hers. Another inch and he’d be tasting her—and he wanted to. God. He wanted to fall into this woman and take his own sweet time climbing back out, and it didn’t matter that she was a section head or that his behaviour was way out of line. Maybe he’d forgotten what normal behaviour was. Meet a woman, like a woman, ask her on a date. Maybe he should start there.
‘Have dinner with me.’
‘That’s your next play?’
Nice to know he could surprise her. ‘Why not?’ He could feel the warmth in her, sense the steel in her, and he wanted both. ‘You can toy with me. Mentor me. Discipline me. I’m young. Impulsive. Smitten.’
‘I’m not.’
‘Could be why I like you.’ He eased back, just a fraction, and watched for signs of arousal in her—the faint flush of her skin or the hitch of her breath—but he didn’t find any. Just a soul-deep caution that matched his own.
‘You need to back off, Agent West.’
‘How about I take you to lunch? I promise to behave.’
‘No.’ She pushed her knuckles into his injured ribs—not hard, but a warning nonetheless. ‘You’re out of line.’
‘Would you hurt me?’ He leaned into her hand. ‘I don’t think you would.’
‘I’d rather not have to. Doesn’t mean I won’t, Mr West—
‘Call me Jared. Call me by my name.’ He hadn’t answered to his real name for such a long time—two years or thereabouts. He’d been Jimmy. Jimmy Bead. ‘Just—use my name. The way you did before. I want to hear people say it.’
‘Is your last name not enough?’
‘First name’s better.’
‘Why?’
‘There’s more me in it.’
‘Jared—’
‘Yeah. That’s the one.’
He stepped back all the way this time, and gave her the room she deserved. Her hand fell away and he felt the loss of warmth as if someone had dipped him in the Atlantic. He had a feeling that his psych report hadn’t covered half of what was wrong with him at the moment.
Or maybe it had.
‘If I say that my next question is for your benefit as well as mine, will you believe me?’ she asked quietly.
He ran a hand through his hair. He’d been doing that of late too, and it wasn’t something he’d ever done before—either as Jared or as JB … Jimmy Bead. ‘What’s the question?’
‘Do you know who you’re hunting? Antonov’s last insider. Do you know who it is?’
‘I— No. I think it’s a director, but I don’t know who it is. If I could have nailed a bullseye to his forehead I’d have done it.’
‘That much I do believe.’
‘Get me to Belarus,’ he begged.
‘No. Not yet. You need to rest. Take some leave. No one’s going to send you back out into the field in the condition you’re in. Get some sleep and let your body heal and then we’ll talk again. And, Jared …?’
‘That’s me,’ he muttered, and there was a joke in there somewhere, though it was probably on him.
‘Welcome back.’
THE WEST FAMILY beach house sat on the edge of a long stretch of unpatrolled beach in northern New South Wales. Jared’s brother had bought the sprawling house several years ago, with the intention of making it his home, but that hadn’t happened yet and all four West siblings tended to treat it as their own personal place of sanctuary and of rest. Although preferably not all at once.
Lena and Trig’s big old farmhouse was a twenty-minute drive away, although given how much time they’d spent at the beach house with Jared this week he could be forgiven for thinking them homeless. They were supposed to be on their honeymoon, for heaven’s sake. A honeymoon that Lena had said they’d cut short because there was no place like home.
Jared hoped, for the umpteenth time, that they hadn’t cut it short because they’d wanted to keep an eye on him. They kept making excuses to drop by. Lena in particular wouldn’t stop hovering—which was rich, given how much she hated it whenever someone did that to her.
She had already been by this morning. She’d skipped out to the shops, because apparently Jared needed more food in the fridge, but she’d left Trig behind with Jared. Trig was currently out on the deck, examining his parachute, because apparently they were doing a jump just as soon as Jared’s ribs had healed.
Without physical challenge in his life, Jared got cranky, Trig had informed him blithely. And they needed to fix that.
Apparently a lot of things about Jared needed fixing.
Jared glared afresh at the psych report in his hand. His psych report, fresh off the back of his debrief. A normal person probably wouldn’t have asked his brother to swipe a psych report from the secure ASIS databanks, but to Jared’s way of thinking that was what genius younger brothers were for.
It had been three days since Rowan Farringdon had called him in to her office and asked him what he needed in order to finish the job. Three days and now he was on leave for two weeks—thinking about his future, trying to settle into the ‘now’ and going quietly out of his mind.
‘Who writes these delusional masterpieces anyway?’ he asked Trig.
‘Psychiatrists.’ Trig looked up from the parachute spread out before him, eyes narrowed as he took in Jared’s scowl. ‘Stop obsessing.’
‘I’m not obsessing. I’m disagreeing with the evaluation.’
‘You
