means what? That you’re off the hook for hurting me? Nice try, but life doesn’t work that way.”
He smiled, keeping it thin and sharp. “You’re not over me, Tai.”
Her skin almost paled. “You wish.”
He argued his point. “If you didn’t care about me, you wouldn’t be holding a grudge.” He picked up a glass figurine from her desk. It was shaped like a butterfly. He traced each fragile wing, memories assaulting his mind. Talia had a tattoo of a butterfly on her bikini line. He’d been with her when she’d gotten it.
“Put that down,” she told him.
“Why?”
“So you don’t break it.”
“I’m being careful.”
“You don’t know the meaning of the word.”
Part of him wanted to shatter the butterfly. Talia hadn’t made the slightest effort at the party. She hadn’t even tried to make a favorable impression.
He set down the figurine. If he didn’t, he would break it, snap its delicate wings in half. “Where’s the Gamblers Anonymous list?”
She opened a file on her computer. “I hate it when you do that.”
“Do what? Change the subject without warning you? Would you rather talk about how not-over-me you are?”
“Go to hell.”
As if he hadn’t been there already. After Talia walked out on him, he’d saddled up with Satan too many times to count.
She activated her printer and handed him a copy of the Nevada GA list she’d compiled. “Happy?”
“Are you?” he shot back.
“Ecstatic,” she droned. “I can’t wait to become your phony wife.”
“We’re going to sleep in the same room.”
“Over my dead body.”
“That can be arranged.”
“How? Are you going to contract Julia and Miriam’s hit man to do me in?”
“If only I could. We don’t even know who he is.” Suddenly he thought about the person who’d asked them to help the FBI find Julia and Miriam. Thunder’s brother, Dylan, was the concerned party. Dylan had inadvertently rescued Julia from a kidnapping just days before she and her mother had disappeared, and now he was tangled up in their lives. Dylan even felt guilty about the assassin, but that was a long story.
“I don’t need to hire someone to take you out,” Talia said. “I could do it myself.”
“Go ahead and try,” he retorted. “Better yet, you can do it while we’re sharing a room.”
“I’m serious about that, Aaron.”
“So am I. It’s part of our cover.”
“Bull.”
“If we’re going to pull this off, if we’re going to become a married couple, then we have to behave accordingly, to get into character, to make our cover believable.” He glanced at the fragile butterfly, itching to touch it again, to threaten to break it. “We’re not going to blow this, Talia. We’re not going to put our lives on the line.”
She gave him a cynical look. “No matter how much we want to waste each other?”
Touché, Aaron thought, recalling her pearl-handled gun. “We’re going to pose as a couple on vacation in Nevada. I’ve been working on the details.” He paused, explained further. “I’ve got a makeup man on the payroll who will teach us how to change the way we look, just to be sure that the assassin doesn’t recognize us. We don’t know who he is, but he might know who we are.”
“I don’t mind changing my appearance.”
He took an unabashed gander at her. “I’m still deciding on the color of your hair.”
“Red,” she told him.
“We’ll see.” He wanted to tug her head back, to use her hair to rein her in. “SPEC will provide us with new identities, but I’ll make sure the feds approve them.”
“How long will we be gone?”
“Two weeks. Three if we need more time. I’ll make the travel arrangements.”
“I’ll be there with wedding bells on.” She fluttered her lashes, then mocked him with a breathy seduction. “I can’t wait to shack up with my husband.”
He didn’t appreciate her rotten-tempered wit. He stood and left her office, wanting to choke himself with his tie, right before he strangled her with it.
There was nothing funny about how badly he wanted to check into a hotel with her.
Nothing at all.
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