She’d miss her little muscle car, just like she had a feeling she would miss her old life before this was all over.
She turned away from the window and sat on the bed next to the suitcase. She didn’t want to think of Kane, but she couldn’t help it. His familiar scent still lingered in the room, haunting her with memories of their shared past.
They’d begun their relationship as partners, two committed people working for the good of the country. They’d flown to exotic locations, worked both in squalor and in splendor. By the end of that second year of their partnership, their relationship had become personal.
It had been a tumultuous affair, filled with the danger of their jobs and an explosive passion neither had been able to deny. The most difficult thing she’d ever done in her life was walk away from him. But she was determined that she stay personally removed from him.
The air-conditioner unit in the wall clicked on and began a loud hum. She opened the suitcase to see what was inside. As Kane had said, she found clean, comfortable clothing, the usual toiletries and a cotton nightshirt. All in her size. In the bottom of the case she found a tube of pear-scented moisturizing body cream.
He’d remembered.
She clutched the bottle to her heart and closed her eyes. A well of emotion pressed tightly in her chest. One of her nightly rituals was to apply the sweet-scented cream to her arms and legs. It touched her more than she cared to admit.
She tossed the tube on the nightstand and stood, eyeing the folder that sat waiting for her on the table. Better to focus on work than on her softening resolve to keep her work with Kane strictly professional.
“Where did you go to high school?” Kane barked the question from his position in a chair at the table.
Cassie paced back and forth in front of her unmade bed, thinking that he sounded like a drill sergeant. “Lincoln High school,” she replied.
“What was your mother’s name?”
“Mary…Mary Sinclair and my father was Joseph. They died in a car accident when I was eighteen and my brother, Jimmy, was eight.”
“What was your address in Des Moines?”
Cassie stopped her pacing, frozen as she drew a blank. She stared at Kane with frustration.
“Bang, you’re dead,” he said.
He was right. It was the kind of lapse in memory that got you killed when you went undercover. She sank down on the edge of the bed, exhausted both mentally and physically. They’d been at it for the past three hours, Kane firing questions and her answering.
“You’re right,” she said tiredly.
“We’ll take a break, eat some dinner, then start again.”
She wanted to protest. What she really wanted to do was curl up in bed and sleep for about ten hours. She’d stayed up most of the night studying the information in the file, then had gotten up before dawn to study some more.
“I feel like a college student cramming for finals,” she said.
He rose from his chair. “Yeah, but in this case if you flunk your final, you might lose your life.”
“I know…I know.”
“So what are you hungry for?”
“I don’t care as long as it isn’t another hamburger.” He’d brought her a burger and fries for lunch. “Surprise me.”
She immediately wanted to call the words back as a muscle in his jaw ticked and his eyes darkened.
“I’ll be back,” he said and left the room.
Cassie rubbed the center of her forehead where a headache threatened to take hold. Surprise me. How many times in their past relationship had they said those words to each other…a hundred? A thousand?
“If we get out of this alive, want me to tell you what I’m going to do to you?” he whispered when they’d been trapped in a cooler on a ship smuggling explosives to the Philippines and left to die.
“No, don’t tell me. Surprise me,” she’d replied.
“Want to know what I’m going to do with you when we get back to your place?” he’d asked, his eyes lit with fires that had burned her from the inside out.
“Surprise me,” she’d whispered breathlessly.
She now got up and began to pace once again in an attempt to erase the past from her mind. So far, Kane certainly hadn’t acknowledged that they’d shared any kind of a past. He hadn’t asked her why she’d left. He apparently had moved on.
It was important that she do the same.
All she had to do was get through these three days in the motel room. After that she’d be undercover and immersed in the job. There would be no time for thoughts of Kane, no time for entertaining any regrets that might plague her even temporarily.
He was back within twenty minutes, bringing with him Chinese takeout. He opened the containers as she got out the paper plates and chopsticks.
Moments later they were seated at the table across from each other, eating in silence that quickly became oppressive and heavy.
“Has the agency kept you busy in the last couple of years?” she asked, unable to stand the silence any longer.
“Fairly busy.” He speared a piece of sweet and sour chicken with one chopstick. Cassie swallowed a smile. He was adroit at almost everything else, but had never mastered the art of chopsticks.
“Domestic or foreign?” she asked, trying to draw him into something that resembled a normal conversation.
“Both. Did you follow the Brahm’s case?”
“The guy in New York selling arms to Iraq?”
He nodded. “We were in on that. It took almost a year to build the case.”
“Tell me about it,” she urged, eager to keep the silence at bay.
To her relief, he did. As he told her the details of the operation that had taken place two years before, his eyes lit with animation and he appeared to relax.
Cassie found herself relaxing as well as the tension between them disappeared at least for the moment. As Kane explained the various operations he’d been a part of for the past five years, Cassie asked questions to keep him talking.
She had always enjoyed Kane when he spoke with passion and conviction, and that’s what he exhibited whenever he talked about the job. The darkness left his eyes and his features softened.
Clad in a pair of tight jeans and a black T-shirt, there was a look of danger about him. His dark hair was carelessly mussed, but that only added to his attractiveness.
As he filled her in on his work over the last five years, she found herself wondering about his personal life. He told her where he’d been and what he’d done for the job, but he didn’t mention
