stood up and took the next chair down the table. He was getting closer to her. The bell chimed again, announcing the beginning of the next five minutes.
“How can you look like that and be so socially awkward?” the woman across from him asked.
His focus on his target, he only spared the woman a glance. She was probably old enough to be his mother—maybe his grandmother—with iron-gray hair and small reading glasses hanging from a chunky gold chain around the neck of the sweatshirt embroidered with cats. “Excuse me?”
“You haven’t said anything to the women before me,” she said. “Of course when you look like that—the epitome of tall, dark and handsome—you probably don’t have to say anything. You could grunt and women would go home with you.”
He felt like grunting with frustration and impatience, but then she might take that as an invitation. “I’m sorry,” he said. “This is the first time I’ve come to one of these things—”
“It’s called speed dating,” she said. “You only have five minutes, so you have to talk fast.”
“I would rather listen,” he said. It was what he did. Listening was how he had found the threat. He’d picked up chatter on wiretaps and other surveillance and then he’d found the post himself.
“Oh—” the older woman fanned herself with one of the drink menus “—you look like that and you’d rather listen. No wonder you’ve never come to one of these things before. You haven’t had to. Why are you here tonight?”
Obviously he couldn’t answer honestly. Ash was no rookie when it came to going undercover; he’d had some dangerous assignments over the years, going deep undercover in terrorist camps and militia groups as well as a motorcycle gang.
But he had never gone speed dating before. A couple of chairs earlier, someone had run a stiletto heel up his pant leg. Another woman had tried to give him her room key. There was danger here, too. So Ash had to be careful to not blow his cover.
“Why?” the woman asked again, her voice sharp with impatience that he hadn’t answered yet.
She definitely reminded him of his grandmother, at least as much as he could remember of the austere woman from whom his father had run away as a teenager. After he’d gotten married and had Ash, he’d come back to visit, but Grandma hadn’t approved of Ash’s mother any more than she had her own son.
Because the woman was kind of intimidating and because it was easier to sell a cover if you told as much of the truth as possible, Ash replied honestly, “I want to meet someone.”
The woman emitted a wistful sigh. “You will,” she assured him. “You will.”
He glanced down the table again to where the threat chatted easily with the man across from her. He was bald with no neck and an ill-fitting suit. Was he a buyer?
“Ooooh,” the woman across from Ash said as if she’d just learned something momentous.
Had he given himself away?
He turned back to her and found her studying him through the thick lenses of her small glasses.
“You already have your eye on someone,” she said, and she pointed down the table at the threat.
Ash swallowed a groan. He had given himself away. So he offered the woman a sheepish grin. “Am I that obvious?”
She shrugged. “I’m observant. I don’t think she’s noticed you at all, though. And in my opinion, you could do better than that pale little blonde.”
It could have been the crimson shade of her tight dress or the pale yellow of her hair that made her skin look translucent. But he knew it wasn’t—even while he admired the fit of that dress and the bright shade of lipstick on her wide mouth and the shimmer of her light hair.
The woman snorted derisively. “She looks like she hasn’t been out in the daylight for years.”
Ash knew why Claire Molenski looked that way. She hadn’t been out in the daylight for years. And if he had his way, he would be locking her back up again soon.
He just had to catch her before she and her greed put into motion an economic and security catastrophe of epic proportions.
* * *
CLAIRE’S HEAD WAS THROBBING, and the smile felt frozen on her face. Her lips were so dry that they were now stuck to her teeth, so she couldn’t pull them down again. This is what you wanted, she reminded herself.
A new life. A life that wasn’t so lonely and empty.
She doubted she was going to find that new life in the dining room of the Waterview Inn, though. Most of the guys were much older than she was and some, from the deep indents on their ring fingers, were not as eligible as they claimed. In fact, when she sneezed, one pulled out a handkerchief for her and whipped out his ring as well, which rolled across the grape-leaf-and-vine-patterned carpet.
She giggled as he chased after it. But then that strange feeling assailed her—as if everyone was staring at her. She looked around the room but noticed no one overtly studying her. Maybe she was just paranoid because she hadn’t been out in public for a while—for a long while.
That was the whole purpose of coming here. She could have just signed up for online dating. But she’d wanted to go out and actually meet real people—people with personality and character. Only she hadn’t yet met anyone she cared to date. The bell dinged again, so she drew in a deep breath to brace herself for the next man to take the chair across from her.
First she looked at his hands, which he’d braced on the table in front of him. The ring finger held no telltale indentation. So she glanced up, and the breath she’d drawn escaped in a gasp of surprise.
Very pleasant surprise. This man wasn’t too old for her. His hair was thick and black, and his eyes were a piercing blue. So piercing that he seemed to peer right through her. Had it been his stare that she’d felt earlier?
“Hello,” she said. “My name’s Claire.”
So many of the other men had remarked that it was odd that such a young woman had such an old-fashioned name, but he just nodded, almost as if he’d known her name. But she had never met him before; he was the kind of man a woman would never forget meeting.
So she was definitely just paranoid.
“What’s your name?” she asked when he didn’t freely offer it.
“Ash,” he replied almost reluctantly.
She floundered around for something clever to say, but her mind was blank. Maybe it was because he was so damn good-looking; maybe it was just because she had no idea how to date anymore. It had been too long.
She had read some books about how to flirt when dating. But none of what she read came to her mind. It remained blank, which was a novelty since she was usually unable to stop thinking.
“What do you do for a living, Claire?” he asked.
Several other men had asked that same question, but she actually wanted to tell him the truth. “I work
