to be sick?” Connor asked.
“No. I’m fine,” she said, her stomach dropping. She didn’t want to admit to him her fear of heights.
He swore under his breath. “Are you afraid of airplanes? Or heights?”
No point in lying. He’d already noticed her body language. “Just the latter and only when it’s high enough that I know falling will kill me.” A perfectly reasonable fear: falling to her death with nothing to stop her.
“Great. That’s great. Phobias in the field will get us both offed.” Connor was whispering, but the irritation in his voice was clear.
“I’ll be fine in the field.” She’d been authorized to work for Sphere and they had an extensive screening process. They didn’t think her height phobia made her a danger to anyone. Her primary job function was performed from behind a computer, but if her fear had been debilitating, she would have been eliminated as a candidate.
Connor didn’t let up. “You should have told me. Full disclosure. You’re playing a dangerous game.”
She rolled her head to look at him and opened one eye. “First, you asked for no such thing. Second, you haven’t told me any of your fears. Third, I wasn’t about to give you more reasons to want to ditch me.”
“One, fair enough. Two, I don’t fear anything happening to me and, three, I’ve already tried to ditch you. You’re a pit bull when you want something.”
A pit bull? He was comparing her to a dog. She chose to take his words as a compliment. “Thank you. Perseverance is one of my best qualities.”
“Your perseverance will get you killed. You’ve got to know when to back down and back away.”
That got him a full-on stare, eyes wide-open. “I’m not backing down on this. I will find Aiden.”
“We’ll see.”
Dismissive words. Anger gripped her. She would prove him wrong. “Yes, we will. And when I return to the States with him, I won’t invite you to the welcome-home party.”
“Just like a woman to worry about inconsequential things like having an exclusive party for someone.”
Her mouth opened. What a jerk! Her crush on him waned to almost nothing. Despite her frustration, she kept her voice low. “How can you say that to me like that’s all I care about? I sought you out to help your brother, and it wasn’t exactly easy to find you nor have you been particularly pleasant to work with.”
Connor shrugged. “I don’t know what you care about, but I’d wager most of your intentions are self-serving. Just like a typical, shallow woman. Do me a favor. When we’re looking for my brother, try to keep the whining to a minimum. I can’t stand to hear a woman jabber on about her nails and her hair and her clothes, especially when I have something important to do.”
She sputtered. Was asking Connor for his help a mistake? She wanted to help Aiden, but could there be another way? How could this be the amazing, considerate man whom Aiden had spoken of? Aiden had made his brother sound like a hero. But the Connor she was seeing was a self-centered, misogynistic—
The plane jarred against the tarmac and the pilot’s voice announced their arrival.
Connor grinned. “Look at that. We’re on the ground and you didn’t throw up on me or pass out. Nice job.”
Realization flooded into her. “You were antagonizing me on purpose?”
He winked at her. “Not hard to do and it distracted you, didn’t it?”
It had. Her anger lessened. “You didn’t mean any of that?”
“Not the insulting stuff, no.”
She wondered what he considered insulting. She didn’t question every word he’d said, though certain phrases replayed in her mind. Dangerous game. Would her perseverance get them killed? Kate didn’t thank him for the distraction, though she’d seen yet another side of Connor. He’d seen her need and had taken action.
When they debarked the plane in Carvalo City, the capital of Tumara, Connor said nothing to her. He gathered his carry-on from the overhead compartment, murmured his gratitude to the flight attendants as they passed and strode down the hallway into the main airport. He blended into the crowd around him. Connor didn’t turn around to see if she was following. Maybe he didn’t care. He disappeared around a corner and mild panic shook her. A man like Connor could vanish and she wouldn’t find him. He’d been trained by the best in the world in evasion and disappearance techniques.
A hand came around her forearm and pulled her into an alcove. Kate started. Connor’s grip on her arm was strong as he held her against his body. The tension in his muscles tightened his hard body and his eyes burned with red-hot emotion. “We were followed.”
The words were accusatory. “What? How?” She struggled to step away from him. He didn’t release her.
“I don’t know how. I thought you might.”
Her jaw slackened. He was quick to imply she was lying and trying to screw him over. “I was careful. We traveled under your arrangements, remember?”
He pulled her bag from her hand. “This has to go.”
She wasn’t an amateur. “I checked my things. They’re clean.”
His eyes narrowed. “Then it’s something on you.” He dropped her bag to the ground and his hands moved to her shoulders, inspecting the fabric of her clothes. As he moved his hands lower, Kate shrugged off his touch. His intentions were to find a bug or tracker on her, but the contact was igniting her desire for him, making her hot and bothered. “I don’t know if you’ve been living in the woods for too long and you’ve forgotten basic social decency, but you can’t feel me up in an airport. I don’t have any tracking devices on me.”
“I’m not feeling you up. This isn’t about a cheap grope in a public place. This is about keeping us safe and finding my brother. Take off all your clothes and change into mine. They could have sewn something into the fabric of yours. It’s not safe. They track every employee every moment of the day. The sooner you realize that, the safer you’ll be.”
Kate didn’t believe him. Her movements at work were monitored and her use of the computer equipment restricted, but Connor made it sound as if Sphere tracked her everywhere. They could request access to her personal financial documents or talk to her friends and family about her leisure-time activities, but she would have been alerted if she was under investigation. “You’ve lost it. They don’t know I’m here and they certainly don’t know I’m with you.” Aiden had mentioned his brother was paranoid about security and she had witnessed plenty to support it, but this was ridiculous.
“Change. Your. Clothes.”
A man and a woman walked past them, their heads bent together in conversation. Connor tensed and lowered his head, tucking it into the nape of Kate’s neck. The closeness and his hands on her shoulders sent lust spiraling through her. It was the wrong time to get turned on, but Connor did something to her. He had the confidence and the moves and just enough daring to make him dangerous.
“They’ve been following us,” Connor said.
Kate
