LITMIR.BIZ

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      Jessica summoned a smile. “You wouldn’t really write the door code on your jeans leg, would you?”

      “Well, I wouldn’t, but it wouldn’t surprise me if Mike or Carl did something stupid like that. I swear, neither one of them can think except in assembly language. Well, don’t let me keep you from working. And, Jessica, if this has still got you upset, don’t worry about the design. We’ve got a little slack and can wait a little longer.”

      Alone again, Jessica took two aspirin and forced her attention to her work. Work, she’d discovered a long time ago, was solace.

      Arlen pulled his car up under the overhang in front of MTI’s main entrance to wait for Jessica. He left the engine running and the defroster blowing to keep the windows clear. The day had turned unexpectedly cold and miserably wet. He was glad he had an old umbrella in the backseat, because he suspected Jessica had probably misjudged the weather this morning just as he had.

      Jessica. He’d been thinking about her a little too often for his own peace of mind. Such a severe little mouse of a woman, he told himself, and then remembered the unusual brilliance of her brown eyes and the soft shell-pink of her full lips. Or the fact that her loosely cut gray slacks and high-necked white blouse had hinted at a figure that was better than average.

      Well, better than average if you liked women with some meat on them, Arlen thought wryly. He guessed he did, to judge by his reaction to the lady. It hadn’t been something he’d really thought about before.

      He’d dated Lucy all the way through high school, over her family’s ceaseless objections, and married her a week after graduation. Then had come an eighteen-month separation while he went to Desert Storm with the marines. He’d returned from the Middle East with a couple of medals to rejoin his bride and meet his eleven-month-old daughter, Melanie. And nine months after that, Andrew had been born. Two years later, he was out of the marines and in college on the GI Bill, both him and Lucy working to support the kids. The hard times had paid off in a big way when he fulfilled his life’s dream of joining the FBI.

      Sighing, he looked back with a kind of nostalgic sadness. How young and invulnerable he and Lucy had been then, both of them sure that the hard times were over. Life had a hell of a way of grinding out the smugness of youth.

      Exiting the building through the electronically controlled glass doors, Jessica caught sight of Arlen just moments before he spied her. In that instant she thought he looked sad. Alone. The way she felt inside all too often. Did she look like that to others?

      But he smiled as he climbed out of the car and came around to open the door for her. That lopsided smile of his was infectious, she realized as she felt her own lips stretch and lift in response. Today he wore another, darker, gray wool suit, and he once again looked very much like the FBI agents of her imaginings. Very neat, very correct. Very tall and very imposing. Strange, nervous little tickles danced through her stomach.

      But Arlen didn’t act like her image of an agent. As she slipped past him to get into the car, he bent without warning and kissed her lightly on the cheek. When she looked up at him in astonishment, he further confounded her by laughing and dropping a kiss on the tip of her nose.

      “Climb in, honey. It’s cold out here.” Still smiling, he urged her into the car.

      Honey? Surely he couldn’t be one of those awful men who called every woman honey. Awful as that thought was, she was even more astounded to realize that some fugitive part of her wished he really meant it. She couldn’t help thinking that it must be really nice to have someone in your life who called you “honey” and surprised you with kisses.

      But a very long time ago Jessica had decided it was wisest to avoid men. The boys in high school had scorned her because she was too poor, too plump, too smart and wore glasses. She was one of the very few girls who didn’t go to her senior prom.

      Things like that had hurt, of course, but nothing had prepared her for the anguish she discovered in college. Prince Charming had arrived in her freshman year in the guise of a premed student. To this day Jessica considered herself fortunate to have discovered that he was more interested in having her do his programming assignments than he was in her love, and that wooing her had been just a way of buying her brains.

      And to this day she could still writhe with embarrassment when she recalled her own eager stupidity and readiness to believe in magic. Lord, the whole world had turned bright and shining for her in those two short months. She had believed the sun rose and set on Chuck Meyers, had done any and everything he had asked her to, and all because he took her out to a couple of movies and spent his evenings in her dorm room. Making her believe he liked being with her. Teasing her with little kisses and then laughing at her blushes.

      Fool that she was, she had thought he was laughing because he thought she was cute. And then he would hand her his math book or his computer science assignments and say, “Hey, Jess, I don’t exactly understand this. Help me, huh?” And she would do his whole damn assignment because he gave her those little kisses and made her feel like a million dollars.

      Stupid, stupid sixteen-year-old Jessica. How crushed she had been the day after she finished his final program, the one that had guaranteed him an A for the course. How stupid and crushed and humiliated when she learned that Chuck thought they’d had a fair trade. “You had your fantasy, and I got my A,” he had said bluntly. “What’s the big deal, Jess? It isn’t like I even slept with you.” He hadn’t even had the moral decency to understand what the big deal was. She’d been a fool, all right, and she had plumbed the true meaning of despair. She’d also learned what it meant to be used, and while she might risk the heartbreak, she would never again risk the humiliation and the sense of worthlessness that went with knowing you had been taken advantage of.

      Sitting next to Arlen as he pulled out of the MTI parking lot, Jessica realized she wasn’t as immune as she’d believed these past years. For the first time in a very long time she found herself acutely, femininely aware of a man. She found herself noticing the way his thigh muscles flexed as he drove. The easy competence with which his large, lean hands held the wheel. The faint shadow of the morning’s beard growth on his cheeks and chin. The muted scent of a man, just barely noticeable in the closed confines of the car. The things that make men different, and that make them attractive to women.

      And she found herself wondering what it would be like to lean over and rest her cheek against the wool that covered his shoulder. What would it be like to have his arm close around her shoulders and hold her? Just hold her. Dear heaven, was it possible to ache just to be held? Startled by a need she had never recognized before, she simply stared at him.

      Arlen glanced her way as he eased into the heavy noon-hour traffic and caught her staring at him. Before Jessica’s blush became visible, he’d once again fixed his eyes on the road.

      “I guess I owe you a whole pack of apologies, Jessica,” he said. “You probably think I’ve gone off the deep end. But the simple fact is, if somebody notices us together, whether it’s someone who recognizes me or someone who recognizes you, I’ll be a whole lot more comfortable if they assume we have some kind of personal relationship.”

      “Why?” And then it dawned on her. Her scalp prickled as she realized that Arlen actually thought someone might be watching her.

      “After your report to security yesterday,” he continued, “somebody might be interested in your actions for the next couple of days. It’s better all around if they don’t get wind that you’ve talked to the FBI.”

      “Is that why you wouldn’t let me talk on the phone this morning?”

      He nodded and glanced at her. “You never know who might be listening. It’s just a precaution. Why did you call?”

      “Because you were right. The missing document was back in my safe this morning, tucked at the bottom of the drawer as if it had slipped down. I wanted to ask you how to handle it, because it occurred to me there might be fingerprints on it.”

      Arlen steered the car into the parking lot of a popular restaurant. Only when he’d

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