LITMIR.BIZ

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were I to have any, would fall on deaf ears.” He wore a black, Armani three-piece suit. His raven hair curled against the virgin white of his shirt collar. He smelled of a spicy autumn afternoon, and seemed somehow able to defy the heat.

      “I like color,” she said. If he had his way, she’d be covered from head to toe in flowing veils all fit for a funeral. But that she would never do.

      “Color likes you back.” He caught her chin in his big hand, startling her.

      The blush swept her body again, gaining heat this time as it reached her face. She could pull away, but sensed the room watching them. She whispered, “What are you doing?”

      He leaned closer, as though to kiss her. Her breath jammed in her throat at the raw sexuality in his very touch, his very nearness. The pad of his thumb traced the soft flesh above her upper lip. “Foam…from the beer.”

      “Tha—thank you.” She took a faltering step back. “How did you know to find me here, Zahir?”

      “Actually, I wasn’t looking for you, love.” His voice was a mix of Northeastern crisp and Middle Eastern mellow. “I had no idea you were here. I was passing by and spotted that tabloid reporter—what’s his name— Redwing, outside.” He glanced at the door as though he half expected The Buzzard to burst through it, camera flashing. “The last thing I want is him getting wind of where and when the wedding is coming down.”

      Coming down? That was a strange way to refer to their wedding. She lowered her voice. “Bobby Redwing has been hassling Cailin. He’s probably not after you or me.”

      “In the past, he’s been very persistent, very good at ferreting out…secrets,” Zahir said in a distracted voice as though he were speaking to himself. He touched his chest near his heart and an odd expression played around his alluring mouth. Then he seemed to shake himself and flashed her a too-quick, too-bright grin. “You don’t have anything to hide, do you, love?”

      Miah flinched. “No. Nothing.”

      Nothing except a blackmailer’s secret.

      “What about you, Zahir?” What don’t I know about you?

      His gaze flicked away from hers, a sure sign he was hiding something. Miah felt the uneasiness returning, the second-guessing. She was marrying a man she didn’t know. A stranger. One who could have secrets she didn’t even suspect.

      Maybe dangerous secrets.

      Chapter Two

      Javid blew out a taut breath and stepped from the dark interior of Finnigan’s Rainbow into the blinding afternoon on Michigan Avenue. Pretending to be Zahir was taking its toll. He hated lying, even necessary lying. Just now, he’d have sworn Miah knew, sworn she was going to expose him right there in the pub. He tugged sunglasses from his suit pocket and glanced around, but saw no sign of Redwing. This game of hide-and-seek he was constantly playing with that damn snoop was wearing thin.

      Tomorrow. It would all be over tomorrow. Thank God. He’d survived more than one tight situation in recent days, but none that had left him this rattled…and that was her fault.

      Heat sizzled off the sidewalk, several degrees cooler than the fire in his belly, a fire for a woman he didn’t want to want, a woman he wanted so badly he ached. He took long strides away from the pub, berating himself with every step, unable to abolish the image of her long luscious legs in that scrap of hot pink, her shapely feet in those high-heeled, mind-numbing sandals, the way that green top made her amber eyes shimmer like spun gold.

      “Damn it all.” Miah Mohairbi was an assignment. The daughter of the devil himself. She was also a vixen. He’d never met a woman quite her equal, and he’d met a lot of women since he’d been old enough to pay attention to his hormones—women here and in the Middle East, women at Harvard during college, women around the globe at each stop on his worldwide travels as Anbar’s Goodwill Ambassador.

      Miah was unique. Beautiful, yes, but she was so much more than that. She had a sharp mind, a wicked tongue, style and defiance. She could be hard one moment, tender the next. To his chagrin, he found the conflicting aspects of her personality endlessly intriguing. If only circumstances were different. If only she were not Sheik Khalaf Al-Sayed’s blood child.

      Thank God this torment ended tomorrow. After that, he could guarantee Miah would hate him—once she discovered he’d been lying to her, posing as his twin; once he helped arrest the father she seemed to adore, once he exposed Al-Sayed to the world for the heartless bastard he was.

      An odd tightness twisted his heart at the thought of breaking hers. He checked his watch, then glanced around for Redwing. That damn reporter had made him late, but he hadn’t dared risk being followed to the Langston Building. He’d ducked into Finnigan’s Rainbow to avoid him and had run smack into Miah. The memory of meeting her unexpectedly like that, of her dressed like that, threatened to distract him anew.

      His beeper went off. He stepped out of foot traffic and into a shop doorway to view the readout. “They” were waiting for him. Keeping an eye out for Redwing, Javid walked past the Langston Building, then circled back, went inside and took the elevator to the penthouse. The automatic door slid open on Solutions, Inc., the fictitious corporation that fronted for Chicago Confidential, an elite division of the Federal Department of Public Safety.

      The outer office smelled new, but had the ageless elegance of corporate lawyers’ suites—thick carpet, brocade waiting room chairs, cherry-wood receptionist desk, file cabinets and paneling. Picture windows framed the Chicago Harbor.

      Liam Wallace, the building maintenance man, had one slender hip hitched on the edge of the desk, his head bent toward Kathy Renk, Solutions’s receptionist. Javid couldn’t see what they were doing, but when he cleared his throat, they jumped apart as though he’d caught them necking.

      Kathy’s apple-size cheeks glowed pink, and Javid wondered if he had caught them necking. The idea amused him, since the two were usually bickering over some inane thing or other. Not to mention their obvious differences. Liam was all of twenty-two, with ambitions to strut fashion runways parading the latest designs by Armani and Klein. He had the looks, the sculpted body, the hollow cheekbones.

      Kathy, some seventeen years his senior, smoothed her blouse over her generous figure, gave a nervous tug at her short brown hair that was flecked with blond highlights. She had Meg Ryan features and a smile that never quit.

      She beamed at him now, her face still red. “Mr. Haleem, they’re expecting you. You want the usual?”

      “Please.”

      “You’ve got it. Diet pop. Rocks.”

      As he headed to the inner office, Javid heard Liam hiss, “It’s not crazy.”

      “No.” Kathy snorted. “You are what’s crazy.”

      Vaguely wondering what this newest spat was about, Javid let himself into the special ops room. He’d have thought that by now he’d be used to this room, but it always amazed him, always made him feel as though he’d stepped into the cockpit of The Enterprise, the Star Trek spaceship, with its wall-to-wall blinking lights, switches, screens and dials. Every kind of electronic device imaginable. Even some unimaginable. Certainly things Javid didn’t understand, but that made chasing after terrorists a whole lot easier than the bad guys liked.

      Andy Dexter, the tech whiz whose genius had assembled this room, was not present. In front of each chair at the round table was a built-in laptop screen for briefings.

      The only incongruous sight in the room was the antlers mounted on the wall, a gift from the head of Montana Confidential to the head of this new unit.

      Javid closed the door. Four voices stopped in mid-discussion, all heads turning toward him. Javid greeted each agent by name. When not on undercover assignment for Chicago Confidential, the three men and one woman seated at the round table pursued successful careers, most unrelated to law enforcement. Javid took an empty chair, apologized for keeping them waiting and explained

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