LITMIR.BIZ

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frowned. “That’s what my boss said.” This he murmured more to himself than to her. “They sure didn’t send me to get married. Of all the options to get us out of trouble, why did you do this?” He pointed to the ring on his finger.

      “What’s the big deal? Got a girl back home?” She wanted him to take the bait and bypass the bigger problem while she figured out a way to salvage her potentially compromised operation. Instead, she watched the storm brewing in his deep brown eyes.

      “It doesn’t matter.” He turned away. “I wouldn’t believe you anyway. But don’t count on wearing the pants in this happy union, Mrs. Grant.”

      “Call me Gin.”

      He sank back into the chair where she’d draped his sport coat last night. “Now that you have a husband, Mrs. Grant, and I’m him, care to share your next move?”

      Now he was just being stubborn. It seemed a shame to have so much handsome man at her fingertips and not be able to do anything fun with him.

      “I’m here tracking a product and hopefully I’ll get to oversee the sale,” she admitted. “Sexy blondes in Las Vegas are everywhere. I thought it would be a foolproof disguise.”

      “The red is memorable,” he agreed, eyeing her hair. “Too bad I forgot everything after that.”

      His eyes raked her from head to toe and she felt as if he saw right through her pale blue cashmere sweater.

      If he ignored her barbs, she could ignore his. “It would be nice to get a look at the security footage from the bar. Maybe we can identify the woman who drugged you.” Whether that would help with her mission or not was yet to be seen, but perhaps it would convince him that it hadn’t been her who’d drugged him.

      “Why? You just said sexy blondes are everywhere.” He sipped his coffee and took another look at the marriage certificate. “Married by an Elvis impersonator. That is just not me.” He shook his head.

      “It was your idea last night.”

      “My brain on drugs.” He shrugged, sipped more coffee. “Great. When you’re finished with your mission are we going to do a drive-through divorce? I always thought those were an efficient concept.”

      “Give divorce a lot of thought, do you?”

      “Enough.”

      She recognized a personal trigger point. She wanted to push for the real answers but, married or not, they weren’t actually on personal terms yet. “Does the drive-through thing even exist anymore?”

      He glared at her. “Guess we’ll find out.”

      “We should be done here in plenty of time to qualify for an annulment.

      “Same result.”

      “Does that mean you’ll cooperate?”

      “Sure. Marriage is all about compromise. Or so I’ve heard.”

      She didn’t like the way he said that, and for the first time since bolting into the wedding chapel with an oblivious fiancé on her arm she questioned the wisdom of her rash decision. Well, the second time. Sharing a room with him had pushed her resolve to the brink.

      “Getting married was your idea.” Had she really needed a kiss from him that badly? She touched her lips again. If she were completely honest with herself she would admit that the kiss had been worth it. “I swear it was your idea.”

      “You knew I was compromised.”

      “True, and leaving you in a public place seemed like a really bad idea.” She folded her arms over her chest.

      “Let me get this straight. You didn’t drug me, didn’t see who did, but you thought it was okay to haul me into an Elvis-themed chapel and marry me?”

      “Not exactly. My first suggestion involved you giving me some cover at the craps tables.”

      “I don’t gamble.”

      “So you said.”

      “What else?”

      “We went for a walk and I asked you to kiss me.” She hurried on when he raised an eyebrow. “But you said we had to be married first. It was all rather gallant.” If she didn’t think about Isely and his thug flanking them. That was one part she could not afford to mention. Her mission was far too important to compromise for anyone, even the man she’d pretended to marry.

      “Gallant?”

      “I assumed it was a personality quirk. It fits your whole ex-military persona.” She went to the table and pulled out a chair, sitting on her hands so she wouldn’t fidget with the breakfast dishes. “But now that we’re stuck together it could be an advantage. Just give me forty-eight hours to track this product and sale and then I’ll pay the fees to grant you a speedy divorce.”

      It wouldn’t be necessary because the receptionist knew he was intoxicated at the time of the marriage and because they hadn’t filed the marriage license, but Gin could tell him the whole story later. No sense burning bridges and tossing away an ally right now. This might be her only chance to experience a marriage. Not to mention she’d been having fantasies about this guy for weeks now.

      As a CIA agent, she wasn’t the sort of woman a man brought home to his family. She didn’t even resemble the sort of woman a man wanted to build a family with. No, she’d learned that hard lesson early in her life.

      She was the sort of woman men fantasized about, the woman men liked to show off, but never the woman they kept around. They gave different reasons and it took her longer than she cared to admit to learn those reasons were a reflection of the men who gave them, not the reality of who she was as a person.

      When he still hadn’t given her an answer, she went for broke. “Please. I really need your help.” There, she’d said it. Gin Olin rarely asked for help, but she was no fool and it was clear she couldn’t finish this alone.

      “Fine. I’ll help. Holt gave me an ultimatum. Either I fly back to the office or consider myself fired. The suite is booked through the weekend. If I’m fired I may as well have a little fun with the last perk my job bought me.”

      “You’re willing to risk your job to help me?” Was he serious? Would Mission Recovery really fire him? Emotions she didn’t want to try and untangle were suddenly twisting inside her.

      He startled her, tugging one of her hands free to hold it. “What are you doing?” she demanded.

      “Do we need ground rules?” He raised her hand to his lips and feathered small kisses over her fingers. “Or do you trust me to be the best doting husband ever?”

      She yanked her hand away. “Doting?”

      “We might even enjoy ourselves.”

      That was her second biggest fear. Her first was losing the trail of that bio-weapon. “We need ground rules.” That was a given. There was just something about this guy that got to her. As badly as she needed him, she also needed to keep her head on straight.

      He sat back. “I’m listening.”

      “Whatever happens outside of this room stays outside of this room.”

      “Isn’t that just the opposite of how it should be for wedded bliss?”

      She ignored him. “I mean it. The ‘doting’ is for public consumption. Up here, we’re just you and me—two covert agents sacrificing for the mission.”

      His brow furrowed. “Ah, sharing a bed, giving completely of ourselves.” He made a tsking sound. “The sacrifices we make.”

      She rolled her eyes. Snagging another piece of bacon, she nibbled it while she resumed her pacing. What she was about to do was risky, but having a second set of eyes and a capable agent at her back in the casino was her best chance of spotting the buyer.

      “Let

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