LITMIR.BIZ

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of the loving couple. No easy task since they were practically at each other’s throats.

      “Questions?” Abbot asked, standing. “Doubts? Concerns? Complaints?”

      As if they would actually voice any of that to him. They’d both already fulfilled their complaint quota for the day. Maybe for their entire careers as federal agents.

      Tessa and Riley shook their heads.

      Abbot closed the laptop, got up and headed for the door. But then he stopped and turned back around. He aimed his attention at Tessa.

      “The chief is still considering your promotion. I’ll make my recommendation to him after this mission.”

      With that, Abbot made his exit and the door swished closed behind him.

      “A promotion?” Riley mumbled. “And it probably hinges on this ops. No pressure there, huh?”

      Tessa was already reaching for the mission folder, but her hand stopped in midreach. “And do you think that makes this ops more, or less, important to me?” she countered, throwing his own words right back at him.

      Riley couldn’t help it. He had to smile. “Dare I use the P-word? As in personal? Seems to me that you have a problem with agents going into an ops when there’s something personal at stake.”

      “This is a mission,” Tessa informed him, sounding very much as if she were trying to convince herself. “And I don’t bring personal issues into a mission.”

      He was betting she would this time.

      Tessa and he had both been friends with Colette. That made it personal. Added to that, they had to spend the next few days in close, intimate quarters pretending to be a loving, married couple.

      And they had to do it with a killer watching their every move.

      Oh, yeah.

      That was just about as personal—and as dangerous—as things could get.

      Chapter Two

      Thanks to some road construction, the limo was crawling through the congested Dallas traffic. The stop-and-go snail’s pace didn’t help the tension that had settled in the back of Tessa’s neck. Of course, she couldn’t blame that tension solely on the traffic, the circuitous clandestine flights they’d taken from D.C. or even the mission itself.

      No.

      That tension had a lot to do with the man in the black cashmere sweater who was seated shoulder-to-shoulder with her.

      Her partner.

      Her husband.

      And the absolute last agent she wanted to be paired with for this mission.

      Tessa had planned for a lot of contingencies, but Riley McDade sure wasn’t one of them.

      She wanted a quick in and out. No complications. Nothing to extend the length of this ops.

      And especially nothing to interfere with its success.

      With his renegade tendencies, personal chip on his shoulder and badass attitude, Riley McDade put all those things in question.

      “The fictional Aston Tate was born in L.A.,” she heard Riley say. Not to her. He was obviously going over the undercover identity info stored on his PalmPilot. “He’s twenty-nine—just two years younger than me, so I shouldn’t have a problem with that. He collects Civil War memorabilia—I’ll have to fake that part. He’s a huge L.A. Lakers fan—won’t have to fake that. And he’s a jackass.”

      Tessa glanced at the PalmPilot he had cradled in his hand. “It says that in the file?”

      He shook his head. “No, that’s my opinion. Anybody who’d go to these lengths to have the perfect heir is a jackass. He should be satisfied with what Mother Nature intended him to have. Or not have.”

      That tension in her neck went up a notch.

      Tessa decided it was a good time to sit quietly and stare out the limo window. Maybe that way she wouldn’t have to respond to Riley’s comment, but her silence didn’t do a thing to ease the deep ache in her heart.

      “I’m pulling into the parking lot of the clinic now,” Chris Ingram, the limo driver and fellow SIU agent, informed them through the intercom.

      It was almost show time. Tessa took a deep breath. Steadying herself. And hating that steadying herself was even necessary. Why had fate chosen her for this assignment anyway? Talk about rubbing salt in a wound.

      A baby mission.

      One where she had to pretend to be a hopeful parent who desperately wanted to conceive the perfect child. Well, at least she wouldn’t have to fake the desperately-wanted-to-conceive part. All she had to do was open a vein and let her true feelings flow. In that respect, she was the ideal agent for this ops.

      Tessa clung to that.

      And hoped it was enough to get her through.

      Because in another respect, she was as ill-suited for this as Riley was.

      Maybe even more.

      Both of them had more than enough emotional baggage to sink this mission before it even got off the ground. And for her, it was emotional baggage that she should have gotten rid of years ago. Bottom line: a baby couldn’t change what had happened in her own childhood. It couldn’t change what her father and she had endured because her mother had walked out on them when she was a child. It couldn’t change any of that. But the emotional baggage could definitely interfere with what she needed to do now on this mission.

      If she let it interfere, that is.

      She wouldn’t.

      Riley clicked off the PalmPilot, essentially erasing its memory. A necessary security precaution. “Want to practice your bio?” he asked.

      “Not really.” She already had it committed to memory. Isabel Tate. Twenty-nine. Tessa’s own age. No hobbies. No real life—something that Tessa could definitely relate to. Isabel was essentially the reclusive trophy wife of an equally reclusive trophy husband. A marriage of new money and blue blood.

      “There’ll be lots of personal contact between us when we’re in there,” Riley commented. “And afterward while we’re at the second appointment.”

      “I know. Loving couple and all that. I understand what we have to do, Riley.”

      He nodded. Paused. And otherwise continued to grill her with those storm-gray eyes. “You haven’t been in a deep-cover situation like this before.”

      That improved her posture. He’d better not be questioning her abilities. Or reminding her that her father had appointed him as team leader.

      “Are you trying to make conversation or a point?” she asked.

      “Definitely a point. At a minimum, we’ll probably have to kiss while Fletcher has us under surveillance.”

      Oh, that.

      She’d thought about kisses all right, along with other intimate behavior that might be expected of a happily married couple.

      Embraces.

      Long, lingering looks.

      Caresses.

      It wouldn’t be especially comfortable. Or easy. But then, there wasn’t much about this assignment that would be easy. Still, she’d do it. There were a lot worse things than kissing Riley.

      With that reminder, she glanced at his mouth. Sensual, she supposed. After another glance, Tessa took out the supposed. Yes, his mouth was sensual, and why the heck she’d noticed it, she didn’t know.

      “Well?” Riley prompted when they stepped out of the limo.

      “Well, what?” Tessa asked, already worried that her daydreams about his mouth had caused her to miss

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