LITMIR.BIZ

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it was a failing, she thought, but she needed to feel part of something. Something other than the bureau.

      She made eye contact with James, who was there with his wife and oldest son. Her partner started to come over, but she shook her head and James faded back, giving her space.

      As she stood, looking at people exchanging pleasantries, catching up on one another’s lives, she became aware that someone had come up to join her. She began to move away but felt something being slipped into her hand.

      “What’s this?” Cate looked down at the brown manila envelope Doc Ed had just given her.

      “Everything that I know about your adoption. It’s not much, but it might give you a start.” Slipping his arm around her slim shoulders, he said, “I know you people at the bureau have ways of finding things out as long as you have some kind of starting point.”

      The envelope was light. It couldn’t contain much. “We don’t use government resources for personal ends.”

      His gray eyes twinkled for the first time in three days. He gave her a fatherly squeeze. “Yeah, and I’m sure there are ways around that, too, Catherine. Now, eat something before I have you strapped down to a gurney and fed intravenously.”

      She looked down at the manila envelope again. The smile that rose to her lips was only slightly forced, far less than what she’d been displaying all day as well-wishers pumped her hand, gave their condolences and told her stories about her parents.

      “Yes, sir.”

      He took hold of her arm and steered her toward one of the two tables laden down with food. “If you think I’m going to be taken in by that, then you don’t really know me, either.”

      She appreciated the irony he’d tossed her way.

      Chapter 5

      Dr. Lukas Graywolf quietly tiptoed up behind his wife in the Wedgwood-blue tiled bathroom of their modest Southern California home. He slipped his arm around her waist and buried his face in the nape of her neck. Taking a deep breath, he inhaled the fragrance that still clung to her skin from her morning shower, an event he sorely regretted missing.

      “So how’s the bureau’s sexiest extra-special agent this morning?”

      He’d startled her. Lost in thought and rushing, Lydia Wakefield Graywolf hadn’t realized that her husband was behind her until she’d seen his reflection in the slightly fogged mirror a second before he’d wrapped his arm around her waist.

      Lucky for him that she had, otherwise he might have found himself sprawled out on the floor, flat on his back. She wasn’t trained for pleasant surprises, only the other variety.

      Lydia had had every intention of going in to the office early today. Certain new things had come to light regarding the case she was working on and she wanted to go over the details. And they were getting in someone new today, a Catherine Kowalski from up north. The assistant director wanted her to take the woman under her wing as if she was some kind of mother hen instead of one of their top operatives.

      She didn’t have time to babysit anyone.

      She didn’t have time for this, either, Lydia thought, but she allowed herself to linger for a moment in the embrace of the man she loved more than life itself.

      His bare chest pressed against her back and heat penetrated the bath towel she’d wrapped around herself. She could feel the heat stirring her. Tiny tongues of desire began to burn away at logic and resolve. Her mascara wand slipped from her fingers.

      Lydia smiled at his reflection, their eyes meeting as she covered his arm with her hand. “The bypass surgery went well, I take it?”

      He hadn’t mentioned the operation to her yesterday at breakfast. Their schedules were so busy lately, especially hers, that they barely had time to see each other. He didn’t want to waste what time they had together with shop talk. Neither did she.

      He wished they could both take some time off and just spend it with each other, going away to some reclusive beach where the next warm body was miles away.

      She’d probably go stir crazy within two days, he thought with a silent laugh. Lydia always had to be doing something. Most of the time that involved making the country safe for tomorrow.

      Pressing a kiss to the side of her neck, Lukas thought for the umpteenth time how lucky he was to have found Lydia. Everything had changed since she’d come into his life, including him. He never knew he could feel like this, that love could be so uplifting, so empowering.

      He felt her sigh as it rippled through her. “You add clairvoyance to your job description, Special Agent Graywolf?”

      With a small laugh, Lydia turned around to face him, her body brushing against his as she did so. Her heart quickened a little, the way it always did when they were so close together.

      Her husband had the vaguest hint of stubble on his rugged, handsome face, and there was still a trace of sleep in his vivid blue eyes. Right now, he looked more like a boy than the skilled surgeon that he was. She didn’t know who she loved more, the boy or the man.

      Because her towel felt as if it was slipping, she tugged it back into place, then threaded her arms around his neck. “Not that I couldn’t use that kind of an added boost, especially with this case, but clairvoyance has nothing to do with it. You always act like this whenever a bypass goes well.”

      He didn’t mind being predictable, but she’d aroused his curiosity. “Like what?”

      She cocked her head. Her smile bathed over him. “As if you just won the brass ring and all’s well with the world.”

      “All is well with the world and the brass ring I won doesn’t have anything to do with Mr. Sellers, the man whose life yours truly saved yesterday.” His sentence was punctuated with two light, almost chaste kisses, delivered to first one cheek, then the other.

      A sound akin to a purr escaped her lips. Lydia moved her hips against his, her body silently teasing him, drawing him out.

      “Oh?” There was nothing short of mischief in her eyes. “Then what?”

      He’d started this, but now he was the one who was hopelessly trapped. Trapped by the look in her eyes, by the smile on her face. By the feelings that were always there, just a hairbreadth beneath the surface, waiting to be summoned and pressed into service.

      “You know damn well, what.” Lukas pressed a kiss to her temple. “It has to do with a certain sexier-than-hell FBI operative.”

      Gazing up at him, struggling not to melt right there in his arms, Lydia batted her lashes at Blair Memorial’s leading cardiac surgeon like an old-fashioned femme fatale. “Anyone I know?”

      “Maybe.” Ever so lightly, he brushed her lips with his own and ignited a fire in his veins. “Someone I definitely know better than you do.”

      Because she was so well trained, Lydia didn’t stiffen, didn’t react. Lukas had said that before. That he knew her better than she knew herself. Until recently, she wouldn’t have taken exception to the point.

      Until recently, she would have been the first to say that Lukas could see into her very soul, a soul that had been driven and troubled until she’d allowed him into her life.

      But now, well, now he didn’t know her as well as he thought he did. Didn’t know that she was keeping something from him and would continue to do so for at least a while longer, even though it killed her to do it. But there were reasons for what she was doing, reasons she knew that her husband wouldn’t understand.

      “Speaking of which,” Lukas murmured, his words heating the hollow of her throat just before he kissed it, “something bothering you?”

      It was a struggle to keep her eyes from fluttering shut. She really did need to get down to the Santa Ana field office and Lukas was making it very, very difficult for her to keep her mind on her goal. She’d been

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