“I promised myself I wasn’t going to touch you,” she said. “But then you touched my hand and…” She smiled a little. “And I can’t seem to resist.”

“I shouldn’t have touched you at all. Ever.”

“It’s too late. Did you know…?”

“What?”

“That I’ve been the one to kiss you, every time?”

He couldn’t take his eyes off her mouth. “Have you?”

“Yes. And next time…if there is a next time, you’ll have to kiss me.”

He absolutely was not going to do that. Her lips were naked and parted, and now he had to close his eyes. Probably. He probably wasn’t going to kiss her.

“Tell me what makes you so…stoic,” she said softly.

“Just because I don’t talk every moment of the day doesn’t mean I’m stoic.”

She let out a little laugh and said, “Okay, maybe stoic isn’t the right word. But distant isn’t either, or cold.” She tilted her head and dropped her gaze to his lips, which reminded him of how they felt on hers.

“Definitely not distant,” she whispered. “Or cold.”

He groaned; he couldn’t help it. His hands dropped down to her hips and dragged her closer. “You drive me crazy.”

“Why?”

“You make me want.” He dropped his forehead to hers. “I don’t want to want, damn it.”

“Because of what happened to you?” She cupped his face. “Oh, Reilly. Did you get your heart broken?”

Broken, tromped on and destroyed, but that was another story. “She shouldn’t have told you I was in the CIA. She shouldn’t have told you that my last job went bad, that I was betrayed by a double agent who just happened to be sleeping with me at the time.”

Her eyes softened even more and she slid her arms around his neck. “She didn’t tell me that part, she never said… How badly were you hurt?”

“I don’t want-”

“Please, Reilly. Please tell me.”

It was the last thing he wanted to do, but he had to tell her something so it might as well be the truth. “Look, I was stuffed in a trunk for a few days and left to die,” he said, shrugging. “I’m over it.”

Now those eyes went suspiciously bright. Wet, shiny moss. “My God,” she whispered on a wavering breath as she hugged him so tightly he could barely breathe. “No wonder.”

“No wonder what?”

“No wonder you don’t like people close. You were hurt by someone you let in.”

“Not that hurt.”

“And no wonder you’re an accountant. You get to work alone. With numbers instead of people, for the most part.”

He didn’t know what to do with the fact she saw him so clearly. “I was an accountant for the CIA, too, before the field stuff. I was an analyst.”

“Everything makes so much sense now. Like why you’re afraid of the dark.”

He wasn’t afraid of the dark.

He wasn’t afraid of anything.

She skimmed her mouth over his jaw, leaving soft, short sweet little kisses as she worked her way over his flesh.

In reaction, his stomach tightened. Other parts did, too.

And as it turned out, he was afraid of something.

He was afraid of her. “Tess, I thought you weren’t going to kiss me-”

“I haven’t, not really. It doesn’t count unless I touch your lips with mine, which if you’ll notice, I didn’t do.”

He’d noticed. It was just that his body didn’t seem to be able to comprehend the difference, not one little bit. “Tess-”

“I like the way you shorten my name,” she whispered, and wrapped her arms around his shoulders. “I like that a lot. Reilly-”

Whatever it was, he didn’t want to hear it right now. He was a fraction of an inch from caving in, from giving in to her warm, giving body. He was so close to kissing her, all because she had eyes that sucked him in and a voice that he’d follow anywhere.

Because he had to, he set her away from him, this woman who seemed to personify temptation. “We have work,” he said. “Lots and lots of work.”

“Right.”

Her eyes told him that he could put this off for however long he wanted, but it wasn’t over.

And he found he was afraid of one more thing.

He was afraid she was right.

11

TESSA WORKED HARD for the rest of the day. She had no problems without Cheri, just double the work. That was okay with her, she loved being busy, loved being needed.

In her life there weren’t a lot of people who depended on her or needed her for anything. She and her friends were more casual than close. Then there were her siblings, who’d always taken on the authority role, or at least they thought they had. They’d laugh if Tessa tried to get them to need her in any way. As frustrating as it sometimes was, she felt quite certain they still thought of her as a little, snotty-nosed kid.

Not as a woman.

But she was. She was a woman who loved responsibility and tethers on her heart. She craved them.

And yet she couldn’t seem to get them.

But this job…it was good. It made her feel important. She sat surrounded by numbers and ledgers and accounts, thoroughly engrossed, so engrossed she nearly fell out of her chair when a Taco Bell bag suddenly appeared in front of her face.

“Just me.” Reilly dropped it onto the accounts receivable report she’d been lost in. “You’re getting better. You didn’t jump all the way out of your skin that time.”

She had no idea why she liked that he noticed she still felt a little jumpy. She had no idea why watching him watch her made her feel a little…soft. Feminine. “I didn’t even hear you leave.”

“I know. You get pretty into your work.”

“I’m single-minded,” she agreed. “My family doesn’t think that’s a virtue.”

“There’s nothing wrong with single-mindedness when you’re in accounting. Now, maybe if you were an air traffic controller or something…”

She laughed, though emotion backed up in her throat a little when he smiled. Good Lord, he should do that more often.

“Anyway…” he said, plowing his free hand through his hair, as if it wasn’t standing straight up already. “My stomach’s growling. It’s lunchtime.”

She glanced at the wall clock. One o’clock. No wonder she felt light-headed. “So, did you take the money from petty cash? Because the boss doesn’t like it when you spend money on another employee here.”

“Consider it payback for the doughnuts.”

“I didn’t buy you the doughnuts so you’d buy me lunch,” she said, opening the bag and the heavenly scent of a steak quesadilla wafted up. “But I’m so glad you did.” She took a large bite. “Where’s yours?”

Looking amused, he watched her stuff her face, then lifted another bag and a drink-holder with two large sodas in it. “I thought we’d actually eat at a table. Like in the staff room-”

“Oh.” Embarrassed, she licked the cheese off her lips and laughed. “Right.” She stood up and grabbed the quesadilla. She followed him down the hall and into the small room designated as the staff room. There was a refrigerator, a well-stocked little pantry she suspected Cheri took care of and a small wooden table with four chairs around it.

He pulled out a chair for her, waiting for her to sit and she suddenly felt a little off-kilter. A little nervous.

They were on a lunch date. Sort of.

“What’s the matter?” he said, handing her a drink.

“It’s our first date. It feels a little weird,” she admitted. “Given that we’ve already slept together.”

“Eating at work does not constitute a date. And we didn’t exactly sleep together.” That said, he took a large bite out of his chicken soft taco.

She tried not to name the emotion that went through her at his words, but it felt an awful lot like disappointment. “So what would constitute a date?”

In the act of adding hot sauce to his taco, he paused, then said, “I don’t even know. I haven’t actually dated in a long time. Not since…”

Not since he’d been betrayed while at the CIA. He didn’t say it; he didn’t have to. She hated that he’d been hurt and was shocked at the thoughts of violence that flowed through her for the woman who’d done it. “What was her name?”

“Her real one? Or her alias? I knew her as Loralee. And we didn’t date in the traditional sense. We were always out of the country, on various missions. Dating was impossible.”

“What about before her?”

He took a bite and chewed while he thought about that. “I hate to admit this, but I can’t remember.”

“That’s just sad, Reilly.”

“Really?” he said, smiling as he took another bite. Chewed some more. Eyed her just a little knowingly. “So, what have you done in the dating department lately?”

The big zip, not that she wanted to admit it, so she busied herself pulling apart her quesadilla.

“Well?”

She met his gaze and then laughed sheepishly. “Okay, so we’re tied. We both are equally pathetic when it comes to the opposite sex.”

“Oh, no,” he said silkily and brushed off his hands. His gaze ran over her features. “I never said I was pathetic with the opposite sex.”

Her tummy quivered just a little. “I think I hear your phone ringing.”

He cocked his head. “Chicken, Tess? Now, after all we’ve done?”

“All we’ve done is kiss,” she whispered.

“More than kissed.”

“We’ve…touched.”

“Yeah. Did it feel pathetic to you?”

“No.”

“Are you sure?” His voice was low, hypnotic and so sexy her entire body hummed. “Because maybe you need me to prove to you that I’m not a bungling idiot when it comes to physical matters with the opposite sex.” His eyes flamed. “That I do know what I’m doing.”

Oh boy. “I-” She broke off when his cell phone rang, grateful because she had no idea what she would have said anyway.

Reilly pulled the cell phone out of his pocket and frowned at the ID. “Eddie.”

“Maybe he’s going to give you back Marge.”

He looked at her, startled, as if the thought had left his mind and was back only because she’d reminded him. She found a laugh. “Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten you didn’t want me to work here.”