Femme Fatale by Virginia Kantra, Doranna Durgin, Meredith Fletcher Page B

this mission stood.
    Standing there in this most romantic of places, a handsome man beside her, dressed as she was for an evening of wine tasting and classy social flirting, and she was about to make her escape to the dark, eccentrically crowded warren of a theater. I must be crazy, she thought. Except she didn’t know if it was because she wanted to go, or because she wanted to stay —to stay with this man who kept trying to reel her into his MI6 lair.
    Her stomach, fed only with a few dainty morsels and half a glass of wine, had no such waverings; it knew exactly what it wanted. More. More food, more drink, time to digest. It growled. Loudly. The breeze in the grapevines was no match for it.
    Somehow, Chandler did not laugh—though Beth saw it lurking in the way his eyes crinkled at the corners, and in that little twitch at the corner of his mouth. He said, “Come with me. Along with the trouser press, the hotel offers room service. Not only that, it has running water.”
    “The three stooges found me there once already,” Bethsaid without thinking, and then realized how much she’d revealed with the comment. That she was considering it. That she wanted it. Food, a chance to contact Barbara, maybe even a real shower instead of a paper-towel sink-bath in a maintenance closet. That Jason Chandler came along with the room…something to deal with later.
    “They didn’t find the room…and they won’t. Not even if they identified me in the lobby.”
    “I doubt they did that,” Beth said, turning to head back for the visitor center. Still undecided, but moving forward with the faith that she’d make the right choice when the time came. “I think their heads were spinning too hard.”
    “A possibility,” he said, sounding cheerful about it. They walked in silence for a few moments, until they reached the visitor center and went right on past it, into the parking lot and up to the yellow motorbike. Chandler asked, “Anything else stashed in those bushes you want to grab?”
    “I’ve got it all,” she said, surprised at how tired she sounded.
    So was he. There was no mistaking it under the single parking lot light that replaced the moon. Surprised, and…concerned. “Beth,” he said, “I know we’re on different teams. Our goals might not be the same. I know there are things you’re not telling me, and you can be damned sure there are things I’m not telling you…but what I am telling you is the truth.”
    “Mmm,” she murmured, thinking about the bus schedule and thinking she probably wouldn’t have to wait too long to grab a ride back into town, and then looking up to find that those gray eyes of his weren’t cold at all and suddenly wondering how she’d ever thought they were.
    Reason enough to turn around and walk the other way.
    As if he read her mind, Chandler slowly reached forthe small pannier on the motorbike, not taking his eyes off her as he unlocked and opened it…to pull out her fanny pack.
    He offered it to her.
    “You searched it,” she said.
    “Yes.” He hefted it slightly. “But left it as it was.”
    Wyatt. With as much restrained dignity as possible, she accepted the fanny pack and knew instantly from its heft that the Sig was still in place.
    “Nill-Grips, all right,” he said, with some admiration, smart enough not to get pushy on top of the gesture of trust he’d just offered her. “You weren’t having me on about the sixteen-round clip? Given that they only come in ten or fifteen.”
    She gave him her own version of a cocky smile. “If you use a follower from a ten-round clip, you can get sixteen snug little bullets in the fifteen-round clip.” And boy did it come in handy if you were up against someone who counted up to fifteen and then thought they had that instant of safety it takes to reload.
    He caught the implications immediately and grinned back at her. And then, after just the right pause, he sat on the bike and said, “Come back with me. No handcuffs this