Her Secret Agent Man by Cindy Dees Page A

Alone. How was it that she felt sorry for the man who’d sworn to kill her?
    As she continued to watch him cautiously, something desperate flickered at the back of his eyes. She blinked. There it was again! There was no mistaking it. He was terrified. The sight of this man scared unnerved her more than the idea of being chased by a gang of paid killers. A visceral need to reach out to him, to hold him and comfort him, took shape low in her belly.
    As if he’d just realized he’d given away too much, he looked off quickly. His phenomenal self-control slammed back into place.
    The salads arrived and he commented calmly, as if that raw, revealing exchange hadn’t just happened, “So. What have you been up to for the last ten years?”
    “Not much. Just running the financial end of a global crime empire,” she replied with light bitterness. “It has been a real picnic, let me tell you.”
    His gaze snapped to hers, his blue eyes blazing in fury for a moment before he clamped down on the reaction. What a pair they made, circling around each other like a couple of prize-fighters, each one waiting for an opening to land the knockout punch.
    “Tell me about it,” he said quietly.
    Right. Like he cared about just how hellish it had really been. The constant danger of discovery, the fear of being murdered by her father’s enemies, her anguish over the innocents who were hurt or killed every day by her father’s actions and, indirectly, hers. Nobody could understand how she was as much a victim as the people her father killed. They saw her living in a big house with servants and luxury all around her and didn’t see it for the beautiful, deadly cage it was. They didn’t know about the blackmail, the constant, subtle threats to kill Carina, her beloved Carina.
    No, Dutch wouldn’t understand. She dug into her salad of baby greens. “How about we enjoy this amazing food and talk about serious things later?”
    He nodded briskly and then picked up his water glass. “A toast. To good snow, fine food and beautiful women.”
    Her face went inexplicably warm as she picked up her glass. Sheesh. It wasn’t as if nobody’d ever told her she was beautiful before. Except it mattered when this man said it. She wanted him to think she was pretty.
    Their glasses touched with a musical chime, and their gazes touched over the sparkling crystal. A hot spark leapedin his eyes and in an instant raised the temperature in the room about twenty degrees. She was too mesmerized to tear her gaze away. For a moment, they were back in the jungle, dark and dangerous, and the beautiful and brave American soldier who’d stolen her heart was coming to meet her. Her heart pounded and the old anticipation filled her.
    Ah, to be that young and innocent again. To still have hope that a man like him could fall in love with her and sweep her away to a new life of safety and joy.
    The restaurant came back into focus around her. But Dutch’s gaze never wavered. The intensity of those azure eyes hadn’t changed one bit in the last ten years.
    She sighed. As much as she wanted this man, she couldn’t have him. Their past had already doomed them. She tore her gaze away and blindly cut into her salad.
    “So,” he said painfully politely, “tell me about your hobbies.”
    And just like that he bottled up all that sizzling sexual attraction. She’d give her right arm to know how he did it. But at the same time, a kernel of pity for him formed deep in her heart. What must it be like living that way, always shut off from his feelings, isolated from the rest of the human race?
    True to his word, Dutch steered their conversation strictly to inconsequential subjects. Nonetheless, he had interesting opinions and observations on everything from Cuban art to international lending practices. His raw intelligence and body of knowledge reached the point of being downright frightening. How was she ever going to outsmart or outmaneuver this man?
    As she savored a