Cherry Adair - T-flac 09 (8 page)

He never mixed business and pleasure. And while he’d been tempted to break that rule a time or two, he never had. As a T-FLAC operative he had little downtime, and when he did he intentionally kept relationships casual. He wasn’t stupid enough to try to buck the family Curse.

Caleb had no intention—ever—of testing the part of the Curse that stated:
“When a Lifemate is
chosen by the heart of a son, No protection can be given, again I have won. His pain will be deep,
her death will be swift, Inside his heart a terrible rift.”

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Five hundred years of Edges had proven that the witch’s Curse couldn’t be broken. Over the centuries, all the women the Edge men had loved had
died.
He and his brothers weren’t going to let Nairne’s Curse continue.

The freaking Curse would die with them.

He’d been close to trying to buck it, damn close,
twice.
And in each instance he’d forced himself to walk away before more than a glimmer of emotion could blink into life. He’d never regretted doing so.

Christiana was now happily married to a decent guy, had a cute daughter, and was living happily ever after in Maine. Donna had produced four girls and lived with her senator husband in DC.

Both women were happy. Both women were alive.

It was somewhat ironic that Christiana and Donna had both produced daughters. Edge men could only make sons.
“Three sons on three sons find nothing but pain.”

Yeah. Whatever. He’d never know.

Other than the fact that he’d been out of the ball game for almost three interminable months during his surgery and rehab, Caleb was happy as a pig in shit about his life.

So, as much as his body was yelling, yes, yes, yes right now, the answer to his rampant libido was an emphatic
no.
But
damn
—her skin was as soft as it looked. She was naturally fair, and her skin appeared smooth and flawless. Caleb had the insane urge to lean across the table and stroke her cheek with his lips.

He wanted to kiss her. Touch her. Everywhere. With lips and teeth and tongue. He wanted to rip off that bulky raincoat and the dark red sweatshirt beneath it. He wanted to drag the jeans free of her legs and bury his face against her stomach. Hell, he wanted to bury himself deep inside her.

But what he wanted was immaterial.

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What he needed was a crack across the back of the head with a two-by-four. Then Shaw’s address.

Not necessarily in that order.

She wrapped both hands around her paper cup tightly enough to cause the plastic top to pop off. “Not that much to tell.” She concentrated on picking up the lid and moving it a few inches to the side. Then she placed it on the lid he’d discarded earlier. She was neat. No, Caleb thought, watching her movements.

She felt a need to control her environment. She also wanted something to do with her hands. Interesting.

He could suggest any number of things this woman could do with her hands. All of which involved his body.

“I’m twenty-seven, and I design and sell jewelry for a living.” She had the prettiest eyes, Caleb thought.

Not just the color, which was a clear, almost transparent brown/green, but large, intelligent, and interested. “How about you?”

“Thirty-three, single.” Under the table he stretched out his legs,
accidentally
brushing her leg with his foot. Only her eyes flinched. He kept his ankle against hers. She didn’t move away. “Had all my shots and I’m in sales.” He lifted his butt off the seat a few inches, yanked out his wallet from the back pocket of his jeans, dug a business card out, and handed it to her.

Caleb Edge, VP Sales and Marketing, Preda Enterprises. A Portland, Oregon, address. Preda could be anything the operative needed it to be. It worked well as a cover. The address was real. T-FLAC

maintained similar offices all over the world.

She glanced briefly at the card. “What do you sell?”

“Tractor parts. Not that interesting, but lucrative enough. Been with them going on eight years.”

“Do you live in the Bay Area, or in Oregon?” she asked, sticking his business card into her coat pocket.

Her eyes flickered to the door, then back to his face. Who was she waiting for? Caleb wondered.

“I’m here often enough, but no. The bank and I own a house in Portland.” Not true. He kept a condo in New York. One he rarely visited. “I always stay at the Indigo Hotel ’round the corner when I’m in town.” The cover would work for her. He was solid enough to own his own house, close
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enough—almost—to be a local, and therefore not much of a threat. The shadow of fear in her eyes receded a little more.

Still, she wasn’t completely comfortable, he noticed. She started to pick at the side seam of her paper cup. Nerves. Tension. The same sexual awareness that he was feeling? Interesting how her tone conveyed confidence while her body language showed that she was anything but.

Caleb wasn’t a hand holder, but he took a chance and casually took her hand off the cup, lacing his fingers with hers on the tabletop. Her fingers looked ridiculously small engulfed by his. Her skin was soft, indicating to an extent her past privileged lifestyle, but her nails were short and unpainted, and she wore no jewelry, not even a watch.

“It’s only coffee.” He meant the event.

But it wasn’t “only coffee.” It was a razor-sharp mutual attraction that seared through him and made him want to grab her up and carry her off to his cave.

She gave a little start of surprise to find her hand in his, but didn’t pull away this time. “Right. Just coffee. The Indigo’s nice.”

Roadblock. “Yeah, I guess.” He traced the back of her fingers with his thumb and felt his own body echo the slight tremor transmitted from her hand to his. He found his attention focused on her mouth, which looked soft and silky and eminently kissable. He wanted to lean forward to taste her. Would tasting her be enough? He was afraid the answer to that was a resounding no.

“Hotel food gets old after a while,” he said, trying to keep his mind on track with difficulty.

“Well, don’t look at me.” She really had the prettiest eyes, despite the wariness he saw in them. The color changed from hazel to a rich amber-brown when she smiled. It wasn’t a fully fledged smile, but it did ease some of the tension around her lush mouth. “I’m not a very good cook.”

He ran a thumb over the smooth skin on the back of her hand again, saw the nerves jump in her eyes.

She was still a little wary, but she wasn’t afraid. He tried to ignore his own physical reaction to touching
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her. The elevated heartbeat, the sudden sensation of euphoria were just his body’s response to the closeness of a beautiful woman. “We’ll have to hire someone then,” he said easily, shifting closer into her personal space. Getting her ready to accept him.

“Absolutely,” she told him seriously, eyes bright with amusement. “We both like to eat. And the children will need to be fed.”

“No problem.” He wanted to turn her hand over and press his mouth to her palm. He wanted to feel the rapid pulse that beat just beneath her skin. He wanted her soft pale hands on his body. “My folks will be delighted when Michael, Matt, and Mark arrive. How about your folks? Are you close?”

“Sorry. The kids will only have one set of grandparents. Mine died a long time ago.”

She was a social liar. Good enough if one wasn’t watching her eyes. She made just the right amount of eye contact. She didn’t fidget. And if he hadn’t been watching her so closely he would have missed the small tell of her pupils dilating.

“I’m sorry. Were you close?”

“I don’t like to talk about them, do you mind?”

Hmm. Not even an attempt to bullshit about them. Interesting. Intriguing. “Okay,” he said easily, taking another drink of his still-hot coffee and moving in another few inches so that their knees touched under the table. “We won’t.”

Well, damn. What had he expected? That she’d give up her father’s address to a stranger an hour after meeting? Caleb wished he had his brother Gabriel’s ability to read minds. It would be handy as hell right now. He was tempted to TiVo time back to when she and her father had split.

Unfortunately he didn’t have an exact date or precise location, and without those he’d be screwing around trying to pinpoint the timing. A waste of valuable time and energy.

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He could smell her soap or shampoo. Fresh. Clean. Female. Not expensive perfume, just soap and the natural fragrance of her skin. Being this close to her was like an aphrodisiac. Good in a torturous kinda way.

He’d never been this turned on by a woman seated three feet away. And damned sure not when in a public place. He wanted to lean over and kiss her. Ludicrous that he was even
thinking
it, let alone this freaking tempted to throw caution to the winds, give in to the craving, and do it. If she’d been any other woman in the world, he wouldn’t have hesitated or given it another thought.

But she was Heather Shaw. Caleb was willing to go as far as necessary to extract the information he needed. But he doubted, unfortunately, that he’d have to make love to her to get what he needed.

He forced himself not to imagine teleporting her directly to the bed in his hotel up the street. Forced himself not to imagine burying his face against her creamy skin. Forced himself not to imagine the overwhelming release of burying himself deep inside her.

Caleb figured he was suffering for the good of T-FLAC and his country and took another drink of his coffee before asking, “How about brothers and sisters?”

The slight tension in her shoulders eased. “No. You?”

“Couple of brothers. One older. One younger.”

“Are you close?”

Caleb held up twined fingers. “Like this.”

“Lucky you.”

“Yeah. Never more so than when I saw a beautiful woman ogling a loaf of bread an hour ago.”

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“We’re strangers.” Who was she reminding? Herself?

“Do you really feel that way?”

She bit the corner of her lower lip as their eyes locked. “No.”

“Me neither. Fish or meat?”

She smiled at the non sequitur, but got it. And relaxed a little more. “Both. You?”

“I’m a meat and potatoes kinda guy. Dogs or cats?”

“Cats.”

“You don’t like
dogs
?!”

She shook her head. “Once bitten, twice shy.”

“Where were you bitten?”

“In the kitchen.”

“Funny. Not funny. Show me.”

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“Oh. I don’t think so.”

“I’ll kiss it better.”

“It happened when I was eight. It’s quite better now. But thank you for the offer.”

“Okay, the kids can have a cat.”

“Thank you.” She took a sip of her coffee, looking at him over the rim. “Raw or cooked?”

“The
cat
?” He gave her an exaggerated horrified look. She choked back a laugh.

“Food!”

“Ah. Definitely cooked.”

God, she was sweet. Sexy and funny and damn cute as well. There was a vulnerability in her that he hadn’t expected.

He didn’t have a type, he enjoyed most women. But if he did have a type, Heather Shaw wasn’t it, Caleb thought, playing with her slender fingers as he shifted closer still. Too bad his body wasn’t getting the message.

“Yeah. Me too. Flying or driving?”

“Getting there the faster the better.” Which was why this slow acquaintance dance, no matter how necessary, was making him crazy with impatience. Caleb let nothing of his thoughts show in his face, however. “Beatles or Elvis?”

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“Beatles.”

“Elvis.” He needed to speed things up. Needed to get the answers he wanted so he could get back to—What? A frigging vacation? Jesus, he needed to get out there and kick some tango butt. Mano a mano would suit him fine right now. Preferably something violent that would relieve some of this excess adrenaline he felt just looking at this woman.

“Vacations?”

“Often,” she answered.

He focused on her words, on probing for clues, and tried to ignore his body’s reaction to her. Instead of fading somewhat with proximity, the lust factor was rising exponentially with every second he was with her. “Beach or mountains?”

Her brow knit pensively. “Mountains. I’ve gotten the beach thing out of my system.”

He smiled. “Suffered the obligatory family vacations to the shore, did you?”

She shrugged. “We traveled a lot when I was growing up.”

Brian Shaw was the banker
du jour
of some of the largest terrorist groups in the world. Taking his wife and pretty daughter with him when he went to see his clients was his MO. The family traveled extensively and often. “Favorite place?”

“They all look the same after a while.”

“Humor me. I spent almost every summer vacation in Scotland. I would have liked variety.”
Almost as
much as I’d like to see you naked.

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“I love Paris,” she mused. “Great shopping and great restaurants.” Her mother had been French, and they’d had a home just outside Paris. As far as they knew, Shaw hadn’t returned to France since the death of his wife a year ago.

According to their intel, Babette Shaw had been killed in an armed home invasion. Both Shaw and Heather had been out of the country at the time, Shaw in South America, Heather at a close friend’s in London.

“But no beach,” Caleb teased. She wasn’t telling him anything they didn’t already know. “Where else?”