It had been a really lovely dick.
“I promise it won’t make me late. I’m not due in the office until one. Big Tag thinks far too much of jet lag, but this time it works in my favor. I’ve got plenty of time to review the dossier on Mr. Malone. I’ve memorized the ones on our most likely suspects.”
They included two members of the senior leadership team and an admin attached to David Malone’s son. The admin was going in her boss’s place. Apparently Jackson Malone wasn’t big on retreats.
Jackson.
The name seemed very popular here in Texas.
“Well, our op took a left turn,” Sandra said. “David Malone had emergency surgery yesterday and he can’t travel for a few weeks.”
Fuck. “Is Tag scrubbing the op?”
It would be hard to explain her presence without David Malone. She could work it from a staff angle, the way Sandra was, but there was a reason they’d been trying to do both.
“Nope. You’re going to go in with David’s son. We’re bringing JT Malone in this afternoon so we can lay the groundwork for your new cover. He’s already got an admin. She’ll be going along, but we can’t tell her the truth because she’s under suspicion.”
She stood up at the sound of those initials coming from Sandra’s mouth. “Excuse me.”
Surely she’d heard wrong.
“She’s been his admin for a long time,” Sandra explained. “I don’t know JT the way I do his brother, Michael…”
“Did you say JT?” She paced the floor, the signs she should have seen the night before becoming plain now.
David Malone lived on the other side of Fort Worth on a ranch called the Circle M. Just far enough to make staying in Dallas necessary at times. Staying in a fabulous suite that was available to him and his son. He’d said something about engineering. She’d thought he did something mechanical, but he could be a petroleum engineer.
No.
No.
Fucking no.
This could not be happening to her. She did not sleep with the client.
She picked up her clothes because she might need some armor to deal with this situation.
“Yeah, that’s David’s son. JT Malone. He’s hot, too,” Sandra said. “I only know that because Mike is his twin. See, now there’s a thoroughbred. I know I joked about hooking up with him, but he’s probably a tidal wave of sex. You need the kiddie pool. JT’s not married either, so I’ll get a chastity belt for you. Maybe you should go in as a lesbian. We could do the couples thing. I’ve heard it used to work for Jake and Adam.”
JT had absolutely been a tidal wave, and she’d ridden him all night long.
A little panic threatened. She didn’t sleep with people she had to work with. Ever. Well, not since that first time when she’d been used to feed an arm’s dealer Interpol intelligence.
She was going to get fired. Her job was all she had.
Unless JT met with an accident. She knew several assassins, and quite frankly a couple of them owed her favors. Tucker was a doctor. Maybe he still had some of that forget-everything medicine. She wasn’t sure if she would use it on JT or herself.
Fuck.
“Nina?” Sandra asked.
A chiming went through the suite, the doorbell.
JT was back and now they really needed to talk since she was going to have him murdered. She liked him and she would also probably lose her job if she killed the client. They had to make this work.
There wasn’t time to prep someone else. They would need a good cover. She could be his cousin or something. David Malone’s wife was English. That could work. Absolutely. She could handle this. JT would be reasonable because this was his business at stake.
“Sandra, I have to go.” She wouldn’t tell anyone. Not even Sandra. She and JT would make a pact to be utterly silent about the events of the previous evening.
About the sex. About the incredible sex that had felt like something more.
She took a deep breath and hung up the phone. She was panicking over absolutely nothing, and honestly, panic was beneath her.
Had she panicked when the red notice criminal she’d been arresting had tossed a bomb her way? No. She’d lobbed that bloody bomb right back at the bastard and saved her partner in the process. She could handle sleeping with the wrong man.
Except he’d been the right man, and her whole body had known it.
Still, there was nothing to do now except find a professional level with a man she knew could rock her whole world. She wouldn’t think about how his hands felt on her body or the fact that no one in the world had ever eaten her pussy quite as thoroughly as JT Malone. No. He was a client now and she would let him back in, explain the situation, and then go get dressed because she couldn’t be professional when she was wearing his T-shirt and luxuriating in his scent.
She opened the door. “JT, we need…”
Two men in business suits and a well-dressed woman stood in the doorway. The woman appeared to be in her late twenties or early thirties, and her eyes narrowed as she took Nina in.
“What the hell are you doing…” She huffed, a long-suffering sound, and she brushed by Nina, handing her the shoe that had fallen off in the hall the night before. “Looks like you forgot something. Drunk much?” She turned back to the men she’d come with. “Come in. She’s some chick JT dragged out of a bar last night. JT!”
Maybe she would murder someone today. She knew exactly who that angry little woman was. Deanna Kilgore, assistant to the vice president in charge of pretty much everything. She’d studied the woman’s dossier but glanced over her boss since her boss was considered above reproach and therefore uninteresting to her.
If only she’d paid attention to Deanna’s boss, maybe she wouldn’t have slept with him.
Unfortunately, the other two intruders completed her list of