The Complete Red-Hot Collection. Kelly Hunter
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was just about to mention it.’ Sam turned her blandest gaze on Rowan. ‘I didn’t say you’d eat it.’
‘Is this a variation on Will you have dinner with me?’ Rowan asked him.
‘Or I can eat and you can watch,’ he offered with a sinner’s smile. ‘I’m hungry.’
‘Apparently you’re also very fragile—I’ve been hearing that all day. This had better not be your version of the Last Supper.’
‘If it was I’d have chosen the lobster instead of the duck.’
Not for a second did he let her see whether her words had got to him. And then his gaze skidded to her mouth and hers went to his for more than a count of three.
Damn. Rowan dragged her gaze back to the rest of his face and motioned him into her office.
‘See you in the morning, Sam.’
Sam nodded and left without another word. Jared walked past Rowan and headed straight over to the panelled bookcase that doubled as a door that led through to her private apartment. He knew how to open it and didn’t wait to be invited inside—just strode on through.
Perhaps he expected her to follow.
Warily, she did.
Rowan didn’t use the apartment often. She kept a few changes of clothes there, a few emergency toiletries in the bathroom cupboard. Sometimes she ate there. But not often.
‘You know the layout of my office and you know my favourite food. What else do you know?’ she asked as she leaned against the doorframe and watched him make himself at home.
‘Have you eaten since you ate my pancakes this morning?’
She hadn’t.
‘That’s what I thought.’
He found plates in the cupboard and cutlery in the drawer. He fished napkins from the bag and she let him, more focused on his economy of movement in such a small kitchenette space than on his words.
‘I bought a boat today.’
‘What kind of boat?’
‘An oceangoing yacht.’
‘Do you miss Antonov’s yacht?’
‘That was a floating fortress, not a yacht. I don’t miss it specifically. I do miss being at sea.’
‘You work in Canberra. How often are you going to use this yacht?’
‘Not as often as I’d like, but I won’t be the only one using it. Lena went halves on it with me.’
‘That must be nice.’
She didn’t mean for him to stop serving up the food—heaven forbid—but he paused long enough to slide her an enquiring glance.
‘Having siblings to share things with,’ she elaborated. ‘Do you have a favourite sibling?’
‘Lena’s closest to me in age. Closest to me overall.’
And Lena had just married Jared’s best friend.
‘Lena followed you and Adrian Sinclair into the service. You made a good, reliable team, the three of you. You led, and mostly they followed. And then Lena got shot while the three of you were checking out an abandoned biological weapons factory in East Timor.’
Jared’s lips tightened.
‘Adrian stayed to look after her. You, on the other hand, went rogue, trying to pin down who was responsible for hurting your sister.’
‘I had a handler. I didn’t go rogue. Serrin knew what I was doing.’
‘I’ve read Serrin’s notes,’ she countered mildly. ‘Frankly, they made me wonder who was running who.’
‘Still not rogue. I worked within the framework that was there.’
He handed her a plate piled high with red curry duck, plain rice and Asian greens.
‘Where’s the wine?’ she asked.
‘You don’t drink.’ He said it with utter confidence.
‘We really are going to have to stop letting your brother use our database as his personal information library.’
Jared smiled and shoved a forkful of food into his mouth. Rowan looked at her plate and headed for the little table in the room. She walked over to it, pulled out a chair and kicked another one out for him. He joined her moments later.
Corbin’s words of warning slid insidiously through her mind. Don’t bury him. Don’t send this man to his death.
She didn’t want to. ‘What’s in Belarus?’
‘Churches, city squares, a fine fear of the Motherland and a man Antonov wanted to impress.’
‘A man Antonov wanted to impress?’ The only people she could think of who might fit that particular criteria would be hellishly hard to access. Rebel leaders and legitimate ones. People of power. ‘Does this man have a name?’
‘Ro, you haven’t even tried your duck. It’s really good.’
‘Do you know how to find him?’
‘Yes.’
‘And then what?’
‘I think he knows who Antonov’s main mole within Section is.’
‘Assuming you’re right, you still have to get that information out of him.’
Jared said nothing.
‘Are you going to bring him in?’
‘Wasn’t planning on it.’
‘It’s an option.’
‘Given who he is, it’s really not.’
Something to chew on … ‘Does your sister know that you’re going back out there? Does Sinclair?’
‘No.’ Jared kept right on eating.
Rowan nudged his foot with hers. ‘Will you tell them before you go?’
‘Wouldn’t want to worry them.’
‘Withholding your whereabouts from them isn’t going to make them worry any less. I thought you’d have learned that lesson by now?’
Jared scowled. ‘I’ll phone them from the airport. Satisfied?’
‘Beats having Sinclair and your sister contacting me for your whereabouts. I’m all for delegating my excess workload. You’re on record for this trip, by the way. Check your inbox. You’re liaising with a new informant on my behalf.’
Jared’s scowl had morphed into something a whole lot more thoughtful. Rowan studied his face—the refined masculine beauty of it, the cuts and bruises that hadn’t quite faded from it. She was risking her neck for this man and she still didn’t really know why.
Take a deep ops agent, fresh from two years in the field, driven by a personal vendetta and deep feelings of failure and responsibility, one who had a dislike of authority and a bad case of alienation and expect him to be a team player?
No. A team player he wasn’t.
The best Rowan could do was give him the space he needed to get the job done and hope that there were pieces of him to pick up afterwards.
‘Jared, are you up to this?’
‘Yes.’
She wanted to believe him.
‘Yes,’ he repeated. ‘I know you’ve probably had to convince, connive and bury my psych report in order to get me back out there this fast, but I won’t let you down. Trust me.’
She