Night Shadow (7 page)

“I’m a strong swimmer.”

She waited a moment and he hazarded a glimpse to see why she was

tongue-tied. Which made him study her mouth. Which only made him

think about kissing her. Crap.

Her eyes narrowed. “Are you really amphibious?”

Wizards had varying skil s and powers, but this one clearly seemed far-

fetched to her. If only she knew. “Let’s put it this way. I’m a
great

swimmer.” His lips twitched.

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Night Shadow

“No swimming. We’re
working.
We should walk up to the medical building

and see if we observe anything suspicious.” She turned and started back

the other way.

“Do you know Lucas Fox?”

“Only by reputation.”

“Is he a slacker? A moron? A bad operative?”

“No. Just the opposite. He’s wel respected for his attention to detail and

the work he does.”

Alex levered up on one elbow. “Then why do you think he’d leave a

situation without securing it? Without turning over every rock and blade of

grass for answers?”

Lexi shifted her weight. Interesting. She didn’t like being on the receiving

end of scrutiny. “According to his initial field report, he secured a

warehouse. He’s coming back to remove an entire floor of a medical

building and tie up loose ends. What’s left? If he’s so efficient, what are

we
doing here?”

“A, because he and I both think this place has something to do with those

dust bag tangos. B, because El icott
ordered
us to come. You wouldn’t

want us to disobey a direct order, would you?”

She shook her head and sunlight from the open window tangled in her

hair. Her skin looked dewy, soft, incredibly
female.
Eminently touchable.

“That’s what I thought,” he said biting back a smile as she glared at him.

“Want me to conjure a tanga for you?” He wondered how Lexi would look

in the Brazilian swimsuit, which consisted of nothing more than a few

brightly colored strands of dental floss.

She lifted her chin. “No, thank you.”

“Can we at least get some lunch? I’m starving.”

Her sigh was subtle, he would have missed it if he hadn’t been admiring

her breasts. “We’l walk.”

He got off the bed and opened the front door, shimmering a change of

clothes as he went. “Okay. We’l walk.” He glanced back. “You might want

to lose the sweater before we go.”

Everyone seated at the outdoor restaurant wore as little clothing as

possible. Dressed in black pants tucked into combat boots and a black

tank top, her skin Montana-winter pale, Lexi felt like a fish out of water.

Not an unusual occurrence for her. She ignored it, straightening her spine.

And resorted to what she did best, categorizing the random bits of

information that always floated about in her mind. Being a walking library

with a photographic memory had its disadvantages. Like needing to file all

the crap that came in, useful or not.

“Did you know that Brazil occupies almost half the area of South

America?”

She was on an op. Didn’t matter
what
she looked like. Right.
Focus,

Stone.
Here she was, sitting under a white umbrella sipping freshly

squeezed orange juice, looking at Alexander Stone, and it mattered,

dammit. It mattered a lot.

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Night Shadow

“It’s the world’s fifth largest country.” She shrugged off her irritation at

herself. “Although just slightly smal er than the United States in area,

Brazil’s population is about forty percent less.”

He looked at her, his eyes glazed. “Great.”

Okay, so he didn’t give a damn that she knew. She’d only told him

because it was her way of—making conversation, a connection. As usual,

it didn’t really work. She sipped her juice. The waiter arrived with their

food.

Alex’s
Feijoada completa,
a simmered bean and meat dish of Bahian

origin, looked and smel ed delicious. Her seafood salad was . . . healthy.

Beautifully arranged, but definitely not in the luscious category. In their

line of work, eating a balanced meal at regular intervals was more about

fuel than taste; her instructors had been clear on that.

The waiter asked her something. She had no idea what. Alex answered

him in what sounded like perfect Portuguese.

She didn’t know Portuguese, Brazilian or otherwise, which she would have

made an effort to learn given half a chance. Hel , if she just read

Portuguese for Dummies,
she’d probably be able to acquire the language

in less than a few days. In fact, if they’d flown here on the T-FLAC

Challenger,
she could have done some reading. But no.

Alex had insisted,
against the rules,
that they’d teleport.
Again.
This made

the third time in less than twenty-four hours—that she knew of. He could

have teleported off to see several of his Russian girlfriends before

shimmering back to the safe house for her untimely arrival, for all she

knew. And how the hel had he gotten to Russia from Paris? Another

teleportation violation.

“Want sunglasses?” he asked, shoving Ray-Bans on his nose that he had

somehow snatched out of thin air. He was slouched in his chair, feet

propped on the seat opposite. Dressed in a lime green T-shirt with a

surfer on it, purple shorts, and red flip-flops—all
uncoordinatedly
conjured

before he left the bungalow—he looked, Lexi thought, annoyed, as though

he were on vacation. Far too relaxed to be on duty.

“Sure. Do you have another pair—” He moved to pick them out of the air

and her heart pumped up a notch. She darted a glance around the

restaurant.
How in the hel did he think he could get away with that in

public? People were bound to notice.
“You’re going to hocus-pocus them?

No thanks. I’m good.”

Too
good. Her full, sexy mouth was ripe for kissing. He wondered what

factoid she’d have relating adversely to
that.
“You’l get little white

crinkles beside your eyes,” he told her, trying not to look too admiringly at

the pale, creamy, velvety,
damp
swel of her breasts above the tank top.

Not too much, not too little. Her breasts were damn near perfect, as far as

he could tell.

Everywhere he looked he saw something about Lexi he wanted to touch,

taste, smel . “Then you’l have to come back here for some painful

treatment to get rid of them,” he managed, sliding a pair of Italian

designer glasses across the table. “Here. Put on the glasses. Who cares

where they came from?”

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Night Shadow

She put them on. He was sorry he’d offered, because now instead of her

soft gray eyes looking back at him, he saw himself reflected in the lenses.

No good deed goes unpunished,
he thought wryly. “Tel me about your

family.”

She tucked her hair behind her ear before picking up her fork and

stabbing an innocent shrimp with the tines. “Why?”

She had cute ears. Had he ever noticed a woman’s ears before? He didn’t

think so. They looked . . . nibbleable. “Because it’s a beautiful day and I

don’t feel like shooting anyone. Come on, Lex, let’s just have a nice lunch

and talk about something other than chaos and destruction.”

“Exactly.”

The waiter returned with the bread he’d offered earlier.

“Obrigado.”
Alex speared a pat of butter onto his side plate, then ripped

off a chunk of hot bread. “Exactly?” He offered the piece in his hand to

Lexi.

She shook her head. She’d had her carbs for the day. “You asked about

my family, but you don’t want to talk about chaos and destruction. Pick

another subject.”

Interesting. “Your family is chaos and destruction?”

“You’re going to be like a dog with a bone, aren’t you?” She took a sip of

juice and focused on her salad. “My parents were in their midtwenties and

pretty much hippies when I was born. I was an inconvenience. Oh, they

loved me to death, but it was tough lugging a kid around, one step ahead

of social services. We moved a lot. They had many creative and

impractical ideas on how to make money. Note I didn’t say make a
living.
”

She sighed a little. He wondered if she even realized she’d done so.

“They were, stil are, charming, and persuasive, and God only knew how,

always managed to talk some bank officer into extending them a small

business loan. First it was the vegan restaurant in Denver. Of course it

never occurred to them that they had no idea
how
to run a restaurant, nor

about preparing food. Vegan or otherwise.”

“How’d they do?”

“They loved it. But of course the health department closed that down

within a month.”

“How old were you?”

“That time? Seven.” She paused to let the waiter refill her water glass.

“Where were you at seven?”

He chewed a bite of food before he answered. “San Francisco. My parents

had just died. My grandmother took in my twin, Victoria, but couldn’t

handle me. I went into the system.”

“I used to
dream
about being in foster care,” Lexi said dryly. “Are you and

your sister close?”

Alex smiled. “We are. Tory and I have a great relationship. Her husband,

Marc Savin, was one of T-FLAC’s founding fathers, so to speak, and he

and I were friends before he met her.”

He could tel her eyes widened slightly by the way the smooth skin of her

forehead moved. “Marc Savin is your brother-in-law? He’s a legend.”

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Night Shadow

Alex smiled. “His reputation is wel deserved. They have a couple of great

kids, and a good life. Things turned out okay.”

“Were you ever adopted? Another dream of mine, by the way.”

“No, but Mason Knight, a good friend of my parents’, mentored me as I

passed through the system.”

“I’m familiar with Dr. Knight’s reputation as a microbiologist. He’s done

some work for us in the past, and I believe Fox brought him in on these

bombings, right? But why weren’t you adopted?” She ate each bite as if

measuring it for size and caloric content.

“How’s your salad?” He stifled a grin.

“Protein, carbs, ten percent fat. Perfect.”

Another rule apparently. He nudged his plate toward her just a little.

“Want some of mine?”

“No thanks.”

She was lean and fit, but then women were always talking about what

they could and couldn’t eat, which mystified him. “You don’t need to be on

a diet.”

“I’m not. I choose to eat healthy, balanced meals. You weren’t adopted,

why?”

Dictionary. Tenacious. “Grandmother got some wild hair and refused to

allow it.”

Apparently, there was an invisible line down the center of her food. When

exactly half—to the lettuce leaf—was consumed, she set her fork down

and inched the plate away from her. “Sorry, but she sounds like a royal

bitch.”

“She loved Tory. That was good enough for me. What did your parents do

when the restaurant closed?”
I’l see your Tenacious and raise you a

Relentless.

Her choppy bangs were a little long, and she blinked the golden strands

off her lashes. He imagined doing the same thing with his lips. Too bad he

had to chug cold water instead of the beer that would have made this

meal even better. He could only imagine what she’d have to say about the

consumption of alcohol while working.

“Dress shop in Charleston, where my father had a second cousin, twice

removed, who lent them the capital. The shop hadn’t even opened before

they realized, because of poor planning, that they didn’t have
enough

capital. We split in the night. I liked my cousin Sandra. I wanted to live

with her, in fact. But that didn’t pan out.” She waved a hand, as if

banishing the memories. “Okay. Enough personal stuff. Why don’t you

brief me on what we’re supposed to be looking for here?”

“Right now, I just want to have a pleasant lunch with an attractive

woman. Can briefing wait until later?”

She struggled to keep her mouth from dropping open and blessed the

sunglasses he’d forced on her. He thought she was attractive? He hadn’t

thought she was attractive when her hair had been mouse-brown and

she’d worn horn-rims. Then, he’d just come down to the research center

and handed her whatever orders he wanted investigated. The only reason

he’d hung around was to give her a hard time.

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Night Shadow

Propinquity. She was here. He was here . . . he just liked women. Al

women. Her head got that. Unfortunately, her heart didn’t understand the