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No. He wouldn’t go there. This wasn’t going to happen today.
Not today.

To his relief, she crunched a little frown at him. “We all want to be here, Senator.”

“I think you know what I mean.” He pulled back a little. But hell, that just made her more breathtaking. Every emotion played itself so honestly across her face. After forcing down a breath, he continued, “Most people applied for this project because of the extra money, the prestige of the deal, or both. And I imagine most think the toughest part of the process is behind them. I’m here to shake those perceptions a bit. Maybe more than a bit.” He looked back at her again, letting her see his open assessment. “I won’t be shaking you up, will I?”

Her lips lifted in a full smile this time. “No, sir.”

She could’ve told him to fuck off and caused him less shock. He masked the reaction by pretending to clear his throat. Her voice, still so soft and sure, turned the heat in his blood to more than a minor irritation. It took a simple mental click to imagine her
no
getting replaced with a
yes
. As for the
sir…

It was the first time he’d ever imagined the words coming from someone other than Heather.

Who was she?

“So. What’s your name, Ms. I-Can’t-Be-Shaken?”

“Rosalind Fabian, sir. I…I mean Senator.”

He feigned another throat clearing. “‘Sir’ is just fine if you’re comfortable with it, my dear.”

She laughed. The sound was like the rest of her, a rich braid of soft and strong. “And most people call me Rose, if you’re comfortable with that.”

“Fine then. Nice to meet you, Rose.”

He’d meant to keep it professional. Instead his voice dipped into a range he didn’t recognize from himself, borrowing from the thick velvet of her eyes—which now widened a little as his hand fit against hers. Her grip was firm though. And
that
troubled him. He didn’t want her so steady when he was near. He wanted to keep her hand locked in his, just before he turned it over by the wrist and pressed his mouth into her palm. He wondered what that would do to Miss Rose Fabian and her composure. She’d erected her personal barricade so painstakingly, to the point that he knew one thing with certainty: it was there as much to keep her from breaking out as others from busting in. But why? What would a kiss like that unleash in her, from her?

Before his mind took that fantasy into risky territory, he released her and backed away. No. Forget risky. The word was
lethal
. He wanted to do things to Rose Fabian he hadn’t
thought
of in four years. He wanted more of those eyes that enwrapped him, the smile that unglued him…

And the circumstances that were impossible.

She was a student, damn it. And on her way to Baghdad in two weeks. And at least a decade younger than him.

Yep.
Lethal
said it just about perfectly.

Chapter Two

She’d gone and screwed it up again. Whatever “it” was.

Rose tried to get in at least one steady breath as the conclusion attacked for the hundredth time in the last three days. It sounded silly, junior high, and ridiculous. But it was the only explanation for why Senator Moore had all but ignored her since they’d met on that first morning. It was clear now that she’d imagined the electricity of their first handclasp. The connection she’d felt from his attention, his hold, his unblinking tawny eyes…it had all been sheer desperation. Why not? It made sense. When was the last time anybody had touched her? Her parched libido simply craved sustenance, and now it was jumping to embarrassing conclusions. With a gorgeous, commanding, fascinating…altogether inappropriate man.

He had to be at least ten years older than she.

He also happened to be an ex-senator and the father of a world-renowned pop star.

He was also exactly what she thought about every time her mind had a free minute.

Result? She’d made it a point not to have a lot of those moments. In short, she’d overcompensated. She participated in all the class discussions. Tried to ask the correct questions. Even sat in the front of the room the last three days, to prove how much she wanted this, how badly she needed this new start in her life. No, needed it. Needed to slam shut, then glue down forever, the chapter she wanted done and forgotten.

Not that Mother and Shane were ready to do the same. Like prizefighters grieving a lost title, her mother and brother held up her failure every chance they could. The worst thing was, she’d let them. In a perverse way, she understood every note of pain behind their glib commentary.

Mother’s had been preceded by her traditional sigh. “
We should have seen it coming, I suppose. Owen didn’t even have a bachelor party. We all thought he was just being a good fiancé. He was so sweet and respectful.”

Shane just went straight for that male-model head tilt of his.
“Agreed in full, Mother. It just wasn’t a good fit. Men like him need a certain type of woman…the right look, the right temperament. You do have moments, Rose, of rather intense emotion. It was best he saw it and nixed everything before you two actually said the vows.”

She’d let it all pass, but now it had been a year. She was ready to sell the dress, bury the shame, and start the journey toward doing something meaningful with her life besides the wallowing-in-my-mistake thing. So when GRI had landed the contract for the rebuild in Iraq and solicited internal candidates due to the ease of security clearances, she’d swallowed her nervousness and decided a degree in environmental engineering might not be the “useless paper” Shane had originally asserted. She’d applied, not telling anyone about it. When she passed the intake process and got accepted, it was too easy to continue the trend of silence.

She probably could’ve kept up the ruse, since Mother and Shane knew little, and cared even less, about her “amusing job,” but when the invitations for Chicago’s spring gala season rolled in, the gig was up. How did she explain she’d be 6000 miles away instead? She’d gone at them with a determined approach. They could all make a decision that her empty ring finger didn’t bode eternal doom for the family. Here was a chance to do something good for the world beyond the tennis club, the polo team, and months of fund-raisers for causes they only pretended to care about. This was a chance to move on. Didn’t they all want that?

Apparently not.

She’d gotten Mother’s sigh in triplicate first.
“So now you’re going to embarrass us even worse by running away?”

Shane had tossed aside the head tilt in favor of a full glower.
“Rose, really. It’s been barely a year. We’re only now getting invitations again to the events that matter. Don’t you understand? We need this season to gain face again! How are we supposed to show ourselves in society and explain that you’ve run off to a desert hellhole for your eat-pray-love break? Couldn’t you have chosen Paris, New York, even India?
”

She gripped her pen harder to stop her hand from shaking. “Thoughts on the now,” she whispered to herself. Time to stop thinking about events she couldn’t undo, about the person she wasn’t capable of being. About mistakes that weren’t yet forgiven, much less forgotten.

She focused again on the paper in front of her. It was their last session of the day. The senator had instructed them to write down their reasons for initially applying to the team and how those motives had changed now, if at all. He’d given them fifteen minutes to consider their answers, urging them to “dig beneath surface responses.” She’d filled her paper in about five minutes but then had the next ten to stress over every line. There were no right or wrong responses, Moore had said. Yet when she dared a look up at him, she caught his leonine stare fixed right on her. It felt like he was already assessing her answer by telepathy.

His lips quirked. The look was almost a smile. Millimeters at a time, she felt her own mouth shifting in the same direction. Parched libido, meet beautiful oasis. He entranced her all over again, making the room go away with his intensity. She’d thought of electricity when they’d first met. Now that current arced again. Only this time, it bypassed the rest of her body and shot to her most intimate core. Her eyebrows jumped as the arousal spread, making her thighs tingle, sending its stunning impact down to her toes.

That was when the senator’s gaze locked down again and his mouth pressed to a line.

The
senator
, Rose reminded herself. Okay, one who’d stepped down from office six months ago, but still a man who’d bear the title the rest of his life. And she’d just gawked at him like a fifteen-year-old at a boy band concert.

Hell. Would she ever get something right in her life again?

Best not to consider that answer too hard.

“Pens up.”

His voice carried the edge of experience yet the confidence of command. The rest of the class raised their heads along with their pens, but Rose didn’t join them. That tone of his, clipped and commanding, finished what his gaze had started in her sex. Now she contended with drips down her labia and a flush to her whole face. She hoped the writing exercise had been just that, an exercise, and that they wouldn’t be actually asked to share what they’d written with everyone. She wasn’t sure what her voice would sound like, with her body raging in this condition.

“Who’d like to share their answer first?”

For the first time in three days, she didn’t volunteer for the duty. But her die had been cast. From two rows behind her, a snicker broke out. “Why don’t we let Rose have the honor? After all, when a woman begs enough…”

Forget the flush. Her face burned now. It wasn’t the first time Ryan Johnson zinged a one-liner at her expense. He did it enough back at the office in Chicago, seeming to think his continued friendship with Owen gave him the right. Though Owen had left GRI for the corner office at his dad’s firm long before the wedding day, Ryan kept the strings tied nice and tight between them. Turned out that a flawless face and a ripped torso really could get a cheap gutter snake invited to the best parties.

“In your dreams, Ry-Ry,” she managed to snap back. It wasn’t her best effort, but she usually didn’t have to process Ryan’s crap with her shields down, her body on fire, and her logic shot to hell. She couldn’t summon even a decent eye roll to finish it off.

There was also the matter of him being right. She’d made an idiot of herself, hadn’t she? In longing to earn Moore’s approval signature on her training docs, she’d instead exposed her true colors, something in a hue between desperate and seriously messed up. Moore would likely make it worse right now too. She could already hear him dressing Ryan down, telling the ass to apologize. Then she’d have to endure Ryan’s insincere compliance. And she sure as hell could feel what she’d want to do after that. She gazed at the floor, wondering how hard she’d have to fall to blend into the carpet.

“That’s a considerate gesture, Mr. Johnson.” Moore’s voice now sounded like an ironic tease. “As a reward for such, why don’t you take the honor of first stab, instead?”

Ryan’s two buddies, Kai Thomas and Peter Ferne, chuckled and elbowed him. The three had nothing in common physically, which balanced the fact that they shared the same brain, clearly set on adolescence as the default under tension like this.

Despite their ribbing, Ryan replied, “Sure thing, Senator. I’m game. You want my full essay, or just the flyover?”

Rose heard Moore’s measured exhalation. “The main points will be fine.”

“That’s good, because I really have just one.”

“And that is?”

“Excellence, plain and simple. I stand proudly for it.”

Peter snickered. “They don’t call him the human tripod for nothing.”

Rose got in her eye roll, if only to herself. “Or the money burner. Or Mr. Atlantic City.” She was confident the comment went unnoticed in the round of chuckles that answered Pete’s quip. Still, the senator’s next sigh had a knowing weight to it.

“Decent start, Mr. Johnson. Maybe a little more detail
is
in order.”

“No problem.” Ryan shuffled in his notebook. “All right, we all know GRI wasn’t the first contractor of choice on this gig. Instead, they selected Renovera. Granted, the big
R
is Swiss and neutral, but they also don’t know how to do things properly. They used shoddy materials on the initial build-out, and were likely too lazy or just too ignorant to double-check the geo study numbers after pouring the foundation. Now look what’s happened. The school is falling down after a year. The hospital isn’t even finished. We stand for excellence, for doing things perfect the
first
time. We gotta be diligent, and that’s what we’re gonna do. I can’t wait to get over there and show these bozos how great American companies kick ass the right way.”

The class erupted in applause and a round of woots. Everyone except for Senator Moore.

“Not a bad response,” the man said after the clapping abated. “And not a bad way to think either. Back in my marines days, I’d have been proud to have you on my team, Mr. Johnson. But”—he paused, letting Ryan have a good preen first—“it comes close to a deadly way to think when you’re in a civilian contracting situation. You’re not just representing America and GRI. You’re there to absorb and respect the Iraqis in
their
land. You’re a visitor, not an invader. Don’t forget it. Take the GI Joe attitude into subjects beyond your immediate expertise, such as their food, their drink, their women or God help you, their religion, and you’ll find yourself in a prison with medieval standards at best. Your kick-ass company won’t be able to get to you, and your so-called native hosts will use that third leg of yours as your cell torch.”

Ryan, Pete, and Kai gave up discomfited laughs. The rest of the class gasped. Rose felt sacrilegious for her gloating smile and tried to hide it. But Moore was back to his homing-beacon stare on her face. She glanced up to find him flashing a secret grin back at her. It had her bracing for his next words. Oh yeah, he definitely had the laser trained on her now.