Femme Fatale by Virginia Kantra, Doranna Durgin, Meredith Fletcher Read Free Book Online Page A

that single moment of vulnerability when he’d crushed her against the crane pylon.
    On the other hand, boyo, she got you with that sultry act. Pure and simple. It had stirred something within him that very much stayed stirred.
    Creative types. Couldn’t trust ’em. Never knew when they’d go haring off on some impulse, or get carried away by all the emotion that fueled them. Never knew when—
    That’s enough, Chandler. Jason stopped himself cold, slamming the door on the over-lurking wellsprings of painful loss that lay in wait for such careless openings of thought. Another time, another place. Keep your head here.
    He discovered she was staring at him, one eyebrow arched. And well she might, to witness him with such a loss of concentration within striking distance of a woman he’d attacked—who’d responded in kind and prevailed—earlier in the day. She plunked her sling pack in her lap and crossed her arms over it. Defensive gesture, indeed. “How’d you find me?”
    “No bloody thanks to whatever it was you slipped on me,” Jason said, not how he’d meant to respond at all. “Have mercy next time and just bean me one.”
    She blinked in surprise. “You had a reaction to it? It’s only supposed to leave you a little confused.”
    “You can find evidence of my reaction to it all along the dock.” Even to his own ears he sounded churlish.
    In her place he supposed he might have smiled, too. Just a small smile, quickly hidden. “Gosh,” she said, about as American as she could get. “I’m so, uh, sorry to hear it. Really.”
    “I’ll just bet,” he said. He slid his hand under theparka, neatly snagged his Browning, and scooped up the bundle so he could slide over to her bench, settling close enough to look intimate to anyone who happened to glance at them. She smelled of the same fresh scent as the parka. “Now, you want to talk to me about what went down this morning?”
    She managed to look amused. “And why would I want to do that, Jason Chandler? Because you think I killed the woman I was trying to protect? Or because you tried to take me away in cuffs? You’re not going to do that part again, are you?”
    “Not planning to,” Jason managed, thrown entirely off balance by her casual revelations. She knows who I am. She was trying to protect—?
    No, he wasn’t sure he believed that. His hand certainly didn’t believe it, curled reactively around the Browning grip the way it was.
    Or maybe it was just smarter than he was, and knew he was too off balance around this woman to play the game.
    She said, “I don’t know what weapon he used, but he was a fool. He was way too close to target, and even so, didn’t manage an instant kill. Worse yet, he didn’t follow through. We were wide-open while I dragged Lyeta behind that crane leg. Sloppy, sloppy. If you think you can pin work that bad on me, then you don’t have any idea who you’re dealing with, do you?”
    Jason gave a one-shouldered shrug. “Everyone has a bad day. Bad enough to leave the rifle behind. And maybe some prints?”
    She snorted. “As if.”
    After a moment he said, “Ah. One of those American nonsense phrases that’s supposed to mean something.”
    “It means I’m leaving.” She stared off at one of theplants, defiant in a way that made no sense to him. In sudden insight, he recognized it—she was in some way challenging her orders. Not surprising. “I’m not desperate enough to work with you.”
    “To work with— ” Caught flat-footed, he stole her American nonsense phrase. “As if!”
    She slanted a shadowed gaze at him. “That really doesn’t work coming from a manly MI6 guy like you.”
    Creative types. They followed a logic that meant nothing to anyone else. They switched directions so fast you were always hanging with one foot over the edge of a hairpin curve, a helpless little cartoon character trying to catch up.
    And yet still, there was something stirring in such intensity. Such a self-directed