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She licked her lips. She’d already decided he wouldn’t bait her, but he was sure trying hard enough. And damned if some secret little part of her actually liked the attention.
“Of course, it can also be bad,” he continued, not waiting for her nonexistent answer. “In a wife, for example.” He shrugged. “Every man wants a little mystery, sure. But I want to know all about the woman I’m going to spend my life with. I’m not inclined to have a relationship with an enigma.”
“Good thing we’re not having a relationship, then.”
“Oh, but we are.” His soft words seemed to drip over her like warm butter, and she licked her lips again, uncomfortable with the way her body was tingling simply from the sound of his voice.
“Excuse me?” She sat up straighter, determined that he not see he’d managed to dent her armor.
“You’re my wife, remember? For the next week or so, you promised to love, honor and obey me.”
Tori rolled her eyes. “I don’t remember the obey part. I’m sure any ceremony we had wouldn’t have included that.”
“No, it did.” His mouth curled into a smile. “I remember the day we discussed our vows. You were on a porch swing, wearing a flowing pink sundress.”
She laughed. She had so never worn a sundress, much less pink.
He ignored her, continuing with his story. “And you said ‘darling’—” He cleared his throat, then pitched his voice ridiculously high. “’Darling. When we marry, you’ll be my master, my one and only, and I’ll be your obedient little wife.”’ He coughed, then took a sip from the bottle of water tucked in by the emergency brake. “Trust me. I remember it clearly.”
“I’ll bet you do.” She crossed her arms and tried to look stern, but she couldn’t quite manage it. She’d been expecting him to rub in the fact that he was leading their team, and instead he was goofing around. She hadn’t expected this side of him at all, and while she was a little confused, she had to admit it wasn’t unwelcome.
“I’m hurt you don’t remember such an important day in our lives.”
“Oh, but I do.” She leaned forward, trying to concoct a story of her own.
“Exactly,” he said.
“What?” She frowned. He was back to not making sense.
“I do. That’s what you said. Those two little words are what got us into trouble.”
“Ha, ha.” She twisted in the seat again, then kicked her shoes off and propped her feet on the dashboard. “What I remember is that I wanted less traditional vows. You know, more modern. Husband and wife as equals. That kind of thing.” She aimed an appraising look his direction. “You didn’t like it at first, being basically a Neanderthal, but eventually you came around.”
He kept a mostly straight face, but the tiny crinkles that appeared around his eyes told her she’d scored a few points.
“Nice to know I’m a trainable Neanderthal.”
“Hell, yeah. You’re very malleable. Just like putty in my hands.”
“My flesh in your hands.” He waggled his eyebrows. “Sweetheart, I like the sound of that.”
Both his words and his low, sultry tone caught her off guard, and she had the overwhelming urge to cross her legs tightly. Suddenly her hard-earned points were slipping away. “Glad to hear it,” she said, forcing bravado, “because the most we’ll ever do is talk about it. No perks with this job.”
“And here I’d gone and signed up for the fringe benefits. I’m sure as hell not here for my government salary.”
“Then I guess I must be a huge disappointment.”
“Hell, yes. Especially since this was your idea,” he said.
“My idea?”
“About getting to know each other.” His voice changed, and she recognized that they were moving from banter to work. “You’re right. There’s no way we can pass as a happily married couple if we don’t practice. Just like you said at the airport.”
Practice. She swallowed, trying to force some moisture into her mouth. She really had said that. It was number one on her list of points to address with him. And now he was praising her work. She should be thrilled. But what had seemed a reasonable plan at first now seemed dangerous. And not the kind of danger she’d anticipated when she’d joined the Bureau.
He was staring at her, gauging her reaction, and there was no way she intended to let him see that he’d thrown her. “Be careful, Sinclair.” She shot him her jauntiest glance as she pulled her feet off the dashboard. “I may have taken an oath when I joined the FBI, but you can be damn sure it didn’t include that.”
Not that that would be all that unpleasant, but there was no way she’d ever sleep with Sinclair. She’d come close once, and look at the trouble that had caused.
He shifted gears, his knuckles grazing the side of her thigh. “Don’t worry, agent. I’m not any more inclined to subject myself to that kind of peril on this mission than you are.” He reached over and squeezed her knee. “You’re safe with me.”
She jumped at his touch and yanked her leg away, a stupid knee-jerk reaction that was sure to cost her, because he knew he’d really gotten under her skin.
And that, frankly, made this mission more dangerous than anything else she could have been assigned to.
CARTER HUMMED to himself as he maneuvered up Highway 101 toward Santa Barbara. Never in his wildest dreams had he expected himself to start teasing Tori. And he certainly had never expected her to respond in kind.
But he had, and she had, and the entire scenario made his head spin.
It was also a good sign.
No matter their history, and no matter any past animosity or competitiveness, first and foremost they were partners. And if there was one thing Carter believed in, it was that partners stuck together. Partners trusted each other. And, yes, partners were friends.
A few hours ago, he hadn’t been certain he could hit that level of relationship with Tori. Now, though, he knew they were at least on their way.
Still, it was only baby steps. They might be getting along, but he knew Tori well enough to know that when it came time for him to pull rank, she’d likely balk.
But he’d cross that bridge when he came to it. At the moment, he had no reason to play team leader, not when her idea about spending their first few days practicing being married made so much sense.
For that matter, Tori had a lot of good ideas. Not that he’d expected anything less. Everyone at Quantico had known within minutes of meeting her that Tori had brains and drive. Carter wasn’t entirely certain how Tori would perform undercover—analysis seemed to be where her real talent lay—but if there was one thing he was certain of, it was that Tori would throw herself into this assignment.
He only hoped that was a good thing. In undercover work, overzealousness could often work to your detriment. And if Tori screwed up, that meant the mission could be jeopardized. And that meant his reassignment might go out the window.
With a quick glance in her direction, he pushed the thoughts away. He had no reason to think the mission would go anything but smoothly. Positive thinking, right? The power of positive thinking would surely see him through this assignment.
“I read your report,” he said.
She hooked her finger onto the bridge of her sunglasses and pushed them down her nose. “Well, yeah. I mean, I hope you weren’t planning to throw yourself into this assignment without reading the background info.”
Touché. “My point wasn’t to tell you that I’d read it.”
“Then what are we talking about?”
He tightened his hands around the steering wheel, wondering if she was intentionally baiting him. Considering the way she had her hand draped over her mouth, probably hiding a grin, he figured she was. “We’re talking about your conclusions,” he said. “Your report didn’t really have any.”
So much for light teasing. She dropped her hand, revealing a mouth set into a firm line.
“Are you nuts? Of course it did. Why do you think we’re driving this highway? Because we’re heading to the resort that appears to be at the center of a blackmail ring. That my dear Agent Sinclair, was my conclusion. And, I might add, pretty much the entire point of the report.”
“All of which gets us to where we are today. But I’m wondering about when we get to the resort. Any prime suspects on your radar? The owner? Anybody?”
She glanced at him from the corner of her eye, then licked her lips.
“Tori?”
“No, not yet. I mean, I was pretty proud of myself just for making the connection to the resort.”
“You should have been. Your report was impressive. In retrospect, I suppose it seems pretty obvious, but you managed to take a set of seemingly unrelated cases and find the common denominator. And considering our victims didn’t exactly advertise that they’d visited a sex camp, your job wasn’t all that easy.”
He glanced over to see her reaction, and she was looking at him with her brow furrowed.
“What?” he said.
“I’m just wondering why you’re being so complimentary.”
He laughed. “Because you deserve the compliment.”
“But two seconds ago you were slamming me for not including any conclusions in the report.” Her mouth was tight and her back ramrod straight. The message was clear enough—Tori wasn’t particularly amenable to criticism of her work.
“I wasn’t slamming you. You found the connection. I was just wondering if you had any suspects.”
He turned his gaze away from the road to look her in the eye, but she avoided him, turning instead to look out the side window.
“Tori?”
“What? Oh. No. I mean, that’s why we’re going there, right?”
Carter frowned, mentally shaking his head in exasperation. Earlier, he and Tori had seemed to be making progress, really working together as partners. But with Tori he should have known that every move would be one step forward and two steps back. “We’re a team, Lowell. If you’ve got your eye on someone, let me know about it.”
Again, she licked her lips. But this time she didn’t stay silent. “No one in particular.” She nodded toward the pad in her lap. “I was just going over all the possibilities, actually. The owner’s got a lot of potential, of course, since he would have contact with everyone who comes to the resort. After that…” She trailed off with a shrug.
“What?”
“Just that, the way the resort is set up, the clients follow a certain track. None of our victims line up.”
“And that means what?”
“A couple of things. For one, with some of the victims, the information used to blackmail them was simply that they’d gone to the resort at all.”
“The client list is confidential,” Carter said. That was another reason the owner didn’t make the best suspect. If word got out that the promised confidentiality had been compromised, his business would go down the tubes.
“Exactly,” Tori said. “And for some of the victims, that was enough ammo to blackmail them.” She riffled some papers. “For others, though…” She trailed off with a shrug. “Well, like for our celebrity victim. What celebrity would care about being seen at a sex resort?”
“So the ammo against him went a lot deeper.”
Tori nodded. “Exactly. A lot nastier. A lot more provocative.” She turned to face him. “And there’s more. The victims didn’t come in contact with the same people. Here, I’ll show you.” She rummaged around for a while, then pulled out a sheaf of papers with computer-generated charts and graphs. “I did this before I left. It’s a breakdown of everyone we know that our victims interacted with.” She pointed to the chart. “Here and here are the intersection points. But there isn’t one person except the owner who came in contact with everybody.”
“So maybe he is our man,” Carter said. He didn’t believe it, but he wondered how Tori would analyze the situation.
“Maybe.” She shrugged. “Except from what I understand, he’s squeaky clean.”
“On the surface. Maybe underneath, he’s as dirty as they come.”
“Well, he certainly is the only one my research points to specifically. But still…”
“What?”
She waved the sheaf of papers. “This may suggest one result, but it doesn’t feel right. He’s got so much at stake. And he’s such an obvious suspect.”
“Too obvious?”
“I think so.”
“I do, too,” Carter said. He nodded toward her pile of papers. “So you just pulled that together after you were assigned this project?”
“Yeah. It wasn’t hard. Research comes easy to me.”
“I’m impressed.” He shouldn’t be, of course. Tori Lowell was one smart lady.
She flashed him a genuine smile. “Thanks.”
“You’ll let me know if you find any hidden clues buried in your charts and graphs?”
She laughed, revealing a tiny dimple in her cheek, then nodded. “Yeah,” she said. “I promise I’ll share.”
While she turned to her notes, Carter whistled to himself. So far so good. Not only were they almost to Santa Barbara, but he’d made a little progress with Tori. Maybe teamwork wasn’t her middle name, but at least he was pretty certain she’d make an effort. Considering it was Tori he was talking about, he considered that a victory.
Fifteen minutes later, Carter tapped the brakes, slowing the car as they passed the sign welcoming them to Santa Barbara, a quaint, Spanish-influenced town that housed a good percentage of the world’s rich and famous. “Any recommendations?”
She looked up from her notes. “For what?”
“Hotels.”
That must have surprised her, because she closed her portfolio and turned to face him. “We’re not going straight to the resort?”
“I told you. Your idea makes sense.”
She turned, facing him more directly, one eyebrow arched. “Really?”
“Really.” And he wanted to make peace after their little tiff about the suspects. Not that Tori needed to know that. “Besides,” he continued, “we’re not due to meet with the task force until the day after tomorrow. They’re still working on making sure our cover stories are in place. So we’ve got two full nights to practice being married.” He grinned, then patted her hand. “Works out well, don’t you think? Gives me time to get acquainted with my little wife.”
She rolled her eyes. “Lesson number one—the little wife ain’t so little. And she’s got a mean right hook.” She frowned. “So you’re really agreeing to this?” She squinted, as if searching for ulterior motives.
“Hell, yes. I told you. It’s perfect. You’re right. But don’t let it go to your head.”
Her shoulders dropped a bit as she relaxed. “Well, okay, then.” She aimed her blue eyes at him, and he couldn’t help but smile at the light he saw there. Tori liked to win, no doubt about that. “But remember those words,” she said. “I expect to hear them a lot.”
“Words?”
