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LOGAN WAS A GOOD TEN paces down the hall before Grace was out the door. “Agent Pierce?”
He didn’t answer.
She’d spotted him immediately. He didn’t look like anybody else milling through the administrative end of the FBI training center. He seemed an anachronism to the tradition of discipline and routine radiating from the walls around her.
Exactly what she needed. Someone different. Someone who could teach her to be a different person.
She pushed her way through men in three-piece suits and women dressed in similar fashion and called his name again. Either he was going deaf or purposely ignoring her. She had a feeling it wasn’t the former.
Logan Pierce was tall, with broad shoulders emphasized by the bulk of his black leather jacket. His lean hips and long legs seemed naturally built for clinging to hardware-heavy motorcycles. He wore his dark brown hair short, like most of the other agents he passed. But the day-old scruff of beard clinging to the jut of his jaw and angular planes of his face altered any air of respectability.
He rounded the corner and headed toward the elevator, pausing to wink at the leggy blonde who passed by. Grace opened her steno pad and jotted down the woman’s reaction to his flirtation. The woman’s eyelids dropped a fraction as she watched Logan pass by. Her bottom lip pouted out into a smile. No, not really a smile. Not exactly a pout, either. More of an upward tilt at the corners, a pressing of the lips—oh, hell.
Grace scratched out the observation. If she couldn’t even explain how it was done, how could she ever hope to do it herself?
But Logan, too, had slowed his pace to study the woman, and Grace seized the advantage by dashing ahead and falling into step beside him. “Is it your usual practice to walk out on a superior officer?” she asked.
His easy stride stuttered a fraction, as if her appearance at his elbow surprised him. He stopped and sucked in a deep breath, stretching the black T-shirt material across his chest and momentarily distracting her from her purpose.
He was such a big man. Even bigger up close like this. So tall. So broad.
So bad.
Oh, God, what had she been thinking? A quick catch of breath filled her nose with the rich scent of leather and spice and man. Foreign smells to her untrained senses. Enticing smells.
“Nope. But I’ve done it before.” He pointed to the steno pad tucked under her arm. “Be sure you write that down, too.”
He turned and marched on down the corridor. Grace swallowed the impulse to run back to Carmody’s office. That would mean accepting defeat. And the thought of failure frightened her more than the idea of harnessing the overwhelming power Logan possessed over women.
Commander Carmody had agreed to her plan only if she went in with a seasoned veteran at her side. And only if she could prove she had what it took to work undercover.
Logan Pierce could help her on both counts.
She tapped the corner of her glasses with her fingertips, pushing them up to the bridge of her nose. She could do this. She had to do this.
Instead of retreating, she doubled her pace.
“You’re living up to your reputation, Agent Pierce. I’ve heard that your arrogance has gotten you into trouble on more than one occasion. But I’ve also heard that you have more citations of merit in your file than any agent in the drug enforcement division.”
Logan halted in his tracks. She took an extra two steps past him before pulling up. There was no mistaking the warning glare in his gray eyes.
“Your research should also show you that I work alone.”
Then Logan went and did the one thing sure to move her past her insecurities about herself, past her trepidation about asking a living legend at the Bureau for his help.
He patted her on the head.
“Now be a good girl and run along.”
He brushed past her and headed for the elevator. Grace stood rooted to the spot, feeling the resentment well up inside her, overtaking her, making her curse the day she’d ever been born the daughter of Mimsey Lockhart.
She squeezed her eyes shut and gritted her teeth.
Logan Pierce was just like any other man.
Her chest began to move up and down with heavy breaths as she struggled to control the anger.
Of course, Logan wasn’t exactly like the men her mother had known. And he certainly wasn’t anything like the men—make that man—she’d known.
She’d come a long way from Joel Vitek and his groping hands and drooling lips. A long way from hearing her mother’s name instead of her own as he’d found his completion within her. As he’d lived out his fantasy at her expense.
She’d thought Joel was different. But men were all alike.
Patronizing, self-serving sex machines who talked to a woman’s breasts instead of her eyes, who winked at a woman only if he thought she was pretty…who patted her on the head and set her aside as if she was unimportant.
The hot breaths hissed between her teeth now as resentment began to win the battle inside her.
Grace had come a long way from Hollywood, California, to Quantico, Virginia. But she hadn’t come for the snatches of verdant hills or the history of the area. She hadn’t come for the eligible marines stationed nearby. She hadn’t even come for the chance to get away from the painful memories of her childhood.
She’d come to prove she was more than the sum of her parts. That she had a brain inside her body.
She’d come to prove she was nothing like her mother.
Her breath seeped out in one cleansing breath, leaving her feeling weak. She tapped into the logic and common sense that had gotten her thus far. That logic would give her strength.
No man would take advantage of her the way they’d used her mother. The way they’d wanted to use her.
Lusty old men who had tried to catch her mother’s eye and failed sometimes turned to her. She hadn’t known there were laws then about grown men hitting on fifteen-year-old girls.
But she knew now. Now she was twenty-six and educated. Now she carried a gun and a badge.
The perverts and the users of the world had better watch their backs. Agent Grace Lockhart was out to get them.
And Harris Mitchell was the man who topped her list. She had him in her sights, with every intention of bringing the exploitative thief, murderer and racketeer to justice.
But, first, she had to learn all those feminine secrets she’d worked so long and hard to deny.
She had to get Logan Pierce to help her.
He hadn’t listened to a direct order.
He hadn’t listened to reason.
Time to play her best hand.
Grace hurried after him. She saw a length of well-worn denim stepping onto the elevator. When he turned around, she rushed forward, her desperation replaced by a self-righteous anger. “I don’t care what kind of agent you are, Pierce. I don’t care if you think you failed Roy Silverton. Despite what Commander Carmody said, those aren’t the skills I want from you.”
His cheeks flushed at the mention of his deceased partner’s name, and his fingers curled into a fist at his side. Grace flinched when he raised that fist. But his hand shot over her shoulder to brace the door open. “What skills are you talking about?”
His size and proximity didn’t matter right now, even as he towered over her. The heat in her own cheeks fueled her anger. She tilted her chin and stated her case.
“I’ve devised a plan to bring down Harris Mitchell. From the inside. I can handle the computers once I’m in, but I need your help to get there.”
“What skills, Miss Lockhart?” he repeated, moving a step closer, forcing her to tip her head back farther.
“Agent Lockhart.” She corrected him and continued on without taking a breath. “Harris Mitchell is eccentric. He hires only women for his inner circle. His bodyguards, chauffeur, housekeeper, hit men—hit women, I suppose—”
“What skills do you want from me?” He articulated each word with probing finesse. His warm breath fanned across her lips, shocking her into silence.
Her anger vanished in an instant and she became acutely aware of just how close he stood to her. How his arm stretched beside her cheek, close enough for her to turn her head and bury her nose in the leathery smell of his jacket. How his chest rose and fell in steady rhythm just inches away. How she could feel his heat at the tip of her chin, at the tips of her breasts, even at the tips of her toes.
“I do need you to keep me safe. But…”
What was she doing? What was she thinking?
Her glasses fogged as her skin rapidly chilled with a sense of foreboding. Without thinking, she reached up to adjust them on her face and inadvertently brushed her fingers against his stomach. He sucked in his breath and she snatched her hand away, hugging it close to her chest as if she’d been singed.
“But what?” His low voice vibrated through her.
What did she have to lose? She’d already tossed away most of her pride by chasing him so relentlessly.
She had to have his help. There was only one way to get to Harris Mitchell. Carmody would reassign the case if she couldn’t learn what she needed to. And she knew Logan Pierce, legendary field agent, undercover expert, and love-’em-and-leave-’em ladies’ man was the best choice to teach her.
She lowered her gaze to his scuffed boots and followed a hesitant path up the tantalizing length of his legs and chest before meeting him eye-to-eye.
“I need you to teach me how to seduce a man.”
2
GRACE TWISTED AGAINST the soft steel grip on her elbow as Logan steered her down the hall to the first empty office he could find. He shoved her inside, locked the door behind him, and closed the outside blinds before turning to face her.
“What did you just say to me?”
She stood in the center of the room, clutching her steno pad to her chest while he circled her, eyeing her like a hawk with a delectable bit of prey in his sights.
“I need you to turn me into a femme fatale.”
“A femme fatale?” He plowed his fingers through his hair, standing it up on end in spiky disorder. “Who talks like that anymore?”
Okay. So maybe she had no clue what she was doing. But, damn it all, she’d done her research. Logan Pierce’s way with women was standard gossip around the break room.
If one liked the dangerous, smooth-talking, bad-boy type.
And judging by her uncontrolled reactions to Logan—the shallow breathing, that naughty feeling that had tingled in her fingertips when she’d accidentally touched him, the way she kept turning her head now to keep him in her line of vision—she did like that type. A little. Well, maybe more than a little. Okay, probably too much for her own good.
He reminded her of those handsome backstage bums and one-night stands who had chased after her mother all those years.
The kind of man who promised nothing but heartache.
The kind of man she needed right now.
“As I said earlier, Harris Mitchell will only work with women. Directly, that is.” She fought to keep the businesslike detachment in her voice. “Word on the street is that as he gets ready to expand his enterprise, he’ll be hiring a new personal accountant. I intend to be that woman.”
“Word on the street?” Was that a swearword that hissed between his teeth? “What do you know about ‘word on the street’? How many times have you even been out of your cubicle?”
“If you’ll kindly watch your mouth, Agent Pierce.” Grace’s fingers trembled in their grip on the steno pad. “I’ve done my research—”
“I’ll bet you have.” He stopped circling and closed the distance between them. She felt the heat of him at her shoulder as he leaned in behind her, felt his hot, moist breath like a caress down the side of her neck. “But can you think on your feet? Be creative? Dodge bullets? Forget who you really are and become someone else?”
When she realized that the tempo of her own short breaths matched his, she took a step away and turned. She would not let this man distract her from her purpose.
“Commander Carmody gave me the green light for this project. I intend to go forward, with or without your help.”
As that hawk who had circled her earlier, Logan snatched her glasses from her face, plunging her world into a blur of smeared colors and lights and shadows.
“What are you doing?”
She reached out blindly, groping the air.
“Seeing if you have what it takes to go forward.”
“I can’t see a damn thing right now.”
“If you’ll kindly watch your mouth, Agent Lockhart.” He clicked his tongue behind his teeth in admonishment.
Embarrassed by the instinctive panic in her reaction, she hugged her steno pad to her chest, calming her fluttering heart and giving her shaking fingers something to do. “I am an excellent student, Agent Pierce. If this is some sort of test…” Her nose detected the smell of well-worn leather, and she guessed he’d circled behind her again. Pleased with her detection skills, she actually smiled. “I graduated top of my class. I’m a Phi Beta Kappa. I had personal recommendations from two senators for my appointment—”
“Yeah, yeah. But can you kiss a man and make him forget what he was thinking?”
With a magical snap of invisible fingers, he zapped her confidence and took her into uncharted territory. “I beg your pardon?”
“When it comes down to it, can you turn all that brain power into a seductive smile that Harris Mitchell will find irresistible?”
“I—”
She felt the heat of his lips brushing against her ear. “Can you do this…?” A vise clamped around her waist—Logan’s arm. She snatched at his leather sleeve to free herself, but froze as he pulled her back against him. Shoulders to chest. Hips to belt buckle. Bottom to…Grace squirmed at the vee of pure masculine heat that cupped her buttocks, not yet understanding the lesson he was teaching her. The long, strong fingers of his free hand seized her hip and stilled her struggle. “Without flinching?”
His lips moved to the column of nerves that ran down the side of her neck. “Can you let a man do this to you…?” She tilted her head to the side, straining away from his hot, moist assault on her senses. His tongue joined the foray, supping at an undiscovered indention where her neck met her shoulder. The electric current that had tingled beside her ear now shot out to the tips of her breasts, hardening her nipples, making the tender globes feel heavy above the restricting band of his arm. “And pretend you enjoy it?”
Pretend?
A damp mix of pleasure and pain gathered between her legs. Her hand, which had once tried to push him away, now tugged at his arm, unconsciously begging him to ease the friction gathering in the breasts it cradled.
Grace turned her jaw to his mouth, struggling to speak, fighting through the current of unaccustomed electric heat consuming her. He was making a point, she tried to remind herself, teaching her about working undercover.
“I should—” she stuck out the tip of her tongue and licked the circle of her parched lips, trying to regain control of the conversation—and her traitorous body “—be taking notes.”
He shifted his attention to the movement of her tongue and traced the same circle around her lips with an erotic rasp of his own tongue. The electric current humming through her transformed into an outright jolt. Her thighs clenched together and she lifted her bottom, rubbing herself against his bulging heat.
