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Jared scowled. ‘I’ll phone them from the airport. Satisfied?’
‘Beats having Sinclair and your sister contacting me for your whereabouts. I’m all for delegating my excess workload. You’re on record for this trip, by the way. Check your inbox. You’re liaising with a new informant on my behalf.’
Jared’s scowl had morphed into something a whole lot more thoughtful. Rowan studied his face—the refined masculine beauty of it, the cuts and bruises that hadn’t quite faded from it. She was risking her neck for this man and she still didn’t really know why.
Take a deep ops agent, fresh from two years in the field, driven by a personal vendetta and deep feelings of failure and responsibility, one who had a dislike of authority and a bad case of alienation and expect him to be a team player?
No. A team player he wasn’t.
The best Rowan could do was give him the space he needed to get the job done and hope that there were pieces of him to pick up afterwards.
‘Jared, are you up to this?’
‘Yes.’
She wanted to believe him.
‘Yes,’ he repeated. ‘I know you’ve probably had to convince, connive and bury my psych report in order to get me back out there this fast, but I won’t let you down. Trust me.’
She nodded—because it was a more positive response than telling him to please stay alive.
She took a couple of mouthfuls of the curry. ‘The duck is good.’
‘Yeah.’
They finished the rest of their meal in silence. It wasn’t a companionable silence—more like a heavy, expectant waiting. Jared cleaned up. Rowan helped. His shoulder brushed against hers—the chambray of his shirt soft and well-worn against the bare skin of her shoulder—and her nipples pebbled tightly beneath her bra. She had a jacket somewhere. Wouldn’t hurt to put it on and get the hell gone from here before the mind-melting awareness between them turned into hot, sweaty sex.
‘If I was ten years older would you take my attraction to you more seriously?’ he asked.
So much for ignoring the elephant in the room.
‘It’s not the age difference.’ Nothing but the truth. ‘Given your experience with life, loss and the demands of intelligence work, you’d be a good match for me. Your body in its prime would just be a bonus.’
‘Is there someone else in your life?’
‘No.’ Not for years.
‘Who do you get intimate with?’
‘Since the director’s chair? No one.’
‘Well, that can’t be healthy. How long do you plan on keeping the chair?’
‘It’s hard to say. It was my end-game. I got here a little sooner than expected. Now I’m regrouping. Starting to plan ahead.’
Next thing she knew she’d be revealing that sometimes she questioned what had driven her to this and whether the power she now wielded had been worth the sacrifice. The gruelling hours and the responsibility. Always having to watch her back on account of the power games people played. She could count on one hand the number of people she truly trusted.
Even Jared trusted more people than she did.
‘You could set your sights on the top job,’ he said. ‘Run the division.’
‘I could. That’s likely to depend on the mistakes I make in this job and the never-ending politics. Are you going to be a mistake on my résumé?’
‘No.’ He held her gaze. ‘That’s not the plan.’
‘Then what is the plan? You come in here this evening, bearing food—’
‘People eat in this building all the time.’
‘Yes, in the twenty-four-hour cafeteria.’
‘Never seen a director eating in there yet. You could have asked me and my duck to leave.’
‘And I will—but not before you give me the name of your informant.’
‘And what will you give me in return?’
‘Permission to leave the room and the country.’
‘I want a kiss.’
Nothing but challenge in the rough purr of his voice and speculation in his eyes.
‘Because that’s not going to undermine my authority at all?’ she offered dryly.
‘You’re a little hung up on authority, Ro.’
‘It comes with the territory.’
‘Last chance,’ he offered. ‘You want a name; I want a kiss. Think of it as a trust-building exercise.’
‘Or blackmail?’
‘A freely given exchange,’ he countered smoothly.
‘If you don’t return—if you crash and burn or simply decide that your attention is needed elsewhere—my head is going to roll unless I have something to bargain with. I’m trusting you to do your job, and I have precious little reason for doing so other than gut instinct. I want the name of your informant and I want you back here in six days—free of all Antonov baggage, clearheaded and fit to work.’
