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For that matter, I had grown up around Brian Grant.
And yes, I’d always had a crush on him. But what I was feeling now was something altogether different.
Somehow, the perfect look of the military man wore differently on Brian. He didn't have the impression that he had been forced into a certain shape or that he was dressing to please a higher authority. He looked likehimselfwith tidy hair and well-kept clothes, like this was the way he would have presented himself even if he was selling surf gear on a beach in California. It was just who he was, making it sexy to me.
I closed my eyes, reminiscing about the touch of his hands on my body. I had only ever been involved with men my age before, and I’d never had any complaints, but there was something masterful about how Brian handled me. It was like I was an instrument he had been playing all his life.
I was sure that skill came from experience with other women, but for some reason, that fact wasn’t bothering me at all.
It’s not like I’m into him emotionally.
That was true. On an emotional level, I wasn’t sure how much I even liked him. After all, he was getting in the way of my investigation, and I didn’t need that.
I was daydreaming about what it would be like to be fucked by the subject of my investigation even as I was working. I was fiercely glad that no one at FBI headquarters was able to read minds. I would have been the punch line of the century if they knew what I was thinking—if anyone guessed what had happened.
He’s off-limits, I told myself firmly.I’m just going to have to make sure that nothing like that ever happens again.I didn’t want to bungle my very first big assignment because I had the hots for my subject, for God’s sake.
But the idea of never touching him again bothered me more than I would have imagined it would. I wanted to do it again, I realized. If we hadn’t been professionally involved the way we were, I would have been pursuing him aggressively.
“Barrett?”
My eyes flew open.
My supervisor, FBI director Kevin Grummond, was standing over my desk and looking down at me. “Napping on the job?” he asked.
“No, sir.” I regained my composure. Grummond was always trying to catch me slacking, but I wasn’t doing anything wrong—technically. “I was thinking about my investigation,” I told him, which was sort of true.
He eyed me appraisingly. “I think you’d better come into my office, Barrett,” he ordered.
“Is everything all right?” Now he was making me nervous.
“I just want to talk to you about your investigation,” Grummond stated, but something about the way he was looking at me made me even more worried. “I’d like to hear how it’s going directly from the horse’s mouth.”
I knew there was no avoiding it. I stood up, followed him across the office floor of the headquarters, and entered the room with his nameplate on the door.
Grummond was an orderly man in a very different way from the military men I knew. I had never seen him out of a three-piece suit. His hair, rather than being short and tidily combed, was always kept in an expensive cut that I thought would have looked more at home on a younger man. His office was Spartan, with none of the picture frames featuring family members that the rest of us kept on our desks, without so much as a stress toy or a cup full of pens next to his computer. This office had always creeped me out a little bit.
Grummond pointed to the chair across from his own, and I took it immediately.
“Have you found any evidence of wrongdoing?” he asked.
“No,” my throat went dry. “But I’ve only been investigating for about twenty-four hours. It might take me a little more time than that.”
He raised his eyebrows. “Are you being smart with me?”
I probably had been. I knew I needed to control my tone. It was a recurring problem. “No, sir.”
He eyed me for a moment, then asked, “How old are you, Barrett?”
He knew the answer to this, of course. My date of birth was in my file. He was trying to make some masculine point by bringing up my age, and I wasn’t at all sure I liked where this was going.
“I’m twenty-six,” I blinked back, keeping myself in check.
“You’re one of the youngest analysts the FBI has ever hired.”
I had known that. It was a point of pride for me, for obvious reasons. I also knew that starting this job as young as I had meant plenty of opportunities to grow and build an illustrious career.
“Yes, sir,” I said.
