Page 18 of Velvet Vaughn

Leo stood in front of her in a rumpled white long-sleeved polo with some logo embroidered over the left chest, his dark hair doing the thing it did when he’d been running his fingers through it for an hour. His feet were bare on the oak floor of his entryway. He had a mug of coffee in one hand and an expression Anja recognized from across the bed five months ago. His composure had just left the building.

She cataloged the rest of him in the half-second before he spoke, because that was what she did. Six-three, give or take, with the leftover frame of an athlete who’d never quite let the gym go. Olive skin and a faint shadow along a jaw that hadn’t seen a razor since morning. Brown eyes the color of espresso, with something gold in them when the entryway light caught them just right. A small, pale scar through the outer edge of his right eyebrow. Sleeves shoved to the elbows, revealing his forearms. They were a problem.

He was dangerously handsome. More so than she remembered.

He gazed at her mutely for a full ten seconds.

She let him have that because she wasn’t sure she trusted her own voice to come out right on the first try. Then she heard herself deliver, “Try to pace yourself, De Luca.”

It was the first thing she’d said to him when they met.

Leo exhaled as if he’d been holding his breath since he’d called her hours earlier. The corners of his mouth pulled up, sending an involuntary shiver racing through her. What was that?

He stepped aside. “Come in.”

Anja crossed the threshold of Leo De Luca’s condo with her go-bag on her shoulder, and the drawer she’d been sitting on for five months unlocked inside her.

Behind her, the door clicked shut and the deadbolt turned.

Outside the east-facing windows, the St. Louis skyline glittered against a dark sky.

Anja set her duffel on the hardwood. More than anything, she wanted to walk into Leo’s arms and lose herself as she had months ago. Instead, she turned to face him, the agent firmly back in control.

“Let’s get to work.”