Instead, Elizabeth had the ground-floor apartment in a converted three-storey Victorian-style house. Admittedly the rooms were big and spacious, with high ceilings, but they were also old-fashioned, and the furnishings were old and comfortable rather than expensively modern.
All in all, Rogan decided he liked it.
Although he still wasn’t sure about being in Elizabeth’s apartment with her. Especially an Elizabeth who somehow seemed far less prickly and defensive than she usually was…
Elizabeth eyed Rogan quite openly as the two of them sat either side of the breakfast bar and began to eat. Rogan slouched slightly even as he shot her looks from beneath long, dark lashes that were guarded to say the least.
Had she unnerved him by bringing him to her apartment?
She certainly hoped so!
‘So, I was thinking of maybe giving my father some of the Britten money,’ she said brightly. ‘What do you think?’
Rogan straightened his back, dark brows raised. ‘I think that’s your business and no one else’s,’ he finally answered.
She shrugged. ‘I’m asking you for your opinion.’
He frowned. ‘Why don’t you get back to your numbers while I have a think about that?’
Elizabeth continued to look at him for several long seconds before slowly nodding. ‘Okay. We had got up to number three, I believe…?’
Rogan gave a hard smile. ‘Both you and your methodical brain know that we had.’
‘Yes.’ She smiled. ‘But I was just checking to see if you knew too.’
‘I know, okay?’
Elizabeth’s smile deepened. ‘Right. Number three.’ She held up her third finger, her expression once again serious. ‘You were in the army, transferred to Special Ops eight years ago, but became sickened by the whole thing when most of your unit was wiped out five years ago, during a mission that went terribly wrong. You resigned from the military after that, along with the five other men who survived. The six of you moved to New York for a while, but moved back to Washington three years ago.’
‘You were listening to me in the car earlier, after all,’ Rogan acknowledged softly.
‘Oh, I was listening to your every word, Rogan,’ she assured him. ‘Your scars…’
‘A little memento of that last mission,’ he confirmed.
She nodded. ‘What happened?’
‘I’m really not allowed to talk about it. But what I will say,’ he added, as Elizabeth grimaced, ‘is that mistakes were made. Bad intel, maybe. Whatever the reason, we were ambushed, and half of my men were killed before we got anywhere near completing our mission.’
‘And the other half, Ace, Grant and Ricky included, now work for you in Washington?’
‘You really do have a methodical brain, don’t you?’ Rogan murmured admiringly. ‘They work with me, not for me.’
‘At RS Security.’ Elizabeth nodded. ‘Ricky is number four on my list.’
Rogan’s brows rose. ‘Ricky is? Why?’
‘You care enough about him to try and stop him from chasing after a woman you know is bad for him.’
‘It’s what any friend would do.’
‘No, it isn’t,’ Elizabeth contradicted gently. ‘People don’t care about other people in that way any more, Rogan. It’s all me, me, me. But you care about Ricky.’
‘He’s watched my back on more than one occasion,’ Rogan said.
‘And now you’re watching his.’
‘Move on to number five, Elizabeth!’
‘The woman who was trying to contact you through Grant a few days ago…’ Elizabeth was willing to let the subject of Ricky go if that was what Rogan preferred. If it made him uncomfortable to admit he cared about the men who he worked with. But she wasn’t going to give up on the rest of this conversation. ‘I thought she was—Well, I assumed she was some woman you’re involved with in New York. When I thought you still lived in New York, that is,’ she added.
‘You mentioned something like that before.’ Rogan shook his head. ‘Meg Bailey is a piranha who’d stab you in the back rather than stop you from drowning. I’d as soon bed a crocodile as I would her!’
‘I get the picture, Rogan,’ Elizabeth assured him with a soft laugh. Relieved beyond measure that Meg Bailey wasn’t what she had thought she was. ‘So who is she, if she isn’t your girlfriend?’
‘She works for Langley, the company who issued our assignments.’
‘She’s one of the people who let you down five years ago?’
‘She is,’ he confirmed grimly.
‘And she’s still trying to contact you after all this time?’
‘We still do the occasional private job for them, okay?’ Rogan told her. ‘Maybe one or two a year. I was out of the country when your letter arrived, which is why I didn’t get here as quickly as I should have.’ He shrugged. ‘What can I say? The guys enjoy keeping their hand in,’ he defended, as Elizabeth gave him a pointed stare.
Her brows rose. ‘The guys do…?’
‘Okay, I do too,’ he accepted dryly. ‘But now we do it on our terms, at our convenience, no one else’s, and we gather our own intel,’ he explained.
Elizabeth moistened dry lips. ‘What sort of jobs?’
‘Usually kidnappings and hostage situations that are too sensitive even for Langley to handle. Satisfied?’ he wanted to know.
Elizabeth was far from satisfied, and felt a deep fluttering of unease in the pit of her stomach just at the thought of Rogan putting himself and his men in danger in that way.
Except…
Her mother, instead of accepting the man she was married to as he was, perhaps becoming involved in the things he did and going with him when he travelled on business, had instead tried to change him, to make him into the sort of man she wanted: a stay-at-home husband who worshipped dutifully at her feet. The sort of man Leonard Brown could never hope to be.
That was another thing Elizabeth had learnt today: people could change themselves if they wished to, but another person never could, or should, try to do that changing for them.
Rogan was the man that he was, danger included.
In fact, he was danger with a capital D!
And Elizabeth loved him so much she ached with it!
Rogan watched the changing expressions on Elizabeth’s face. The shock at learning what he did. The unease. The trepidation. Was there slight distaste there too…?
‘Still think I’m not really a bad-ass?’ he mocked, pushing his plate of food away half eaten.
What the hell had he been thinking, making love to this woman? Dragging a woman like Elizabeth Brown—smart, sassy, so courageous and very much the lady—into the lowlife world he was occasionally forced to inhabit? He had to have been out of his stupid mind!
He stood up abruptly.
‘Where are you going?’ Elizabeth demanded sternly as she also stood up.
Rogan raised an eyebrow. ‘Well, somewhere in my decision to drive to Surrey with you I forgot that I was going to need transport back to Cornwall. As it’s too late now to get a train back, I thought I might look for a hotel to stay in tonight.’
‘You can stay here.’
He smiled humourlessly. ‘I don’t think so, Elizabeth.’
Her chin rose challengingly. ‘Why not?’
Why not? Because if Rogan stayed here there was no way he was going to remain on the couch Elizabeth would no doubt consign him to. Not with her in bed only feet away…!
His mouth thinned. ‘To answer your earlier question, about giving your father money—’
‘I totally agree with you. If I did that it would unbalance the life he and Cheryl now have together,’ Elizabeth put in.
Rogan’s eyes widened. ‘How did you know I was going to say that?’
‘The same way you know that the two of us are going to be sharing my bed in just a few minutes,’ Elizabeth answered matter-of-factly. ‘I know you, Rogan,’ she continued, as his expression darkened thunderously. ‘For instance, I know that right now you just want to get out of here. Away from me. Away from any temptation to go to bed with me again.’
He folded his muscled arms across the broadness of his chest as he regarded her closely. ‘Think a lot of yourself, don’t you,’ he taunted.
‘No. No, I really don’t,’ Elizabeth said shakily. ‘I know you want me. But I have no idea what else you do or don’t feel for me. And it doesn’t matter.’ She gave a rueful shake of her head as she stepped closer to him. ‘It’s enough for the moment that you want me. And that I want you,’ she added softly.
Dear God, Rogan groaned inwardly. No woman should have such deep, mesmerising blue eyes. Or such a poutingly sensual mouth that begged to be kissed. And she certainly shouldn’t have the sort of toned and curvaceous body that a man would kill to possess.
That he would kill to possess just once more!
He closed the distance between them, his arms moving about her waist like steel bands as he pulled her into him and his mouth fiercely claimed hers.
He was hungry for her. Ravenous. Needed her, wanted her, with the same desperation a drug addict needed his fix.
Even as he devoured her mouth he was curving her body into his, loving the way she fitted so perfectly against him, and his hands were everywhere as he touched her back, her breasts, her hips, finally cupping her bottom to pull her into the hardness of his thighs, groaning as the softness of her curves cupped and held him there.