“What do you do?” Lennox asked, following her inside.
“I’m in finance,” she said, taking a seat on the piano’s stool and crossing her legs on an angle to draw Lennox’s attention.
It worked. His gaze ate up her legs. “You deal with money, then?”
“Mm-hmm,” she purred, placing her untouched drink on the piano bench, and then she rose. She couldn’t let this questioning continue. Heath Lennox had the brains along with the good looks. Too many questions would leave him suspecting something. Trying to remain playfully shy, she kept her eyes down when she approached him. “Is that why I’m here, though”—she stopped in front of him, slowly glancing up through her lashes—“to talk about my business?”
Alex met Lennox’s smoldering eyes as he trailed a finger along her jawline. “Why do you want to be here?”
She licked her lips, drawing his attention to her mouth as she placed her clutch under her arm, keeping the auto-injector tucked in her palm. “I knew the second I saw you, I wanted you,” she told him huskily, stepping a little closer, readying herself to stab his neck.
“Is that so?” He closed the distance between them, yanked her against him, and pressed his hefty erection against her thigh. Before she could act, he cupped her face and then he boldly kissed her.
Alex had kissed men like Lennox before. He kissed like he had the right to whatever he wanted and then he’d only dema
nd more. And that was because he held the world at his fingertips. His kiss was meant to consume, yet it lacked that ravenous spark that Alex felt when Rowan placed his mouth on hers.
She began to lift her arm to inject the needle when a whistle came from behind her. Lennox broke the kiss in the same moment a fist flew by her face, and then a second later, Lennox staggered back, eventually landing on the ground, knocked out cold, blood trailing down his nose. Alex slowly turned around, finding Rowan standing behind her, fury etched into his face. “That was totally not in the plan.” She sighed at him.
Rowan’s gaze flicked to hers, his jaw muscles working. “An easier way of getting what we need?”
She snorted a laugh. “Oh, really?” They both knew that was total bullshit. “We gave our real names tonight. He’s going to find out who I am. He’s a smart guy.”
Rowan glared at Lennox. “I’m sure you’ll come up with something.” He pressed his lips shut, but the tightness around his eyes gave him away. He was 100 percent jealous. And since Alex hadn’t had anyone be jealous over her in longer than she cared to admit, she found it sort of endearing.
Endearing if it didn’t come from a CIA agent who always had an agenda, of course.
She quickly moved to Lennox then flipped him over and lifted his shirt. “Damn.” No tattoo.
“Fuck,” Rowan said, thrusting his fingers into his hair in frustration.
Alex dropped Lennox’s shirt, wanting to move to Rowan, feeling heartbroken for him. All these dead ends couldn’t be easy. But as soon as she went to move, Lennox began groaning. Alex stuck him with the auto-injector to give them time to get out.
“Let’s go,” she said, pulling on Rowan’s arm to get him moving.
They dodged the security waiting at the end of the hallway and made it to the staircase. The only sound while they descended the staircase was Alex’s high heels on the cement floor.
Only when they were back in the limo that was already waiting outside did she turn and look at Rowan. He sat next to her with his head resting back against the headrest, eyes closed. His chest rose and fell quickly from their run down the stairs, but it was his stillness that she noted most.
“Where to?” the limo driver asked.
Alex rambled off the address for the airport, unable to take her eyes off Rowan. She reached for his hand. “We’re going to find her.”
She saw his deep swallow and understood it too. The FBI couldn’t find this killer. She didn’t have any success so far either. And she had felt this pain. She knew what it was like to have someone you loved missing. It hurt with every breath.
He finally exhaled deeply then turned his head and looked at her, and there was a vulnerability she’d never seen in him before. “Time is against us,” he told her with a tight voice. “Mia is waiting for me to find her.”
Alex paused, wanting to find the right thing to say. She decided on: “Why do you think I’m brought in on difficult cases?”
“Because you’re the best,” he said immediately.
She slowly shook her head, taking one of his hands in both of hers. “Because I never stop trying, not since my sister.” She leaned just a little closer, drawing in Rowan’s scent instead of Lennox’s. “I know what’s on the line. That’s what drives me. So no one ever has to feel what I felt when Lena died. I will find Mia.”
Rowan’s expression softened, and he cupped Alex’s face. His eyes searched hers while the shadows passed over his face as they drove beneath the streetlights, and then his lips met hers. She felt the raw emotion in his kiss, the sense of urgency in his quivering muscles, and she felt helpless too.
He eventually broke the kiss and leaned his forehead against hers. “You were right, you know.”
“Right about what?” she asked, moving away to hold his intense stare.