We were finally getting somewhere, but it sure wasn’t any place I’d ever wanted to visit. Super Agent spun me a web of deceit, double agents, and doubling down. Gambling, that is. Apparently, Chuck Puckett had his fingers in more pies than a professional pie-eater. I sat and listened, all the while trying to reconcile what Super Agent was telling me with the Chuck Puckett I knew. His tale just didn’t jibe…if you overlooked the Asian cowgirl thing.

“Are you sure we’re talking about the same guy? Tall, blond, talked like Madonna? Wouldn’t eat anything that grew underground or walked on two legs?”

“Of course.”

“You’re the super agent here; why would you need my help? It seems to me you’ve got almost everything figured out. Oh, except who really killed Chuck Puckett. It would be ever so nice if you could riddle that one out.”

“Did he ever give you anything to hold for him?” he asked.

“You mean like a bag of money or the passwords to his offshore bank accounts? No.”

“What about presents?”

“Just the obligatory Valentine’s, birthday kind.” Chuck Puckett bought me things all the time. Sometimes little things, sometimes big things, but nothing that sent up any flares for me.

“And you’re sure you’d never seen Trinh Pham before? Maybe in the senator’s office or home?”

“Keep saying her name and I’ll do to you what I did to Chuck Puckett.”

He clamped his legs together. “Sorry, it’s just that you’re the only one who’s ever seen her.”

“And more of her than I’d ever want to.” My thoughts skidded to a halt and rewound. “What do you mean I’m the only one who’s seen her? You know I don’t have a cat and probably know what movie I was watching when Chuck Puckett called, but you don’t have any surveillance footage of Slutzilla?”

Embarrassment tinged his cheeks again. I’d never thought a guy blushing could be so sexy, but Super Agent was making it work for me…big time.

“No. And you’ve seen her twice. That makes you an exception we think she’ll want to rectify.”

“Rectify as in…?” I made a slicing motion across my neck.

He nodded. “We don’t know who she is or how she fits into the equation. Our best guess is she’s a hired assassin who went rogue, but we’re just not sure. We think she might not have known you’d be there the night she killed the senator.”

“How do you know she killed Chuck Puckett? What about Thug and Boston?”

“Who?” He shook his head. “Never mind. You. You’re a fairly reliable witness since we know you weren’t involved in any of the senator’s activities, and you told the police you’d seen her there. By the way, next time you’re arrested, maintain your right to remain silent until your attorney arrives.”

“You say that like you think there’ll be a next time.”

“This wasn’t your first arrest.”

I crossed my arms over my chest. “What don’t you know about me?”

“I don’t know why you put peanut butter and jelly on a bacon cheeseburger.”

“Try it and you will.”

“Not a chance. I’m a vegetarian.”

His squinty-eyed grin did interesting things to the parts of me that Chuck Puckett had long left to gather dust. Under normal circumstances I would have been half in his lap by now, but even though we’d fogged the windows, the knowledge that other agents were out there watching us kept me firmly in my seat.

“Stop looking at me like that.”

I blinked innocently up at him. “Like what?”

“Like I’m a bacon cheeseburger slathered in PB and J.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about, Agent Poole.”

“God, you have a smart mouth.” His gaze dropped to my mouth.

My lips parted and my breathing sped up. His did too. The steamed-up car windows suddenly felt intimate, as though we were all alone in the world. He reached for me, grasping the back of my head, and pulled me to him. Our lips met on my low groan. This felt right, his body up against mine. It felt right and hot and oh, so intense, I thought I’d melt right there in a puddle of need and want. He made a deep-throated sound and bent me back to lie down.

All the years I’d had my old Pontiac, I’d never been so grateful for bench seats. I pulled Super Agent down on top of me. He was heavy in a really good way. It had been so long since I’d had a man on top of me. And he knew what he was doing, tracing my jaw with kisses, his hand creeping up under my shirt. Wrapping my arms around him, I brought him closer. He fit me so well I let out a purr of pleasure and wriggled closer, rubbing my pelvis against his.

He gripped my hip to still my movements and rose up to look down at me. “Keep doing that and it’ll be over before it starts.”

“Are we starting something? ’Cause it feels started to me. In fact, I might already be halfway finished.”

He grinned down at me, that cheese-eating grin I now associated with his being inordinately pleased with me. His gaze traced every inch of my face and I felt the longing mirrored in his expression. “You’re so crazy beautiful.” His words were barely audible, almost as though he was speaking to himself. “If I had you I wouldn’t want anyone else.”

No one had ever spoken to me like this. All I could do was stare up at him, completely dumbfounded.

“Do you think…” He cleared his throat. “Do you think we could put a bookmark here and come back later?”

“How much later?”

“Until we find Trinh Pham.”

“I told you not to say that name.” I pushed at him to get off me. Of all the things he could’ve said to me, that was the one thing guaranteed to douse my ardor. “Thanks for the cold shower.”

He sat back slowly, watching me straighten myself as though I’d vanish or something. “My job is hard enough as it is.”

I looked pointedly at his lap. “Not likely.”

“You distract me. I can’t get distracted.”

“Seems to me you don’t have a job anymore. You know I’m not a part of whatever it was Chuck Puckett was doing. You won’t tell the police I didn’t kill him, and I gave you all of the information I have on the Vietnamese Vixen. As far as I can tell your job here is done and maybe we should be too.” I was bluffing…badly. I couldn’t stop looking at him like he was a big ole giant bacon cheeseburger with peanut butter and jelly and I hadn’t eaten in days. Years, even.

“That’s the thing; my job with you isn’t over.”

“It’s not?”

He shook his head. “My job now is to protect you, make sure nothing happens to you.”

“Like a bodyguard?”

“Exactly like a bodyguard.”

I would have made a crack about the ways in which I’d like him to guard my body, but reality locked the words in my throat. It wasn’t enough that the tattooed tramp had banged then killed my boyfriend, leaving me to take the rap. I was now at the top of her hit list with nothing but Super Agent between me and death.