He reached out to touch a pen that had a microcomputer and phone in it.

Vannie, the head of the lab, smacked his hand. “Don’t touch. We’re still testing that one.”

Alan yanked his hand back and grinned down at one of their best developers. “Hi, my name is Alan Hyatt. I’m the new recruit.”

“I’m Vannie and I’m busy.” She looked at Beth. “You got that supply thing worked out with the chip manufacturer?”

“They’re working on it, but we’re probably going to be getting our product from Kulim. Is that a problem?”

“I need it now. How long is that kind of shipping going to take?”

“They can get here the day after tomorrow.”

“Good.” Vannie turned to go.

“She’s surly.”

“I heard that,” floated over her shoulder as she disappeared in one of the lab cubicles.

“Watch it. Vannie isn’t just one of our best developers, but she’s in charge of assigning gadgets for field operations.”

“In other words, don’t piss her off or I’ll be carrying last year’s technology into battle.”

“Something like that.”

“She’s cute.”

“I heard that,” came out in a growl over the cubicle wall and sounding ten times more menacing than Vannie’s reaction to the surly comment.

“She may be diminutive in stature, but she makes up for it in attitude and she’s too shy to be comfortable with comments on her looks.”

“Her? Shy?” Alan asked in disbelief as Beth led him from the lab before he really annoyed the other woman.

Beth just laughed, but she wasn’t kidding. Not really. In the lab, Vannie was a fire-breathing dragon, but out of it, she was quiet and definitely wary of men.

“I always wanted to be 007 when I was a kid,” Alan said as they walked back toward the main office and her desk.

“I think most of the agents here did.”

“Even the women?”

“Hey, don’t knock Jane Bond…when they run out of movies to make on James, they’re going to start on her.”

“Is there such a thing?”

“In someone’s imagination and in our department…yes. We’ve got a couple of female agents that would make Old James look like a has-been.”

“I believe it. I’m looking forward to meeting them,” he said with a wink.

They were both laughing when they reached her desk.

Ethan was standing beside it, his six-foot, three-inch frame towering over her empty chair. His sandy hair looked like he’d run his fingers through it and his green eyes were watching her with barely concealed impatience. “There you are.”

“Um…yes.”

She was used to his impatience, but not the unnerving way he was looking at her. Like he was really seeing her. She’d been noticing him for over two years, but the reverse…well, it was a totally new sensation, and not altogether pleasurable.

Those feelings zinging along her nerve endings weren’t pleasure, they were trepidation. Right. Of course they were.

“I was helping Alan to settle in.”

“For over an hour?”

“What? Have you been buzzing my desk every five minutes, or something?”

His lips flatlined, but color scorched his sculpted cheekbones, confirming her teasing suspicion.

She stared at him in shock. “I’ve got my cell phone on me. All you needed to do was call it.”

“It wasn’t that important.”

It had been important enough for him to come and hover over her desk, waiting for her return.

“I didn’t think you’d be gone that long,” he added.

“She was just giving me a tour of the facility,” Alan said, measuring the other man with an indecipherable expression.

“Impressive, isn’t it?” Ethan asked, with some pride, his tone and expression as if the antagonism had never been there.

“Very,” Alan replied.

Ethan had been recruited for TGP right out of special agent training and had been with the organization for nine years already. The possessive pride made sense…the antagonism did not. Unless he saw her as an extension of the agency and thereby as belonging to him first and the new recruit second. Strictly in a professional capacity, of course.

But she’d never seen this kind of territorial behavior in him before. It was really odd…and just a little exciting. Even if she knew it had nothing to do with her as a woman, or even being a person really.

Too much about this man excited her.

In her opinion, he was the best operative they had. Which also made him the worst candidate for her sexual fantasies imaginable, but she couldn’t stop thinking about him that way. She was just glad he didn’t have any idea about the thoughts that went through her head when he was around…or when she was alone in her bedroom at night.

Ethan fixed his attention on her and her whole body tightened with primal anticipation she fought to hide. “I need some things from you.”

Now why all of the sudden did that very frequent and very normal request sound so indecent?

It was all she could do to bite her tongue and hold back an offer of anything he wanted.

“I’ll see you later, then,” Alan said, drawing her eyes back to him.

He saluted her with two fingers like he used to do before saying good-bye. She nodded distractedly and scooted around her desk to take her chair. Ethan was back to watching her with that strange, inner-shiver-inducing expression. And he was standing much, much too close.

“What?” she finally asked in exasperation after several seconds of silence.

“What’s going on between you and the new recruit?”

“Nothing.”

“I don’t think so. Earlier, you could have cut the undercurrents with a knife and just now he was looking at you intimately.”

“Intimately? I don’t think so.” She knew Alan’s intimate look and that hadn’t been it. It had been more his “just friends” look. She was pretty sure. Three years was a long time…his looks could have changed.

“You’re wrong. He was looking at you like he knew you intimately.”

She rolled her eyes, putting on a good show of humored indifference, but inside she was gasping for air. Where was all this personal interest coming from? She couldn’t afford for Ethan to start to notice her as a person. Her feelings for him were precarious enough as it was.

“You’re imagining things,” she dismissed.

“I’m a good operative, Beth.”

“The best.”

He smiled in acceptance of the compliment and leaned back against her desk, his strong thighs only inches from where her hands had automatically gone to rest on her keyboard. “I got that way by relying on my instincts. I’m not imagining anything.”

She pulled her hands from the keyboard and pushed her chair away just a little bit, but the move did nothing to diminish the impact of his nearness. She could smell his expensive aftershave, the crisp clean scent of his designer T-shirt and signature black jeans, even the faint fragrance of boot leather so close to her. He was surrounding her with his presence as effectively as if he’d touched her and her heart wasn’t going to bear the strain. Neither were other, more demanding parts of her body.

She took a deep breath and nearly cried out at how dumb that had been as every sense went up a notch in awareness of his masculine appeal. “Even if you aren’t, and I’m not conceding anything, it’s none of your business.”

She was really proud of how calm and firm she sounded.

But he looked totally unmoved by her declaration. “Maybe, but I’m curious. And when I’m curious, I always find out what I want to know.”

“Curiosity killed the cat.”

“Not any cats I’ve known. You can tell me, or I can find it out for myself. I’m good at that sort of thing, baby.”

He’d never called her baby before and he said it so seductively that the word went through her like a five-alarm fire, sending every nerve ending clamoring for things she could never allow. How she maintained her composure, she had no idea, but she managed it. Years as the daughter of a mostly absentee father and mother who made Machiavelli look like a political novice had been good for something, she guessed. She’d learned to hide her emotions early and had to draw on every scrap of that ability now.