Midnight Assignment. Victoria Dahl

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       CHAPTER ONE

      “I’M NOT GOING TO LET you screw this up, Noah James, is that clear?”

      Noah ignored the question and watched Elise Watson’s sweet little backside as she walked ahead of him. Each of her long strides turned the gray conservative skirt into an intriguingly tight scrap of fabric before it relaxed into boring wool again. Then her next step would stretch it tight for another brief moment, cupping her muscles like a—

      Elise stopped so suddenly that he almost crashed into her.

      “I said, is that clear?”

      By the time she’d spun toward him, Noah had forced his gaze higher, and he managed to meet her eyes with a cool glare. He, after all, hadn’t been the one to screw things up the first time around. Elise had definitely been the one who’d caused that damage. She’d started the kind of trouble for him that had lasted two long years. Trouble that hadn’t ended until he’d stolen the Denver job out from under her nose and gotten the hell out of D.C.

      She was still pissed about losing the job, and her anger gave Noah an excuse to smile. “Whatever you say, Elise.”

      Her mouth tightened at his insolent tone. Her eyes narrowed. Elise Watson was about to lose her temper, and the agents waiting ahead of them in the hotel lobby were cringing visibly in anticipation. When she lost her temper, heads rolled, and Noah knew she’d be pleased as punch if it was his head bouncing across the faded blue of the hotel carpet.

      But hotel carpet it was, and he saw the moment Elise remembered they were in public. She couldn’t scream and cuss and threaten death, or the hotel staff might suspect that they weren’t really there for an emergency corporate meeting for a company called Workfire Industries. They’d already strained belief by holding their fake meeting two days after Christmas. If their supposed CEO started cursing like a sailor, punching Noah in the chest with her finger, suspicions would be raised. So her temper was thwarted. Noah was safe.

      Plus, he reminded himself, he was armed. Surely one five-foot-seven-in-heels woman couldn’t hurt him. Physically.

      She leaned a little closer, her green eyes ablaze with violence, but before she could speak, someone else called out.

      “Hey, Noah James!” Tex Harrison called. He was a forensic computer analyst, and though he looked like a scrawny seventeen-year-old boy trying to grow a beard, he was a genius. A perverted genius. Noah bit back a groan.

      “Noah, I heard you got an invite to party with the flight attendant team from your flight. Where are they staying?”

      Glaring, he gave a quick shake of his head, but Elise’s eyes slid back to him and caught the movement. “That’s not true,” he said, as if it could possibly matter to her.

      She swept him with a scornful СКАЧАТЬ