The Newlyweds. Elizabeth Bevarly

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СКАЧАТЬ length. Then she finger-combed her thick bangs, grimacing when she noted how badly in need of a trim they were. She was exhausted from the twenty-plus-hour trip and what had seemed like hundreds of plane changes, and what she really wanted most was to go to her parents’ house to shower and change and catch a quick nap. But she had work to do first. And for Bridget, work always came first.

      She’d been told she would be met at the airport by someone from the Portland field office, so she resigned herself to make do for now with the few hours sleep she’d stolen over the last twenty-four, and with the airline peanuts and the bagel and cream cheese she’d consumed while changing planes in Chicago. Her stomach grumbled its discontent at her decision, and she grumbled back that it was the best she could do.

      What time was it here, anyway? she wondered. She searched her tired brain, trying to remember what time her flight had been scheduled to land. Three-thirteen, she recalled. But was that a.m. or p.m.? Surely p.m., she told herself. Though, truly, she wasn’t sure. It was the end of April, however, that much she did know, because it had been the end of April in Vienna, too. And springtime in Portland, she recalled, meant rain. Lots of it. Of course, summer, fall and winter meant rain, too, but springtime seemed to be the worst for it. She just wished she’d remembered that before she’d packed her raincoat.

      Popping a mint into her mouth, Bridget collected her things and made her way toward the exit, scanning the crowd of people beyond baggage claim before she realized she had no idea whom she was looking for. Unless maybe it was that guy over there who was holding up a hand-lettered sign that said Logan. Being a good agent, and knowing a lot of things about a lot of things, Bridget recognized a clue when she saw one. Even in her sleep-deprived state.

      But she woke up a bit when her gaze wandered higher, and she saw the face of the man who was holding the sign. He looked plenty rested and was in no way rumpled, something that made Bridget feel even more disheveled than she already was. His hair was the color of imported milk chocolate, flecked with flashes of gold in the glare of the fluorescent lights overhead. Lights like that always made her hair look brassy, she couldn’t help thinking. And instead of travel-worn and disarrayed locks like hers, his hair was expertly cut and styled, not a strand out of place. He was dressed in the sort of suit most field agents wore—dark, nondescript, the kind meant to draw no attention—with a white dress shirt and plain blue tie. In spite of that, the man had drawn quite a bit of attention, Bridget noticed, because a trio of women standing nearby were all gazing at him with something akin to longing.

      Which wasn’t exactly surprising, Bridget had to concede, since the man was, in a word, gorgeous, his features chiseled and powerful and jagged, as if sculpted by the ferocious hands of an irascible artist. Instead of making him look dull and inconspicuous, the blandness of his clothing only made more appreciable his virile good looks. But his eyes, she decided as she drew nearer, were without question his best feature yet, because they were seductively hooded and breathtakingly blue. But not the kind of blue one normally saw on people. They were a dark, midnight blue, reminiscent of a twilit sky, that silky mix of purple and sapphire that slipped in just before complete darkness overtook everything.

      As she drew to a stop in front of the man, she noticed he was tall, too, something that came as no surprise at all. But at five-seven, Bridget didn’t have to tip her head back to meet too many male eyes. For this man, though, she had to tip her head way back, because he easily topped six feet.

      She told herself not to be intimidated by him—yeah, right—and did her best to sound efficient when she told him, “I’m Special Agent Bridget Logan.”

      He dipped his head forward in acknowledgment and gave her a quick once-over, the kind of appraisal any agent would give anybody, simply because it was in every agent’s nature to do so. But Bridget couldn’t get a handle on what kind of impression he formed about her, which was more than a little disconcerting since she had a real knack for reading people. It was something else that had benefited her in her quick climb up the Bureau ladder. As soon as he finished his silent assessment, he tossed the sign with her name on it into a trash can to his left, making the shot effortlessly without even looking.

      “Sam Jones,” he told her by way of a greeting. “Special Agent Samuel Jones,” he then corrected himself, as if he needed to make the distinction. As if he needed her to know he needed to make the distinction. “I’m with the Portland field office. Welcome home, Logan.”

      His welcome was as warm as the rest of him—namely not warm at all—but that was just fine by Bridget. She wasn’t all that pleased to be home, truth be told. Yes, she rarely made it back to Portland these days, but she spoke to everyone in her family regularly by phone. And although she missed them, she’d been too busy to feel homesick. It wasn’t that she didn’t like Portland. On the contrary, she loved being able to call the city her hometown. But she had things to do, places to go, people to see. She had a career to build. And returning here had been a giant step backward in that regard.

      “Special Agent Logan,” Bridget corrected his identification of her. She needed to make that clear to him, too. “So just what am I doing home, anyway?”

      “You’re needed for a job,” he told her.

      “That much I gathered,” she replied, biting back the duh with which she’d almost punctuated the statement. Exhaustion, she told herself. She always got cranky when she didn’t get enough sleep. “What I want to know is why me?” she elaborated patiently.

      Instead of answering her, Sam Jones—or, rather, Special Agent Samuel Jones—bent to pick up the larger of her two bags, leaving the small one for Bridget. An equal opportunist, she thought. She liked that in a man. Not that she liked this man, mind you, she hastily backpedaled. But he clearly wasn’t a coddler, and she respected that. She wasn’t a coddler, either.

      He tipped his head toward the exit doors. “Car’s just outside. You’ll be briefed on the assignment when we get to the field office. You’re expected ASAP. I’m expected to be the one to get you there.”

      He was obviously no-nonsense, too, something else Bridget admired. Still, a little information up front would have been nice.

      Without awaiting a response from her, Samuel Jones began to make his way to the exit, so she hastily retrieved her other suitcase and followed. Involuntarily, her gaze fell to the elegant expanse of his broad shoulders as he cut a swath easily through the crowd, and she noticed how much taller he was than everyone else. He turned his head once, to glance at something that must have caught his eye, and even his profile made her want to sigh wistfully. And seeing as how Bridget Logan didn’t have a wistful bone in her body, that wasn’t exactly a reaction she welcomed.

      Fatigue, she told herself again. She was only acting like a boy-crazy preteen because she was tired and crabby and hungry. She hadn’t been boy-crazy even when she was a preteen. She’d been way too focused on school, and way more interested in changing the world than in thumbtacking pictures of River Phoenix and Leonardo DiCaprio to her bedroom wall. Once Agent Jones dropped her at headquarters and took off again—and once she got some decent sleep and a decent meal—she wouldn’t give him a second thought.

      They walked in silence until Jones halted behind a black, commonplace, four-door sedan—government issue, natch—and thumbed the key bob to open the trunk. He hefted her suitcase inside, reached for the one she held out to him and repeated the action, then thumbed the key bob again to unlock the car doors. He didn’t stride to the passenger side to open the door for Bridget. And again, she grudgingly saluted him for it. He was obviously the kind of man who assumed a woman in her job could take care of herself. And she could.

      So it made absolutely no sense that Bridget should feel slighted by his gesture. Or lack thereof. For some strange reason, though, she did. Boy, she really did need to catch СКАЧАТЬ