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None of the people in the conference room had gotten there by being dimwitted.

The collective group looked back and forth between him and Piper suspiciously.

He pasted a fake smile on his face and pointed it in her general direction.

Thankfully, she caught the hint and returned a plastic, pleasant expression.

For the first time since she’d stepped into the room, he really looked at her.

Wow. He’d never seen her look remotely like this.

Gone were the combat boots, dusty fatigue pants, utility belt, and assault weapon.

She wore a tight skirt and a white silk blouse that hugged her curves until a man had to sweat a little.

And then he caught sight of those sheer black hose with a retro seam up the back and high-heeled, fuck-me shoes with sassy red soles. A definite urge to mop his brow came over him.

Jesus. She looked like a woman. A confident, sexy, all-woman one. The kind of female he’d steer way wide of in a bar. He wouldn’t exactly call himself intimidated by women like her—they just weren’t his type.

She didn’t look the least bit pliable or easy to manage. Frankly, she looked like hell on heels. It didn’t help matters that she was currently glaring at him as if she was contemplating shoving her hand down his pants, grabbing his testicles, and looping them over his ears. Right here, right now.

Huh. He missed the girl with the assault rifle. He knew where he stood with that woman. But this one? She was a mystery to him.

Piper froze as she locked stares with Ian. He was here ahead of her? Basking in the credit for her intel, no doubt. Bastard .

She took one aggressive step forward before André Fortinay boomed, “There she is. The lady who will be assisting you in finding and stopping the Scientist. I promise, she will pull her weight. She has a master’s degree in biochemistry and worked at the Centers for Disease Control before she came to work for us.

She knows the handling protocols if you encounter live virus samples. ”

Her gaze hardened into a killer glare aimed at Ian. She was supposed to assist the jerk who’d screwed her in bed and then screwed her career? Oh, hell to the no .

She said firmly, “I would prefer to be the lead agent and have Mr. McCloud assist me. The nature of the materials we’re tracking make my expertise crucial to the decision-making process.” Hah. Take that .

Ian replied evenly, “Given the dangerous nature of the mission to date, I would suggest that my operational experience is paramount and I should be team lead.”

Piper’s jaw tightened until it hurt. Her fingernails positively ached to gouge his eyeballs out. Slowly and painfully.

The Army general interrupted their burgeoning argument.

“This will be a joint op. Mutual cooperation, you two. Got it? This Scientist potentially has enough of the live virus to wipe out a major city. We’re talking tens or hundreds of thousands of deaths, here.

I need you both to share your toys, play nicely together, and figure out what his target is.

Find him and stop him by any means necessary. Understood?”

Chastened, Piper nodded respectfully at the general and those impressive racks of stars on his shoulders. Ian looked grouchy but also nodded.

“All right then,” The general said briskly. “If we’re finished here, we’ll let you two get to work while we prepare a flash briefing for the National Security Council.”

Piper turned on her heel and marched out of the briefing room.

She wasn’t about to scream and throw pencils at Ian McCloud in front of her boss and the assembled heads of the whole damned intelligence community—the very men she was determined to impress with the ability of women to play with the big boys.

“Did you drive here?” Ian’s voice muttered close to her ear, making her jump.

“I took a cab,” she bit out, vividly aware of the discreet surveillance cameras tucked close to the ceiling of the hallway and the wagging ears of the analysts adjourning from the conference room behind them.

She jumped again as a familiar hand landed lightly in the small of her back.

Dammit, her pulse still leaped at the contact.

And there went a shiver down her traitorous spine.

Her body kept betraying her by reacting to Ian as if it didn’t know he was an ass who’d tried to torpedo her career, and now would have a new and improved opportunity to screw her over.

She stopped in her tracks and turned to face him. It had the happy side effect of knocking his hand off her back and getting his stupid mouth away from her rebellious ear.

She spoke low, for his ears alone, a smile pasted on her face as she snarled, “You listen, and listen good, Ian McCloud. I’m going to complete this mission and by God get credit for it, and nothing you can do is going to stop me.

I don’t like you, and I don’t like working with you.

But I’m a freaking professional, and I’m going to do my job in spite of you.

As soon as this op is over, you and all your smoldering sex appeal can go straight to hell. ”

With a furtive glance up and down the hall, he grabbed her upper arm and dragged her to an elevator bank. He gritted out under his breath, “You can tear my head off to your heart’s content as soon as we get out of here. But until we’re in my car, for the sake of both our careers, put a lid on it.”

He had gall to order her around? Her ire climbed a notch higher. The elevator door slid closed, confining them in close quarters. She opened her mouth to really let him have it just as he waved up at the ceiling.

Instead of ripping him a new one, she blurted, “What are you doing?”

“Waving at the surveillance guys. Head of security for this building’s an old teammate of mine.”

There was surveillance in the elevators, too? Her balloon of rage deflated with an almost audible squeal of escaping air. No wonder he didn’t want her ripping him a new one until they reached his car.

Rats. She’d really been looking forward to letting him have it. She glanced up at the inobtrusive black glass bubble in the corner of the ceiling and smiled wanly.

Ian led her into an underground parking garage and to a pick-up truck in a numbered slot.

“You have your own parking spot in a Congressional parking garage?” she asked in surprise.

“It pays to have friends in high places.”

Her stare narrowed. This was exactly the good ole’ boy network she was out to bust. Or bust into, if she was brutally honest with herself.

Ian surprised her by unlocking her door for her and helping her into the cab of his truck in an old school act of courtesy. Contrite over stealing her evidence, mayhap? Or was there surveillance in the parking garage she didn’t know about?

“You look fantastic today, Piper. I knew you’d clean up great, but even I didn’t imagine you’d look this spectacular. You look like a cover model.”

Well, hell. There went another little piece of her irritation, bleeding away with his sincerely delivered compliment.

No, wait, dammit. She was furious with him. He didn’t get off this easy. She didn’t forgive him for stealing her evidence, and she didn’t forgive him for ditching her in Djibouti.

She also didn’t forgive him for being able to turn his back on her and walk away from her so easily either—stop. Rewind. Strike that from her list of grievances. What they’d had between them in Africa had been serial hooking up between strangers. Noth. Ing. More.

Big. Fat. Liar .

Aww, crap. This was not good. She was not still carrying a torch for this jerk. It wasn’t possible. Not after what he’d done to her. She was not that freaking needy, thank you very much. Except a little whimper way down deep inside her proclaimed her exactly that needy.

The internal argument between her head and her heart raged unabated as he guided the truck west through the downtown area toward the suburbs.

He was winding into northwest D.C. along choked surface streets before she finally exhausted her anger enough to ask tiredly, “How could you steal that stuff from my room?”

“I didn’t steal it. Well, technically I did, but I took it because I had a last-minute opportunity to jump on a cargo plane that was about to leave for the States.

You were exhausted and needed sleep, and I felt okay to keep going.

It was nothing personal. I just got the time-sensitive evidence back here faster than you could.

I gave you full credit for collecting it during the debrief. ”

“I could’ve gotten on that plane, too.”

“It was a Navy cargo plane. You’re a civilian. I’m Navy and could get thrown on the crew manifest as a supplemental security guy. You would’ve had to go through a pile of paperwork and get on the manifest as a passenger, and the bird was about to start engines. There was no time to process you.”

His unassailable logic perversely annoyed her. Did he have to be so damned reasonable and have a perfect rebuttal for every accusation she threw at him? “You still should have told me.”

They were stopped at a red light, and he had the grace to look genuinely regretful as he glanced over at her. “You’re right. I should have. I’m sorry.”

Dammit, he even apologized well!

Frustrated all to pieces, she searched for and found a kernel of suspicion in her gut that he was playing on her emotions. Hell, playing her. He was an ex-SEAL, after all. That bunch was traditionally known to dislike the idea of equality for women in the Special Forces field.