Tangled Sheets, Tangled Lies. Julie Hogan

find a way to get the hell out of this gracefully. Dammit, dammit.

      “Agent? Oh, that’s right, you’re a model,” he said, as he returned to his task, placing the loosened panes on a cloth he’d laid at the base of the window. “Didn’t I read somewhere that you’d retired?”

      Lauren stared at his back, dumfounded. Until that moment, she hadn’t been sure he knew who she was. And now, even though most of the western world knew what she looked like in her underwear, the knowledge that he did made her feel strangely exposed—naked even though she was fully clothed. She crossed her arms over her chest guardedly before saying, “Somehow, I can’t imagine you reading the tabloids, Cole, but those are the only publications I can think of that report such useless trivia.”

      He turned around, one brow arched. “I believe I read that in the Wall Street Journal, actually. The reporter seemed to think your retirement might affect the stock price of Boudoir’s parent company.”

      She’d read that load of tripe, too. “In a year,” she said with a shrug, “no one will remember my name, I assure you.”

      “Your name, maybe. But you I think they’ll remember.” As he spoke, his gaze never strayed from her face for a second.

      The intensity in his blue topaz eyes sent a wild tribal dance into full swing in her stomach, but she couldn’t seem to look away. The good news was that his attention had been effectively diverted from the phone conversation during which she was horrifyingly sure she’d said something about “working on her handyman.” The bad news was she was beginning to think that something about her handyman was working on her.