Rogue Commander. Leo J. Maloney

left her sleeping boyfriend to shower, letting the warm water clear away everything from the day before, the good and bad. It was something approaching a ritual, preparing her to leave for her new mission.

      She returned to the bedroom, wrapped in a fluffy white towel, to find him sitting up on the bed, looking despondent. She didn’t feel like dealing with him, so she just said, “Good morning,” as she wiped her exposed skin with a facecloth.

      “I wish you could stay,” he said.

      “Me too.” Her heart wasn’t into it, though. Not that it wasn’t true. It was just that her mind was already on the mission, and the danger to come.

      “I wish—” he continued. “I wish you could come live with me.”

      “Scott...”

      “Well, why not? I’m crazy about you, and I think you like me too—”

      “I do, but—”

      “Then what’s the problem?”

      She squirmed in her towel. “Headquarters is in Boston.”

      “Maybe they can transfer you over here. Or I can afford to send you to Boston whenever you’d like. Business class, private jet, you name it.”

      “Scott ...”

      “I mean, do you even need it? This job, I mean.”

      “Are you asking me if I need a job? Christ, do rich people know anything about real life?”

      “I wasn’t born rich, Lily. In fact, I’ve been rich for only twenty percent of my life. I know what it means to want money. What I’m saying is that you don’t have to do this job.”

      “And what is it that you think I should be doing?”

      “Someone as smart and competent as you—I could get you a job that pays twice what Zeta’s paying you, guaranteed. Hell, I bet you’ve never worked an office job in your life, but smart and ruthless as you are, I already know you’d make a killer executive.”

      “Well, technically—”

      “I’m serious, Lily. Even with gaps in your business experience, any company in the Valley would be lucky to have you. Hell, worse comes to worse, I’d hire you myself. We’d have plenty of uses for you. And it’s not like you’d need the money anyway if you were with me. I already have more than I’d know what to do with for several lifetimes.”

      That struck a nerve with Lily. “Have you considered that I wouldn’t want to be your lapdog? Or that I don’t want to work in an office where I have to talk about quarterly earnings and marketing strategies and profit margins?”

      “Is that really so much worse than risking your life?”

      “What, wasting my life on something I’d hate? Yes. I mean has it crossed your blinkered male mind that I do what I want because I want to do it?” Fuming, she stood up, the towel falling to the floor. “And has it occurred to you that you fell in love with me because this is who I am and that changing everything about that would make me another one of the many women you’re bored to death of?”

      “I could never be bored of you.”

      “Oh yeah? Just wait until I’m two years into a high-powered corporate job. Damn it, Scott, you can barely stand to talk about that stuff. Imagine if that’s what you had to come home to as well?”

      He stared at her naked shape, having a hard time maintaining his concentration. “It’d still be you.”

      “It doesn’t matter,” she said, “because I don’t want it. I’m not a damsel in distress waiting for someone to save me. I’m already exactly where I want to be.” She picked up the towel and wrapped it around her remarkable body.

      Scott took his time to reply and did not make eye contact with her. “Sorry, I guess.”

      “Don’t sulk. It really isn’t a good look for you.” She got into a pair of tight black denim pants from the night before. “Anyway, I’ll be back in a couple of days.”

      “Unless something happens to you, which isn’t all that unlikely, right?”

      “Nothing’s going to happen to me.”

      “You can’t promise that.”

      “Tell you what,” she said, clasping her bra. “What I can promise you is that, next time I’m in town, I’m staying right here with you. Okay? No more hotels for me.” She pulled on a wrinkled emerald-green top.

      “Yeah, fine,” he said without much enthusiasm. “That’d be good.”

      “Whatever,” she said, now fully dressed. She planted a perfunctory kiss on his lips, knowing that he was going to resent the dry farewell. “I’ll call you.”

      “If you survive.”

      She shut the bedroom door behind her, swearing under her breath as she made her way out of his labyrinthine house.

      Chapter Twelve

      Jenny Morgan came home to find Alex’s motorcycle in the driveway.

      Her daughter at home was a nice surprise, but oh, how she hated that bike. It was everything she hated about Alex’s and Dan’s lifestyle: risky and reckless and too damn fast.

      She knew that loving a dangerous man would mean a lifetime of worrying, and she loved him enough to live with that.

      Jenny went inside and set her purse and keys on the kitchen counter. “Alex?”

      Her daughter’s voice came from the living room. “Mom?”

      “Alex? Where are you?”

      “In here.”

      “What are you doing—oh my Lord, are you okay?”

      She was sitting on the floor, holding her hand up close to her head— and only then did Jenny see the handcuffs.

      “Yeah, I’m fine,” Alex said.

      “You sound awfully calm for someone cuffed to the furniture. What happened? Who did this to you? Was it burglars? Are we in danger?”

      “No, Mom, it’s fine. It was Dad.”

      “What?”

      “Mom, it’s really no big deal.”

      “No big deal?”

      “Could you let me out? The key’s somewhere in the kitchen. On the floor, I think. I’ll explain everything.”

      Jenny was annoyed by Alex’s attitude, as if she had no call to be worried at finding her daughter locked to a table, as if finding that her husband had left her there made any kind of difference.

      She just let out a weary groan and went to grab the key, which she found in the corner, hidden under the edge of a kitchen cupboard. She came back to Alex and knelt to unlock the cuffs.

      “I don’t suppose you’ll do me the courtesy of explaining to me why my husband left our one and only daughter chained up like an animal.”

      “It’s classified,” Alex said, getting up and rubbing her wrist where the cuffs held it.

      “Young lady, you will tell me what is happening.”

      “I can’t—”

      “Do not,” Jenny said. “I am your mother, and we are talking about your father. I have had it with being kept in the dark. I have had it with you two disappearing on me. Tell me what’s going on.”

      “Oh, all right. We had a bit of a disagreement about an assignment. I mean ‘we, ’ including our bosses at Zeta. I wanted to stop him from doing something stupid, and he went ahead and did it anyway. You know Dad.”

      “I