Just Like a Man (33 page)

"Do what?" he asked. "What's the important emergency?"

Her eyes fairly sparkled, and he could almost see electricity spiking there as she told him, "I have a key to Adrian's place. And Adrian isn't home. And he gave me permission to go over there and look around."

Several thoughts bounced through Michael's head at the announcement. Where had Hannah gotten a key to Adrian's place? When had Adrian given it to her? How did she know he wasn't home? What was she supposed to be looking for there? Who did she think she was, calling this an important emergency? And why was Michael here? She was acting like she planned on doing something with this knowledge and the key to Adrian's place, like go over there and have a look around. And that was just plain—

Uh-oh.

"Maybe you better start at the beginning," Michael told her.

Still leaning back against the door, her eyes still gleaming, Hannah said, "Adrian called me this morning and told me he needed me to do him a favor, because he's in Seymour on business, and he forgot something at home, a computer disc he accidentally left in the CD burner that he really needs, and he wondered if I could possibly go over and get it for him and drive it down to Seymour for him, because he's going to be tied up in meetings all day and he needs it by dinnertime."

Michael narrowed his eyes at her. Putting aside, for now, the fact that this was just a bizarre request on Adrian's part, and the fact that her mouth was running at a hundred miles per hour with her excitement about it, he asked, "Why do you have a key to Adrian's place?"

She toggled her head back and forth impatiently. "Well, I don't have it yet. But he told me where he hides a spare key. In the garage of his building, not far from his assigned parking space. And he told me to go into his home, Michael. We have permission to go to his condo and look around."

"No,
you
have permission," he said. Not that it mattered, because there was no way he was going to let her go over there.

"But I'm inviting you along," she told him.

"Oh, no," he told her. "I'm not going anywhere near Adrian's place under these conditions, and neither are you."

She gaped at him in disbelief. "Are you nuts? This is the perfect opportunity for us to go search his place and see if we can find out what he's up to."

"Are
you
nuts?" Michael countered. "This is a setup."

"A setup?" she echoed.

"Oh, come on, Hannah, even the boys in the mail room at OPUS know better than to fall for something this obvious."

She straightened up and crossed her arms over her chest, a clear indication that she was feeling defensive. "This isn't obvious. It's a legitimate request. Seymour is forty-five minutes away, and he needs something for a meeting this evening, and he doesn't have time to drive back here to get it. So he asked a friend—me—to do him a favor and bring it to him. I don't see anything suspicious about that."

No, of course she didn't, Michael thought. Because she was so damned trusting of people, even a crook like Adrian. "At best," Michael said, "this is an attempt by Adrian to get you to come to Seymour, and then he'll try to convince you it's too late to drive home, so you should stay and spend the night. In the same hotel he's staying in. In the same hotel
room
he's staying in. At worst, he's still here in town, and he's just waiting for you and me to go over to his place, and there will be a booby trap of some kind waiting for us."

"The caller ID on the phone when he called said it was a call from Seymour, Indiana. You are just too suspicious of people, Michael."

Now it was Michael's turn to gape. "Of
course
I'm suspicious of people, Hannah. It's my job to be suspicious."

"No, it
used
to be your job to be suspicious. You're just suspicious on a consulting basis now, remember?"

Michael bit back a growl of discontent. "Hannah, we are
not
going over to Adrian's condo," he stated in no uncertain terms. "Not for any reason. You're going to call him back and tell him you've gotten tied up at work, and you can't do this favor for him."

She lifted her chin defiantly. "Fine. You don't want to go with me, don't go. I'll go by myself and have a look around."

Michael started shaking his head before she even finished what she was saying. "Oh, no, you won't."

"Oh, yes, I will."

"No, you won't."

"Yes, I will."

"You won't."

"I will."

"Won't."

"Will."

"Hannah—"

"Michael—"

And just like that, they hit an impasse. She settled her hands on her hips in an "I dare you to try and stop me" way that made him want to stop her just about any way he could. And the way that came to mind just then was a way he would have enjoyed very much. Because something about her posture taunted him, tempted him, and he wanted more than anything in that moment to cover the room in the three quick strides it would take him to do it, pull her into his arms, and kiss her until they were both too addlepated to do anything.

Well, anything but fall to the floor and spend the rest of the afternoon making love.

And, oh, dammit, why did every thought of Hannah lately end up with the two of them falling to the floor—or a bed, or a couch, or a chair, or stairs, or into a shower stall, or a bathtub, or onto a kitchen countertop, or a kitchen table, or, hell, the kitchen sink, he didn't care—and spend the rest of the afternoon/morning/evening/night/sunset/sunrise/dawn/twilight/lunch hour/whatever making love?

And why weren't they making love now, the way he wanted to? Oh, yeah. Because Hannah would rather go over to Adrian's place and rifle through that guy's drawers instead of Michael's.

"I won't let you do this," Michael told her.

Her eyes went wide in obvious outrage. "Excuse me?" she said. "You won't
let
me do this? I don't recall asking for your permission. And I don't have to have it."

"Maybe not," he said. "But when you get over there and realize this is a setup, you'll wish like hell I was there."

"Then maybe you better tag along," she said sarcastically. "Don't want the little woman getting into trouble, do we?"

"The little woman won't get in trouble if she stops acting like a child," Michael pointed out.

She ignored that and said, "We might not ever have another chance like this. We need to take advantage of it."

"The only reason we have this chance right now is because Adrian is up to something," he countered.

"Then I'll go without you, Michael."

He shook his head in defeat. "Man. One little taste of intrigue, and you're turning into Mata Hari."

"And you're turning into Mahatma Gandhi," she told him. "What's wrong with this picture?"

Everything,
he wanted to say. Because this should be a picture of two people on the verge of discovering each other's most intimate secrets. Instead, it was a picture of two people who were about to make a terrible, terrible mistake. Hannah by falling for Adrian's ruse, and Michael by doing nothing to stop her.

Stop her? he jeered at himself. Hell, he was going to drive her over there.

He blew out a long, impatient breath and said, "Just promise you'll stay close to me when we get there."

Adrian may have been a despicable human being, Hannah thought as she rifled through a desk drawer looking for heaven alone knew what, but he sure did know how to live in style. He'd probably spent more just to furnish his home office than Hannah took home in a year's time.

Not that she was bitter or anything.

But the computer system whose files Michael was currently plundering was completely state-of-the-art—though she supposed, since Adrian was a big muckety-muck for CompuPax, he probably got a decent deal on stuff like that—and the furniture was all quality hardwood—teak, judging by the look and feel of it. Of course, she knew an executive of a company like CompuPax probably drew a pretty good salary. And, naturally, it never hurt to blackmail your former employer for millions of dollars before leaving, did it? Especially if your former employer was some hush-hush spy group like OPEC. Or OPRAH. Or OPERA. Or ODIOUS. Or whatever the hell the name was of the organization Adrian and Michael used to work for. OPUS, that was it. Even if, to Hannah's way of thinking, she and Michael were currently working for OBTUSE. That would be the Opportunity for Boneheaded, Tedious, Useless, Stupid Efforts. Because they'd been searching Adrian's condo for nearly an hour, and they'd discovered absolutely nothing of consequence. Not even a decent security setup they couldn't easily evade.

On the upside, they hadn't walked into a trap the way Michael had thought they would. And Hannah had done her best—honestly she had—not to sing,
Nyah, nyah, nyah, nyah, nyah… I was right and you were wrong.

On the downside, though, she now knew where Adrian threw his dirty socks and underwear at day's end. And she also knew his preferred brands of toothpaste, toilet paper, dishwasher detergent, deodorant, and foot powder, which would definitely come in handy, oh, say, the next time he asked her to pick up a few things from the grocery store for him while he was out of town. As for today's enterprise…

Well. Suffice it to say she'd never really thought about all the things one discovered upon searching a premises that one
didn't
want to find. Like the aforementioned name brands. And the aforementioned dirty laundry. And the skeezy cheeses in the refrigerator. And the sexually ambiguous, ah, equipment, in the nightstand. Not to mention the
enormous
box of condoms that indicated Adrian was either quite the hound dog or quite the optimist. Though combined with the aforementioned, ah, equipment, in the night-stand…

Well, suffice it to say Hannah preferred not to think for too long about what Adrian did in his spare time.

She closed one desk drawer and opened another, and reminded herself that
she
had been the one who insisted they search Adrian's condo. Even if, by some wild chance, it
wasn't
a setup, Michael had told her on the drive over Adrian was too smart to leave anything out in the open. But Hannah had been sure he would feel comfortable enough in his own home to have kept things here that might be potentially incriminating.

Okay, okay, okay. So Michael was the real spy here, and this just proved it, and she should have listened to him in the first place. He hadn't
had
to tag along. Just because he'd thought it might be dangerous for her to come here, that didn't mean he had to come, too. Just because he'd thought there was a chance Adrian would come home while they were here. Just because he thought it might even be an ambush Adrian had coordinated. Just because he thought Adrian was going to show up and catch them red-handed. Just because—

Her thoughts stopped right there when she heard the front door open and close in the other room.

Oh. No.

Oh. Damn.

She really hated it when other people were right and she was wrong.

Her gaze flew to Michael, who had halted with his hands hovering over the keyboard, obviously having heard the same thing she had. He lifted a hand to his mouth, holding his finger to his lips in the international sign language for,
Button it.
Oh, like she needed to go through spy training to know that was how you reacted when someone caught you going through his things. She snatched from the top of the desk the CD she'd pulled from the computer's burner—yes, Adrian had indeed left one in there—and made a face at Michael, then turned and left the room. Hey, he was a smart spy. He'd figure something out. She hoped. Real bad.

"Adrian?" she called out as she exited the office. Her heart was pounding so hard, she was afraid he'd be able to hear it, and it made her feel almost dizzy with the way it was rushing her blood through her body. Her legs felt wobbly as she walked, and she hoped like hell she could keep her voice steady. "Is that you?"

"Hannah?" he called back.

She strode down the hallway to the living room, and he came into view the moment she rounded the corner. "What are you doing here?" she asked. "I was just about to leave." She held up the CD and forced a smile. "Is this what you needed?"

He smiled back. "That's it," he told her. "One of my meet-ings was a no-show, so I thought I'd have time to run back here and get what I needed and not bother you. I tried to call you at school to intercept you, but they said you'd left." He glanced down at his watch. "That was almost an hour ago."

Meaning he wondered where the hell she'd been and what the hell she'd been doing since then, she realized.

"I went to lunch first," she said. "I was starving, and since you said you didn't need this until dinnertime, I thought you wouldn't mind."

"Of course not," he told her. "But now you won't have to make that long drive yourself. Thank you, though, for agreeing to."

"Don't mention it," she told him. "Anytime."

She covered the rest of the distance between them and handed Adrian the CD, then turned toward the front door, certain he'd want to turn around and leave again, now that he had what he'd come for, so that he could get back in time for whatever he had to get back in time for. So it was with some surprise that she watched him toss his keys onto an end table near the sofa.

"Don't you have to be going?" Hannah asked.

He shook his head. "Oh, I have a few minutes. Since I'm here, there are a few more things in my office I'd like to get."

"The office?" she echoed, much too loudly, and with much too much panic striking her voice. Worse, without thinking, she bolted in that direction, situating her body at the hallway entrance in a way that was clearly meant to keep Adrian from venturing any farther.

Oh, yeah. Mata Hari. That was her, all right. Smooth as extra-crunchy peanut butter. Spread over broken glass. With a pitchfork. In the dark.

Adrian halted in front of her, his expression indicating he thought she was as nutty as extra-crunchy peanut butter. "Yes, the office," he said patiently. Then, to make things even clearer, he added,
"My
office."