Free Secret Seduction by Lori Wilde Page B

offices.”
    Real fear hit her then and she thought of Carlo Vega. The man was capable of anything. Even hiring a hit man to take her out after fourteen years. He’d sworn revenge. “You have a dark perspective of the world,” she said.
    No darker than your own.
    “Comes with the job description.” He ambled back across the room, took hold of her heavy mahogany desk and pushed it as if he was moving Lincoln Logs.
    Vanessa tapped her foot. “Now what are you doing?”
    “Moving you out of the line of fire.”
    “This is silly,” she said, even as the fear filled up her stomach. “No one is going to try to shoot me from the grassy knoll.”
    He wasn’t listening. He was busy positioning her desk in a more secure location kitty-corner along the wall on the same side as the window. Now, with the wall to her back and the window to her left, she could see both the front door and out the window, but someone lurking about outside would not be able to see her.
    “As an added bonus it’s also feng shui,” he said. “You’re never supposed to have your back to the door the way you had it positioned.”
    “What would you know about feng shui?” she teased.
    “My wi—” He broke off and then said, “I’m a lot more feng shui savvy than I look.”
    She could have sworn he was going to say “my wife,” but she let it go. He didn’t wear a wedding band and he’d told her he was single over medium-rare steaks on Friday night. She’d chosen to believe him. Perhaps he was divorced or widowed, but she wasn’t going to ask. He had his secrets. She had hers. It wasn’t as if she was going to sleep with him again.
    Silence fell.
    They stared at each other and Vanessa felt the now-familiar sexual tug that pulled at her every time she met his heated stare.
    “Thank you for rearranging my furniture,” she said.
    Tanner looked surprised at her politeness, quirked half a grin. “Just doing my job.”
    “Are we through here?”
    He took her chair, which was still in the middle of the room, and spun it into place behind the desk. “I want you to know that I’m going to be around a lot.”
    She had to admit she was both relieved and concerned to hear this. Relieved because she was truly afraid of Carlo Vega, concerned because the thought of having Tanner around excited her far more than it should. What was the matter with her? She wasn’t given to flights of fantasy, yet every time she looked at him she found herself imagining things she had no business imagining.
    “If you need anything, Vanessa, anything at all. Even if you just need someone to talk to or—”
    “I know where the security office is,” she said, cutting him off. She had a sudden longing to tell him everything and that scared her almost as much as the threat of Carlo Vega’s henchman creeping along the grassy knoll behind her office.
    “I’ll leave you to your work.” He stuck out a hand.
    Reflex had her reaching out to take it.
    Big mistake.
    His palm was hot and hard against hers and he held on just a second too long. She kept her face a smooth mask, not letting herself reveal how much touching him affected her.
    As she watched him walk away, Vanessa couldn’t help wondering how on earth she was going to keep herself from seducing him again.

5
    “WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT our…um…mysterious occurrences?” Jarrod Butler asked from the doorway of Tanner’s new office in the security department on the basement level of Confidential Rejuvenations.
    On this subterranean level, the hospital took on a whole other personality. Like a well-bred woman without her makeup on, down here you could see the cracks in the beautiful facade. The corridors were narrower, the lighting dimmer, the temperature three or four degrees colder than it was on the ground level. Down here, there were no windows. None of the sunny radiance that greeted guests when they walked through the front door.
    Tanner glanced up from the data gathered after five days of analyzing