Free Dangerous Disguise by Marie Ferrarella Page A

on.
    Pulling her hair from out of the coat, she turned to face him.
    “All right,” she relented. “A short one.”
    “Five steps, ten, more, your choice.” He grinned as he held open the front door for her.
    Jared waited as she locked up and pressed in the security code. Her back was to him, as if to block out his view of her fingers. He wondered what she’d say if she knew that he already knew the code.
    When she turned from the door, he held out his hand for hers. “Ready?”
    Pulling the collar up around her, Maren ignored his hand and began to walk around to the rear of the building. Beyond the spacious parking lot in the back, an empty beach stood waiting, separated by only a knee-high distressed brick wall. Jared swung his legs over with ease, then helped her.
    The moon was out, bleaching the sands until they appeared almost white. Stars dusted the otherwise black sky. It was a night made for lovers. Too bad he was working, Jared thought.
    She grudgingly took his hand and stepped over the wall. He glanced down at her footwear. She wore heels that were at least three inches high, if not more.
    “You might want to take those off,” he said.
    Maren looked reluctant, then gave in. He stood still as she held on to his shoulder with one hand, slipping the shoes off with the other. When he reached to take them from her, she held the shoes to her. He laughed, dropping his hand. Jared began to walk. “I wasn’t going to steal them.”
    She fell into step beside him. The sand was cool against her feet rather than cold the way she’d expected. “I prefer handling my own things.”
    He slanted a look at her face, then went on looking out into the blurred distance. They were the only two people on the beach. “How long have you been this distrusting? Or is it just me you don’t trust?”
    “I’m not distrusting.” The defensive tone was back in her voice. “I just like carrying my own load.”
    “Shoes are hardly a load.” Moving one step ahead of her, he looked back to peer at her face as they walked. “It is me, isn’t it?”
    She didn’t answer him directly. Instead she stared straight ahead, trying to keep other thoughts from invading her mind. “You remind me of someone.”
    He knew very little about her. Only the things that could be pulled from school records. Her personal life had managed to exist under any radar he’d had available to him. “And he was a bastard?”
    His directness made her laugh despite herself. “Not at first.” Memories pushed their way through the cracks. “At first he was wonderful.”
    “So far, I can see the similarity,” he said.
    Amusement rose and she was secretly grateful for it. “He wasn’t quite as cocky as you, but then, he was younger.”
    “How much younger?” Pressing his opportunity, he tried to take advantage of the situation and to coax any information he could out of her.
    A heaviness pressed itself against her chest as she remembered. “We were in college together.”
    “And he broke your heart.”
    “And he broke my heart,” she whispered more to herself than to him. Memories began to overpower her, the bad swallowing up the precious good.
    How could anyone hurt someone like her? “You’re right. He was a bastard.”
    She wasn’t going to cry, she wasn’t. Thoughts of Kirk had long since stopped hurting. But thinking of him ushered in thoughts of Melissa, the baby who died from SIDS. Those thoughts, she knew, would never stop hurting.
    She shrugged. “He was a man.”
    He didn’t want her thinking that way. Shutting him out. Then again, he was the one lying to her about his life, and when she found out the truth, he would be dead to her.
    Still, he heard himself defending his ilk. “The two are not necessarily equivalent.”
    “Right.” She nodded her head. “I should have said a good-looking man.”
    He knew that, because he looked the way he did, the amount of effort he had to put forth to get around women was a great deal less than