Free Stars, Love And Pirouettes (Dance 'n' Luv Series) by Roy Street, Alicia Street Page B

it looks in the movies. Gun fights with semi-automatics blaring, car chases.”
    “You’ve totally lost me now. What are you talking about?”
    She leaned in close and whispered. “About you being a secret agent.”
    He belly laughed. “Jenna, I love your offbeat sense of humor.”
    “Don’t play me, Aiden.”
    He paused and stared at her, reading the seriousness in her face. “You’re not kidding, are you?”
    “Okay. I get the message. I promised never to bring it up and I broke my word. Let’s just pretend I never said anything.”
    Aiden studied her, dumbfounded. “You honestly do believe me to be some kind of government operative?” A deep chuckle rumbled through him.
    Jenna slid off his lap and went to the porch railing. “You can stop the games. It’s humiliating and unkind at this point. Sorry I brought it up. From now on consider I have amnesia.”
    “I am not toying with you. I’m not a secret agent. Where did you ever come up with such a wild idea?”
    At first her chin went up in an indignant pose. Then she frowned and tilted her head, looking confused. And embarrassed. “Well, I… it was an accident. I was changing your bedding one day, and I bumped your laptop and saw this document about Briggs, a photint and some other obviously clandestine bits of intel.”
    “Briggs? Oh my God. Do you think if I were an operative I’d be that sloppy? To leave that kind of information lying around on my laptop?”
    She crossed her arms over her chest. “What about the phone call?”
    “Phone call?”
    “Don’t take me for a snooper—”
    “Which of course you are.”
    “I just happened to be opening my window when you were out on the deck talking on your mobile. You said something about an agent who died named Jim.”
    “Jim Golan was a literary agent. Died of a heart attack. I am not a secret agent, Jenna.”
    She looked crushed, and Aiden felt it like a blow to the gut. What a fool he was to think she might actually want him. Just him for his plain old self.
    His voice went flat. “Now I see what’s going on here. Sorry to disappoint you, my dear excitement addict. But I’m just a boring schoolteacher who likes to write. If you’re looking for 007, try Daniel Craig. No, wait. You’ve already got Sean Risk. I do believe he’s going to be playing agent Monte Blessing in Aftermath , that frikken spy movie everybody’s talking about. So you’re all set.”
    “How dare you judge me this way. Just because I had the wrong idea. Give me a break. Every time I asked you what you did you evaded the question.”
    No way would he tell her that he’d written Aftermath . Not now. “Maybe I don’t feel like talking about what I do.”
    “Then don’t get angry if people jump to conclusions. Or get crazy ideas. Or go off on some fantasy. What if I do have a weakness for exciting men? Handsome alphas who know how to please a woman in bed. As if men don’t encourage it and make their own ridiculous demands? Those gaudy lions flaunting their fancy cars, fat wallets and guido pectorals. Ordinary women need not apply. Only girls with movie star looks will be considered. We all survive in our own way.”
    He snorted. “It’s a jungle, all right. And we wouldn’t want a top-of-the-food-chain ballerina-actress like you turning into a bottom feeder, wasting her time with someone like me. You better go back to your lions.”
    “Is that what you want?”
    He’d expected her to take a stand. To either tell him she intended to do just that. Or to say what his heart hoped for: that he was what she wanted. Throwing it back in his court only frustrated and confused him. “I don’t know.”
    Her nostrils flared. “Tell you what. Why don’t I give you plenty of time to think about it.”
    Jenna turned and marched across the porch, made an effortless jump over the fence to the other side, and disappeared into her room.
    Aiden sank back down to the bench, the starlit night suddenly cold and