Free Intimate Knowledge by Elizabeth Lapthorne

effectively with it long.
    “It’s the ultimate accessory. You can convincingly pass as anything from a bum on the street to some high-society knob of fashion,” she’d insisted with a twinkle in her beautiful blue eyes. “Besides, I like the way it brushes your collar and falls like silk around your strong jaw. It makes you look… I’m fond of it like this.”
    David admitted only to himself it was her last point that had stayed his hand each and every time he was tempted to get rid of it. The way she’d looked at him when she had uttered those last words…yes. Soon he’d have to act on that. He knew it, and he felt certain she knew it too. Particularly with the thinly veiled looks of concern she’d been giving him lately.
    A slight shake to his head dispersed all thoughts of his sexy colleague.
    He focused back on the matter directly at hand. David knew he was in seriously deep shit. The woman had turned to a professional. He’d known from the moment he had felt her presence out in the woods that night that she was a loose cannon, the proverbial free radical and complete unknown.
    Subjects like her turned up in his professional life very infrequently. Despite the madness, bloodshed and complete mayhem of his work, true unknowns were practically unheard of. Everyone had a past. If one had the patience and skill to dig deeply enough into the research facilities at his fingertips, usually even the knottiest of problems could be unravelled, studied, categorised and most importantly of all—neutralised—with very little effort.
    Not even his heftiest of bribes and threats had unearthed the least intelligence on this woman.
    That concerned him.
    Deeply.
    The last time he’d come across such an unknown, such a deeply buried past and uncontrollable woman, was when he’d partnered with her professionally—eighteen months ago. Even after all this time, while they knew volumes of information about each other, she still shocked and surprised him on a regular basis. He could accept that in his special lady. He could not, would not, accept it at this critical juncture in time from a total stranger.
    David studied the townhouse, watching as the last of the lights were extinguished. He checked his watch, weighing his options and trying to carefully feel his way forward.
    He now felt certain the woman had seen him, but was unable—or unwilling—to identify him. Since he’d felt her eyes on him as he’d buried that damn box he’d been confident she couldn’t have seen him too closely, not enough for a positive, actionable ID. The simple fact her bodyguard hadn’t spirited her into hiding—or worse, gone to the authorities—showed a small trickle of luck still flowed his way.
    David calculated his plan of action with caution and precision. He needed to balance his own priorities with those of his mission and weigh it against the cost of what he was prepared to lose.
    Eighteen months of work, more if he included the background and preparation.
    When he thought of the situation in terms of what consequences he was willing to bear, one thing promptly became crystal clear. There was one item—one person—he was not, under any circumstances, prepared to risk. Not even under pain of torture or death.
    Everyone—everything—else could go directly to hell as far as he was concerned. His top priority was his partner.
    Suddenly, his decision and the path ahead of him seemed perfectly straightforward.
    Reaching into the inner pocket of his pea coat, David removed a slim, tiny mobile phone. He flipped it open then hit the buttons without needing to look at them.
    “Is everything all right?” a husky, sexy voice asked him drowsily.
    David smiled. Should this be the first time he’d ever heard her voice he might assume he’d woken her from a luscious, highly erotic dream, her voice thick with sleep and promising darkly of sinful pleasure. He knew her far better than that, however. He knew this was how she always sounded, at