Free CLOSE TO YOU: Enhanced (Lost Hearts) by Christina Dodd Page B

enthusiasm.
                  With heightened color, Kate busied herself with placing the pad and pen in her big black bag.
                  Teague picked up his earbud, slipped his transmitter into his inside jacket pocket, and organized the wires so they were mostly out of sight. When he wore this, it looked as if he was talking on a cell phone.
                  He opened the door for Kate.
                  She waved and smiled as she exited. "Thank you all! I look forward to working with you." As Teague shut the heavy door, she said, "I recognize Gemma and Rolf. I've seen them around the complex, although I thought they must work for a senator or something."
                  "You have a good eye." She did. She impressed Teague with how much she absorbed. "If you ever decide to leave reporting, I'd hire you."
                  "Thank you." As they passed the south exit onto Congress, she turned and headed toward the door.
                  "Where are we going?" he asked, taken by surprise.
                  "Starbucks. It's time for my double whipped frappuccino.
                  "Starbucks," Teague said in disgust. "There's coffee in my office.
                  "I want my frappuccino."
                  He supposed it wouldn't hurt to go outside. She was supposed to behave normally. Still he injected his tone with scorn. "A girly drink."
                  She grinned back at him. "I am a girl."
                  She certainly was.
                  A girl not so different from other girls, yet something about her drew him irresistibly. It wasn't just the way she looked. When he got close to her, she smelled . . . rich and wholesome. Most people would say there wasn't a smell that defined wholesome, but he knew better. Wholesome was the exact opposite of every smell in his boyhood. Nothing about the border town where he'd been raised had been wholesome. Nothing about the alleys and the rotting garbage and the humidity and the heat had been wholesome. So, he supposed, that made him the exact opposite of Kate Montgomery. She was wholesome, he was . . . not.
                  She came from money.
                  She'd probably gone to a finishing school.
                  She'd probably belonged to a sorority in college.
                  She probably had never done anything she needed to feel guilty about or heard a shrill voice from the past shrieking, Hey, you little bastard . . .
                  He needed to remember Kate was a client. Forgetting wouldn't bridge the huge damned distance between them, wouldn't give him anything more than temporary relief from a past that haunted him still.
                  Would haunt him . . . forever.
                  Autumn's first cold front was edging through Austin, sweeping away the stale humidity and replacing it with the first crisp hint of winter. Kate threw her arms out and took a long breath. "Isn't it gorgeous? I love winter in Texas."
                  "You've seen winters a few other places." He was making conversation, trying to draw her out and discover a clue about who might be after her. A former lover? An old friend? He was interested. Far too interested . . . far too enthralled with the glow of autumn's golden sunlight on her piquant features.
                  He automatically watched the people on the street, kept an eye out for the flash of sunlight on the metal of a firearm, and kept track of Kate.
                  "A lot of other places, most recently in Nashville." She made conversation easily. "We were there for the worst snow in years. No one knew how to drive in it. Everyone put their car in the ditch."
                  "We?" She was talking about that former lover he