19

THE CHALLENGE

(Sixteen Months Ago)

“You mean he literally helped the old woman across the street?” I released an unladylike cackle and sat back in the corner booth of the Whiskey Room, where I currently held court with Simon and two other agents from their department. “As in, stopped the protesters, took her arm, and escorted her through an armed militia?”

“On my honor.” The smallest of the trio—a techy guy in plastic-rimmed glasses named Nathan who I was developing a minor crush on—held up his hand. “To this day, it remains one of the most surreal feats I’ve seen performed on the job. He was like Moses parting the Red Sea. And I’ve seen some crazy stuff, so you know that’s big.”

I wanted to ask him what some of those feats might be—just out of curiosity—but although liquor had loosened this group’s collective tongue enough to share Grant’s more impressive exploits, they were still a federal-looking bunch. And, yes, people can look federal. It’s all in the shoulders. Even Nathan, who clearly spent most of his time hunched over a keyboard, looked like he could handle himself on the mats.

If their impressive statures weren’t convincing enough, you only had to listen. In all my time among the men in black, one of the things that stood out the most was the way they paused a fraction of a second before speaking, running their entire dialogue through some kind of official internal checkpoint first.

“Okay, but that doesn’t really count,” I said. I turned my brightest smile toward the man on the end—Paulie, his friends called him, though the best I could tell, his name was actually Bernard. He looked more like a Paulie, with a calm air and a Hawaiian shirt I was pretty sure wasn’t regulation uniform. “That’s the kind of story a guy’s friends are prepped ahead of time to tell his girlfriend so she gets all swoony inside. I want to know the dirty stuff. The stuff he wouldn’t want his mother to know.”

“It’s classified.” Simon, who’d been characteristically silent until that point, narrowed his eyes at me. “We couldn’t tell you even if we wanted to.”

I was fast learning that an FBI agent and his partner forged similar bonds to those between a jewel thief and her cohorts. The two men worked together, sparred together, shot at targets together, pitched themselves into life-and-death situations together. They were understandably tight. And protective.

Just as Riker and Grant had never warmed up to each other, so too did I have a hard time sharing a room with Simon without feeling the urge to squirm and check my teeth for diamonds. I had the feeling he knew as much about my life as Grant did…and had about one-tenth as much appreciation for it.

“Well, I already know he’ll abandon a girl out in the sticks of New York the second one of you idiots call.” I smiled to show there were no hard feelings. Nathan, bless his bow tie–wearing heart, blushed. “I know he’s habitually late meeting his girlfriend for dates, and I know he sometimes works for so many hours straight, he actually slurs his words.”

I tapped my chin coyly and tried to come up with more seemingly innocent facts about Grant’s professional life, but they were surprisingly difficult to conjure. Most of the things I knew about his past had been gleaned the unethical way, via Oz and Riker and a search through the deepest, darkest parts of the Internet, and I didn’t care to share the things I knew that weren’t work related.

Call me sentimental, but I wanted to keep the wooing to myself, clutched to my heart and cherished in ways that would have shamed the Penelope Blue of a few months ago. Riker and Oz knew almost nothing about the dates Grant took me on, and Jordan got the blacked-out version, but there was fodder for a hundred journal entries, complete with swirly lines and googly-eyed hearts.

So far, Grant had taken me to eighteen dinners, seven lunches, one long, romantic walk along the docks—the ones of the near-drowning wharf job, in case you were wondering—and spent an entire afternoon teaching me to shoot ducks in a carnival game at Coney Island. I was a terrible shot, a fact that had afforded him infinite amusement, and he solemnly vowed to protect me from any and all future gunfire, since I was clearly useless on my own.

He’d also returned my dad’s record in mint condition, as promised. He’d hunted down the original cover and presented it a few weeks before with a shiny red bow. I didn’t cry or anything embarrassing like that, but I came close when he put the record on and twirled me around my apartment floor, the pair of us dancing beneath tangerine trees and marmalade skies.

In short, he was perfect. Ever since that day at the antique store, he’d been attentive, interested, and not the least bit pushy. It was starting to freak me out. He didn’t push for information about my dad, he didn’t push me to stop stealing things, and he didn’t push for anything more than the occasional knee-knocking kiss before sending me on my way. It was like he was on a lengthy stakeout, and I was the building he needed to watch.

Not enter, mind you. Just watch.

I meant that as euphemistically as possible. There was no entering happening in this building at all—and the building was seriously gagging for it.

I chose my next words carefully. “I also know he’s like a dog at a bone when it comes to certain cases. Especially cases that have grown blue from being out too long.”

The men’s reactions told me everything I needed to know about them. Paulie nodded, agreeing with me. Nathan looked sheepish in the way of men who always feel they should apologize for the general shortcomings of their sex. And Simon—oh, Simon—he pokered up so much, I was surprised he didn’t turn to stone.

So there it was. Paulie and Nathan didn’t know anything about me beyond the cover story, but Simon was clearly in on the ruse—and he was none too happy about it. I almost felt like I should introduce him to Riker. They’d have so much to talk about.

“There’s nothing wrong with being diligent,” Simon said.

“There’s diligent, and then there’s obsessed.”

“He’s not obsessed.”

“You sure about that? It looks a little like obsession from where I’m sitting.”

Everything that wasn’t already closed up on Simon’s body tightened to black-hole levels of impenetrability. His nostrils became pinpricks, and his eyes narrowed to serpentine slits. “I’d watch myself, if I were you. Don’t presume to understand his motivations—or how far he’s willing to go to get what he wants. You have no idea how long he’s been tracking y—”

His eyes opened again, as if suddenly noticing that we were in a bar and that Paulie and Nathan were looking at him with something approaching concern.

“How long he’s been tracking certain cases,” he amended. Poorly, if you asked me. It seemed that not all FBI agents were the close-lipped professionals they ought to be. Grant would have never let that slip—not even if I did everything I could to provoke him, not even if I started stripping off my clothes in an attempt to break him down.

A strange feeling of pride filled me at that thought. My boyfriend might be killing me with chivalry, but he’s a way better agent than you.

“Would you look at that? It’s four of my favorite people in the whole, wide world.” Grant approached our booth with a smile on his face and the top two buttons of his shirt undone. No combination of things could cause a flustered distraction as much as that. He had a marvelous chest—I saw it once when he was changing shirts, a brief flash of tawny skin and a smattering of hair. Those two buttons were like a peep show reminding me of what I couldn’t have. “I would have said my four absolute favorites, but I’m not sure my mother would forgive me. So I’ll cap it at five.”

Grant wasn’t close enough to give me a proper greeting, so he dropped into the seat across from me and nodded instead. It was enough—a nod from Grant wasn’t like a nod from mere mortals. Every action that man took carried a hundred hidden meanings. That nod said, hello. It said, I see you sitting here pumping my friends for information, and I think it’s cute. It said, I also hope you discovered something good, because it’s all the satisfaction you’re getting from me today. It probably could have kept going, but Simon intervened.

“How is Myrna, by the way? I haven’t seen her in a while.”

“Oh, she’s fine. Busy at the hospital, as usual. I’ll tell her you asked about her.”

“You do that,” Simon said and smirked. “What does she think of Penelope? I bet she’s ecstatic to hear you’re finally getting serious with someone.”

I saw through Simon’s ruse in a flash. He was baiting me. He was baiting me with Grant’s mom.

I tossed my head and refused to let it get to me. Of course I didn’t care that they’d been best friends for decades and that they had some kind of childhood tie that would forever bind them. Of course he had more insight into Grant’s personal life than I did. And of course I hadn’t met the woman who’d raised him. We’d been seeing each other for three months. There had been no talk of exclusivity. He’d only grazed my nipple once, and that was entirely by accident, even though I’d done my best to recreate the series of fortunate events that led up to it.

I was no expert on traditional male-female relationships, but I was pretty sure nipple play came before meeting the parents.

And if my throat hurt a little at the thought of how far out of the realm of possibility meeting the parents was, what of it? It wasn’t like we were dating for real. This was still part of the game of pretend we were playing. Cops and robbers. Good guys versus bad guys. Make-believe.

“She doesn’t know about Penelope yet, to be honest.”

“Ah, I see.” Simon’s gloating look was so intense, it practically gave me a third-degree burn. “I guess she wouldn’t, given the circumstances.”

A heavily shod foot nudged against my calf, and I didn’t have to look to know it was Grant’s size thirteen snaking across the distance to comfort me. Then his other foot did the same thing, and I realized I wasn’t being comforted so much as I was being pinned in place.

“I know,” Grant said and winked at me. Holding me forcibly down with his feet and then winking about it—that was the man I currently called my boyfriend. “Which is exactly why I’ve decided to take Penelope on a road trip to my hometown for Christmas.”

“What?” Simon cried.

I wasn’t far behind with the theatrical outrage, but resistance was futile with Grant’s enormous legs holding me in place.

I settled for a glare instead. “What do you mean, a road trip to your hometown?” I asked.

“You. Me. A rental car. Miles of highway stretching before us.” Grant reached across the table to cup the side of my face. “You’ll come, won’t you? I can’t think of anything I’d like more than for the two most important women in my life to meet.”

Wow. It took a low kind of man to make an offer like that in public, to foist a challenge in front of his friends, thereby making it impossible for me to back down. The crinkles around his eyes deepened, and that was when I realized he’d done it on purpose. He wanted me to say yes, and he knew very well this was the best way to get me to do it.

At any other time, in any other place, I’d have flatly refused the offer. But Simon was gawking and flustered beside me. Paulie and Nathan had smiles on their faces. And Grant’s feet still held me down, forcing me to meet him on the battlefield.

Oh, I’d meet him. I’d meet him and his sweet old mother if it was the last thing I ever did.

“That sounds lovely,” I lied.

The gleam of appreciation in his eyes almost made the sacrifice worth it. His thumb came up to trace my lips, and we might as well have been alone in the bar after that. “Perfect. I know she’s going to love you.”