Donahue had ordered a special tech crew to come in and clean his bathroom of any residual gas as well as test to see what kind it had been, and he hadn’t resisted at all when Nina had given each of the crew members a complete pat down, one at a time, before she’d let any of them over the front door threshold. They’d come in with their gear and been gone in an hour or so, promising results as soon as possible. Donahue had been very quiet for the rest of the morning, at least with her.

The medicinal gel on Nina’s eyes was gooey and disgusting, but it had thoroughly rinsed them free of whatever gas had been coming out of that tube. She’d be coughing a bit for the next few days as her lungs recovered, but she’d refused the inhaler Donahue’s personal doc had offered. Irritated lungs weren’t going to slow her down.

If anything, Nina was glad that the first attack had happened so fast and had been so easy to neutralize. She was no stranger to hand-to-hand combat or weaponry engagement. She could hold her own in both. But it had been so much more impressive of her to handle this situation the way she had.

She held back a small chuckle as she remembered the look on Donahue’s face when she’d pulled the towel off it, then forced herself to sober. The threat itself had obviously been meant as a warning, but that didn’t mean she could take this any less seriously than if it had almost killed her client. After all, the fact that the intruder had been able to breach Donahue’s perimeter security in the first place was reason enough for her to be even more on guard.

Leona had told Nina this job was probably going to be an easy one, but it seemed like that was wrong. Donahue’s estate was supposed to be one of the best-protected in the world, yet someone had been able to get close enough to lob those tubes through the bathroom windows. Someone had been smart or lucky enough to get away before the rest of the security team could find out who’d done it. Most likely, the intruder had been assisted by someone on-site, and that was an entirely new can of worms, all of them wiggling free.

“Your eyes are looking better,” Donahue said. “Are you sure you don’t want the inhaler?”

She shook her head. “Nah. I’ll be fine. How are you feeling?”

“Excremental,” Donahue said flatly.

He’d showered in a guest bathroom and dressed in a suit. Solid navy fabric, tailored to fit his lean, muscular body. A paler blue shirt picked up the azure hints in those hazel eyes. What kind of bro wore a suit to hang around at home? The sort who worked hard to make himself look good, she reminded herself. A man concerned with appearances. Shallow and self-serving.

Nina herself had also showered quickly, right behind him, while he brushed his teeth and shaved, but she’d dressed in an outfit identical to the one she’d been wearing originally. Smooth black leggings tucked into serviceable boots and a matching, slim-fitting shirt with long sleeves. All her gear fit into a series of holsters on a harness she wore crisscrossed over her chest, back, and thighs. Come to think of it, she thought, it was her version of a business suit. Combat gear. What she wore when she was feeling vulnerable.

She thought she understood him a bit better all of a sudden.

“Can’t say I blame you. If you can’t feel safe in your own home, you can’t feel safe anywhere, I guess.” Nina watched his expression shift at her words, which had been honest but also meant to poke him a little. Draw him out. She needed to learn him, his reactions and emotions and responses, and not only from files or reports.

“Isn’t that what I’m paying you for? To feel safe? Yet the irony here is that hiring you probably opened me up to even more scrutiny and threats than if I’d gone with someone else. Smart offered me a different protector. You know that, right? I picked you because—”

“I’m the best,” Nina replied calmly.

Only fifteen NorthAm soldiers had been enhanced before the program had been shut down. All of them were forbidden by international treaties to serve their country because it had been deemed their enhancements gave them an unfair advantage. Nobody had seemed to care about unfairness when she and her fellow soldiers had been suffering in the line of duty. Nobody cared that she’d faced death and come back from it ready and willing to go back to fighting for and protecting her country, but instead had been relegated to private service.

Only three of the others, plus her, had ended up working for ProtectCorps. The rest had retired or gone into private hire. Donahue was one of only a few who could afford to pay for the level of protection Nina could provide. You’d think he’d have appreciated it more, if for no other reason than she was costing him a lot of money.

“You’re controversial,” Donahue said. “One of Smart’s other protectors wouldn’t have been.”

Nina nodded. “True, but you’re paying ProtectCorps the beaucoup credits for the best, and discretion is part of that. You think that something got leaked about you hiring me?”

“It must have. I can name at least three groups right off the top of my head who’d want me dead just for letting you inside my home, much less using your services, and all of them are ones that have stood behind me in the past. Hiring you, best or not, was risky. I knew it when I did it,” Donahue added.

“Maybe you should associate yourself with a better class of people.” Nina shrugged.

Donahue frowned. “Chemical attacks like that usually have a DNA-like string of components that make it possible to identify where they were made. If you find out where it was manufactured, you can usually figure out who was behind it. I can tell you already who did it, though. The team can analyze it, but I already know.”

Nina had been spreading a slice of whole wheat toast with strawberry jam so decadently delicious it was almost depraved. The man lived like a king. Better than a king, as a matter of fact, since the only kings still on thrones all ruled countries that had fallen into poverty, and none of them could afford real strawberry jam. She bit into her toast and chewed slowly, savoring every bite.

“Same group that’s been behind the rest of the most recent threats, I’d bet,” she said.

“Yeah. The League of Humanity.”

“Sounds like something out of a comic viddy. Wow, this is so good. You sure you don’t want some?” She could go days without eating if she had to, suppressing her hunger and running on energy reserves. She didn’t have to now, and she intended to take every advantage of it.

“That’s . . .” Donahue paused, his gaze flicking to her mouth as his own lips thinned.

She took another swipe of sweetness off her lips, wondering if she had jam stuck in the corners of her mouth. Maybe he was stingy with his jam. She wouldn’t blame him. This stuff was worth more than gold right now. Literally. “Hmm?”

“Yeah. It does. The name, I mean. Sounds like something from an old superhero book.” Donahue shifted in his seat. With a shake of his head, he reached for the pot of jam. Nina pushed the special spoon across the table to him.

“Here’s your fancy jam spoon,” she said. “You wouldn’t want to forget that.”

“What, you think a guy like me uses some plain old regular spoon?” Donahue’s voice had dipped a little lower than usual, something her enhancements allowed her to notice more than someone else might’ve.

Donahue wasn’t smiling, but still, the corners of his eyes creased to show that he did, at least, occasionally allow himself a grin or two. Those creases and crinkles were less a sign of age and more like proof the man sitting across from her might actually get his laugh on once in a while. She might not be capable, herself, of the same raucous laughter and giddy joy she sometimes flashed back to remembering, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t appreciate someone else’s good humor. Maybe there was hope that this assignment wasn’t going to be one long and consistent pain in the ass.

She sat back in her chair to eye him up and down. “Heavens, no. A guy like you was probably born with one of those in his mouth. Made of silver, of course.”

“Of course.” Donahue’s self-mocking tone softened as he spread a piece of bread with the jam and took a bite. He studied her. “You don’t know much about me, do you?”

Mindful of how he kept eyeing her lips, Nina wiped the corners of her mouth with a cloth napkin. It was hard enough to get him to take her seriously; she didn’t need to make a mess of her face, too. “I know what I need to know.”

“Sure. You know my height, weight, my eating and sleeping habits. You probably know the depth of my bank account, or at least some idea about it. You know the groups that have declared they’re out to get me. What else did you have to study up on before taking this assignment?”

“That’s about it. Nothing much else was important. I don’t need to know your personal history in order to protect you.” The truth was, she knew a little more about him than she was letting on. You couldn’t get past a gossip site on the net without spotting a picture of Ewan Donahue with a blonde on his arm. Nina didn’t spend much time on sites like that, and even so, she could recall half a dozen different stories about his social life. She poured them both coffee from the self-heating pot on the table. Donahue had the best of everything. Appliances. Technology. Women. She glanced at him. “Cream?”

“Black. I guess how I take my coffee wasn’t one of the things.” He took the mug she pushed toward him.

Sipping, Nina sat back in her chair again. She might look relaxed, but even with the mug in her hands she was alert to everything in their surroundings. Besides, a mug of scalding coffee could become a weapon in so many useful ways.

“Nope,” she said. “Preparing your coffee isn’t part of my job description. I’m your protector, not your future ex–Mrs. Donahue.”

“There’s never been a Mrs.”

She smiled a little. “Yeah. I did know that. An ex-wife, kids, that sort of thing would be a vulnerability.”

“And you would need to know about that,” Donahue said.

“Yes. It’s useful.”

His eyes narrowed. “But I don’t have any.”

“No exes of significance,” Nina said. “Not no vulnerabilities.”

Donahue didn’t seem to like that at all. Nina couldn’t blame him. She didn’t much like having any, herself.

“I’ve done everything I can not to be vulnerable,” Donahue said.

“The highest security. The best tech. Sure. But . . .” Nina paused, looking him over.

“But what?” Donahue demanded, his frown deepening. “If there’s something I need to be doing to better protect myself, I need to know it.”

Nina shrugged, uncertain how to put it into words. “Cameras and fences, even an enhanced protector, well . . . all that stuff can keep you safe, but it won’t ever keep you from really being vulnerable. Nothing can totally protect you from that, because everyone has something that someone else can use to get to them with.”

“Not me.”

She laughed at that, low and under her breath, and shook her head. “Right.”

“You’re talking about personal things. Ways someone could get to me. Personal vulnerability. Emotional.”

“And you don’t have any?” She scoffed. “Everyone has something they—”

She broke off, her own declaration a lie for herself.

“Something what?” Donahue challenged in a low voice, his gaze intense. “What? Love?”

Nina said nothing.

“No exes. No pets. No family,” he added after the barest second. “Anyway, love is a construct of emotion, ephemeral and insubstantial. You can’t hate or fear or grieve forever, so why should we expect love to last forever? Love is an emotion, and like all emotions, it’s not meant to last.”

“That’s so cynical,” Nina said.

Donahue pursed his lips. “Oh, and you’re not?”

“Not me,” she said with a small grin. “I’m super nice.”

She sipped again, savoring the heat, the flavor, the comfort of a truly terrific cup of coffee. It had become so hard to find real coffee after the fungus plague that had wiped out more than 90 percent of the world’s coffee bean plants. The synthetic replacement might suit people with less sensitive palates, but she could always tell the difference. Donahue had dropped some serious money on this morning’s beverage.

“Nice is not a word I’d use to describe you,” Donahue said.

Contemplating this, Nina let the steam bathe her face before answering. “How would you describe me?”

“Fierce,” he said at once. “Efficient. Determined. Stubborn . . .”

“Takes one to know one,” she murmured, and at the sight of his expression at her interruption, she added without much sincerity, “sorry.”

Donahue didn’t smile. “Strong. Impressive—”

“Thanks,” she interrupted again.

“Beautiful,” he added at last, and she didn’t have anything to say to that but a small bleat of surprise. “No? You don’t agree?”

She thought of her solid, muscular body. She had curves, but they were hard. She thought of her scars. Her eyes narrowed, her head tilting as she looked him over.

“Should I be grateful you think so?”

“I’m not asking you for gratitude,” Donahue said with a frown that told her yes, he probably had been. “I’m just telling you the truth.”

Nina took another slow sip of coffee, relishing the flavor and aroma before she asked, “And if I was ugly? Would that have anything to do with how well or not I can do my job?”

“Of course not,” Donahue retorted, “but it’s much—”

He cut himself off so abruptly she heard the click of his teeth together. They stared at each other across the width of his dining room table.

“Much easier to deal with me if I’m pretty?” She took another sip of coffee and savored the deliciousness as a way to keep the bitterness off her tongue.

“I didn’t say that.”

“Synthetic is never as good,” she said after a moment, meaning the coffee or maybe the long parade of blondes in all the media stories about him. “No matter what anyone tries to tell you.”

“Most people can’t tell the difference,” Donahue said.

“Most people have never had real coffee,” Nina pointed out. “Just like most people don’t have special fancy spoons for their jam.”

Donahue’s lips pressed together momentarily. “I’ve worked hard for everything I have.”

“I’m sure most people think the same about themselves.” She paused, considering him. “How bad were you hit on Gray Tuesday?”

Gray Tuesday, when a still-unknown, anonymous hacker had destroyed 90 percent of the entire world’s servers and backed-up data, wiping out nearly a century of stored information. Bank accounts. Education credits. It had taken five years of international chaos, rioting, and destruction before most of the population’s data had been recovered even at 15 or 20 percent, and there were still people who’d never recovered from the devastation. For Nina, who’d been in the midst of recuperating after her surgeries, the loss of her entire previous life’s records hadn’t been so bad. After all, she’d forgotten most of it already.

“I had most of my data on private servers,” Donahue said.

“Of course you did,” she said. “People who had enough money to do that were mostly shiny fine. The way people with enough money almost always are.”

Donahue frowned. “I don’t apologize for the way I live. I’ve earned it.”

The silence between them became too large. Donahue might be an arrogant pain in the rear, but he was her client. If it was easier for him to deal with her because she wasn’t hideous, well . . . it would be easier for her to deal with him if he was in at least a decent sort of mood.

“So,” she said to change the topic, “what is it about you that you think I should know?”

“I wasn’t born with a silver spoon in my mouth, first of all. My parents were both teachers. My sister and I—”

“You have a sister?” Nina interrupted.

Donahue’s expression darkened. “Yeah. Katie.”

Nina didn’t point out that he’d said he had no family. Maybe they didn’t get along. She had a sister she never spoke to. Not her choice and something she regretted, when she allowed herself to dwell upon it. That wasn’t often. At least she could no longer ache about that distance between them. That betrayal.

“Katie and I were ten years apart. She was my mother’s favorite.”

“And who was your father’s?” Nina asked.

Donahue’s expression didn’t change. “He didn’t have one.”

Something in the way he said it made it sound like a lie. Nina didn’t press him on this, either. Family was complicated.

“We never lacked for anything, growing up, but there weren’t a lot of extras,” Donahue went on without giving her time to speak. “After high school I apprenticed in a bunch of places, but settled in at a research and development corporation.”

Secondary education, once considered a requirement for anyone desiring a “better” life, had been replaced with more practical applications. During the Second Cold War, there hadn’t been enough people of working age left on the home front to keep businesses running. With tuition prices at astronomical levels and government incentives to enter the workforce, most kids of their generation had gone straight to apprenticeships.

“I worked in a dairy,” Nina said.

This stopped him for a moment. “You did? Really?”

“Yep. And for a waste management plant. Also for an industrial building factory. Making concrete pillars and stuff.” She grinned at him. “I’m good with my hands.”

“I was always better with my brain,” he answered.

She finished her coffee. “Then we’ll make the perfect team, yeah? Brawn and brains. Oh, and don’t forget the beauty. We both have that.”

“Yeah,” Donahue said after a second or so. Then, “You think I’m vain.”

“Is that what you’re calling it?” Nina said in a posh voice quite unlike her usual tone. “How practically pre-millennial. No, your self-confidence is galactic, as the cool kids would say.”

Another quirk of his lips showed that Donahue did, in fact, have something of a sense of humor, even if he seemed dead set against showing it. “And you think that’s bad?”

“I think,” she said, “it’s good to know your strengths.”

“You know yours.” It wasn’t a question.

“I like to think so.”

Donahue’s voice got a little gritty. “I don’t mean how fast you can run or how much you can deadlift.”

“I know what you meant. You want to know if I think I’m beautiful? Or smart? Or funny?”

“Yes,” Donahue said.

“Yes,” Nina echoed. “To all of that. Humble, too.”

He almost laughed, then. She saw it in the crinkles at the corners of his eyes and the way his mouth tried to curve upward, but at the last minute, Donahue kept his expression sobered. He shook his head.

“You don’t agree?” she asked him.

“It’s not that I don’t agree. It’s that . . .”

“What?” She challenged.

He met her gaze evenly. “If emotions aren’t meant to last, memories are supposed to. Memories are what make us who we are. They make us human.”

“And my memories don’t last.” Nina’s lip curled a bit.

“What was done to you was wrong, and I’m sorry,” Donahue said. “You should never have been implanted with that tech. None of you should have.”

She let her fingers trace a pattern along her thigh, where she’d had part of her femur replaced with a steel rod. That had nothing to do with the enhancement tech, although she knew they’d bundled some of the additional hardware inside the metal. It hurt, sometimes, if she worked out too hard, but never for more than a moment or so. Her body automatically adjusted to get rid of pain.

“I’m not sorry,” Nina said. Then, because she wanted to change the subject, “After the apprenticeship. What then?”

“I worked in the R & D program for a while, then got put on a team dealing with some new software that turned out to have governmental applications. I’m sure you can guess how that went.”

She thought he seemed relieved she’d turned the topic, and for a moment wished she hadn’t. What was it to her if she made Ewan Donahue uncomfortable with her truths? His had done quite a lot to mess her up, after all.

“I’ve had a bit of peripheral experience with government applications, yeah. So what then?” she said.

“Government contracts turned into big money. Big money turned into bigger. And bigger. And here I am today with a fancy spoon for strawberry jam.” Donahue’s grin was more genuine than any she’d seen from him so far. There were those crinkles again. If he knew how much more handsome they made his face, she thought, she bet he’d smile all the time.

Nina gave a small shake of her head. “Is that how you got into politics? Lobbying and legislation and stuff?”

“And here I thought you were changing the subject.”

“I was,” she said. “I can’t help it if the topic keeps becoming relevant.”

Donahue’s grin faded. “Yes, I guess it does. Look, Nina . . .”

She waited for him to continue. He frowned. It disconcerted him when she stayed silent, she thought. He was used to being argued with? Or perhaps having his ass kissed? She didn’t know or care. She’d learned more with silence than she ever had with words.

“It’s not . . . personal,” he added.

“You’ve been creating, supporting, and being crucial in the implementation of legislation that has effectively banned further advancement in the enhancement procedures since almost immediately after they were used on humans,” she said, keeping her voice light. “But of course it’s not personal. How could it be? We’ve only just met. You hired me to do a job that I’m qualified to do specifically because of the exact experimental surgeries you’ve worked to suppress, discredit, and make illegal. That just sounds practical to me, though. Certainly not personal.”

She’d gone too far, she could see that at once. Her response had been anything but impersonal, and far from professional. Nina lifted her chin, meeting his gaze, ready to take whatever he was going to give.

“Nobody talks to me that way,” Donahue said, but she couldn’t tell by his tone if he was pissed off or surprised or grateful. “They might talk about me, but never to my face. And anyone who does, doesn’t last very long around here.”

“Well, I’m not your maid or your secretary or the guy who trims your grass, and here’s the funny thing about my job security. If you want to fire me, you can, but chances are there won’t be anyone at my level to replace me. You’d have to settle for less than the best, and Mr. Donahue, you do not impress me as a man who settles for anything less than the best.”

His eyes narrowed. “You know my opposition to the enhancement procedures is what got me on the League of Humanity’s shit list in the first place, right? Their goal is to open all that research back up so they can use it to fund super soldiers.”

“Of which I am one,” Nina said quietly.

“Which is against the law,” he answered. “And beyond that, morally wrong.”

She again licked the sweetness from her lips, taking her time before replying. Morally wrong. As though her very existence were something to be ashamed of. Like she was a monster, better off being destroyed than simply being given what she needed to live.

“Do you know that I can taste at least three different flavors of berries in this jam? The difference in soil, the amount of sun or water they had while growing. Where in the field they were planted. All of those things gives them different qualities. I could never have tasted that, before.”

Donahue stayed silent.

Nina leaned forward. “I was dead, Mr. Donahue. Breathing, but dead. Do you want to know what I saw when I was dead?”

Donahue leaned forward with a gleam of interest. “Tell me.”

“I can’t remember,” Nina said flatly. “Not a onedamned thing. No white light. No chorus of angels, singing me home. I can’t remember anything at all.”

“I’m not surprised,” Donahue told her. “There is nothing beyond death to see.”

Nina had never believed that, and she didn’t want to believe it now. The blank spot in her memories between those last moments before the attack and her first recollection of waking up in the hospital haunted her more than any of the other myriad dark spaces. “I said I didn’t remember anything, not that nothing existed.”

“Nothing does.”

“You’re a self-professed atheist.” It was no secret and had been written about him in nearly every interview he’d ever given. Donahue had officially dissolved his affiliation with Monodeityism, which had surged into worldwide popularity and replaced most of the original faiths three decades before either of them had been born.

“My lack of religious belief is exactly the reason why I don’t think we should be screwing around with that sort of tech,” Donahue said bluntly. “If humanity is meant to evolve, it will happen the way it’s supposed to. Not because we fill our heads with hardware. Don’t tell me you’re a Monodeist.”

“I do believe in something,” Nina said. “I’m not sure exactly what. But I want to believe there’s something for us after we go. So many people have seen and felt and heard it.”

Donahue shrugged. “Are you saying you’d rather have been left for dead than brought back?”

“No. Do you think I should wish I’d been left dead?” When he didn’t answer, she shook her head. “Those enhancements saved my life. Made me more than I could ever have been without them. I would not be here now if not for those surgeries and that tech, and I will never regret any of it. But the decision to make the tech illegal wouldn’t stop anyone from using me or anyone like me for their own purposes if they wanted to. I mean, you are.”

“That’s different!” The snap of anger in his eyes was a sudden, sizzling zing between them. His fists clenched, and though she didn’t want to imagine the strength of his grip and how it would feel if he put those hands on her, nevertheless she found her own fingers twitching in response. “I’m not choosing to use you for anything that’s against the law.”

“But you could,” she said. “I exist. So do the others.”

“And I don’t think there should be any more of you.”

“Is the reason why you’re so adamantly involved in blocking all upgrades to the current tech and eliminating any future research because you don’t want super soldiers to be utilized in international combat? Or is it because you don’t want us to exist at all?” Nina asked. “Do you think we should all have been left dead?”

Donahue shook his head and looked as though he meant to answer one way, but chose a different response at the last second. “Let’s just say the reasons for my working so hard to stop additional advancement in those technologies is personal.”

“Fair enough,” she said lightly, though it took a lot of effort to keep from sounding caustic. She took another spoonful of jam and spread it on the toast. Chewed. Swallowed. “So, will I be collecting my last pay deposit from you, or not?”

She felt the weight of Donahue’s gaze upon her, but she didn’t look at him. She concentrated on the flavors of the jam and the bread. She’d survived way worse than being fired by some rich bro with an axe to grind. He could think what he liked about her. It didn’t make it true.

She was not monster. Not a moral dilemma. She was a person, full and whole, and . . . Nina’s throat closed and she couldn’t eat another bite, no matter how delicious. She set the knife on the edge of her plate and put her hands in her lap, staring hard at the white tablecloth. Her mouth tasted bitter, but she drank some coffee anyway. This time, she didn’t make a happy sigh at the flavor. She didn’t make a noise at all.

“What would you do, if you were me?” he asked.

Nina shrugged and found a scrap of jam in the corner of her mouth. She caught him once more watching the motion of her tongue and paused, assessing that look. She’d thought he was judging her for being messy, but the hint of heat there told her maybe he was looking at her in a different way.

So many of them did, those powerful and rich men and women who’d hired her to keep them alive. They looked at her as something to be used. Sometimes, she let them. They never figured out she was using them, too.

“I’d fire me for insubordination, I guess. I’m a lot to put up with.” Nina shrugged.

He sat back in his chair, arms crossed over his chest. “But like you said before. You’re the best.”

“I am.”

“And I don’t settle for anything less,” Donahue said with a small, quirking smile that helped to ease the tension, if only a little.

“Why should you? It’s your life, after all.” Nina pushed the plate away and dusted her fingers of crumbs. “I guess you could stop doing things that make people want to kill you. It would be cheaper, in the long run.”

“Somehow, I don’t see that happening.”

“Then I guess I’ll be sticking around, at least for a while longer.” She finished her coffee, wishing the richness of the flavor hadn’t dulled for her after this conversation. She studied him and put the mug on the table. “Look. I can’t do anything to make them stop coming after you. I do promise to keep them from killing you. Or causing you major bodily harm. But I can’t promise they won’t do something awful to your jam spoon.”

She liked his face when he laughed. It made him seem accessible and human and fun, the sort of guy you’d want to shoot hoops with. Maybe hang out by the pool. It helped her to pretend he was not a close-minded bigot who stood in the way of her mental—and physical—survival.

“I can afford another jam spoon, if I need one,” Donahue said.

She leaned to dip it back into the pot of jam so she could spread it on another piece of toast. “Thank goodness for that. I hate to think what you’d do if you had to use, like, a plastic butter knife or something. I mean, oh, the horror.”

“That’s really what you think of me, huh?” Donahue looked thoughtful, and perhaps the smidgiest bit offended.

Nina shrugged, aware she should watch her words but not caring in that moment. When she got stung, she tended to sting hard in return. “Does it really matter what I think about you?”

“Maybe. Yes. Of course it does.”

“Why?” She pointed her triangle of toast at him before tucking it into her mouth. She chewed and swallowed and this time was able to find a happy sigh at the flavors again. “I mean, in the end, why do you care about my opinions of you personally? I’m just a hired hand. Right? I’m a nothing.”

Donahue’s frown shouldn’t have made him as attractive as his smile did, yet the stern expression was still sexier than any man had a right to be. She was sure it got him places he wanted to go, but she’d hardly have to worry about that, would she? She wasn’t going to be a place he ever wanted to go.

“Sure. Right,” Donahue said but sounded as though he were disagreeing.

“Shiny fine, then.” Nina stood, hands on her hips. Brisk and matter-of-fact, bringing them both back to where this thing had to be and where it would stay. “So. What shall we do after breakfast?”