Page 42 of Covert Temptation

His stomach gave a rumble of agreement, and he started to turn away from the computer when adingsounded.

An alert popped up on the photo hejustentered moments before.

“Impossible,” he murmured even as he clicked on the search.

He stared at the list of matches to the photo. Of course, Alyssa got a thousand hits. She was, after all, an ambassador, even if she was finishing out her term with plans to change her career path.

But Kennedy…her search only turned up a few things he already knew—assistant to Ambassador Vargas. Graduated from Wellesley College, a university known for politics, art and activism.

And the search revealed one thing he didn’t know. A new social media profile popped up. The name on it? Diana Prince.

He rocked back in his seat, eyeing the name he’d seen her use twice now. Why was it so familiar?

The name rolled around in the systems of his mind for several minutes, but he couldn’t place how he knew it. A look at the window showed that Kennedy was still outside, pacing in a slow circle around the fire pit now. The wind had died down, and snowflakes seemed to hover in the air like the contents of a snow globe.

He racked his brain harder, desperate to shake something loose. A sudden image of his younger brother Kane flashed through his mind—ten years old, black hair falling into his eyes, always in need of a trim. Kane, hunched over a borrowed comic book from the library, lips moving silently as he devoured every panel.

Diana Prince.

That was it. The superheroine Wonder Woman’s real name.

Dante sat up straighter and typed the name into a popular social media site. Dozens of profiles popped up. None of them were Kennedy. He tried again on another platform—more hits, but still no match. No profile pictures were even remotely close.

But itwassomething. The system rarely made mistakes. At some point, she’d used that name as an alias.

If he had to guess, she’d wiped it all, scrubbed the evidence. What was left was barely a digital echo—just a faint footprint that suggested she’d once existed more openly, more freely.

The front door creaked open, and a gust of winter air swept into the living room.

Dante didn’t look up right away, just kept his hands on the keyboard, letting her presence settle behind him. Then he turned, calm and steady.

“Hello, Diana.”

She froze in the doorway.

Her chest lifted with a slow, deliberate inhale. For a second, he expected her to pivot and run back out into the cold.

But she didn’t.

She stayed.

Because she’d made a promise. And whatever else Kennedy Bloom might be hiding, she was a woman who kept her word.

* * * * *

The sofa springs creaked under Kennedy when she plopped down hard. A dozen questions blasted through her mind, jamming all the circuits.

Dante had dug even deeper than she ever believed someone could. If he knew the fake name she used for just a short time on the internet, he knew too much.

She thought all that had been well hidden years andyearsago.

Kennedy didn’t want anyone digging up those parts of her past—things that would have compromised her ability to get her dream job.

She might have fibbed a little on her job application, which the government frowned upon.

She also lied—by omission—in all her interviews, leaving out part of her job history.

I’m in so much trouble.

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