Page 3 of Critical Mass
Her gaze stopped on a man leaning against the boardwalk railing. She didn’t recognize the man, who was dressed casuallyin jeans and a white T-shirt. Though he wore sunglasses, he appeared to be looking at the water.
But as she stood there, the man slowly looked over his shoulder.
Looked her way.
At her?
She couldn’t be sure with the sunglasses.
As easily as he’d turned her direction, he casually turned back toward the water.
Who was that man? Had he been watching her? Or was her imagination working overtime after that phone call with her father?
She wasn’t sure.
But she hurried back inside, suddenly feeling exposed.
Something was wrong.
Hudson Roberts—alias Timothy Shaw—watched as Natalie returned to their table. Even in the fading sunlight, she was striking.
She was petite and graceful with delicate features that could shift from girl-next-door approachable to elegant sophistication in a heartbeat. Her dark-brown hair fell in soft waves past her shoulders, and those expressive brown eyes, which had captivated him from their first cooking class, now held something he couldn’t quite read.
She had the kind of classic beauty that didn’t need enhancement, though the way the light played across her fine-boned face made her look almost ethereal.
However, right now her smile seemed too bright, her movements just a fraction too careful.
For the past hour, she’d exuded a warmth that had made him forget exactly why he was here.
Which was dangerous within itself.
But now that warmth had vanished and was replaced with . . . something he couldn’t put his finger on. What had changed with that phone call?
“Everything okay?” he asked as Natalie slid back into her chair.
“Just work drama.” She reached for her water glass, but her hand wasn’t quite steady as she lifted it. “You know how it is.”
He did know what work drama was like, though his version involved hostile extraction zones and split-second decisions that could get people killed. Missions that went sideways when intelligence turned out to be wrong. Partners who didn’t make it home.
The kind of work where “drama” meant bullets flying and blood on your hands, not office politics or difficult clients.
His work drama also required lying to people he cared about.
The knowledge sat in his chest like a lead weight. Getting to know Natalie had been a long-term assignment.
It had required three months of careful deception, three months of “dating” Richard Ravenscroft’s daughter while investigating her father and trying to figure out if he was the leader of Sigma, a terrorist organization determined to bring mass destruction to the United States.
Falling for Natalie hadn’t been in his job description.
But some things couldn’t be predicted.
He snapped from guilt-ridden thoughts and turned his focus back to Natalie, remembering he still had a mission to accomplish. “Do you want to talk about it?”
“Not really.” She managed a smile. “I’d rather talk about you. Aboutus.”
The words hit him like a physical blow. There was no “us”—not really. There was Hudson Roberts, Blackout operative, and there was Timothy Shaw, the fictional persona he’d created for this assignment.
Then there was Natalie Ravenscroft, daughter of potential crime lord Richard Ravenscroft and corporate communications director for his shipping company. She was caught in the middle of something she couldn’t possibly understand.
