Read Online Hard Target by Tibby Armstrong - Free Book Online Page A

her question. He’d easily used half the bottle before he set down the syrup. Alex tried not to picture him drizzling the amber liquid along her navel when he took his first bite and licked lingering droplets from his lips.
    “You’re going to get diabetes,” she said.
    He ignored the criticism and chewed, a thoughtful expression drawing his brows close. “They seem more interested in the frame than the painting.”
    Alex laid down her fork to give him her full attention. The eggs were rubbery anyway and she’d added too much salt.
    Another bite of pancake and a sip of tea later, Simon shook his head. “What I don’t get is how they knew I was with you. They couldn’t have followed us from FBI HQ. Could they?”
    Probably they had a tracer on his phone, but she didn’t need to tell Simon that. He’d figure it out himself if he thought about it long enough. She was surprised he hadn’t already.
    “I’m not as worried about that as I am about what you told them.” Her mind still fixated on that kiss, she stabbed a bite of his pancake, wanting to know what the inside of his mouth would taste like right now.
    Simon’s lips twitched as his gaze followed the fork to her mouth. “I told them the truth.”
    Alex chewed and swallowed the drippingly sweet mouthful before reaching for her water. “Which truth is that?”
    “I told him I’m seducing you to get information about your undercover op so I can burn you the way you burned me.”
    Seduce hit her animal hind brain at the same time her logical mind heard the words undercover op and burned . All of them tangled together, forming a trip wire that shorted her ability to speak. He’d blown her cover? He planned to seduce her? She gaped at him.
    “Oh please, Alex.” He rolled his eyes. “It was a joke. I didn’t tell them anything except that I wanted to get laid.”
    Alex’s hand jerked reflexively to the right, knocking over her coffee cup. Brown liquid ran in a river across the table toward Simon. He grabbed a stack of napkins from the dispenser and pushed them against the threatening deluge, holding it at bay before it hit the floor or his glasses. By the time he had everything cleaned up she’d almost managed to formulate a coherent response.
    “So that’s why you kissed me?” A pile of brown, wet napkins at the end of the table held her attention as she asked the question and tried to ignore the bereft, needy feeling in her middle.
    Withdrawing his wallet from his rear pocket, Simon flipped a few bills on top of the slightly coffee-stained check, covering his half. “That’s why I kissed you.”
    Embarrassment and disappointment made her stare at the traffic streaming down the avenue.
    “Sorry, sweetheart. I tried to make it good for you.” His tone went low and suggestive. He baited her.
    She snapped her head around. “Go out of my sight again? I will lock you up. This time, for good.”
    Simon’s hand convulsed against the table and a little tic jumped to life under his right ear. In that moment Alex had no doubt he hated her. He stood and walked out the door, leaving her to pay the bill. When she emerged from the diner, he waited in a cab alongside the curb. The ride uptown might’ve been the tensest in the history of Manhattan. Staring straight ahead, jaw working as if he’d chewed metal shavings for breakfast, Simon didn’t speak once. Not when she asked where they were headed and not when he ushered her into the elevator of the luxury high-rise he lived in.
    By the time they reached his front door, her nerves sang with all the aural finesse of a howling cat. Every move he made—the way his muscles bunched as he took his keys from his front pocket, how the line of his neck tensed as he bent to examine the lock—reminded her that this man who’d kissed her in a way that made her lips tingle and her knees buckle was off limits. For good. Though why she should care about a lying, thieving, double-crossing…
    Simon opened his front door