so only half of his tattoo on the inside of his arm was visible. He wore a military-looking watch with a thick, black band next to it, and she was unable to remove her eyes from it for some reason.
“I didn’t break in. I had a key.”
“Then why worry about the cameras?”
“I can’t tell you anything, especially without knowing what you were doing there.” Her eyes zipped back to his face. “It’s complicated,” she added, feeling a bit guilty since the man had helped her out of a major jam. “But maybe it’s time we go separate ways since we’re both closed books.”
“How can I leave you after someone attacked you tonight?”
“It was a wrong-place, wrong-time situation. No one sought me out.” Only you, apparently.
“You don’t actually believe that, do you?” A.J. stepped closer, and she walked backward into the coffee table.
“Were you hired to spy on FBI agents? Are you being paid to follow me?” It was the only thing that made sense. Someone in the upper echelon of the FBI must have thought there was a leak and didn’t want to spook anyone on Ana’s team, so they outsourced for help. Winters hadn’t believed in their innocence earlier as he’d claimed.
But the Bureau wouldn’t outsource this to a civilian company. No, it had to be someone within the government with high-level security clearance. And that meant her theories about A.J. were correct. Scott & Scott Securities was a front for a covert team of operatives.
“Why would a man like me be hired to follow an FBI agent?”
She reached for his ball cap once again and removed it, hoping he didn’t seize her wrist this time and feel the increase of her pulse, but she needed to see his entire face to read him better. “Because you and I both know what you really do.”
He leaned in, the smell of mint on his breath—when did he pop a mint in his mouth?—and his eyes drilled straight into her. “And what is that?”
She lifted her chin and moved in closer, putting them almost nose to nose. “You’re an Avenger, remember?”
Chapter Ten
After the playful, seductive way Ana had made the vigilante Avenger jab, A.J.’s heart exploded in his chest. His entire body was more alive than when in the middle of a gunfight with a bunch of Talibani terrorists.
The gorgeous redhead, with eyes capable of seducing him to the most dangerous of waters, had him wrapped tight around her finger without even trying.
No woman, including his only real relationship outside of high school, had ever had him tongue-tied before. And was it sad that he’d just turned thirty-eight and hadn’t been in something real in over a decade?
Ana began straightening the pillows on her living room couch, then moved on to the stack of magazines on the coffee table, clearly anxious to hear news from A.J.’s team.
Panic-cleaning?
With his back to the column in the room, he eyed her as she bent over to retrieve the TV remote that had fallen on the floor, and he became mesmerized by the woman’s ass in those black jeans. She had to do Pilates. Yoga, maybe. Something that tightened and lifted her butt to perfection.
Her top came untucked, and when she stood upright and faced him, she began fidgeting with the material. The woman was a bit high-strung, but . . . damn.
Headstrong, guarded, and stubborn one minute—playful, sexy, and witty the next. He couldn’t always get a read on her, but he was pretty sure Ana was confused by her behavior when around him.
While sitting in his SUV an hour ago, watching Ana slip around to Porter’s backyard, his hand had remained frozen and hovering over his cell phone to alert Harper to what Ana was doing, but he hadn’t been able to rat her out. Not without knowing more. He wanted answers from the source herself as to why she’d go into her boss’s house dressed like a burglar.
He hadn’t expected the gunshot shortly after she’d gone inside.
And when A.J. had rushed through the unlocked back door, the masked man had caught him off guard and barreled straight for him, arm outstretched, a firearm in his hand.
He didn’t want to shoot the man first and ask questions later since he was on U.S. soil and rules of engagement were a bit stricter. But damn, he’d swear ever since his fall Saturday, the random dizzy spells, the ones that felt like his head was filled with air, had him off-kilter.