due to the traffic lights on Beach Boulevard, which stayed green for them 100 percent of the time. She had barely gathered her thoughts when the limousine drew to a halt outside the revolving front doors. Foot traffic was steady as usual.
As Eve followed Gray Man out of the car, she lamented her lack of heels and suit. She would have felt armored then. In jeans and a T-shirt—and reeking like a demon—she felt worse than naked.
They crossed the packed foyer on their way to the glass tube elevators. Unlike the last time she was here, she found the sickly sweet fragrance of the atrium flowers almost nauseating. She concentrated hard on turning off her Spider-Man sense of smell but it didn’t work. And then something else drew her attention.
The door to the stairwell where she had been marked.
Memories hit her in a rapid-fire series of heated images. She could smell Reed’s scent in her nostrils and feel his rough touch on her skin. The recollections were both disturbing and a turn-on.
She growled low in her throat. Her libido was now officially a royal pain in the ass.
“This way, Ms. Hollis,” Gray Man said, gesturing to an elevator that was separated from the others.
Looking away from the past and ahead to the future, Eve began to notice the number of stares directed her way. They were prolific. She tugged surreptitiously at the hem of her shirt and lifted her chin. When the elevator doors closed behind her, she breathed a sigh of relief.
Gray Man inserted a key into a lock in the panel and the car shot to the top without pause. She looked down at the atrium below, watching normal-size people shrink into teeny ants. So industrious. So inconsequential. Is that what she looked like to God? Is that why he didn’t care that he had set her life spinning like a top?
The elevator dinged, and the doors opened. Eve turned and found herself looking directly into a massive, well-appointed office. An intricately carved mahogany desk was angled in the far corner, facing the bank of windows on the opposite side. Two brown leather chairs faced the desk, a fire crackled in the fireplace, and a portrait of the Last Supper decorated the space above the mantel.
“Ms. Hollis. So glad you could come on such short notice.”
Her head turned to find Gadara. He faced away from her, his attention on a file he read directly from a filing cabinet built into the wall. He returned the file to its place, then closed it. The drawer front settled into a clever wooden facade that looked like a wooden chest of drawers.
“Mr. Gadara.”
“Please, call me Raguel.” He faced her and smiled.
She had seen photos of him, but they didn’t do him justice. Dressed casually in a guayabera and linen slacks, Gadara was no less imposing than he would have been in suit and tie. He was African American, his skin espresso dark, his salt-and-pepper hair cropped short, his cheekbones dotted with sunspots. His eyes were dark and ancient.
He assessed her from head to toe, then gave a nod that seemed approving. “I apologize for missing our last appointment.”
Her mouth curved slightly. He couldn’t sound less apologetic if he tried.
Gadara’s eyes narrowed when she did not reply. “Do you still want the job?”
“The position as described would be a dream come true. I’m sure you know that.”
He gestured toward one of the chairs set before his desk. When she was seated, he rounded the corner and settled opposite her. His pose was deceptively relaxed, as if this was a social visit. He had one ankle crossed over the opposite knee and his forearms rested lightly on the armrests. But his gaze was as sharp as a hawk’s and when he picked up a remote control from his desktop, she grew wary.
“I am not certain breaking into my construction site today was advisable then,” he drawled, pushing a button that lowered a screen over the windows, blocking out the light and providing the canvas for a projection.
As images of her accessing the computer at the tengu site flashed in guilty testimony, Eve froze.
Gadara smiled. “I could have you arrested.”
She pulled herself together. “If you wanted to do that, you would have done so already.”
“True.”
“So what do you want?”
His voice came with a sharp edge. “I want you to do your job the way you are supposed to.”
Eve’s erratic emotions kicked in with gusto. Her mouth spit out words before her brain fully caught