Five Dates with the Billionaire - Alyssa J. Montgomery Page 0,63

of her hair back behind her ear.

‘Connor! Have you heard a thing I’ve—?’

He placed a finger up to her lips, cutting off her stern words. ‘How about you call Stanley. I’d like to hear what he and this agent have to say about what should happen next.’

He was exasperating!

Damn it all. She knew Connor would pursue her relentlessly. For now, she bottled up her frustration, dug out her phone and called Stanley.

He and Agent Roberts would be straight up.

She was so mentally, emotionally and physically spent she looked longingly at Connor’s broad chest, yearning to be wrapped against it.

He’s offered, Mia. All you need to do is agree.

No. No. A thousand times, no.

I have to stand firm.

Chapter Nineteen

‘As far as we know Correlli doesn’t know who you are,’ Agent Carlisle Roberts said ten minutes later when they were all sitting around Stanley’s hotel room. ‘He simply thinks you remind him of someone.’

The FBI man was tall and athletic looking and Mia had always found him intimidating. Tonight was no exception. ‘Lou hasn’t joined the dots yet, but I think he’ll keep turning it over in his mind until he makes the connection,’ she said.

‘You shouldn’t have been wearing your mother’s necklace.’ Carlisle shot her a fierce look. ‘Are you holding on to any other pieces of your past?’

‘There’s no need for that tone, Agent Roberts.’ Connor’s words were laced with warning and he placed a protective arm along the back of Mia’s chair. While she appreciated Connor’s support, she knew she deserved the agent’s wrath. She’d broken the rules when she’d taken the two items belonging to her mum.

‘Mia was a teenager,’ Connor continued. ‘You think it was easy for her to see her mother killed and then walk away from everything that’d ever been familiar to her?’

‘We don’t make rules up lightly,’ Carlisle shot back. ‘Every rule, every condition, is for the safety of the witness we’re trying to protect.’

‘Let’s move along, gentlemen.’ Stanley’s quiet authority went a little way to easing the atmosphere of antagonism that had sprung up between Connor and Carlisle. ‘What’s done is done.’

From the moment he’d entered the room it’d been obvious to Mia that the FBI agent resented Connor being here and knowing her background. Now Connor’s defence of her was making things worse.

‘I’m sorry.’ Mia was eaten up with anxiety layered in guilt. ‘I knew I was breaking the rules, but I didn’t think it would do any harm.’ She held her hand up in entreaty when Agent Roberts looked like he was about to give her another rebuke. ‘I brought my mum’s necklace and her jewellery box with me. Nothing else.’

‘Was there any other jewellery inside the box?’ the agent asked.

‘No.’

‘Alright.’ Carlisle stood and paced the room with one hand on his hip and the other rubbing back and forth across his forehead. ‘There are two main options.’

‘We discussed this downstairs, Mia,’ Stanley put in. ‘Each has merit, so tell us which you’d prefer.’

Her tension coiled tighter.

‘The first is the most drastic, but definitely the safer,’ Carlisle said. ‘We assume you’ve been made, give you a different identity and relocate you—possibly back to the States.’

The bottom dropped out of her world.

‘No,’ Connor said at the same time Mia shook her head vehemently. ‘Mia can’t be expected to uproot her life again.’

‘I don’t want to become someone else.’ Desperation surged through her and she shot to her feet. ‘I won’t be someone else and I don’t want to go back to the States.’

‘It’s okay, sweetheart. Nobody’s going to force you to do that,’ Connor said before he asked, ‘What’s the other choice?’

Carlisle’s posture was stiff. Ignoring Connor, he told Mia, ‘The second option is that you go on living as you’ve been doing, but with increased security. You stick to your normal routines unless we get evidence you’ve been made.’

‘And what if it looks like Giovanni’s found me?’

‘Then there are another two options,’ Stanley said.

‘How the hell are you going to know she’s been identified?’ Connor demanded before Stanley could continue.

‘Before I left London I put a team in place to monitor the situation,’ Carlisle said. ‘If anyone starts searching for Mia Simms online, we can relocate you immediately while we assess the risk.’

‘Relocate me temporarily?’

‘Yes. Until we determine the risk has passed.’

‘But what if you miss something?’ Connor argued. ‘What if they hire an investigator who has a more sophisticated way of tracking Mia down than online searches?’

‘You have no idea how these things work,’ Carlisle growled at Connor. ‘That risk