the opposite knee. He was thoughtful today, like he wasn't quite sure what to do with her. And she didn't miss the fact that as she took a seat on the sofa and began nibbling at the buttered toast, his gaze lingered hotly on her body.
Not to mention her throat.
She flashed back to what he'd said to her several hours ago: I can smell you, Dylan, and I want to taste you. I want you...
She definitely had not imagined that. The words had been playing in her mind, practically over and over, since he'd growled them at her through the door. And as he watched her so closely now, with a broody interest that was all male, Dylan could hardly breathe.
She dropped her gaze to her plate, suddenly very self-conscious.
"You're staring at me," she murmured, the silent scrutiny driving her crazy.
"I'm merely wondering how it is that an intelligent woman like you would choose the line of work you're in. It doesn't seem to fit you."
"It fits well enough," Dylan said.
"No," he said. "It doesn't fit at all. I've read some of the articles on your computer - including a few of the older ones. Articles that weren't written for that rag that employs you."
She took a sip of her coffee, uncomfortable with his praise. "Those files are private. I really don't appreciate you excavating my hard drive like you own it."
"You wrote a lot about a murder case in upstate New York. The pieces I read on your computer were a few years old, but they were good, Dylan. You are a very smart, compelling writer. Better than you may think."
"Jesus," Dylan muttered under her breath. "I said those files are private."
"Yeah, you did. But now I'm curious. Why did that particular case matter so much to you?"
Dylan shook her head and leaned back from her breakfast. "It was my first assignment fresh out of college. A little boy went missing in a small town up north. The police had no suspects and no leads, but there was speculation that the father might have been involved. I was hungry to make a quick name for myself, so I started digging into the guy's history. He was a recovering alcoholic who never held a steady job, one of those class-act dead-beat dads."
"But was he a killer?" Rio asked soberly.
"I thought so, even though all the evidence was circumstantial. But in my gut, I was sure of his guilt. I didn't like him, and I knew if I looked hard enough I'd find something that pointed to his guilt. After a few false leads, I ran across a girl who'd babysat for the kids. When I questioned her for my story, she told me she'd seen bruises on the boy. She said the guy beat his kid, that she'd even witnessed it personally." Dylan sighed. "I ran with all of it. I was so eager to get the story out there that I didn't fully check my source."
"What happened?"
"Turns out the babysitter had slept with the guy and had some personal axe to grind. He was no Father of the Year, but he never laid a hand on his son, and he sure as hell didn't kill him. After I was fired from the newspaper, the case blew apart when DNA evidence linked the boy's death to a man who lived next door to him. The father was innocent, and I took an extended leave from journalism."
Rio's dark brows arched. "And from there you ended up writing about Elvis sightings and alien abductions."
Dylan shrugged. "Yeah, well, it was a slippery slope."
He was staring again, watching her with that same thoughtful silence as before. She couldn't think when he was looking at her like that. It made her feel exposed somehow, vulnerable. She didn't like the feeling one bit.
"We'll be leaving tonight, as I mentioned yesterday," he said, breaking the awkward silence. "You'll have an early dinner, if you like, then, at dusk, I'll come back to prepare you for travel."
That didn't sound good. "Prepare me...how?"
"You can't be allowed to identify this location, or the one we're traveling to. So tonight before we leave, I will have to place you in a light trance."
"A trance. As in, hypnotize me?" She had to laugh. "Get real. Anyway, that kind of stuff never works on me. I'm immune to the power of suggestion, just ask my mother or my boss."
"This is different. And it will work on you. It already has."