Show No Fear - By Marliss Melton Page 0,6

larger body.

“No,” she countered, giving him her most stubborn look.

In a gesture that she recognized from their college days, he turned away, jamming his fingers through his russet-brown, neatly trimmed hair. With a muttered curse, he punched the button for the elevator again.

His vehemence gave Lucy pause—that and the implication that he truly cared about her well-being. “Why does it matter to you so much, anyway?” she asked, remembering with a pang the tenderness he used to show her.

He swung slowly back around. “Because now I’m your partner,” he articulated with a tremor in his voice. “And now it’s my freaking job to keep you alive.”

“I don’t need you to keep me alive,” she retorted. The thought was ridiculous. She’d done fine on her own all these years.

His eyelashes came together as he glared at her with flashing eyes. “Is that right?” he countered softly. “How many ops have you done in the jungle, Lucy?”

She opened her mouth to shoot back an answer, then closed it with a snap. “None,” she admitted, self-consciousness pinching her cheeks.

He raked her with another look, this one reflecting honest fear and concern. Then he turned and walked away.

“Where are you going?” she asked, frustrated by her inability to get a good read on him. Why was he so against her involvement?

Without a word, he pushed through the door marked EXIT.

She had the answer to her spoken question, but not the unspoken one. He was taking the stairs.

CHAPTER 2

A thumping noise in the hotel room next door brought Gus’s eyes wide open. He had just lain down, drained by their mentally exhausting dinner with Carlos, doomed to suffer dreams of Lucy imperiled in the jungle. It was 11:30 p.m., and by the sound of things she was still awake, doing jumping jacks.

He already knew she rarely slept. His sources claimed she liked to run at night, up to ten miles at a time. Maybe she was warming up for a run.

At night in New York City?

He sat up with a start, throwing off the covers. Surely she was smarter than that.

In the dark, he fumbled for his sweatpants, searched for his socks and sneakers. He was jamming his head through a T-shirt when her door thudded shut.

Shit!

Feeling a little like a stalker, he peeked outside his own door in time to see her turn the corner. She had changed out of a tiny black dress and into shorts, a jogging bra, and tennis shoes. She wouldn’t thank him for trying to dissuade her from a run, any more than she’d thanked him for suggesting she turn down the assignment. Doing that had driven a wedge between them that even Carlos had detected, urging them to reconcile their differences before the outset of their trip.

There was no time like the present, thought Gus. With their plane departing in two days, they might as well strike a truce. As partners, they had to think and act as one.

Darting down the hallway, he turned the corner in time to see the elevator close with her inside it. Punching the button for a second elevator, he waited to see where she stopped—the mezzanine level, where the indoor gym was located. Of course, she wasn’t so stupid as to go for a run outside.

By the time he joined her in the glass-enclosed fitness center, she was running like a mouse on a wheel, flying like the wind and getting nowhere.

The look of surprise on her face was worth losing sleep for. He was glad to see they had the place to themselves.

“What are you doing here?” she demanded, removing a pair of earbuds.

His gaze slid to the alluring expanse of her bare abdomen, which looked smooth and supple and perfectly feminine despite her level of fitness.

He stepped onto the treadmill next to hers and powered it up. “Might as well get used to it,” he countered. “From now on, where you go, I go. That’s how it works in the jungle.”

For a moment they ran wordlessly, side by side. Worried that she might stick her earbuds back in, he said abruptly, “Carlos suggested we bury the hatchet. Maybe we should talk.”

Her continued silence forced an apology from him first. “Look, I’m sorry for my negative response this afternoon. If you were in my shoes, you’d have done the same thing,” he assured her.

She flicked a considering glance at him but held her thoughts to herself, keeping aloof.

“Is there anything you wanted to ask me?” he offered in desperation. “You know,