touching her and listening to the sounds she made when she came apart around him. And that was new for him. He liked women, but he’d never had the desire to be so close to one before. And definitely not for so long.
He’d already stayed in Cairo longer than he’d planned, and if he didn’t leave soon he was going to stay a helluva lot longer. They’d spent two nights locked in his suite at the Mena House, then the last two at her flat. She’d had to go to work yesterday, which gave him a chance to reschedule his appointments and get some much-needed paperwork done on his own, but he couldn’t put off his meetings any longer.
But the not-knowing-when-he’d-be-able-to-get-back-toher thing? Yeah, already eating at him.
Had it only been four nights ago he’d rolled into Cairo and swept her off her feet? It seemed like months. There were a thousand things he still wanted to know about her even though he felt like he’d already known her forever.
She was still watching him with those come-get-me eyes, and he knew if he didn’t say something to distract them both he was definitely going to miss his flight.
“Admiring your handiwork?” he asked as he threaded his belt through the loops of his khaki pants, then tossed his shaving kit in his bag.
“Yes. Does it make you nervous?”
“Makes me hot. Don’t look at me like that.” He buckled his belt. “I’m already late as it is.”
Her kiss-me lips spread into a warm smile. “You’re the one who insisted on having a shower. We could have gone for round four if you’d skipped it. Or was it five?”
He zipped his bag. “Tease me now and you’ll pay later.”
“Promise?”
His eyes shot to her darker ones, and he saw the same things reflected there he felt. She was putting on a good face, but she was hating this as much as he was.
Damn, but he should have listened to that little voice going off in his head the night they’d had dinner and stayed away from her.
He lifted the bag from the foot of the bed and dropped it near the door, then came back to sit next to her on the mattress. “Should I be worried about this ex of yours Shannon keeps talking about?”
“I don’t know,” she said with a sultry grin. “Are you worried?”
“A little,” he admitted. “He’s here, and I won’t be.”
She ran her hand up his forearm. “Marty’s just a friend, Pete. We dated for a while, but it wasn’t serious. He’s married to his job.”
“What does he do?”
She looked like she wasn’t going to answer, then shrugged. “He works for the U.S. government.”
“Here in Cairo? Doing what?”
“Antiterrorism stuff.”
Pete’s brow lifted. “Like with the CIA?”
“I don’t know for sure. He didn’t talk about it much, but yeah, that was my guess.”
Shit. Pete looked at the pink wall across from him. Her ex was CIA. Fabulous.
Walk away.
That teasing returned to her voice. “So long as you haven’t committed any crimes, you don’t have to worry about Marty at all.”
New plan: Don’t just walk away. Run.
Pete fought to keep from frowning as he stared at the wall and tried to picture all the spooks he knew in the area. “Good to know,” he mumbled.
Her finger traced a lazy circle on his forearm. “Um, I have a confession to make.”
He looked over and watched her bite her plump lip in a way he’d learned the last few days meant she was nervous or worried about something. “What?”
“It’s nothing. Silly, really. You’ll get a kick out of it. But,” she bit into her lip again, “when you took me to the Mena House that first day and I, uh, got the wrong idea about you—”
“About me not wanting you? I think we cleared that up.”
She blushed. “Yeah. Well. I was worried you were only interested in me so you could get information about my work site. Artifacts have disappeared from some of the neighboring tombs, and there’s talk of a smuggling operation in the area. Some of the crew’s on edge about it.”
Pete stiffened, though he hoped like hell she didn’t notice.
“Crazy, huh?” she said with a chuckle. “I mean, that you would do something like that? I don’t know what I’d been thinking. I guess I was just nervous.”
Pete turned fully toward her. “I’d never use you like that, Kit-Kat. Never. You know that, don’t you?”
Her smile faded. She sensed he was making her a promise, and though she couldn’t understand the enormity