She panted her reply. “Oh yes.”
As much as she wanted to linger, she forced herself to roll away from him and get out of bed. She found her robe and put it on, threaded her fingers through her hair to give it some kind of order, and walked barefoot out of the room.
What the hell? “Where are you going?” Liam asked. Did she already regret what had just happened? He hoped not. He sure as certain didn’t. He’d wanted her from the minute she opened the door tonight.
“To fix the printer.”
Liam was floored. This was a first for him. He was typically the one who would ease his way out without hurting feelings. There was always the time after sex when the woman he was with wanted affirmation that it had been wonderful for him, even though it usually wasn’t. It wasn’t bad, either. It was just sex.
Until Allison.
Bewildered by what he was feeling, he decided he wasn’t going to waste another minute thinking about it. Taking her lead, he got dressed. When he joined her, she was printing the second copy of the contract. Liam once again read it over, and only when he was sure everything was the way he wanted did he offer her a pen. She signed it and handed it back.
“Phillips is going to have a fit when he reads this,” she said.
Liam smiled. “Yes, he will.”
“I guess this is it, then,” she said. “And you’re off to London.”
He put his suit jacket on and walked to the door. “Okay, then. You’re going to be all right.”
“Yes, I know.”
They both put their hands on the doorknob at the same time. Allison let go and stepped back. He turned to say good-bye, changed his mind, and pulled her into his arms. He kissed her long and hard and walked out the door.
And he was gone. It took another hour for Allison to admit the truth. She felt abandoned. That didn’t make any sense to her, but then, having sex with Liam and pretending it hadn’t meant anything didn’t make any sense, either. Didn’t he know? Didn’t he have a glimmer of a notion that he was more than a casual fling to her? Apparently not.
She really couldn’t blame him, because she had only just figured it out. Trying to be a with-it modern woman wasn’t working for her. She had no one to blame but herself. She should have known she wasn’t cut out for games. She didn’t have the nerves or the disposition to be coy or clever. No wonder she hid in her computer. It couldn’t hurt her.
EIGHTEEN
Eight weeks, three days, and not a word from Liam. Not that she cared, because she didn’t. Swamped with work and classes, she had barely thought about him. She accepted the fact that he had moved on, just as she had. She told herself that lie so many times she was almost beginning to believe it.
Exams were finally over. She turned in the last paper she was ever going to write for persnickety Dr. Bracey’s class, and she was officially finished. Now that she thought about it, senior year hadn’t been all that difficult, just time-consuming.
Her job, on the other hand, was making her crazy. She was getting sick and tired of being dragged out of her apartment by the FBI. There were always two agents—never one or three—banging at her door at the most inconvenient times. Every once in a while, if they were in a “let’s prank the employee” mood, one of them would dangle handcuffs in front of her face to get her to hurry. They thought it was funny, but their little stunt wasn’t humorous in Starbucks or the gym. Their ferocious expressions could scare the bejesus out of an ordinary person. The scare tactics were wasted on her. The agents were having fun, she supposed, and fun was hard to come by in their line of work, so she let them torment her.
Her days at the cyber unit were intense. Because Phillips assigned her only the most complex cases, he kept her isolated in her own office. The other employees passing by looked through the glass wall and saw her working. When she glanced their way, they returned her smile, and when she passed them in the hall, they nodded and said hello, but there was no other interaction or camaraderie. She didn’t take time to form relationships with coworkers. They most likely assumed she was antisocial. To them she looked as though she had it all together because she had had years of practice perfecting her laid-back attitude. On the outside she appeared to be calm, cool, and in control, but on the inside she was a mess of nerves, and she was mentally counting the days until she would once again be free to pursue her own dreams.
The FBI owned her now, and in the eight weeks she’d worked for them, they had managed to turn her life upside down. She was all theirs for six full months. On paper it didn’t look all that long, but on a day-to-day basis it was an eternity. Two months down, four to go.
She hated that others controlled her every action, and on the days when the stress and tension threatened to overwhelm her, she would put on her Bose headphones, close her eyes for a few minutes, and think about something pleasant, like walking along a white sand beach or, better yet, punching her immediate supervisor, Special Agent Jim Phillips. She bet that would remove his perpetually smug expression. Allison didn’t consider herself a violent person. She had never hit anyone, not even her irresponsible cousin, Will, yet the thought of smacking her boss did lighten her mood.
Agent Phillips seemed to know what buttons to push, and Allison came close to completely losing her composure one afternoon. He called her into his office for another one of his famous pep talks about the bureau. Then came the suggestions. The latest proposal was a doozy. He wanted her to wear a thin silver bracelet that had a built-in tracking device. She wouldn’t have to worry about losing it because, once it was snapped into place, it was impossible to remove. The man was actually enthusiastic about his outrageous plan, and it took every ounce of her willpower to sit quietly and listen. After gritting her teeth, she insisted for the hundredth time that he simply call her cell phone if and when he needed her after hours. He countered that there were times when she couldn’t be reached by phone, most likely suspecting she had turned it off. She had to admit there had been a few instances when she had silenced her phone just to have a couple hours of peace.
As much as she hated the job, she loved the work, and how strange was that? The real irony was that she was making a good salary, and it was all hers. Her aunt and uncle couldn’t take it from her as they had with her previous earnings.
She was a paid employee of the federal government—an employee who wasn’t allowed to quit—with official credentials and benefits up the wazoo. She had been told that the six-month job she’d agreed to would be only from eight to five Monday through Friday. There was a caveat attached, though: if there was ever an urgent situation, she would be required to come in after hours. Thus far, there had been an average of three urgent situations each workweek and one almost every weekend. Agents had pulled her out of bed in the middle of the night too many times to count, had ruined innumerable dinners, and had barged into half the movie theaters in the city looking for her. She became so skittish she even imagined they were trying to interrupt her graduation. She had been chosen to represent her department and had just stepped onto the stage to collect her diploma when she glanced at the crowd and spotted two men in suits hurrying down the aisle toward her. They looked determined. In the hope of avoiding a tug-of-war, she rushed across the stage, snatched the diploma out of the president’s hands, all but fist-bumped him in lieu of a handshake, and ran down the steps, just as the two men reached the front row, turned, and sat down next to their families.
After the ceremony, she was congratulated by Jordan and Noah, who promised to celebrate with her on Nathan’s Bay the following weekend. There was a big party scheduled. Allison had just said good-bye to them when Dan and his girlfriend made their way to her. Mark and his fiancée were also there. She had discouraged them from subjecting themselves to the never-ending proceedings, but they insisted on attending because they were her friends. She surmised they felt sorry for her because Charlotte and Oliver couldn’t come and she wouldn’t have family at her big event, but even if they came out of pity, she was happy to see all of them. It was while Dan was giving her a big bear hug that she looked up into the stands . . . and saw him . . . there, standing in the middle of a crowd of people who were slowly making their way to the exits. He was there only as long as a blink, and then he was gone.