License to Love (An Agent Ex Novel)

  “How’d you know to bring naloxone?” Ty asked.

  Rock shrugged. “Elementary. Sol’s rumored to give painkillers to his assistants before his act. It calms them and allows them to get into painful positions for his acts.

  “I told you, Sol uses dangerous practices. Codeine has always been his drug of choice. It wouldn’t be too hard for him to claim Lani took too many because of nerves or guilt and accidentally overdosed.”

  “But killing Lani like that?” Tate said. “I wonder if that went against RIOT orders. Lani is the only leverage they have against you. Why eliminate her?”

  “So that when I commit suicide in a few days, despondent over her death, no one will suspect I’ve been murdered.” Rock paused for dramatic effect. “For spies, you really don’t watch enough cop shows.

  “But I will have to say you were right about one thing.” Rock held up his thumb. “I should have brought the wand gun. I had two thugs on my tail. One shot was not enough.”

  Tate grinned. “More firepower is always better.”

  “Yeah, I realized that too late.” Rock walked to the bar and poured himself a drink. He pulled his cell phone from his pocket. “I should check in on my team and congratulate them on a job well done.”

  “Don’t bother,” Ty said. “We already have.”

  Rock grinned. “I did a damn fine job with those kids. This was a dress rehearsal for the bigger show and they pulled it off without a hitch. Or a leak. Key for both magicians and secret agents.”

  Tate walked behind the bar as if he was going to mix himself another drink. Instead, he stooped, picked something up, and held it up for Rock to inspect. “Does this look familiar?”

  Rock examined it. “One of the knives I use in my act.” Rock frowned. “What does that have to do with anything?”

  “It’s distinctive and it shouts Rock Powers. And we pulled it off one of Sol’s goons. You were wrong about the overdose,” Tate said, drily. “After Lani’s death, they were going to slit your wrists and make it look like suicide.”

  As Rock stared at them, he felt his jaw tic. “That’s bloody.”

  “And painful,” Tal added.

  “I’m going to kill Sol when I get the chance,” Rock said.

  “I wouldn’t go spouting that around in public,” Tate said.

  Ty, Tate, and Tal exchanged looks with each other. For a trio of spies, they looked decidedly uncomfortable and as if they were keeping something from Rock. He thought these guys were supposed to be kings of the poker face. Which made him just the tiniest bit suspicious—what garden path were they planning to walk him down now?

  Tate looked at Ty. Ty shrugged. Tal was evidently no help.

  “Ah, hell.” Tate sighed. “You’re probably going to hear this from Sol himself sooner or later, but he was bragging to his crew about sleeping with Lani.”

  Rock clenched his jaw so tightly he felt like he was about to break a tooth or pop a blood vessel or maybe both. “Sol’s a liar! Lani would never—”

  He cut himself off and looked at the three other men.

  Tal cleared his throat. “She’s a spy. She does what she has to do.”

  Ty nodded. “Yeah, we all did. In the pre–ball and chain days. Now Tate’s the only one who gets to sleep around for the job. Treflee would kill me if I did.”

  “If she found out about it,” Tal said.

  “She’d know. Believe me, she’d find out about it. She has spies everywhere. Sometimes I think the Agency should hire her and her network,” Ty said.

  “Don’t listen to them.” Tate slapped Rock on the back. “It’s not all that much fun sleeping with enemy agents. After the sex, when all you’d really rather do is sleep, they try to kill you. Nearly every time. And if not then, later. And don’t even get me started about an enemy agent scorned…”

  “Yeah, it’s really tough duty,” Tal said. He shut up when Tate shot him a look that said he wasn’t helping matters.

  Rock took a deep breath. “Why would you take Sol’s word for it?”

  “Lani was right there and didn’t deny it,” Tate said.

  * * *

  The master bedroom in Rock’s mansion had blackout curtains on its 180-degree panoramic-view windows. The room was round, like a turret on a castle, a knight’s abode. But the curtains were cracked open and the sunlight was streaming through when Lani was awakened from sleep by the gentle swoosh of the door skimming deep, plush carpet, and the smell of bacon and coffee.

  She sat up, reached for her gun, which was missing, and swung her gaze toward the door, assessing her options. She realized then that she was still dressed in the red outfit Rock had had her change into last night when he stole her from Sol’s show.

  Rock stood in the doorway, carrying a breakfast tray complete with a red rose in a vase. “Morning, beautiful. No need to bring out the big weapons. It’s just your adoring husband come to pamper you before a hard day of spying.” He wore the trace of a smile, just a trace, and his voice was low and sexy, mesmerizing.

  Lani glanced at the clock. “What time is it?”

  “Nine.” Rock walked over and set the tray over her legs.

  Nine! Lani couldn’t remember the last time she’d slept so late.

  Rock sat down next to her on the bed. He smiled and swept the hair out of her eyes. “You were drugged, remember?” He laughed softly. “Maybe not.” He laughed again. “I rescued you from Sol’s clutches and certain death.”

  Rock looked perfectly delectable when he was bragging about his heroics. “Certain death? I thought you stole me away in the middle of his act. Just to foil him and steal his thunder. You always have liked to one-up him.” She mocked a frown. “There goes my paycheck and my shot at black magic stardom.”

  Rock held a cup of coffee out to her. “The asshole deserves it. And you’ll have your shot at stardom. With me. If you want it.”

  His words made her breath catch as she took the cup from him. She didn’t know what to say. Oh, she knew what she should say. She knew she should stomp on his little old aorta and dash any hopes of an until death do us part little wife-and-husband duo. The odds didn’t favor a family magic act for them and the son Rock didn’t know he had.

  Rock mistook her hesitation. His grin faded, replaced by a look of concern and consternation. “You don’t remember the drugging?” He cocked a brow. “And what followed?”

  Oh, she remembered that well enough. She was just pulling his chain.

  She nodded and took a sip of coffee before speaking. “That bottle of water the stagehand gave me just before I went on. Never trust a sealed bottle of water, not from a magician, anyway. Or one of his crew.”

  “You can trust this magician.” Rock pulled the linen napkin from the tray. “Nothing up my sleeve.”

  Nothing but rock-hard biceps. He was wearing a short-sleeved T-shirt that showed them off very nicely, thank you.

  “No, I can see that.” She set the coffee down on the tray. Knowing what was coming, she watched him closely.

  “Empty napkin to begin with.” He showed her and then grabbed the napkin and began rolling it from the center. When it was in a nice roll, with only a triangle of tail hanging out, he grabbed the tail and pulled. The napkin unrolled, revealing a table knife with a flourish.

  Back in their happy good old days, Rock used to bring her breakfast in bed just like this. He’d set the tray down and make all kinds of things appear in the center of the napkin. Usually flatware. Sometimes a piece of jewelry or other small gift.

  She knew how the trick was done, but as many times as Lani had watched him perform it, it still seemed like magic. He was that good. She never saw him working the reality behind it. It was a lot like being in love with Rock—somehow he worked his magic on her, even though she shouldn’t have loved him.

  “Dull cutlery, how lovely. I hear you pulled diamond jewelry out of thin air for Tate’s latest bimbo, that awful blonde, Gillian.” She winked.

  “But, baby, you are Gillian.” Hi
s voice was calm, deep, sexy. Almost mesmerizing. He stared at her with a look she couldn’t quite pin down.

  He was masking what he felt from her. He was good at masking, nearly as good as she was. It was disconcerting. She liked to be the one in control and able to read the other person with her considerable skill in reading microexpressions. Rock stymied her. But that was part of the attraction.

  “You were there when I had to give it back.” She pulled the knife from the napkin and used it to spread jam on her toast. Rock had brought her a nice pot of seedless raspberry jam, her favorite.

  “Unborrowed jewelry. I’ll keep that in mind for next time. Hard to spread jam with, though.” Rock continued staring at her with his deep, penetrating gaze, his voice modulated and under control.

  “Something the matter?” she asked him.

  “No. Should there be?”

  Last night had been fantastic, hot, exciting between them. But now there was a subtle distance between them. For whatever reason, Rock was trying to hide it. But it was still there. She couldn’t think what she possibly could have done in the hours she’d been asleep. Best to ignore it. “Why did Sol want me dead? He doesn’t suspect I’m an agent, does he?”

  “No. It was his ultimate revenge against me.” Then he went on to explain about the knife and the theory that Sol was trying to kill Rock and make it look like suicide because he was despondent over Lani’s death.

  “Not good about him wanting to kill us. But good news my cover isn’t blown.” She frowned. “For a minute there I thought he’d realized I’d hypnotized him. My hypnotic suggestions not to hurt you or me sure didn’t stick.

  “I should have known not to mess with a messed-up mind. I should have figured his sense of revenge would overcome my hypnotic suggestion to protect me. He is a sociopath, after all.” She cursed beneath her breath, mumbling about a lapse in her spycraft.

  “Don’t tell me you tried to hypnotize him?” Rock’s calm expression momentarily cracked again. A quick look of fear crossed his face before he regained control. When he spoke, it was in that same soothing voice. “You really think you hypnotized Sol? Sol isn’t hypnotizable. He knows all the tricks and he’s one hundred percent resistant.

  “But it explains why he tried to kill you. Now he knows you’re not loyal. And if there’s one thing Sol can’t stand, it’s unfaithfulness.” A microexpression of anger crossed Rock’s face at the word unfaithfulness. It, too, passed quickly.

  Lani stared at Rock with the table knife in one hand and a piece of toast in the other. “You do realize I have a knife in my hand and I know a thousand lethal ways to use it, even though it barely slices through jam?” She pointed the knife at him as she spoke. “FYI, I’m a highly trained, certified, licensed master hypnotist—”

  Rock shook his head, still totally tranquil and reassuring when he should have been at least at touch angry at her for trying something so risky. “I know, we’ve been over that. Sol was faking it, baby. Faking. Don’t take it too hard. He can fake out the best of them.”

  “No one fakes it with me.” She paused. “As a secret agent for the U.S. government I also have several powerful hypnosis-aiding drugs at my disposal. I hypnotized you once, too, magic man.”

  He arched a brow. “Oh, really? When?” He was almost too calm.

  She set the knife down. It was no good pointing it at him, anyway. He didn’t seem the slightest bit intimidated. “Just after we met. At the beginning of the Hoover Dam mission.”

  She paused for effect. “I hypnotized you to speed you along in the falling in love with me process.” She set the toast down, too, next to the bacon and eggs that were growing cold. She’d lost her appetite.

  Rock gave her a deadpan look. “Not this again. Not the Aphrodite complex. We’ve been over this before. You can’t make men fall in love with you left and right by looking deeply into your eyes. Can you make your eyes spin, too? Is that part of the trick?”

  He leaned forward across the bed toward her. “Seriously. Lani, darling, you were so cute hypnotizing me that I went along with it.”

  He paused. “It was flattering in its way. I’d never had a girl so hot and desperate for me she resorted to hypnosis to get her way. Thrown panties at me, yes. Offered to be sawn in half or volunteered to be my able-bodied assistant, absolutely. But hypnosis? Now that was new and thrilling.”

  He continued to hold her gaze. “You could have been a little more creative, though. Maybe made me your sex slave. I could have gone for that.”

  “You flatter yourself, Rock.”

  He ignored her comment. “You really can’t hypnotize someone into falling in love. You know that, right?”

  She arched a brow.

  He paused again, looking as if he was thinking about it for a minute. “Seduce them, possibly. Temporarily bend them into a crush, maybe. If they’re already susceptible to your charms. But that’s a big risk and a lot of work to go to when a little flirting would suffice.”

  “Flirty doesn’t build loyalty,” Lani said. “Flirty doesn’t make the other person trust you enough to share secrets.”

  “I see,” Rock said. “What secrets did you want from me?”

  She ignored the question. “Why do you think you continued searching for me for two years?”

  Rock took a deep breath, looked at her with a confident look of love, and shook his head. “Oh, I don’t know. Because I really do love you? Because I wanted to clear my name and get the police off my tail? Because I missed you and wanted closure?

  “Lani,” he said softly. “I know love at first sight sounds stupid and sappy. But you caught my eye the moment you walked into the ice bar wearing that white faux fur coat and matching Russian hat. I knew right away you were the one for my act. And me.”

  “All the girls were wearing white fur coats and hats. It was part of the admission package.”

  Women wore white coats. Men wore black. Rock had looked particularly hot and handsome in his black faux fur coat, his eyes lined with eyeliner, a magic wand up his sleeve.

  She’d gone to the bar ostensibly with friends for a girls’ evening out on the prowl—for Rock. In reality, the other three girls with her were also agents, backup in case something went wrong or the Agency intel about Rock’s taste in women proved inaccurate. And for cover. A lone girl in a bar was a bit too obvious.

  The ice bar was like a modern rendering of the Snow Queen’s winter palace. Everything from top to bottom, from wall to wall, was created out of ice—the couches, the bar counter, the floor, even the glasses. Practically everything but the deliciously cold vodka-based cocktails.

  On the April day she met Rock, the temperature soared to over a hundred degrees outside. She still remembered with fondness the luxurious feeling of stepping into freezing temperatures and snuggling into a fur coat, even if it was fake fur.

  Cold blue light, neon, illuminated the décor, shone through ice sofas, and reflected off polished ice walls so pure they’d turned into mirrors. Elaborately carved ice sculptures adorned the room—winter-white swans, rabbits, deer, and bears.

  “You knew I’d be there that night,” Rock said, bringing her focus back to the present. “All my best memories of us and they’re setups.” He shook his head, but he didn’t seem upset.

  He looked almost amused and impressed by the deception. Deception was his trade, but—

  “Yes, we knew. Of course we knew,” she said, trying to figure him out. “Which is why I did my Hispanic impersonation of a Russian agent. I was playing a Bond girl, for your eyes only. We know you love danger. You’re a thrill seeker. A Bond girl, a woman with a dangerous edge, has always been your ultimate fantasy.”

  “Is it? You know me well. Well enough to understand—you’re my fantasy, Lani.” He paused again. “Now that I think back, the four of you were a redhead, a blonde, an Asian girl with hair as dark as black magic, and you. A buffet, was that it?”

  She nodded. “Sometimes it’s best not to dwell on the past.”


  “Still, all dressed alike, all beautiful women, and you were the one who caught my eye.” He sounded almost breathless.

  “I was intended to. The rest were backup. They intentionally stayed in the background and showcased me. Think back, Rock. Picture it in your mind’s eye. Do you have the image? You see what we were doing. You see the performance for what it was.

  “The way I caught your eye. Smiled at you. I was practically begging you to send me that drink. If you hadn’t, I’d have had to resort to something more obvious.” She, too, now spoke in dulcet tones.

  “Would you? I would have liked to have seen that. If only I’d known.” He was so unflappable and good-humored.

  “Still, it was impressive the way the drink appeared out of nowhere in a wisp of smoke in front of me. And then there you were, standing beside our table. Pulling an ice rose from up your sleeve was a nice touch, too. Too bad the rose didn’t last long out of the bar in the Vegas heat.

  “I’m not generally sentimental. But the first flower you ever gave me and there was no way to press it or dry it for posterity.” She shrugged. “And here I like to keep souvenirs from my missions.”

  “You have your wedding ring. That should be souvenir enough for a lifetime.” His gaze was intense, his tone soft. “I hope you brought it with you. People will expect you to wear it now that we’re happily reunited.”

  Her wedding ring. Crap. “It’s in the safe in Tate’s hotel room.”

  Rock made a fist, rubbed his fingers together, and opened his hand palm-up. Her wedding set glistened in the sunlight in his open palm. “Is it?”

  She gasped. “That Tate—”

  “He had nothing to do with this. I requisitioned it on my own. Saved him a trip. May I?” He took her left hand in his and gently slid the ring on, holding her gaze as he did.

  The ring slipped onto her finger as if it belonged there. He squeezed her hand.

  She’d never tell him, but she often wore her wedding ring between missions when she was alone and wanted to remember who she really was. Or simply needed to think of him and feel him near her. Never long enough or regular enough to build up a ring imprint on her finger or gain a real sense of permanency. Her covers demanded she be decidedly single. Not a woman who’d removed her rings to go looking for love.