“Target?” Almost a decade spent as an undercover government-contracted security operative has given me pretty solid instincts and intuition, and since my dad is my handler and I know all his tells—including the way he’s looking to the left of straight-on, settling his gaze on the small moon-shaped birthmark to the side of my right eye—I have a sinking feeling that I know what’s coming.
“Anton Bates.”
And just like that, the image of the man I fell in love with all those years ago—the same man whose heart I broke with my dishonesty—comes rushing back with the kind of piercing clarity of the sky on a cloudless, summer day.
He’s in danger.
“Why me?” I whisper.
“You’re the best option, Rosie. Nobody knows you’re an operative. If you come back into his life as his girlfriend again, no one will think anything of it. It’s his best chance at close protection until the threat is neutralized, and we’re concerned about a mole…someone close to him. We need you for this.”
I muster a stiff lip. “If I say no?”
“You’re not going to say no.”
I bite the inside of my cheek. I hate that my dad knows me as well as I know him. Of course I’m not going to say no. I might have broken Anton’s heart. But I broke my own too. And my feelings for him haven’t gone away. If he’s in danger, then I’m going to do everything I can to protect him…or die trying.
“You’re right,” I breathe. “What are my orders?”
As my dad details a loose plan being put together to protect a foreign dignitary on U.S. soil, I let my mind soak it all in. Bad guys don’t scare me. I can handle myself, and I’m prepared. But what scares me is Anton Bates and my feelings for him.
How am I supposed to convince him to let me get close to him when the last time we spoke he swore he never wanted to see me again?
