A Profiler's Case for Seduction(4)

“Nice day,” she finally said.

He looked at her, as if startled to see her by his side, then gazed around and looked back at her. “It is, isn’t it?” He smiled and a flutter of warmth whispered over her.

“Autumn is my favorite time of the year,” she said, hoping to keep the conversation flowing.

“It is nice,” he agreed.

It was ridiculous that a faint nervous jitter had played in her veins the moment he’d asked her to get coffee. She was a forty-year-old woman, not a teenager, and yet each time she looked at him she felt an evocative heat in the pit of her stomach, a tingle in her veins that she recognized as full-on attraction.

His facial features were chiseled, with angles and planes that created not only a handsome face but also a face with a slight edge, especially with the hint of dark stubble on his lower jaw.

She breathed a sigh of relief as they entered the busy coffee shop. He pointed toward an empty two-top table. “Grab us that place,” he said, “and I’ll order the coffees. You like it any special way?”

“Just black is fine,” she replied. She hurried to the empty table and sat with her laptop case and purse on the floor at her side.

FBI agent Mark Flynn was easy to spot at the counter since he was taller than the others who stood in line before and after him. Maybe she’d agreed to have coffee with him because he was working in the field that she wanted to make her career. He’d solve the crime and be gone.

Maybe her decision to make an exception to the rule she’d made about men had nothing to do with the depth in his blue eyes or the chiseled features of his handsome face, but rather because she knew he wouldn’t be around long enough to threaten her self-improvement drive.

Comforted by this thought, she decided to just enjoy this moment, assured that she wasn’t going back down the dark rabbit hole from where she’d been pulled over three years ago.

She smiled as he returned to the table with two steaming cups of coffee. He eased down into the chair across from her. “A criminologist,” he said, as if they’d been in the middle of a conversation before he’d retrieved the drinks. “I’d say right now you’re in a good place for a little beyond-the-books learning experience with everything that has happened here in the last couple of weeks.”

Her smile fell away when she thought of the murders and the kidnapping of Melinda. “It’s been a terrible time for everyone. First the kidnapping, and then those poor men strangled and left to be discovered by students. At least Professor Grayson wasn’t killed, as well. But you probably don’t want to talk about your work while you’re enjoying your coffee.”

He took a sip from his cup and then leaned forward. “So, tell me about Dora Martin. Married? Divorced? What were you doing before you landed here in Vengeance?”

His gaze seemed to pierce through her, as if he could ferret out secrets by merely looking deep into her eyes. And she had a lifetime of secrets about who she had been, about where she had come from, secrets that she wasn’t about to share with anyone ever.

“Divorced a long time ago,” she replied. “And before I moved here and began my higher education, I was working as a waitress and going nowhere fast.”

“It’s admirable that you decided to make a change,” he said encouragingly.

“Thanks.” She looked down at the tabletop and tried not to remember that it hadn’t really been her who had made the decision that she needed to make a change, but rather two people who cared about her.

She gazed at him once again. “What about you? Married? Single?”

“Single and divorced,” he replied with a quicksilver frown that danced across his forehead and then quickly disappeared. “This kind of job isn’t conducive to relationships. During my brief marriage I saw more of my team members than my wife, Sarah.”

“That’s too bad.”

He smiled. “Actually, we parted as good friends. I have my work and she has hers as a journalist in Dallas, and we share a three-year-old daughter.” His smile faded and the focus in his eyes grew hazy.

“What’s her name?” Dora asked.

He didn’t reply. It was as if he were lost to the here and now, lost to place and time. “Agent Flynn?”

His eyes regained focus and he straightened in his chair. “Sorry about that. I tend to get lost in my head sometimes, and please, make it Mark.”

“I asked about your daughter’s name,” Dora said.