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together had been an adventure she would never forget, but whatever he did after she made her exit was his problem. She’d be planning the last details of her wedding and honeymoon.
    She didn’t like the smug look he gave her from across the small table. It reminded her of the night they’d met. She often wondered what he’d have done if she hadn’t reacted as she had, but that didn’t bear thinking about right now.
    She placed her cloth napkin on her lap. “Someone could see us,” she said, her throat still raw from puking.
    “If you’re expecting paparazzi, forget it.” Kyle lifted his own napkin, his nails, she noticed, neatly buffed and filed. He had the biggest hands she’d ever seen, but in his suit and cuff links, he managed to blend in with the Washington types. “No one in Washington cares you’re marrying Thomas Asher.”
    “A prominent ambassador was just killed a few blocks from here.”
    “Really? Did he have a heart attack?”
    “When the car hit him, maybe.”
    Melanie couldn’t hold back a smile. It seemed to erupt from deep inside her, along with a giddy excitement. She always felt this way after taking risks. There was nothing like it. The mix of power, relief, fear, guilt, energy—the tension that existed among such contradictory emotions.
    Indescribable, really.
    Kyle didn’t smile back. He was doing a job, and it was serious business for him. He didn’t have the imagination to understand the psychological addiction of killing, the emotional draw—the satisfaction that went beyond a paycheck. Melanie liked money. But money wasn’t why she’d become a paid assassin.
    “I’m not letting you screw up a good thing for me.” He sat back and gave her a grim look. “You should never have gotten involved with Thomas Asher. You should have at least told me when you did.”
    He’d found out two weeks ago when he’d come to Washington to discuss the Bruni hit. “I didn’t know we’d be given Alex Bruni as a target.” Melanie kept her voice low, but she was careful not to sound defensive. “We’re partners, Kyle, but you don’t own me. You and I are together
maybe
a week, at most two weeks, a month. You don’t live in Washington. I’m not even sure where you
do
live. I’m entitled to have a life.”
    “Not with someone you met in Black Falls, Vermont.”
    She ignored him. “Thomas could have seen me this morning,” she said.
    Kyle shook his head. “No, he couldn’t have, and it wouldn’t have mattered. Your disguise was good. Your timing was perfect. You did exactly what you were supposed to do.”
    “Your plan worked,” Melanie said, hoping flattery would distract him from how annoyed he was about her relationship with Thomas.
    “Yes, it did.”
    There was no pride, no sense of accomplishment, where there should have been. She never could have pulled off such a hit by herself—she wasn’t the planner Kyle was. Calculating the details of running a prominent ambassador over in broad daylight was where his limited imagination kicked into action and combined with his logical, lethal mind. He’d left nothing to chance. The hit-and-run death of Alex Bruni was pure choreography.
    But thanks to her relationship with Thomas, she’d known Bruni would be at the hotel that morning, thus making the final choice of the time and place to kill him that much simpler.
    “There was a messenger,” she said in a near whisper. “A young woman on a bicycle—I almost ran her over, too.”
    “She didn’t see anything that can identify either of us.”
    He was so calm. So certain, so reassuring. Melanie felt a twitch of desire and knew it would become more urgent—it always did after a successful mission. Very soon the twitch would become an ache that would take over her body, her mind, every fiber of her being. She wouldn’t be able to think about anything else until it was satisfied.
    “Kyle…”
    He was like a rock. “Meet me at my hotel in an hour. Room 257.”
    She glanced