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class.”
    “How do you figure that, we’re supposed to be blending in?”
    “No. We’re supposed to be celebrating our honeymoon. I’m going along the lines that my shop is ridiculously successful and I want to spoil you.”
    He’d be damned if he started off an already delicate mission cramming his frame into the ice cube tray of coach. Having his new bride pissed was definitely not the way to start it off as well.
    What would Zinc do? If this were Z and Ally, how would he have gotten her to forgive him and bring a smile to her face?
    Steele lifted the arm rest between them then held his arms open. “Come here.”
    She did a double take. “What?”
    “Come here. A married man wouldn’t want his new bride angry at him. He’d want her in his arms all of the time.”
    Her lips parted as she blinked at him several times. “And you have experience at being a married man?”
    “Nope. I’m just going on instinct. So take your seatbelt off, and your shoes. Tuck lost long legs up against the seat and come here. Pretty please, wife…”
    Her gaze traveled up and down his chest as a flurry of emotions swirled in her dark eyes so quickly, he couldn’t tell what she was thinking. She flicked her tongue across her lips in that way he’d noticed she did before making a decision and finally relaxed her arms.
    The shoes went first, then the seatbelt. She shifted closer in the seat to lay her cheek against his sternum. As his arms closed around her, a weight lifted off his shoulders and his first easy breath in a long time eased past his lips.
     
    * * * * *
     
    Under her ear, the solid thump thump of Steele’s heart brought tears to her eyes.
    Adam Steele in the flesh, after all this time. How many nights had she tossed and turned, wondering what she’d say to him if she ever got the chance to meet him in person?
    Sorry was not even close to conveying how guilt-stricken she was over the failure of Operation Phoenix. Because of her, several men and one woman lost their lives. It didn’t matter she too almost died there on the banks of the Moscow River or how, like Steele and the other survivors, she was unable to return to her previous life. Risk had gone hand in hand with her job, but Steele and the other recon teams had been the unfortunate ones. An unlucky lottery devastated their numbers.
    No greater reminder of her purpose on this mission existed than the piece of metal resting on his chest. The letters on the dog tag hanging around Steele’s neck were worn down, as if rubbed away, but she could still make out the name. Zachary “Zinc” Daniels.
    For Steele. For Zinc. For all of them. She had to make it right—take out that bastard double agent Korovin once and for all.
    “You’re shaking,” Steele’s voice rumbled above her. The deep timbre sent shivers along her skin. “Are you cold?”
    How could she be cold when the man generated heat like a furnace? “No. Just processing.”
    He tilted her chin up to meet his gaze. “Having second thoughts?”
    Second thoughts? She couldn’t have second thoughts when staring at his handsome face? She had gazed at his photo so often in the last week. She knew every plane and angle by heart. The thick brows over brown eyes that always appeared to be squinted in thought, and the square jaw line that reminded her of a cartoon super hero. The goatee was new, grown after he left the Marine Corps. Underneath the bristles was a dimple in his chin she wondered what it would feel like to bathe her tongue with it.
    Yes, the man was sexy, but any fantasies she may have spun about him mattered jack shit nothing. She owed him. She owed his men, and if she had to walk through hell to repay her debt, she’d do so without a moment’s hesitation.
    “No. No second thoughts,” she whispered.
    He drew in a breath and his gaze narrowed with what looked like hunger and confusion. “Do I know you? Have we met before?”
    “No.”
    “But you know me.”
    “Just what I’ve read about