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Stephanie—the dicey factor was doubled.
    Carrying the drinks out to the living room, he joined her on the sectional. She was wearing her signature scent, an intoxicating blend of peaches and spring rain showers that suited her perfectly. The fragrance was fresh and sweet and innocent. Like her.
    She could play dress-up all she liked. Looking the part of a sultry femme fatale did nothing to camouflage her true innocence.
    He’d been a senior in high school when he’d learned his adorably shy and bookish friend had a crush on him. He’d been flattered—even more flattered when Stephanie offered to break the vow of abstaining from sex until marriage that it was common knowledge she and some other sophomore girls had taken.
    He’d turned her down, of course. Not that he hadn’t been incredibly tempted, but he never would have taken advantage of her that way. Nor was he willing to jeopardize their friendship when he’d been certain she would have regretted the impulsive move in the light of day.
    His rebuttal of her little seduction play had put an awkward strain on their relationship for a time, but they’d gotten past it and their friendship had grown all the stronger for it.
    He handed her one of the chilled glasses of iced tea, and she accepted it with a smile.
    “Thank you. And thanks for giving me the chance to try out for your team. It’s nice to do something besides work, for a change.”
    “I imagine between your schedule at the library and your commitment to the agency that your days are really hectic.”
    She nodded. “I’m zanily busy, but I wouldn’t have it any other way.”
    The chiming of his doorbell interrupted their conversation. Dinner had arrived. On his way to the door, he surreptitiously checked his security system. Even though his gut feeling was that the break-in had simply been a reconnaissance mission, in his line of work it paid to be cautious.
    The feed from his surveillance camera revealed an innocuous-appearing young man holding a pizza box. Collecting the food, he paid the delivery boy and added a generous tip.
    “It smells heavenly,” Stephanie enthused when he set the pizza between them on the coffee table.
    “Dig in,” he invited.
    Her groan of appreciation as she sampled her first bite had his gut clenching in reaction. Her sexy vocalizations had his thoughts shifting quite inappropriately to satin sheets and intertwined body parts.
    He shook his head, disgusted with where his mind had trespassed.
    This is Steph, for crying out loud. She’s a friend, not a potential lover.
    He really needed to dial back the sudden flood of excess testosterone that had him reacting so uncharacteristically to her.
    “My taste buds are swooning,” she enthused, interrupting his reproving thoughts. Setting her pizza down, she met his gaze. “I missed you,” she told him with heart-wrenching candor. “I worried about you every single day while you were gone. When you stopped e-mailing . . .” she trailed off, her voice breaking.
    His breath hitched in his chest at the emotion pooled in the depths of her gorgeous amaretto eyes. “I was deep undercover. I would have kept in touch if I could have, but it wasn’t possible.”
    “The rational part of my brain recognized that, but it didn’t stop me from imagining every possible worst-case scenario. I was so afraid something awful had happened to you.”
    He shrugged, seeking to hide his inner struggle as he fought to keep the door to the dark place that housed the memories of that time firmly barricaded. “I had to follow CIA protocol. That’s all behind me now, though.”
    The truth was, he’d been to hell and back while he was incommunicado. But he wasn’t about to drop those demons on her doorstep.
    He and his partner had been burrowed deep undercover within a network of embezzlers when they’d been abducted and taken to an abandoned warehouse where they’d been grilled for hours for information. Information they didn’t