Just One Look

Book 3: Kittredge Family Saga

by Linda Cajio

Genres: Women's Fiction; Romance; Contemporary Romance

Synopsis

In this taut and tingling romance, two spies find themselves entangled in a deadly game—and a sweet obsession—as undercover takes on a sexy new meaning.
 
His orders are to follow her every move. Luckily for agent Remy St. Jacques, this assignment comes with an unexpected benefit: His mark is drop-dead gorgeous. Too bad she is a traitor, a “turned” agent now trading state secrets for money. But when the unthinkable happens, and Remy is spotted by his target, he must make a bold move: forge an intimate bond with the woman, seduce his way into her heart, and discover what she’s hiding. Only now Remy’s not so sure she’s guilty of anything—except making him fall in love with her. 
 
Susan Kitteridge had the perfect cover as a glamorous denizen of the Washington, D.C., party circuit. But when the spy sees something she was never supposed to see, she must flee the city and plot her next move. Susan’s mind is in turmoil when a handsome stranger suddenly catches her eye. But the growing, burning heat between them just might lead them both into mortal danger.
 
Includes a special message from the editor, as well as excerpts from these Loveswept titles: Deep Autumn Heat, The Last Warrior, and Kevin’s Story.

Release date: August 13, 2012

Publisher: Loveswept

Print pages: 208

Sample

One
 
 
 
He watched her.
 
He was being paid to watch her, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t enjoy the view. A man had few pleasures in his line of work. Susan Kitteridge was proving to be one of them.
 
The droning voices of the sunbathers combined with the heat should have been lulling, but they weren’t. He didn’t need the raucous calls of the sea gulls to keep him from nodding off. The woman was too intriguing, not at all what he’d expected.
 
As he pulled his baseball cap lower on his forehead and settled back against the wooden bench, he decided she didn’t look like spy material. Still, no one ever really did. That was the beauty of it.
 
She was lying on the beach almost directly below him. He was admiring the tapering line of her back when she flipped over to expose her front to the sun.
 
The world stopped.
 
Her features were beautiful, exotic. He surveyed, with pleasure, her high cheekbones, winged eyebrows, and the long lashes shadowing her smooth skin. Her mouth was lush in repose, tempting a man to taste the passion that must lie just beneath the surface. Her breasts were full, and her bandeau top made him wonder when it would give way and bare tight nipples to his sight. “If” was not the operative word on the bathing suit. The sucker was going to give at any moment. Her waist, in contrast to her breasts, was taut, her belly supple before her body curved into hips that could only lead a man beyond redemption. And how he wanted to sin.
 
But what left him gaping was the way her slender thighs were parted slightly, as though to trap the sun’s rays between them. He could almost feel the heat caressing her satiny flesh, warming it. Sweat that had nothing to do with the day’s heat broke out on his forehead.
 
Too bad she was so beautiful.
 
Too bad she was a traitor.
 
Too bad she was his assignment.
 
“Really, Susan, that bathing suit looks about ready to fall off you at any moment.”
 
“You’re no fun, Grandmother,” Susan Kitteridge said as she stood up. The top dipped dangerously low, exposing creamy skin. She yanked it up again, grinning at her grandmother. Lettice Kitteridge glared back. She was dressed in a one-piece suit, and an ankle-length terry cover, and a large straw hat and sunglasses. She was also sitting inside a canvas cabana. She must just like the sea air, Susan decided. Or else Lettice was really Vampira out for a day’s jaunt.
 
Her grandmother’s glare was piercing in spite of the sunglasses. Susan sighed. Maybe Lettice had a point. The suit did seem a bit small. She slipped on a wrinkled gauze shirt. Leaving it unbuttoned, she tied the tails together at her waist, then turned around for her grandmother’s inspection. “This way if the top falls off, I’m still covered.”
 
“In a pig’s eye!” Lettice exclaimed, shaking her head.
 
“It could be worse, Grandmother. It could have fallen off already.”
 
“I’m grateful for small things.” Lettice glanced at her watch. “Almost four. About ready to go home, dear?”
 
“Yes. And you’ve had enough sun, I’m sure,” Susan said, chuckling. She wrapped a sarong around herself, tying it at her waist.
 
As she helped her grandmother pick up their beach things, she couldn’t keep her hands from trembling. Somehow she had managed yet again to hide from her grandmother the turmoil inside herself. She had automatically slipped into her party-girl image, as if it were a second skin. It was so easy, too easy, after all her years of practice. But now, in the aftermath, she was sick and shaken.
 
Susan clamped her teeth together to hold back the scream that threatened to erupt. How could she act normal when everything she believed in was being turned inside out? She knew what she should do, but she didn’t know if she could do it. She couldn’t turn her back on a long friendship, but she couldn’t turn her back on what she had seen either.
 
She forced the memory out of her mind. For weeks she had been haunted by it. She couldn’t live with herself now, and no matter what course of action she picked, she didn’t know if she could live with herself afterward.
 
She felt as if she had lost the real Susan Kitteridge somewhere, and so two weeks earlier she had left Washington and everything behind her and come home to family. Oddly enough, not to her parents or her reclusive brother, Rick, who were all living in England. She had returned to her grandmother, Lettice Kitteridge, the matriarch of one of Philadelphia’s first families, Lettice had never been a “let’s bake cookies” grandmother. Susan almost laughed out loud at the thought. But she needed a dose of her grandmother’s common sense and indomitable spirit. Lettice, who had left her Gladwynne, Pennsylvania, mansion for her shore house in Ventnor City, New Jersey, to arrange a charity affair there, had welcomed her granddaughter with open arms—and a lecture for being obsessed with the Washington, D.C., party circuit.
 
If only Lettice knew what her granddaughter actually was …
 
“Don’t forget the basket,” Lettice said, interrupting Susan’s thoughts.
 
Susan smiled to herself. Here she was, wrestling with a scandal that would rock Washington to its toes, and her grandmother was telling her the most mundane of things. It was a cockeyed perspective, but a perspective just the same.
 
“Bless you, Grandmother,” she murmured. “I won’t.”
 
She put on her Phillies baseball cap, then picked up the basket and followed Lettice off the beach.
 
Remy St. Jacques sauntered behind the two women, careful to keep a respectable distance from them.
 
He knew the woman with Susan Kitteridge was her grandmother, even though she was covered from head to toe. One tough old lady by all reports. Remy smiled when the women turned toward one of the walkways off the boardwalk. The direction they were taking made it clear they were heading back to the grandmother’s summer house, six blocks away. A castle was more like it, he thought, picturing the huge old Victorian place in his mind. His room at the Sea Drift motel, while clean and livable, was a far cry from the Kitteridge mansion. Technically he should be admiring Susan’s audacity in using her own grandmother as a cover for her operations. Instead, he was disgusted by it.
 
“You’re losing your edge, cher,” he muttered to himself.
 
He wondered if he had already lost it. Ten years in the Company’s internal affairs section was bound to make anyone lose his edge. One saw things when investigating “turned” agents. One did things …
 
He forced the thoughts away. He had a job to do. One last job, and then he would tell Ross Mitchelson it was over. No more. He was tired and burnt out. That was bad for someone in his occupation. Very bad.
 
As he kept pace behind them, he gazed at Susan’s dark hair. It was pulled back in a ponytail that hung to her shoulders. He had never seen hair so rich in color that it was nearly black. Her filmy shirt enticed rather than hid, as did the long skirt that exposed one leg to view as she walked. Very sexy, he thought. Extremely sexy. And in the midst of extremely sexy was a maroon baseball cap pulled low across her brow. Somehow she made it work with the rest of the outfit. At least her cap looked a helluva lot better on her than his ever would.
 
He truly didn’t understand why she was doing what she was doing. She came from a prestigious family, and she exuded sophistication and self-confidence with every movement. Her father, the old lady’s son, had even been an ambassador to the Court of St. James’s. She had married an up and coming diplomat, Richard Ames. But after he had died, Susan had taken back her maiden name and become a courier for the Company. She used a Washington party girl cover, and Ross said she was very good at retrieving and passing along incoming data.
 
Now she was about to sell sensitive documents to an unfriendly government.
 
He slowed as Susan and her grandmother stopped at a small, exclusive boutique called Pearls and Lace. They went inside, and Remy casually strolled up to the window to admire the intimate apparel display. Lace teddies, satin nightgowns, and silk garters from Marks and Lindley, expensive enough to drain a man’s wallet and sexy enough to set his blood on fire, were intermixed with jewelry and other accessories. The display looked as if a woman had draped the lingerie all over her bed in an effort to choose the most alluring.
 
Through the window Remy saw Susan pick up a pair of turquoise bikini panties. His blood surged heavily in his veins. He wasn’t going to survive if he kept having this reaction to her. She had “turned,” and that knowledge should kill any desire for her. Ross said she was even part of a new spy network. Remy shook his head. Why was she doing it? For kicks? She certainly didn’t act like an ideologist, and she certainly didn’t need the money. Not that selling secrets paid all that well.
 
It just didn’t make sense. And he had been pulled off a job to baby-sit Susan, a newly born “mole.” That didn’t make sense either.
 
She set down the panties, to his relief. But she didn’t move on to another item. Instead, she stared off into space, her expression changing from curiosity to something else. For a long moment her features held a look of unbearable sadness and vulnerability. Then she turned … straight toward him.
 
Remy froze as the unthinkable happened. His quarry gazed straight into his eyes. She smiled and tipped her head in an action of good manners when two strangers catch each other’s glances. He could do nothing but smile back in brief acknowledgment. Etiquette done, she walked over to her grandmother.
 
Every muscle in Remy’s body collapsed. He managed to gaze down at the window display with calculated casualness, then saunter off along the street.
 
Your edge is definitely gone, he thought.
 
For the first time in his career he’d been spotted.