The door shut with a click behind her, and she double-checked to make sure it was locked. She walked to the elevator slowly, adopting the hip-wiggle and slink that screamed "Look at me!" She pushed the down arrow, tapped her foot impatiently and twisted her hair with her right index finger as she waited for the elevator to make its way to the 15th floor. "God," she muttered under her breath, "I could spend half my life here in D.C. waiting on the goddamned elevator. I do not even have time for this." Patience was not one of her long suits. More than once her frustration at having to wait for something—anything—had caused her to make a snap decision that could have harmed her. She always came out smelling like a rose, though, so the impetus to change her impatient ways was just not there. Her mother always told her that some day ...

"Ah, finally," she said aloud as the elevator door slid open. Without looking she charged inside and immediately collided with the elevator's exiting occupant. "Goddamn you, look where you are going," she cursed aloud. Still adjusting herself from the collision, she barely had time to look up when she heard a familiar voice from her distant past say, "Some things never change. Still in a hurry, are you?"

Her knees went soft and she sank against the wall of the elevator for support. Looking up just as the doors slid shut, her eyes met his. His eyes, those impossibly blue eyes gazing out from a tanned and oh-so-handsome face that had not aged a bit since she had last seen it. That had been while she lay on her back with a bullet in her side, five years ago in Istanbul.

Derran was alive, and he was in D.C.

The elevator stood awaiting her instruction while Theresa gathered what was left of her wits. She pressed the lobby button and stood for a moment in contemplation of what she had just seen. It was Derran, she was sure of it. But why D.C., and why her building and floor? How could he have tracked her ... Wait—maybe he had not tracked her after all. She pressed herself to remember the sweet southern voice of her neighbor introducing herself. "Miss Lilly Beth Henderson." Oh, my God, she thought, that sweet little old woman must be his grandmother.

Theresa staggered out into the brightly lit morning not even bothering to don her Gucci sunglasses. Her heart was racing, pounding so hard with the shock of seeing him again that she thought perhaps she was having a heart attack. Could you have a heart attack from love? she wondered to herself. She was consumed, ravaged by her memories. She quickly realized she had better get a grip on herself or she could easily be taken down by one of Derran's avenging henchmen. That is, of course, assuming he still had henchmen. With a reassuring pat on her purse, and finding her gun right where it should be, Theresa vowed to get her act together and decided to treat herself to a quiet breakfast in her favorite neighborhood diner.

She slid into the booth with a grace practiced at accomplishing awkward movements with the greatest possible ease—and with, of course, the greatest show of leg. It was only once she had ordered and was sipping a steaming cup of coffee that she allowed herself a moment for reflection and bewilderment. Inhaling deeply on a borrowed cigarette—she had given up the habit years ago, but this occasion allowed her the perfect excuse to fall off the wagon—Theresa slowly began to lose herself in her memories and her pain.

It was five years ago (What year is it now?), Istanbul. She was hot on the trail of famed international terrorist, Christobal. He was wanted by the FBI for the fatal shooting of a Middle Eastern terrorism expert, the very man who had fingered Christobal for an embassy bombing in New York the year before. The FBI read his character profile, and decided that Christobal's weakness for blonde bombshells would be his undoing. Theresa was well prepared to go after him and had other agents to back her up for the collar. They would take him secretly because Turkey had no extradition policy with the U.S. This type of operation had been done before and should prove to be as easy this time. Entrapment? Perhaps. You could call it that, since Theresa knew her breasts would once again prove the perfect distraction.

Posing as an anthropologist studying the cultural effects of the Armenian-Turkish conflict, Theresa set herself up in a small hotel on the outskirts of the city. She went about daily with her guide and interpreter, interviewing elderly witnesses to the atrocities committed on both sides. Personally she was not prepared for the stories she heard, and regretted daily that she had ever agreed to this cover. It was painful to hear the old people speak, some with regret, some still with hostility over the bitter battle waged. Even though she was in the business of crime, she could still be shocked.

Having studied the intelligence reports of Christobal's daily movements, Theresa forced herself to progress slowly. Dressed in the modest garb of a Muslim woman (covered from head to toe in fabric that was most certainly not designed by Versace), she went about her work, careful not to run into him until the time was right. One month after she arrived in Turkey, she told her guide to take her to a little coffee shop deep in the bowels of the city. But, it was not Christobal who she ran into that fateful day.

After seating herself so she could see all entrances and exits made by other patrons, Theresa dismissed her guide. She ordered with the proper demeanor, coyly arranging her blouse to display to best advantage all of her feminine wiles. The nature of the garments certainly made this endeavor much more challenging. She knew, however, that Christobal was accustomed to assessing the charms of a woman, whether they were buried under layers of coarse fabric or not.

Her tea arrived. As she sipped it she began to make an inventory of all the occupants of the room. It was small and dimly lit, filled with odors ranging back centuries. Her eyes roamed from person to person taking in as much as she dared without seeming to be bold. It would not do to be thought bold in an environment such as this, especially since she was unescorted by a male. She turned her head to the left to peruse the denizens of a nearby table. Her curiosity satisfied, she returned her attention to her tea. Just as she glanced around, she gasped in surprise, shock—she confessed to a little fear—and dismay. Unbeknownst to her, a man had walked right up to her table; now his face was mere inches from her own, and without her having heard or sensed a thing. One hand flew to her chest as her eyes met with a pair of bold, dancing, blue eyes on fire with curiosity. Speechless (for a change), she returned his questioning gaze and ran her eyes over his body.

"Out of the blue," Theresa muttered aloud, as she searched for some sign of hostility or suspicion in the blue eyes that beheld her. He was tall and rangy with a rugged countenance—the sort you might find on a billboard advertising cigarettes. His deep tan led her to believe he had been in this hot, arid climate for some time. His black hair and expressive brow lent him the appearance of a native, yet something in the way he managed himself in those first few seconds led Theresa to believe he was not your average local boy. She found him unbelievably handsome, although it was only her peculiar taste in men and not necessarily the truth.

Wordlessly still and still holding her gaze, he reached up a hand and slid the covering from her hair. She, knowing full well the penalties for this public display, rushed to cover it once again. And once again she was uncharacteristically subdued.

The Theresa she knew—who should curse him quietly and tell him to leave her the hell alone—where was this woman now? And who—what—was the man who could evoke this reaction in her?

With a question in her eyes she hastily pulled the scarf back into position hoping no one else had seen her golden display. He laughed. "My name is Derran," he said, with an obvious Midwestern American accent. "I knew there was a treasure buried under that awful garb. Permit me to sit with you for a moment."

Speechless again, she glanced toward the empty chair to her right and watched as he, with the practiced grace of a man in total self-assurance, swiftly took it as his own.

I must get help, Theresa thought to herself. This heat is going to my head; I've gone barmey. Just who does he think he is? Her inner turmoil was not wasted on the man to her right. He seemed to sense that he had just thrown her off balance, but Theresa was certain he could not possibly know how far. What if Christobal came into the shop today? So much for keeping to herself.

To this day Theresa had no explanation for why she had allowed the man to sit next to her. She knew only that it had changed her life forever. Perhaps love is far wiser than we give it credit for, forcing its way out from beneath the bedrock of the stony heart. Perhaps love knows us far better than we do ourselves.

He asked her what a "beautiful American lass" was doing so far from home, and she told him. (The cover story, of course; she was not that far gone.) He told her he was in Turkey trying to negotiate an oil pipeline deal with the Afghani and Turkish governments, a story she foolishly never bothered to check.

It seemed she had known him forever. Even the timbre and cadence of his voice seemed familiar to her. Perhaps, she thought to herself, there is something to these stories of past lives after all. How had she become so quickly enraptured by his very presence? For this she had no answer. Even now the memory of that sultry afternoon five years ago made her hands shake and her heart pound.

The following two weeks were blazoned in her memory, imprinted onto her psyche as deeply as her knowledge of her humanness. He invited her to dinner that evening and she accepted. She had, she felt, some time to kill, and she rationalized her actions against the stark conditions under which she had been living for the last month. She deserved a little enjoyment, didn't she? Why not?

After dinner in a quaint local diner, he kindly escorted her to her lodgings. Her guide, having been dismissed earlier in the day, was no where to be seen. And her backup agents would remain in hiding until she called them in to move on Christobal. She leaned against the door to her room and stared once again, unquestioningly, into the blue eyes of her fate. Her heart gave a resounding thud as he moved closer. Whispering, forcing her to move closer to listen, he told her what she wanted to hear: "I want you this moment like I have never wanted another woman."

Derran took her by the shoulders and, with one last glance into her eyes, kissed her. She melted into his embrace. His tongue blazed a pathway into her mouth and she answered him with her own. A hand found its way onto her breast and at his touch she found that she ached for him in a part of her body she had thought asleep. Theresa turned abruptly from his embrace and pushed open the door to her room. Taking his hand, she pulled him in and shut the door with a resounding bang.

With a frenzy she didn't know she possessed, she began pulling at his clothing. Laughing at her reaction to his kiss, he let her remove every last shred of cloth from his body. Standing proudly naked before her, he moved back and watched with a growing smile as she tore at her own clothing, until she too stood naked. He gasped in surprise at the bounty hidden beneath the heavy Islamic garb. In one swift movement he engulfed her in his arms.

There is no way to describe that feeling when two bodies come together flesh-to-flesh that first time. Shock wave? A torch to the gasoline? Theresa was unable to control the trembling of her body. For a while it became not her own—alien to her in its reactions to the apparent stranger who was about to ravish her.

And ravish her he did. Wordlessly he touched her in places that had long hungered for a hand other than her own. He shuddered in surprise when he found her ready to receive him. In near-anguish for want of her, he pushed her down onto the little bed that occupied a corner of her small room. With his mouth hungrily fastened onto her breast he positioned himself to enter her and, without the tiniest bit of guidance (her hands were tight on his waist), she pulled him into her, nearly shrieking with the joy of it.

Together they pushed each other into a realm of ecstasy that neither had known existed. Over and over Theresa found herself falling over the pinnacle of pleasure, meeting his amazed gaze each time. Finally he could stand it no longer and he released himself into her. The pulsing of his pleasure sent Theresa over the edge one more time and she collapsed. Arms over her head in an almost heavenly embrace, she lay sweating, staring into eyes of blue. Eyes, perhaps, of love.

The next two weeks flew by as the accidental lovers embraced the joy they found in each other. They discovered new heights of relating that neither expected nor perhaps wanted. Theresa struggled to maintain her role as decoy for Christobal. One hot day, in the very café where she had met Derran, she laid eyes on the world's most-wanted terrorist in much the same manner.

Continued—»