Lauren felt self-conscious dressing in front of him. He must have read her discomfort and turned his back. She hurriedly slipped out of bed and into the shirt. The sleeves hung past her fingertips, and the tails ended above her knees.

  “Let’s hope Jimmy has some tea in this flat,” she said, trying to ignore the feel of the fabric against her skin. She began to roll up the sleeves.

  He turned. One black brow arched, disappearing under the fall of his hair. “Are you kidding me? Whoever heard of an Englishman who didn’t have tea in his house?”

  A laugh escaped her mouth. “I guess you’re right.”

  They found a half-empty tin of Earl Grey in a cabinet with the sugar bowl and teacups. Lauren tried to keep her eyes off the wide expanse of Jon’s chest as he prepared the tea, but her eyes kept returning to the well-muscled torso and arms that were marked with dozens of scars.

  “Do I look that bad?”

  She jumped, flushing guiltily. “No.”

  “Then what?”

  “The scars. Are they from the accident?”

  An arctic coldness entered his eyes. “Yes.”

  It occurred to her at that moment that he had his contacts out and his eyes were Jon’s familiar blue. With his entire face revealed, she could see his high cheekbones and strong chin. The scar that ran from his left temple disappeared under his jawbone. But as she gazed at his face, some memory stirred to life in her.

  He placed the teapot on the table, startling her out of her musings. Lauren poured while Jon retrieved the sugar and cream. Cream? She didn’t take cream in her tea, and neither did the real Jon.

  “Do you still take your tea without cream?” Jon asked.

  “Yes.”

  He poured a generous amount into his cup. “Before the accident I couldn’t stand cream in my tea, but a nurse at the clinic in Bath, where I recovered, who looked like she played fullback for the New York Giants, always served me tea with cream and no one dared argue with her. Now tea tastes, strange without it.”

  He was an excellent liar. She’d seen him in action, up close and personal. Was he lying now? Just as she was convinced this man was Jon, some little thing would pop up, pointing to the possibility he wasn’t. It was confusing, tiring and frustrating.

  “Why couldn’t you sleep?” he asked softly.

  The 64,000-dollar question. Well, you see, I have the hots for you and it bothers me, since I’m engaged to another man and I don’t know if you’re my dead husband or a raving lunatic. She shook her head. That answer would never do. Leaning back in her chair, she skimmed her fingers around the lip of her cup. “My life’s been turned upside down and inside out, and you ask me why I can’t sleep?”

  “Yeah, I guess you’re right. It’s not every day that a car tries to run you down.”

  She glanced down at the shirt she wore—his shirtthen pushed the rolled-up sleeves past her elbows. “I still believe that was an accident.”

  “It wasn’t.”

  From the set of his chin and the hardness of his eyes, she knew she wouldn’t convince him otherwise. “One thing’s been bothering me.”

  “Only one thing?” he returned, his face lighting with mischief.

  “A thousand and one things, really, but this one I think you can answer.”

  “Shoot.”

  They stared at each other for several seconds before bursting into laughter.

  “How did you happen to be there today, just at the right time to save me from that cab?”

  “Still doubting me?” he countered.

  “Well, you have to admit that it was a suspicious coincidence. Your timing was a little too perfect.”

  “No coincidence. I’d gone to the restaurant to explain about Tony before I disappeared. I saw you walking back to the restaurant, then stop to read the newspaper. The Ford wasn’t hard to spot.”

  “Oh.”

  “Mind if I ask you a question?” he asked.

  “Turnabout is fair play. What do you want to know?”

  He picked up her left hand in his and carefully examined her fingers. “If you and Donald have already had an engagement party, why aren’t you wearing an engagement ring? I would think a man of his social status would give his fiancée a ring.”

  Lauren pulled her hand free. “He did, but it was too big. That’s one of the reasons we were going to the jewelers today, to pick it up.”

  He studied her, but his expression gave away nothing of what he was thinking, making Lauren very nervous. “Do you still have the wedding ring I gave you?”

  “It’s been three years since you died.”

  “I didn’t ask why you don’t wear it. I only wondered if you still had it.”

  Unable to endure his scrutiny any longer, she took her empty cup and set it in the sink. He joined her. The heat from his body wrapped around her, drawing her to him. He reached in front of her to place his cup next to hers. She looked over her shoulder, and their eyes met and locked. Like lightning arcing from one cloud to another, a charged current passed between them. He reached for her, turned her around and pulled her against his naked chest.

  “Do you still have it?”

  The feel of his skin against her cheek was as joyful as the first warm winds of spring. “Yes, I have it.”

  Without realizing it, she slipped her arms around his waist and lifted her face to his. His warm, moist lips covered hers, igniting a fire storm in her veins. He nudged her mouth, seeking entrance to the treasures beyond. She yielded, and the burning arrow of pleasure that pierced her body nearly reduced her to a pile of ashes at his feet.

  Her hands skimmed up his spine and over the broad muscles of his back. His smooth skin was interrupted periodically by thin crisscrossing ridges.

  Reality intruded and she drew back.

  His passion-glazed eyes met hers, and she read in their smoldering depths the question of why she pulled away.

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered, looking down at her hands.

  His fingers under her chin forced her gaze back to his. “Why are you sorry?” he asked bitterly. “Sorry you enjoyed it? Or sorry you returned my kiss? Or sorry you’ll deny us both?”

  “You have no right.”

  “I’m your husband.”

  Like a volcanic eruption, anger shot up through her. “So you say. But I’m not sure who you really are. Even if you are Jon, too much has happened for me to hop into bed with you without a word of protest.”

  She whirled and took three steps, then turned back. “Besides, I have a fiancé, and no matter what you think of me, I won’t sleep with you before I sever my relationship with him. I don’t jump ship midstream. I at least give those I love some closure.”

  Immediately she realized it was the wrong thing to say. His blue eyes flared with a burning light, and his facial muscles turned to stone. With one step he closed the distance between them.

  “Do you love him?”

  She wanted to lie, to wound him. But her gaze drifted to the scars on his chest, and she knew she couldn’t do that, no matter what he had done.

  “I like him.”

  “But do you love him?”

  “Love’s overrated.”

  Something flickered in his eyes. Pain, loss, regret? “Now who’s the liar?”

  She opened her mouth to refute his statement, but after seeing the dark warning in his expression, her jaw snapped shut before she uttered a word.

  “You always were a smart lady.”

  “Urrgh!” She tried to stomp away, but he caught her wrist.

  He studied her, then reached out and tucked a long strand of hair behind her ear. His thumb brushed over her bottom lip. Once. Twice. Lauren thought all the air in the room had been sucked out, because she couldn’t catch her breath.

  “One of these days you’ll trust me enough to come to me on your own,” he told her, his voice low and rough with need. “I hope that day will be soon.”

  She glared at him.

  “Tell me this, Lauren. Why would I claim to be Jon? What benefit is it to me? I’ve got nothing to gain except getting my wife back.”

  He released her wrist, and she rushed into the bedroom, slamming the door behind her. She walked to the window and stared out into the street. His question rolled through her mind like thunder on a spring night. What did he have to gain? Her flat? Her cranky, ancient MG? Her restaurant? He didn’t seem like the kind of man interested in spending his life managing foodstuffs and waiters.

  Then what?

  Had Jon left her anything that might be of value? No, he had only left clothes and a few books.

  Could he be after Donald, trying to get to him through her? That made no sense.

  Wrapping her arms around her waist, she sat on the bed. She couldn’t answer his question. But this much she knew. She was drawn to this man, like a june bug was attracted to the light. When she was growing up in Kaufman, Texas, she could remember lying in bed at night during the hot summer listening to the bug’s futile attempt to get inside to the hall light. It mindlessly hurled itself against the screens until it died of exhaustion or found a hole in the wire mesh.

  What would be her fate? Would she be able to penetrate the lies and half truths that surrounded the man calling himself Jonathan Michaels and find the truth? Or would she die trying? It was a less than comforting analogy.

  Jon sat on the sofa, his elbows resting on his knees, his head cradled in his hands. Well, he certainly had blown it with Lauren. With his hormones driving him, he had pushed her too hard, too fast. He couldn’t afford to do that again. He needed to win her trust, not alienate her. And yet whenever he was close to her, his mind seemed to go on hold and his body took over. She evoked feelings in him that were dangerous, that drew his thoughts away from the problem of finding the mole, drew him to the desire to taste her lips.

  Every time he thought.about her being engaged, it made him crazy. He was afraid if he ever met Donald Blake face-to-face, he’d feed the Englishman a knuckle sandwich.

  He sighed and stretched out on the couch. His bad knee was throbbing, telling him that he’d been on it too long. Because of the injury, he could no longer serve as a case officer, recruiting foreign nationals to gather information. Nor could he be sent into a foreign country as a singleton as he had been in the past. He was now desk bound.

  But if he were honest with himself, he wasn’t terribly disappointed. He was tired of the lies, tired of always trying to discern people’s motives, tired of always watching his back. That’s why Lauren meant so much to him. What you saw was what you got. Pretty and sassy. And smart. And if he didn’t watch it, he was going to blow this opportunity all to hell. He couldn’t afford to do that. Too much rested on Lauren believing he was her husband.

  Lauren glanced in the bathroom mirror one last time. Her hair was in a tight braid, and she was dressed in her wrinkled blouse and skirt. She looked as if she’d slept in her clothes, but at least they were clean. Her face was devoid of any makeup, and there were dark circles under her eyes. Well, there was no help for it. She hadn’t slept and she looked like it.

  She was mad, having wrestled with her doubts and attraction to Jon all night. She grabbed his shirt, opened the bathroom door and walked into the living room. Jon sat on the couch, his elbows resting on his knees, his shoulders hunched. She could see his back and the numerous scars that crisscrossed it. Her heart ached for him. No matter who he was, the man had suffered through a tremendous amount of pain. She remembered the scars on his legs and the ugly red mass around his injured knee.

  “Good morning,” he said, his voice low and rough.

  That was something else about this man that disturbed Lauren. The gravelly quality was unlike Jon’s, but it was dark and sensual and always evoked dangerous emotions in her.

  He pointed to the shirt in her hand. “Are you returning that?”

  Color flooded her cheeks. She felt as though she was ten again with a crush on eleven-year-old Mickey-Bob Shelton. She’d been so enamored with the skinny boy that she’d managed to walk into the cafeteria wall at school while trying to catch his attention. She now felt the same feeling of embarrassment with the same painful clarity.

  She shoved the shirt at him. An amused smile curved his lips as he took it from her hand. Like stepping in front of a blast furnace, the heat of his smile warmed Lauren from head to foot. Her stomach seemed to do a somersault, and she knew that if she spent another second staring into his handsome face, she was going to hop over the sofa and kiss him. Her reaction further fed her irritation.

  “I’m going to fix blue cornmeal. Do you want some?”

  “Do I have a choice?” Laughter laced his words.

  She rested her fists on her hips. “Yes or no.”

  “Yes.”

  She marched into the kitchen without a backward glance and started breakfast. As she cooked the mush, Lauren came to the conclusion she was going to have to get out of this flat if she had any hope of surviving Jon’s magnetic pull on her will. Her heart felt like a pretzel, twisted and pulled around on itself, and she couldn’t seem to regain any of the sense of balance or objectivity she needed to make a decent judgment.

  Jon limped into the room several minutes later, leaning heavily on his cane. His hair was wet, his shirt on, and the look in his eyes utterly weary. The sight aroused her sympathy and made her want to comfort him. In this situation those were bad impulses.

  “Breakfast is ready,” she announced unnecessarily.

  He frowned at the bowls of cereal on the table.

  “It was your choice,” she reminded him. “Last night I volunteered to get eggs and muffins, but you nixed the idea.”

  “Don’t remind me.”

  As they ate, she glanced at his cane. His limp was very pronounced this morning.

  “I told you, my limp is worse when I’m tired.”

  Her gaze flew to his, and her cheeks heated with embarrassment. He had read her mind with amazing accuracy.

  “And are you wondering what kept me awake most of the night?”

  She didn’t want to hear.

  He leaned across the table and whispered, “You.”

  She jerked back in her chair. The conversation was drifting down a dangerous avenue. She wanted to redirect the focus. “Do you think your, uh, disability will hamper your—”

  “Do you mean does my limp blow my spying days to hell?”

  “Kinda.”

  He laughed, but there was no humor in the sound. “Not completely. I can still sit behind a desk and do analysis, but my days in the field are finished.”

  She swallowed a spoonful of her cereal, then asked, “Do you regret it?”

  He picked up his cup of tea and gazed into the golden liquid. “I don’t know. I know I’m bitter that I didn’t have the choice of when to quit. And now I’m determined to find the bastard who betrayed me and killed Tony.”

  The rest of the meal passed in silence. Lauren gathered the bowls and put them in the sink. She poured them both a second cup of tea, mentally preparing herself for the argument she was going to precipitate.

  “I’m going in to work today,” she said, picking up her cup.

  His gaze locked with hers. He hadn’t put in the brown contacts this morning. It made her crazy to gaze into his blue eyes. It was one less barrier to keep her sane. And one more reason to escape the small confines of these four walls.

  “You promised to stay until I checked if it was safe for you—”

  “To go to my apartment. I said nothing about work.”

  “You’re being legalistic.”

  “You got it. I’ll keep to the letter of my promise.”

  “But not the spirit.”

  “From you, that’s quite a statement.”

  He paled as the barb hit its mark. Stumbling to his feet, he said, “Dammit, Lauren, you’re just being pigheaded.”

  She leapt up. “I’d say that makes two of us.”

  “My only concern is you.”

  She couldn’t argue with his concern, but she was desperate to escape his presence. So she said nothing but raised her chin in silent determination.

  He sighed and shook his head. “At least stay until I talk to my superior.”

  “I can’t. I’ll be safe at the restaurant.”

  He grabbed her wrist, showing her the purple-and-yellow bruise. “Like you were when this happened?”

  “Listen to me. If you think I’m going to stay in this flat all day long, sitting on my rear doing nothing, while my restaurant is unattended, then you’ve seriously miscalculated. That hole in your memory is bigger than you think.”

  She tried to yank her arm free, but he wouldn’t release her. He attempted to intimidate her with his stare, but she returned his glare.

  “If I have to wrestle you,” she told him, “I will. And if you remember, the last time we went a round, I won.”

  His mouth twitched at the corners, then he released her and stepped aside. She strode across the flat to the front door. As she opened it, she thought she heard him say, in an intimate whisper, “Be careful.”

  Jon stood back from the window and watched as Lauren walked down the street toward the Underground station. He certainly had handled her with a suave and elegant manner, much like a hog caller yelling at swine. He definitely was losing his touch.

  His stomach knotted with tension. Although he had no concrete proof, his gut instinct was screaming at him that there was an unseen threat against Lauren. Why wouldn’t she believe him that her life was in danger?

  Could it be that you’ve lied to her more than you’ve told her the truth since you’ve known her? his conscience whispered.

  He walked away from the window and collapsed onto the couch. And what could he do to protect her? Run down the street to catch her and force her back to the safety of Jimmy’s place? Yeah, right. A toddler could outrun him. And even if he could catch up with her, Lauren wouldn’t come quietly back.

  So what could he have done?

  Nothing. Absolutely nothing. And that’s what had him so frustrated. He rubbed his throbbing temples as he faced the ugly truth of this situation. His lies were catching up to him.