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For Services Rendered

Harlequin Enterprises, Ltd.

Chapter One

Sam Deering linked both hands above his head and stretched his powerful arms. He had kinks in his back from sitting so long, exactly the kind of thing his physical therapist would give him hell for, but he really needed to get somebody into the new position so he had to finish the interviews today. He dropped his glasses on top of the stack of paper before him and stood, stretching his left leg. It had never been the same since he'd been shot, but it was a lot better than anyone expected, so he supposed he couldn't complain.

"You okay?" Del Smith, the vice president of Protective Services, Incorporated, looked up from the résumé she was reviewing, her heavily lashed brown eyes focusing on him.

"Yeah." He picked up his glasses and resettled them on his nose, then nodded at the door. "Let's get this over with." It had been an exciting ride over the past few years, he thought. PSI might have started out small, but it was making up for it now. About a month ago, he'd realized they needed an assistant for their in-house undercover consultant to handle the amount of work they were getting. He liked the fact that his Virginia-based company could respond to so many different needs in people's lives, fromkidnappings to home-security analyses to bodyguard services, but it kept him on his toes.

Del and him, he corrected himself. Without her, he might never have been able to put this all together.

"This is the last one." Del's husky voice sounded as relieved as he was. She laid a neat file before him on his desk, picking up the previous one at the same time. "Here's the next interview."

Sam flipped open the file, casually riffling through it as he watched her from beneath his lashes. "What do you think so far?"

Del shrugged slender shoulders beneath the oversize man's work shirt that was part of her standard code of dress. Beneath the open shirt she wore a PSI T-shirt that probably would fit Sam. He suspected there were some decent breasts under those sloppy casual clothes, but in seven years, he'd never once seen her in anything other than her jeans and shirts or a shapeless black jacket and pants she wore when they entertained clients. It wasn't exactly the kind of thing he could ask about, either. So, Del, what size jugs you got under that shirt? No, probably not a good idea.

Unaware of his thoughts, Del shook her head as she arranged papers in front of her own seat. "The Sanders man probably would be competent, but he didn't show me anything special, if you want the truth."

He nodded, forcing himself to focus on the potential employees they'd spent the afternoon interviewing. "I agree. Maybe we'll get lucky on the last one."

Del gave him a small smile as she turned to walk to the doorway. "Maybe."

As she strode across the floor in the no-non-sense style he associated with Del, Sam watched her go. He knew she was slender beneath the baggy jeans and shapeless shirt, but the clothes left him guessing at details. Over the years, he'd become obsessed with trying to catch her in positions that might give him a hint of what lay beneath those layers.

Today, as always, her long, shiny brown hair was braided into a single thick rope that hung from the hole in the back of the baseball cap she always wore and as she walked, it twitched from side to side, brushing across her butt rhythmically, capturing his gaze as surely as if she were stripping in front of him. What would that mane of waist-length hair look like loose and flowing around her shoulders? Hard to believe that in nearly seven years of working in each other's pockets every day, he'd never seen her with it down.

He shifted in his chair, glad he was sitting down. He doubted any of his employees had any idea how his vice president turned him on and he wanted to keep it that way. It wasn't as if he had any intention of acting on it, after all.

No, the last thing he needed was any sort of entanglement with a woman. PSI was the only mistress he had time for. A flesh-and-blood woman would never be content with the long hours he put in, the occasional urgent summons and instant response that certain kinds of cases required.

The door of his office opened again and Del ushered in a tall woman in a severe dark jacket and pants with a white button-down shirt. The jacket was a boxy, unconstructed cut and as he assessed her, he'd bet that it had been made to conceal a sidearm, although she wasn't carrying today.

Del took her seat at Sam's side with a second file. "This is Karen Munson," she said. "Karen, Sam Deering, the president of PSI."

She turned her attention to Sam for a moment. "Ms. Munson has a Criminal Justice degree from Penn State. She started as a beat cop in Miami, worked her way up to Homicide investigations and then applied to the FBI. Her background includes criminal profiling, kidnapping investigations and long-term deep-cover assignments."

"Call me Karen," the woman said, smiling at him. There was no hint of flirtation in the smile, and no hint that she recognized him as anything other than the head of the firm.

Good. The last thing he needed was an employee blabbing his whereabouts to the press. He'd had enough media attention nine years ago to last a lifetime. Even Del didn't know about his past.

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from For Services Rendered by Anne Winston Copyright © 2004 by Harlequin Enterprises, Ltd.. Excerpted by permission.
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