“There’s this place,” I started with a smile. “It’s called a gym.”

Sloane’s brows raised, her eyes widened, she put her forearms on the edge of the table and leaned in deep. “Tell me more about this place,” she breathed. Her voice was raspy and full of fake wonder, but it was the way her sexy mouth curved up into a big bright smile that had my dick stirring in my pants. “It’s called a gym you say?” she finished.

It was then I realized I’d indeed gone insane.

I should’ve driven Sloane straight to the beach house, or alternately and more satisfyingly, I should’ve tossed her ass on the bed and done every damn thing I told her I was going to do to her. The truth was out, she knew who I was. The guilt that accompanied the lies was no longer a factor. I wanted her. She wanted me. The end. I could’ve given us what we both wanted and maybe, just fucking maybe my dick wouldn’t be rock hard from a smile.

Yet I knew that was bullshit. The way her face was lit and her eyes shining full of humor, it wouldn’t have mattered if I fucked her five minutes ago—that smile would still have had me rockin’ a hard-on.

“Smartass.”

She ignored my comment and her gaze traveled to her plate. After that, she hilariously declared, “Men suck.”

“Why’s that?”

“There are a variety of reasons, but for the purpose of this conversation, calories.”

“Calories?”

“Or more to the point, men’s ability to burn them. You see, if a woman ate all of that it would take a five-mile run and a two-mile swim to burn off the pancakes alone. Forget the bacon, that would be another mile of each. But no, not a man. A man walks into a gym and the calories just start melting away.”

It seriously sucked on top of everything else wonderful that was Sloane, that I was learning she could be funny.

“I work out to stay in shape, not train for the Olympics. And just to point out, men don’t like skinny and pointy.”

“Right, so what? You only swim a mile and a half and run two?” she asked, ignoring the rest of what I’d said.

“No swimming.” I smiled. “And I was joking—my ass only sees the inside of the gym when there’s snow on the ground or it’s too hot to run outside and I need a treadmill. Other than that I do my three miles a day outside.”

Sloane’s brows pinched together and her head tilted to the side when she asked, “Snow? Wait. You don’t live here?” Then she added, “In California?”

My identity, employment with Takeback, and the location of the office were not top secret. That didn’t mean the company had a website with an About Us or Contact Us page. I hadn’t been undercover for an operation since I left the FBI but that didn’t mean I had my shit splashed all over the internet. However, I did live in the shadows.