“Because she can’t testify against you if you’re married,” Janie said. She was the queen of oversharing.

“Thank you, Janie.” I closed my eyes for a beat. So much for breaking it to him gently.

“You’re welcome,” came her clueless, happy response.

His face no longer looked relaxed. “How did you…when…how did you find out? You want to get married so you don’t have to testify?”

“Can we discuss this after the wedding?”

“No.”

Damn. It was worth a shot.

“Fine.” I glanced around the car. How does one ask for privacy in the back of a limo occupied by eight observers? To their credit, my friends did their best impression of quality assurance engineers, checking the seat cushions for stitch durability and picking lint from the carpet.

I lowered my voice and leaned close to mimic our cocoon. “I don’t want to testify against you, so that’s part of it. And there are lots of other reasons.”

“You want to marry me?”

I nodded. “Yes.”

To my infinite frustration, he didn’t believe me—not for one second.

“No.” The anger and hurt behind his eyes made me want to smack him and hold him, but he physically pushed me away. “No way. I’m not doing this.” He leaned forward around me and turned to Quinn. “Stop the car.”

“Don’t stop the car.” I also leaned forward, blocking Alex and glaring at Quinn.

“Stop the car.”

“Don’t stop the car.”

Quinn sighed. “We have to stop the car. We’re here.”

“Fine, stop the car.” I rolled my eyes and looped my arm through Alex’s and issued Quinn my very best I mean it scowl. “But he isn’t allowed to leave until I say so.”

“Sandra….” Alex’s voice held an edge, a warning. It sent an uncomfortable shiver down my spine. I spun around to face him—which was logistically difficult to do considering our lack of space. I could see that he’d already retreated some distance within himself.

Therefore, I allowed my frustration to show. I was fighting for him, darn it all to heck, and he was not allowed to shrug me off.

“I’m as serious as a Wookie about winning. You are going to sit in here, in this luxury automobile, with leather seats and a full bar and soundproof tinted windows, and listen to what I have to say.”

His eyes half blinked, cobalt muddied with his perception of my treachery; his zing-inducing, full lips pressed into a thin line; his jaw like granite.

“Everyone. Out. Please.” I didn’t remove my gaze from his as our companions fled the car. Luckily, the limo had four rear doors, which decreased the amount of jostling.

When the last passenger departed and we were left alone, I tempered my expression and reached for him.

He pulled away.

“Speak.” He looked beyond angry. His eyes screamed betrayal.

“No. Kiss me first.”

His mouth parted slightly. I could tell the suggestion distracted him from his fury—which was good. I’d said it to distract him. I didn’t expect him to actually do it.

But he did.

Alex reached for me quite abruptly—one hand like a vise on my hip, the other firm and tense on my neck—and he entered my mouth before I’d realized his intention to take my order seriously.

He was greedy, punishing, passionate, furious, and so very, very arousing. When I regained control of my faculties, I straddled him on the bench, continued our mutual mouthlesting, slipped my hands under his jacket and T-shirt, scratched my nails against his stomach and sides.

He hissed, then tried to bite my bottom lip. I dipped my head backward and out of his biting radius.

His eyes flashed lightning. “You’re going to pay for this,” he growled.

“Promise?” I rocked my body against him until he gasped then shuddered. His fingers dug into my bottom, holding me where he wanted me.

“I can’t believe you did this. Why would you do this?” His words and his tone surprised me. Yes, he sounded angry and accusing, but he also sounded torn, wounded.

I lifted my hands to his face, cradled it between my palms. “Because I love you.”

Alex flinched as though I’d struck him and tried to turn his face away. I wouldn’t let him.

“Listen to me. Fiona—my friend Fiona—she is ex-CIA.”

“Fantastic.” He growled the word through his clenched jaw.

“And Quinn knows people—powerful people in Washington. He can help us.”

His eyes ransacked mine, still angry and belligerent. “They told you, didn’t they? They told you about the deal.”

I sighed. “Oh, Alex.” I placed a gentle kiss on his lips. He was unresponsive, but his hands still held me to him as though he were afraid I would disappear.

I tried to impart, with every cell of my being, how much I loved him. I hoped he felt it in my words and actions.

“If we’re married, then I can’t testify against you, yes?” I didn’t wait for him to answer. “Therefore, you won’t feel compelled to move to Washington, DC. Therefore, you won’t have to give the NSA what they want. Therefore, we can be together. See—it all works out.”

“Because you suddenly want to be with me,” he said, sarcasm laced through every word.

“Alex, I’ve wanted to be with you since you forced me to cop a feel during the taping of Wait Wait…Don’t Tell Me. You had me at wait wait.”

He exhaled unsteadily and closed his eyes. Our foreheads touched. We breathed each other in, hid within our temporary shared universe of two.

“Even if we get married, they might still leak the information about your past, about you working as a phone sex operator to get through college.”

“Yes. They might. I don’t really care about that. I can’t lose my medical license over it, and I’ll still be able to find a job. I just want to help people and, for better or worse, there are plenty of people needing help everywhere. But if we’re married and they release the information, the chances of you cooperating decrease substantially. And they can’t force me to testify, so….”

He leaned just his head away, studied me. “This isn’t one of your movies. Real people don’t do this; they don’t get married to avoid testifying.”

“Yes, yes they do. Janie looked it up. It actually happens a lot, and usually in the Northeast where there is a lot of mob activity.”

“She looked it up?”

“Yep. She does that.”

He appeared to be both confused by the turn in our conversation and torn by my irrefutable proof. Finally, he said. “This isn’t going to work.”

“It will.” My hands fell to his chest, felt the beating of his heart. “Quinn—the big guy with the grumpy face—he owns a global security firm, and he knows who you are.”

“You told him about me?”

“No. The NSA called him when we started using the apartment in his building, but he already knew who you were, not your real name, but who you were because your online reputation preceded you or something like that—long story. Anyway, he knows people, powerful people; he knows senators in Washington. As it turns out, so does Fiona. They want to help us.”

This earned me a skeptical but hopeful stare. “What do they want in return?”

“Nothing…except, Quinn would like you to start working for his company.”

“Oh really?” He rolled his eyes.

“It’s not like that. I promise. He assured me it would be simple stuff—like breaking into banks.”

“What?”

“Security systems, the banks would pay you to find holes in their security systems,” I quickly clarified. “He has a security business. I promise it won’t be illegal or painful.”

Alex breathed a laugh that sounded both amused and forlorn. “They’re not just going to agree to this. They’re not going to just let me go.”

“With Quinn and Fiona using their contacts, I think you might be surprised.”

Staring past me, his hands absentmindedly caressing my backside, he finally, finally appeared to be seriously contemplating the plan.

I gave him a small push. “Could you offer them something? Could you talk to Agent Bell? She actually seems to like you. I’m sure, if you talked to her, maybe you could reach a compromise that wouldn’t require handing over the skeleton key. She might allow you to walk away, have something like a normal life…with me.”

I was pleased to see that the hostility and suspicion he’d been clinging to earlier had been replaced with respect and simmering desire.

Desire was like a good soup; it needed simmering.

“Life will never be normal with you.”

This assertion made me smile. “I know. That last part was a lie. Our life will be unbelievable.”

He stole a gentle kiss, followed by another, then whispered against my mouth, “I’m not happy about this.”

“Yes you are.” I kissed his nose.

“I’m not.”

“Why?”

“Because I’m trapping you.”

“I thought you wanted to trap me.”

“I do. I want to trap you. Just like I want to take you away and keep you all to myself.” His hands on my backside became increasingly fervent. “I want to spend every minute of every day making love to you. I want to hear you laugh and watch you knit, and I want to tear your clothes off right now and….”