“I focused, rather embarrassingly, on his chest which was rising and falling slowly. I left teeth marks!”

“His jaw was set, telling me I should back off. Unfortunately, being a gobby cow meant I couldn’t.”

“Erica had asked me a million times. 'Madison, are you sure you’re just the child minder? He pays you a lot of money for doing hardly anything.' Pushing aside the blatant insinuation that I was his weekend whore, I’d always told her the absolute truth. He’d never so much as looked at me inappropriately, let alone anything more.”

“It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair that I’d stumbled across the kind of man I used to find irresistible, or that he’d managed to stare right inside my brain to locate my weaknesses. The thrill of being wanted while pretending not to be interested was a game I’d played over and over during my youth. I’d grown up since then. I’d done more than my share of getting mixed up with men who were all ego and muscles, and he reminded me exactly why I’d given them up. Unfortunately, my body hadn’t got the memo yet.”

“I don’t know, man.” He reached into his inside pocket and pulled out a pack of cigarettes.“Ew!” I recoiled. “You smoke?”“Only when I drink,” he said, reaching for a lighter, “or when I’m seriously depressed.”I snatched the pack away. “These will kill you, and you don’t want that.”“Yeah?” he said sarcastically. “How should I get myself killed then?”“You could hang out with me some more,” I suggested. “I attract homicidal maniacs like mosquitoes, baby.”

“It dawned on me then that I didn’t understand anything half as wellas I thought I did.”

“I don’t want to kill you, but I must. For the good of the country.”