The Great Oz had spoken.

“Sorry, but this Friday I’m having dinner with my father. And as you already know, on Saturday I have plans with my friends,” Jordan said. “But if it’ll make you feel better, I could bump you up to Sunday evening, after the store closes.”

“There’s a man who’s been watching my every move for the last eight hours, Jordan. He’s going to wonder what’s going on when Nick Stanton, who supposedly has a girlfriend and a regular life, sits at home alone on a Friday and Saturday night. The FBI didn’t magically produce friends for me as part of this cover. Other than my fake house and my fake office, there aren’t too many places I can go because I can’t risk anyone recognizing me. You are the part of this assignment that makes everything look normal. So it’s either dinner with your father on Friday, or Saturday with your friends. You pick.”

Jordan bit her tongue, knowing he was at least partially right. Still, for a fake boyfriend, he was awfully bossy. “Fine. You can pick me up on Saturday night and I’ll take you to dinner with my friends. I’ll tell them your work meeting was canceled or something.”

“See? Was that so hard?”

Yes, because now she had to lie to three more people she cared about, but she’d worry about that later. “Just be at my house at seven.”


WHILE DRIVING BACK to his condo – with a guy on his tail – Nick’s cell phone rang a few minutes after he finished talking to Jordan. He saw that it was Huxley, who Davis had assigned to be the liaison on the favor Nick had called in.

Finally. Nick had been expecting this call all day. “I was thinking you might’ve forgotten my number,” he said as he answered.

“Sorry for the delay,” Huxley said. “Griegs isn’t easily accessible, given the circumstances.”

True. “So what’s his assessment of the situation?” Nick asked.

“That Kyle Rhodes isn’t exactly Mr. Popularity with some of the inmates at MCC. He’s already been involved in several altercations. It doesn’t sound like he’s the instigator, but the guards have started putting him in disciplinary segregation nevertheless. Probably hoping that will pacify anyone who thinks he’s getting special treatment because of his money.”

For the first time, Nick sympathized with Kyle Rhodes. Being sentenced to prison for a crime he’d willingly committed was one thing, but being thrown in disciplinary segregation merely for defending himself was another. “But Griegs will keep an eye on him?”

“He says he’ll try. But he told me to warn you that there’s probably not much he can do. Apparently, Rhodes isn’t exactly helping the situation – he defends himself when threatened. Griegs says it’s just as likely that Rhodes will end up injuring somebody else during a fight. Either way, it’s not a good situation.”

“No, it’s not.” That wasn’t the report Nick had been hoping for. “Kyle Rhodes sounds like a ticking time bomb.”

“And if he explodes, Jordan Rhodes will pull out of this deal,” Huxley said. “You got any ideas how to keep her brother under control?”

“I always have ideas, Huxley. We’ll talk soon.”

  Seventeen

“SO TELL ME about your friends.”

Jordan looked over at Nick. He’d insisted upon driving, even though she had wanted to take a cab. Given the circumstances, meaning that the evening counted as a work night for him, he said he didn’t plan to drink much. Which was a shame, because she’d brought along some great wines and had been planning to take another shot at making Nick a non-scoffer. She might not get another chance, after all. Things seemed to be progressing well with the surveillance of Xander, which meant that their dating charade wouldn’t last much longer.

“Well, you already met Melinda,” she said. “She’ll be there with her boyfriend, Pete.”

“What does he do for a living?” Nick asked.

“He writes operas. That’s how he and Melinda met – they’re both in musical theater.”

Nick eyed her skeptically. “They’re not going to burst into song or anything during dinner, are they?”

“That depends on how many bottles of wine we’ve gone through.”

Nick muttered something about men from Brooklyn not doing musical theater. “What about the other couple?”

“Corinne is a high school teacher and her husband, Charles, is a lawyer.”

This, at least, seemed to meet with his approval. “Sounds more my speed.”

“Do try to get along with everyone, sweetie,” Jordan said. “Remember that we’re in that stage of our relationship where you’re trying to impress me by getting to know my friends.”

“I’ve never been very good at that stage.” Nick thought about this. “Actually, I’ve never been at that stage.”

“I’m sure you can handle one night of it. Just do whatever it is you normally do on a date.”

Nick looked over with a devious sparkle in his eyes.

“Other than that,” Jordan said.

Charles and Corinne lived with their son in a three-bedroom bungalow in Andersonville, a quaint, charming neighborhood a few miles north of downtown Chicago. As they climbed up the steps to the front porch, Jordan saw Nick look over to their right. She heard a car approaching down the block at the same moment she felt his hand move to her waist.

She waited until they were at the front door and spoke quietly. “Are we being followed again?”

“Yes.”

She rang the doorbell and took a deep breath, preparing herself for the next episode of the Nick and Jordan show.


NICK PLASTERED ON a charming grin just as the door opened. A woman with straight, jet black hair greeted them with a cheerful smile.

“Hey, guys.” She held the door open and introduced herself. “I’m Corinne. It’s so nice to meet you, Nick. We’ve heard … well, honestly we’ve heard nothing about you. Jordan’s been oddly quiet about this whole thing. Melinda’s been telling everyone that you’re some kind of spy or secret agent.”

Jordan tripped over a child’s boot and would’ve fallen if Nick hadn’t caught her in his arms. He shot her a look. Stay cool.

Corinne apologized to Jordan and kicked the boot out of the way as Melinda and a man with sandy brown hair and a medium build came out of the kitchen. “Don’t take it personally,” the man told Nick with a chuckle. “Mel thinks everyone’s a spy or secret agent these days. She’s addicted to watching 24 on DVD.” He shook Nick’s hand. “Pete Garofalo.”

Melinda punched Pete in the shoulder. “I didn’t say I thought he was a spy, I said he looked James Bond-esque with the five o’clock shadow and the dress shirt and pants.”

A second man, wearing a red and white checkered apron, called out to Jordan and Nick from the kitchen, throwing in his two cents. “From what we heard, it sounds like Melinda caught you two at an inopportune time on Sunday morning. Something about how long it took you to answer the door?” He grinned cheekily as he held up a pair of salad tongs, greeting Nick. “I’m Charles, by the way.”

Corinne scolded her husband from the doorway. “Charles Kim – what kind of host are you? At least let the new guest take off his coat before we begin embarrassing him.”

Melinda was still stuck on the 24 thing. “And I don’t see you grabbing the remote away from me when that countdown clock starts chiming,” she said to Pete. “Unless it’s to get a quick check of the scores on Monday nights.”

Nick’s ears perked up at the mention of scores. Sports. Now there was a topic upon which he could wax poetic. “Too bad Monday night football is over,” he lamented to Pete. “But there’s always basketball. Who are you eying for the Final Four?”

Pete looked mildly embarrassed as he gestured to Melinda. “She’s, um, referring to the scores on Dancing with the Stars.”

“He likes it when they do the paso doblé,” Melinda threw in.

“The dance symbolizes the drama, artistry, and passion of a bullfight. It’s quite masculine,” Pete said.

“Except for the sequins and spray tans,” Melinda added.

Pete clapped his hands together, ignoring this. “How about you, Nick? Are you a fan of the reality television performing arts?”

Nick threw Jordan a look, trying to decide if his character was so smitten that he needed to feign an interest in any topic that involved sequins and spray tans that did not also involve cheerleaders.

She stood up on her toes and whispered in his ear. “Don’t worry. It’s like a bottle of wine that needs to breathe. They mellow out after about an hour or so.”


DINNER WENT SMOOTHLY enough, particularly because Jordan’s friends turned out to be a warm, welcoming group. Nick felt satisfied that to an outside eye – or eight of them – he and Jordan appeared to be simply a normal guy and girl on a date on Saturday night.

From time to time throughout dinner, he studied Jordan curiously. He was having a hard time sizing up what, exactly, was “normal” for her. A week ago, she’d been entirely in her element at Eckhart’s fund-raiser, chatting it up with the crème de la crème of Chicago society while wearing a designer dress and drinking wine that cost more than what many people earned in a week. On the other hand, she seemed just as comfortable with her friends, wearing jeans and a sweater and eating homemade pizza in a house that looked like a Toys “R” Us had exploded inside it.

She surprised him. He could handle anything Xander Eckhart threw at him; was unfazed by money laundering, undercover ops, fake identities, fake condos, offices, and cars, and private investigators who followed him around the clock and watched his every move. But Jordan had managed to throw him off guard more than once already, and Nick knew that could be a dangerous thing.

A prime example was that kiss neither of them acknowledged.

Despite being much shorter in duration and objectively far more pleasant than any other assignment he had been given, this was one undercover investigation he looked forward to wrapping up. Quickly. Before anything got … messy.

Shifting his attention away from Jordan, Nick turned to Charles, the lawyer, who sat on his right. The two of them spoke about Charles’s criminal defense practice, with Nick being careful not to give away the fact that he obviously knew a lot more about the justice system than the average real estate investor.

“Does your firm handle a lot of high-profile cases?” he asked. He hadn’t recognized the name of the firm when Charles had mentioned it earlier, but Chicago was a big city with a lot of lawyers.

“We get our fair share,” Charles said. “I mean, nothing as high-profile as the Roberto Martino trial. Not that my firm would represent the likes of him.” He lowered his voice. “At one point, we talked to Jordan’s brother about handling his case, but he decided to go with a different firm. Which is a shame, given the way things turned out. I mean, Kyle gets eighteen months over at MCC for a crime that hurt no one, yet it took years for the FBI and U.S. Attorney’s Office to get their acts together and arrest one of the most notorious crime lords in the country. That’s our federal criminal justice system at work.”

“Charles.” Corinne reached over and squeezed her husband’s hand with a meaningful look in Jordan’s direction. “You know she worries about Kyle. Let’s not bring that up tonight.” She smiled. “Maybe you could tell us how you and Jordan met, Nick.”

All conversation at the table stopped.

Frankly, Nick was surprised it had taken this long for someone to ask. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Jordan take a nervous sip of her wine. He knew this was the part of the evening she’d dreaded, the part where they told more lies to her friends.

Perhaps he could help her out with that.

“Jordan and I met two weeks ago, at her store,” he said. “On the night of the big snowstorm.”

Pete chuckled. “You really must’ve been jonesing for wine to go out in that mess.”

Nick reached across the table and linked his fingers through Jordan’s. “I think Fate had a higher purpose for bringing me to her store that night.” He winked at her. I’ve got this.

Melinda melted. “That’s so sweet.”

“Then what happened?” Corinne prompted.

Nick faced Jordan’s friends. For her sake, he’d tell the truth – perhaps not the whole truth – but at least nothing but. “Well, I asked Jordan a few questions, some quips were exchanged, and I distinctly recall her making a sarcastic comment about chardonnay. I can’t tell you exactly what happened from there, but five days later I found myself at Xander Eckhart’s party drinking pink champagne.”