“Do you two have something going on?” Alan asked.

Beth’s gaze jerked back to him. “Me and Mr. Cool? I don’t think so. You, of all people, should know I don’t date agents.”

“Anymore.”

“You were an exception I lived to regret.”

“I’d rather you regretted walking away.”

She stood up, unwilling to rehash the past in such a public setting. “Well, I don’t. Sorry.”

He sighed. “People make mistakes, Beth.”

“And most of us try to learn from them. I certainly learned from mine.” She started walking toward the office that had been prepared for the new agent. For him. And darn it all anyway, her dad had known that. “Come on. I’ll show you your space and explain the computer system and pass codes.”

He didn’t reply, but he did follow her.

Once they were in the office, she showed him his graphic interface computer.

“Everything is biometrically coded. Once your fingerprint is logged into the system, you can change the computer so only you have access.”

She pressed her finger over an electronic eye on his desk and a flat screen rose into view. “Right now, I have access to your system, but it doesn’t have to stay that way.”

She touched the screen and the log-in box appeared in the center. “All computer systems have a triple security level access. Your fingerprint brings up the screen and then you log into the basic operating system with a password that changes daily.” She typed in the password on the keyboard that had appeared when she touched the screen. “To get into your personal programs and files, there is another password that you can change as frequently as you feel the need, though the agency suggests doing so at least weekly.”

“Do the other agents have you coded into their systems for access? Does Ethan Crane?”

“Most of them do, but some don’t,” she said, ignoring his reference to Ethan. She didn’t know why he was fixating on the other agent, but she wasn’t going there. She did enough fixating of her own in that direction. “I don’t care either way. The accessibility of your system to me is mostly for your convenience, not mine.”

He touched the screen with his finger and the application he’d brushed over opened up. Another touch and a picture on the screen zoomed to twice its size. “Holy shit. It’s completely touch interactive.”

“It gets better.” She touched some things on the screen and a holographic three-dimensional model of one of their latest lab gadgets appeared in front of the screen. She dismantled it before his eyes by touching the right places on the mirror image on the screen. “You can go 3-D with any graphic with the capability.”

“Incredible.”

“It will probably be another year or so before even the screen is available on the consumer market and longer than that for the holographic imagery to make it to market, but we have access to some of the world’s most advanced technology.”

“So do the bad guys…or so I’ve been told.”

“Right. That’s the point of our organization. To stop technological advancement making it into the wrong hands.”

“Your dad told me The Goddard Project was put together during World War II when it was discovered that civilian scientists who our own State Department were ignoring were being spied on by our enemies.”

“And their technological advances were being taken advantage of while we dismissed them as crackpots.”

“Like Robert Goddard.”

“Yes. His rocket propulsion concept made it into German hands without his knowledge and we didn’t even have a clue until our own military spied on their experiments.”

“That’s when we started taking rocketry seriously.”

“And a host of other things.”

“Hence the name The Goddard Project?”

“Didn’t Dad tell you that?”

“We were discussing my first case actually.” Alan leaned back against the desk, crossing his long legs, encased in slacks, at the ankles. “He told me you’d be happy to fill in the blanks on the background of the organization.”

Of course he had. She was going to kill him. “There isn’t much more to tell. TGP never got disbanded, but it stayed ultra top secret over the decades. Unlike a lot of agencies, it never got top-heavy with political brass either. I find it amazing that in a town like D.C. the secrecy thing has remained so strong. Our funding comes from the State Department, but almost no one knows we exist.”

“I sure as hell didn’t.”

“Which just goes to show that the FBI doesn’t know everything.”

His lips quirked. “No, I guess it doesn’t.”

“Don’t feel badly. Until I got clearance to work for him, I thought my dad just worked for the State Department. I’d never even heard the initials TGP. I don’t know if my mom knows to this day what agency her husband works for.”

“And you haven’t told her?”

“No way. We sign an airtight privacy policy before we get briefed to work for the agency.”

“I know.”

“Yes, of course. Anyway, I keep my word.”

“I do, too, honey. When I can…”

“You would die rather than give up state secrets, I know.”

“I’d die for some other things, too.”

“The past is over, Alan. Please don’t bring it up again and please don’t call me honey. We’re coworkers now. Nothing more.” Three years ago, the way he was looking at her would have melted her bones, but she didn’t feel anything anymore.

Nothing at all and she was really glad. Fantasizing about Ethan had been good for something. She had to stifle the grin that thought brought.

“I’m sorry about what happened, you know.”

“You said so at the time and I believed you, I really did.” She sighed. She guessed it had to be said once more and with feeling. “But I also knew that if you could stand me up at the altar for the sake of a case, there would be a lot more situations in which I’d come a poor second to your job. I wouldn’t have tolerated that very well. For both our sakes, I’m glad I realized that in time.”

“It could have been good, damn it.”

“No. I’m not forbearing like my mother. I would have insisted on coming first sometimes…most times if you want the truth. You could never have given me that.”

He ran his hands through dark hair cut short to FBI standards. “What I do is important.”

“I’m not denying that. I’m really not, but the relationship between a man and woman is important, too. Face it, there just wasn’t any hope for us.”

He sighed. “I didn’t want to believe that then and I don’t like it now, but I can see you still mean it.”

“You haven’t spent three years pining, I know you haven’t.”

“No.” He smiled, his eyes acknowledging the hit. She was sure he’d had a much more active love life in the past three years than she had. “But I’ve never felt the same about another woman and I spent that time wondering what could have been.”

“Nothing good. Nothing truly permanent. Not even if we had gotten married.” She’d never even shared her deepest fantasies with this man.

Fantasies she sensed Ethan would understand and maybe even get into, but ones she doubted Alan would have taken seriously or been willing to act out.

When she’d realized that, she’d also realized that she’d held a lot of herself back from him. Lack of trust because he was an agent…or just a man? She’d never decided which, but it didn’t matter. He hadn’t loved her enough to put her first and she hadn’t loved him enough to tolerate his job or trust him with her innermost being.

They were actually pretty lucky they hadn’t ended up married. They would have hurt each other. She was sure of it.

“If you say so.” He stuck his hand out. “Friends?”

She smiled and shook the proffered hand. “Friends.”

She finished explaining the computer system and how to access central agency intelligence to him, then took him on a tour of the facility. He was impressed with the gadgets lab. All the agents were. Men and women alike, they didn’t get recruited for TGP unless they were well versed in and enamored of the high-tech world.