Alan’s frown was more thoughtful than accusatory. “If that’s true, you move fast.”

Ethan shrugged and Beth felt a betraying blush climb up her skin. There was such a thing as keeping a private encounter private. He was from Texas…didn’t they teach gentlemanly discretion down there?

Alan’s eyes assessed Ethan and his expression turned forbidding. “Or is it that you move with necessity?” he asked in a tone that could have stripped paint.

“Not your business, old son.”

Which was practically an agreement in her opinion. And an unnecessary one at that.

Alan faced Ethan head-on, his entire manner aggressive and borderline threatening. “Beth is a friend. I don’t want to see her hurt.”

“Don’t worry…I have no plans to leave her standing at the altar,” Ethan said with derision.

Alan flashed a look of surprise at Beth and then looked back at Ethan. “You do move fast, but you’re smart enough to know that the past is going to make me more protective of her, not less.”

Ethan shrugged in acknowledgment of a fact that Beth found highly suspect herself. What gave Alan the right to play her protector? He’d abrogated all rights in her life the day he left her standing alone to face three hundred wedding guests and try to explain the inexplicable, all the while wondering if her groom had been killed in the field.

“I am a grown woman and I can make my own decisions and fight my own battles when the need arises,” Beth said acerbically. “I don’t need, or want, a protector.”

Alan’s eyes filled with concern that grated. “Honey, you don’t have experience with men like Ethan. You’re twenty-nine, but you’re still so damn innocent. He’s not above creating a sexual relationship to give a sense of reality to your role in the case.”

“I’m aware of that and I’m not that innocent.” Especially after last night.

“I repeat, this is not your business,” Ethan said to Alan, his drawl pure ice.

But she could not miss that he had not bothered to deny the accusation.

“Patently, I don’t agree.”

Beth stood up and leaned forward so she could speak low enough her voice would not carry down the hall to any interested listeners. “I don’t really care what either of you think. You will stop talking about me and any potential relationship between myself and Ethan publicly and as if I’m not even here right this second.”

They both looked at her like she was speaking in ancient tongues.

She could feel her facial muscles stiffen as her glare went sulfuric. “I mean it.”

“After last night, our relationship is not a potential. It’s a done deal,” Ethan bit out, sounding offended.

“You know I care about you,” Alan added, managing to inject injury into his voice.

She wondered which neck she’d rather wring first.

“Was a conference called that I’m unaware of?” her dad asked from behind Ethan as he walked up.

Beth turned her ire on him. As far as she was concerned, his actions had spawned the whole sorry mess. “No conference, just a couple of your agents stepping out of line. Care to rein them in?”

Both Alan and Ethan stiffened in affront, but her dad’s eyes glittered with a suspicious triumph. “Is that right? What are they stepping out of line about?”

“My private life.” This time her frown was mostly for Ethan. “Some men have not learned to adhere to the adage of kiss and don’t tell.”

“I didn’t say a word about kissing,” Ethan drawled.

Beth had never had homicidal tendencies. She only knew how to shoot a gun because it had been required in her training. But right now, she could cheerfully have shot him…or at least threatened to.

“Face it, Sunshine,” Ethan went on, obviously ignorant of his bodily peril. “Right now…I am your private life.”

“And if I shoot you? What are you then?” she asked sweetly.

“Was she always this bloodthirsty?” Ethan asked Alan.

“I don’t remember that particular trait, but it could have been latent.” Alan shrugged. “Maybe you bring it out in her.”

“Maybe you both do,” she inserted.

“So, this is a bad time to ask if you’ll have lunch with me today…for old time’s sake,” Alan said.

“She’s having lunch with me.” Ethan’s voice dared Beth and/or Alan to argue.

Which she promptly did. “I don’t remember agreeing to lunch and I certainly have no intention of doing so now.”

“You’re not eating lunch with Hyatt.”

“I’m not?” she asked neutrally.

“She’s not?” her dad asked, his voice laced with amusement that scored her nerves like nails on a chalkboard.

“She’s not?” Alan asked, his own voice dangerously soft.

Ethan crossed his arms, his stance one of absolute purpose. “We need to discuss the case.”

Beth took perverse and delighted pleasure in thwarting him. “I need to get the new admin as up to speed as I’m able and according to my e-mail, she’s going to arrive any minute. I plan to spend the lunch hour with her.”

Her dad had been busy and she’d thought again that he could have warned her he’d been prepared to act quickly. Apparently, he’d already screened applicants for the job and the new hire had accepted sometime yesterday.

“Another time,” Alan said.

Ethan’s eyes narrowed to green slits. “She’ll be busy on the case.”

“The case won’t last forever,” Alan replied, his voice laced with meaning-the implication being that the relationship would last only as long as the case.

“What you two had is over. Accept it.”

Beth could not believe Ethan had just said that.

Neither could her father, if his expression was anything to go by. “She told you about their past?”

“Yes,” Ethan replied shortly to Whit and then focused on Alan again. “You blew it. It’s over. Forget about rekindling old flames because I’m here to put them out.”

“For how long?”

“That’s between Beth and me. Whatever you two had in the past has no bearing on the present.”

“And if I’m not willing to accept that?”

“I don’t plan to give you a choice in the matter.”

Okay. That was it. She was dreaming. Men like Ethan did not have these kinds of discussions. He wasn’t the type to kiss and tell. Which made his comments all the more jarring to her. Nor was he the type to announce his most recent liaison to the office staff. He was too suave…not some primitive Neanderthal who warned other men off what he considered his woman.

Definitely a dream. Because even primitive men didn’t have this sort of discussion over her. Not Beth Whitney, who would have made an ideal small-town librarian in another life.

The dream had started yesterday morning when her dad practically ordered her to take an agent’s role in a case. That just wasn’t normal either. No…maybe it had started when Alan showed up in front of her desk and her dad said he was the new hire. Yes, she liked that scenario better. She nodded to herself. That’s definitely when she’d started dreaming.

So, he wasn’t here. Neither was Ethan. It was all just a really involved, really long dream. And she should wake up any second now to two hungry furballs and an apartment that had never been invaded by Ethan Crane.

“Are you okay, Sunshine?” the dream Ethan asked.

The dream Alan’s brows furrowed. “She looks odd.”

“Elizabeth.” That was not a tone she liked hearing in her dreams and she frowned her disapproval.

She let her gaze slide to her dad. “I’m dreaming and I want you all to disappear right now. There are other ways I prefer to spend my fantasy time.”

The dream office environment did not dissolve to make way for a more pleasant subconscious exercise in imagination.

And all three men now looked at her with varying levels of concern.

Until Ethan’s face creased with a slow, knowing smile, his green eyes lit with wicked lights. “This isn’t a dream, Sunshine. Neither was last night. You’re no longer fantasizing your way through life. You are living it.”