And watching her with her dad was like seeing two peas in a pod, though he didn’t think either one of them noticed the resemblance.

“Even I like to get home on time once in a while.” She was grabbing her purse and locking her desk as she spoke. As if she was in a real hurry to leave.

Like he’d told her earlier, the one bane of his existence was his curiosity and this woman, as much as she was so not his type, sparked more curiosity in him than most. She was too private. Which he should understand, being the same way…but it made him want to peel away the layers.

He’d refrained up to now because he knew it was dangerous to get to know her better. With some women, familiarity bred contempt, but he had a feeling that learning more about Beth would just lure him in further. It didn’t make a lick of sense, but then hormones and the male psyche rarely did.

Hadn’t his mother and older sister always said so?

He leaned against her desk, blocking her exit. “You meeting someone before dinner?”

She stared at him like she couldn’t comprehend what he was asking. Then, her dark eyes narrowed. “I am not, not unless you count my two new kittens.” She bit her lip, frowning. “But if I were, that would not be any of your business.”

He shrugged.

“Do I ask you about your personal life?”

“You don’t need to. You have access to my voicemail and e-mail and take a lot of my messages.” She probably knew more about his social life than he did.

“That is not the point. The point is, I’m not nosy and I don’t ask. I would appreciate the same level of courtesy.”

“I wouldn’t mind if you asked.”

“That’s not the…” Her voice trailed off when she realized she was repeating herself and she glared at him like it was his fault. “Well, I do mind. Can we just leave it at that?”

“You sure are prickly for a woman who doesn’t have plans later.”

She made a sound like steam escaping a safety valve. “I am not prickly.”

“Of course not. In fact, she’s rather sweet,” Hyatt said from behind Ethan.

Beth tensed and the glare she’d been giving Ethan turned hotter than molten metal. Curiouser and curiouser.

He turned slowly to face the newcomer, making it possible for Beth to come out from behind her desk. “Is she?”

Hyatt smiled toward Beth. “Yes.”

“You would know?”

“Yes.”

Now why that one bitty word should rub Ethan so wrong, he didn’t know. But it did. It also increased his already dangerous level of interest in Beth’s secrets to extreme risk levels. Which was probably why he found her so interesting. He liked risk. Thrived on it.

Yes, that made sense.

“Past history is not something we are going to discuss,” Beth said with an expression that was no doubt meant to intimidate, but in Ethan’s mind made her cute as hell.

She was too darn innocent and free from violence to truly intimidate a man who was neither.

“We aren’t?” he asked mildly.

But she looked at Hyatt, not him, her dark eyes flashing a warning, before answering. “No, we are not.”

“No, we are not,” Hyatt parroted with an irritating smile.

“At all or ever,” she emphasized, “with this annoyance that calls himself an agent.”

Didn’t she realize the more she fought him knowing what she sought to hide the more his predator’s instincts would be aroused? She spent enough time around agents that she should realize they weren’t tame or easily led.

Hyatt measured Ethan up and down and then nodded. “Our past is a closed book as far as he’s concerned.”

“As far as anyone is concerned.”

Hyatt merely shrugged and if Beth missed the significance of that, Ethan didn’t. The other man wasn’t about to drop the issue of their shared past and that made Ethan even more determined to find out what it was.

Beth grimaced, but nodded. “I’m off.”

“I’ll walk you to your car.” Hyatt smiled, his expression reminding Ethan of a saying his grandmother used to utter.

The man looked as happy as a donkey eating saw briars and Ethan just naturally resisted letting another man be that smug in his presence. “I’m leaving, too; may as well walk with you both.”

Beth walked out of the building flanked by two of the sexiest and most dangerous men she’d ever known. For a woman who did not exactly command legions of male admirers, it was a heady if strange sensation. And being seriously annoyed with both of them did not diminish that feeling one iota.

She thought she might know what was motivating Alan, despite his agreement to be nothing more than friends, but she didn’t get Ethan at all. She knew he had a bone-deep curiosity that made him a really good agent because he was so observant, but why be curious about her?

Her past held pain and embarrassment for her, but certainly nothing that would or could interest a man like Ethan.

He was the one who opened her car door for her, though, after she pressed the unlock button. The look he gave a clearly disgruntled Alan was pure one-upmanship and she couldn’t help laughing. She wasn’t exactly either of their types.

Despite the fact that Alan had once claimed to love her, Beth had long since figured out her main attraction for him had been the fact that she was so serene and cozily domestic. He liked the contrast of coming home to her to the high-adrenaline life in the field as an agent. He’d even said as much once and she had been foolish enough to think that meant he was getting ready to truly settle down. That maybe the stress of fieldwork had started to get to him.

She’d been spectacularly wrong and his signing on with TGP proved it.

But both men were acting like a couple of alpha wolves marking territory. She supposed that was only natural when a new agent came on staff, for him to settle his boundaries, but she’d never had one use her to do it with before. And she found the whole experience downright hilarious.

“When she laughs like that, you can’t help feeling she’s laughing at you, not with you,” Alan said with resignation.

Ethan’s left brow rose in a gesture she’d never been able to perfect. “Are you laughing at us, Beth?”

She grinned, tugging on her door. “Yes.”

“Why is that, I wonder?”

“Why are you holding my door?” she countered.

“I’d say that was obvious. I’m not ready for you to leave yet.”

“I’d say why I’m laughing is obvious, too.”

“Maybe you’d better explain it anyway. I’m just a simple Texas boy. We don’t always get the subtle nuances in a situation,” he drawled, his accent exaggerated.

If anything, her mirth doubled. The man was as far from simple as an expert-level Sudoku puzzle. “There’s nothing simple about you, Agent Crane, which is why I’m sure you’ll get the concept that if you don’t let go of my door, important messages might start getting mislaid. Messages from friends wanting to go skydiving, women hoping to see you again…that sort of thing.”

“Never piss off the secretary,” Alan intoned with mock solemnity.

“Central Administrative Agent,” Ethan corrected, looking far from worried.

Beth tugged on her door again, but it didn’t move. She gave Ethan a pointed glance.

“Tell me why you are laughing at us.”

She shook her head at him, humor tinged with exasperation. “You’re both so intent on marking territory, you haven’t even stopped to consider that neither of you wants the thing you’re working so hard to pee a circle around.”

“Are you sure about that?” Ethan asked.

Her heart skipped a beat at the implication of his words before reason kicked in. She could so not afford to let her imagination go there. Alan was going through some sort of nostalgic feelings for her and apparently Ethan, swift observer that he was, had latched onto that fact. Like men the world over, he was getting entirely too much enjoyment out of pulling the other man’s chain.

It was just another way to razz the new recruit.