Excerpt of Consumed by Fire by Anne Stuart

“You said you’d answer questions.”

“I did, didn’t I?” He sounded faintly disgruntled.

“So let’s start with the most obvious one. Exactly who
and what are you?” She
made it sound like he was an alien artifact or a lost
species of snake, which
wasn’t far from the truth.

“I think we’d better get some ground rules established.
If you think I’m going to
while away the next five hours telling you the story of
my life and a whole lot
of the kind of secrets I’d need to kill you for, you’re
mistaken. I didn’t go
this far to protect you only to have to turn around and
cap you myself. I’ll give
you … let’s say five questions, which I’ll answer to the
best of my ability, as
long as it won’t put you in more jeopardy.”

She stared at him, his elegant profile so familiar and
yet so different without
that mop of dark hair. His short blond hair was growing
out a bit, and the roots
were darker, but not the mahogany shade his hair had been
in Italy, and his
scruffy beard was brown and flecked with bits of gray,
which shocked her.

“Exactly what color is your hair?” she demanded. “Your
eyes, for that matter?
Sometimes you look like a complete stranger, and other
times I know you far too
well.”

“My real hair, last time I saw it, was a sandy brown and
I’m not wearing contacts
right now. What you see is what you get. That's two.”

“Two what?” Of course he’d end up having gorgeous eyes.
The deep ocean blue of
them was almost unbelievable, but she’d somehow know they
were the real thing.

“Two questions, Angel. You’ve got three more.”

“That’s not fair!” she said, outraged.

He shrugged. “You still have three questions. You aren’t
going to have that
chance again, so you’d better take advantage of it while
I’m still in such a
cooperative mood.”

“All right. But I don’t want you answering until I tell
you it’s one of my
questions. I need to think about this.”

“Take your time,” he said affably. “We’ve got miles of
highway between us and our
next destination, and your company is, as always,
delightful.”

She didn’t give into temptation and call him a nasty
name, mainly because she
believe, in a strange sort of way, he actually meant it.
Or maybe she was just
telling herself that, but she didn’t care.

“I want to know who and what you are.”

“That’s two…”

“I told you, no answers until I tell you what my actual
question is. I want to
know who James Bishop is. Who do you work for, and what
in God’s name your job is
that you’d know how to kill people? Are you CIA, FBI?”
She realized her first
guesses would immediately make him one of the good guys,
and she quickly added,
“Or are you a criminal, which seems more than likely.
Don’t answer!”

He took another drink of beer, then draped his strong,
beautiful hands
comfortably on the steering wheel as they headed into the
infinite flatness of
the empty countryside. His eyes seemed to be on the road
but she knew he was
somehow managing to watch her. Maybe he had fabulous
peripheral vision or hidden
mirrors; somehow he was acutely aware of her every
expression. Which meant she
had to be more circumspect, or he’d catch her looking at
him like a love-starved
kitten…

Where the hell had that idea come from? Too much beer--
probably because she’d had
so little to eat in the last few days. There was no place
to set the bottle, but
she needed to be careful, not let maudlin emotions
interfere.

“Tell me who you work for,” she said abruptly.