Hot Imports

Working uncover isn't for the faint of heart.

When Tara takes a job clerking at an export firm, she finds that office politics isn't her worst problem. She is trying to determine if the company is honest. Clearly someone isn't and she quickly finds herself in the middle of smuggling, high finance, treachery, sexual madness, and outright greed. The people she works for are up to something, and they aren't all in it together.

The man she is hot for isn't what he seems to be either, but his passion is honest. If only he isn't a crook.

~~~~~ PG Excerpt ~~~~~

On Monday morning Tara stared at her clean desk and empty in-basket. Most of her work assignments came directly through Barry, and he'd gone to Panama on Thursday.

With him out of the office, once she finished the work he'd left her, there wasn't much to do. He'd been so busy getting ready for his trip that he hadn't bothered to reschedule their after-work get-together.

After what had happened with Jake, she was just as glad.

Jake was still a mystery. A sexy, amazing mystery. She wondered if her abrupt leaving that night was why she hadn't heard from him since.

Of course, he was a busy person too, so there could be any number of reasons he hadn't called, hadn't suggested another meeting.

When it came to that, she could have easily called him. She still had his card with his mobile number. But spending one night with him had her perilously close to compromising her investigation.

When it was done, if Jake was in the clear, then she'd worry about picking up where they left off. If he had any interest, that is.

“Barry is flying back this morning,” Nina told her.

Nina had seemed unusually chipper since Jake came around. There had to be a connection, but Tara couldn't imagine exactly what it was. Still, there was an awful lot of commotion going on over Jake's small order. She and Barry were really rolling out the red carpet.

“I'm picking him up at the airport in an hour.” Nina was still talking about Barry. “Juan has a checkup this morning, so he is leaving too. You'll need to answer the phones while I'm gone. Not that they are ringing off the hook. If anything important comes up, call me on my cell.”

Once Nina left, Tara collected her thoughts and called Barb to report. She didn't have much new to tell her, but she had a hunch that things might start happening once Barry was back and Barb needed a heads up.

She made her call, then went to lunch. Shortly after she returned, Nina and Barry came in. Looking at them, Tara felt certain they'd stopped somewhere for a personal encounter of the sexual kind. They both had that languid look as they wandered back to their offices.

A bit later Nina came over to Tara's desk waving some papers. “We need to modify the paperwork for that big shipment right away. Here are the notes of the changes Barry made in Panama to consolidate Jake's packages into it. It's going off shortly, so the paperwork needs updating right away.”

Tara gave her an appropriate worker-drone grimace as she looked through the papers. “Okay. It will take a little time to do all this.”

Nina shook her head and Barry came out of his office to stand behind Nina.

“It has to be done today,” Nina said. “The shipment has to go out on a cargo ship tomorrow afternoon and the paperwork has to be done today or it won't get loaded in time.”

“I'll be around if you have any questions,” Barry said cheerfully. “Get this done for us and there's a bonus in it for you.”

“I haven't done changes like these before,” Tara said.

“There's not much to it with the new program I installed,” Barry said. “Reship, is the name of it. It lets us access the customs database.”

“They let us do that?”

“We are beta testing it for them. If this works, everyone will have it.”