PRIMAL INSTINCT by JANIE CROUGH Page B

didn’t know really what it was, but she knew she hadn’t been able to stop thinking about him from the first moment she had seen him in the barn two days ago. And the kiss at the hotel last night. She had thought they had turned some sort of corner then.
    But evidently Agent Perigo didn’t actually have to trust or believe her in order to act on his attraction to her. The kiss obviously hadn’t implied he had feelings for her, because feelings were based on trust, and Perigo most definitely didn’t trust her.
    Of course Adrienne could also admit to herself that whatever she felt for Conner didn’t come wrapped up in a nice little bow, either. She seemed to spend most of the time she was around him fighting the urge to slap the smug look off his face. But she definitely had to admit that he affected her. She wasn’t sure what she was going to do about that.
    Adrienne knew he would watch the footage from the interrogation room and know she was telling the truth. Where things would go from there—professionally and personally—she had no idea. She wasn’t sure what she wanted.
    It wasn’t long before Adrienne realized coming down to the Embarcadero hadn’t been a good idea. It was much more crowded. The buzzing was becoming louder and her headache worse. Adrienne bought a pretzel from a vendor—to replace the lunch she had lost before, and hopefully to ward off some nausea now—and decided to begin walking back toward the FBI building.
    She stopped at another park and nibbled on her pretzel for a few moments before giving up. Her headache was definitely worse, and she doubted she’d be able to keep any food down long. Adrienne put her hand up to her forehead to try to shade her eyes and give her head some relief from the pain the sunlight was causing, even though it wasn’t a particularly bright day out.
    This was what she remembered from her years with the FBI. The constant bombardment. Even when she was out of the office with no one asking her to look at some crime scene photo or touch some artifact, she still had never been able to get any quiet in her head. When she was eighteen and nineteen, she had thought she could just push through the pain and the noise and keep going.
    She had been wrong.
    It hadn’t seemed so bad earlier today, but now Adrienne just felt like hell. She would go back to the office, tell Conner and Seth that she was heading to the hotel. Maybe she’d even drive back to Lodi tonight. At least there she knew she’d have some peace. But she definitely needed to get away and give her body a chance to rest and heal. She couldn’t keep this up for long.
    That she knew from experience.
    Plus, if her gifts were only going to work every once in a while, then she really wasn’t going to be much help to the FBI at all. So she might as well go.
    From where she sat on the park bench, she heard the car pull up to the curb—tires slightly squealing—and saw it at the same time. She watched as Conner Perigo got out of the car and strode with determination straight toward her bench.
    Adrienne looked down at her watch. She’d been gone about forty-five minutes. That was quicker than she had thought. She’d figured it would take him longer to go through the footage.
    “How did you find me?” Adrienne picked at her pretzel some more as he sat down beside her without saying anything.
    Conner cleared his throat in an embarrassed fashion. “I had them track your phone’s GPS.”
    “Special Agent Perigo, I’m shocked. Isn’t that a misuse of taxpayers’ money?”
    “Probably. I thought you were already gone, maybe headed back to Lodi. If I had known you were only a few blocks away, I wouldn’t have driven.”
    “So you found me.” Adrienne put another small piece of pretzel in her mouth. “I would’ve thought it would take longer to go through all that footage of me in the interrogation room. They must have a fast forward switch, huh?”
    Conner shifted uncomfortably on the bench.