Undercover Mistress

Chapter 9

Celia couldn’t sleep.

Not that there was anything unusual about that-she almost always had trouble sleeping lately. Which, after all, was why she’d been out walking the beach at three in the morning the night she’d found Roy. Insomnia was insomnia. So, what was different about this night?

Well, for starters, she wasn’t alone-which was not to say she wasn’t lonely. There was a man-a stranger, and yet, somehow not a stranger-sleeping in the downstairs bedroom. The room that had been hers for almost a year. The room that held her past…her memories…her childhood. She’d been too busy to think about it, but now she realized because of the stranger’s presence in that room, with all it meant to her, she felt exiled. As if she’d been shut out of her own place…her own past.

And it occurred to her that maybe that was part of what was different about this sleeplessness. Because normally it was the past that haunted her, and tonight it wasn’t. It was the future.

Except, haunted wasn’t the right word. Preoccupied, perhaps. Excited. Galvanized. Yes-all of those!

There was so much to do. Her mind was a jumble of plans…ideas. She couldn’t wait for the new day to begin so she could get started-as soon as Max gave the go-ahead, which he would, she was sure of it.

Roy, of course, was another matter.

Her thoughts darkened, and some of the old, more familiar nighttime loneliness crept around her like a chilly draft when she recalled the way he’d looked when she’d made her proposal. Angry, of course. And…betrayed?

He’d called her devious.

He’d accused her of having an ulterior motive for kissing him. Implying he wouldn’t care to kiss her if she did. The thought that Roy might not want to kiss her again made her feel unexpectedly bad. Hollow. Empty and lonely and cold.

But you’re getting what you wanted. You’re getting to be a part of something important. Something real.

Yes, she was. And Roy, after all, was only a guy. The world-her world-was full of guys, most of them much better looking than Roy. Well, okay, some of them. A few. Maybe. Anyway, guys were just…guys. She had to keep her focus on what was important.

And she really needed to sleep.

Not that she wasn’t tired enough to sleep-she was, for a change, since she hadn’t spent most of the day sleeping, as she’d become accustomed to doing in the past year.

This day had been a long and eventful one. Waking up with Roy…fixing food for Roy…fighting with Roy…kissing Roy. Meeting Max…convincing Max…fighting with Roy some more.

This evening, there’d been that unsettling conversation with him out on the deck-and what was that about, anyway? Telling him about things she never told anybody. About her childhood, and her parents, and how much she missed them. Feelings. Real ones. Celia never shared those particular feelings. Ever.

Then, later, in the living room…that strange tension between them. Had she only imagined it? She did have a…well, a rather active imagination, admit it. But it had seemed so strong, so real…the feeling that there was some kind of connection happening between them…as if he were reaching for her across the void…touching her, even when he wasn’t.

But then Dr. Chan had come, and she would never know what might have happened if he hadn’t.

After the doctor had gone, Celia had tried to recapture the earlier mood of intimacy. Since Roy seemed to be getting a little testy over being treated like an invalid, she’d set the dining room table for two-even lit candles. She’d microwaved the chicken cordon bleu for Roy, and made a salad for both of them-one thing she was fairly good at was salads. She’d even opened a bottle of very good chardonnay. But he hadn’t wanted any, and after drinking one glass of it, she’d wound up pouring the rest down the sink drain. Conversation had been…awkward, to say the least.

Even after that glass of wine, she was simply too keyed up to sleep. And-which was weird, since it was her own-the bed she was in now felt strange to her. It had been a long time since she’d slept in it, true, but it was more than that. It was so…empty. Big…and empty.

My God, she thought, shocked to her very toes, I miss him.

It was true. She missed sleeping with Roy. For the past two nights, she’d slept cuddled up next to him-once practically naked, wrapped up with his chilled body cradled in her arms inside a cocoon of blankets. Then again fully clothed, on the outside of the blankets but close to him, with his body heat soaking through to keep her warm, and the reassuring thump of his heartbeat in her ear and her breathing timed to the slow, even tempo of his.

My God, two days and I’m hooked? Is that even possible?

She threw back the covers and got out of bed. Without turning on the lights, she found a pair of shorts and a tank top and put them on, then tiptoed downstairs. At the bottom of the stairs, she hesitated, and her heart quickened as she turned left, as she made her way silently past the kitchen and entryway, down the hallway to the den. Her room. Roy’s room.

The door was only partially shut. She pushed it with one finger and it opened without a sound. With her heartbeat thundering so loudly she wondered he didn’t hear it even in his sleep, she stood holding her breath and gazing at the dark mound of bedding, listening to the steady rhythmic breathing that was almost a snore.

Her mind filled with recent images and sensory memories, her body with a tight, hot arousal it hadn’t known in a long, long time. She saw herself walking across to the bed, easing back the covers and slipping between the sheets, breathing in the warm, musky scent of sleeping man as she stroked his lean, hard body to wakefullness, delighting in the sudden awareness…the blossoming of heat…the slow, sweet murmuring welcome…

Her stomach lurched, a sensation like having the floor drop out from under her. Dizzy with that, and from holding her breath, she pulled the door to, leaving it exactly the way she’d found it. She let the breath out, then went silently down the hallway and back upstairs, where she put on a pair of fleece pants and a zippered jacket over her shorts and tank top. Downstairs again, she slipped through the sliding glass door and out onto the deck.

The fog was a chilly caress on her fevered skin as she skipped unevenly down the stairs to the sand, the muffled thump of the surf a familiar rhythm. The tide was out-just as it had been two nights ago, she remembered. Her muscles protested as she slogged across deep, dry sand, until her feet found the wet, firm strip near the retreating waves. Then she began to run.

Max rang the doorbell at eight o’clock that morning. Since there was still no sign of Celia, Roy let him in.

“Did I wake you?” Max asked, grinning with cheerful malice. He took off the sunglasses he’d been wearing, even though the sun had a long way to go before it would break through the thick layer of coastal morning fog, and stuffed them into the pocket of his brown leather jacket.

“Nah,” said Roy easily, waving him inside, “I’ve been up a while. No sign of Sleeping Beauty, though. Want some coffee?”

Max raised his eyebrows. “Making yourself at home?”

“Self-defense, trust me. The woman makes the worst coffee I ever tasted.”

“Can’t have everything, I suppose.” Max followed Roy into the kitchen where he accepted a steaming mug, declining milk and sugar with a shake of his head as he hitched himself onto a stool next to the counter. He nodded at Roy’s chest. “You’re looking a whole helluva lot better. How’s the wound?”

Roy rotated his arm experimentally, touched his side, then shrugged. “Better. Ribs are the worst. I’ll live.”

The two men sipped coffee in comfortable silence for a few minutes before Max said, “So, aren’t you gonna ask me about the director’s decision?”

Roy shrugged again. “Do I have to? He went for it, right?”

Max lifted his cup, drank coffee and put it down again. “How’d you know he would?”

“Because,” Roy said, pulling out a stool for himself, “it’s what I’d do. Hell, it’s the only thing to do. The stakes are high, we’re out of time, we have to use what’s available in order to get the job done. End of story.”

Max gave his head a wry half shake. “Gotta say I’m surprised. Relieved, but surprised.”

“Look-” Roy got comfortable on the stool “-if Celia says she can get us an invite into the prince’s social circle, if she thinks she can actually get us on board that yacht, then we’d be crazy not to let her try.”

“I’m sensing a ‘but’ in there somewhere.”

Roy swiveled to face him, frowning. “Okay, look-when the time comes for serious business, I don’t want her anywhere near that boat. That’s where I’m drawing the line.”

Max stared at him, eyebrows lifted. “You’re ‘drawing the line’? What’s this? If I didn’t know you so well, I’d think you actually care about her.”

Roy snorted. “Sure, I care about her, but not the way you’re thinkin’. The woman saved my life-now I’m gonna repay her by gettin’ her killed? Besides-she’s a civilian-an actress, for God’s sake. She’s got…I don’t know, romantic notions, like this is some kind of spy game, and she’s Mata Hari.” He picked up his mug and scowled into it. “Be like having a five-year-old tottering around in a war zone dressed up in her momma’s-”

He broke it off, warned by Max’s none-too subtle throat-clearing. That was followed immediately by, “Speak of the devil…” spoken in a ventriloquist’s undertone behind the toothy, “Good mornin’, sunshine” smile Max aimed past Roy’s head.

Roy swiveled around on his stool and even though he’d been warned, he couldn’t help but react-like he would if somebody had thrown a play punch at him and held up at the last second-with a catch in his breathing and a little squirt of adrenaline in his blood that made him tingle all over.

Celia was coming down the stairs…slowly…one step at a time, looking sleepy-eyed and tousled. All she needed, he thought, was a pair of footy pajamas, and she might have actually resembled that five-year-old he’d just been comparing her to. However, wrapped as she was in a slinky, slithery ice-blue robe, with some sort of satiny high-heeled slippers with silvery fur puffs on the tops that peeked through the front slit of the robe with each step she took, it was obvious the look she was going for was more along the lines of old-time Hollywood glamour queen. Names like Mae West or Carole Lombard came to mind. Maybe Rita Hayworth? One of those. Anyway, sexy as hell.

And Roy, watching her in appreciative silence, nevertheless couldn’t help but think of what he’d just been saying to Max, about a five-year-old playing dress-up in her momma’s clothes.

Meanwhile, as he sat in spellbound silence, Celia produced a warm smile and a husky, “Hi, Max,” and joined them. And was it Roy’s imagination or did the wattage of the smile dim a notch or two when she shifted it his way?

Then he thought he must have imagined the coolness, because when she said, “Oh, lovely-you made coffee. Is there any left for me?”, her voice had a warm and furry quality that made him think of something he’d like to nuzzle his cheek next to.

Without saying a word, Roy got a mug out of the cupboard and filled it for her. While he was doing that, she floated around the end of the counter and into the kitchen, trailing blue silk and a faint hint of fragrance and raising the temperature in the room by measurable degrees. She began opening doors, taking out little packets of artificial sweetener and flavored creamers, and a spoon to stir them with. Naturally, all this required Roy to keep dodging and sidestepping her, which he managed to do without once touching her or either of them saying a word.

All of which Max observed wearing a look of utter fascination. Roy decided then and there if Max said one word about it, he was probably going to have to deck him, whether the man was technically his boss or not.

“Sorry to wake you so early,” Max said, looking not sorry at all. “Thought you’d want to know as soon as I got the word.”

“Oh…yes…tell me,” Celia breathed, lighting gracefully on a stool and leaning toward him in a seductive way that elevated Roy’s temperature to simmer. “Did the director-”

“He did-and it’s a go.” Grinning, Max lifted his coffee cup toward her. “Looks like you’re ‘on,’ dear.”

She gave an excited wiggle accompanied by a delighted peal of laughter-then naturally couldn’t resist throwing Roy a little “I told you so” look across the rim of her cup.

“However,” said Max, pasting on a stern expression, “there are going to be some conditions.”

“Of course,” Celia said solemnly, picking up her cue from him like an eager-to-please child.

“First, there will have to be a security check-”

She gave a short, ironic laugh. “That shouldn’t be hard. My life is an open book-literally. Just check out the tabloids.”

“Then, you’ll need to learn some basic undercover skills. Call it a crash course in spying.”

Celia made a snuggling movement and murmured, “Cool…” as she caught her lower lip between her teeth to hold back a smile.

Roy couldn’t help it-watching her flirt like that made his mouth water. To cover it up, he gave an out-of-sorts “Humph.”

“And,” Max said, looking stern again, “there’re going to be some ground rules. Understand?” Celia nodded gravely. “Okay. Rule number one: You don’t do anything-and I mean anything-without running it by me first. You got that?” He waited for her nod before adding in a conciliatory tone, “That’s so we can get security measures in place-surveillance, backup, and so on.” He paused to put his tough-boss scowl back in place again, which Roy happened to know meant absolutely nothing anyway. “Rule number two: You make no contact whatsoever with these people-I mean al-Fayad, or anybody connected with him-unless Roy, here, is with you.”

Smoky blue eyes, veiled and unreadable, shifted toward Roy, and when they touched him, he felt a shiver go down his spine.

“Yes, boss,” she murmured.

Max stabbed a thumb toward Roy. “Uh-uh-in the field, he’s the boss. He’s the guy with the training and experience. You do what he says, no questions asked, you got that? Lives could depend on it-one of ’em could be yours. Other than that-the both of you answer to me. I answer to the director. Any questions?”

Roy saw Celia’s throat move and he thought sardonically, What’s that she’s swallowing, her pride? How hard must it be? After a moment, she shook her head. Roy tore his eyes away from her and looked over at Max and pointedly cleared his throat.

Max shot him back a look. “Oh, yeah-one more thing. This goes one step at a time. Which basically means, if at any stage along the way, we decide the situation looks bad, if we don’t like the risks, we call it off. We pull you out. Understand? We will not take any chances that might put you in harm’s way.”

He placed both hands palms down on the counter. “So-those are the rules.” He ducked his head in order to snare Celia’s eyes, which were studying her mug as if there were something in it far more fascinating than coffee. “Still want to play?”

“Yes,” she whispered, then cleared her throat and lifted her eyes to his as she repeated it in a normal voice, nodding, “Yes-of course.”

There was a bright smear of color on each cheek, but Roy didn’t know what that meant. Anger? Excitement? He didn’t know her well enough to read her. Considering how good an actress she was, he thought gloomily, most likely, he never would.

Max took a swig of coffee and waved his mug at her. “Okay, so…what’s the plan?”

In contrast to how subdued she’d been during Max’s “briefing,” Celia sat up alertly. “Plan?”

“Yeah-what now? You told us you can get yourself invited on board al-Fayad’s yacht. How do you propose to do that? What’s the plan?”

“The plan-” she drew it out as she threw a frowning look over her shoulder at the digital clock on the microwave oven “-is to call my manager. He’ll know what’s going on in town right now-where the best parties are, what everyone’s doing. But he’d kill me if I call him this early. So, I guess…” She swiveled toward Roy, wearing the well-fed kitty-cat smile along with a gleam in her eye that made the skin on his arms and the back of his neck tingle. He wasn’t exactly sure what hackles were, but he figured if he had some, they’d have been rising. “The first thing we should do,” she continued, “is figure out who you’re going to be.”

Roy wished he knew for certain whether the way her robe slipped open as she was moving around on that stool was as accidental as it seemed to be. As much as he didn’t want it to, his gaze dropped as if it’d had lead weights attached to it, down, down into the deep, narrow slash in the top half of the robe-a slash that had fallen more to one side than the other, so that it revealed one almost-hemisphere of soft round breast. Then a movement of her legs commanded a further shift in his line of vision. Down it went again…and down…

He felt a jolt, as if somebody had punched him under his ribs. Because, in the long, inverted V below the robe’s belt, where he’d expected to see the graceful line of feminine calf and knee and thigh clothed in creamy skin, lightly tanned, perhaps…instead, there was the ugly red weal of a scar.

He thought he’d done a pretty good job of disguising the involuntary check in his breathing, and he knew his face wouldn’t betray the shock he felt-or the shame. Nevertheless, with a seemingly casual movement of hand and body, she twitched the robe shut, hiding her legs and the scar from his view.

“You can’t be you,” she said-and was it his imagination, or had her voice suddenly gone breathless? “You said yourself, Abby’s people got a good look at you and might even have identified you-I don’t pretend to know how they’d do that, but if you say so, I’m sure it’s true. So we have to give you a new identity, right?”

Though she hadn’t addressed the question to Max, he shrugged and made a gesture that said, basically, “This is your ball game-go for it.”

She slipped off the stool and walked slowly around Roy, studying him in a way that made his heart pound and his breath go shallow. He couldn’t have described the way he felt, but he sure as hell knew he didn’t like it. It was like…being in a car going way too fast, with somebody else driving-somebody whose driving he didn’t entirely trust. Come to think of it, he’d been having that feeling a lot lately.

Then she stopped directly in front of him, and-he couldn’t help it-his breath hissed between his teeth as she reached up to finger his hair back from his forehead. “The easiest way to change your appearance, would be to make you…older,” she said softly, and her eyes brushed past his to follow her exploring fingers. “We can give you gray hair-a nice silvery gray, right here at the temples, which will be very striking with your skin…and so distinguished. We can add a few wrinkles here…make your eyebrows a little heavier…”

Her fingers moved over his skin, light and cool as flower petals, touching each feature as she cataloged it, while he glared at her in helpless fury. His temperature rose and his pulse thumped low in his belly.

“Maybe a few more crow’s feet-contact lenses, naturally, to change your eye color.” Her own eyes seemed to shimmer…or was it his vision beginning to go, flickering like a faulty lightbulb? Her voice was a hypnotic murmur, like a cat’s purring. “Blue, I think-it will look stunning with the silver hair. You already have a little bit of a bump to your nose…no time for plastic surgery, but a mustache, maybe, to hide the shape of your mouth…” Her fingertips traced the still swollen and tender bridge of his nose…outline of his lips, and he felt a growl forming in the back of his throat as he held himself rigid and fought the almost overwhelming urge to capture those tormenting fingers in his mouth.

But almost as quickly as the impulse formed, the fingers moved on…the backs of them, now, lightly brushing the quarter inch of stubble on his jaws. Shock waves of shivers rippled down his back. His face felt on fire. His fingers curled, wanting to reach up and grasp her wrist so badly, it was all he could do to hold himself still. He curled the fingers into fists and fought to keep his eyes from closing, glaring into hers instead and seething helplessly.

“Or…maybe a goatee? No-wait! I know…” Something flared in her eyes, then smoldered. “A scar-right here.” Her fingers traced a line down the side of his face, from his cheekbone to his chin, her eyes never wavering from his as she said softly, “The thing about a scar, you see, is that it draws the eye, and people tend not to look past it. They see the scar, not the person. That’s what makes it the perfect disguise.”

She whirled abruptly back to Max, leaving Roy shell-shocked. A little humiliated. Definitely weak in the knees. “What do you think?”

“Sounds doable to me,” Max said, not even trying to hide his grin of delight.

After a moment, maybe in response to the murderous look Roy threw him, he coughed and got serious again. “Okay-what about a background story? We’ll need to get our people going on the paperwork as soon as possible.”

“I don’t see why I have to be old,” Roy muttered, picking up his coffee cup and scowling into it. He didn’t know quite what had just happened to him, but he felt like an invalid who’d been out of bed too long. Not to mention itchy and out of sorts, and vaguely abused. “What am I supposed to be, your father?”

“Of course not,” Celia said, giving him her kitty-cat smile. “You’re going to be my sugar daddy.”

Max guffawed. Roy choked on a swallow of coffee. “Like hell! Who’d believe that, anyway? You’re the one who’s rich, maybe you should be my…my-what the hell would you call it-my sugar momma?”

“Obviously,” said Celia dryly, ignoring Max, who was laughing so hard he had tears rolling down his cheeks, “you don’t read the tabloids. If you did, you’d know I’m supposedly broke.” Both men stared at her. “Oh, yes-after having squandered the fortune my parents left me on drugs and fast living. Trust me-showing up on the arm of a mysterious older man who also happens to be a millionaire will fit the public’s expectations of me to a T.”

“So,” Roy said gruffly after a moment, folding his arms on his chest and glaring down his ruined nose at her, “I’m a millionaire?”

She prowled closer. “Billionaire, probably. Nowadays, millions aren’t all that impressive. Canadian, I think-”

“Canadian!” Gun-shy, this time he reared back from her like a nervous horse. “Woman, you’re forgetting. I’m from Georgia-and I’ve got the accent to prove it.”

She paused, her smile flickering…and were the shadows of uncertainty in her eyes for real, or the products of her art…or merely his imagination? “Only a slight one, actually-most of the time. Anyway, we’re supposed to be disguising you, right? You want your new background to be as different from your real one as possible.” She tilted her head and studied him thoughtfully. “The real problem is going to be your actual voice. Voices are harder to disguise than faces.”

“She’s right,” said Max.

“I know-how’s this?” Though she was obviously speaking to Max, her voice was low and intimate, and her eyes never left Roy’s. “He can’t talk. He can only whisper. He was injured-in an accident. A hunting accident-in the Northwest Territories. That’s how I met him, you see-in rehab. We helped each other through…difficult times…and of course, it was inevitable that we should fall in love.” She whirled away from him, leaving him with the sensation of a man teetering on the edge of a cliff.

“And it explains the nose and the scar, too,” she said breathlessly to Max. “Oh, this is perfect. Americans don’t know anything about Canada, so any accent he might have, any odd habits, they’ll just think it’s because he’s Canadian.”

“You’re something else, you know that?” Roy said with half a laugh, desperately trying to ground himself. “Forget acting-you should be writing fiction.”

“I’ve thought about it, actually,” she said, throwing him a look that seemed to be serious-as if she really did want him to understand. “They’re not that different, writing and acting. Both are about making up characters and then crawling inside their skin. Getting to know them. Figuring out what makes them tick. Then, you figure out ways to let the audience in on the secret.” She gave a half shrug, along with a faint smile. “That’s all acting is. And maybe fiction writing, too.”

“Got it all figured out,” Roy said in a grating voice.

He wasn’t sure when his heart had begun to beat so fast, when he’d begun to feel like a hunted man, dodging through the woods, looking for a place to hide. He knew he didn’t much like the idea of anybody getting inside his skin…figuring out what made him tick…knowing him that well. And as for a woman like Celia…it scared him to death. Just as well the character she was trying to crawl inside of was only some fictitious Canadian billionaire and not the real him. So, fine, he thought, let her do that-so long as she lets Roy Starr and his secrets the hell alone.

The momentary fog of panic cleared from his vision slowly. He found that he was staring down into Celia’s eyes-dangerous waters if ever there were any-and a new question seemed to be lurking in those mysterious depths. He could hear echoes of it vibrating in the waiting silence.

“What?” he muttered thickly.

“A name,” Max said patiently. “You need to pick one.”

“Oh.” He frowned, thinking about it, but the only name in his mind seemed to be the one he’d been answering to for thirty-five years.

“I rather like…Cassidy,” Celia murmured, again not taking her eyes from Roy’s, but smiling this time. “It has a nice outdoorsy ring. Rugged.”

“Cassidy? Not bad…first or last?” It was Max’s voice, coming from far away.

Roy shook himself. “Last,” he said crossly. “Why can’t I use my own first name?” It was what he usually did when he was under deep cover-less chance of slipping up that way.

Both Celia and Max were shaking their heads decisively. “What’s your middle name?” Max asked him.

“Jackson,” Roy said, eyeing him warily. “As in, General Stonewall.”

“Initials,” Celia said, with a smile like a burst of sunshine. “R.J.-how’s that? R. J. Cassidy, Canadian millionaire.” She stood back to look at him, like an artist surveying her creation-which, in a way, she was.

She clapped her hands over her mouth, stifling giggles.

“What?” Roy glared at her, unreasonably affronted. Then he looked down at himself.

Well, hell-he supposed it did look a little ridiculous for a billionaire-Canadian or otherwise-to be wearing a pair of baby blue UCLA sweats several sizes too small for him.

“Max,” he said plaintively, “tell me you brought me my clothes.”