Undercover Mistress

Chapter 11

Celia sat hunched in the passenger seat, listening to the steady thump of windshield wipers and fidgeting to hide the shudders that rippled through her from time to time. She could feel Roy’s glance dart her way, but kept her eyes steadfastly focused on the raindrops that spangled the Land Rover’s windshield and hood like diamonds.

Stopped for a light on Sunset Boulevard, hands relaxed on the wheel, he looked over at her and said quietly, “You’re not sayin’ much.”

She looked at him and lifted a shoulder. The last thing she felt like doing was talking. Her mind felt drained…empty…exhausted. And yet her body was humming with tension, with an excess of energy, as if, she thought, forces beyond her control, alien forces, had taken it over.

“You did good,” he went on, and she could hear the wryness in his voice. “Damn good. Surprised the hell out of me, in fact.” The light changed, and so did the direction of his voice as the Land Rover moved forward. “You might just be a natural.”

“Thanks,” she said dryly, and she was thinking that a week, even a day ago, she’d have been quivering like a puppy over a compliment like that.

Instead, anger rushed over her unexpectedly, making her feel off balance, the way a wave did when it swirled and sucked around her feet, then slid dizzily away.

“Apparently, I have a few things to learn.” She’d meant to say it lightly; the tight, hard edge she heard in her voice, and its tendency to tremble, shocked her. She closed her eyes and concentrated on controlling both the anger and the trembling.

Roy’s chuckle was oblivious. “Maybe one or two.”

“About working with you, I mean.” Her voice was hers again, light and only mildly curious. “For instance, what was with that kiss? Some kind of ploy, I suppose, but you might have given me some warning.”

She heard a soft snort and then, for a long, unbearable time, silence. Ashamed of the need, she managed to steal a quick look at him before setting her gaze on the windshield again. When she swallowed, she was surprised at how much it hurt.

Finally, he exhaled and said in a low, half-muffled voice, “Yeah…well. Didn’t have much time to discuss a game plan with you. It was the best I could come up with at the moment.”

“Really? Game plan…for what, exactly? I mean, I know I’m supposed to be your mistress, but the rest of the evening you barely touched me. Was that kiss just a declaration of ownership for Abby’s benefit? ‘Hands off, this woman is mine.’? Not that I mind-it’s definitely not the first time I’ve been kissed according to script. I just like to know my motivation.”

“For God’s sake,” Roy said harshly, his body leaning toward her as he took the hard right turn onto the Pacific Coast Highway. “Not Abby-the bodyguard. I was trying to keep him from getting a good look at me. And…like I said, it was the only thing I could come up with at the time.”

“The bodyguard?” She stared at his profile, grim in the highway lights.

“I was afraid he might…I was afraid he’d recognize me.” His voice sounded tight, as if his teeth were clenched. “He’d seen me before-on the boat. He was the one who shot me.”

She paused to let that sink in, and to consider whether it made any difference. Deciding it didn’t, she said, “And…the thing with my hair…and my ear?” Breath, in mysteriously short supply, sifted from her air-starved lungs.

He glanced over at her and lifted a shoulder. In the erratic light, his face seemed like a mask. “Like I said.”

She sat for another time in silence. The rain was coming down harder, now, the way it can in California, sluicing over the windshield and side windows and curtaining them inside in their own little bubble of quiet, alone with the tension of misunderstanding and a thousand unspoken thoughts.

She drew a breath. “He wouldn’t have recognized you.”

“Yeah,” he said, somewhere between a drawl and a growl, “I think I know that…now. Can’t say I did then, though.”

She listened to the echoes of irony. Though far from being an apology, it made the silence seem less electric, somehow.

After a while she asked carefully, “Is it always this-” she coughed “-forgive me, but are you always this nervous when you go undercover?”

He gave an unexpected bark of laughter. “You wanna know the truth? This is the hardest thing I’ve ever done-bar none.”

She stared at him. “Seriously? Why? These are just…people. Showbiz people. Actors, directors, producers. It’s not like they’re…dangerous.” She listened, head tilted wryly, to a replay of that, while Roy echoed her thought.

“I can think of at least one who is.”

He drove for a while without speaking, then threw her a frowning glance. “I don’t know if I can explain or not, but…see, normally, if I’m going to be ‘made,’ it’s because of some screwup on my part-not doing my job right. Those things I can pretty much control. My face…well-not much I can do about that. I’ve never had to worry about being recognized before. I guess I felt…I don’t know…naked. You know-exposed.”

Naked… Celia stared straight ahead through the rain and didn’t say anything. Her throat felt achy and tight.

She could feel him look at her. “Guess you know what that’s like, don’t you?” His voice was deep with unexpected sympathy.

Her impulse was to laugh-why, she didn’t know. Some sort of defensive mechanism, she supposed. “Why would you say that? I’ve never been undercover before.”

“No, I mean, the face thing. Being recognized even when you don’t want to be. I guess, unless you want to go around in a disguise all the time, wherever you go, you’re always going to be Celia Cross.”

She didn’t know what to say. Who would have thought he’d understand? She said dryly, “More likely Nurse Suzanne.” Then, after a short silence, looking away from him again, “Actually, this past year I’ve gotten fairly good at disguises.”

Again she felt his glances, asking questions he didn’t quite know how to put into words. She let the silence settle around her-like fog, cloaking, insulating, protecting and, at the same time, making her feel chilled and lonely, so that when she broke it to say, “That’s my turn up ahead,” even her voice sounded muffled to her own ears, the way it does in fog.

Roy made the turn without comment. He drove slowly down the steep, narrow, winding street and pulled into Celia’s driveway. He turned off the motor, and the roar of rain and the whump of distant breakers rushed to fill the space where the engine and wiper noise had been, keeping time with her heartbeat.

He took the keys from the ignition, but instead of opening the door, said in a gruff voice, “Something I can’t figure out.”

She waited for him to continue, her heart quickening. He turned toward her, a dark silhouette against the silvery sluice of rain on the windows. “Why were you so nervous tonight? I mean, it’s not like you were in disguise, worrying about being recognized. You were…you-Celia Cross. Everybody there knew who you were. But you were shaking. When we first went in. I felt it. How come?”

Her heart gave a lurch, her breath caught, and to hide it she gave another light laugh. “Obviously, you don’t know much about showbiz. Of course I was shaking-it’s excitement, it’s adrenaline. I was about to go ‘on’-as in, on stage, you know? It’s normal, it’s…energy.”

“I heard what they were saying-those people-when we walked in,” he said roughly. “You did, too. Don’t tell me you didn’t.”

She shrugged and looked away, and the movements felt awkward to her, as if her body were a marionette controlled by an inept puppeteer. Through stiff lips, she said, “Oh well, I expected that. I told you about the rumors…the newspaper stories…the tabloids. The first time I appear in public…after…there were bound to be comments.”

“The first time…bound to be comments…you ‘expected’-” He broke off, muttering. Glancing at him, she saw that his elbow was propped on the steering wheel, his hand clamped over the lower part of his face. He shook his head and snapped her a look, blue contact lenses glittering in the meager light. “Why in the hell didn’t you tell me?”

She tried the laugh again, this time with a lift of her chin, hoping it would be enough. “Why would I? What could you have done?” Why do you care? Her heart thumped and her skin shivered with something that felt like fear.

“Hell, I don’t know-” he made an angry gesture, frustrated and typically male “-but you’re my partner in this, dammit, if you’ve got something goin’ on, I need to know about it.”

Smiling, patient and gentle, she said, “I haven’t ‘got something going on,’ as you put it. It’s no big deal. It’s just the way things are in this town. You develop a thick skin or you don’t survive. Look-I got through it-it’s over. Finis. Done.”

He looked at her, saying nothing. She looked at him, and her whole body seemed to hum…background noise, an undercurrent to the restless stormy nighttime sounds.

In a sandy whisper, barely audible above the shush of the rain, he said, “You’re really something, you know that? One hell of an actress…”

Clinging desperately to her smile, Celia said nothing. I must be, she thought, or you would know how vulnerable I am right now. You’d know how much I want you to hold me…warm me with your body, the way I warmed you. Kiss me…make love to me…make me feel strong and good…make this aching go away.

And she thought, Oh, God, I’m glad you don’t know that! Because if you were to touch me right now I’d come apart in your arms and cry on your shoulder. I sure wouldn’t want to do that!

Oh, God…how I want to do that.

Please…touch me.

“Well, you definitely had everybody there fooled tonight,” Roy said, reaching for the door handle. “Sure as hell fooled me.”

Celia let out a breath and opened her door, gasping, “Thanks,” as the cold rain hit her face.

Yes, she thought, I surely did fool you, didn’t I?

In the days that followed, Roy grew to appreciate the one good thing about having a deadline coming at you way before you were ready for it-it made time go by a whole lot faster.

Although, he’d probably have to admit, at least part of that could have been due to the fact that much of what filled his days-not just events, but images, sensations, emotions-was new to him.

Every day, he and Celia put in an appearance at some trendy restaurant or other on Melrose Avenue or in Beverly Hills. Lunch at Morton’s, maybe, where the prices made it hard for him to swallow his steak and fries, even with the ketchup the place thoughtfully provided. At other times, it was dinner at some romantic garden hideaway where he felt underdressed even in the silk Armani suits Celia insisted on buying for him on their shopping forays to Rodeo Drive.

At those times, it was Roy’s job to look rugged and outdoorsy and enigmatic-Canadian, he surmised-and Celia’s to appear the love-struck celebrity-starry-eyed, effervescent, radiantly beautiful. No great stretch for her-not the last one, anyway. As for the first two, well…it just made him admire her acting ability all the more when he saw how the stars faded from her eyes and the effervescence went flat as three-day-old beer as soon as they were alone together.

Admiring…awed…hell, yes. Where Celia was concerned, he had no trouble justifying all those feelings. It was the let-down-disappointed blues that came with them he couldn’t understand.

As far as Roy was concerned, it was all getting too damn complicated. In his past life, B.C.-Before Celia-whenever a relationship showed signs of developing complications he’d put an end to it in a hurry. Which he figured was probably why he’d managed to remain friends with so many of his old girlfriends, most of whom were currently happily married to other people. But this thing with Celia-in the first place, of course, it wasn’t even a real relationship. It was all playacting. Make-believe.

Or was it?

That was where it began to get complicated. Could things ever become real between Celia and him? On her side…truth was, he didn’t know. Normally he considered his instincts to be pretty good, but in this case…for starters, there was the acting thing. He’d seen firsthand what the lady was capable of. How was he supposed to tell whether the feelings she was letting him see were real or not?

Lately, every waking minute it seemed his mind was full of images and sound bites: some grainy and flickering like old black-and-white film clips-Celia blowing on a spoonful of broth before touching it to his lips…sitting cross-legged on the foot of his bed, laughing…tumbling with him onto the sheets…kissing him; others warm and glowing with color-Celia painting a scar and goatee on his face with her fingertips…mugging in a purple fedora in a Rodeo Drive menswear shop…sniffing a gardenia and smiling at him across it with her eyes in a candlelit garden café. Still others made him feel restless and uncomfortable, like watching a sad movie when other people were around who might see him cry: Celia saying, “Of course I miss them!” And her eyes shining with unshed tears…a scarred leg peeking through the gap in a silky robe…Celia walking along the water’s edge, pausing to throw a stick for a passing jogger’s dog, laughing…then looking up to see Roy watching her and the laughter fading to a bleak and lovely mask, impossible to read.

If only he could make some sense of it all! But the memories flashed by too quickly, always changing, so he never got a close, clear look, a chance to figure out what they meant. If only, he thought, memories could be more like photographs, so he could shuffle them around, lay them all out like snapshots in an album…maybe that way get a sense of the overall picture.

And supposing he did figure it out and, from Celia’s viewpoint, the answer was yes…what then? Would he want a real relationship, considering all that was sure to come with it?

From a purely physical standpoint, the quick and easy answer was: what red-blooded male in his right mind wouldn’t?

But again, this was where it got complicated. And Roy didn’t like complications, particularly where his own emotions were concerned. Having a “real” relationship with the likes of Celia Cross-meaning not make-believe-was one thing; having a real relationship, as in one that might put his heart in danger-that was something else.

The way Roy saw it, as long as he and Prince Abby al-Fayad’s bodyguards were walking around loose in the same city, he was in enough danger as it was.

Prince Abby al-Fayad…danger…loose in the city…

Sometimes he could almost manage to forget the nightmare cloud that might even then be approaching L.A.’s oblivious millions, hidden in the hold of one of the thousands of apparently innocent sailboats, fishing boats, pleasure craft and yachts that floated regularly in and out of Southern California’s marinas and boat harbors. He could almost believe his own nightmare on board the yacht Bibi Lilith and in the chilly waters of the Pacific had been only that-a bad dream. The fantasy role Celia and Max had created for him became less alien to him once he got used to the idea that nobody short of a mind reader was ever going to connect the battered, shivering wretch in the frogman suit, shot and thrown into the deep, dark ocean, with the silver-haired Canadian billionaire with a scarred larynx and a movie star mistress.

The truth was it should have been an easy part to play, putting him in no imminent physical danger, demanding nothing of him except that he appear at Celia’s side, present in her scene but not a part of it, indulgent and a little aloof, like a patient and loving parent watching children in a playground.

He did have a bad moment the first time photos of the two of them appeared in People Magazine.

“Shoot, my momma reads People,” he told Celia in an outraged growl. “What am I gonna do if she recognizes me?”

For an answer, she turned the magazine around and showed him the picture, snapped by some paparazzi on Rodeo Drive, then waited in silence while he studied it. After a long time, he nodded and muttered, “Well, okay, then…”

It was like seeing himself in the mirror at Art Milos’s party all over again. After that, he pretty much accepted the fact that Betty Starr’s little boy Roy was no more-at least until the current operation was over.

But, while the operation put little or no pressure on him personally, he was well aware that the same could not be said of Celia. After all, she’d claimed-bragged, really-she could get the two of them invited on board al-Fayad’s yacht. No doubt she would, eventually, but the problem was, it had to be sooner rather than later. According to Max, intelligence chatter was growing ever more insistent about a major west coast “event” planned for sometime during the “holidays.” And Celia and Roy had had no contact whatsoever with the prince and his retinue since the night of Art Milos’s party.

No one nagged-it wasn’t Max’s way, or Roy’s, either-but it was obvious to Roy that Celia was feeling the pressure. He was certain that was the reason for her growing moodiness, and her habit of sneaking out of the house at night to go for long walks alone on the beach, maybe even the way her smile faded whenever she looked at him…the way her eyes darkened and slid away from his. She’s afraid, he thought, that she might fail.

What surprised Roy most was, for reasons having nothing to do with terrorist threats against a sleeping city, he didn’t want her to fail.

In any event, as the Christmas holiday approached, Roy’s and Celia’s social calendar got busier and busier. The parties were bigger and glitzier, and nerves more and more on edge.

“Why can’t you just impound the damn boat?” Roy exploded one day to Max as they sat drinking beer on Celia’s deck. “I don’t know…make up a reason.”

“Wish we could,” said Max with a gloomy shrug. “But the man hasn’t broken any laws. Technically, he’s a member of the ruling family of a country friendly to ours. We can’t just confiscate a hundred million dollars worth of yacht on a hunch.”

“What about the guys that roughed me up-the bodyguards?”

“Nothing on them, either. Sorry.”

“Sorry?” Roy jumped up to pace in the confines of the deck, arms folded and shoulders hunched in spite of the fact that three straight days of Santa Ana winds had pushed the temperature into the low eighties. “What’s ‘sorry’ gonna do? Christmas is…what, four, five days away? And what am I doing? I’m going to parties.” He made a disgusted noise, then rounded suddenly on Max. “Send me back in. Let me check out the damn boat. Look at me-my wound’s pretty well healed, I’m strong…I’m fine. Getting caught last time was a fluke-I’ll be more careful this time. Come on, man…”

Max was shaking his head. “Even if I was willing to let you, you’d never make it. Security’s too tight-you found that out. The only way to put that yacht out of commission-other than her way-” he tilted his head toward Celia, who they could see on the other side of the sliding glass door, talking on the telephone “-would be with several well-placed packs of C4. And don’t even think about it,” he added, with a wry smile at the look on Roy’s face, “because we can’t just blow up a hundred million dollars worth of yacht on a hunch, either.”

“Why on earth would you want to blow up Abby’s yacht?” Celia asked innocently as she joined them, placing the cordless phone on the table among the beer bottles, as if it were a gift she’d brought them. She waited, returning their frowns with a maddeningly angelic smile.

Finally, when neither one of them asked who was on the phone, she relented, first helping herself to a sip from one of the beer bottles-Roy’s, as it happened. She wiped her lips, then said, “That was my-” she coughed delicately “-a reliable source, who tells me on good authority-” her smile came out like an irrepressible child playing peekaboo “-that Abby is planning to attend the premiere party tomorrow night.”

Max looked at Roy. “I take it this is one on your agenda?”

Roy nodded. “Yeah. I get to wear a tux. Can’t wait.” But a strange little quiver was running through him. Excitement? Foreboding? Anticipation? He lifted his bottle to Celia in a silent toast and saw warmth bloom in her cheeks.

At the time, he was sure he understood why.

“You look nice,” Celia said.

Under the circumstances she thought she might be forgiven the enormity of the understatement; Lord help her-help both of them-if Roy ever found out how her body warmed at the sight of him…how her heart stumbled and her skin prickled with the dangerous impulse to step close and feel his arms around her…

Instead, she gave his lapel a pat and moved one pace back, tilting her head judiciously to one side as she gazed at him. Amazing, she thought. Nude, his naturally thin, hard-muscled body had made her think of Greek statues and portraits of martyred saints. Clad in a classic tux, that same wiry grace assumed a natural elegance that brought to mind images of fairy-tale princes.

“You sure this thing’s okay?” he asked, tugging at his neck-wear in a potentially destructive way. The white silk cravat was a compromise; he’d absolutely refused to wear a bow tie.

She slapped at his hand. “Leave it alone. You’ll probably set a trend.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he said with a mock-serious frown, staring over her head like a soldier at inspection. Then his gaze flicked downward and his features relaxed. “You look nice, too,” he said softly.

“Thank you.” She smiled as she looked into his eyes, remembering he’d said those same words the night of Art Milos’s party, the first they’d attended together. And when he smiled back, she knew he was thinking of that night, too. His teeth gleamed in the lights that cast a daytime brilliance over the theater’s entrance and the crowd of celebrity watchers gathered there, and though the silvered hair and blue contact lenses softened his pirate looks somewhat, her heart gave a queer little bump just the same.

His smile slipped, became crooked. “So,” he growled under his breath, “we gonna do this, or what?”

She drew a meager breath. “Ready when you are, R.J.”

He offered his arm. Celia tucked her hand into the bend of his elbow and when his hand came to cover hers, felt a shiver ripple through her. Behind them, the limousine purred quietly away, and they stepped together onto the red carpet. She felt the cool tickle of her mother’s favorite diamond-and-topaz earrings on her neck as she lifted her head to smile at the waving, cheering crowd.

It was something she’d done-oh, many times before, the first when she was all of five years old, decked out like a princess and clinging proudly to her father’s hand. But how, she wondered, must Roy be taking all of this? Surely, the glitz, glamour and celebrity must be a little overwhelming to someone from…where was it? Oglethorpe County, Georgia?

She glanced nervously at him. He said something out of the side of his mouth, something she couldn’t hear, and she whispered, “What?” and leaned closer.

“I said, this reminds me of my senior prom,” he growled, showing his teeth like a ventriloquist.

She gave a laugh, half surprise and half…something else. Envy, perhaps? “I’ve never been to a prom,” she whispered, gazing at him as new layers of awe, of emotions unnamed, wrapped themselves around her heart.

“I’ve never been to a premiere. Guess we’re even.”

She felt heavy inside…half-suffocated. She thought, This is terrible. What am I going to do? I adore this man…

Then they were inside the theater, making their way through a vast, crowded lobby decorated in the plush-carpeted, gold-painted opulence of recreated “Old” Hollywood and, of course, some larger-than-life statues of the movie’s major characters. Ushers came to show them to their seats. The theater darkened, the audience grew quiet and the movie began.

Roy hoped nobody asked him what he thought of the movie, because the truth was, he didn’t remember one thing about it.

Maybe it had something to do with what he’d said to Celia about the whole thing reminding him of his senior prom. For some reason, sitting there beside her in that dark theater, it was as if he were back there again, in high school, sweating through a Friday night movie date, and his mind more on what he might manage to convince the girl to let him do with her later on than anything up on the screen. There’d been a lot of girls…

His prom date-what was her name? Jennifer…something. Jen…Jennie Dooley-that was it. He recalled they’d done some fooling around that night-not as much as he’d have liked, probably more than she’d intended-and he’d taken her out a few times after graduation. But evidently she’d been saving herself for somebody with more to offer her than some sultry summer nights, because she’d gone off to college in the fall unsullied-at least by him. Last he’d heard, she was married to a state senator in Atlanta and had three or four kids.

He thought about the girls he’d known, where they were now…what they were doing. Sitting there in the dark theater, remembering them the way they’d been, it didn’t seem all that long ago. When had he got to be thirty-five?

It hit him then-if it hadn’t been for the woman sitting next to him, his life would have ended right there, at thirty-five years old. And what had he got to show for it?

A tiny frisson of…something…rippled through him-loneliness, maybe? Regret?

Not regret-I made my decisions, chose my path with my eyes wide-open. I’ve done good things…made some difference, maybe. And maybe I’m gonna make some more. So, no-no regrets. But loneliness? Okay, maybe. But hey-that’s life. Right? Sometimes you have to make sacrifices.

He shifted restlessly and glanced over at Celia. He wondered what she’d think if he were to put his arm across the back of her seat…then let it sort of slide…forward…onto her shoulders…take her hand and pull it over onto his thigh, the way he used to do back in high school.

Yeah, right. Smiling to himself in the darkness, he faced the giant movie screen again.