Undercover Mistress

Chapter 12

After the movie, an endless line of limos moved in to whisk everybody off to the party, which was being held in some swank hotel in Beverly Hills, in a huge ballroom fixed up like a set from the movie, with pillars and palm trees, ferns and fountains, and a whole lot of fancy food and champagne. It was loud with music and congratulatory chatter, bright with dazzlingly beautiful people and bathed in a rich golden light.

In the midst of the splendor, Roy stood like one beleaguered, with his back to a pillar that looked like marble but he was pretty sure was actually made of something lightweight, like Fiberglas or maybe plastic foam. He was sipping champagne-which he’d never liked, much-and supposedly keeping an eagle eye out for the prince and his retinue.

Instead, at the moment, he was watching Celia. Small wonder. Even in the company of beautiful people, she caught the eye…ensnared it…commanded it.

Taken piece by piece, he supposed, she wasn’t that much more striking than any of the dozens of gorgeous women there. Her dress was slinky and all but backless, but elegant rather than sexy, her hair upswept…elegant…leaving her long neck bare. Her hair and her dress were both the exact color of the champagne in his glass, come to think of it, and shimmered like it, too, and the jewelry she wore…diamonds and some kind of deep golden stones-topazes, maybe?-caught the light and threw it back like sparks. Her body, of course, was perfection in his opinion, all long slender lines and dizzying curves.

All those things taken together…bright…beautiful…rich… elegant… She was, he thought, like a shaft of golden sunlight slashing across a landscape of muted purples and grays.

He pushed the fantastic thought away. To help it stay there, he drained his champagne glass in one angry gulp and went back to scanning the ballroom for Prince Abdul Abbas al-Fayad. That was what he needed-to keep his mind on his job. Just let me find him, he thought…let Celia work her magic-or, as Doc puts it, her wiles-get us invited on board the damned yacht, then we can go home.

At least he no longer felt so much like a fish out of water, paralyzed with worry about somebody recognizing him from his former life. Actually, except for the fact that, at the moment, his feet were killing him, he’d grown fairly comfortable in his new role. It happened like that in undercover work. If he stayed in a situation long enough, sometimes the lines between his undercover life and his real one got blurred, his old identity slipped further and further away. Sometimes it even got misplaced temporarily, shoved into the back cupboards of his memory. Until he happened to stumble across it again, the way he had tonight. Those were the danger times, when the memories, voices, people he loved from his past life nagged at him, distracted him, made him feel restless and off balance. Maybe guilty, too, for letting himself get sucked too far into the new life. For forgetting who he was…what was real and what was not.

“R.J., darling…there you are…” Celia swayed into him, gracefully holding a champagne flute aloft, cheeks dusted with golden mist and eyes sparkling. A prickling blanket of sexual awareness enveloped him, as impossible to deny or ignore as the compulsion to sneeze. “Come with me,” she murmured, warm and husky with muted excitement.

What could he do? In his experience, a beautiful woman with too much champagne in her was pretty much a force of nature; he knew arguing with her, even if he’d had a reason to, would be an exercise in futility.

With a wry smile and an indulgent shake of his head, he allowed her to sweep him from his quiet eddy and into the mainstream of the party. Caught up in her magnetism, bemused by the power of his attraction to her, he was barely aware of the path they followed, or whom they spoke to. Faces he’d seen on TV and movie screens floated close, smiling and making self-conscious conversation, then drifted away again. People he’d met casually during the past two weeks gave him air kisses, cheek hugs or handshakes. Through it all, Celia clung devotedly to his arm or dipped and swayed at his side like a rowboat on a choppy sea as she laughed musically and charmed with effortless grace.

Then suddenly, ungracefully, she tripped, lurched, uttered a decidedly unmusical squeak and threw out a hand to clutch for support-not from Roy, standing right next to her, but instead the purple-jacketed arm of a man with his back to her, engaged in conversation with someone else.

The man jerked around, reflexively reaching to steady her, and adrenaline squirted through Roy’s body and turned his nerves to electrical charges and his blood to ice water. Man, he thought, she’s good. Damn good…

“Oh-I’m so sorry,” Celia gasped-then, switching to a squeal of delight: “Abby…how lovely to see you!”

Prince Abdul al-Fayad’s liquid brown eyes widened and warmed in recognition. Keeping her hand possessively sandwiched between his, he drew her close and kissed her cheek. “Celia-my beautiful little Celia-how are you? We meet again!”

“You remember R.J.-you met him at Arthur’s party…”

“Yes, yes-I remember.” The prince reached past Celia to shake Roy’s hand, then, showing very white teeth, made the same finger-waggling motion toward his own throat he’d made before. “The throat-the voice-it is better, yes?”

Roy managed a lopsided smile as he replied in R. J. Cassidy’s sandy whisper, “Ah, well, they tell me this is ’bout as good as it’s gonna get.”

By this time, he’d located the quartet of bodyguards, standing in a cluster near a grove of potted palms, looking out of sorts and uncomfortable, wearing their uniform dark suits and holding plates filled with hors d’oeuvres.

At least, thank God, the adrenaline had blown away the sexual fog that had been clouding up his brain. He was back on track, nerves on edge, senses humming…but prickling still with a peculiar residual irritation, which, if it wasn’t so alien to his nature, he’d have said was jealousy. Watching Celia “work her wiles” on al-Fayad, he felt torn between admiration and the need to keep reminding himself to unclench his teeth.

“Abby, I’m so disappointed…” She was cooing to him now, swaying her body sinuously…almost but not quite brushing against al-Fayad’s. At the prince’s look of stark dismay, she put out her lower lip in a charming pout-subtle as a truck, Roy thought, but the prince seemed to be buying it all the way. “You know, you promised to show me your beautiful yacht. I’ve been waiting, but I haven’t heard a word from you. Please, don’t tell me you’ve forgotten…”

The prince’s mouth popped open, but before he could get a word out, Celia rushed enthusiastically on. “Actually, R.J. was saying he’d like to see it, too. He’s thinking of buying one-aren’t you, R.J.?”

Roy gave a harumph and a shrug of masculine modesty. “Ah…well, from what I hear, nothing near so big as what you’ve got.” And Lord, even playacting, it was amazing how hard it was to say those words. “Wouldn’t mind having a look, though. Maybe you can give me some ideas…advice…”

Abby, his face lit with smiles, burst in with, “Oh, but Celia…R.J., of course, you must come on my cruise!”

“Cruise?” said Celia breathlessly. Roy felt his heart begin to tap against the satin front of his waistcoat.

“Yes, yes-for the New Year holiday. We will cruise down the coast to Mexico and back again, and finish it off at Avalon-you know, on Catalina Island? We will have the greatest New Year’s Eve party ever-the party to end all parties. All my friends are coming-many you know…so many famous people. Of course you must come! Both of you-I will reserve a stateroom for you-the best one! Please say you will come…” His eyes implored, with a childlike enthusiasm that seemed completely innocent.

And yet… New Year’s Eve…a yacht filled with famous people…Avalon Harbor…the party to end all parties… A cold chill settled between Roy’s shoulder blades…a knot in his belly…a sickness at the back of his throat.

Dear God. This is it. It has to be. This time the “chatter” is real.

From a great distance he heard Celia exclaiming her delighted acceptance of the prince’s invitation. He heard his voice-R. J. Cassidy’s voice-seconding that and adding thanks. Words floated back and forth. More handshaking and cheek hugging, and then he and Celia were moving again, moving through the glittering crowd like water in a stream flowing past clusters of people standing motionless on the shore.

“I did it,” Celia said as they walked together side by side, when they had left the prince safely behind. She was looking straight ahead, her voice husky and low in her throat.

Roy swallowed, then answered the same way. “That you did.”

“Told you I would.” With a defiant little toss of her head, she snagged two glasses of champagne from a passing waiter and handed one to him.

He took it, clinked it gently against hers. “Done good.”

“Yes, I did.” She held his eyes while she said it, then tipped back her head and drank, nearly draining the glass in a few thirsty gulps. Afterward, her gaze slid away from his, as if she felt awkward with him, suddenly. He thought her face seemed pale, too. As if she was feeling ill…or scared.

If she was, he pretty much knew how she felt. He had a sudden impulse-a need-to draw her close and hold on to her-to gather close to everyone he cared about, the way primitive people once huddled together against the terrors of the night.

The limousine rolled through holiday traffic like a migrating whale, unhurried and unfazed. Inside, isolated and insulated behind tinted windows and an aura of privilege and mystery, Celia sat and watched Christmas lights and crowds of last-minute shoppers flash by in a kaleidoscope of gaudy color and frantic motion. And music. In her mind a song was playing over and over, one line in particular, from “Silver Bells”-the one about city sidewalks decked out in holiday style…

But where, she wondered, was the “feeling of Christmas” that was supposed to be in the air?

Her mind felt as disconnected from the emotions and sentiments of the season as her body was separated from the busyness and bustle of it by the limousine’s steel-and-glass shell. She had no room in her head for Christmas! Her thoughts, her whole being felt crowded, stuffed full, overfilled, like a balloon in danger of bursting, and all the more in chaos because so many of the thoughts and emotions filling it seemed to be in conflict with each other.

And her fertile and imaginative mind, being perhaps overly fond of allegories, reminded her that it was conflicting forces in nature that created tornadoes and hurricanes.

Her life forces were pounding inside her head and chest, loud, distracting, unsettling, like storm winds or heavy surf. Nerves pricked her skin like wind-driven rain. Her scalp tightened, as if warning of some unseen danger. Her breathing was shallow and her muscles tense, as if preparing her for imminent flight.

She felt exhilarated…and at the same time, in despair.

She wanted to run as fast as she could on a wide-open beach, put back her head and scream at the empty sky.

She’d never felt so alone, or wanted less to be.

Beside her, inches away, Roy sat in infuriating, and typically masculine, oblivion. How, she wondered, could he not be aware of the turmoil that was in her? How could he not understand what she must be feeling? How can he not know how much I want him?

Done good.

That much at least he must know-how much she’d wanted to do this thing…how much it meant to her to have succeeded. And then… “Done good,” he’d told her-like a grudging pat on the head.

That’s not enough, damn you! I want more! Though how much more, she couldn’t bear to say, even in the privacy of her mind.

Then, assailed by that actor’s familiar malady, insecurity, she decided if Roy somehow “didn’t get it,” it must be her fault. She was an actress, after all; it was her job to communicate thoughts, feelings and emotions to her audience. If her audience-Roy-didn’t understand, it was because she’d failed. She was a lousy actress.

No! Stomach flip-flopping, she quickly rejected that. She’d won Emmys, after all. She only had to try harder.

Sunk deep in ivory plush and the darkness of his own thoughts, Roy gave a start when Celia suddenly unbuckled her seat belt. “Hey, where y’goin’?” he asked, reaching for her.

She threw him an enigmatic smile over her shoulder. She murmured, “I know this limo must have some champagne…” as she opened the bar.

“I’d have thought you’d had enough of that stuff already,” he muttered, but she ignored that. Naturally.

She slid back into the seat beside him, triumphantly holding up two glasses and a champagne bottle. “I feel a need to celebrate,” she announced, smiling the way she sometimes did, with her teeth pressed down on her lower lip, like a little girl doing mischief.

Well, damn. He hated when she did that. Because no matter how much was on his mind, that look, so at odds with the elegant clothes and hairstyle she wore, her sultry beauty and probably a queen’s ransom in jewelry, made something twinge in the back of his jaws, as if he wanted to smile, too, and maybe do the same mischief right along with her.

Not trusting himself to come up with anything intelligent to say, he snorted and accepted the glasses she gave him to hold while she expertly opened the bottle. Naturally, she had to give a little squawk when the cork popped and laugh as she licked the spillage from the back of her hand.

Resigned, he offered the glasses, and she put her hand on his to steady them while she poured. She tucked the bottle into the corner of the seat behind her, then turned back and took one of the glasses from him. She held it up and faced him across it, the champagne’s liquid effervescence washing sparkling golden light over her smile.

“A toast,” she said.

Roy said, “Humph,” and added an unwilling, “Okay-what to?”

She opened her mouth, then paused, looking uncertain, and instead gave a one-shouldered shrug. “I don’t know-to us. To the mission. To success!” She clinked her glass half-defiantly against his and drank.

He felt a spurt of anger and tasted bitterness at the back of his throat at the thought of what might still lie ahead of him. He lowered the glass without drinking. “The job’s not done,” he said harshly.

She waved her glass, lips glistening with champagne. “My part is-” her eyes flew wide “-No-wait-I didn’t mean-”

“Well, I’m sure as hell glad to hear you say that,” he said, smiling darkly at her.

She leaned toward him, earnest and dismayed. “I didn’t mean that. It’s not done-just this part of it is. You still need me-you know you do. He invited both of us.”

Furious with her, he said, “Why do you insist on being in on this? You’re like a little kid trying to get into the big boys’ game. Dammit, Celia, this isn’t a game.”

“I know it’s not.” She burped softly and looked away. After a moment she brought her eyes back to him, and he saw in them something he’d seen before-he couldn’t remember, now, exactly when it had been. Pain and wariness, and maybe even fear.

She licked her lips, then said in a hard, quiet voice, “Have you ever killed anyone?”

He jerked and spilled champagne on his hand. “What the hell kind of question is that?”

“It’s a question. Have you?”

He took a drink of champagne, shifted his shoulders. “No. Of course not. I’m in the information-gathering business. We don’t kill people.”

Her gaze was dark and steady. “I have.”

Again he jerked, irritably, as if she’d poked him with a stick. “Come on.”

“No, it’s true-I told you.”

“For God’s sake, Celia, that was an accident!” Clumsily, he polished off the rest of the champagne and set the glass on the floor. “That’s pretty melodramatic,” he muttered angrily, “even for you.”

“Maybe…” She exhaled softly and once again her gaze slid away. This time, when she brought it back to him, there was something in her eyes that tugged at his heart in new and uncomfortable ways. His anger with her drained away like waves in the sand.

“Do you believe in fate? Destiny, I mean.”

“Jeez, Celia…” He ran a hand over his hair as he sat back against the seat, then let out a hissing breath. “I don’t know…I guess so…maybe. Tell you the truth, I never thought about it.”

“Think about it.” She sat forward, hunched and intense, the champagne forgotten, one hand resting on his knee. “Two women…driving alone along a highway…one crosses over the line-never mind whose fault it is-and the two cars collide head-on. One woman lives, one dies.”

She looked down at the glass in her hand but found it empty. She said softly, “She had a husband and three grown children, do you know that? The woman who died. She was about to become a grandmother for the first time.” Her voice broke, and she cleared her throat.

She lifted the gaze once again, and Roy’s heart stumbled. Her eyes…dammit…they reminded him of a lost dog confronting a possible rescuer…full of confusion and fear, and maybe a glimmer of hope. He tried to think of something to say to her that might help, but he was no healer. Her pain was beyond him. He felt helpless, frustrated, useless-ways no man wants to feel.

After a moment, she cleared her throat again and, in a low, husky voice, went on. “I used to wonder about it…why I lived and she didn’t. I felt so awful…”

“Survivors’ guilt,” said Roy, nodding, pleased with himself now, like a kid in school who finally gets a question he knows the answer to. “I guess that’s normal.”

She nodded. “That’s what I was told. I don’t know that it helped much.” She drew a deep breath. A smile flickered, then grew brave. “Then…I found you. And I thought, That’s why! I thought, it’s all a matter of destiny. I lived because I was needed to be there, on that particular beach, on that particular night, so I could save your life. You see? But then-” she held up a hand as if to keep him from interrupting her, though he couldn’t have spoken if his life had depended on it “-later on, when I heard you talking, and I knew what was at stake, and I figured out it was Abby’s boat you were investigating… Then I thought, This is why I lived! Because anybody walking on that beach that night could have saved your life, right? But only I could get you onto Abby’s yacht.”

When she finished, her voice was hoarse with emotion, her eyes fierce-a heroic effect that was spoiled an instant later when a tear tumbled swiftly, like an escapee, down her cheek. She sniffed and wiped at it, then continued thickly, “So, you see why this was so important to me. Why I-” she hiccuped loudly “-had to do it. Have-” she hiccuped again, then muttered a small, “Oh dear-have to do it. Don’t you?”

She gazed at him, waiting, and he stared back, unable to think of a single thing to say. And at that moment, with timing worthy of the best of Hollywood directors, the limo, with a polite jerk and a discreet squeal of brakes, came to a halt in Celia’s driveway.

His eyes flicked to the windows and he blinked, momentarily disoriented by the half-lit shapes of houses and cypress trees he saw beyond them. His lips moved and sounds came from them, but rusty and viscous, as if they’d been kept in the heat too long.

“We’re home,” he said.

She flinched and threw a look randomly into the night, like a startled animal uncertain which way to run. She caught a breath and said with desperate lightness, “Yes, I suppose we are.” Even without touching her, he knew she was trembling, her body’s vibrations stirring the air in some strange way that he felt in his soul rather than his senses.

The door opened and the limo driver stood there. Celia leaned forward to take his hand, and stepped from the car with the easy grace of someone who must have done such a thing a hundred times before. Roy followed somewhat less nimbly, his attention distracted, as he dealt with the driver, by Celia, who had gone ahead of him down the curving path. He could see her floating there in the near darkness, arms extended to each side as if she danced to music only she could hear, the distant surf a muted drumbeat. He paid, tipped and thanked the driver, then hurried after her, swearing under his breath. Behind him, he heard the limo growl quietly away.

Just as he caught up with her, she pivoted tipsily toward him-and stumbled. She gasped and lurched sideways as one of her high-heeled shoes twisted and collapsed under her, and even though he remembered all too well the way she’d worked that particular trick on the prince earlier tonight, Roy did the only thing he could do, under the circumstances. He caught her and swept her up into his arms.

And miraculously, didn’t drop her a second later; he’d forgotten about his half-healed ribs. Fortunately, his hiss of pain was lost completely in Celia’s gasp as she hooked her arms around his neck and stared up at him with wide, shocked eyes.

“Thank you,” she whispered in a slow, wondering way.

“No problem.” His voice was tight and air-starved, but she didn’t seem to notice.

She licked her lips and said thoughtfully, as he tottered with her the few remaining steps to the front door, “I think…maybe I’ve had a wee bit too much champagne.”

“Ya think?” On the steps he halted and croaked, “Keys.”

Her lips curved, catlike. “You have them, remember?”

“Oh, yeah…” Because Celia didn’t like pocketbooks, he’d taken to carrying her essential feminine odds and ends in his pockets. He thought about it now, frowning over the logistics of it because he was going to have to put her down in order to get to the keys. He was frowning, too, because the pain in his side suddenly didn’t seem so bad-either that, or sexual arousal trumped pain-and as a result, putting her down had become the last thing he wanted to do.

“I’ve had too much champagne,” she said, gazing into his eyes with a curious intensity, “but I am not drunk.”

“Okay…” He barely heard her. His head was swimming…all at once he felt as if he were drowning in her scent, her heat, her energy. The shape and weight and warmth of her in his arms crowded every other thought from his mind. Desire for her pounded like thunder in his temples. Wanting zapped across his skin like heat lightning.

It seemed almost an inevitability when she kissed him…a consequence of natural laws. She seemed to flow upward in his arms, like warm air rising, and her lips came to his as if gravity itself compelled them. He closed his eyes, and night spun into day. Heat engulfed him. He opened his mouth to hers…and flew headlong into the sun.

A long time later, he felt her body slide along the front of his, but molded to him still as if the heat from the kiss had melted them into one.

“Do you know how long I’ve wanted to do that?” she whispered brokenly, her breath flowing over his lips and making them tingle, like warm champagne.

“How long?” His hands, helpless and awed, stroked her back.

How long? All my life. All my lives before this one. Maybe even forever.

She was numb with wanting. Dazed with wanting. Nothing else mattered, not even pride. “Since the first time. I’ve wanted so much…for you to kiss me again. But you didn’t. I thought…you didn’t want to.”

He stared fiercely over her head. His voice was guttural. “I wanted to.”

Her fingers curled against his shirt front. She wanted to pound on it and scream at him, and her jaws ached with fighting that impulse as she whispered, “Then why didn’t you?”

He laughed the way people do when something hurts. “Do you really want to get into that now?”

She was silent, listening to opposing wants colliding inside her head like bumper cars. Oh, she did very much want to get into this with him. She needed desperately to understand him. But right now…oh, right now, she simply wanted him.

Needed him.

She drew a shuddering breath. “No. I want you to kiss me…again. Please.” Her voice caught. Her smile flickered-pure reflex. “I don’t normally have to ask.”

Frowning, he held her face between his hands, stroked her cheeks with his thumbs and looked deep into her eyes. “Not now,” he said harshly. “Not here.”

Fear and anguish coiled around her throat. I want you so much. Why don’t you want me? Don’t make me wait again…please. In that constricted voice she managed to ask, “Why?”

His warm lips touched her forehead. “Because,” he said with a rasping sigh, “I’m not gonna make love to you on your front doorstep. What would the neighbors think?”

A single joyous note, one bright bubble of laughter burst from her, beginning the unraveling of the tangle of doubt and frustration and confusion and despair that had been inside her for so long. Laughing, she stood on tiptoes and held his face between her hands. She heard, “Wait-” but it was muffled and far away, and lost completely when she kissed him.

He leaned into the kiss, gasped and pulled away, then groaned and plunged back into it, all the way this time. His hands roamed frantically over her body, then abandoned the struggle and folded around her.

And suddenly warmth and strength surrounded her. She felt euphoric and giddy and frightened, like a baby on a swing…and at the same time, grounded in that lovely warmth and strength, she felt entirely safe. Because, though she knew it was only for that moment, for that moment, at least, she felt…loved.

“Celia…”

“I know…”

“We can’t…”

“I know…the key…”

Somehow…gasping and trembling, overcoming obstacles like clumsy fingers and randomly placed kisses, they managed to remove the key from his pocket and open the door, tumbling into the shadowy quiet like puppies, oblivious and uncaring what parts of them touched where. That they did touch each other was all that mattered. For Celia, separating from him, even for a moment, even for such necessities as walking and undressing, seemed intolerable.

Articles of discarded clothing marked their progress through the house: her shoes and his jacket just inside the door; his cuff links and cravat on the kitchen counter; his shirt on the back of the couch. Even the silky tickle of his hair on her skin and the hot promise of his mouth couldn’t hold off the cold jangle of alarm she felt when he found the abbreviated zipper in the back of her dress and pulled it down, when she felt the fabric relax around her waist and the thin straps slither over her shoulders.

She gave a laughing gasp and caught the dress with her arm as it slipped below her breasts, before it could fall all the way to the floor. Roy, preoccupied with what had been uncovered, seemed not to notice. By that time, they were in the hallway where the light was dimmer, then in the bedroom where there was almost no light at all, and Celia relaxed and let herself become wanton again…