Undercover Mistress

Chapter 6

He could have counted to four…maybe five…while she stared at him without moving, as if he hadn’t spoken a word. Then her eyes widened, and he felt her breath swirl across his skin. The hand that had pillowed her cheek uncurled, her fingertips extended slowly and touched his lips, as if, he thought, she expected him to turn out to be a mirage after all. Evidently assured by her senses that he wasn’t, she lifted her head, then her shoulders, propping herself on one elbow while she brought her other hand to his face.

He felt her warm hand cuddle his cheek, then lie long and gentle across his forehead. He was certain nothing in his life’s experience thus far had ever felt so good-though it did occur to him there were possibilities that might grow from this moment that would feel even better yet. It felt so good he didn’t want that feeling to end, and only the cocoon of clammy bedding he was imprisoned in kept him from putting his hand over hers to hold it where it was.

“Your fever’s gone-I can’t believe it,” she said. The husky rasp of her voice sounded unbelievably sexy to him.

“That would explain why everything’s soaking wet,” he said with a smile to let her know he didn’t hold her responsible.

“It is?” She scrambled up onto her knees and began tugging at the blankets. “Oh God-you are. Here-let me…get those-”

“Hey-not so fast,” he protested in a desperate and feeble croak while trying to hold on to at least some of the blankets with his one good arm-that is to say, the one not folded like a broken wing against his bandaged side. “I’m naked, here.”

It occurred to him that she was fully clothed-unlike the last time he’d awakened to find her sharing his bed-in sweats and a tank top.

She sat back on her heels and regarded him with amusement, the hands that had felt so good on his cheek and forehead now folded in her lap. “You really are feeling better. Who do you think found you yesterday when you passed out on the floor? Who got you back to bed? You didn’t mind if I saw you naked then.”

“Yeah, well, I was pretty out of it then,” he muttered darkly, looking around him. “What the hell happened to my clothes?” Failing to spot anything that looked familiar, he pulled a clammy sheet around his shoulders. Dammit, he was shivering again. Like a little kid. He wondered if the cold was going to affect him like this from now on.

“What clothes? When I found you all you had on was a pair of shorts. Doc took them off of you. They were full of sand. He probably threw them away.”

She scrambled backward off the bed and stood for a moment looking down at him and combing her hair back from her face with her fingers. In spite of the tumbled hair and sleep-flushed cheeks, it was clear to him the sexy sweetness of her waking up was already history. Fully alert now, she had that odd awareness about her again-that indefinable edginess that made his jaws tense and his insides quiver with wordless warnings.

He didn’t know why, but in spite of the fact that she’d saved his life, he didn’t in any way trust her. Not, as they used to say in the part of the world he’d been raised in, any farther than he could throw a bull by the tail.

Frowning and nibbling ingenuously at her lower lip, she said, “I’ll see if I can find you something to put on, okay?” She moved to the door, where she turned and pointed at him like an empress issuing edicts. “Don’t go anywhere. If you need to…whatever, just hold it until I get back, okay? I don’t want you keeling over again. Promise.”

“Okay, okay, I promise.” He raised himself on one elbow to call after her, “No flowered bathrobes, you hear? And I’m not wearing ruffles, either.”

She looked at him over her shoulder, rolling her eyes in an as if kind of way. “That is so TV sitcom, don’t you think?”

She went out, leaving Roy with silent laughter bumping against the sore places that still lurked through his insides.

Sweet, sexy or siren, he thought, the woman did know how to stir a man’s juices and kindle fires where, by rights, there oughtn’t to have been any fuel left to burn. While he still felt that lightness, that sense of well-being he’d woken up with, now he wondered how much of it was due to the fact that he’d fought a bare-knuckle brawl with death and won, and how much to the predictable effect a sexy and beautiful woman had on him.

One thing he did know. He’d lost-and was continuing to lose-precious time.

I have to call Max.

He was combing the room with his eyes for some evidence of a phone and trying to assess the odds he’d keel over if he got up to look for one when Celia came back.

“I found some sweats,” she announced as she sailed into the room, trailing articles of clothing from both arms like a department store sales clerk. “They’re going to be short on you, I’m sure. I don’t care if you cut them off, so you don’t go around looking like Alice in Wonderland after she nibbled the wrong cookie.” She broke off, no doubt having noticed the fact that he was sitting upright and tense, with a frustrated light in his eyes. “What is it? Is something-”

Then, evidently sure she knew the answer: “Oh-duh. You need to use the bathroom-right. Do you need me to help you?”

Roy winced. “Lady, do you have any idea what it does to a grown man’s pride to be asked that kind of question by a beautiful woman? Makes me feel about two years old.”

“Sorry,” she said, unrepentant, this time letting the compliment slip by as if it were no more than her due. She handed him the sweats. They were baby blue, with UCLA embroidered across the shirt in yellow script. “Here you are, then. If you need me for anything, holler.” She turned on her heel and headed for the door.

Damn. “Wait-” So much for his masculine pride.

She pivoted back to him, eyebrows spiked up in a way he knew good and well was mocking him. “Yes?”

Reminding himself-again-that she had, after all, saved his life, he said grudgingly, “There is one thing you can do for me.”

Something flared in her eyes, not long enough for him to figure out the subtle differences between gladness and triumph. “Sure. What do you need?”

He was thinking how it would be if he were himself, a healthy man, red-blooded and strong, sitting in bed watching a woman such as this come toward him with a smile lurking and eagerness in her eyes… His voice deepened and his smile came, naturally as breathing. “I sure could use a phone, ma’am.”

“Oh-sure. I’ll bring you the cordless.”

Quickly, before she could turn away again, he added-only a little grudgingly, “Before you do that…if you wouldn’t mind waiting until I get my pants on, I guess I could use a little help getting to that bathroom.”

Again he caught that brief but unmistakable spark in her eyes, but she was either too good at shielding herself or too good an actress to let him know exactly what she was thinking.

“No problem,” she murmured, hiding the light behind demurely lowered lashes. “Call me when you’re ready.”

Once again, he watched her walk away from him, feeling too frustrated to laugh, too weak to swear.

The truth was, beautiful though she may have been, she wasn’t the kind of woman he’d normally have any interest in. Roy liked his women simple-not meaning lacking in intelligence, but in the sense of uncomplicated. He liked them warm and funny and accommodating and encumbered with a minimum amount of emotional baggage. He might be called shallow because of that, but he got plenty of intrigue and mental stimulation, and more than enough complications and challenges, in his line of work. When it came to women, what he wanted was recreation. He wanted to relax and enjoy himself-and them-which was not something he could ever see himself doing with a woman like Celia Cross. Getting involved with her, he had a feeling, would be like one big long sword fight-whether that meant the delicate thrust and parry of a fencing match or an all-out duel to the death, like in those old Hollywood swashbucklers.

No thanks-not for him. It made a shiver go down his spine just thinking about it.

Reasonably assured Celia wasn’t going to pop back in on him to see how he was getting along, Roy shoved the damp bedding away and eased his legs over the side of the mattress. Oof-still weak…still woozy. He waited until the worst of the dizziness had passed before tackling the sweat pants. If anybody had ever tried to tell him how complicated a job it was to put on a pair of pants one leg at a time, he’d have thought they were nuts.

By the time he was on his feet and more or less upright, there was a howling wind blowing through his ears and a hollow drumming in his belly, and it was all he could do to summon the strength to croak, “Ready.”

She must have been waiting outside the door for his call, because it seemed to him she was there in less than an instant. The muffled, “Thanks,” he mumbled when he felt her arm come around his waist was both humble and sincere.

He was grateful, too, for the strong shoulder she tucked in under his arm and acutely aware of the feminine shape of her snugged up against his uninjured side. She was a good height for him, he noted; not an Amazon, by any means, but tall enough, sturdy enough to be a real help to him. And at the same time, soft where a woman ought to be. An observation…nothing more.

She turned her head toward him, her hair sliding across his arm like silk, and his skin shivered and his nipples hardened. “No problem,” she said. “Just take it slow…”

“Is this how Nurse Suzanne does it?”

She gave that the answer it deserved-a short, mirthless laugh.

She guided him into the bathroom and left him holding on to the cold porcelain sink as if his life-or, at the very least, his dignity-depended on it. He waited until he heard the door close behind her before he lifted his head and confronted his image in the mirror. It was a good thing he’d waited, because what he saw hit him like a fist to the belly.

No wonder she’s not impressed with your looks and charm.

He tried to make light of it, but the truth was, the gaunt, bearded and battered stranger looking back at him from the mirror shocked the hell out of him. His eyes stared at him from blackened sockets like wild creatures lurking in caves, and his nose was a different shape than it had been before. What it was, he realized, was his own mortality in the flesh, and he was feeling chastened and thoughtful as he attended to his most pressing need.

Back at the sink, he splashed his face with cold water, but while he was patting his dripping jaws dry with an embroidered hand towel, he studied the reflection of the tiled stall shower behind him with longing. Inevitably, as his various aches and pains diminished, he was becoming aware of secondary discomforts-the itch of sand, the sting of salt, the stickiness of blood. He knew he probably wasn’t supposed to, given the bandages, the bullet wound, and all, but…

What the hell, he thought, and turned on the water.

He showered with his hands braced against the tile walls, letting the water sluice unimpeded over his bowed head…his upturned face…his aching body, bandages and all. Eyes closed…mouth open…teeth clenched in a grimace of overwhelming emotion…he let the water run and run, the pleasure of that simple thing so intense he wanted to cry.

Afterward, he crawled out of the shower and felt his way to the towels, bent over like an old, old man. He had to sit on the commode to dry and dress himself, but it had been worth it.

He pulled himself up and made his way slowly to the door; when he opened it, he found Celia there, gazing at him with luminous, unreadable eyes.

She looked at him for a long time without saying anything, and he looked back at her and didn’t say anything, either. He wished he was better at reading her, because there were several times when it seemed to him she was on the verge of saying something…well, hell, he didn’t know what he thought she was going to say, but something that was probably going to change his opinion of her for the better, put it that way.

Then she did speak, and instead of something sweet and nice, it was in her usual way-smart, cool, edgy. “You look like a member of the human race. Welcome back.”

“Thanks,” he said dryly as he moved past her.

“You’re welcome.” She came close to his side again but didn’t touch him, and he made his way slowly back to the bedroom without leaning on her.

Then he felt humbled again when he saw the bed had been freshly made for him-lavender sheets with scalloped edges, no flowers this time. He crawled between them, almost chuckling aloud with the sensual pleasure of that smooth coolness against his skin, thinking he was never going to take such a thing for granted again.

Thinking how much he owed this woman, this beautiful stranger. So she was a little bit arrogant, a little bit nutty-so what? Considering what she’d done for him, he thought he could forgive her that.

After he’d gotten himself settled, she picked up a cordless phone from the nightstand and handed it to him without a word.

He took it and thanked her, then sat there and held it, wondering how he could ask her for some privacy without sounding too ungrateful. He looked up at her, hoping she’d get the message, but she was fussing around with things on the nightstand, tidying up…avoiding his eyes. He took a breath, then let it out with a little bit of a laugh as some help came from an unexpected quarter. His stomach growled. Loudly.

Her eyes flicked toward him and her lips parted in surprise. Then she, too, gave a laugh-a charmingly childlike giggle. He felt the easing of tensions he hadn’t even been aware of, and it occurred to him she might have been looking for a way to ask awkward questions, too.

“Sounds like you might be ready for some real food,” she said, avoiding his eyes again.

“Yes, ma’am, I believe I could eat,” he said, falling back on his Southern ways.

She nodded, but before she could turn away, he surprised both of them by reaching out and catching hold of her wrist.

“I have to ask you somethin’.”

It was a true statement; he didn’t want to ask her, and all his training told him he shouldn’t. But she’d mentioned Max. And that was something she shouldn’t have known about. He had to find out how she’d come by that knowledge. He had to.

“A while back, you said something to me.” Yesterday? The day before? I’ve lost track of time. “You asked me about Max.” His voice grew rougher as he stared at her, willing her to look at him. “I want to know where you came up with that name.”

She didn’t answer, and her eyes stayed stubbornly on the place where his fingers were wrapped around her wrist. Following her gaze, Roy felt twinges of shame, enough to make him loosen his grip some, but not release it entirely, as he repeated with more urgency, “What do you know about Max?”

She hesitated, and he saw her throat move, her lips part. Then she lifted her lashes and her eyes met his head-on, and it felt a like getting slapped in the face by a cold ocean wave. He thought how easy it might be for a man to lose his bearings and his sense in those eyes…if there wasn’t so much at stake.

“You talked about him,” she said with an evasive little shrug. “When you were unconscious. Or delirious, I suppose.”

Even though it was only his own fears confirmed, Roy felt himself go cold. Her wrist slipped unnoticed from his fingers. “I…talked?” He shook his head, not wanting to believe it. But there it was. He’d talked. “How much?” he finally asked, in a voice deep and hollow with dread. “What did I say?”

“Quite a lot, actually.” Now there was accusation in her voice and in the lift of her chin. “You know, I have a question, too. I’d like to know how much of it was true.”

He ignored that. “Did Doc-”

She gave her head an impatient shake. “He heard some-not very much. He just thinks you were out of it.”

“And you?”

She looked at him for a long moment without speaking, then said quietly, “Well, there has to be some reason for the shape you were in when I found you. Doesn’t there?”

And with that she left him there, staring after her and listening to the rumble of his career as an undercover agent of the United States government crumbling around him.

Eventually, he became aware of the weight of the phone in his hand. He glared at it, as if it were solely responsible for the mess he was in. Then, with his thumb, he savagely punched in a number he knew by heart. Swearing under his breath, he listened to the universal answering machine voice telling him to leave a message. When the beep came, he said in a voice as calm and expressionless as the recording, “Yeah, Max, this is Diver…just got back…guess I’ll wait to hear from you.”

Then, instead of hanging up, he pressed the handset against his cheek and closed his eyes, visualizing Max’s computer running through its voice recognition software. After what seemed like a lot longer wait than usual, he heard a click, followed by a series of musical beeps, and a voice he knew well, sounding like nine miles of bad road.

“Diver? Jeez, where you been? I’d given you up for dead.”

Roy laughed without humor, then wished he hadn’t; he’d forgotten how sore his ribs and chest were. “Yeah, me, too,” he said grimly. “Listen, Max-” it wasn’t the man’s real name, of course, anymore than Diver was Roy’s “-I’ve got a helluva lot to tell you, but not over the phone. Okay? And, uh, I guess I’m gonna need you to come get me.”

“Sure, absolutely. Just tell me where.”

“Oh, shoot.” He broke off, swearing, since he had no idea in the world where he was, other than somewhere on the Southern California coast. “Uh, wait-let me see if I can find-”

“You’re in Malibu,” Celia said from the doorway, in a firm, clear voice, projected to carry to the telephone receiver in his hand. “Off the Pacific Coast Highway.” She continued talking as she prowled toward him, holding a tray before her like an offering to a pagan god, giving her address and some admirably concise driving directions, which she wrapped up just as she was bending over to place the tray on Roy’s lap. Then, with her mouth roughly a foot from the phone’s mouthpiece, she added, “Oh, and Max? You might want to bring him some clothes. Mine don’t fit him all that well.”

She straightened up, wearing a distinctly catlike smile of satisfaction, as Max screeched in Roy’s ear, “Who was that?”

Roy closed his eyes. “You get all that?”

“Yeah, I got it.” Max’s voice was a good octave higher than it should have been, and Roy could hear him breathing. “Can I conclude from what I just heard that we might have ourselves a problem, here?”

“Yes, sir,” Roy said dully, “you sure could do that.”

He thumbed the disconnect button and carefully placed the phone on the nightstand. Celia went to sit on the foot of the bed and pulled her feet up under her.

“You’re upset,” she said. And she knew upset didn’t come close to describing the man’s state of mind just then.

It wasn’t that she didn’t understand, in her own heart, what he must be feeling-at least, she was pretty sure she did. An actress needed to be capable of recognizing and responding to a whole range of human emotions, and Celia considered herself more empathetic than most. But now it occurred to her that in terms of subtle shadings, the range of emotions she’d had to deal with in the past couple of days made all the rest of her emotional life so far seem like children’s crayon drawings in primary colors.

She said mildly, “I don’t know why you’re so upset. Just because I heard you talking in your sleep.”

“Delirious,” he growled, tearing his gaze from the tray on his lap and throwing her a black look. “I wasn’t asleep, I was out of my head. What you heard was garbage. It wasn’t real.” He picked up a fork and stabbed at a bite of pot roast.

“Max is real,” she pointed out. And completely independent of the tense conversation she was engaged in, a warm little spring of happiness-primitive and uniquely feminine-bubbled up inside her as she watched him put the food she’d prepared for him-all right, she’d only microwaved it, but still-into his mouth, and chew and swallow it with obvious enjoyment. It was a whole new experience for her.

“Yeah, well,” he said between quick, savage bites, barely tasting, “the rest of it isn’t. So you can just forget about it, you hear? It’s just…nightmares.”

“Then why,” she asked, “are you so upset that I know?”

He paused long enough to throw her another glare. “I’m not upset-just don’t want you getting a bunch of wrong ideas.”

His air of affronted masculinity amused her, and she couldn’t resist saying, with exaggerated innocence, “Wrong ideas? Oh-you mean like, that you’re a government agent working undercover trying to stop terrorists from bringing some sort of weapon of mass destruction into Los Angeles by boat? And that you were caught in the act of trying to sabotage some Arab prince’s yacht-” She broke off when her patient erupted in a paroxysm of coughing and leaned over to pluck a napkin from the tray and hand it to him.

“Thank you,” he muttered, voice muffled.

“You’re welcome.”

He dabbed at his eyes, tear-reddened and furious. “You…have one hell of an imagination.”

“I do. I also have a helluva good memory,” she said calmly. “Especially for dialogue-I have to memorize pages and pages of it every day, you know. I remember every word you said. It sounded like…” She paused to ponder it. “I think you must have thought I was this Max person, and you were giving him-me-a full report. With lots of details. In fact,” she added, returning his stony stare, “there wasn’t much left for me to imagine. Plus the cold hard fact that I found you washed up on the beach, half-dead from a gunshot wound.” Celia hated being patronized and belittled. Anger embers flared as she nodded toward the damp bandages stuck to his chest with adhesive tape. “Tell me I’m imagining that.”

Then, as a new thought occurred to her, she caught her breath and leaned toward him to peer interestedly at the wounds. “You know…I just realized…Doc said the angle was strange. He couldn’t figure out how the exit wound could be up here, and the entrance way down there, on your side. He said it was like you’d been shot from below. But you weren’t! I can see it now-you were diving!” She was up off the bed and on her feet, now, acting out the scenario. “Someone on the boat shot you as you were diving into the water. That’s the way it happened-right?” She spun toward him on the last word-then halted. “What are you doing?”

He’d set the dinner tray aside and was pulling his legs from under the covers. Aiming a smoky glare past her, he muttered, “Gettin’ the hell out of this bed, that’s what I’m doing. What does it look like?”

Her heart slammed against her ribs. “What does it look like? It looks like you’ve lost your mind. You’re not strong enough. You’re going to-”

“I’m fine.” Having succeeded in planting two bony bare feet squarely on the carpet, he transferred the glare to Celia. “Max’ll be here in a minute. I’m not gonna have him find me lying here like some damn helpless invalid.”

He’d never looked less like an invalid, in her opinion-or more like a buccaneer. Not a sick buccaneer, either, not any longer. The truth was, with his thickening beard and shower-rumpled hair, eyes throwing daggers, he looked more than capable of wreaking havoc on pretty much any venue he chose.

Her heart stumbled. She couldn’t bear to look just then at the reasons for the irrational protests and denials that were screaming inside her head, so she told herself he was simply too weak, too sick to go. She told herself he needed her. Because she couldn’t bring herself to admit the simple truth behind the protests, which was that it was she who needed him.

She stepped forward, reaching instinctively for him as he lurched to his feet, at that moment not sure in her heart whether she meant to help him…or stop him.

What happened next happened quickly. He swayed, uttering a muffled, “Whoa…” as his hands came up to clutch wildly at the only support within reach-which he did manage to grab hold of in the last instant before he toppled backward onto the bed.

As she felt his arms come around her, as she felt herself pitching forward, tightly wrapped in a surprisingly strong and wiry embrace, Celia had time for one electric flash of thought: Oh, please don’t let me hurt him.

She heard a sharp exhalation-whose, she couldn’t have said for certain-and the next thing she knew she was lying sprawled full-length on top of a hard masculine body. A thankfully no longer nude, but rather badly bruised, battered and recently gunshot body. A body, it further occurred to her, that had grown suddenly and alarmingly still.

Icy with fear, she carefully raised her head. Relief-and warmth-flooded back into her when she saw her patient’s eyes were open and focused. He appeared to be staring thoughtfully at the ceiling. Although she did think his breathing was somewhat shallow and constricted, and it seemed to her his heart was beating awfully fast. For that matter, so was hers.

“Are you okay?” she whispered. “I didn’t hurt you, did I?”

She felt his abdominal muscles clench as he lifted his head in order to see her. He shook his head slightly, and his voice seemed to rumble inside her own chest. “Uh-uh…how ’bout you?”

“I’m okay.” Which wasn’t quite true. For starters, was that raspy croak hers? Then there was the way her heart was banging against the walls of her chest-for all the world, she thought in dawning horror, as if it were trying to get through it, to get closer to him.

In fact, her whole body, waking up from the numbness of shock, seemed overjoyed with the circumstances it now found itself in. All across the surface of her skin, happy little nerve endings were springing to delighted attention-particularly those lucky enough to be in direct contact with some part of him. Pulses pounded through her veins like excited signal drummers racing to spread glad tidings. And who could blame them? It had been a long time since they’d had anything much to get excited about.

“I told you you weren’t ready,” she said thickly, desperately trying to throw a net over her voracious senses. “Naturally, you wouldn’t listen. What is it with men? Always think you have to-”

“Do you know,” he interrupted in a conversational tone, “that you are a damned exasperatin’ woman?”

Exasperating? For a moment she couldn’t think of a response; she’d never heard that word applied to herself before. She decided she sort of liked it. Warmth crept through her and into her face, bringing a smile with it. “Thank you. That’s very…John Wayne of you,” she breathed, gazing down into his eyes. Eyes…like dark vortices, pulling her in…

Her perspective…her world…slowly narrowed until nothing existed in it except for those eyes…then slowly it expanded outward again like a window spiraling open into a whole new world. A world that now included the hot, hard body beneath her, a furious pounding in her chest that seemed to leave no room for breathing, and the sweet, warm weight of his hands on her back. In this new world, she was deaf to reason and warnings of conscience. If, somewhere in the distant reaches of her mind, a voice was shrieking, Are you out of your mind? He’s injured, remember? she didn’t hear it.

And so, when his belly again tightened under hers, when his hand slid up to cradle the back of her head, when his head lifted and his mouth claimed hers, she was blissfully, eagerly waiting.