Spies, Lies and Lovers

by Sally Tyler Hayes

  “You never saw this mysterious person who came after you?”

  “I was tempted, believe me. But I didn’t know how many of them there were or what kind of trouble I was going to have getting out. I thought I needed to get out, that I could make my explanations later. I didn’t think the people protecting my work were the ones out to steal it until later—until my fingerprints were found on the weapon that supposedly killed the guard.”

  “Doc,” she said. “His name was Doc. You’re sticking with that story? That Doc was already dead before any of this happened?”

  “When I got to the door, it was open. He was slumped over in the doorway. I checked. He was already dead. The guards who were supposed to be outside were gone, and I took off.”

  Geri frowned, finding it totally implausible. “Nobody could get into that lab.”

  “Somebody who knew the setup could. Somebody responsible for guarding me there could,” he argued. “Think about it, Geri. That’s all I’m asking you to do. Think.”

  “It won’t change my mind,” she said.

  “My question,” he countered. “Why do you keep doing this?”

  “This’?”

  “This job. You hate it.”

  “It’s all I’ve ever done,” she said.

  “You’ve always hated it?”

  “No. I haven’t always hated it. I just... For the longest time, it was all I ever imagined doing.”

  “Your father really is a general, isn’t he?”

  She stiffened, wishing she’d never told him anything about herself. “My question.”

  Geri thought about it, thought about the fact that her head hurt, and her arms ached, and that this whole thing was pointless anyway. “Never mind,” she said. “I’m tired of this. I don’t want to play, Alex.”

  “Oh, babe. Giving up already?”

  “All right.” She swore. He had to be the most exasperating man she’d ever met, and she had thought of one more question. “Did you have some kind of plastic surgery? On your face? There’s something different about you. You look different somehow from all the photos we have of you.”

  He grimaced. “I feel like I’ve aged ten years in the past few months, but no, I didn’t have plastic surgery on my face. I did get my nose broken seven or eight weeks ago, and my own face has seemed odd to me ever since.”

  Geri nodded, satisfied on that point.

  “My question,” he said. “Your father really is a general?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you wanted to impress him?”

  “What if I did?”

  “That’s not an answer.”

  “Oh, hell,” she muttered. “Yes, there was a time in my life when I wanted very much to impress him.”

  “Give it up, babe,” he advised. “It’s eating you alive.”

  She laughed pitifully. “What does that have to do with anything?”

  “It has to do with you, and part of this is about me and you. I told you, I like you, Geri. Sometimes, I really like you. When I’m not furious with you. When you’re not telling me you hate me and that you’d like to see me dead. Which leads me to my next question. Why do you hate me so much?”

  “You’re a traitor,” she said. “And a murderer.”

  “No, I’m not.”

  “Alex, this is pointless. Don’t you see that? We’re never going to agree, and I’m not going to help you. If you’re going to shoot me, please go ahead. It doesn’t sound so bad to me anymore. If you’re going to leave, then leave. Much as I hate the idea of seeing you again, I’ll get out of this mess and hunt you down. So it really doesn’t matter what you do, but God, I wish you’d just go ahead and do it.”

  He ignored her and went on with his game. Holding up the communications unit she’d found on the body of one of the men at the cabin, he asked, “What’s this, Geri?”

  She swore, thoroughly exasperated. “Is it possible to irritate someone to death? Because if it is, you’re dangerously close.”

  “You didn’t have this when I hauled you back to the cabin with me, and it isn’t mine. So unless you stole it somewhere along the way yesterday, you found it on one of the bodies at the cabin. I’d say this is what has you so worried.”

  Geri glared at him.

  “I’m not that good with electronics, but this... This is a cool toy. Or at least, I’ll bet it was before somebody pulled all these wires loose. That would be you?”

  “Yes, Alex. That was me.”

  “Why’d you take it?”

  “I like toys,” she replied. “You said it—‘It’s a cool toy.’ ”

  “Why’d you disable it?”

  “Alex—”

  “Come on. This is petty stuff. We have so many bigger issues to argue about. Let’s dispense with the small ones, okay? They knew where you were, didn’t they?”

  “I don’t know,” she insisted.

  “They were tracking you with this. Think about it. Your organization is tracking me down, and someone behind the scenes—your boss, maybe?—is watching and waiting, and when someone from your group finally finds me, what does he do? He uses your own equipment against you. He gives it to his people and punches in the frequency of some little tracker he put on you—something you probably didn’t even know you were cazrying-to send somebody to take you out and probably to blame me for it. Meanwhile, his people get me and the formula for the explosives.” Alex sighed. “That’s evil.”

  She shook her head, grimacing because it still hurt. “That’s...”

  “Possible,” he argued. “Admit it. It’s possible. And it means we’ve got to figure out how they’re tracking you, so we can stop them and get the hell out of here before the next set of goons finds us.”

  “Why would I believe you?” she demanded. “Why would I believe anything you say? You’re a liar. You’re one of the best I’ve ever met, Alex.”

  “Me?”

  He spat out the word. Gone was the easygoing, boyishly charming man. If she thought this meant nothing to him, she was mistaken. She’d finally found an exposed nerve and stepped all over it.

  “Yes,” she said, baiting him. She was tired of being the only one on edge, here. “What about that stupid game we were playing at the cabin?”

  “I wasn’t playing at anything,” he said.

  “Oh, hell. Everything’s a game with you. Nothing’s real. Nothing matters.”

  “You mean when I touched you?” he asked, his eyes glittering dangerously. “When I kissed you? When you had your hands all over me on the bike?”

  Her face burned at the memory. “It was a game, Alex. We were just playing a game.”

  “Really? It’s just something you do? Part of the job at times? Using your body or whatever it takes to get the job done?”

  “Whatever it takes,” she lied.

  “You know, that’s the part of this that’s really made me mad.”

  “Your ego can’t take the fact that I’m not really attracted to you? That there’s a woman on earth who can resist you?”

  “This is not about my ego,” he said. “And I’m not ready to concede the notion that you’re not attracted to me.”

  “Then I must be a better liar than I thought.”

  “I didn’t lie to you, Geri.”

  She scoffed at that. “All that false concern—”

  “I was concerned about you.”

  “The kindness? The tenderness?”

  “I make it a point to be very nice to women, especially to women I’m interested in,” he said.

  She laughed. “Thank goodness you’re not interested in me anymore. I don’t think I could take any more of your particular brand of charm.”

  “I gave you the impression I was uninterested?” he asked.

  She gaped at him. “We’re ready to kill each other, to put ourselves out of the misery of being together.”

  “Oh, babe. It’s not that I’m uninterested. Not necessarily. I haven’t really thought about it. You see, I’m just too mad at you r
ight now to think about anything else.”

  “It was all an act, Alex. Don’t even try to pretend it wasn’t.”

  “You know, it does makes me wonder.... You were so surprised I was nice to you. Why wouldn’t I be, Geri? What’s the matter? Men aren’t usually nice to you? They don’t know how to treat you?”

  “It’s none of your business what my relationships with men are like.”

  “I don’t think you’ve had a lot,” he said.

  “Oh, please. Spare me your analysis of my love life.”

  “I think you’re starved for a little kindness, a little gentleness. A sweet, soft touch.”

  She frowned. It was the last thing she wanted or needed.

  “I think all of that back at the cabin—the man-to-woman part? I think all of that was real,” he said. “I think that’s why you’re so mad. I know it’s why I am.”

  Geri shoved the personal part of it away to deal with later, if she ever could. If not she would bury it, as she buried everything else. She would stick to business, as best she could, to the implausibility of what he was telling her.

  “Let me get this straight. You’re wanted by every law-enforcement agency in this country. For murder. And treason. You’ve got some supersecret formula for explosives that’s worth a billion dollars, conservatively, on the black market. Two people tried to kill us yesterday, and we’re intent on doing bodily harm to each other, and the thing you’re mad about is this silly, annoying relationship between the two of us?”

  “‘Silly’?” he questioned.

  “Yes.”

  “‘Annoying’?”

  “We’re driving each other crazy, Alex.”

  “We were great together.”

  “Until we started telling the truth about who we are and what we were doing in that cabin.”

  “It wasn’t all a lie,” he insisted.

  “What wasn’t? What wasn’t a lie?”

  His face softened. He leaned closer, and she scooted over as much as her bindings would allow.

  “Nervous?”

  “No,” she lied.

  He looked her over from head to toe—appreciatively, if she could read the gleam in his eyes. He reached for her, his big, warm hand coming up against her belly, pushing up the fabric of the shirt she was wearing, skin landing on warm, quivering skin. She jerked hard with her arms, the cuffs holding her firm, and she was in trouble—she knew it.

  “This part,” he said with a wolfish grin. “This wasn’t a lie.”

  Chapter 10

  He sat down on the bed beside her because he wanted to. Because he had her handcuffed to the damned bed, and he’d been arguing with her to no avail for ten minutes, all the while seeing her stretched out on the mattress glaring at him and swearing that she hated him.

  He was getting really tired of hearing that she hated him and thinking she’d played him for a fool. He didn’t quite believe it, either—especially not when he touched her. And if he couldn’t talk her into admitting she doubted at least a little bit that he was some lying, murdering traitor, he was going to make her admit she was wrong about one thing—about what happened when he touched her.

  He reached for her again, letting his hand skim across the surface of her skin. He felt her suck in a breath, saw her eyelids come down and her mouth stretch into a taut line. It was the most satisfying exchange they’d ever had, he decided. And one of the most honest. The lady wasn’t immune to him, after all.

  “Don’t do that,” she said.

  “Why not?”

  “Because I don’t want you to.”

  “Oh, I think you do.”

  “And I think you’re delusional,” she retorted.

  He laughed. “The mad scientist? Finally gone over the edge? I don’t think so, Geri. Although if anyone could take me to the breaking point, it would be you.”

  “Thank you,” she said. “I’ll take comfort in that.”

  “And double your efforts, I’ll bet.”

  He pushed up her shirt, until it was bunched under her breasts, and stared at her midsection. It was trim, slightly tanned, the skin stretching over her bruised ribs, then dipping down over her belly. He whistled appreciatively.

  “What are you doing?” she asked.

  “Looking at you. I like looking at you.”

  “Alex, if you think anything’s going to happen between us while I’m handcuffed to this bed, you really are delusional.”

  He just smiled. “I guess we’ll see, won’t we?” Then, with the tips of two fingers, he started tracing circles on her belly. The skin and muscles danced and contracted subtly beneath the play of his fingers. He found it infinitely satisfying.

  “Stop that,” she said.

  “Why? It doesn’t mean anything to you anyway, right? You didn’t really like it when I held you, when I kissed you, when you had your hands all over me? It was nothing. Right, Geri?”

  “It was a job. You were a target. Still are. Nothing else.”

  “Really?” He let his hand move lower, tracing that delicate ribbon of skin just above her panties. “So think of this as another part of the job.”

  He leaned down and kissed her, tracing her belly button with his tongue. The handcuffs rattled against the metal headboard as she jerked her arms down as far as she could and cursed him.

  “Ticklish?” he asked.

  “Furious.”

  “I just want the truth about this one simple thing,” he said, finding that he very much liked the taste of her skin. He teased at it with his tongue, and she wriggled beneath him, breathing hard now.

  “You wouldn’t know the truth if it jumped up and bit you, you—”

  He bit her, lightly, bit her bottom rib on her right side. It quieted her more effectively than anything he’d ever said to her, and he found himself nearly intoxicated by the taste of sweet, silky skin.

  Alex had told himself he could do this and not lose track of his objective, and not lose himself in her. He’d told himself he was too furious to make this anything other than what it was—a war waged with long, slow, openmouthed kisses and silky expanses of skin. But maybe he was wrong about that. Or maybe he underestimated just how badly she got to him, on every level imaginable.

  Target, hell, he thought.

  He couldn’t figure out how he could want her so much and be so damned mad at her, but he did and he was. He couldn’t understand why he was so convinced the soft, vulnerable, lost-looking woman in his bed at the cabin had been the real her, but he believed it He wanted the Geri he knew back again, and he was willing to play dirty to get her.

  He nudged the shirt higher, with his nose. She tried to jerk her arms down again, getting nowhere, again.

  “Lady, you may just be the death of me yet,” he muttered, taking great satisfaction in every little hitch in her breath, every restless wriggle of her hips and jerk of her hands against the bindings.

  “When I get out of this, I promise you—”

  He set his mouth upon her breast, finding her nipple easily as the fabric of her shirt bunched against it. Her entire body seemed to heave upward and then sink back into the mattress at the touch. He fought the urge to stretch out beside her, place his entire body in line with hers, fought the urge to settle himself on top of her and sink into all that waiting softness.

  “You are killing me,” he admitted, burying his face against the side of her neck.

  Giving up the fight, he settled himself on top of her. Their legs scissored together, thigh to soft, silky thigh, heat to answering heat. They were both gasping for air, and Geri was muttering a string of disjointed curses, but her tone—hot and sexy and yielding—ruined whatever sentiment she was trying to express.

  He laughed, then silenced her with a kiss. Her mouth opened greedily beneath his, taking him deep inside, sucking him down into that vortex of pleasure he’d never found with anyone but her. He could admit it now. She’d become an obsession with him. Everything else just fell away—the sense of danger, the fear, the out
rage—as soon as he touched her.

  “It would be so good,” he said raggedly, pulling his mouth from hers and staring down into her deeply troubled eyes.

  “You’re dreaming,” she said.

  He lay heavily on her, his body pressed intimately to hers, with nothing but a few scraps of cloth keeping him from being way up inside her. “Yeah,” he admitted. “Maybe I unlit

  “It isn’t me,” she said. “None of this is me. You couldn’t touch the real me, no matter how far you take this.”

  “Liar,” he accused, liking that desperate tone of her voice.

  “You’re supposed to be so smart, Alex. Don’t you understand? I can be a dozen different women. A hundred. If that’s what it takes to get the job done, and none of them is me. Nothing that touches them gets to me.”

  “I did,” he said, putting his hand on the side of her face, running his thumb across her bottom lip. “Feel that, Geri. That’s me. Touching you.”

  His hand fell to the sweet peak of her breast. “And that? Don’t even try to tell me you don’t feel that. Don’t tell me your body is like some weapon you can use at will. That you can open yourself up like this and be so sweet and so soft for any man who comes along. Don’t try to tell me it has nothing to do with me—with who I am and how you feel about me.”

  “It doesn’t!” she cried.

  He settled himself more fully on top of her, shifted his hips, thrusting smoothly against her, finding a heat like none he’d ever known, a feeling that was almost more than he could bear. It would be so easy to have her.

  “I need you, Geri,” he admitted. “You think that’s easy for me to say? You think I like it? I hate it. I hate opening myself up one more time to anyone. I’ve always had trouble trusting women, and I hate the idea even more right now. I hate being in this situation and not knowing how to get out. I hate needing you—not just like this, but because you could help me, if you’d believe in me just a little bit. I hate it.”

  “Then we’re even, because—”

  He smothered her words by kissing her again—long, hard, drugging kisses that left her limp in his arms and begging him with her eyes.

  “I hate the way you just swept into my life and turned it upside down,” he said. “The way you made me forget that I had to do this by myself, that I had to be alone. I’m damned sick and tired of being all alone. And I really hate thinking I could have been so wrong about you, about us.”