Undercover Mistress

by Kathleen Creighton

  “Looks to me like you’ve done okay,” Roy said gruffly, nodding toward the row of golden statuettes on the top shelf.

  She followed his gaze and made a disparaging sound. “Those? Well, the Oscars are my parents’, of course. As for the Emmys, let me tell you-”

  But before she could, the doorbell rang. “That will be your friend, I’m sure,” Celia said lightly, as she rose to answer it. And Roy, who not so long ago would have given just about anything to hear that sound, now found himself silently cursing Max for being so damn prompt.

  Halfway across the room, she paused, turned, then nodded toward the row of Emmys. “You want to know how much those are worth?” she said in an amused, conversational tone. “I haven’t appeared on the show I won them for in over a year. You want to know how much they miss me? To accommodate my ‘indefinite’ leave of absence, ‘Nurse Suzanne’ has been presumed to be dead after her plane went down somewhere in the Amazon jungle. Now-my contract comes up for renewal next spring, at which time one of three things will happen: If my contract is renewed and I decide to return to the show, Nurse Suzanne will be miraculously discovered tending the natives in some remote village. If it isn’t, either someone new will be cast in the role, and Nurse Suzanne will be miraculously resurrected following extensive plastic surgery to heal her terrible wounds, or no one will be cast in the role, and poor Nurse Suzanne will remain dead-‘dead’ being, of course, a tentative condition in daytime drama. Either way, with or without me the show goes on.”

  The doorbell pealed again, more insistently. Celia threw Roy a dazzling, movie-star smile and went out, leaving him dazed and wondering whether any of the emotions he’d just witnessed were for real, or if he’d just been treated to an Emmy-worthy performance by one of the best actresses he’d ever seen.

  In the living room, Celia paused to rake her fingers through her hair and draw several deep, cleansing breaths. It’s like being in a play, she told herself. All this adrenaline churning…butterflies rampaging… Exit, stage left. New Scene-a few minutes later-Celia enters, stage right.

  Blowing out the last of the breaths in an explosive whoosh, she affixed a charming hostess’s smile to her lips, marched to the front door and threw it open.

  “Hel-lo,” she said warmly to the man who stood there looking edgy, hand upraised to press the doorbell for the third time. “You must be Max. Won’t you come in?”

  The man appeared to be around fifty, about her height and wiry in build. Even though his nose was rather large and his grayish brown hair was thinning, he was attractive in a way, possibly because he had a very nice smile. He was wearing jeans and a Hawaiian print shirt and sunglasses, the last of which he peeled off to reveal an astonished stare.

  He muttered a profane exclamation, for which he immediately apologized. “Sorry. You really are Celia Cross. I thought-hell, I don’t know what I thought. My wife is never going to believe this…” He shook his head and his voice trailed off as he moved past her into the house, tucking the sunglasses into the pocket of his shirt and looking about him with undisguised interest.

  In the living room, he halted, apparently transfixed by the view. When Celia joined him, he turned to her with a gleam of amusement in his keen gray eyes and said dryly, “Nice place.”

  “Thank you.” She smiled back and decided she definitely liked him.

  “So.” Deliberately turning away from the vast Pacific beyond the glass, Max took in a breath and lifted his eyebrows. “Where’s my boy?”

  My boy? Liking the man more by the minute, Celia hid her delight and murmured, “This way,” as she made a graceful gesture for him to follow her. She was rather enjoying the role of gracious hostess as she led him to the room behind the stairs, knocked lightly as she pushed the door open, then stood aside like a well-trained housemaid for him to enter.

  As he slipped past her, Max gave an explosive exclamation, the same one with which he’d greeted Celia at the front door. That was followed by, “Man, what the hell happened?”

  “He was shot,” Celia offered. “Among other things.”

  She thought Roy looked rather comical, actually, standing beside the bed with his head and one arm through the appropriate openings of the sweatshirt she’d given him to wear. The rest of the shirt was rolled up around his neck, leaving his chest and torso, complete with its Technicolor assortment of bandages, bruises and abrasions, mostly bare.

  The look on Max’s face as he walked slowly toward him was like someone coming upon a tethered leopard-equal parts dismay and awe, with a healthy amount of caution.

  Celia’s, as she gazed at the long, tapering lines of body disappearing into the sweats she’d once worn herself…sweats that now rode perilously low on narrow masculine flanks…must have reflected something very different. Remembering how that body had felt under hers, she had a sudden and terrible need to swallow-except she couldn’t, because her mouth had gone dry.

  “I can’t lift my damn arm,” Roy muttered, throwing her a furious glare, as though it was somehow her fault. Transferring the glare to Max, he immediately contradicted his first statement with a growled, “I’m okay-I’m fine.”

  “Yeah, I can see that.” Like a patient father helping a child dress for kindergarten, Max calmly lifted Roy’s arm and directed it into the proper sleeve opening.

  Celia diverted herself to the easy chair where she perched on the arm and folded her arms across her waist. From there, she watched jealously as Max guided Roy to the edge of the bed and gently sat him down.

  “Okay,” he said, folding his arms across his chest and frowning down at Roy’s glowering face, “let’s hear it. What the hell happened?”

  Instead of answering, Roy stared meaningfully at Max and jerked his head toward Celia. Then, switching to her and showing his teeth in what he no doubt thought was a winning smile, he said jovially, “Hey…Celia…could I maybe get a glass of water? Or better yet, how about a cuppa coffee? What about you, Max? You want something to drink?”

  “Uh, sure,” said Max, “that’d be great. Whatever you have.” But he flicked her a look of apology that made her inclined to forgive him.

  Roy, however… What did he think she was-five?

  Max’s eyes followed Celia as she rose with dignity, dipped her head in acquiescence and floated from the room.

  “I can’t believe you,” he said in a low voice, after a long enough pause to make sure she’d really gone. “That’s Celia Cross you just treated like the hired help. Celia Cross.”

  Roy shifted around and scowled, trying to pretend he wasn’t feeling uncomfortable about that himself. “So she’s an actress,” he muttered. “In a soap opera. Big deal. Anyway, she’s been trying to get me to eat and drink stuff ever since she hauled me in here. She’s probably thrilled I asked her for something.”

  “I can’t believe you,” Max said again. “Where’ve you been living, under a rock? Or are you just too young to remember?” he paused to shake his head dolefully. “God, I feel old…”

  “You are old,” said Roy, secure in the knowledge that Max had at least fifteen years on him. “Remember what?”

  “Not what-who.” He jerked his head toward the biggest of the pictures on the wall, a framed movie poster. “Frederick Cross and Alice Merryhill-just about the greatest husband-and-wife team ever to grace the silver screen. They were…Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers without the music. Unforgettable.” He sighed, shaking his head. “When they died-”

  Sympathy kicked Roy under his ribs. Or maybe old memories of the daddy he’d lost too young. “What happened to them?”

  “Plane crash-small plane, in Africa, I think it was the early Eighties. Celia would’ve been just a kid. Oh-yeah-” he paused to throw Roy an accusing look “-that woman you’ve been ordering around like the maid? She’s their daughter-their only child. True Hollywood royalty, man.”

  “Well, hell,” Roy said moodily, gazing at the poster, “I thought she looked sorta familiar.”

  Celia was pacing in
the kitchen like a caged lioness. She was about as angry as she could ever remember being.

  How dare he? I found him. Washed up on the beach like a chunk of driftwood. I saved his life. He talked to me-okay, he was out of his head, but still…I was there. He talked to me. How dare he shut me out now? Banish me like a child? I deserve a part in this, dammit! I earned it.

  She stared down at the tray on the countertop in front of her, not seeing it, seeing instead images from the past thirty-six hours…a gaunt face, gray-frosted with sand…a bruised and battered body, dark against her flowered sheets…a naked body, lean and spare, coiled and tense, like a painting of some martyred saint. Remembering the way that same body had felt when she’d held it wrapped in her arms, sand-gritty and cold against her nakedness, and the strange, intense sense of ownership.

  Okay…it was impossible to stay mad at him, remembering what it had felt like to be lying on top of that body, hot and vital and strong…wrapped in his arms. Remembering his mouth…the heat… the taste of it…

  You’re pathetic, you know that? You’ve fallen for him. You have-admit it!

  Impossible. I’ve known him what, two days? And most of that time, he’s been unconscious. I’d have to be crazy.

  Yeah, but we’re not talking love, here. How long does it take to fall in lust? Face it, Celia. You’re not mad because you’re being excluded-you’re scared you’re going to lose him before you even have a chance to take him to bed. He’s going to leave and go back to his life, as exciting and dangerous as that may be, and you’re never going to see him again.

  Celia found that she was shaking her head in silent denial. But even as she whispered, “No, uh-uh,” she knew it was true.

  You’re like a little kid-“I found him, he’s mine!” Finders keepers, right?

  All right, she thought, maybe I have fallen for him. Maybe I do want him. But it’s not just him I want. It’s the life he leads-a life that means something. Dammit, I want that, too.

  This…thing-whatever it is-he’s involved in…there’s a part for me in it, too. I know there is. I’m not going to be shut out. I won’t let them shut…me…out.

  She blinked the tray into focus and was surprised to find it laden with coffee cups and spoons and napkins. She had no recollection of having put them there. “Great,” she muttered aloud, “all I’ve done the past couple of days is fetch trays from the kitchen-now I’m doing it in my sleep.”

  With that, she turned her back on the counter and the tray, opened the refrigerator, snatched up two bottles of gourmet iced tea-mango-flavored-and marched out of the kitchen.

  Both men broke off talking when she entered the bedroom.

  Ignoring their pointed silence and polite, waiting stares, Celia swept across the room and, like a grande duchess bestowing favors, handed each of them a sweating bottle of tea. Then she plunked herself down on the arm of the chair across from the two of them and folded her arms on her chest.

  “You might as well let me stay,” she said, with an airy toss of her head to disguise the way her heart was pounding. “I know everything anyway.”

  Max and Roy looked at each other. After a long and profound silence, Max said in an ominous tone, “Does she?”

  Roy opened his mouth.

  “Don’t blame him,” Celia said. “He was out of his head. He didn’t even know I was there. Well-actually, I think he thought I was you. He made a very good report-very complete. At least, it seemed like it to me. Lots of detail.”

  Max tore his fascinated gaze from Celia and swiveled back to Roy. “Is that true?”

  Roy cleared his throat. His eyes flicked toward Celia, and she felt an odd little thrill ripple through her. “I haven’t heard it all,” he said in a glum and resigned tone, “but from the part she’s told me, I’d have to say…yeah, it probably is.”

  “Wow.” Max ran a hand back across his thinning hair, then left it clutching the back of his neck, which he began to rub as if he’d just developed an ache there. “This…could be a problem.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  Celia slid from the arm of the chair into the seat and leaned eagerly forward. “Actually…I think I can help you with your problem.” No stranger to the effectiveness of good timing, she paused, teeth clamped down on her lower lip, to let the suspense build.

  Across from her, seated side by side on the bed, the two men exchanged “Is she for real?” looks.

  It was Max who spoke, in a polite and wary tone. “And…what problem is it you think you can help us with?”

  Celia delivered her money line, shivery with triumph. “You need to get someone onto Abby’s yacht, right? Well…it just so happens…I can do that for you. I can get on board that boat.”

  Roy snorted and threw up his head like a startled horse. Max frowned and said, “Abby?”

  “Yes-the Arab prince? Abdul Fayed Amir Abbas-or whatever… anyway, it’s Abby, to his friends.”

  “Friends…” Max said faintly.

  “Good Lord,” Roy exclaimed, staring at her, “you mean to tell me you know him?”

  Celia flicked a gaze toward him, but it was like touching hot coals and she quickly brought it back to Max where she felt much safer. She wasn’t used to having men look at her the way Roy did-unless, of course, such a fierce and smoky look happened to be called for in the script.

  But this-this wasn’t anything like having some actor standing in front of her, reading lines, feeding her cues. And she had no lines to give back to him, lines cleverly written by someone else. She was on her own. This was real. She could almost feel the heat radiating from those eyes…hear the tension singing in that taut body. And she knew when she continued, whatever she came up with, her voice wasn’t going to be as steady as she wanted it to be.

  But I still…somehow…have to make them believe in me. I have to make them believe I can do this.

  “I don’t know him well,” she said, locking eyes with Max and finding it was much easier if she pretended Roy wasn’t in the room. “But I have met him. Several times. At parties, and things. Look-” she lifted a hand and gestured toward the pictures on the walls “-you have to understand-the house my parents left me is right up there in the part of Bel Air where Abby’s is. It’s like a small town. If I hadn’t sold the house when I did-it was about the first thing I did when I turned twenty-five and came into my inheritance-too many memories…” She gave Max a shrug and a sad little smile. “Anyway…if I hadn’t sold that house, Abby would be my neighbor now. But then,” she added, turning up the wattage on the smile, “I wouldn’t have had this place, and I wouldn’t have been here to discover Roy washed up on the beach and saved his life. It’s like…kismet…isn’t it?”

  “Did she do that?” Max asked Roy in an awed tone. “Find you on the beach?”

  “’Fraid so,” Roy said. It was the sound a dangerous animal makes, low in its throat…just before it springs. “I was about to tell you.”

  “Good God. How the hell did she get you in here?”

  “Carried me.”

  “Not…by herself.” Max’s tone was flatly disbelieving.

  “Well, of course not,” Celia interjected, “I had help. But even with Doc, it wasn’t easy.”

  Max’s glare snapped back to her. “Doc? Who the hell is this we’re talking about?”

  “Yeah, that’s another thing,” Roy said ominously.

  “Oh, never mind that now.” She switched her focus to Roy, bracing herself, willing him to look at her. Then he did, and it was worse than she’d expected. Her heart stumbled and began to beat even harder and faster.

  She said breathlessly, “I saved your life. Dammit, you-”

  “Don’t…say it-” His face squinched up in a grimace of extreme pain.

  “-you owe me.”

  Roy clamped a hand over his eyes and let out a gust of breath. “She had to say it.”

  Max sat forward and clasped his hands together, elbows on his knees. “Miss Cross-”

  “Oh-Celia, please
.” She flashed him her most radiant smile.

  He coughed, looked at his hands, then back at her. She thought his eyes seemed intelligent…measuring. Unlike Roy’s, which looked like something that could set off explosives. “Celia. What is it, exactly, that you want?”

  She sat up straight and widened her eyes. “What do I want? Why…nothing, except what I said. I want to help, that’s all. We’re all fighting a war, right? I just want to do my part.” She felt an odd little thrill go through her as she realized she meant it-absolutely-and she finished in a quieter voice, keeping her eyes locked on Max’s, even though the words were meant for the person who was sitting next to him, simmering like an active volcano. “I can’t do much, but I can do this. You suspect Abby’s yacht is being used by terrorists, and you need to get someone on board to find out for sure. Well, I can get you there.” She paused. “Are you telling me you’re willing to pass up a chance like that?”

  While Max studied her in thoughtful silence, Roy cleared his throat loudly. “You’re forgetting something,” he said, raspy anyway. “The prince’s thugs got a real good look at me. By this time, they’ve probably got me ID’d, as well.” Max looked at him. He lifted a shoulder. “I was about to tell you.”

  Celia laughed, a light ripple of sound. “You’re forgetting where you are. I know people who can change your appearance so your own mother wouldn’t recognize you.”

  “So do I,” Max said, studying her thoughtfully.

  Roy looked at him and made a disgusted sound. “I can’t believe it. You’re actually considering this ridiculous notion of hers. It’s crazy, you know that. Lunacy. These people are dangerous. Trust me,” he added darkly, “I know.”

  Max was gazing at Celia with narrowed eyes. “It’s not like she’s planning on joining special ops. Hell, during World War II, movie stars flew bombers. All she’s wanting to do is what she does anyway.” He gave her his very nice smile. “And very well, I might add. I don’t see how there’d be any danger…”