No one but R. J. Cassidy would have seen the glint of excitement and triumph in her eyes.
“We don’t even know if they got the damn message,” Roy growled later that evening, as Celia tugged and fussed with the collar and lapels of his white dinner jacket. His shirt collar was open. He’d told her if this was to be his last night on earth, he was damned if he was going out wearing a bow tie.
“We don’t know they didn’t… There-that’s better.” She stood back and regarded him with her head tilted to one side. “You look nice,” she said softly, her chest too full of emotion for breath.
“Thanks. So do you.”
She knew she did, of course, in the ruby-red gown she’d had copied from an old Rita Hayworth film and with her hair loose on her shoulders and diamonds and garnets at her ears and throat. But his eyes, glittering blue in the contact lenses, weren’t looking at her. Instead, they scanned the horizon, where the lights of Avalon Harbor twinkled festively in the distance. Looking, she thought, for some sign of the Special Forces teams…the cavalry that even she knew might never come.
They were on one of the portside decks, a private spot they’d managed to find since neither of them felt much like joining the party that was in full swing in the lounge. And staying in their stateroom had felt too much like being trapped…
Roy flicked a restless glance at her. “I can think of a million things that could have gone wrong.”
“Sounds like I’m not the only one with an imagination,” Celia said lightly, and pain reminded her to take a breath.
“Celia-listen to me.” He caught her wrists and pulled them against his chest, demanding her attention. As if his voice wouldn’t have been enough…it sounded like tearing cloth. “If they don’t show up soon, I’m going in.” She was already shaking her head violently, whispering wordless rejections, but he held her still and overrode them. “Yes…I have to. You know I do. I can’t let this happen.”
“There’re so many of them.” Her voice broke. “You’re only one man. How can you possibly-”
“I’ll find a way. They’ll have the fireworks on the stern deck. Stands to reason the bomb’ll be there, too. All I have to do is figure out which one it is-shouldn’t be too hard-get to it and heave it overboard. Piece o’cake.”
“It’s not. It’s suicide. Roy-” She hadn’t meant to cry. He’d be upset if she cried. And he was-she could feel him quivering with held-in emotions when he pulled her against him, murmuring soothing things in a broken voice.
She pushed him away and dashed a hand across her cheeks. “Roy, you can’t die now. You can’t. I love you. And I know what you’re thinking, but this is not my imagination. I love you, dammit. I think I was meant to love you. I think…” She paused, touched her nose, swallowed and continued, speaking rapidly so he couldn’t interrupt her and she could get it all said before it was too late.
“Remember when I told you I always wondered why, when the accident happened, I was allowed to live? I thought there must be some reason…some purpose. I thought first it was because I was supposed to find you and save your life. Then I thought it was because of this mission-because only I could get you on Abby’s boat. But…I think it’s bigger than that. And way more simple.” She was crying in earnest, now, harder than she’d ever cried in her life before, all the anguish and pain of a lifetime saved up for this. “I think,” she sobbed, “I was simply meant to live. To live the best life I can. To find someone to love, and to be happy. Well, I found that someone, dammit. I found you. Literally. I found you. I love you. If you die, it will all have been for nothing-the accident, her dying. Because how am I supposed to live my life and be happy if you’re not here?”
“Ah, God. Celia.” He kissed her tear-drenched mouth, then clasped her tightly to him. “Love…my love…it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t. I have no choice. You know that.”
Suddenly, there in the warm protective circle of his arms, she felt a great stillness come over her. A kind of peace. And she nodded and whispered brokenly, “I know.”
They were standing like that, holding each other, when it occurred to both of them at about the same moment that the thumping sound they were hearing wasn’t heartbeats. Drawing apart and lifting their eyes heavenward, they watched the Apache helicopters swoop in out of the darkness. Only when the dark shapes began dropping into the water and swarming up over the sides of the yacht Bibi Lilith did Roy finally pull Celia to the deck and cover her body with his.
Early in the evening of the first day of the new year, Celia went for a walk on the beach. She was alone; Roy had stayed behind with Max, the first of what would undoubtedly be many briefings. She’d turned back toward home, because the sun had slipped behind an angry-looking bank of clouds and a wind had sprung up, carrying the promise of storms. And she looked ahead and there he was, coming toward her along the water’s edge.
She checked, her heart lifting frighteningly under her ribs. As she went to meet him she felt it thumping madly in her chest and her belly quivering with nervous anticipation, like the worst case of stagefright she’d ever known. She’d said so much, there on the boat when she’d thought she would lose him forever. And he’d said so little. There’d been no time, before all hell had broken loose, or since then, either.
Wordlessly now, he took her hand, turned, and they walked on together.
“Did Max leave?” she asked, her voice showing no signs of the turmoil inside.
He nodded. “Lotta loose ends to tie up, but he wanted us out of the way when it all hits the media. They’ll find us anyway, I’m sure. You, anyway. You don’t mind, do you?”
She shook her head. Watching her bare feet in the sand, she said, “What about Abby?”
“He’s claiming he didn’t know anything. His crew’s been…detained-they’ll be sent to Gitmo for interrogation. The yacht’s been impounded-CSI’s going over it with a fine-tooth comb as we speak. The public’s not being told what the nature of the threat was. Which is probably for the best.”
“So,” Celia said after drawing a careful breath and lifting her face to the wind, “I guess we done good, huh?”
She heard his exhalation…a soft chuckle. “Yeah, we did.”
“We made a pretty good team, didn’t we?” She felt him look over at her. Oh please, she thought. Please don’t make me beg for this. But he didn’t say anything, so she went on. “Our cover didn’t even get blown.” She paused, but he still didn’t say anything. “Just think what we could accomplish if we-”
That did it. “Don’t even think about it,” he growled. “I mean it. There’s no way in hell I’m doing this again.”
Fear and hope were warring furiously inside her, but somehow she managed to keep her voice light. “But why? When we work so well together.”
“I can’t, that’s all. It’s just too damn hard, workin’ with someone I-”
“Someone you…” she paused and turned, forcing him to stop, too, as she squeezed his hand, gathered all her courage and said it for him: “Love?”
He gripped hers tightly while he glared at her. Then he shifted that fierce gaze to the horizon, drew a ragged breath and on its exhalation said, “Yeah. That.”
She went light-headed with happiness; her knees all but buckled. “Well,” Celia said, after a long, sweet moment, “I already talked to Max about it. He thinks it’s a great idea. He’s going to run it by the director.”
“You what?” His voice soared upward an octave. “Are you nuts? There’s no way you’re doing this. No way. Out of the question.”
Up ahead on his deck, she could see Doc standing, watching them. She lifted her arm and gave him a smile and a wave as she said sweetly, “Well…it’s a good thing it’s not up to you, isn’t it? It’s up to me-and Max, of course. And the director. Naturally. I’d have to go to Quantico for training. And it doesn’t look like I’ll be playing Nurse Suzanne any longer.
“You know…” she paused to give him a radiant smile, her heart quivering with delight and ov
erwhelming love at the look on his face “…there really isn’t that much difference between acting and undercover work. That scene on the deck, when we dropped the bottle overboard-you were quite good, you know. I think maybe you’re a natural.”
Dazed, Roy could only stare at her. It never occurred to him in that moment that the woman smiling up at him was Celia Cross, TV star, Hollywood princess and one of the most beautiful women he’d ever seen, or even that she’d saved his life once. The face he saw before him now and would forever after was the one imprinted on the part of him referred to, poetically if erroneously, as the heart. That part of him-his heart-didn’t register homely or beautiful, young or old. His heart knew only one thing: This was the face of the woman he loved more than life itself.
And if that’s true, the reasoning part of him asked, how can I even consider a life that doesn’t include her in it?
How that might work he didn’t quite know, but he couldn’t see the white picket fence working for either one of them.
“Did you know,” he said in a wondering tone, “that you’re an amazing woman?”
“Really?” She lifted her face to his. “I thought I was exasperatin’.”
“That, too,” he murmured as he kissed her.
Whatever a future with Celia might hold, he knew for sure it wasn’t ever going to be dull.
KATHLEEN CREIGHTON
has roots deep in the California soil but has relocated to South Carolina. As a child, she enjoyed listening to old-timers’ tales, and her fascination with the past only deepened as she grew older. Today, she says she is interested in everything-art, music, gardening, zoology, anthropology and history, but people are at the top of her list. She also has a lifelong passion for writing, and now combines her two loves in romance novels.
***
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Undercover Mistress Page 25
