by Rachel Lee
She shook her head. “No, I’m a hayseed, too. From a little town in West Texas where we had a lot more dust storms than we had rainstorms. Let me get some more coffee.”
At the door she paused and looked back. “Are you hungry? I think I have some coffee cake in the freezer. It’d take only a minute to zap it in the microwave.” Actually, she more than thought the coffee cake was there. She had bought it on the way home this afternoon just so she could offer it to him.
“Sounds good,” he admitted. He’d stayed late at work tonight, and by the time he got away he’d decided on fast food so he wouldn’t arrive at Jessica’s too late. The food had been tasteless, though, so he’d ditched his dinner, stopped by his apartment just long enough to change, then dashed over here. Coffee cake sounded very good. In fact, relaxing sounded very good. It was Thursday evening, and so far he’d worked every night this week, not to mention last Sunday, when he’d had to help one of the agents iron out some wrinkles in a bribery investigation.
“Do you work all the time?”
The soft question caused him to look up at Jessica. She was standing beside him, holding out a plate with one hand and his freshly filled cup with the other.
“Thank you.” Smiling, he took both from her and set them on the coffee table.
“Do you?” she asked as she resumed her seat on the couch.
“Do I what?”
“Work all the time.”
He shrugged. “Sometimes it seems that way. Aren’t you having any cake?” His plate held a large piece. She had no plate at all.
“I can’t afford the calories. Don’t worry about me.”
She said it as if she’d been saying it for a very long time and had come to accept it, and somehow Arlen found that utterly intolerable. “Are you trying to lose weight?”
“Of course.” She smiled faintly. “All the time.”
“Why?”
She gaped at him. “Why?” she repeated stupidly. “Why?” Anybody could see that just by looking at her.
“Yes. Why?” And somewhere between images of pink satin skin on a white satin bed and the understanding that he was being driven out of his mind by the sexual appeal of a woman who believed she didn’t have any, Arlen lost the first iron layer of his self-control. Having been, for more than four years, unable to hold and love a woman probably added considerably to the stress of the moment. Since Lucy had become too ill to love, he hadn’t wanted to love. Not until this plump little partridge entered his life. And here she was trying to waste away the very charms that were driving him wild.
“You have no idea,” he said flatly, “just how beautiful your healthiness is. How attractive you are—just the way you are.”
Jessica’s hand fluttered to her throat, and she stared at him disbelievingly. “I, um, th-that’s very kind of you to say,” she squeaked. Her heart was hammering so hard there was no room in her chest for air. He was just being nice, she told herself. But, oh, how she wished…
The wish was plain on her face, and Arlen was just tired enough, just pushed enough, just frustrated enough, to forget he was an agent on a case. Rising, he walked with a deliberate tread around the coffee table and just as deliberately sat beside Jessica on the sofa. Her head had turned as her eyes followed him, and now she looked at him with wide, wondering brown eyes. Bright eyes, he noticed, that were far more hopeful than fearful.
“I’m going to kiss you, Jessie,” he said huskily as he reached up and removed her glasses, setting them aside on the table. She blinked uncertainly at him while he noticed that her eyes were even larger without the lenses in front of them. And her lashes were long and silky.
Gently, he cupped her face between his hands. “I’m going to kiss you because I’ve been wanting to for the last half hour,” he told her, stroking her cheeks lightly with his thumbs. “I’m going to kiss you because you’re so damn sexy, and because those soft pink lips of yours are just begging for it.”
She seemed to have stopped breathing, but now she drew a shaky breath and her eyelids fluttered down. Arlen smiled as he saw her consent. The hunger in him was strong, but gentleness tempered it. This woman needed gentleness as surely as she needed to be desired.
Bowing his head, he brushed his lips lightly against hers, gently questing like a bee seeking nectar, again and again, the lightest brush of lips against lips, his breath as much a caress as his touch. It had been so long since he’d kissed a woman for the first time that he wasn’t really sure he remembered how. He was coaxing because she seemed to be as uncertain as he was. His tongue touched her upper lip, stroking its length enticingly. Next her lower lip, a sweep to incite.
Arlen heard her swift intake of breath, felt her lips part beneath his. And then, so good, her arms wound around his back and reached upward to cling to him, to embrace him. Ah, God, it had been so long!
To Jessica the moment was a miracle. She simply didn’t know what pleased her more, the strength of his muscular back beneath her hands or the sinuous, sinful enticements of his tongue as he plundered the depths of her mouth. She’d never dreamed there were so many sensitive nerve endings there, nerves that were mysteriously linked to other parts of her. Her entire body felt as if it were being kissed. This was what she had believed she could live without?
Arlen lifted his head a fraction, looking down into her hazy eyes. His voice was a husky whisper. “More, Jessie?”
She nodded, dazed by the sensations he was evoking in her. “Please,” she whispered.
Her head had fallen back, bespeaking her surrender to the moment. He moved, cradling the back of her head in one hand, wrapping the other arm around her back as he lowered her to the sofa cushions and stretched out beside her.
“More, Jess,” he said roughly, a statement this time.
And this time, when he took her mouth in a kiss, he took it deeply, with a rhythm so primitive that her very cells responded to it. She opened her mouth wider to receive the bold thrusts of his tongue and responded in kind with a need she didn’t even know how to name.
Her hand somehow found its way to his hair and combed into the dark silk, finding the warmth of his scalp. His mouth slanted to a new angle over hers, giving her a chance to catch her breath a little, giving her a moment to feel her whole body pulse in time to his kiss. Giving her a moment to feel his pelvis rock against her hip. Giving her a moment to feel the evidence of his desire.
A new thrill trickled through her, the thrill of being wanted, but the trickle was accompanied by a stronger thrill of fear. She’d met this man only last night. A chill clamped over the throbbing ache in her body, cleared the fog from her brain. What was she doing?
Sensing her mood change even through the hazy red layers of his hunger, Arlen clamped down on his needs and began, by gentle stages, to withdraw himself without causing embarrassment. Damn! he thought. He’d been celibate for too long if he could lose control like this.
Before long Jessica sensed his intent, and her fear dissipated, leaving her with a dissatisfied ache and a dawning sense of wonder. He had wanted her! She’d felt the proof of it.
Arlen raised them both to a sitting position and cradled Jessica’s cheek against his shoulder, his arm around her. It was exactly the embrace she’d fantasized about on the way to lunch that day, and it was so much better than her imaginings. His shoulder was firm beneath her cheek, his distantly sensed heartbeat a steady, somehow reassuring thud. Even the faint scratchiness of his sweater was somehow stimulating. And the weight of his arm around her shoulders—there just weren’t words to adequately describe how good it felt.
“Are you all right, Jessie?” he asked presently, touching her cheek with gentle fingertips.
“Yes.” The word sounded lost and breathless against his shoulder.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I shouldn’t have done that.”
A long moment passed before she could find her voice. “Why not?”
“Any number of reasons.” His voice had returned to normal, and his h
eart rate was coming into line. “In the first place, it wasn’t very professional. I don’t think there’s a specific rule against it, since you’re not a suspect, but I still don’t think an agent is supposed to be kissing someone who’s involved in his case.”
“I won’t tell,” Jessica murmured, still too swamped by emotions to speak cautiously.
Arlen smiled and tightened his arm around her just a little. “And I won’t do it again, Jessica.”
It was on the tip of her tongue to protest, but her mind was swinging into action again, and she caught the words before she could speak them. She didn’t know this man, and if she were to think about it she would probably be shocked that she had fallen into his arms so easily after an acquaintance of a mere day. After all, she’d never before fallen into anyone’s arms.
Jessica tilted her head back and looked up at him. He was close enough at the moment that she could see him clearly without her glasses. “How old are you, Arlen?”
“Forty-two.”
His smile, she thought, looked a little sad somehow. “That’s part of the problem, isn’t it?” She didn’t mention the wedding ring he still wore, which she suspected was the biggest part of the problem.
He didn’t ask what she meant. He knew. “I have a daughter who’s nearly your age, Jessie. She’s twenty-three and expecting her first child. My first grandchild. And I have a son who’s twenty-one.”
“You started young.” It wasn’t a question.
“I was eighteen when Lucy and I married. Right out of high school and right over everyone’s objections.”
“Were you right, or were they?”
He closed his eyes, and his smile broadened just a shade. “We were,” he said. And he brought his other arm around Jessica, giving her a little hug. “I had a good marriage, Jessie. A very good marriage. Once in a lifetime is all anyone has a right to expect.”
Eventually, because their embrace was still too intimate both for their respective roles and for his conscience, Arlen stirred. Releasing Jessica, he handed her back her spectacles.
“I’ll go get that fingerprint kit,” he said, rising from the sofa.
She slipped her glasses onto her nose and looked up at him. “Okay,” she managed to say brightly. “I think I’ll make some more coffee. Do you want any?”
He looked down with a smile that didn’t reach his gray eyes. “I’ll pass, thanks. I need to get some sleep tonight.”
So did she, thought Jessica, but she seriously doubted she was going to get it, coffee or no coffee.
It was a night for memories, Arlen thought. It was late, and his apartment seemed emptier than usual, though not as empty as the house he’d shared with Lucy had seemed after her death. The only keepsakes he hadn’t put into storage were an eight-by-ten photo of Lucy and a slew of photographs of the children. Everything else had been put away, because a man his age had no choice but to move on.
But sometimes he remembered, and tonight, with a glass of bourbon to keep him company, he held Lucy’s photo and looked back.
He hadn’t been kidding. It had been a good marriage. Not a perfect marriage, but a good one. A comfortable one. A hell of a lot better by far than most marriages he knew about. Part of him had died with Lucy, had expired with her last breath as he held her in his arms that one final time. Afterward, he had figured he would go on as father, friend and government agent, but never again as lover or spouse. That part was gone.
Evidently, he found himself thinking as he looked down at Lucy’s smiling face, he’d been a little naive in his expectations. The feelings hadn’t died but had merely gone into hibernation. That created a whole mess of interesting problems he wasn’t sure he cared to deal with at this stage in his life.
First of all, he was about to become a grandfather. He had certain images of that role that didn’t jibe with the memory he had of himself and Jessica on her couch this evening. It also meant he was too damn old to be rolling around with a girl her age. His children were grown, and she was the right age to be having children. Damn, Jessica was only a few years older than his daughter! That realization kept drawing him up short and hard, like a yanked rein.
Setting Lucy’s picture aside, he carried his drink into the kitchen and dumped it down the sink. He’d never been much for alcohol, and at a time like this he wanted his head to be perfectly clear.
Except how clear could it be when he kept imagining pink skin and white satin, and remembering just how right a certain young woman had felt in his arms? How perfectly she’d fitted against him and how passionately she’d responded to his kiss?
And what damn difference did it make? He was an agent on a case and had to remain professional. Whatever had gotten into him tonight had better not get into him again. That was the beginning, middle and end of it right there.
She was too young for him, Jessica thought as she lay in the middle of her four-poster bed and stared up at the patterns made by the moonlight on her ceiling. Of course he would think so. How could he not? She and men had spent her entire life avoiding one another, so how could she possibly know the right things to say and do to make it clear that she didn’t feel young? It had probably been that very inexperience that had caused him to draw back from her tonight. She didn’t know how to kiss, how to please, how to entice. Discovering that, he’d naturally lost interest.
But, of course, it was all for the best. He still wore his wedding ring. Whether she felt young or not, Jessica definitely didn’t feel up to dealing with the ghost of Arlen’s wife. She had a very healthy respect for the power of ghosts. Hadn’t she watched her mother languish and drink herself to an early grave over the death of Jessica’s father? And, oh, what a slow death that had been, finally leaving the mother dependent on the daughter who was still only a child.
Arlen seemed to be holding up a lot better than her mother had, Jessica thought, but she knew too well what it meant to be invisible to grieving eyes.
Turning over onto her side, she looked out the window at the moon through the lacy tracery of tree branches. He had been in this room tonight. What had he thought of it? Did he think it childish? Probably. She knew as well as anyone just how childish it was. It was the room she had dreamed of having someday, a dream she could trace all the way back to the age of seven. That was the year after her father’s death. That was when she’d finally realized there was no way to go back home.
And so she’d begun to dream of a home in the future. A lot of that dream had matured to more realistic proportions that could be embodied in this house she now owned. Tonight, however, it was strikingly obvious to her that she’d forgotten to include the most important part of any home: family.
Sighing heavily, her throat suddenly and inexplicably tight, she wrapped her arms around a pillow and hugged it. She’d been lonely for so long she’d ceased to be aware of it. Until tonight.
Damn Arlen Coulter for making her conscious of it.
Chapter 4
Dressed in her favorite dove-gray suit and black silk blouse, Jessica arrived at work forty-five minutes early the next morning. The extra time was essential if she was to try to lift fingerprints from the document. It wasn’t so much that the process was complicated, because it wasn’t, but she wanted ample time so she could move slowly and avoid errors.
Security, mindful of DIS inspectors, checked her identification thoroughly before waving her through. When she arrived in her own section she walked down the hall, assuring herself that all the other offices were empty. Only then did she return to her own office, close the door and start to open her safe.
“Talk about acting suspicious,” she muttered to herself as she spun the dial first left, then right, then left and then right again. She felt the dial resist as she reached the last number and knew she’d worked the combination correctly. Pressing down the lever, she grabbed the drawer handle and pulled it open.
The document was still on the bottom of the drawer, apparently untouched since she’d found it there yesterday. When she
’d emptied enough of the other documents to give herself unobstructed access to the red folder, she used the plastic gloves Arlen had given her to lift it out.
“It’s not that your fingerprints will get you into trouble,” he’d told her last night. “You just don’t want your prints to destroy a good print by overlaying it.”
Only, there were no good prints. She knew that with certainty twenty minutes later, having dusted the entire folder and the document with dark powder. The powder adhered to nothing except some vague, blurry streaks. The spy had wiped the prints, just as Arlen had suspected.
Disappointed, she cleaned up the mess with exaggerated care and then went down the hall to wash her hands. Frank Winkowski was just entering the section when she came back down the hall from the restroom. He looked surprised to see her, then smiled.
“You’re early, too,” he said. “Brainstorm?” He was a pleasant-looking man with a round face and a tendency to softness around his waist.
Jessica shook her head. “Not really. I just woke up early this morning, and there didn’t seem to be any point in hanging around the house. Besides, after all that uproar with security the other day, I need to do some catching up.”
Frank nodded. “We’ll all have to do some catching up, I think. From what I hear, this security inspection is turning into a real bear. Stan Watson—do you know him?”
“He’s the guy heading up the Big Whistle project, isn’t he?”
“Yeah.” Frank shifted his briefcase from one hand to the other, as if it were heavy. “He said a team of two inspectors are shutting themselves up in a private office with each of his team members for an hour at a stretch.”
“Oh, boy.” Jessica managed to sound surprised. “What’s going on? What’re they asking?”
Frank shrugged. “Dunno. The guys they questioned yesterday afternoon say they can’t talk about it. Maybe there’s been a leak from the project.”
