Serious Risks

by Rachel Lee

  An eternity passed during the moments while Jessica stared unblinkingly at him. Well, you couldn’t get much clearer than that. The Bureau would protect her. Arlen would protect her because it was his job. Something inside her felt as if it were dying, but she didn’t know if it was Arlen’s choice of words that was killing it or the knowledge that her life had just slipped out of her control. Somebody was watching her; somebody had bugged her telephones. Somebody was deadly serious.

  At long last something inside her let go a little, and her lower lip quivered. Drawing a deep breath, she closed her eyes for a moment and gathered her resources, such as they were. When she felt reasonably calm she sat back in her chair.

  “And what about the intruder?” she asked in a fairly level voice. “What do you think that’s all about?”

  Arlen lifted one of her hands and studied her delicate fingers. Clever fingers, as he’d discovered. “Jessie, let’s put that subject on the back burner for a bit. We’ll talk about it later.” Looking at her, he smiled ruefully. “Right now I’d just be shooting off my mouth, the kind of wild speculation that never gets anybody anywhere. I need to just let it simmer a while, okay?”

  She nodded, keeping her eyes on his face.

  “In the meantime, there are a couple of things I want to do. First, I want us to go together to my place. I need to change into some fresh clothes, and I want to pack a suitcase to bring back here.” He saw the surprise in her eyes. “I told you, you won’t be alone. I meant it. I’m here for the duration.”

  An unhappy smile curved her lips. Just doing his job again, of course.

  “Then I want to go to the hardware store and get dead bolts for your doors. You have no idea how easily I got in here last night.”

  She tried to repress a shudder. “I’m beginning to get a notion.”

  “I plan to take care of that,” he assured her. “Okay?”

  Jessica nodded. Something inside her had frozen up, as if she had used up all her reactions for the time being. After Arlen squeezed her hand and let it go, she moved it back onto her lap and turned her head to look out the window at the backyard. Rain still fell in a steady drizzle, and the sky promised no improvement.

  “Jessie?”

  She looked at Arlen and saw he was frowning at her. “You know, I thought I’d finally made it.”

  “Made it how?” He never took his eyes from her. Somehow there was more going on here than her very justifiable distress about what had happened. She’d been struck in some other way, and he hoped for a clue so he could help her with it.

  Jessica shrugged. “It doesn’t really matter.” Again she looked away.

  “Jessie, talk to me.”

  “Why bother?” she said harshly. “Aren’t things already messy enough? Anyway, I told you I was a coward.”

  But he didn’t believe it was cowardice that put that ineffably sad look on her face. Damn, she looked like someone who’d just seen the death of all her dreams.

  The cigarette smoker across the street had vanished by the time Arlen and Jessica left her house, but Arlen was sure the surveillance was continuing from some other direction. They would want to know about him, about why he’d shown up sometime during the night right after they placed their bugs. He reassured them by draping his arm around Jessica’s shoulders as they hurried down the wet walk.

  Jessica didn’t want to go to Arlen’s apartment, but he offered no other option. She was in no mood now to face the specters of his past. She had gone from the heights to the depths in an amazingly short time.

  She had awakened this morning feeling positively exuberant about the night just past. She’d never dreamed that lovemaking could be so incredibly magical. Just as astonishing, though, was the amazing sense of freedom it had given her. She had lain with a man, naked skin to naked skin. They had engaged in an act of shattering intimacy, demolishing barriers she hadn’t been aware of until they were gone.

  Little champagne bubbles of joy had seemed to rise in her, tickling every nerve ending. She had actually made love with this man! She had been wrapped in his arms and he in hers. This highly controlled, experienced man had shuddered and groaned at her naive touches, had actually begged her to touch him again. When she remembered his encouraging whispers, the way he had gently guided her, everything inside her clenched in painfully exquisite longing.

  But now she felt horrifically fragile. Reality had shattered all her wonder and joy. Arlen was an agent on a case, and she was part of that case. She had only herself to blame for losing sight of that very significant fact. There was no excuse for her shock this morning when the order of his priorities had been made clear to her. Whatever he might feel for her, and she did him the justice of thinking he felt something, he was first and foremost an agent. First and foremost a man who didn’t want any entanglements. Hadn’t he told her so, more than once?

  When they arrived at his apartment, Jessica wanted to stay in the car. She didn’t want to face those ghosts again. Not on top of everything else.

  “Absolutely not,” Arlen said flatly.

  His refusal to let her wait in the car inadvertently revealed that he was worried about her safety. She felt her tension hike another notch. Was she actually supposed to endure this?

  “You told me I’d be in no danger,” she reminded him as she stood in the middle of the living room and watched him lock the door behind him. That made her edgier.

  He was smiling lopsidedly as he faced her. “You sore?” he asked.

  Puzzled, Jessica shook her head. Actually, she was a little sore, but not enough to complain about.

  “Good,” Arlen said. As he walked toward her, he tugged his shirt off.

  Jessica swallowed and filled her eyes with the sight of smooth skin and lean muscles. She swallowed even harder when he stopped right in front of her and unbuckled his belt. Somehow, when she looked at him, it didn’t seem to matter that she was just a job to him.

  “You’re in danger, all right,” he said gruffly as he popped the snap and tugged down the zipper of his jeans. “From me.”

  Jessica’s eyes snapped up to his face and found nothing but sincerity. He leaned forward and dropped a kiss on the tip of her nose.

  “However,” he said as he straightened, “I don’t think you’re ready for what I have in mind, so I’ll just go take my shower alone.”

  Jessica watched him disappear down a short hallway. Her heart was beating heavily, and her blood felt as thick as molasses with desire. She wanted to lie down with him again. She wanted to run her palms over his warm, smooth skin, to feel the roughness of his legs against hers, to…

  Instead he’d left her here with all his cherished reminders of why he didn’t want to get involved. Muttering a very unladylike word, she plopped onto his couch and looked away from the photo of Lucy Coulter.

  Damn it, Jessica thought. Damn, damn, damn. All he had to do was kiss her or look at her in that certain suggestive way and she forgot everything but her hunger for him. Damn, it was unreal!

  And she had no one to blame for this but herself. He’d warned her. How many warnings did she need, anyway? He’d been up-front about his ring, and he sure as hell hadn’t been subtle about it when he brought her here on Friday and showed her his shrine. He’d even come right out and said it in so many words: he wasn’t in it for the long haul anymore. He’d said that right to her face.

  Stretched out on her back, head propped on the arm of the sofa, Jessica found herself looking at the picture of his daughter, Melanie. She and Melanie were definitely contemporaries, and she could see that that might be a big stumbling block for Arlen.

  As for his wife… Deliberately Jessica turned her head and looked at the photo of Lucy Coulter that sat on the table by the easy chair. It was stupid to envy the dead, but Jessica admitted to envying Lucy Coulter. Arlen’s wife had had twenty years of steadfast love of the kind Jessica could only imagine. In fact, she was feeling a whole bunch of unpleasant, immature feelings she had never felt before,
everything from jealousy to possessiveness to anger.

  “Damn.” She sighed and turned her attention to the ceiling. Maybe he hadn’t brought her here because he was concerned about her safety. Maybe he’d brought her to remind her.

  That idea hurt. It hurt so badly that she felt the prickle of tears. Squeezing her eyes shut, she turned her face to the back of the couch and confronted her own folly. In spite of repeated warnings, she’d given this man everything. And now, now when she ought to heed her common sense, she was unable to turn her back and walk away. She needed him! And that was the worst folly of all.

  Was it really too much to wish he was moving in with her because he wanted to be with her, not because he felt honor bound to protect her? Was it too much to wish that his motive was clear rather than so muddied?

  “Jessie.”

  The husky murmur preceded the gentle touch of fingertips on her cheek. She felt the couch dip as Arlen perched beside her and turned her face toward him. Struggling against a tangle of emotions, she kept her eyes closed.

  “Aw, Jessie,” he said gruffly, and the next thing she knew she was sitting up within the tight circle of his arms, held snugly against his hard chest. He smelled like soap, and his T-shirt smelled a little like bleach, and his touch was somehow so reassuring and comforting that the tears came anyway.

  “I know,” he murmured, rocking her gently, stroking her hair, rubbing her back soothingly. “I know, honey. It’s all too damn much at once.” And he did know. What twenty-one years of marriage hadn’t taught him, twenty-three years of raising a daughter had. A woman who’d just given her virginity ought to be able to snuggle up to the man who’d taken it and worry about nothing at all. She ought to be able to savor her changes and try out her new powers, and by God somebody ought to be pouring champagne and telling her she’d made him feel like a king, like a conqueror, like Tarzan.

  Instead she’d learned that her phones were tapped, that her house had been invaded by strangers while she slept and that she was being watched.

  And then he had brought her here. Looking at Lucy’s photo, Arlen tightened his arms around Jessica. Eventually, he thought, you had to let some things go. Eventually he would have to let Lucy go. He wasn’t quite ready, he admitted, to take that portrait and put it away, but that didn’t give him the right to hurt the woman who was in his arms. He was being unfaithful not to Lucy, who was gone, but to Jessica, who was here.

  Jessica spoke on a broken sob. “I feel so dumb….”

  “Shh. You’re not dumb, Jessie. Not dumb at all.” He tilted her face up and kissed away her tears, acknowledging how much he had missed being needed. How much he needed to once again bring a smile to a woman’s face, how much he wanted to kiss away tears…and how damn tired he was of being alone. “It’s been a rough morning,” he said, and wiped away the last tear with a fingertip.

  “Yeah.” She sniffled. So rough she couldn’t even decide which part was roughest.

  “I told you once before that the whole Bureau would be looking out for you if you agreed to help us. I meant it, Jessie. After what I found this morning, you can count on never being alone for a minute.”

  The damn job again. She was getting sick of hearing about the Bureau. It was, however, an inescapable fact of her life at the moment, and she would be foolish to ignore reality just because she was emotionally tender. She leaned back a little to better see Arlen’s face, but he didn’t loosen his hold on her. When she spoke, she sounded incredibly weary. “Then there is danger.”

  “I don’t know,” he said honestly. “All I know is that those bugs and the fact that somebody entered your house just don’t fit the usual recruitment scenario. Something else is going on, and it makes me uneasy as hell.”

  “That’s why you didn’t want me to stay there alone?”

  He shook his head. “Not entirely. The fact is, I don’t know how many bugs there may be in the place, but it’s safest to assume the ones in the phones aren’t the whole thing.”

  “Can’t you find out?” The idea of her whole house being bugged struck at her in deep, painful ways. She felt so victimized.

  “Honey, I could look, but I couldn’t be sure I found everything. And, unlike in the movies, an electronic sweep isn’t something that can be done in a couple of hours. It takes days to sweep a single room. And even that’s no guarantee, because it’s possible for somebody to sit across the street with a microphone that can pick up the vibrations of the windowpanes and hear every word you say. And that’s why I wanted you to come with me. Part of the reason. We need to talk about this, and for the time being I don’t think we ought to do it there.”

  He stroked her cheek with his fingers, hating the horror and pain he saw in her eyes. “Jessie, honestly, I really don’t think anybody’s going to be listening. I truthfully think the phone bugs are the sum of it.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you live there alone. Nobody would be interested in anything you might say to yourself. I just want us to be cautious, that’s all.”

  That made sense, and a hard knot inside her eased a hair. “But now they know about you.”

  “I took some precautions. Relax. Nobody will get in there without me knowing about it now.”

  “Relax? Arlen, I don’t want people I don’t know listening to anything I say!”

  “I know, Jessie. I know.”

  “You don’t know, Arlen. You can’t know. You can’t possibly understand how this makes me feel.”

  “Then tell me, Jessie. Tell me.” He cradled her head against his shoulder, feeling the tension in her.

  “The only home I ever had until now was when I was little,” she said after a moment, wondering how she could possibly make anyone understand. “My daddy was a roughneck in the West Texas oilfields. We lived in Midland, and Daddy would come in from the fields on weekends. I can still remember the way he used to come through the door. He was a big man, really big, with huge hands, and he used to pick me right up and swing me in circles over his head until my sides ached from laughing. Then he’d set me down and pick Mamma up and kiss her till she turned all pink.”

  Feeling shy again, she stole an upward look at Arlen and found him listening intently. Reassured, she plunged on.

  “Anyhow, Daddy was killed in a well blowout when I was seven. Mamma and I went to live with Daddy’s mother. She really didn’t want us there, and she was forever saying so, but I don’t think Mamma ever heard her, or ever cared. Mamma just started drinking, and she pretty much kept to her room and stayed drunk.”

  Arlen’s arms tightened around her, as if he could shelter her from remembered pain.

  “Basically,” Jessica said, “it wasn’t a home. It was a place where I slept and did chores to earn my keep. And when I got older, my grandmother started to get suspicious. I don’t know if I actually did something to start her off, or if she just got a little crazy, but she started rifling my belongings nearly every day, and she listened in on every one of my phone calls. I can’t tell you how hard I worked to graduate early and get a scholarship so I could go away to college. Arlen, I can’t stand the thought of anybody doing that to me again.”

  He smoothed her hair back from her face and then looked down into her brown eyes with an intensity that left no doubt about his sincerity. “I can’t stop them from listening, Jessie, but I promise I’ll get them. I’ll see that they pay for it.”

  His words touched her so deeply that she once again had to blink back tears. “I won’t hold you to that. I know how hard it is to get criminals for anything these days.” Closing her eyes, she leaned into the comfort of his warmth and strength and tried to let go of her anger and fear. “I don’t suppose I can just move into an apartment somewhere?”

  “No.” The single word conveyed Arlen’s regret and determination. “Don’t you see, Jessie? Right now you’re our only link with this person or persons. Somebody is obviously very interested in you, but if we let him know we’re onto him, he’s apt to vanish back into
the woodwork and turn his attention elsewhere. Right now you’re the only lead we’ve got.”

  “So I’m bait.” She shivered.

  “I’ll take care of you.”

  And then, because he couldn’t stand the tension between them another minute, because he felt responsible for wounding her, because he wanted her to smile for him, he scooped her up from the couch and carried her into his bedroom. It was all he had to give her, but he would give her the absolute best that was in him. He would make her forget everything else.

  When Arlen laid her down on his bed, Jessie was almost afraid to open her eyes, sure that she would see a picture of Lucy Coulter on the bedside table. Her heart had risen to her throat and hammered nervously as she listened to him move around. He closed the curtains against the gray day; the sound was unmistakable. Then he sat on the edge of the bed beside her.

  “Jessie,” he said gently.

  Her bright brown eyes opened and met his, and in them he saw her fears and her questions. He waited as she darted nervous glances around, taking in the sterility, the lack of color. The lack of photographs. When her gaze returned to his, he cupped her cheek with his palm and gave her the only reassurance he could.

  “I’ve never shared this bed with anyone, Jess.”

  Jessica squeezed her eyes shut again. It was silly, she told herself, to worry about such things. The man had loved Lucy, after all. That was a fact, and nothing was changed by whether this had been her bed. But it mattered anyway, and she wished there was some way to thank him for understanding that. Here, at least, there were no ghosts.

  Then Arlen began to undress her. He supposed there were seductive tricks to undressing a woman, but he had never learned them, and he wasn’t in the mood for that, anyway. He wanted no seduction, no tricks, no skills and practiced gestures. He wanted to get at something more elemental, more honest. Something real.