“Yes,” she said without hesitation. Every additional encounter with him was going to make leaving at the end that much harder. Yet when he stood before her, all her resolve disintegrated.
He lowered his head, his lips gently following the trail he had laid out with his finger. One button. Two buttons. Three. She felt her blouse parting, her skin burning. He took his time. The delaying tactic was calculated to increase her desire. It succeeded. She wove her fingers through his hair, holding his head against her breasts as he teased them with long, sensual kisses. Slowly he pushed her bra below her breasts, freeing them entirely. He pressed his body against hers, and she was acutely aware of just how much he needed her.
With fingers that had become suddenly clumsy, she unbuttoned his shirt and thrust her breasts against the fine layer of dark hairs that covered his chest. A tingling sensation sped through her as she moved rhythmically against him. With a gentle touch here and a light prod there, he removed all her clothing, then his. His hands slipped along the curves of her body, turning her cool skin feverish with each touch. As he stroked her buttocks she could feel her desire mounting. How could she go on without this? In a moment of fleeting frenzy she told herself she was leaving the Bureau after the case was over.
“I love you, Reese.” The words spilled out naturally, without thought, without effort. Feelings translated into sound.
“I hope so,” he said in a voice full of passion. “This would be a hell of a time to tell me we were just good friends.”
A laugh bubbled up within her. He made her laugh. He made her feel as if there were sunshine trapped inside her. She loved him so much she thought she would burst.
“Love me, Reese.” It was a softly whispered plea.
“All in good time,” he promised. He stepped back and glanced quickly around the room, then pulled down what looked like a moth-eaten fur rug. It landed next to Charley, raising a cloud of dust as it fell.
“Your boudoir awaits, milady,” he said, grinning.
Charley looked down at the huge cloth on the tiny floor. “What is it?”
“I think it was supposed to have been a buffalo robe.”
A giddy feeling came over her. “Think the buffalo would mind?” she asked as he urged her to sit. There was scarcely enough room to do that, much less to lie down.
“I think he’d be honored,” Reese said, and took her into his arms.
His bare skin was hot against hers, and both excitement and serenity filled her as he laid her back on the robe. He covered her body with his, and she closed her eyes in ecstasy. Then she opened her eyes, wanting to look at Reese, wanting to drink in every detail of his face. But what she saw when she looked at him made her smile broadly. She tapped Reese on the shoulder.
“Intermission?” he asked, a note of confusion in his voice.
“I think we’re being watched,” she said, pointing behind him.
Startled, he turned. Perched on what appeared to be a chest of drawers was a statue of a sea gull, his wings spread in flight, his head lowered as if ready to capture a hapless fish. One wing was broken.
Reese turned back, his eyes meeting Charley’s. She could see amusement mixed with desire in his expression. “Well, then, let’s give him something to see,” he said.
“Yes, sir, Mr. Substitute Director.” She nodded her head smartly.
“If I had known being a director was this much fun, I’d have tried it long ago,” he said just before he lowered his mouth to hers.
Fun was a poor word for it, Charley thought. Passion, rapture—now, those were the words. Reese’s hands tangled in her hair, then slid down her eager body to her hips, pressing her to him once again. The teasing was over. Desire could no longer be denied. He came to her, loving her the way she needed to be loved, taking her away from her world and all its responsibilities. As the urgency created by his thrusting movements grew, Charley found herself being swept away to paradise. She clutched at Reese for all she was worth, loving him as she never had done before.
The rate of their breathing slowed, mellowing into satisfied, rhythmic sounds. She felt Reese smile against her cheek. “Think the sea gull got his money’s worth?” he asked.
“I don’t know about the sea gull, but the moths in the buffalo robe are giving you a standing ovation,” she said, trying to keep a straight face.
“Us a standing ovation,” he corrected her.
She smiled. That had a nice ring to it. But already reality was beginning to intrude. Would there still be an “us” after the case was over and she told him how she had deceived him? And even if there was, could she settle down with Reese, share his quiet existence without feeling stifled or trapped? Would her feelings for him sustain her or would they change, altered by her restlessness? She didn’t know. She just didn’t know. She kissed him quickly, then slipped out from underneath him and started to dress.
“What’s the matter?” he asked, noticing the strange expression on her face.
It was her guilt showing, she thought. Max had told her to stay away from Reese, to stay away for a lot of good reasons. And yet here she was, still flushed from his loving. What had happened to her discipline? She lied. “Nothing.”
But Reese wasn’t buying it. He stood and put his hands on her shoulders. “I think we need to talk.”
She shook her head. Talking wouldn’t help. She needed to make a clean break from him. But how? He was around every day. She couldn’t leave him the way she had the last time. And suddenly Charley realized that she didn’t want to leave him like that again. Fear of making a commitment was no longer clawing at her throat. She didn’t want to leave him at all. But she had no choice. She had no right to endanger him this way. She was back to the original excuse she had used to justify running away. But this time it was true.
“Sorry,” he said, looking away from her, ignoring the shake of her head, “I didn’t see that. We’re going to talk.” He cleared a spot on a crate, dusting it off with his hand. “Sit,” he ordered.
“Reese—“
“Sit.” She sat, but her eyes warned him that he wasn’t going to get anywhere. “Now, I don’t want to crowd you,” he began.
“But you are—“
“No,” he interrupted. “What I’m doing is letting you know that no matter how long it takes, I’m sticking this out. That woman on the buffalo robe showed me that she needs me as much as I need her. I can’t be wrong about that. And I’ll wait it out. When you want to tell me what’s really standing in our way, I’ll listen.”
Oh, Lord, she thought. How she wanted to tell him, to make a clean breast of everything and let him see why it was so hopeless for them. But she knew she couldn’t. Even if she hadn’t been worried about Reese’s insisting on protecting her, which she knew he would, there was one other little matter. Max would kill her.
She looked up into Reese’s eyes, vacillating. The hell with it, she thought. She had to tell him. She couldn’t bear to keep it locked up inside anymore. She licked her lips. “I’m an FBI agent.”
“Funny, you don’t look like Efrem Zimbalist,” he said, joking.
“Makeup,” she muttered.
“You’re serious, aren’t you?” he asked, staring at her in disbelief.
She nodded.
Reese shook his head as if to clear it. “From the beginning, please.”
So Charley told him the story, all of it. She left out only the type of documents the congressman had in his possession. She told Reese about how she had become an agent and how she felt about her career. She told him about her current assignment, and Allison and the unknown enemy agent. He remained silent throughout the whole recitation and after she was finished.
“Reese?” she finally asked. She touched his hand, feeling the need for contact. To her surprise, he pulled back. The eyes that looked at her now were accusing, smoldering with something that she had never seen before.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” he asked. His voice was deceptively quiet; she could hear the
suppressed anger in it. “That day, a year ago, when you walked off just as everything was starting for us—why didn’t you tell me?”
She bit her lip. “I didn’t want to get you involved. I didn’t want to get you hurt.” She clutched at her own hands, as if in need of support. Suddenly she felt tired and drained. She wanted him to hold her, to say he understood all her motives. One look at his face told her that she wasn’t going to get her wish.
“So you thought it’d be easier if you just faded into the sunset,” he said harshly, “leaving me to wonder what I had done wrong, why you couldn’t love me as much as I loved you. I was in love with you—and you walked out.” The words filled the tiny room, almost smothering Charley.
“I thought it was best,” she whispered, looking down at her hands. Tears began to form, stinging her eyes, even as she tried to keep them back.
“Best?” Reese’s laugh was biting. “Best? Dammit, Charley, don’t you know that’s no way to treat a lover?” They stared at each other for a long moment, and then he pulled her to him. When he spoke his voice was softer. “You had no right to decide what was ‘best’ for me. Only I have that right.” His anger drained from him as he held her. “Lord, Charley, all those nights I spent staring at the ceiling and wondering what I’d done wrong, what I’d done to scare you off . . .” He pushed her back slightly in order to get a good look at her face. “If you want to play spy, I can get used to that. I can handle anything but rejection.”
She swallowed, wishing her mouth didn’t feel so dry. “I did it for your own good,” she said lamely.
“That’s what parents say before they whip the tar out of their kids. Putting me through hell is not for my own good. Letting me be a part of your life—now, that would be good.” He kissed the top of her head. The kiss, tender and fleeting, awoke sensations down to her very toes. She leaned against him, her heart beating hard. She needed his warmth, his understanding. Most of all, she needed his love.
And she had it.
Chalmers returned the next day, his disposition even worse than before. He began to work them harder, and as before, he was even more demanding of Charley than of anyone else.
“He doesn’t like you,” Carol whispered during a break.
“He doesn’t like anyone,” Charley replied. But Carol was right, she thought. Was Chalmers’s animosity based on artistic temperament, or was there more to it than that? Perhaps he was resentful of the way she had gotten her part. Or perhaps he was the operative, and wanted to keep her off-balance . . . and away from her roommate, Allison. She decided she would suggest to Max when she saw him in Boston that a tail be put on the director during the dress rehearsal.
The rest of the week was lost in a whirlwind of rehearsals. Chalmers was dissatisfied with the way the play was shaping up and demanded constant rewrites. The playwright, provoked into fits of anger, threatened to walk out, taking his play with him. It fell to Reese to smooth things out. There were constant demands on his time, and though Charley missed being alone with him, she was relieved, too. Away from the influence of his warm eyes, she could concentrate on her own work.
Allison was never out of her sight. Charley offered to rehearse with her after hours, shared lunches and as many dinners as she could with her, made sure they left the rehearsal hall together. Thanks to Reese’s help, she even arranged to have her costume fittings at the same time as Allison’s. So much togetherness was beginning to get to Allison, and Charley knew it. It was meant to. An edgy, nervous Allison would be more prone to slipups. But although Allison was given to a lot of anxious chatter, she said nothing to give away the identity of her enemy contact.
By Friday afternoon there was so much nervous energy in the rehearsal hall that it fairly crackled in the air. Chalmers’s tongue had never been sharper. The cast had never been more exhausted. After one particularly grueling musical number, Charley sank down next to Reese on the far side of the front row. She draped a towel around her damp neck. The dress that the costume department had provided for her to rehearse in was limp and damp with perspiration.
“Looks pretty good, doesn’t it?” she asked, keeping her voice low as the rehearsal continued.
“Looks terrific from where I sit,” Reese murmured.
She didn’t have to glance at him to know that his attention was not on the stage. “I meant the show,” she hissed, hiding a smile.
Chalmers gave her a murderous glare that she pretended not to see.
“That too,” Reese whispered. “You sing and dance well,” he added after a pause.
“So do you,” she said, remembering the day he had taken over for Chalmers. She turned to face him. “You never told me you could sing. Or dance.”
A smile curled the corners of his mouth as he glanced down at his lapboard. It was his job to see that all the cues were met on time and that no one ad-libbed any lines. “I guess we both had things we didn’t tell each other.”
“Why did you give it all up, Reese? You could have been a big star.”
He shrugged. “Maybe. But it takes more than talent,” he said honestly. “You know that. At the time, when I got into stage managing, I thought I liked steady paychecks better than the uncertainty of trying to beat out twelve other guys who were just as good-looking, just as talented, as I.”
She doubted that there was anyone just as good-looking, but her attention was caught by another phrase. “ ‘At the time’?”
He nodded, taking her hand. “Stability doesn’t mean as much to me anymore. Frankly, I’m getting bored.”
Was he saying that just to please her? Charley wondered. Or did he really mean it? Just because he was a little bored with being a stage manager, she reminded herself, didn’t mean he was ready to leap into her way of life.
“Charley. . .,” he began.
The way he lowered his voice made her alert. “Hmm?”
“You know what you told me the other night, in the prop room?”
“Yes?” What was he going to say? Was he going to demand that she give up her job? She knew she didn’t want to confront that issue. Not yet. After this assignment was over, then she could sort out her feelings about her job, about Reese, about everything. But not yet.
“Well”—he went on slowly, still looking down at his lapboard—“something happened that evening I took Allison out. Something that didn’t make much sense. At least I didn’t think so at the time. But now”—he looked at her—“maybe it does.”
“What?” she asked eagerly.
“We’d gone out for coffee after the show, to this little restaurant in the Village.”
She nodded. “The Peacock Caffe.” He looked startled, and she added, “We have a tail on Allison.”
“Oh. Well, then you probably already know that when we were there we met Chalmers and he gave Allison some papers.”
“Chalmers?” she echoed. She kept her voice low, but her surprise was evident in the stunned whisper. “What was he—“
“That’s what I wondered. He told us he had just stopped in for a quick bite to eat. He and the playwright had been working on a rewrite, and he had some new pages of dialogue for the second act for Allison. Said that bumping into her was a lucky coincidence.”
“Allison doesn’t have any new dialogue in Act Two.”
“I know. That’s what made it so odd.”
Charley fell silent, thinking. Why hadn’t Branigan reported this meeting to Max? she mused, trying to remember every detail of her conversation with Max. Of course! she thought suddenly. The unaccounted-for five minutes! Max had said that Branigan had succumbed to the effects of his hastily eaten chili dinner.
“Chalmers,” she murmured. Her eyes took on a brilliant shine. This confirmed her suspicions. The pages Chalmers had given Allison probably contained information about the new time for Graystone’s meeting with the Soviets. Maybe it was nothing, but she doubted it. She could feel it. Chalmers was the inside man. At least she had something concrete to report to Max when she met with him o
n Monday.
“Reese, I love you,” she blurted out, kissing him.
He let go of his lapboard, and it fell to the floor unnoticed as he put his arms around her.
Suddenly Chalmers’s voice rang out, and Charley jerked away from Reese. Had the director seen their embrace? she wondered fearfully.
“No, dammit, no!” Chalmers was yelling. “It still doesn’t sound right!”
“Look,” the playwright shouted back, “if you think I’m going to rewrite those lines right before dress rehearsal, you’re crazier than I thought!” He pushed his glasses farther into the tangled recesses of his bushy red hair.
An audible groan came from the actors onstage.
“Reese, I think your talents are needed up there,” Charley said.
He nodded wearily. “Reese the peacemaker to the rescue.” He picked up his lapboard and set it on his seat, then made his way to the center of the storm.
Charley would have liked to stay and watch Reese calm the quarreling men. She knew he could work miracles. Could his powers of persuasion be carried over to a different realm, she wondered, where there was more at stake than the success or failure of a play?
No, she had no right to push him into her world. Despite his earlier remarks, she was sure that he was happy in his chosen profession. Just as she had been in hers. Until she had seen him again. For the second time Charley entertained the idea of quitting the Bureau after this case was wrapped up.
Well, she would have to worry about that later, she told herself. Right now she had to find Allison.
The play was scheduled to preview for two weeks in Boston. Rehearsal ran late Friday night, and on Saturday morning everyone traveled to Boston. The technical crews had gone up a day early and set up the theater, then done a lighting run-through without the cast. On Sunday everyone rehearsed with all the lighting, props, and set changes, and the cast was in costume, but not made up. Like all first full run-throughs, the rehearsal was interminable. They seemed to have to stop every ten minutes to change a lighting cue or the blocking. Charley watched Reese as he patiently dealt with the never-ending problems. She was amazed at his calm, and at his ability to remember even the smallest details. He’d make a good agent, she caught herself thinking more than once as the long day turned into a seemingly endless night.
Three Marie Ferrarella Romances Box Set One Page 25
