Her Spy to Hold (Spy Games Book 2)

by Paula Altenburg

  She didn’t suck at this game quite as much as he’d thought.

  Chapter Five

  Irina awoke with a mouth that tasted like garbage and a brain attempting to drill its way free through her eyeballs.

  It took a few seconds of staring at the bedroom ceiling fan above the bed for her to figure out the cause of the overwhelming mortification she felt. He was clanging pots in the kitchen, singing a truly horrible rendition of a popular song favored by pre-teenage girls. She’d find his taste in music funny if she wasn’t so hung over.

  Or feeling so foolish. She’d told him he was beautiful. She’d let him kiss her. She’d kissed him back. Then she’d shut the bedroom door in his face.

  Her friend Beverley gave terrible advice. If last night had proven anything, it was that Kale Martin was the last man she should go for. He was far too much…everything.

  He was also lying to her.

  She examined the facts. Her professional biography—out there for the entire world to see—clearly stated she’d graduated from high school at the age of fourteen. If he’d done any research on her at all, that was a fact he couldn’t possibly have missed. To her, that suggested his investigation wasn’t official.

  But Detective Buchanan had confirmed Kale was with CSIS. And he hadn’t faked speaking Urdu. She’d been to Pakistan and he had the inflections down pat. He knew people too. He understood what motivated them. From the moment he first stepped into her kitchen he’d done his best to put her at ease.

  And then to knock her off balance.

  The thought of the kiss—kisses—they’d shared left her awash in a full-body blush that prickled to the roots of her hair. Those certainly had nothing to do with any official investigation. Not that she had a right to complain. She’d been an active and enthusiastic participant last night, and if he hadn’t stopped, she wouldn’t have either. That was another mark in his favor, although she gave it up grudgingly. She might not have initiated the kiss, but she wished she’d been the one to show some restraint.

  OK. She believed he was legitimate when it came to his work. So what was his game? If CSIS wasn’t actively investigating her complaint, then why was he here?

  That was the problem with spies. One could never be sure what they were really after. He was never going to tell her the truth so there was no point in demanding an explanation from him. Bottom line, she felt better about having him here. Safer.

  But only up to a point.

  She rolled to her side, tangling her legs in the cotton sheet she’d thrown off in the night. A tall glass of water sat on the bedside table, along with a roll of antacids. The gesture was thoughtful. The fact that he’d been in her room while she was asleep?

  Disconcerting. She’d skipped pajamas and slept in a tank top and panties. He must have gotten an eyeful.

  A glance at the clock said it was quarter to nine. She sat up and chewed four of the antacids before chugging the whole glass of water. Under-hydrating had been her biggest mistake of the night, but at least her stomach had settled. It rumbled at the smell of bacon wafting through the cracks around her door.

  Footsteps in the hall, then a light knock on the door, made her sit up straighter in bed. The quiet sound of her name had her clutching the sheet to her chest.

  “Irina? You awake?”

  “Almost,” she called back.

  A low rumble of laughter stirred up the butterflies already fluttering hard in her chest. “Breakfast is ready in ten minutes.”

  Enough time to get decent. Not enough for a shower.

  She sprawled on her back on the bed, one hand splayed on her stomach, the other arm flung over her head. She had an upcoming conference in Paris to prepare for. She was sitting on a panel with eight other scientists and needed to check her phone messages and email. They came from all over the world and most didn’t keep the same schedules. A lot of them couldn’t tell what time of day it was in their own area codes, let alone the day of the week, when they were involved in a project. She, too, was guilty as charged.

  Her phone and laptop, however, were both in the bag Kale had left beside a chair at the kitchen table. She wondered if he’d tried to go through them. Everything was password-protected, but if he asked for access, she’d give it to him. She didn’t keep sensitive data on her personal hard drives.

  She made a trip to the bathroom to rinse out her mouth and grab some acetaminophen for her headache before digging through a dresser drawer in search of a clean pair of shorts and a T-shirt. It only took a minute to clip her hair up with a plastic claw. She’d wash it later. After she made her bed and hung up her discarded clothes from the previous night, her ten minutes were up. The thought of Kale in her kitchen, however, remained overwhelming.

  She’d have to face him eventually and might as well get it over with.

  He stood at the stove with a spatula in his hand, his white shirt unbuttoned and the tails hanging free, the sleeves rolled up his forearms past his elbows to biceps as thick as her thighs. His feet were bare. He’d tidied his hair, the blond man bun smoothed into place.

  He was gorgeous. She could watch him all day.

  A hunger shot through her that had nothing to do with food. The attraction between them wasn’t a figment of her imagination. Since she appeared to be enough woman for him, why should he be too much man for her?

  As Beverley had said, why not have fun?

  He glanced up from stirring the contents of the frying pan. Morning light caught the incredible blue of his eyes. The gleam in them suggested he knew what she’d been thinking and that his thoughts were running along the same lines.

  “Hey, there. How’d you sleep?”

  “Like the dead.”

  His lips quirked into a sly, sexy grin. “You were breathing. I checked.”

  There wasn’t much she could say about that. She wanted to have fun, yes, but she’d never be able to pull it off to the same level he did. She couldn’t change who she was—a dull and boring computer scientist.

  Her gaze flitted from his to settle on her laptop bag. She wandered over and dug in one of the side pockets for her phone, then sat down to go through her messages.

  “Your breakfast is getting cold.”

  She looked up from her phone, startled to discover that while she’d been reading, the table had been set with placemats and napkins and he’d served her bacon and scrambled eggs. A glass of orange juice sweated beside her plate. Coffee steamed in a mug. He sat across from her, blue eyes studying her face, his own plate half empty.

  “Sorry,” she said. “I sometimes get lost when I’m working.”

  “No kidding. I tap danced and sang show tunes before I finally gave up trying to get your attention.” He pointed his fork at her breakfast. “Now put the phone away and eat. We have rules in this house.”

  “Yes, sir.” She set the phone beside her plate. He raised his eyebrows and flattened his lips with such an expression of mock patience that she had to smile. She picked up the phone and tucked it into the laptop bag pocket. “Let me guess. Your mother was strict about mealtimes.”

  “When we managed to sit down at the same time as a family, yes. You better believe it. Those were rare events and she kept them special. She raised four sons. We’re all terrified of her.”

  “The giantess Jord must be fearsome, indeed.”

  He paused in the act of spearing a piece of bacon. “You think my mother’s a Norse goddess?”

  “No one’s ever compared you to Thor before?” She found that hard to believe.

  “Well…yeah,” he admitted. “But they think Thor’s mother’s name is Frigga, after the comic book character. You know. The one in the Avengers movies?”

  “I’ve never seen those movies,” Irina confessed. She’d heard of them though. She spent her work days with nerds after all.

  “What kind of movies do you like to watch, then?”

  “I don’t really have a preference. I usually read.” Making her the biggest nerd ever.

&n
bsp; “I’ve seen your reading material.” He made a gesture as if he were hanging himself. “You need to expand your horizons. We’re going to watch a movie tonight.”

  That sounded…cozy. “Aren’t we supposed to be working? Trying to find out what’s going on with those pop-ups on my computer?” She reached for her coffee. “And what about that talk you said we’d have?” She threw that out there to see how he’d react.

  He set his fork down and pushed his plate out of the way so he could rest his forearms on the table. “That’s right. I promised you an explanation, didn’t I?” He leaned toward her as if preparing to impart important state secrets. “OK. Here’s the deal. I’ve been working nonstop for the past six or seven weeks. Right now I’m not at the top of my game. I might have missed a few things. I’m willing to bet you’d work twenty-four seven if you didn’t need to sleep, too. We could both use a break. This province has a beach that’s world famous for surfing and I’m not planning to miss out on it. So guess where we’re headed today? Bring a book if you like. Tonight, we’re ordering pizza and watching movies. Unless, of course, you can think of a better way for us to unwind?”

  Not at the top of his game, hmm? She begged to differ. Was he trying to tell her that he’d missed important information? That he wasn’t as prepared to handle an investigation as he might otherwise have been? Or was he simply trying to misdirect her?

  Common sense leaned toward misdirection. Under the table, she flexed her hands. Then, she drew a few breaths. She didn’t have a clue how to figure him out. He wasn’t at all the person he presented to the world. So the next question became, did she trust him?

  Yes and no. She believed he was CSIS. As for the rest of his game, the jury was out. For example, she was only ninety-five percent sure how he’d meant for her to take that last remark, and even then, only because she factored in the kisses they’d shared. The odds still weren’t quite high enough for her, however, so she hedged her response. “I’m good with whatever you’d like to do.”

  The heat in his eyes tipped the odds to one hundred percent. “You say that, Dr. Babe. But wait until tonight rolls around.”

  Forget the other games he might have going on. This one was about sex, plain and simple. Now she had to decide if she was willing to play along.

  Why not have fun?

  She couldn’t change who she was. But she could choose to be brave. While subtlety wasn’t her strength, and she wasn’t quick-witted with comebacks, she knew how to stand her ground and be direct. She met his gaze and held it, the same as she would if she’d been challenged by a peer during a presentation. “I’d only change my mind if you gave me a good reason to.”

  The incredulity slackening his jaw signaled she’d caught him off guard. Worry that she’d misread him dampened her palms. Perhaps he hadn’t been serious. Maybe she was a challenge who’d turned out to be no challenge at all.

  He found his voice. “In that case, I’ll be on my best behavior all day. Guaranteed.”

  A heady sense of relief, and perhaps triumph that, while she might feel awkward and uncertain around him, she could hold her own nonetheless, replaced her worry. Then, some of her bravery began to erode. Directness was one thing. Daring was a whole different ball game.

  “I can see you thinking, Irina.” His expression gentled, at odds with the awe-inspiring, muscled bulk of him. He’d straightened one of his long legs so that a bare foot, high-arched and well-shaped, rested disconcertingly close to her chair. Whether he did it intentionally or not, he constantly invaded her personal space. “Stop analyzing everything I say. There’s no need for it. When I watch movies with a woman, she gets control of the remote. It has a stop button.”

  She could feel her face flaming. She really hoped they were talking about the same thing. “I’m not very good at picking out movies. I don’t watch very many.”

  “Yeah. I figured that out. Don’t worry so much. You have plenty of time to make a selection. Remotes have pause buttons too. Now finish your breakfast,” he said, picking up his fork once again. “This morning we’re going surfing.”

  * * *

  They stopped at the surf shop closest to the beach so Kale could arrange for a rental board. A short time after that, he was struggling into his wetsuit and getting ready to hit the waves.

  A brisk wind blew off the ocean. Irina, beside him, carried a canvas bag containing a magazine, a beach towel, water bottles and sandwiches. He’d insisted she leave her laptop at home. She set the bag on the sand near the rocks at the high water point. Those rocks created a natural barrier between the beach and the road, so that the busy parking lot was hidden from sight, creating a sense of isolation.

  He couldn’t keep his eyes off her. Dressed in a cream-colored, cable-knit sweater that draped off one shoulder, and navy Bermuda shorts, she was slender in a petite, sleekly feminine way that had heat searing through him at unexpected moments, like now.

  He pried his thoughts away from all the movie euphemisms they’d made over breakfast. She’d been playing with him, fighting fire with fire. She was far too skittish around him and had too much pride to be serious. While academically he was no slouch, he was hardly on the same level she was.

  That didn’t mean he wasn’t going to see how far she’d go. He’d meant it when he’d said they both needed a break and she was quite the diversion. He itched to run his fingers over all that silky, lightly-tanned skin.

  Gulls circled and squawked in the wide blue sky overhead. A frown crinkled her pixie nose and turned the full, pink curve of her lips upside down.

  “The signs say it’s not safe to swim here,” she said, shielding her eyes with her hand as she stared out at the stretch of sparkling gray ocean.

  Swimming was off-limits here because there weren’t any lifeguards. He’d done enough surfing in the area to know better than to ignore the posted signs that warned of dangerous currents, but there were three other surfers who looked like they knew what they were doing in the water already. They’d keep an eye on each other.

  He zipped up the front of the wetsuit. “The tide’s on its way in. I’m good for a few hours. But just in case, the car keys are in my jeans pocket.”

  Green eyes swiveled to his. “That’s not funny. I’m serious.”

  “So am I.” It touched him that she was concerned. No one but his mother ever worried about him, and even she had given up a long time ago. He made a few phone calls a year, mostly to make up for the Christmases and birthdays he sometimes missed, and she was happy. “See those rocks?” He wrapped an arm around Irina’s shoulders and turned her so she faced the farthest one of the two points that formed the small cove where they stood. “No one surfs beyond there. As long as the tide’s coming in and I stay on this side of the rocks, I’ll be fine.”

  Doubt curled the corners of her lips downward. “If you say so.”

  She didn’t believe him. That was pretty cute too.

  An unsettling rush of possessiveness took him by surprise when she tipped her face upward as if about to say something more. She was small, the top of her ponytail barely reaching his chest. He dropped a light kiss on her mouth, sweeping his tongue across those full, frowning lips to steal a taste of the salt on her skin from the fresh ocean air. When he lifted his head, her green eyes were wide and bemused.

  He knew the feeling.

  “Do you think we might be carrying this whole pretend relationship a little too far?” she asked.

  The short answer was yes.

  He still had an arm around her. He shrugged before letting go of her to pick up his board, struggling for cool. “What can I say? I’m a touchy kind of guy.” He straightened. “Is that going to be a problem for you?”

  Unsmiling, she gave the cheeky challenge far more consideration than it deserved. “No.”

  Her answer was as honest and direct as he’d come to expect of her. It was his reaction to it that he hadn’t anticipated. His brain dried up and his reeling thought processes shifted straight to his crotc
h.

  He’d been so wrong to think she was no good at this game. The problem for him was that she didn’t play by regulation rules and he had no idea what his next move should be.

  Other than the three surfers out on the water, they were alone. “Stay here where I can see you,” he said, suddenly bothered by the thought of her sitting by herself on the beach. She was safe enough. The beach wasn’t really deserted. There was plenty of traffic right over the ridge.

  Still.

  She held up a copy of American Scientist magazine. “I’ve got my entertainment right here.”

  His uneasiness passed. No one who knew anything about her would ever, not for one single moment, suspect she’d be spending the day at a beach famous for surfing.

  “If that’s your idea of entertainment,” he said, “then you don’t get to pick out the movie tonight.”

  He carried the board to the water’s edge where he straightened the cords on the kite before wading in. It took him an embarrassing number of tries to get it into the air. He needed to concentrate on what he was doing and not let his attention keep wandering to the confusing woman watching him from the beach.

  Once he had the kite up and was out on the water the rest of the world slipped away. A storm had been blowing out in the Atlantic Ocean last night, and today, the waves crashing against the shoreline were unusually high. He loved the sensation of flying as his board shot off the crests.

  He had to change directions to get out of the path of another surfer who was headed straight for him and he made a hard landing. His foot slipped off the board, sending him sliding into the water. A wave washed over his head, pushing him down. He bobbed to the surface a few yards from his board, sputtering water and shaking his hair out of his eyes. The kite dipped and danced in the sky. It hadn’t yet fallen but was on its way down. He shot a glance toward Irina’s distant form on the beach, wondering if she’d seen him go under and if she was worried.

  She was no longer alone. A man in a bright neon orange-and-blue wetsuit was walking from the path that led to the parking lot and down the beach toward her. A surfboard had been jammed upright in the sand at the foot of the path. She didn’t lift her head from her magazine. So far, she was oblivious.