Undercover Agent

by Slade, Heather

  My home—which wasn’t much of one—was a residency suite in the same hotel where I’d met Emerson three years ago. I didn’t have one at the time, but I stayed there often enough that it made sense to.

  I’d said I’d give anything to feel Emerson’s naked body beneath mine one more time, and I had. But now, what? Was I ready to say goodbye to her like I did to every other woman I’d ever been with? Saint and I weren’t so different.

  I laid back on the sand and looked up at the cloudless sky, imagining where we’d be now if she’d only taken my hand.

  —:—

  I rolled to my back and put the pillow over my head. It sounded like a herd of elephants was traipsing on the floor above me. I reached for my mobile and checked the time. “Bloody hell,” I muttered. It was seven in the morning.

  I wondered if Emerson was awake yet. Was she an early riser, or did she like to sleep in? The first night I’d spent with her, she was up before dawn, but was that indicative of her usual habits?

  While I would normally roll over and at least try to return to sleep—particularly on a Sunday at this hour—curiosity got the better of me.

  I’d slept in the nude; my shorts and shirt were tossed on the floor somewhere. I got up and donned both before making my way to the lavatory.

  After splashing water on my face and cleaning my teeth, I crept upstairs and eased open the door that led to the hallway off the kitchen. From there, I had a clear picture of the elephants. Simon was crawling about the floor, as was Brendan, gently bumping the two twins with their heads as they raced around them. Emerson was seated at the dining table with her arms once again wrapped around her stomach as tears of laughter ran down her cheeks.

  If things were somehow different, if she were mine, I’d make it my life’s mission to make her laugh that hard at least once a day.

  I closed the door behind me, nearly slamming it. Things were not different, and they never would be. I’d leave this place when Z gave me the word, and travel on to some other part of the world, for some other mission, on behalf of MI6. I found myself resenting the job I had so dearly loved from the day I was sworn to duty.

  I was about to walk back down the stairs when the door behind me swung open. “Breakfast is ready,” Emerson announced. “Don’t expect much. I made it, but Bridget did supervise. After we eat, we’re going for a hike, if you’d like to join us.”

  “Are you always so chipper first thing in the morning?”

  “First thing? It’s almost half-past seven.” The door closed again, and I had my answer. My Emerson was definitely an early riser. Considering at least part of my body was too, that might work out very well for me.

  “I feel almost guilty,” I heard her say to Bridget when I joined them in the kitchen.

  “Why do you feel guilty?” I asked, looking around for a tea kettle but settling on a cup of coffee as easier.

  Emerson walked over and refilled her cup.

  “Cream or sugar?” she asked.

  “Both, if you have it. So, why?”

  “You know…Dr. Benjamin and Tommy,” she whispered.

  “Dr. Benjamin knew full well the danger he was putting himself in when he decided to take on the entirety of the Chinese government by way of Hong Kong. And Saint signed up for duty just as I did. Can you imagine if everyone stopped living their life whenever there was some kind of crisis? The world would be a bloody sad place.”

  She cocked her head. “Good morning to you too, Lynx.”

  I took a sip of my doctored-up coffee and let my gaze linger on hers. “I can be a bit off-putting first thing in the morning.”

  “Good to know.”

  “Not you, though, you’re a right morning person, yes?”

  “It’s not something I’m ashamed of.”

  “Nor should you be.”

  “We’re going on a hike. Are you joining us?”

  I looked down the length of Emerson, decked out in her short shorts and a t-shirt that every so often moved enough so I could see the bare skin of her tummy. Up the highest mountain, down the lowest valley—I would follow wherever she led.

  When my eyes returned to her face, her cheeks were the most delightful shade of pink. Again, in that alternate universe Emerson had mentioned the other day, the one in which her parents were encouraging us to have sex, it would be my goal not just to make her giggle, but to blush as often as I could as well.

  After the morning hike, that everyone went on, including the twin girls, carried on the backs of Simon and myself, the lot of us took a dip in the saltwater pool, played on the beach, and partook in far too much food and drink. When we reached the end of our day, I was sad it had come so quickly, and wished Simon and his family could stay longer.

  “When are you and Bridget meeting up again?” I asked once they’d left.

  Emerson blushed that lovely shade of pink. “As soon as I’m back in Boston, although depending on how long I end up staying here, she may try to come down again.”

  “Need I remind you—”

  “Yes, Lynx, you told me so.”

  Rick and Rebecca called an early night for themselves, and I wondered if Emerson would want to do the same.

  “I’m going to watch a movie,” she said and then added, “if you’d like to join me.”

  “I would.”

  She bit her bottom lip. “I’m kind of particular.”

  “Go on.” I smiled inwardly, anxious to hear what her particularities were.

  “I prefer older movies. Romantic comedies. Is that okay?”

  “My favorite as well.”

  She smiled, the first I’d seen since my cousin and his family left. “They are not. Anyway, I’m up to 1958. The choices are Vertigo, Gigi, Separate Tables, South Pacific, and Indiscreet.”

  “Hmm. Tough choices, but I’ll go with Indiscreet.”

  “Clark Gable and Ingrid Bergman. Two of my favorites.”

  I watched as Emerson queued the movie. There was so much about her I could easily become addicted to. The blush of her cheeks, her smile, the soft skin on her neck, her long legs, and what I remembered was between them.

  “Popcorn? It’s one thing I know how to make, and with a pan I’m allowed to use.”

  “I’d love some popcorn, but there are pans you aren’t allowed to use?”

  “Don’t feel too badly for me. My dad isn’t allowed to use them either.”

  “Why not?”

  “My mom is a cooking freak, especially when we’re here, although she’s not much better at home. What was it you said about missions going badly when other people interfere? She feels the same way about food.”

  When Emerson returned a few minutes later with a bowl of near-orgasmic buttery goodness, I considered proposing on the spot. “If this is what you can do with popcorn, I’d love to see what else you know how to make.” Seriously, this was the best popcorn I’d ever had.

  “I’m pretty good with trifle, but that doesn’t require cooking.”

  Imaging whipped cream, strawberries, ladyfingers, and Emerson together, I had to shift where I held the popcorn bowl. When she dipped her hand in, I considered moving it the next time she made a reach.

  “What about you? Do you cook?”

  Having raised my brother from the age of fifteen, I’d learned to cook quite well actually. “I’d show you if you could convince your mother to let me use her pans.”

  “That’s a stretch, but maybe when we’re in Boston.”

  Her face heated, and she quickly looked away.

  “I think I would enjoy cooking with you, Emerson.”

  She smiled. “You might want to rethink the ‘with’ part.”

  “What else do you make other than popcorn and trifle?”

  “Mostly things that come in a box, which are truly disgusting for the most part. I can heat things up in the microwave, though.”

  Twenty minutes into the movie, Emerson was sound asleep, reminding me what she’d said about being a good sleeper that first day whe
n she cut her head and we were in Saint’s apartment.

  I eased my arm around her, loving it when she snuggled against me. I rested my head against hers, breathing her in, and for the second time, a life flashed before my eyes.

  After a day spent in the sun and sand, our children in bed, Emerson and I would cuddle up and watch another year’s best romantic comedies. She’d fall asleep in my arms, but when I carried her upstairs to bed, she’d wake, and we’d spend the hours until dawn ravaging one another’s bodies.

  I’d spend my days making her blush, making her giggle, cooking dinner while she did brilliant things to save the world.

  Was it insane that these were now my fantasies? I’d spent three years dreaming about fucking her senseless, and now I dreamed of settling down and raising children with her.

  Did the fact that I could see these things so clearly mean I was ready to manifest them into reality? Did I even have that option? It wasn’t entirely up to me. Emerson was half of this equation, and I had no idea how she felt.

  22

  Emerson

  When I opened my eyes, the sun was just peeking over the horizon. Lynx was beside me, and we were on the daybed on the back porch. I vaguely remembered falling asleep while we watched a movie, but that was all. Had Lynx carried me out here?

  I did what I’d wanted to do the morning I woke up in his hotel room three years ago, and studied his sleeping form. I’d never woken up next to Tommy, but I doubted even he would look as beautiful as Lynx did.

  His dark eyelashes were impossibly long, and it looked like he had a smile on his face. As though he sensed me staring, his eyes opened.

  “Good morning,” he said with a sexy rasp to his voice.

  “Were you dreaming?”

  When he smiled, he looked like I’d just caught him being naughty. “I was.”

  “About?”

  “Are you sure you want to know?”

  I nodded, and he shifted his body so his steel-hard erection poked into me. He cupped my cheek with his palm and looked into my eyes. “I dreamed about a lot of things last night.”

  “All the same subject?”

  “Yes.”

  I scrunched my eyes.

  “You,” he said.

  “Sex with me.”

  “Not necessarily, although there was a lot of that.”

  I was intrigued. “What else?”

  “Watching movies, making popcorn, spending the day on the beach.”

  “Like we did yesterday.” I looked up at the sky. “I’m going to admit something I probably shouldn’t.”

  He propped his head on his bent arm. “Yeah?”

  “Don’t get too excited…it isn’t what you think.”

  “I read your thoughts, not the other way around.”

  I laughed. “I had a good time yesterday. I liked you being here. With me. With my family. Having Simon and Bridget and their family here. It was nice.”

  It was actually a lot more than nice. I didn’t want to think about him leaving and how quiet, lonely, and boring it would be once he was gone.

  “It was nice,” he murmured.

  “It was like in the movies. The boy and girl meet over summer vacation, and then at the end of it, they go their separate ways, but they’ll always have the memory of that one magical time together.” I needed to change the subject; I’d put myself on the verge of tears.

  “When you used to spend summers here as a child, what were your daydreams? When you closed your eyes, how did you imagine your life would turn out?”

  “That’s quite a question, but not at all the way it did.”

  “How is it different?”

  “I never imagined that I’d graduate from high school when I was fifteen. I sure didn’t imagine that I’d go to Stanford, all the way on the other side of the country.”

  “What was that like? How’d you manage?”

  “My parents rented a house, and my mom lived there the whole time I was enrolled. Dad came out when he could. Ricky…my brother…” Did I really want to talk about this? It was the beginning of the end. “He stayed in Boston because it was his senior year.”

  Lynx looked into my eyes. “And then what?”

  “He was a football player. The first game of the season, he got hurt and had to have surgery. Mom flew out right away so she could be there. I don’t remember where Dad was. Anyway, she made it before they took him in to operate. His recovery was rough. He was in a lot of pain, but instead of being with him, Mom flew back to take care of me.”

  “That’s when he began taking fentanyl.”

  I nodded and closed my eyes. “If Mom had been with him, she would’ve monitored how much he was taking.”

  “Maybe.”

  “No, she would’ve. It’s how she is.”

  “The way it played out wasn’t your fault.”

  I shook my head. It was, because it didn’t end there. My parents spent as much time as they could in California with me. They’d tried to talk my brother into applying for colleges there, but he refused. He wanted to stay in Massachusetts near his friends.

  He’d dropped out of college after the first year, and that’s when they realized there was something very wrong. His first stint in rehab later that year was in a facility less than an hour from Stanford. I sat up and turned my back to him.

  “It wasn’t your fault, Emerson,” Lynx repeated.

  I tried to stand, but he wrapped his arm around my waist.

  “It wasn’t your fault,” he said a third time.

  I bent at the waist, with his arm still encircling it, and cried.

  “Let it out,” he soothed as sobs racked my body. This certainly wasn’t the first time I’d cried over my brother, but it was the first time anyone other than my parents held me while I did.

  I tried to stop, but I was too far gone, so I did as he said and let it out. Lynx stayed behind me, whispering all the while that it was okay, I was okay, and it wasn’t my fault that my brother overdosed.

  I’d heard the words so many times when counseling was a regular part of my life. No matter how many times I heard them, it didn’t make them true.

  If I hadn’t gone to Stanford, things would’ve turned out entirely differently. Maybe if we’d been at the game that night, he wouldn’t have gotten injured.

  “I need to use the bathroom,” I said, moving his arm so I could stand. I went into the house and upstairs. When I came back down, Lynx was sitting at the table, talking to my dad.

  “Rough morning?” my father asked when I joined them. He held his hand out to me.

  “Thinking about Ricky.”

  “It’s my fault,” said Lynx. “I asked Emerson about her childhood, and one thing led to another.”

  “Nothing is anyone’s fault. In fact, it’s a word we don’t use in our house. If we did, we’d never be able to move on with our lives. Instead of losing one precious life, we’d lose four, because no one in our family would truly be living.”

  It wasn’t the first time my father had said something like that. It reminded me of how yesterday morning, Lynx had asked me to consider how sad it would be if everyone stopped living their life whenever there was some kind of crisis.

  Sometimes, though, it was impossible not to get mired down in the sadness of it all.

  Without Simon and Bridget at the house, the rest of the day was quiet. Too quiet. When my mother suggested a change of scenery would do us good, I agreed wholeheartedly.

  We spent the afternoon in town, shopping, and then having drinks and dinner at one of my favorite bayside restaurants. When Lynx reached over and took my hand under the table, it felt like the most natural thing in the world. And then, when we returned to the house, we fell asleep on the daybed like we had the night before.

  When I woke the next morning, I knew I couldn’t spend another day like yesterday. It was going to be far too difficult when Lynx left as it was. The more I got used to him being around, doing things like holding my hand during dinner, the more he
artbroken I’d be when it was time for both of us to return to our lives back in the real world.

  23

  Lynx

  “I feel like it’s time I returned to work,” Emerson said when I opened my eyes and found her sitting next to me with a cup of coffee in hand.

  “Your magical summer holiday is at an end?”

  Emerson bit her bottom lip; it was her worry tell. “At the very minimum, I should check in.”

  When she went inside, I rang Decker.

  “I was wondering when I’d hear from you.”

  “Haven’t you been in communication with Z?”

  “Of course I have, asshole. I’m just giving you shit. What’s up?”

  “Emerson is talking about returning to the office.”

  “Is there any reason she shouldn’t?”

  Not any I could think of. As long as she understood that she would still have security detail, whether it was me personally or someone else, like Angel, for example.

  “What about Warrick? What was he still doing there the other day?” It occurred to me that I’d never called Copeland to discuss having Irish reassigned.

  “I’m glad you brought that up.”

  “Go on.”

  “Something felt off, so I put a tail on him yesterday. You’ll never guess where he went—MIT.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know, but he was there all day.”

  “Perhaps Emerson’s return is in order.”

  I went inside and found her father in the kitchen.

  “Anything I should know about?” he asked.

  “I believe Emerson and I may return to Boston soon.”

  He nodded and poured himself a cup of coffee. “Want some?” he asked.

  “Sure.” It wasn’t as though this was the first time I’d opted for it over tea in the morning. There were certainly times that neither had been an option, given where I was in the world and the level of danger of whatever mission I’d been assigned.