“Thank you for dinner and driving me home,” Lies said. Bernard had insisted on it when he’d found out she’d used public transit. She’d hoped Harry would offer, but he’d disappeared.
“Aren’t you going to invite me in?” Bernard asked.
She was smarter than that. She didn’t think he was suspicious of her, but she was hardly going to give him the chance to search through her things if he was. She didn’t want him planting a wire in her flat either. That was what she planned on doing to him.
There was also the possibility that Harry might drop in unannounced, and she could well imagine what he’d think if he found Bernard already there.
Which brought up another downside to sleeping with Harry. This constant worrying about what he might think or how he’d react could have a negative impact on her investigation. Maybe Dan was right to be so concerned over who intelligence officers slept with. It wasn’t always about giving away secrets. Right now she wasn’t paying enough attention to her job.
“My place is a mess,” she said, offering it as a shame-faced confession, not the lame excuse that it was. “I’m not set up for entertaining yet. We could go to your place instead.” She made the suggestion with youthful enthusiasm, as if it were spur-of-the-moment, when she’d been trying to finagle an invitation to his home all through dinner.
“I’m afraid it isn’t convenient for me to have visitors this evening either,” Bernard said. “I’m having my condo painted.” He was quiet for a moment, as if trying to make up his mind. “I’m having a small dinner party on Saturday. Would you care to join me?”
She gave herself a mental high five. A party with other people in attendance would give her the freedom to move around. It was perfect. “I’d love to.”
“I’ll pick you up at seven.”
He leaned across the console, and before she could prevent it, he kissed her. It was thorough and far from unpleasant. In fact, it was quite nice. He knew what he was doing.
Far better than she did.
The kiss ended. She gathered her briefcase bag and umbrella, scrabbling for the latch on the car door, and nearly knocked over a man on a bicycle in her hurry to get it open. The man swerved to avoid a collision and called angrily over his shoulder for her to watch what she was doing. Lies ignored him, her head a swirl of confusion as she stepped out. Night air tugged at her hair and she reached up to smooth the curls off her cheek.
Bernard, if anything, found her reaction amusing. He rolled down the passenger side window, his smile smug. “I’ll call you tomorrow.”
She sank onto a bench and watched his car as it crossed the narrow bridge spanning the canal before disappearing into traffic on the far side. The one bright spot was that nothing about her reaction had screamed intelligence officer. There’d been nothing intelligent about it at all.
She rubbed her forehead, closing her eyes as she pulled herself back together. A month ago—maybe even two days—being thoroughly kissed by a man she found attractive wouldn’t have bothered her. But now, whether Bernard’s kisses were nice or not, he wasn’t Harry.
And this.
This wasn’t a game she could win.
* * *
Harry stared at the ceiling of his bedroom, trying to figure Lies out and where they now stood, or where he wanted them to.
He’d deliberately not stayed the whole night in her bed. If he had it would have led to expectations, more on his part than hers. She was the last thing he needed and he was far from the right man for her. He didn’t have the mental fortitude a woman like Lies would require. He’d had a friend who’d lost a finger playing with fireworks when they were kids. Lies was the firecracker and he hated to think of what he stood to lose.
She’d acted as if a man cutting and running after a few hours of great sex was nothing unusual for her, and that was driving him mad, because in his estimation the sex had been better than great. It was all he could do not to head over to her place right now, despite it being well after midnight.
All that stopped him was the fear that any rising expectations might indeed solely be his. Outside of work he should leave her alone. Otherwise he’d never get her out of his head.
His rarely-used landline rang. It perched on the table beside his bed, a few inches out of reach. He fumbled for the light, upsetting the lamp in the process, and gave up on it, answering the phone in the dark. He couldn’t read the caller ID, but it could only be one of two people—his mother or Lies—and having either one of them call at this time of night didn’t bode well. “Hello?”
“Hi.”
It was Lies. She had this number so they could speak in private. While her cellphone might be locked up tighter than Camp David his wasn’t, and using a landline was somewhat more secure.
He flopped back on the pillows. He’d left her alone at the expo with Vanderloord. What a stupid move that had been on his part. Worry spiked as to what trouble she’d gotten herself into. “What’s wrong?”
“Bernard kissed me.”
He couldn’t begin to process how he felt about that. Certainly not good, but at least she was safe so he struggled for indifference. He’d known from the beginning how CSIS planned to get information from Vanderloord. He didn’t need to hear the details. “Why are you telling me this?”
“Because he kissed me and I’ve been trying to figure out why.” Lies’s responding impatience to his abruptness did a lot to relax the tightening knot in his gut. “I’ve been dropping hints for days about how much access to confidential information at the embassy I have and yet he doesn’t seem to care. If he’s not after information, then what does he want? His attention has been centered around you. We’ve been assuming it’s because of your position with the embassy, but he had an affair with your girlfriend and now he thinks you’re interested in me. He even asked me about our relationship at dinner. So what does he have against you personally?”
Harry tried to give the question the consideration it deserved, but it was hard when his head was busy fabricating images of Lies with another man. And not just any man—someone he had such little respect for. That was the second kick straight to the groin.
“Mutual dislike would be my best guess.”
“Bernard Vanderloord doesn’t like or dislike people,” Lies replied. “He either has a use for them or he doesn’t. He thinks everything through. If he’s after your connections he’s going about it the wrong way, so that can’t be it—he’s trying to push your buttons, not get on your good side. Why would he do that? What would he gain?”
“I have no idea,” Harry admitted. “Maybe he thinks I have great taste in women.”
Lies went very quiet, sending the conversation in a direction he hadn’t intended and should have avoided, but a childish part of him had wanted to hurt her too. Because he really was hurt that she’d kissed another man.
No one could be more surprised about that than he was.
“Are we so much alike? Alcine and me?” she finally asked.
“You have nothing in common,” he relented. If anything, they were polar opposites—except when it came to Vanderloord.
“Did Alcine pursue Bernard or did he pursue her?”
“I couldn’t say.” Harry hadn’t wanted to know. He hadn’t cared enough to find out. All that mattered was that he and Alcine were finished—as they should have been a long time before the affair ever began.
“But the Albanian diplomat’s wife went after him?”
“I’d have to say yes on that one.”
“I’m missing something.”
“It’s late,” Harry said. “Figure it out in the morning.”
A taut string of tension quivered through the telephone line between them. “You’re angry.”
He hadn’t kept as tight a grip on his hostility regarding her methods of interrogation as he’d thought and he didn’t like giving her more power over him than she already had. “Why should I be angry?”
“Because of a little kiss that meant nothing to me. This is a part I’m
playing.”
Damn right he was angry and she’d just tossed fuel on the fire. He’d been down this road with a woman before and he wasn’t traveling it again. “If you could have avoided it, would you?”
There was a long stretch of silence. “Probably not.”
She had to pick now to be honest. The knot in his stomach returned. “Why did you tell me about it then?”
“I’m not like your ex-girlfriend. I don’t sleep with two men at the same time.”
“To be fair to Alcine, she didn’t either.” He rolled to his side, taking the sheets with him, the phone’s receiver pressed to his ear. He tucked the pillow beneath his head and his elbow beneath the pillow. He should let this go and hang up now. Since he couldn’t, he had to address it. “Tell me something. When it comes to this role you’re playing, where do you plan on drawing the line?”
“It was just a kiss, Harry.”
If it had been the casual kind exchanged between friends she would never have mentioned it to him. Therefore, it mattered.
On the other hand, it also mattered that she’d told him. He couldn’t decide how he felt about it that she had. Angry, yes. Jealous, without a doubt.
But relief factored in too, even though he’d spent the past two days reassuring himself there was no relationship developing between them. Since she’d called him at one o’clock in the morning, apparently to ease her conscience, he could safely assume that the other night hadn’t been casual for her either, adding another layer of complication to where they were headed.
“Let me put it another way,” he said. “Where do you draw the line with men, period?”
“You’re blowing this out of proportion.”
He doubted it. Lies had a lot of natural confidence in herself and it went a long way. But at twenty-eight she was eight years younger than he was, and in some areas it showed. If he looked back to where he’d been in his career at the same point she was at now, it was easy to see that while she might be good at what she did, she wasn’t as experienced as she tried to pretend. She’d already made a mistake once by mixing business and pleasure with some man named Michael. She was making a far greater error with Vanderloord, who had twenty years on her, now.
Harry didn’t know if he and Lies were in the first fragile stages of a relationship or not, or if he was simply another one of her bad decisions, but no matter how big the attraction between them became—and to him it was already out of control—if she went too far with Vanderloord, he suspected he’d never get past it. But were they on the same page as to how far too far was? Who got to decide?
“I’m going to put it in perspective for you,” he said. “If you think he’s trying to get to me through you for some reason, then that kiss was just the beginning—and since you’re the one who’s been encouraging him, you aren’t going to be able to avoid the next move he makes. Trust me. It will be more than a kiss. So. Again. At what point are you planning to draw the line?”
“If I’d wanted a lecture I would have called home. You could try being helpful instead,” she complained. There was a long, drawn-out sigh on her end. “How do I fix this?”
Harry’s heart lightened. She’d recognized her problem and come to him for help in figuring out a solution. That was why she’d called him in the middle of the night. Anger still roiled like an angry sea inside him, but more at the situation now and less so with her. He’d wanted to know who she really was and this was a start.
What he wasn’t as clear on was what she believed her mistake to have been. Was she suffering from a moral dilemma or a professional one? Maybe a little of both?
“Since you think Vanderloord is trying to get at me for some reason—” although Harry couldn’t begin to imagine what it might be “—we could try a combination of Plan A and Plan B. Let him think the attraction is mutual and we’re sleeping together.”
“That shouldn’t be difficult since we are.”
An image of her flushed cheeks and heavy-lidded eyes, and the soft sounds she’d made as she came with him buried inside her invaded his thoughts. So did his resolve to end things between them. He’d been the one to initiate sex, yes, and he was willing to admit his mistake, because they couldn’t continue this way. He didn’t do casual.
“About that,” he began, trying to figure out the most tactful way to handle breaking up a relationship that might not exist. Over the phone wasn’t ideal, but might well be safest. “We need to talk.”
“Another brilliant idea, since it’s too late for you to come over here now.” Her voice went husky with approval and a smoldering of heat. “We can make do with right where we are. Are you in bed?”
“Yes,” Harry replied, left in the dust by the about-face in the conversation, “but I don’t—”
“I’m not wearing any panties,” she interrupted him. “Are you naked too? I’m touching myself. The same way you touched me. Mm. I like it, Harry.” He heard a tiny hitch in her breathing, and a faint edge of delight to her tone that he fought to ignore, even as his mind’s eye drew him pictures of what she might be doing. “I have a finger inside me and I like it so much. Tell me how you’d like to be touching me if you were here.”
This wasn’t going to happen. He was being manipulated—diverted away from a topic Lies no longer wished to discuss—and he knew it. He should put an end to this now. And yet it was oddly exciting. “I am not having phone sex with you.”
“Then I’ll have to do this alone, although it won’t be nearly as much fun. You’re welcome to listen to me pleasure myself though.” A soft, dramatic sigh filled with promise had the blood rushing from his head to his treacherous groin. “But wouldn’t you like to know how I’d be touching you if we were together? Because I’d be using my tongue, Harry. I’d be licking you. Tasting you. I’d have you in my mouth and I’d suck on you. I’d slide my tongue around the rim of your…” She stopped. “What euphemisms do you want me to use? Or are you more of a clinical kind of person? Forget that. I already know you are. But I’m not, so I’m going to say ‘pleasure rod.’” She made a soft, humming sound of enjoyment that had his blood pressure soaring. “Because it’s certainly that.”
He was shocked. Fascinated. And, no matter how hard he fought it, hopelessly aroused even as the ridiculousness of what they were doing hit home. No matter how improbable it seemed, even to him, Canada’s defense trade commissioner to the Netherlands was having phone sex with a CSIS intelligence officer. What should have been a turn-off only served to excite him more. How did she do this to him? How did she make him forget every ounce of decency he owned?
“Dear God. I hope my phone’s not being tapped,” he ground out, giving in.
“It’s not. I checked.” Another rustle of sound, one that sparked his overactive imagination, and he ran through all the possibilities of what she might be doing to herself in his name. “Are you touching yourself, Harry?”
“No.” His throat had gone dry and his response came out hoarse.
“Liar.”
Maybe he was. Maybe he did have his fist around his junk and was pumping it hard. No one could blame him. She had him hot and close to the edge and all she was doing was talking.
Sweat rolled down his back. He had to regain control of this situation, or as much of it as he could. Barring that, he sure as hell wasn’t embarrassing himself first. Not when she could be faking. He wouldn’t put it past her if she were.
Which just made it hotter. He gritted his teeth against the pending eruption.
“I’m touching myself,” she whispered. “I’m rubbing my clit and I’m imagining it’s your fingers on me. I love what you’re doing to me. I—I’m going to…”
A soft cry followed by short, breathy pants sparked a response he had no hope of controlling.
“Goodnight,” he said firmly, and hung up the phone.
Chapter Ten
Sexual satisfaction mingled with relief as Lies, too, hung up the phone, the pleasure of her release magnified by the sounds of Harry’s ho
arse breathing that said he was coming with her, or at least on the brink.
She wasn’t proud of using sex against him—although phone sex with Harry had the potential to be almost as good as it was in person if he’d learn to relax—but the chill in his tone and the polite, professional control throughout their conversation had carried an ominous portent.
She should have let him end things. He was far too judgmental, and not only when it came to her work. People often got carried away and did things they regretted and she was no exception. She liked to have fun. She wasn’t perfect and she refused to apologize for a kiss she hadn’t instigated. She didn’t owe him any explanations. This had been a courtesy call, at least until it morphed into sex.
And yet she’d known in her heart that kissing Bernard was something he would strongly object to. Guilt had slithered into her soul and given her conscience a swift kick in the ass. She had no desire to hurt Harry. He’d been cheated on once. If she’d been in his shoes and he’d kissed another woman after a night of great sex with her, she would have been angry too.
It all changed nothing. She was still going to dinner with Bernard. It was her job and she had no real choice. There’d be other people present so she’d be safe enough. Besides, Harry had given her a viable solution for avoiding any further advances. If Bernard tried to take things to the next level—and she conceded that he probably would—then she was going to develop the worst case of unrequited love he’d ever witnessed and cry on his shoulder over Harry.
Which brought her back to the reason she was in the Netherlands in the first place. She hadn’t lied to Harry when she’d said she believed Bernard was only interested in her because he had a vendetta against him. Bernard was a successful, attractive man who didn’t need to pursue an entry-level embassy employee fresh out of college no matter how cute he found her. The affair with the Albanian diplomat’s wife could be explained. The affair with Alcine could be too, if taken at face value. The two women shared a type—both were dark, very beautiful, and polished in a way only supermodels could be. They screamed expensive. But add Lies into the mix?
His Spy at Night (Spy Games Book 3) Page 12
