Operation Homecoming

by Justine Davis

  “The word cougar applies in more ways than one,” she’d agreed.

  She picked up her glasses from the bathroom counter. She’d ordered them specifically to match this dress, but she had yet to wear them together. When she slipped them on, finally able to see the entire effect, she knew she’d done the best she could. And putting it off wasn’t going to improve things any. With a final sigh, she picked up the small—miniscule, for her—clutch bag from the bathroom counter, then slid her feet into the heels she would likely regret before the night was over.

  Now or never. She turned out the light and headed for the living room.

  Walker, who had shaved and dressed using the small powder room, was sitting on the couch, seemingly engrossed in the book he was holding. The legal thriller Becca had given her, saying it was refreshingly accurate, and that she had left on the side table.

  He looked up then. His eyes widened. His gaze flicked over her. The book dropped, apparently unnoticed, sliding off his knee and onto the cushion beside him.

  “Holy...”

  It came out under his breath, in a tone of such awe she couldn’t help but be warmed by it.

  “Hardly,” she retorted, but she couldn’t deny how his response had made her feel. There had been no artifice about it, no practiced smoothness, just stunned reaction, and it made her heart race.

  Slowly, he got to his feet, still staring.

  “You look...amazing.”

  “Thank you,” she said, meaning it.

  “I’m going to be fighting guys off all night.”

  She studied him for a moment. He was wearing that suit again; it fit him as if it had been custom-tailored for his lean, broad-shouldered frame. The tie this time was a light green that made his eyes look even more green. Odd, she thought, how they both had eyes that did that, took on certain colors around them.

  “I doubt that, but thank you again,” she said. “I thought of wearing contacts. I can do it for a few hours.”

  “No,” he said instantly with a shake of his head and a slight, almost-shy smile.

  And that warmed her all over again. She gave herself an inward shake. It wouldn’t do to go thinking any of this was real.

  “Just for tonight, can we pretend it’s real?” he asked softly, and the words so close to her thoughts startled her.

  “We have to, don’t we?” she said, determined to keep the ultimate goal fixed firmly in her silly head.

  She thought she saw a flicker of disappointment flash across his face, but then it was gone. She realized then that Cutter was standing there, looking from her to Walker and back. He backed up, then suddenly sat, oddly as if he’d wanted to be able to look at both of them at once. And odder still, after a moment, he moved his head in what looked amazingly like a nod.

  “Glad you approve, Cutter,” she said with a laugh.

  “How could he not?” Walker said, gesturing at her.

  “He was looking at you just as much.”

  Walker drew back slightly. “Was that a compliment?”

  “Did you need one?”

  “With you? Yes.”

  She wasn’t quite sure how to take that, but she figured she probably deserved it after the way she’d greeted him that first night. “You’ll fit in,” she said, and left it at that, although secretly she knew every woman in the place, and a few of the men, were going to take note of this newcomer.

  And she was going to do her level best to keep her mind on the task at hand. Despite the fact that he was a major distraction. Which was her own fault. She hadn’t had her guard fully up, hadn’t thought it necessary since she was so angry at him.

  Cutter sighed. It was such an expressive sound it drew both their gazes.

  “I can’t tell if he’s upset we’re leaving him, or if we did something wrong in his eyes,” Walker said, sounding like he was only half joking.

  “Hayley says whatever the most humanlike thing you suspect is probably the right one with him.”

  “He’s...different, I’ll give her that.”

  “Maybe he needs to go out.”

  He shook his head. “Just took him out. Checked his food and water. He should be fine.”

  “Thank you,” she said, surprised he’d been so diligent.

  “My sister’s dog.”

  “My house.”

  “You were busy.” He shifted his gaze from the dog back to her. “Productively. You really do look great.”

  “As opposed to how I usually look,” she suggested.

  Walker winced as she resorted to old habits, deflecting. Cutter sighed again, louder this time. If he hadn’t been a dog, she’d swear there was a note of disgust in it. Oddly, it was enough to make her feel guilty.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, irritated at her own knee-jerk reaction. “You were trying to be nice. I should have just said thank-you.”

  “I wasn’t trying to be nice, Amy. It’s the truth.”

  Somehow that disconcerted her more than that she’d let herself be chided by what she imagined a dog was feeling.

  “Thank you,” she said, meaning it this time.

  Cutter got up then and walked over to the door and sat down again.

  “If you’re looking to sneak out when we open it, you picked the wrong spot, dog,” Walker said.

  Amy smiled at that. The dog had indeed sat down where he would be behind the door when they opened it. Walker did so, checked to make sure the lock was turned, then held it for her politely. She glanced at Cutter, who stayed where he was, half-hidden by the door. He didn’t seem inclined to dart for freedom.

  She stepped outside. Walker followed. Turned to pull the door closed.

  Cutter head-butted it closed from inside, so hard it almost slammed.

  They both stared at the door, then at each other.

  “So that’s what he wanted,” Walker said. “The place to himself.”

  Amy chuckled; she couldn’t help it. “He throws a party in there, Hayley’s cleaning it up.”

  Walker laughed. It was a good laugh. He’d always had a great one, and she only realized in this moment that this was the first genuine, nonironic laugh she’d heard from him. Not that he had much reason to be laughing; his homecoming had been pretty grim, from his point of view.

  She needed to set it all aside, for real now, at least for tonight. Tonight she was an adult woman falling in love with a new man in her life. Not a woman longing for a long-gone childhood crush, or an adolescent in love with an image that wasn’t even real. She had a part to play, so did he, and how well they did it mattered. It could all fall apart if they messed this up. They, and Foxworth, would have wasted a lot of time and energy and resources. She wouldn’t let that happen.

  She would, for this night, pretend.

  He turned to her then, gave her a rather courtly bow and held out his arm. “Shall we begin, Ms. Clark?”

  “Very well, Mr. Cole,” she said with mock formality. “Or rather, Mr. Campbell.”

  She slipped her hand through his bent arm, and the charade began.

  Chapter 29

  “Leverage at its finest, that’s me,” Walker said cheerfully.

  He watched Marcus Rockwell carefully out of the corner of his eye. The man had been assessing him from the moment Amy had introduced them, through the handshake—perfectly measured in strength and length—and the first moments of conversation. He wondered if the man assessed everyone in that manner, even at a social gathering like his own office party.

  He found it interesting that Caden and Rockwell did this, throwing a party for their entire staff every year, not on the anniversary of the founding of the firm, but the anniversary of their first headline-making win. To him it spoke of a mindset, and one that didn’t really fit with the vibe he was getting from Amy’s
boss.

  The head of the firm, Robert Caden, who had shaken his hand with a much more challenging grip, then lost interest when he discovered who he was, now there he could see it. The need for fame as well as fortune. He’d once defended a big musical name in a street shooting, and had used it to help put his name in the headlines almost as often as his famous client.

  So Caden had no interest in a low-level peon at a rival firm, but Rockwell did, at least enough to bother to assess. The question was why? Because that was his nature? Because he cared about Amy? Or because he had something to hide?

  Or worst case, because he suspected Amy...

  Walker was having to focus very hard on what he was supposed to be doing here. Because Amy was playing her part with more effectiveness than he ever would have expected she could. She clung to his arm, looked up at him often with a shy sort of excitement, colored prettily when anyone teased her about him and looked pleased in a very feminine kind of way when people reacted with some surprise that she’d brought someone to the annual gala.

  He’d withstood the sometimes-genuine-seeming—that was Kim, Amy told him—and sometimes-arch—that was Alan—comments with a smile and the most civilized manner he could manage. And when Caden’s wife, Willa, the admittedly gorgeous cougar Amy had warned him about, did indeed zero in on him, he deflected carefully, making it clear Amy had his full interest, while letting enough regret show to flatter the woman’s ego.

  He’d found Mrs. Rockwell more interesting. A very gracious woman, she’d struck him as the sort who was rock-solid. She wasn’t flashy, made no effort to look younger than she was and joked that she’d earned every line and gray hair. Walker didn’t see many of either, and thought her much more charming in her own way than the predatory Willa.

  And throughout he kept a discreet eye on Rockwell. The man greeted everyone, and worked a room well, he thought. It was probably going to be a while before he had a chance to make a move.

  He waved off a waiter, gesturing with his still half-full glass of champagne. Amy, he noticed, was still nursing her glass of soda water, a slice of lime impaled on the rim.

  “No champagne to celebrate?” he asked.

  “I don’t drink.”

  “There go my plans to get you drunk and take advantage.” Damn. That was stupid.

  And then he realized he was reacting again as if this weren’t an act, a show put on for others. But Amy stayed cool. If she was irritated by his words, it didn’t show. She just gave a one-shouldered shrug. In that knockout dress, the gesture was beyond elegant.

  “It can be genetic,” she said. “Why take the chance?”

  A memory of her father shot through his mind, and he felt even worse. “Sorry. I should have guessed.”

  And then rescue—and the opening—appeared, in the form of Amy’s friend Becca. The tall blonde with the great smile and a knockout figure seemed to cause a wave in the room as she arrived, clad in a dramatic, elegant suit with a perfectly fitted red jacket and a slim black skirt that bared a bit but not too much leg.

  Amy had told him Becca was the nicest of the lawyers, although you’d never know it in a courtroom. She’d always been kind to Amy, who as a paralegal sometimes straddled the line between lawyer and support personnel, and treated her as a friend, not just an employee. For that reason alone, Walker was inclined to like her.

  “Well!” she exclaimed as she looked him up and down after Amy had introduced him. “So this is the smart one who saw the gem we have in Amy!” She leaned in and touched him briefly on the shoulder, casually, unsuggestively. “You are a very lucky man, Mr. Campbell.”

  Well, that was a word he hadn’t applied to himself in a while. But then again, he was standing here, breathing, so maybe he should rethink that.

  “Yes, I am,” he said, making it sound as he was sure it would, if it were real, if Amy really was falling for him. Just the thought made him ache inside, and he was glad for more reasons than one when Rockwell joined them to greet the new arrival.

  After exchanging niceties, Becca turned back to him. “So how do you like working for Alex Armistead?”

  And there it was. The opening he’d been hoping for.

  “Let’s just say he’s not quite the saint he’s made out to be.”

  He’d made sure Rockwell was in his peripheral vision when he’d said it, and he saw the instant reaction. The man’s eyes narrowed, and his focus sharpened.

  “Really?” Becca’s tone of surprise seemed genuine.

  He shrugged. “I’m tight with his family, and family knows secrets others don’t, you know? He’s pulled some things, I could tell you...”

  “But you won’t,” Rockwell said, sounding almost stern, “because it would be highly inappropriate.”

  Interesting, Walker thought. Rockwell sounded almost like he was warning him. So was his initial reaction a sign of interest or something else? Was he rising to the bait, hoping whatever Walker knew was something he could get from him privately and use? Did he want to make sure no one else did?

  “Oh, Marcus, you old stick-in-the-mud,” Becca said with a laugh, “we could have learned something juicy!”

  “Well, maybe something illicitly tempting,” Walker said with a smile at her, still keeping Rockwell at the edge of his vision. “If you like lots of money, that is.”

  The man’s expression narrowed again. Instincts honed in five years of hell fired suddenly, and he left it at that. Just Rockwell’s reaction told him the man was as quick and sharp as Amy had warned him. And he’d surely captured his attention.

  The bait had been dangled. Now came the slow dance of luring the mark into the net.

  For as well as the night had gone, goal-wise, Amy didn’t seem happy as, much later, they headed back to her place.

  “I liked your friend Becca,” he said.

  She gave him a sideways glance. “Of course you do. Y chromosome.”

  She sounded merely amused, not upset, but he felt compelled to go on. “I meant how she so clearly put me off-limits.”

  “Becca’s not a poacher. She obviously doesn’t need to be.”

  “I would imagine not.”

  “And fair warning, she’s very, very smart. Mr. Rockwell always said the Soren case wouldn’t have gone their way if Becca hadn’t been second chair.”

  Her tone was still amused, her liking for the woman apparent. So that wasn’t what was bothering her. Although why he’d thought for a moment it should, he didn’t know, since their relationship was pure fantasy.

  Yeah. Your fantasy. If she wanted it to be real, why is she warning you about Becca, like she expected you to go after her?

  When they reached her condo and were walking from the garage to the door, he tried again. “Kim seemed nice.”

  “She is. She’s very sweet.”

  He sighed at the short answer. “So what’s bothering you? I thought it went well, for our purpose.”

  She glanced at him. “I was just thinking about Mrs. Rockwell. And their sons.”

  “I liked her. A lot.” That seemed to surprise her. “She seemed like the kind of woman you could really talk to, who would give you advice worth taking.”

  She was truly surprised now. “That’s exactly who she is.”

  They reached her front porch, a relatively small space that forced them to stand within inches of each other. He tried to ignore that. Just as he had tried to ignore all evening how spectacular she looked, even as he had to play the part of besotted new lover. The dichotomy had set him so on edge there had been times he’d thought he was going to fly into a million pieces.

  Determined to keep that foolishness hidden, he worked to keep the routine conversation going despite the sudden intimacy of the tiny porch and the glow of the light above making the darkness around them more stark, increasing the feeling that they we
re alone, together.

  “So you’re worried how this is going to affect her if it turns out her husband is dirty?” There, he thought. That should do it.

  “Yes,” she said as she slid the key into the lock. “She deserves better.”

  “Not everyone gets what they deserve,” he said. “I’m the walking proof of that, aren’t I?”

  He said it wryly, fully expecting another acerbic jab. He’d take it, if it stirred her out of this worried state, and kept his mind where it belonged.

  But instead, she lifted her gaze to his face and said quietly, “I’m not sure what you are anymore.”

  In an instant all his good intentions vanished. If he’d had a moment to think, he might have been able to stop. But she was too close—he’d been fighting too hard all evening and he was moving before he could stop himself. His hands grasped her shoulders, and his mouth came down on hers.

  And at the first touch of her lips beneath his, everything he’d ever known or thought he’d known about attraction, about want and need, was blasted to infinity.

  Chapter 30

  The kiss she’d dreamed of for years wasn’t what she’d dreamed of.

  It was much, much more.

  The shock that he’d done it was burned away in the first moment, leaving nothing but the sudden, fierce response that swamped her. It was stunning in its heat and shocking in its power. None of her muscles seemed to work anymore, and that tiny, sensible part of her brain that was still working couldn’t seem to command them, to keep her from leaning into him.

  His arms came around her, and she felt the heat of him, the strength of him, as she sagged against his chest. He deepened the kiss, gently probing, and when she felt the brush of his tongue, slow, hesitant, as if he were tasting something inexpressibly sweet, she lost what little sense she had left.

  It wasn’t merely everything her girlish heart had imagined. It was so very much more that she’d lacked the knowledge then to imagine. She’d never known you could feel just a kiss in so many places. Her toes were curling, her fingers tingling, and the sensation of heat pooling low and deep inside her was creating an ache unlike anything she’d ever experienced.