by Lucy Monroe
“I agree…for now.”
Ethan questioned the sincerity of Beth’s agreement that evening when Prescott called to tell her she got the job. She gushed and used a breathy voice Ethan considered strictly his…for those times when he made her breathless. He tackled her on it when she hung up the phone and she laughed.
“I was nervous. It showed.” She didn’t look nervous to him, sitting there in the chair by the desk. She looked excited, her dark eyes glowing with anticipation.
He’d taken off his boots and was lying on the bed going over the architectural plans for Prescott’s house and grounds. The house was modeled after a large English manor, complete with a maze and rose garden. On the Oregon coast for crying out loud. The man was pretentious and rich enough to indulge his tastes.
“Sounded more to me like you were flirting. He probably thought so, too.”
“I’m glad.” And she had the temerity to look like she meant it. “I didn’t realize I’d be so nervous when he called and I wouldn’t want that to come through the phone lines.”
He scowled. “We agreed you were not going to flirt.”
“I didn’t flirt, but I’d rather he thought I was doing that than that I was so nervous at a job offer I could barely speak.”
“Try harder next time.”
“Try harder to be nervous?” she asked, sounding confused.
Annoyance spun through him. “Not. To. Flirt.”
She gave him that look, the one that said she thought he was being ridiculous. “Since I wasn’t flirting, that should be no problem.” She bit her lower lip and twisted a dark strand of her shoulder-length silky hair around her finger. “I hope I’m not a total basket case once I start working for him.”
“You won’t be. This job is going to be a piece of cake for you.”
“Yes. Right.” She looked like she was committing that fact to memory.
He bit back a smile. He wasn’t sure why she was so concerned, but she had no reason to be and she’d realize that sooner or later. As long as she refrained from tempting the tiger to hunt with her flirtation.
At that moment, Ethan wasn’t completely certain which man he considered the tiger she had to be wary of unleashing—himself or Prescott. “When do you start?”
“He would like me to start next Tuesday. He’ll be out of town on Monday. I told him I could.”
“No problem. We talked about this and we’ve already got accommodations.”
“We do? Then why are we staying at a hotel?”
“Convenience. Another layer of safety. The team is still working on setting up security.”
“When is move-in day?”
“Monday.”
“That’s good timing.”
“Always.”
“Are we staying here until then?”
“It makes the most sense. Did you pack before we left?”
“Maude has my suitcases she can ship tomorrow.”
“Mine, too.”
“I guess we were both pretty confident this was going to work.” Beth was still twisting her curling hair around her finger, her expression uncertain.
“Yeah, we were. But you aren’t sounding so confident now.”
She took in a deep breath and let it out. “I guess it just became a lot more real for me when I got the job. How long do you think we’ll be out here?”
“I don’t know, baby. A job like this can last as little as a week with a lucky break and as long as a year if things get hard.” Strangely, the thought of living a year in the same house, sharing a bed with Beth, did not bother him at all.
However, she blanched, looking almost sick at the prospect. “A year…I hope we get a lucky break.”
Her reaction bothered him and he had to force himself to reassure her instead of demanding what her problem was. She probably wanted to get that new life of hers started right away and he didn’t want to hear about it. “I’ve got a good feeling about this case. It won’t last forever.”
“You won’t let it. You really want to nail Prescott.”
“You know it.”
“You really think he’s responsible for the deaths of your friends?”
“I know he is, Beth. Don’t ever underestimate the evil that lurks behind the charming exterior.”
“He’s not charming.”
“You didn’t sound like you didn’t think he was charming on the phone.” His voice sounded accusing and that bothered him.
He’d never been possessive like this with a woman before, but like he’d told her, she wasn’t trained for that sort of undercover work. And he didn’t want her hurt, or compromising the case. That’s all it was.
“Are we back to that?”
“I’d rather be in bed.”
Her eyes widened, and instead of interest he read panic in their dark depths. “We haven’t had dinner yet.”
“We can order room service. Later.”
“But…”
“I told you…I think lots of sex is going to help us control the intensity.”
Her face went blank and then she got that stubborn look. “About the intensity,” she said the word like it was something sour she was trying to get off of her tongue. “I don’t know how to do light sex.”
“We’ll work on it together.”
“I don’t think so.”
“What do you mean, you don’t think so?” His heartbeat was hammering inside his chest all of a sudden for no reason.
“I mean I think that no sex makes a lot more sense than trying to keep intimacy between us low-key. I’m not like you. I haven’t been trained how to divorce my emotions from physical pleasure with another person.”
“I never said my emotions were divorced from you.”
She stood up, slipping on her shoes. Not a good sign. “You said you need to keep your focus on the case and I agree. I don’t want to do anything to put this assignment in jeopardy. I haven’t had your training. I definitely don’t have your experience with casual sexual encounters. The smartest thing for both of us to do is to pull back from any sort of physical intimacy.”
“I’m not a damn gigolo.”
“I never said you were.”
“Casual sexual encounters?” he asked with a bite to his tone that would have made a rattler turn tail and run.
She just shrugged. “Call it whatever you want, but we just aren’t in the same league. I knew that going in, but I didn’t realize it would be so hard to hold back my emotions, or that you might have a problem with how good the sex was between us. I’m not like you, Ethan. I’m not like my parents. When I feel, I want the freedom to express those feelings and I’m not comfortable sharing my body or my bed with a man who has issues with intensity. I want you. You know that, but I’m asking you not to capitalize on it.”
She didn’t raise her voice, or get choked up, or any of the other feminine emotional weapons at her disposal. She spoke with quiet dignity, every word laced with conviction. She wasn’t budging. Not for her own sex drive. Not for him. Not for anybody.
She picked up her purse. “I’ve come to realize I’m an intense person. And that’s okay with me. You don’t have to like it. My parents don’t have to like it. Alan didn’t have to accept it. But I do accept it and I’m through trying to fit in with people who don’t. You said we were friends and I’ve always believed we are, but we’re going to have to make this assignment work without the sex thing.” She stepped toward the door. “I want to go to dinner. I’ll wait for you to get ready if you want, but if you’d rather stay in and get room service, I’m fine going on my own.”
“Just like that, no discussion?” He wasn’t only talking about dinner and he knew she was smart enough to see that.
She nodded, a small but decisive jerk of her head. “It’s the way it has to be. I need you to accept that.”
“You think we can live together in the same hotel room and keep our hands off each other?”
“If we both try, yes.”
“And you expect me
to try?”
“I wouldn’t respect you if you didn’t.”
“Only a woman would come back with an answer like that.”
“If I were a man, we wouldn’t be having this discussion.”
“Damn right.”
She laughed when all he wanted to do was howl at the moon in frustration.
He glared at her. “Let me get my boots on and we’ll go.”
Chapter 15
Dinner was quiet. Ethan refused to discuss the case, or anything else for that matter. He didn’t pout—exactly—but she’d never seen him like this. He’d always been either teasing or professional, but right now, he reminded Beth of a wounded bear and she wasn’t about to push him into lashing out.
She didn’t know where the words she’d spoken before leaving the hotel room had come from. She hadn’t made a conscious decision to pull away from intimacy with him. In fact, she’d realized on the drive back from the coast that as painful as his rejection of her intense nature was, their relationship was giving her an opportunity to get to know the woman who lived inside her skin in a way she’d shied away from doing before.
But his comment about trying to control the intensity in their sex had sparked something inside her. Not an explosion so much as a weary acceptance. She was not what he needed and he would never be what she needed. And she couldn’t handle making love with him under those conditions. She was half in love with him already, wasn’t even sure it wasn’t a full-blown loss of insanity. Continued intimacy would tear her apart when she had to walk away, or watch him do so.
And if he wanted her, he had to want all of her…not just the parts he was comfortable with. He’d made it obvious he didn’t and that left her no choice. No sex.
They were in the car, headed back to the hotel when she said, “Can we stop at a store that sells camping equipment?”
“Why?”
“I’d like to get a sleeping bag. I think it would be easier if we didn’t share a bed, but I assume you’d have an issue with asking for another room or a rollaway.”
“You’d assume right.”
“That leaves a sleeping bag.”
He nodded, but didn’t say anything. When they reached the store, he left her in the car to go inside and buy it. He was so cold and uncommunicative, she didn’t ask him to get her a pad for under it. She didn’t want another one of those emotionless looks slicing her way.
When they got to the hotel, he made the pallet on the floor in silence. She noticed he’d gotten one of those extra long sleeping bags and a pad.
“Thank you.”
He turned to face her, his green gaze flat. “For what?”
“The pad. It will make the floor a lot more comfortable.”
“Will it?”
“I think so. I’ll just go get ready for bed.”
He nodded.
When she came out, he was in the sleeping bag, his back to the bed.
“I didn’t mean for you to be the one to sleep on the floor.”
Silence.
“Ethan?”
“Go to bed, Beth.” He even sounded like a wounded bear.
“I really don’t mind taking the floor.”
“If you want me to ignore the way my body is aching for yours right now, I suggest you be quiet, get in bed, and go straight to sleep.”
Even she wasn’t going to argue with that tone and she did exactly as he suggested. Except going to sleep. She lay in the dark, thinking about Ethan, about her decision, and trying not to move so he wouldn’t know she was still awake, long into the night.
Ethan got up a little after dawn. Beth was sleeping. Finally. She’d been awake most of the night. Like him.
She hadn’t wanted him to know she was awake and he hadn’t been sure of his self-control if he acknowledged it. It was that lack of self-control that had dumped him in his current predicament. The way he responded to Beth—the way she responded to him, the amount of pleasure they found in one another’s bodies—had spooked him.
He’d thought he could control it, put some kind of barrier around it, but that hadn’t worked. He’d hurt her in his attempt to regain a measure of his self-control. She’d lumped him in with her parents and Hyatt and that was not a place he wanted to be in Beth’s brain. He knew she didn’t consider any of them people she could truly rely on and he wanted her to rely on him.
Right now, she needed to rely on him for her safety and as much as he didn’t like her “no sex” boundary, he had to wonder if it wasn’t for the best. He didn’t think straight around her and he couldn’t afford to have his thinking and reactions clouded right now. Which he’d known all along, but Beth had been the one professional enough to take the stand that really needed taking.
And he was going to start acting like the professional he was. Starting today. The next two days would be best spent making themselves familiar with the area and getting a feel for the small towns closest to the north and south of Prescott’s estate. It would also keep them out of the hotel room and away from the temptation of the bed that looked too big with Beth’s small form curled in the middle of it.
They moved into a small cabin a few miles from the Prescott estate on Monday as Ethan had promised. The second bedroom had been rigged up as a home office for the pseudoauthor. The state-of-the-art computer and peripherals would serve two purposes. Ethan would use it to oversee their security and continue his research on Prescott. It would also perpetuate the cover of a writer seeking his muse in the coastal forests.
Beth noticed that a daybed graced the wall opposite the computer desk. She would insist on sleeping on it and this time Ethan would listen. He was much too tall for the twin bed, but she wasn’t. And she didn’t want to sleep in the middle of another king-size bed that only succeeded in making her wish she’d never made the no sex decree.
She didn’t regret it. Not really. She had no choice if she wanted to maintain a shred of her emotions when the case was over, but she wanted Ethan. So much. He was no longer a fantasy, but a living, breathing man who she knew could give her more pleasure than she’d ever experienced—or probably ever would experience again.
But he didn’t want that intense pleasure and she had to keep remembering that fact.
Despite its setting, the cabin wasn’t at all rustic. The small kitchen was filled with ultramodern appliances and the television had satellite access. There was a whirlpool bath in the master suite and the furnishings were modern retro.
As she looked around, she realized it fit the image Ethan had chosen to portray of himself perfectly.
“Are we safe to talk here? Always?” Beth asked after discovering her clothes unpacked right along Ethan’s in the master bedroom.
She supposed that made sense, but it felt funny in the pit of her stomach all the same. Did the special training Ethan had mentioned help a woman separate the fantasy from reality in situations like this?
Ethan was looking out the window with field glasses and jotting on his PDA. “Yes. We’ve got a signal jammer activated that mocks television satellite interference.”
“Clever.”
“We like to think so.”
She swallowed, suddenly tired of the distance between them but unsure how to bridge the gap without opening the sex issues. “I like the cabin.”
“Good. It fits my image…our image.”
“Yes, it does.”
“I know you are going to want to sleep on the daybed in the office.” His voice was devoid of emotion, but she sensed that offended him.
“Um…yes.”
“Don’t go in there dressed for bed at night until the privacy curtains are shut both there and in the master bedroom.”
“You think Prescott is going to spy on his new employee?”
“He might. We don’t make stupid mistakes counting on the opposite…ever.”
“Got it, sir.” She saluted smartly.
And he smiled. “Sassy, aren’t you?”
“I’ve been accused of it a time or two.”<
br />
“I bet.”
At the return of his teasing demeanor, some of the tension that had clung to her since Friday evening dissipated. “I start work tomorrow,” she offered for lack of anything better to say.
“I know.” He turned to face her fully, putting the full weight of his attention directly on her.
For no reason she could fathom, her stomach dipped.
“Are you mentally prepared?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“You were nervous before.”
“I’m not any longer.”
“Why?” he asked, disconcerting her.
She wasn’t about to tell him that she’d realized the reality of working for Prescott wasn’t going to be nearly as overwhelming as the reality of living with Ethan in the small cabin.
“I guess I just settled down. Like you said I would.”
“Did it change how you feel about anything else?”
“You mean my decision to move away from D.C. or the sex thing?” she asked with more bravado than she felt.
“Either…both.”
“No.”
He nodded. “My car and your cats arrive in Portland on Thursday from the transportation company. We’ll pick them up after you get off work.”
“You could go in the morning, after you drop me off.” She couldn’t wait to see the kittens again and appreciated the fact that Ethan hadn’t expected her to board them out for the duration of the assignment.
“No.”
She frowned. “Why not?”
“I’m not leaving you alone at the estate.”
“I’m going to be working there five days a week for who knows how long…it’s not a problem.”
“I will be here whenever you are there. Close enough to get to you if there’s a need.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
He just shrugged. The man and his protective attitude were going to drive her insane. But he’d figure out on his own that he had better things to do with his time than sit around the cabin and twiddle his thumbs while she worked.
He moved out of the room, going to the window in the kitchen to look out and take more notes on his PDA.
“What are you looking for?”
“It’s just basic recon. I want to know what I can see of our environment from each vantage point in the cabin in case the information is necessary at some point in the future. I’ll do outside recon in a little bit…checking to see what areas have a good vantage point for looking in through our windows.”
