Hero Under Cover

by Suzanne Brockmann

  There were another few seconds of silence. Then Annie said, “Thanks, Taylor, that’s really sweet. Good night.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  WAFFLES. ANNIE WOKE UP WANTING waffles. It didn’t happen too often—only about twice a year—but when the urge came upon her, she’d get the waffle iron down from the top shelf of the kitchen cabinet, pull out the one-hundred-percent pure maple syrup and actually spend more than her usual five minutes in the kitchen.

  She climbed out of bed, pulled her bathrobe on over her pajamas, found her slippers and shuffled into the kitchen.

  A short time later, the batter was nearly entirely blended, and the waffle iron was heating and Annie was rummaging through the refrigerator, looking for the maple syrup. She spotted the glass bottle way, way in the back. Almost diving in headfirst, she triumphantly pulled it out, only to discover it was nearly empty.

  “Oh, shoot,” she said crossly. She turned the waffle iron down to the very lowest setting, and went back into her bedroom.

  Pete was in the bathroom. Annie could hear the sound of the shower running, so she quickly pulled on her jeans and a sweatshirt and slipped her feet into her sneakers. She ran her brush quickly through her hair, and pulled it back into a ponytail, then grabbed her purse and her car keys.

  She was nearly out the front door when she realized she should probably leave a note for Pete. She quickly scrawled one on the back of an envelope, and left it at the bottom of the stairs.

  Her car started grouchily in the cold morning air, and Annie found herself wishing that she’d taken the time to grab her jacket from where she had left it in the office. It was only a few minutes’ ride to the grocery store, though, so she didn’t go back for it.

  She parked in a space close to the store, and ran to get inside quickly. The automatic doors opened with a mechanical swish, then closed behind her. She didn’t bother to get a shopping cart or even a basket, going straight to the aisle that held the boxed pancake mixes and the syrup. There were shelves and shelves of the cheap, imitation syrup, but only one brand of the real stuff. It was from Vermont, no less. She took the glass bottle to the express line and was standing there, cheerfully reading the headlines on the sensational gossip newspapers, when she was roughly grabbed.

  Startled, she let out a yelp before she realized who had grabbed her.

  Pete.

  He was barefoot, wearing only his jeans and an unbuttoned shirt. His hair was wet and he brushed a drop of water from his nose as he glared angrily at her.

  “What the hell did you think you were doing?” he said, his voice getting steadily louder until the very last word was practically roared.

  The cashier looked at him curiously, and rang up Annie’s maple syrup.

  “I had to get this,” Annie said, wide-eyed, motioning to the syrup. “You were in the shower, so—”

  He was holding her tightly, his fingers encircling her upper arm. “So you should’ve waited until I got out, dammit,” he spat out.

  He was furious, and he wasn’t trying to hide it. She could see the muscles in his jaw working, the force of his anger in his eyes. She had never seen such emotion on his usually carefully controlled face.

  “Four dollars and seventy-nine cents,” the cashier said, snapping her gum and watching them with unconcealed interest.

  Before Annie could take her wallet from her purse, Pete threw a five dollar bill down on the counter and snatched up the bottle of maple syrup. He pulled her toward the door with him. “You are to go nowhere without me,” he said, his voice harsh. The mechanical door didn’t open fast enough for him, and he slammed it with the palm of his hand, pushing it, accentuating his words. “Nowhere.”

  As they stepped out into the parking lot, out into the cold, crisp air, Annie pulled free of him, taking the maple syrup possessively and stashing it in her purse. “Oh, come on, Taylor,” she said, getting angry herself. What gave him the right to drag her out of the store and shout at her in front of the entire town? What gave him the right to tell her what to do, anyway?

  “No. You come on, Annie. You’re a smart lady.” Pete made a tremendous effort to lower his voice, and his words were clipped, spoken through tightly clenched teeth with a quietness that sounded far more dangerous than his outburst. “Nowhere means nowhere. I don’t want you stepping outside of the house without me, do you understand?”

  When he couldn’t find her in the house, he had been so scared, he could barely breathe. There was some kind of electric frying pan in the kitchen, and the power had been left on. There was a mixing bowl filled with something on the counter, eggs and flour all over the place. The first thing he thought was that somehow she’d been snatched right out from underneath his nose. Her car keys and purse were missing, but her jacket was right where she’d thrown it last night. He had been damn close to calling the FBI when he found her little scribbled note at the foot of the stairs.

  And the fear that had tightened his chest had turned instantly to anger. White-hot, burning, seething anger.

  But fear gripped him again as he raced to the grocery store without even taking time to pull on his boots. What if someone had been watching, waiting for the moment when she was alone, unprotected…?

  “Aren’t you getting a little carried away, Taylor?” Annie said, her own eyes flashing with anger now, her breath making a white mist in the cold air. “I only went to the grocery store, for crying out loud.”

  She turned on her heel and started toward her car. But Pete caught her arm, spinning her around, hard, to face him.

  “What, you think you can’t get killed in a grocery store?” he said roughly. “Think again, Annie. I’ve seen more victims of assassins’ bullets than I care to remember—every one of them killed because they were careless, because they didn’t think they needed protection while they ran to the bank or the pharmacy. Or the grocery store.”

  She tried to pull free, but his hands were on her shoulders, and he wouldn’t let go.

  “You can not go out by yourself,” he said, his eyes burning with intensity as he tried to make her understand how important this was. “Annie, there’s someone out there who says that he wants you dead.” His voice broke with emotion. “Damn it—”

  She was staring up at him, her lips slightly parted. Her long hair had come free of its restraint, and it hung down around her face, moving slightly in the chill wind. Pete didn’t notice the cold air blowing against the bare muscles of his chest. He was unaware of the cold, sharp pebbles of the parking lot underneath his bootless feet. All he could see, all he could feel, was Annie. He was drowning. Drowning in the shimmering blue ocean of her eyes…

  He wasn’t sure how it happened, but suddenly she wasn’t trying to pull away from him anymore. Suddenly she was in his arms and he was kissing her.

  He wasn’t supposed to be doing this.

  Her lips opened under his, and he plundered the sweetness of her mouth desperately. He wanted more than just a taste, he wanted to consume her, totally, absolutely, utterly.

  Her mouth was softer and sweeter than he’d ever dreamed, so soft, yet meeting the fierceness of his kisses with an equally wild hunger. She clung to him, one hand in his hair, pulling his head down toward her, the other up underneath his shirt, exploring his muscular back, driving him insane.

  He shouldn’t be doing this.

  He groaned, pulling her even closer to him, pressing her hips in tightly against him, kissing her harder, deeper, longer. He kissed her with all the frustration, all the pent-up passion of the past few weeks. Man, he’d wanted to kiss this woman since he first set eyes on her from behind the one-way mirror in the airport interrogation room.

  He shouldn’t be doing this.

  She moved, rubbing against his arousal, and he heard himself make a sound—a low, animal-like growl in the back of his throat. Oh, man, he wanted her more than he’d ever wanted anything in his life. He wanted to bury himself deep in her heat, deep inside of her. He wanted to make love to her and never stop
, never stop, never…

  Stop.

  He shouldn’t be doing this.

  It wasn’t right.

  He couldn’t do this.

  Kendall Peterson, a.k.a. Pete Taylor, was a strong man, but he didn’t know how strong he was until he pulled away from that kiss.

  Annie stared up at him, her eyes molten with desire, her cheeks flushed and her lips swollen from the force of his mouth on hers. He watched her chest rise and fall rapidly with each breath she took, saw the pebbled outline of her taut nipples even underneath the thick material of her sweatshirt.

  “Pete,” she breathed, reaching for him.

  Somehow he kept her at arm’s length. “Get in your car,” he said hoarsely. “I’ll follow you home.”

  FOR THE HUNDREDTH TIME THAT afternoon, Annie found herself staring sightlessly at her lab equipment, unable to concentrate. She looked across the room to where Pete was sitting and pretending to read a newspaper. He had to be pretending—he hadn’t turned the page in over an hour.

  As she watched him, he glanced up, meeting her eyes. His expression was so guarded, he might have been carved from stone. In a flash, she remembered the way his face had looked after he had kissed her. She’d read so many things in his eyes. She’d seen desire, but no, it was more than mere desire. It was hunger—a burning, scorching need. But she’d also seen confusion and uncertainty. And fear.

  Annie sighed, glancing over to the other side of the room, where Cara was working. Cara had been in the office when they’d come back from the grocery store.

  Pete had just kissed Annie like no other man in her life had ever kissed her, and she had a million things to say to him, only they had no chance to talk, no privacy to continue what they’d started. And she got the feeling that he was relieved about that.

  That feeling turned to certainty as the day wore on and Pete made a point to keep Cara around, like a chaperon at a high school dance. And those rare times when Cara was out of the room, he managed to be on the telephone.

  Annie restarted the test she was running, a test to check the purity of a bronze knife blade, and sighed again. He’d kissed her, and suddenly it all seemed so clear to her, so obvious. Sure, they were friends. It was true that she liked him on that level. But there was no way she would’ve reacted the way she had to a kiss from a mere friend. That kiss had been more disturbingly intimate, more earth-shatteringly intoxicating than anything she had ever felt before.

  No, there was more than mere friendship here.

  Truth was, she was falling in love with this man.

  And he was scared to death of her.

  ANNIE LOOKED AT CARA ACROSS the office. “Well, shoot,” she finally said with a smile. “It’s about time.”

  Cara nervously fiddled with the toys on her desk. “It still seems so sudden to me,” she said. “I mean, marriage…”

  “MacLeish, you’ve known the man for three years.” Annie shook her head.

  “But as friends,” Cara said. “We were just friends.”

  “I can’t think of a better way to start,” Annie said quietly. “Have you set a wedding date?”

  Cara grinned. “Jerry wants us to fly to Las Vegas this weekend.”

  “Good old Jerry,” Annie said, rolling her eyes. “Always the romantic.”

  They both were quiet for a moment, then Annie asked, “So, are you trying to work up the courage to give me notice?”

  Cara looked up, shocked. “No!” she said. “I mean, I don’t know…. You know, Jerry’s trying to get funding to go to Mexico in February….”

  “You’re irreplaceable, MacLeish,” Annie told her. “But don’t worry, somehow I’ll muddle through.”

  “I’ll definitely stay until the end of December,” Cara said. “Remember, we were going to take January off anyway….”

  Annie turned away, not wanting her friend to see the sadness that she knew must be on her face. January was looking to be a very cold, very lonely month, with both MacLeish and Taylor leaving for good…. She managed to smile at Cara as she left the room, though. “Congratulate Tillet for me, will you?”

  CHAPTER NINE

  FROM THE LAB, ANNIE HEARD THE sound of the door closing as Cara left for the evening. She heard Pete slide the bolt home and turn on the alarm system.

  This was it. They were finally alone in the house, just the two of them.

  She heard the sound of Pete’s cowboy boots on the hardwood floor of the entryway, and her heart went into her throat. Turning, she saw him standing in the doorway. His face was carefully expressionless, but there was a tenseness about the way he was standing, an infinitesimal tightness in his shoulders. He was as nervous as she, Annie realized.

  “I’m sending out for a pizza,” he said.

  It was the first full sentence he’d spoken to her since they’d gotten home from the grocery store, since that kiss.

  “Want to split it?” he asked. “There’s a place in town that delivers. Tony’s. Unless you know someplace better….”

  He was trying to pretend nothing had happened, Annie thought. He was standing there talking about the best place in town to get a pizza, when they should have been addressing the fact that that morning he had taken her into his arms and nearly kissed the living daylights out of her.

  His casualness didn’t come as a surprise—not after the way he’d avoided her all day. He was telling her, not in so many words of course, but he was telling her that he regretted the kiss, that it had been a mistake.

  Disappointment shot through her, and she turned away, not wanting him to see it in her eyes.

  “You know, if you’re not done working, I can wait to call,” Pete offered. “’Course, it’ll be about forty-five minutes before the pizza’s delivered even if I call now.”

  Her composure regained, Annie looked at him. From the tips of his boots to the top of his short, dark hair, the man was extremely easy on the eyes. Faded blue jeans cut loose, but not loose enough to hide the taut muscles of his legs—long, strong legs—stretched way up over narrow hips. His plain brown leather belt with the shining buckle encircled his trim waist. He was wearing a heavy white canvas shirt, the kind with snap fasteners instead of buttons, open at the throat, sleeves rolled up to just below his elbows. He drove his hands deep into the pockets of his jeans, and the tanned, sinewy muscles of his forearms strained the fabric of his shirt. His shoulders were broad, his chest powerful.

  And that was just his body.

  Inside that perfectly shaped head, behind those intense dark eyes, underneath that thick, black hair, beneath the movie-star features, was a mind and a soul that Annie couldn’t help but like, couldn’t help but fall in love with.

  But he didn’t want her. Not the way she wanted him. If he did, he wouldn’t be acting so business-as-usual, would he?

  “Pizza sounds great, Taylor,” she said, keeping her tone light. “Forty-five minutes’ll give me just enough time to finish up in here.”

  He turned so that his face was in the shadows. “I’ll call from the office,” he said, and disappeared.

  It was clear, Annie thought later as they ate their pizza, that to Pete, the morning’s kiss had been an aberration, a slipup, a mistake. Their conversation wasn’t as stilted or awkward as Annie had feared it would be, but Pete’s face never lost its carefully guarded expression. And his eyes never even once lit with the heat she’d seen that morning—not even when they accidentally collided in the small kitchen as they prepared a salad to go with the pizza. He’d reached out to steady her, and she’d looked up into his face. But his eyes were distant, emotionless.

  After dinner, Annie spent several restless hours in her office, putting little more than a small dent in the paperwork that sat on her desk. As she sat there, buried in files, Pete’s eyes seemed to haunt her. Even though he wasn’t in the room, she could still see his eyes, so detached, almost cold.

  Oh, Christmas, she thought suddenly, sitting up straight in her chair. What if it was me? What if I threw myself at
him this morning?

  How exactly had it happened? Who kissed who first? She closed her eyes, trying to think back.

  Pete had been so angry, holding her arms tightly enough to bruise her. She’d been trying to pull away from him, hadn’t she? But he just held on to her; he wouldn’t let go. She remembered staring up at him, intrigued by the sparks of anger that seemed to fly from his eyes, startled by the raw emotion displayed on his face. She remembered seeing the fire in his eyes change to a heat of an entirely different kind. And then she remembered him bending to kiss her.

  He kissed her. Yes, she thought with relief, he definitely kissed her. Thank goodness she could remember. It wasn’t that she necessarily minded making a fool of herself. But she hated the thought of not being aware she’d made a fool of herself. That was too much to take. But it was okay. She hadn’t—

  “You working or sleeping?” Pete’s husky voice cut into her thoughts and her eyes flew open. He was leaning in the doorway, with his arms crossed in front of him, watching her.

  Annie grinned wryly. “Would you believe neither?” she said.

  “It’s nearly midnight,” he said quietly, his eyes following her movements as she shut off the computer and restacked the files, putting them into her in basket. As she pushed her shining hair back behind one ear. As she unconsciously moistened her lips with the tip of her tongue…

  Oh, damn, thought Pete. He’d spent the entire day and evening trying to fool himself into believing he was unaffected by that kiss. He’d tried to ignore the fact that when he kissed her, she’d kissed him, too. She wanted him. Even now, even though she was trying to hide it, he could see it in her eyes.

  All he had to do was say the word, and he could have her.

  But while making love to her would certainly solve tonight’s immediate and pressing problem, it would generate a vast array of other, even more difficult future problems. If he slept with her without telling her who he really was, she would hate him. On the other hand, if he told her who he was before he slept with her, she wouldn’t sleep with him, and she would still probably hate him.