by Nancy Warren
Except he didn’t attend those kind of parties anymore. Not since he’d walked in on his wildly exciting girlfriend getting wildly excited with two other men and another woman. She was his ex-girlfriend now.
Cynthia Baxter reminded him of his ex. It wasn’t so much the kinky stuff that put him off, it was the revolving door to the bedroom. He was already the second man through Cynthia’s door tonight. Who knew how many were on their way? He paced. “I saw your boyfriend leave earlier.”
Her lips pinched. “He’s not my boyfriend.”
“Why am I not surprised?” Chew them up and spit them out like grapes. She probably ate them in bunches, too.
She gasped. “Walter’s not involved in some kind of drug thing, is he?” She answered her own question even as Jake shook his head. “No. Not Walter.”
He had to forget the way she intrigued him, one minute sexy as a centerfold, the next as innocent as one of those damned big-eyed pottery figurines. It didn’t matter what she did in the privacy of her own bedroom, so long as she didn’t do it with him.
How to reach her. She didn’t need money. He’d done his homework and knew that, in addition to this house, she’d inherited a nice chunk of change from the folks, had no siblings to split it with, and had managed to accumulate a pretty impressive portfolio of her own.
His eyes scanned the room, which resembled a half-dressed woman with so much of the stuff packed away. She hadn’t touched the bookshelf, though. A full set of leather-bound matching classics that must be from some club were mixed in with books of poetry, modern novels, a few paperbacks and a line of glossy hardcovers as new as her hair color.
He moved closer and squinted: Me, Myself and I, Flying Solo and Loving It, was shelved next to Time for a Change! and Be the Change You Want to See Happen. Hello! Apart from supporting an entire industry of smarmy pseudo-shrinks, she was sending a definite message here.
Change. The woman was looking for change. He couldn’t figure out why she hadn’t quit her job in nine years when she’d obviously changed her hair color and men more often than he changed his razor blades.
She wanted change and he was the man to give it to her. “I want to offer you a job.”
“The FBI needs another accountant?” She licked the last of the ice cream off her lips, her pink tongue teasing the glossy copper lipstick. No wonder they called her Cyn.
His own lips felt dry. “It’s undercover work. Very hush-hush.” The James Bond script people would be embarrassed to use a line like that, but it brought a gleam of excitement to her eyes and she jumped up to face him.
“Undercover?”
He was going with his gut, but it sure seemed like he’d punched the right button. He nodded gravely, glanced around as though her house might be bugged, and dropped his voice. “Top secret. You’d be on a need-to-know basis.”
He could have been 007 himself the way she was staring at him with rapt attention. “What do I need to know?”
“We’re watching an import-export company. We believe they’re a link in a worldwide drug smuggling operation, but we’ve had no luck putting an agent in place inside. One of their accountants recently left the firm, then hopped a plane to Hong Kong before we could get to him.” Jake experienced again the frustration he’d felt when Harrison had slipped through their fingers. “So I know there’s a vacancy in the accounting department.”
Some of the sparkle had dimmed from her eyes. “You’re asking me to be an accountant? That doesn’t sound very exciting.”
“Ninety percent of undercover work is mundane,” he told her truthfully. “But you’ll be able to see things, hear things. You’ll be on the inside.”
He’d had no luck at all infiltrating the shipping and receiving end of the company, where he was certain the action was. But they sure as hell wouldn’t be expecting a plant in the front-office staff. And when they checked Cynthia Baxter out, they’d discover just what he had. She was an experienced accountant with no links to any kind of law enforcement. Lived alone, nice quiet life on the surface. No criminal activities that could bring attention to her. Her bedroom was a fun-house with a revolving door. With any luck, she’d take Neville Percivald for a ride and get him talking. She was perfect.
Her job would be dull, dull, dull. But, Jake thought, salving his conscience, it couldn’t be any more dull than her current job with the cement company.
“When the action heats up, you’ll be there, right in the thick of things.” In a pig’s ear. Long before they made a move, he’d get her out. She’d be safely at home playing hide the salami with some beefcake if and when they had cause to move in on Oceanic.
“Will it be dangerous?”
His gut hadn’t led him astray. She was falling hook, line and sinker. Her eyes shone with expectation.
Her new job would be about as dangerous as night watchman in a nursing home. “Very dangerous.”
Her breathing quickened, sounding like a woman becoming sexually aroused. His body responded to her even as his mind told him to keep his mind on work. No way was he going to get a thing going with the neighborhood nympho. He just wished his brain and his johnson had the same taste in women.
“What do I have to do?”
3
“BE YOURSELF.” If ever she’d received a worthless piece of advice, Jake’s parting words were it. “Herself” was a dull woman with mousy hair and no life, who’d been balancing the books at a cement company for nine years.
The woman walking toward Oceanic Import-Export was the artificial creation of Michael at the hair salon, the woman at the funky clothing store and the optometrist who’d fitted her with contacts.
Cynthia was wearing the most conservative suit in her new wardrobe, a tight-fitting short black wool jacket and knee-length skirt with a pair of black leather boots. Though nobody knew it but her, the boots were lined with faux leopard skin, which boosted her confidence. The jacket had a faux fur collar, but she’d removed it before the interview, not wanting to appear too stylish.
As she clacked along the pavement in her snazzy new boots, she rehearsed what she’d say at the job interview.
Jake had laughed at her when she’d tried to practice on him. “You’re not pretending to be somebody else, you know. Just tell the truth.”
Hah. Little did he know. She was living a huge lie, pretending to be fashionable and exciting.
She smelled the smog of a million cars, mixed in with the briny scent of the harbor. The downtown noises hammered at her senses: a bus wheezing as it pulled away from the curb, the honk of an impatient motorist, some kind of generator, and hammering and male voices from a construction site.
A long, appreciative wolf whistle rolled over her, and she glanced around, then realized she was the only one in front of the construction site. Startled, she glanced up. “Lookin’ good, babe!” yelled a burly man in a plaid shirt and hard hat.
“Thank you,” she said politely, smiling back with real gratitude. The butterflies in her stomach settled. Why shouldn’t she get this job or any other job she wanted? She was the new, improved, better than ever Cynthia—make that Cyn—Baxter, full-time CPA, part-time spy.
All she had to do was land a job she could do with her eyes closed.
The den of iniquity, as she’d taken to calling it in her head, had wide double glass doors and a welcoming foyer in marble and granite. Behind the imposing front entrance, the statuesque receptionist led Cynthia down a carpeted corridor to a small boardroom. Cynthia blinked twice at the woman. She looked like one of the models in Raunch, from the “Erotically Advanced” section.
On the short journey, Cynthia glanced right and left, but instead of seeing swarthy, pockmarked faces, arsenals of weapons and hastily secured bags of white powder, she saw the same kind of people she’d seen at her last job. They worked on computers, talked on phones, made notes. Nothing remotely sinister.
Unaccountably disappointed, she entered the boardroom.
In it were three men. The middle one smi
led politely and rose to extend his hand. Somewhere in his early forties, he had the kind of face that made her relax and smile back. He reminded her of an anchorman she’d seen on a Canadian TV station. Balding, blue-eyed, with the sincere look that suggested he cared about every one of the people injured in the train wreck he’d just described—only he was too much of a professional to let tears well in his eyes.
His handshake was firm and businesslike. No drug-induced tremors, no red haze in the clear blue eyes.
“I’m Neville Percivald,” he informed her in an accent that was half-British, with the vowels rounded as though he’d lived for some time on this side of the Atlantic. “These are my associates, Doug Ormond and Lester Dart.”
The flunkies gave her hope. They looked awfully muscular for desk jockeys. Doug Ormond had hairy knuckles, she noted when he gripped her hand and grunted a greeting, and Lester Dart deserved the slammer on the grounds of his cologne.
She smiled politely and sat in the chair indicated.
They interviewed her extensively about her previous job. Most of the questions were routine, but every once in a while they threw in an odd one. They even asked if she knew a couple of people who’d never worked at Goring Cement.
Still, she remained polite, privately thinking they didn’t have enough brains to run a successful criminal organization. She wondered how the legitimate one was doing, then reminded herself it didn’t matter. Once she’d completed her undercover espionage, she could move on. The important thing was she’d made a break from her dull career and her dull life.
In fact, as soon as she wrapped this case up, she was taking a vacation. She was going to buy a ticket for the first place that caught her fancy, and keep on going.
“Thank you, Miss Baxter. We’ll be in touch,” the TV anchorman type said. And his eyes telegraphed to her the message that no matter what happened, she’d be the one he’d have chosen if it were up to him.
“I CAN DO THIS. I am Cyn the Bold.” But her hands had a death grip on the long roller. She couldn’t quite make the move that would put the paint on the wall.
It looked so dark in the tin, a big purple puddle. And the antique white walls looked so… “Dull. You’re dull, dull, dull,” she muttered. A quick glance at the magazine picture she’d taped to the wall gave her courage. The color was claret, not purple.
The purple was already on the ceiling. When she looked up she felt like she was standing inside a gigantic grape.
Resolutely, she tore her gaze away, reminding herself she’d loved the magazine layout she was copying. Still, she let out a quiet shriek when the first slash of color hit the wall, looking like a blade had knifed the pale wall, making it bleed.
“I can always paint over it,” she reminded herself as she gritted her teeth and kept rolling.
“Going for the grape Kool-Aid look?” a deep masculine voice taunted from behind her.
“Aaah!” Her nerveless hands dropped the roller, and it streaked downward until a dark shape hurtled past her. Jake Wheeler grabbed the roller and only a few dark drops hit the tarp that covered the floor.
“It’s not grape Kool-Aid, it’s claret. How did you get in?”
“Door was open.”
“You could have knocked.” She glanced at Jake and her mouth went dry. At a guess she’d say he’d been jogging. His navy T-shirt clung damply to the fascinating furrows and ridges of his chest and waist. Baggy running shorts showed off muscular thighs, knobby knees that made her smile, and a butt that made her put her hands in her pockets to keep them from temptation as he turned and bent forward to roll more paint onto the wall.
“I didn’t want you to have to stop whatever you were doing to answer the door.”
“How considerate.” She had a couple of cutting remarks on the tip of her tongue, but the way he put paint on a wall was pure poetry. She stifled her snarkiness, rolled aching shoulders and let him get on with it. “Do you think it’s too dark?”
“Too dark for what?”
She let her breath out in an exaggerated huff. “The paint. Do you think the paint’s too dark?” She snapped the magazine photo off the wall and stuck it in front of his face. “This is what I want.”
He stared at the photo for a minute, at the burgundy walls, aubergine ceiling and gold moldings. “Kind of ‘old English pub meets Middle Eastern harem’?”
“Oh, never mind. Do you want some lemonade?”
“Sure.”
While she dropped ice into tall glasses and poured lemonade, he yelled, “You know the ceiling doesn’t match the walls.”
She did a silent Duh and rolled her eyes. “It’s supposed to be stylish.”
“Whatever.” Even without seeing him she’d bet he was rolling his own eyes.
“You’re just the hired help,” she said as she carried the drinks out.
“What’s my wage again?” He placed the roller back in the tray and accepted the frosty glass. He gulped the drink back, and she took a moment to enjoy the way the strong muscles in his throat worked as he swallowed.
“In-for-mation.” She let all the smugness she felt ooze into the single word.
That got his attention, all right. Ice rattled as he yanked the glass away from his mouth to stare at her. “You got the job?”
She allowed the smugness to come right out, and grinned at him. “Couple of hours ago.”
In two strides he was right there in front of her. Even as her senses and nerves went haywire, trying to process the fact that he was invading her personal space, bringing the smell and look and feel of him, everything went into overload.
His mouth came down on hers so swiftly her lips parted on a gasp. She froze in shock, vaguely aware of chilled, lemon-flavored lips that hinted at the hot wet mouth beneath.
Her hands grasped his arms, whether to hold herself up or push him away, she couldn’t have said. Under her fingers she felt the heated swell of muscle under a T-shirt still damp from his run. He smelled so…physical. Like sweat and whatever soap he’d showered with that morning, like paint and lemon. Like sex…
On the last thought, her body edged nearer, waiting for more. Wanting more.
But just as she leaned in, he broke the connection with a shaky laugh. He lifted her and spun her dizzily around. “We’re in!”
He set her down and took a gigantic step backward. If she didn’t know better, she’d have sworn she made him nervous. If only.
He made her something, though. Not nervous, but excited. He might scare the pants off her from time to time, but ever since he’d come on the scene, her boring life seemed to have flipped on its head.
In the last week, she’d been made over top-to-toe, construction workers had ogled her and a man she barely knew had just kissed her. Not only had she changed her appearance, but she’d started changing her house and was about to change her job, plunging into the world of black ops, spies and danger.
A shiver slithered down her spine at the thought of danger. “Will I need a gun?”
He stopped, midway through a rollerful of paint, and shot a comic-terrified glance over his shoulder. “Just slap my face. I promise it won’t happen again.”
“I meant for the job.” He was promising he wouldn’t kiss her anymore. After just one little peck. Her self-confidence took a sudden nosedive. It looked as if she hadn’t changed much after all.
That little peck had been the most exciting thing she’d ever experienced, and he was promising never to do it again.
She didn’t want him to keep that promise. She really, really wanted him to kiss her again.
That and more.
“Have you ever used a gun?” he asked.
“Does an air rifle in Girl Scouts count?”
“Nope.” He didn’t pause, just kept that smooth rolling motion going. The paint slid onto her walls like rich satin sheets onto a white mattress.
“Everybody who goes undercover in books and movies carries a gun,” she argued. She pictured hers now, a ladylike revolver that wo
uld fit nicely into her purse, preferably something with a pearl handle.
“No. Everybody does not. If they find a gun on you you’re toast.” He glanced back over his shoulder at her. “Don’t pout. You have much deadlier weapons.”
“Like what? My fingernails are soft, I could never stab someone with the office scissors and my karate skills are nonexistent.”
He plopped the roller back into the tray and turned to her, pointing to her head. “Your intelligence is your greatest asset.”
“Oh, that’s exciting. We’re going to have crossword puzzle contests to see who wins?” She put on a TV announcer voice and said, “Ooh, sorry. You missed 14 across, the eight-letter word for bad guy, beginning with the letter C. That makes the FBI this week’s winner in the drug wars!”
Amusement danced in his eyes. “I meant mental agility, thinking fast on your feet.” The amusement faded and his eyes took on a smoky hue that made her swallow. “If that fails you can always use your strongest weapon.”
“And that is?”
“Sex.” The way the man said the simple, three-letter word made it sound like a caress. “Sex?” Yes please.
The sultry claret paint seemed to be raising the temperature of the room, or was all that heat coming from the way his gaze teased her senses? “You might have to seduce the bad guys to get information.”
“Seducing bad guys. Is that covered in the FBI employee manual?”
He laughed. “There is nothing official about your involvement in this. As I explained, you’ve volunteered to pass on anything interesting you see in the course of a normal business day.” His face sobered. “And while I don’t condone your sexual escapades, it’s pretty obvious you’re the swinging type. If you do happen to get hot and sweaty between the sheets with a suspect, and they happen to mention anything that might be helpful to our investigation…”
“You mean…”
He winked. “What you do on your own time is your business. Just don’t forget to use a condom.”
4
