by Nancy Warren
SOMETHING WAS WRONG Jake realized, as he watched a blush mount Cynthia’s cheeks. The minute she heard the word condom her face took on a neon hue. A woman of her experience ought to be accustomed to discussing prophylactics, and she sure as hell better be using them. An unwelcome suspicion crossed his mind.
“You do use condoms, don’t you? Every single time?” It was one thing to be wild and carefree, but if she was going around unprotected…
He felt like he’d just said a four-letter word to his aged aunt. Cynthia’s bright red face sort of puckered and her lips tightened into a prissy line. “I really don’t think that’s any of your—”
“You can be damn sure it’s my business. If there’s any possibility at all that you’re carrying something—”
She gave a funny kind of choking sound. “No. Of—of course not.”
His eyes narrowed on her face. If she was clean as a whistle, why did she look so odd? “I’ve got a good mind to make you take a physical before this goes any further.”
She seemed to pull herself together. Her color was still high, but the prissy lip line softened. “Agent Wheeler, I am completely healthy. I’ve never had…never put myself…never conducted… I’ve been fully protected.”
The more her tongue tangled itself up, the more Jake’s gut instinct started clamoring for his attention. He couldn’t understand why she was getting all worked up about something so simple. While he watched her turn away and busy herself checking that the tarp was taped to the exact edge of the floor, he began to wonder.
And as he did, a second piece of startling information occurred to him.
She kissed like a virgin.
Sure, she’d been surprised when he’d grabbed her and kissed her; he’d been surprised himself. But it was only a quick celebration smacker, nothing that should have raised anybody’s blood pressure.
The way she’d responded, first stiff with shock, then warm and yearning, increased his unease. He’d taken umpteen courses and seminars on reading people—body language, facial expression, blah blah blah. He also had a well-developed gut instinct. Right now, all that training and instinct pointed out the obvious—that her reaction to his kiss didn’t jive with what he knew about her.
Correction. With what he’d assumed about her.
Of course, it was possible he’d just startled her, and if she’d seen him coming she’d have cleaned his tonsils with her tongue. But he owed his life seven times over to listening to his instincts, and right now they were telling him that the sophisticated sexpot was a fake.
What if the evidence of his eyes had deceived him and she was no more a wild woman than old Mrs. Lawrence next door? It was just a theory, probably false, but one worthy of further investigation.
Naturally, there was only one way to find out whether she was the sweet innocent her eyes portrayed or the kinky sex toy he’d first thought her.
He’d have to kiss her again—in the service of his country.
The way his own body had jolted as she swayed, warm and willing, against him, was not something he wanted to analyze. Whatever she was, nothing but trouble could arise from getting involved with her. He couldn’t afford to make any mistakes on this investigation. He was out so far on a limb on this one, he might never get back. If this weren’t his last shot at avenging Hank’s death, he wouldn’t have grabbed at straws this way, hoping an untrained volunteer could pick up some leads just by doing her job and listening to office gossip.
It was only a kiss, damn it. Then he’d know. If she was the woman he believed her to be, she’d enjoy a deep wet kiss just for the fun of it. If not…
He went back to the paint roller, determined to begin testing her. Making sure to brush by her at every opportunity, he watched her reactions, and they disturbed him. She was as jumpy as a new recruit in a combat zone. He kept her close, through a variety of ruses, just to invade her space. He had her climb her stepladder with a brush in hand and paint the very top of the walls where the roller couldn’t reach. Once she was perched up high, he “accidentally” knocked into the ladder just to grab hold of her waist and steady her.
She quivered beneath his hands, her waist soft and female. He held on just a few seconds longer than necessary, and the way the flesh beneath her tank top went rigid beneath his hands, he knew she was holding her breath.
Did that mean she was nervous or merely waiting for his next move?
When she came down for more paint, he moved nearer, trapping her against the stepladder. She was close enough that he could see the delicate nutmeg-sprinkle of freckles across the bridge of her nose, tawny against the smooth cream of her skin. Where her hair caught the light it gleamed, in some places old copper, in others the same rich wine of the walls—the exact same shade in one particular spot. He grinned and reached forward to tweak a paint-stiffened tuft. “Are you part of the decorating project?”
He kept his voice casual, but his eyes were alert, watching the pulse in her throat kick up a notch, noting the way her eyes, green as a glacial lake, widened slightly, and that her tongue licked her lips in a nervous gesture—or was that a subtle come-on?
“Excuse me,” she said into the thick silence, and he backed off to let her pass. Still he watched her.
The skimpy top did him a favor, letting him see just how he affected her. From her jerky breaths to her pebbling nipples, she was aware of him, all right. He couldn’t decide about the nerves, but there was some heavy animal attraction happening under the grape ceiling.
It would have been darkly humorous if he didn’t have some major pebbles of his own demanding attention.
“Balls.”
Her head jerked as the word echoed loudly off the wet walls. “Pardon?”
Carefully, he put the roller back once again. He had to know.
She was a pace away from him, fiddling with an unwrapped paintbrush.
“Come here.”
She hesitated for a moment, looking so absurdly vulnerable he wanted to tell her to forget the whole thing. Then a sparkle of determination lit her eyes and her chin came up. She took two steps until they were only inches apart. “What do you want with me this time, Agent Wheeler?” she purred.
Now if that wasn’t a come-on, he’d never heard one. It wasn’t just the words, it was the provocative tone and the challenge in her eyes. Damn if he could figure this woman out.
Since his brain didn’t seem able to analyze her correctly, he went with his baser skills. “This,” he said softly, and bending his head, he covered her lips with his own.
This time she didn’t freeze in shock. She merely trembled. Her lips quivered, then opened tremulously beneath his. Her body quaked when he wrapped his arms around her to pull her close. Even her breath shuddered as she sighed into his mouth.
And at that moment he knew for certain this was not a woman with a ticket booth outside her bedroom door.
It was his last conscious thought before his senses swamped his intellect. He couldn’t think anymore, he could only feel. Soft. She was so soft. Her lips were satin, her tongue velvet as he stroked it.
Beneath his hands, her flesh was warm and giving.
He was mindless with need even as he recognized dimly that she wasn’t keeping up. Where he wanted to drag off their clothes and play any wild game she could think up, she was behaving like sweet sixteen on her first date.
Her tongue touched his shyly, her forays into his mouth like hit-and-run ops. And, contrary to having any wild games in mind, she seemed to leave everything to him. Although she clung to him, her hands tracing little circles on his back, she was pretty much staying in the area just below his shoulder blades.
Ashley, his ex, would have had them both naked and twisted like pretzels by now.
He couldn’t explain how, but he knew this wasn’t an act. Cynthia responded to his kiss with tight-closed eyes, sweetly parted lips and not much of a clue about what to do next.
Damn it all to hell. He’d been conned.
He pulled awa
y and she sighed dreamily. He would have been amused at her naive reaction to a single kiss if he weren’t so furious with himself for jumping to conclusions. Okay, it had been an obvious conclusion given the circumstances of their first meeting—but he hadn’t done the most basic research to confirm his findings.
Now that he stopped to think about it, everything else about her was at odds with the wild lifestyle. Her driver’s license photo; her decor, until this Aladdin’s cave painting scheme—even her word choices were prim.
She was a bit young for a midlife crisis, but all the signs were there. And the worst of it was she’d already accepted the job at Oceanic. If she were tough, street-wise and a sexual dynamo, she could be very useful to him. If she were a sheltered innocent, she could get them all in trouble.
He was tempted to pull the plug. If she were a special agent picked as part of his team, he’d do it without a second thought. But she wasn’t an agent. She was a volunteer. He couldn’t force her to quit; he had to make her want to do it on her own.
He’d have to backtrack. Take back all that bunk he’d told her about the place being dangerous, and give her the truth.
“You know,” he said, drawing back from her sweet, warm body, “I’m probably wrong about Oceanic. We’ve tried every way to find anything suspicious and we’re coming up blank. You’re basically going in on a fishing expedition.”
Her eyes fluttered open and she blinked like a gopher coming up into sunlight. “Fishing…?” Her voice had a dreamy quality and her lips were moist and pouty from his kisses.
He wanted nothing more than to pick up where he’d left off. But he couldn’t, not until he’d convinced his volunteer recruit to un-volunteer. “There’s probably nothing going on at Oceanic. It’s most likely just another boring accounting job.”
She laughed softly, a sleepy, sexy sound that had him fisting his hands to keep from reaching for her again. “For nine years I’ve been an accountant in a cement factory. Goring Cement. We called it Boring Cement for good reason.”
“I thought you wanted excitement?”
“I do. And I think there’s something pretty fishy going on at Oceanic.”
If it wasn’t a serious matter of drug running, he’d find her earnestness kind of cute. “You were there about five minutes.”
“I have good instincts about people. The two men who were with the president were definitely suspicious-looking characters.”
“That’s not—”
“And besides,” she interrupted, “I really needed a change. If this doesn’t turn out to be exciting, I’ll quit and find something more interesting. The important thing is that I took charge of my life.”
“What if I tell you I’ve changed my mind? I don’t think you should do it?”
She regarded him for a moment. “I’d say you were too late.”
She was so blind, so completely pigheaded, that he snapped. “Don’t come crying to me if the job bores you into a coma.”
She stared at him speculatively, a secret little smile curving her lips. “Don’t worry,” she said in a soft voice. “I’ll come to you for excitement.”
A woman rarely rendered him speechless, but this one just had. She’d conned him and twisted his reasoning until he couldn’t think of anything useful except escaping from her as quickly as possible, before he gave her more excitement than either of them needed right now.
“I’ll see myself out,” he snarled as he stomped to the door.
“Don’t be a stranger,” she called softly behind him, and damn if he didn’t hear a smile in her voice.
“CHOPSTICKS.”
“Chopsticks?” Cynthia tried not to let disappointment creep into her tone. Neville Percivald was giving her a tour of his company himself. Not only was she flattered that he was taking the time from what must be a busy schedule, she was determined to use every opportunity to pursue her secret agenda—gathering information that could be valuable to the FBI. “All those crates contain chopsticks?”
He chuckled without opening his lips, in a terribly refined, British sort of way. “Not all of them. No. But we do import chopsticks used in many of the Oriental restaurants in the Pacific Northwest.”
She gazed at the rows of stacked crates on the cement loading dock. “That’s a lot of chow mein.” She smiled up into Neville Percivald’s guileless blue eyes, reminding herself she was Cyn, undercover agent to the drug and possibly chopstick trade. For all she knew those boxes didn’t contain chopsticks at all. They could be loaded with little packets of white powder. She pictured herself sneaking down with a crowbar, cranking open a crate, slitting a packet of white powder and tasting it. Then her fantasy abruptly dissolved. What did drugs taste like, anyway? Would she get intoxicated from tasting them? And who knew what kind of germs they harbored; she very much doubted there were health inspectors at drug packaging plants.
“Is something wrong, Miss Baxter?”
“No, no,” she assured him as inspiration struck. “I’m just not looking forward to counting all those chopsticks.” And checking all the packaging, searching for false bottoms in the crates, accidentally cracking one open to see if it was hollow.
He did that closed-mouth chuckling thing again. “Don’t worry, Miss Baxter. You won’t get your hands dirty. You merely reconcile the shipping tallies with the packing slips.”
He was looking at her like she was a bit dim for a CPA, which was just fine by her. Among her professional colleagues there were several bean counters who were missing a few beans of their own. If Neville Percivald and his colleagues thought she was one of those, all the better.
The more the top mucky-mucks at Oceanic discounted her, the more they’d let slip, and she definitely planned to be picking up every dropped clue that came her way. Accounting had a pretty bad rap in the excitement department, but it had its moments. She reminded herself that it was accountants who’d brought Al Capone down.
When you followed the trail of money, you could find out a lot about a person and an organization. If Oceanic had any dirty little secrets in the financial department, she’d find them.
Maybe she was a late bloomer, as a woman and a spy, but she was determined to make up for lost time, in both departments.
While she’d been plotting his downfall in her head, Neville Percivald had let his gaze stray, and he was checking out her body in a manner that struck her as immensely foolish in the age of sexual harassment charges. Ooh. This was good. If her boss thought his new bean counter was a bean-brain and a bit of a floozy, he’d soon be putty in her hands.
She swept him a look under her lashes that said, If this was a singles bar, and not the loading dock of your company, you might get somewhere. At least, she hoped that was the message she was telegraphing. She’d never actually tried to communicate such a thing before, with or without words.
He was getting some kind of message from her, in any event. His chest puffed out under his navy, double-breasted blazer, and he sent her a smile that didn’t seem particularly professional.
He conducted the rest of the tour walking a little closer than was absolutely necessary, and she reveled in her success even as she tried not to get creeped out that a possible drug smuggler might have the hots for her.
Nobody in her life had had so much as the lukewarms for her. Now she had two men giving her smoldering glances. Well, Neville Percivald was too refined to smolder, but his gaze certainly seemed warm when it rested on her.
Now Jake was a man who smoldered. And it wasn’t just his glances. His kiss had darn near melted her on the spot. Mmm. She felt warm just thinking about it. For some reason, he’d no sooner convinced her to take this job than he’d started trying to talk her out of it.
Fat chance. He’d recruited her for this spy mission at a time when she was desperate for some excitement in her life. There wasn’t an argument he could make that would convince her to give up the most fun thing she’d ever done—before she’d even done it.
She’d love to discover val
uable information on her first day, simply for the pleasure of making him eat his words.
By the time Neville Percivald left her at what he euphemistically termed the “accounting department,” she’d met most of the staff and toured the entire building. Everything seemed perfectly legitimate and innocent. She tried not to feel discouraged, knowing her sleuthing talents would best be used here in accounting. It was a very small department; there were only two of them. Herself and Agnes Beecham, the bookkeeper.
Agnes terrified Cynthia. She was of an indeterminate age somewhere between fifty and retirement. Colorless from the washed-out gray hair coiled neatly on the top of her head to her sallow face and tired eyes, right down to the flesh-colored support hose and beige walking shoes.
To Cynthia, she was right out of Dickens. Cynthia’s own personal Ghost of Things to Come. This woman was herself if she’d stayed on the path she’d been traveling; she was certain of it.
In her soft, monotonous voice, Agnes explained the systems they used and showed Cynthia the files she’d need.
“It’s all computerized now, of course. I’ve never become accustomed to that.”
“Have you worked here long?”
Agnes sighed, sadly. “Thirty years.”
With a pang of cold horror, Cynthia recalled her nine years at Goring Cement, which could so easily have stretched to thirty.
Then a thought struck. “You’ve been here thirty years?”
“Yes,” said Agnes. “Thirty-one next March.”
“But surely Mr. Percivald’s too young to have been here that long?”
Even the woman’s laugh was colorless. And mirthless. “I started working for his stepfather, George Percivald. He founded the company, importing fine china from England.” She sighed softly. “A very genteel man.”
And now the son had ditched the teapots for chopsticks. A tingle of excitement swirled in Cynthia’s middle. Obviously, they weren’t exporting drugs from Stoke on Trent. Mr. Percivald junior had switched the operation to South America, for obvious reasons. Did Jake know about this?
“Here’s your office.” Agnes ushered her into a smallish box, Spartan, but fully equipped. “You’ll want to redecorate, I’m sure.”
