Sure Bet

by Maggie Price

  His fingers were warm; something jolted and tensed in her belly. She couldn't imagine herself ever doing anything so emotionally dangerous as reaching out and touching him. "Fine. No big deal."

  "When you go undercover it's essential you look the part, but it's far more important you play it well. We're a husband and wife who have the hots for each other." He released her, his eyes probing her face. "Our touching each other may feel like no big deal, but whenever Spurlock's watching, we both have to act like it matters. A lot."

  "Message received." She took a step backward. Then another. Not in retreat, she assured herself, but for needed distance. Her breath had clogged in her lungs, and her pulse throbbed hard and quick. Her hands weren't quite steady as her fingers clenched on both envelopes. "I'll…see you tomorrow."

  He studied her as if trying to read her thoughts. It frazzled her to think he might succeed. Might find out how much just his presence unnerved her.

  Finally he gave a curt nod. "Tomorrow, Morgan. And a lot of tomorrows after that."

  Chapter 3

  Two days later Alex rang the doorbell on the McCall sisters' cool-blue two-story house. Drenched in early-morning sunlight, the small front porch looked inviting with a white-wicker table and chair snugged into one corner and slender columns wrapped in spiraling jade-colored ivy. Window boxes and clay pots overflowed with flowers that burst in wild and careless colors. Beyond the porch, the thick hedge and postage-stamp-size lawn looked professionally tended.

  Where plants, flowers and grass were concerned, the McCall sisters apparently knew their stuff, Alex thought with satisfaction while he tapped the manila envelope he carried against his jean-covered thigh. He only hoped Morgan's knowledge of flora and fauna, combined with the physical attributes favored by Carlton Spurlock, were enough to outweigh her lack of undercover experience. His cop's sixth sense told him they were. Otherwise, he wouldn't be standing on this particular tidy front porch, waiting for a certain long-legged blonde to answer the door. Still, he knew his instincts weren't infallible. Only time would prove if his decision to pull a green rookie into this complex operation was the right one. Problem was, his being wrong could get them both killed.

  Just as he was about to make a second stab at the bell, the door swung open.

  "Right on time," Morgan said. She didn't smile, didn't frown. Just gazed at him through those probing eyes that brought to mind a calm Arctic lake.

  "I'm always on time when it comes to work."

  "What about when you're not working?" she asked as she stood back to let him in.

  Stepping inside, he was instantly hit with the aroma of oranges and spices and baking bread. His mouth started watering. "I've been known to be late."

  She shut the door, turned to face him. "That's a bad habit. It makes the people waiting on you think you don't value their time."

  "You're right. And you'll learn I have more bad habits. Which is one of the reasons I'm here. So you can find out about those other nasty practices of mine before we move in together."

  "Are there a lot?"

  "Enough."

  As she had the previous day when they'd worked at his apartment, she wore loose-fitting shorts and a baggy T-shirt that camouflaged her figure. Her long, blond hair was scraped back in a ponytail, highlighting her high cheekbones and strong jaw. With her skin slightly tanned and freckled from the early-summer sun and her mouth and eyes devoid of makeup, she looked more like a teenager than a twenty-two-year-old woman.

  "Have you eaten breakfast?" she asked.

  "No." He'd thought about stopping at the quick mart for coffee, but that would have made him run late.

  "I've got muffins in the oven. And I was about to put on a pot of coffee." As she spoke, she thrust her hands into the pockets of her shorts, pulled them out again. "Want some?"

  There it is, he thought. Neither her eyes nor her expression betrayed her emotions, but body language said it all. He could almost feel the shimmer his presence injected into her nerves. Convincing people they were husband and wife wasn't going to happen unless he figured out how to get her to relax around him.

  "If it's the muffins that smell like heaven, I'll be happy to join you." He raised a brow. "Are you feeding me because all I had to offer you yesterday at my place was tuna fish, stale bread and flat soda?"

  "You got me pegged," she said, then headed down the hallway, its wooden floor dark-stained tongue-and-groove. "Consider this a pity breakfast."

  "I'll consider it whatever you want, as long as you feed me," he said, following her. "Did you notice yesterday how I take my coffee?"

  "Black," she said across her shoulder.

  "Right."

  "Was that a test of my powers of observation?"

  "One of many." He found himself doing his own form of observation as his gaze slid down to her hips, lingered, then lowered. She moved with an elegant stride he attributed to her tall, slim build and those mile-long legs.

  Endless, tanned legs that he felt certain would send a tinge of envy through most professional dancers. And just might tempt a man to beg for a chance to feel all that alluring flesh wrapped around him.

  Disconcerted by his thoughts, Alex jerked his gaze upward and switched his mind off his future partner's legs. Rule number one in undercover work was to maintain emotional detachment. He and Morgan McCall had a serious job facing them and he was too professional to let some out-of-the-blue sexual itch cloud his thinking.

  "My remembering how you take your coffee doesn't involve rocket science," she commented. "You didn't have any cream, milk or sugar in your kitchen."

  "Good point. I always put off going to the grocery store until my back's to the wall, so it's easier to drink coffee black."

  "Not going to the store is another bad habit. That means you probably eat too much fast food and not enough fresh fruits and vegetables."

  "Keep honing those observation skills, and you'll make detective in no time, Officer McCall."

  "That's the plan."

  No surprise there, Alex thought. Any woman who aced every class in the academy definitely had her sights set on moving up the ranks. Good for her—let her ride a desk, push papers and get ulcers. He would rather deal with a hundred bad guys than spend one minute slaving over departmental budgets and policies.

  He trailed her down the hallway, noting the rooms they passed were typical of an older house—small with high ceilings and plenty of windows to let light in. The layout was conventional, too. A living room to the right, small dining room to the left, with a steep wooden staircase at the end of the hall. The furniture he glimpsed was done in calming neutral tones with accent pieces in deep roses and smoky grays. Everywhere he looked, lush green potted plants and flowers speared out of pots and vases.

  "Nice place," he commented.

  "Thanks. I take care of the yard. The decor is mostly Grace's doing." At the end of the hall, Morgan made a sharp left turn. "It's hard to believe now, but this place was a dump when Carrie and I bought it."

  "You fix it up yourselves or hire a contractor?" he asked as he followed her into the kitchen where copper pots and pans hung on a rack over a small butcher-block island. Gray slate topped the counters. Small, colorful pots of what Alex guessed were herbs lined the wide windowsill.

  "It was a family project. My grandparents, parents, three brothers and Grace pitched in with the renovation." While she spoke, Morgan gestured Alex toward the long-legged stools on one side of the butcher-block island. "Carrie and I signed the papers on the house the day before Grace's husband died in the line of duty. Lieutenant Ryan Fox," Morgan added, retrieving a copper canister off the counter. "Did you know him?"

  "Vaguely. I've crossed paths with all three of your brothers. And I worked that short undercover gig with Grace. Ryan and I just never connected on the job." Settling onto one of the stools, Alex laid the manila envelope beside a stack of file folders. "I hear he was a good cop."

  "The best. And an awesome brother-in-law. Losing him…"
Her voice trailed off, and Alex saw grief flicker in her blue eyes. "It was a terrible time for all of us. Having this house to come to, to work on together, was a sort of cathartic experience for the family." She swept her gaze around the room. "Hard to believe three years have passed."

  "How's Grace doing these days?" he asked quietly.

  "Better. She eventually sold her house and moved in here with Carrie and me. It's good she's not alone."

  "Lucky you guys get along so well."

  "We're typical sisters." Sending him a sardonic look, Morgan scooped beans out of the canister and dumped them into a grinder. "We live in harmony as long as Carrie remembers to shovel her heaps of makeup, jars, tubes and potions out of the bathroom every so often." Morgan turned on the grinder, its motor filling the air with a soft whir. "What about you?" she asked while setting the coffeemaker to brew.

  "What about me?"

  "Do you have any sisters? Brothers?"

  "I'm an only child." And on the night a faceless killer fired a bullet into George Jackson's head, Alex had lost the only person who had ever cared enough about him to hang on and not let go.

  The now-familiar mix of grief and anger had Alex setting his jaw. He would never forget the sight of George's body dumped in a weed-infested parking lot. Never forget having to watch the casket of the man who'd been like a father to him going down into the earth. An ache built around Alex's heart, a kind of distant grief he knew he would never be rid of. Whether Carlton Spurlock had pulled the trigger or ordered others to do the killing, George's blood was on his hands. Spurlock was accountable, and Alex would see he answered for his crimes. No matter how long it took, no matter what it took, he would nail the bastard.

  Narrowing his gaze, he studied Morgan while she slid a tin brimming with muffins from the oven. This woman, who looked a hell of a lot more like a varsity cheerleader than a cop, was the weapon he would use to take down a killer.

  "Hope you like these," she said as she drizzled a swirl of pale-orange glaze over each muffin. "It's a new recipe I wanted to try out."

  "Judging by the way my stomach is growling, you don't need to worry about me liking them." Leaning back on his stool, he crossed his arms over his chest. "Your scores in every segment of the academy were off the charts. You grind coffee beans and whip up a batch of homemade muffins with no effort. Then there's your obvious gardening ability. Is there anything you don't do well?"

  "Not anymore."

  "Anymore?"

  "Long story." She settled plates of muffins and mugs of steaming coffee on the butcher block, then slid onto the stool beside his. "The bottom line is, if I want to learn how to do something I get a book, read the directions and then I do it." Lifting her shoulder, she sipped her coffee. "Everything is a step-by-step process. What's so hard about that?"

  "Put that way, sounds like everything ought to be easy."

  "My thoughts exactly."

  Her apparent inner drive to do everything one hundred percent made it a snap for him to compare Morgan to another woman. A woman motivated by a burning need to lead in her career field, to be the best in anything, everything, at the exclusion—and expense—of all else.

  Even after so long the bitterness over his failed marriage was still there, simmering with a foul taste he'd almost grown used to. Almost. He would never forget the betrayal and hurt that had slashed through him when he finally realized his own lack of desire to move up the police ranks had earned him the disdain of the woman he had loved.

  He sipped his coffee—which was the best he'd ever tasted—thinking perversely that he ought to be glad Morgan shared the same no-holds-barred ambitions as Paula. That would make it a hell of a lot easier for him to keep his mind on the dangerous job facing him and the rookie.

  "There's nothing hard about learning something when you've got instructions," he commented. "Unless maybe you're talking about something like quantum physics." He took a bite of muffin, savored it…and decided he had truly stumbled into heaven. Yeah, the woman had learned how to cook. "Problem is, not everything comes with directions. And even if something does, following them isn't always the smartest thing to do."

  She sampled her muffin, washed it down with a sip of coffee. "What about the detailed biography of my undercover character you had me write yesterday?"

  "What about it?"

  She retrieved a file folder near her plate, flipped it open. Alex recognized the pad inside as the one she'd used to jot notes on yesterday at his apartment. Her handwriting was precise, the letters angular. Exact.

  "The biography starts with Morgan Jones's fictional birth," she continued. "Takes her through an unremarkable childhood on to her move to Las Vegas where she worked as a cocktail waitress. There, she met Alexander Donovan. It was instant attraction, which quickly turned into lust, followed by love. They married one month ago, and just wound up their honeymoon at a resort on the north shore of Lake Tahoe."

  "Is there a question in there somewhere?"

  "I'm getting to that. You told me to include every detail of her life I can think of to make her a well-rounded, real human being. And to memorize those details. Practice going over them in my head until I think and react like she would. So, isn't Morgan Jones Donovan's biography my instruction manual for this assignment? Don't I use it the way an actor uses a script?"

  "Not hardly." Alex swiveled on his stool to face her. The span between them was small enough that their knees bumped. Purposely he adjusted by sliding his jeaned thighs against her bare ones.

  And instantly felt her stiffen.

  He told himself the acute annoyance that shot through him was due to the fact this same reaction to his touch after they went undercover could plunge them both into deep trouble. They would deal with the body language, he promised himself. First things first.

  "An actor on stage or in front of a camera doesn't have any room for deviation. He's required to give a certain response that's programmed to get an expected reaction. No surprises. No glitches in timing, no missed cues. Everybody knows the ending before they even get started. That's not the case here—the biography you wrote on Morgan Donovan isn't by any means a script."

  He glanced down, saw she now had her hands fisted in her lap. Her shoulders were back, as rigid as cold steel. Not good.

  Locking his gaze with hers, he shifted closer, wanting to read her eyes. They looked cool and impersonal. At least she had a talent for keeping her feelings from being reflected in her face. It was the body language that needed work. Badly. Among other things.

  He glanced at the pad she'd written the biography on. White paper, black ink. She wouldn't see the shades of gray he saw there, not until she'd gotten some experience under her belt.

  "When it comes to working undercover," he continued, "there is no such thing as a script. All you have is a general scenario of what you're dealing with. You'll get surprises no one can foresee. What you can't anticipate is what will happen from minute to minute and how it will happen. Or what individuals are going to show up, or who might all of a sudden decide to make themselves scarce. And sometimes those are the people who are far more dangerous to you than the ones right there in your face, because you don't know what the hell they're up to. It's all a big question mark. The main thing you need to remember is, if you screw up, you don't have an audience to toss tomatoes your way. Instead, you've got bad guys who fire bullets. Real bullets."

  She nodded, her gaze serious. "I went online, found some articles written by cops who'd worked undercover," she said, her voice even. Businesslike. "I've been studying them."

  "Articles," he repeated. Could this woman be any more by-the-book?

  "Yes. In one the author compared undercover work to walking a very thin wire over a very long drop. With no net below. It's dangerous. I understand that."

  "Let's be sure." He retrieved the manila envelope, dumped out a handful of photos into his palm. "Like I told you the day you snagged this assignment, we know from the notes George Jackson—the retired OC
PD cop who was the head of security at the race track—left on his computer that Krystelle Vander called him. She was hysterical, claiming Carlton Spurlock ended their relationship. She told Jackson she had some sort of evidence proving Spurlock ordered a jockey's murder. Jackson told her to meet him, then left his office." Alex handed Morgan the photos. "We don't know where they met or what happened later. We just know they wound up dead."

  Alex studied Morgan while she scanned the photos of the bodies found dumped in the parking lot of an abandoned warehouse. He knew her recruit class had been subjected to crime-scene photos during their weeks of training. So he wasn't surprised her hands remained steady, her eyes impassive while she gazed at the leggy, model-thin Vander sprawled on her back, naked save for a pair of red-sequined stiletto heels. Bruises mottled the woman's tanned face; her head was twisted at an awkward angle. Her arms and legs were flung out, her long, blonde hair matted with dried blood.

  When Morgan got to the photos of George Jackson, Alex looked away. He didn't need pictures to remind him of how a single bullet to the head had ended George's life. Of how the blood clotted against George's thick, gray hair had looked almost black in the glaring lights the lab techs had set up at the crime scene.

  "You knew him, didn't you?" Morgan asked quietly.

  Alex sliced his gaze back to her. She had finished looking at the photos and was sitting there, watching him. "Yeah, I knew him. He was the best beat cop this department ever had."

  "What I mean is, he mattered. To you."

  "What makes you think that?"

  "Because when you say his name, there's something in your voice. Some change. Emotion."

  Alex couldn't say George's name without it hurting his throat. He figured if Morgan was perceptive enough to catch that, she deserved the truth. "Yeah, he mattered. A lot. George Jackson is the reason I became a cop."

  "Is he the reason you're on this assignment?"

  "He and the other five people Spurlock murdered." Alex gathered up the photos. "I wanted you to see these because I don't want you to forget for one second what he's capable of having done on his behalf."