Embarrassment flooded her system. “No, it really doesn’t make me feel better. Were you able to figure out where the bug was transmitting to?”

“Oh, that was easy peasy. It was being sent to a hotel room on Gloucester Road. When the MI6 boys went there, Baz had left it running with a note that Damon better show up when he calls. Well, the sex tape part was also running. He saved the files from the last couple of days. Mostly it was nothing more than you on the Tube and eating sandwiches and cleaning up your house. And the session this morning was just audio and several hours of staring at Damon’s really sparse kitchen.”

She’d set her bag on his bar before going to bed. Apparently they’d been loud. “Who else has seen it all?”

“Just me and Adam. But he was listening in with me on Satan and Ten.”

“Chelsea!”

Chelsea glanced her sister’s way. “Adam and I modified our laptops with hypersensitive microphones. I wanted to see if it worked over Skype. It does. Adam says you should give Damon a second chance because he was trying to protect you, but I say we set him up as an escort on the Internet. I can have that website built out in an hour. He’ll start getting phone calls shortly after.”

Charlotte groaned, pulling out shot glasses. “Use your powers for good, please. Are you telling me he tried to get her thrown off the op? After what happened last night?”

“It was this morning.” The words were out of her mouth before she could stop them. It wasn’t like she could call up her sister and explain that the man she was in love with had dumped her and hurt her because it was better than getting her brutally murdered by a turncoat agent. Oh, and I don’t actually work for a staid publishing company. I’m SIS. How are the kids? That would go over well.

And I might have to betray him on a level he’ll never forgive me for.

She didn’t even want to think about that.

“He made love to you this morning and then tried to get you fired?” Charlotte poured out a nice shot of amber liquid. Three glasses all in a row. “And after you apparently made a sex tape with him?”

“I eradicated it,” Chelsea said, taking a seat at the bar.

The man had a complete bar in his house. His building. He owned a whole building. Was she fooling herself? She shook her head. “I don’t really drink much.”

“That’s part of your problem.” Charlotte handed her a shaker of salt.

“And I’m the bad influence?” Chelsea licked her thumb and then salted it, picking up a lime wedge with the opposite hand. “He didn’t just try to get her fired. He told her he didn’t like sleeping with her and he’d done it all for the mission. It was cold.”

Come to think of it, maybe she should drink more. The idea of Ian and Tennessee feeling sorry for her made her want to crawl into her shell and never come back out again.

Charlotte’s eyes widened. “Bastard, son of a bitch, cocksucker.”

Chelsea completed her shot, chuckling a little. “I don’t get why cocksucker is a bad thing. You talk about it all the time.”

“Stay on topic. And oral is very nice. I’ll remove that one from my repertoire. I can’t believe he did that. Well, I can. Damon can be a shut-down asshole, but he was totally into you.” She frowned. “Damn it. Adam’s right. He’s trying to protect you. What is wrong with men? Why can’t they just say what they’re feeling? What would you have done if he’d held your hand and begged you to walk away because he couldn’t stand the thought of losing you?”

Somehow, she couldn’t see him doing it. “I would have done anything he asked me to. Well, until I could find a way around it. I don’t want to leave him alone. He’ll get in trouble. He’s not thinking straight when it comes to Baz.”

And his heart might explode.

Charlotte held up her glass. She didn’t bother with the niceties, merely tipped it back and then poured another one. “I knew there was a reason I liked you.” Her eyes settled on Penny. “I know Damon pretty well. He’s always been very careful with women.”

“He wasn’t careful with her according to Ten. He made her cry.” Chelsea turned in her chair, looking out over the dungeon. The sun had waned and the entire place was encased in twilight. Chelsea looked older than her twenty-seven years. Harder. “He’s just like the rest of them, sis.”

Charlotte groaned a little, a sure sign that this was a well-worn argument. “Yes, all men are evil. They’ll screw a woman in the end.”

Chelsea sucked down another tequila shot. “Do you know what I would give to look at a vagina and just want to hit that? I wish girl parts did it for me. Unfortunately, I like dicks. Do you know the problems with dicks? They’re attached to bigger dicks.”

“She’s talking about men,” Charlotte explained.

“Yes, I believe I understand. She’s not happy with her sexual orientation.”

“She’s not happy with anything, but that’s because she’s fighting the inevitable,” Charlotte said. “And so is Damon, if you decide to go after him. I’ve been around that man for a while, and I’ve never seen him look at a woman the way he looks at you.”

Penny bit her bottom lip and decided. She could sit around and try to think this through or she could lean on someone else for a change. “I don’t know how to fight for him. I don’t even know if I should. When he first said what he said, I was devastated.”

“That’s because he was an asshole,” Chelsea agreed.

She needed to ignore Chelsea if she was going to get anything done. “I don’t know how to reach him. Even if it’s true, I don’t think me talking to him about it is going to change things.”

Charlotte waved a hand, obviously dismissing that line of thought. “You can’t talk to him. Men are not logical enough. Trust me. I went through hell to get Ian back. I tried to give him a very simple explanation about why I betrayed him and let him believe I was dead for five years, but does he listen to me? No.”

Penny had read Damon’s very thorough file on the Taggarts. If they could be together and in love, then anyone could. “Then how did you get him back?”

“Sex, of course. It’s really the only language men understand.”

That was what she was afraid of. “I’m not very good at sex. I don’t have much experience.”

Charlotte frowned her way. “You’re going to be one of those women, aren’t you?”

“Here comes the speech,” Chelsea said under her breath.

“One of those women?” Penny wasn’t sure what that meant.

Charlotte crossed her arms under her breasts, leaning forward. “The kind who spends all their time worrying about what they’re not. ‘I’m not sexy. I’m not pretty. I’m not worthy.’ When you do talk about what you are, it’s negative things like ‘I’m fat’ or ‘I have cellulite.’”

She felt herself flush. Yes, she might be guilty of some of that, but it wasn’t the whole story. “That’s not true. I think I’m smart and nice.”

Charlotte shook her head as though Penny had just proven her point. “Only because people tell you that. Do you really believe it? Deep down inside? Or do you keep trying to prove it over and over again? Do you let people take advantage of you because you think the only thing you have going for you is that you’re nice?”

It wasn’t true. Except it sort of was. She spent a lot of time trying to prove how nice she was. And she spent absolutely no time being nice to herself. That needed to change. She needed to take a real inventory of herself. “I like my eyes. I think they’re pretty.”

“Yes, they are.” When Charlotte Taggart smiled, she could light up a room.

“All the guys think you’ve got a nice ass.” Chelsea leaned on the bar and gave her a reserved smile. “I listen in on everyone. It’s for research.”

“They like my bum?” She’d always thought it was way too big.

Chelsea giggled a little, her face softening. She was quite pretty when she relaxed. “Yes, I believe Jesse said, in his always intensely literate way, ‘Dayum, that’s a juicy ass.’ But y’all say arse. Why do you do that? It’s not very sexy.”

Maybe the word wasn’t sexy, but apparently her arse was.

“You aren’t going to win your man by worrying about cellulite,” Charlotte explained. She turned a pointed look to her sister. “Or by treating him like he has the plague.”

“He’s not mine,” Chelsea said quickly.

“Only because you act like a jerk.” Charlotte pushed one of the shot glasses Penny’s way. “She’s got a huge thing for Simon and he totally wants her too. They’ve circled each other for months and months and they’re both irritable because no one’s getting laid. Do you want that? Wait, was Damon good in bed? I mean he could be horrible and he could make you feel like shit and then it’s a good thing that he dumped you.”

“Oh, no, he’s very good. And he made me feel good.” Her confidence was rising with every word Charlotte said. “We were good together.”

They had been. He wasn’t closed down with her in bed. When he’d smiled, there had been actual emotion in him. She was sure of it. He was always so controlled, except for today. He’d lost it and it hadn’t been all because of Baz. His anger was cold, controlled, but his fear came out in screaming fits and every single one of them had been directed her way.

She knocked back the drink. She didn’t drink much because it didn’t seem ladylike and she’d wanted to be seen as a nice girl when she was growing up. She’d gotten used to being in control all the time. She’d had to be when her parents were alive.

It burned down her throat, and she practically coughed it up. Both Dennis sisters laughed and Chelsea patted her back. “It’s an acquired taste.”

But their friendship wasn’t. It was easy and simple and she hadn’t fit in with another group of women in a very long time. She was always worried about doing or saying the wrong thing, but the Dennis sisters were showing her there wasn’t a wrong thing to say.

“I will take another.” It was her time now. It was finally her time to figure out who she wanted to be, and she was very certain that one of the things she wanted to be was happy, and that couldn’t happen without Damon Knight.

“Can you be brave, Penny?” Charlotte asked, sliding her another shot. “I know it sounds silly, but you’re going to have to play a part you’re not used to playing. If you want to break through Damon’s walls, you’re going to have to seduce him and manipulate him and bring him to his knees. You’re going to have to change the attitude. In the end, it can’t be a part you’re playing. It has to be you. You have to fight and fight dirty.”

If Damon had his way, she would be safe and he would upend both US and British intelligence and likely get himself killed in the process. He’d always been brave. He’d been through hell and he still was capable of caring about her.

Was she willing to let that go because she didn’t like her body? Damon liked her body. If he was her lover, wasn’t his opinion of whether she was sexy the only one that really mattered?

“Yes. I can be brave.” She’d been nervous about being naked, but it seemed very silly now. She’d been willing to put her life in Damon’s hands. Why would showing a bit of skin really bother her?

Chelsea put her head in her hand. “Oh, no. Do you know what she’s about to do to you?”

But it was said with a smile and what seemed to be genuine affection for her sister.

Charlotte squealed a little and clapped her hands. “Makeover!”

Maybe she could use one. And she had a bit of money saved so it would be good to have some new clothes. “All right.”

“And we’ll need some help from my hubby to set the scene, but we can’t let him know we’re using him so Penny, I’m going to need some serious tears.”

She’d held them back all day. It was actually quite easy to let them go. Her tears in the bathroom hadn’t even begun to make a dent in her tension, and she got the feeling that she wouldn’t be sleeping beside Damon tonight, so there would be no one to comfort her in the night.

Or would there? Maybe she needed to see how he liked being manipulated. As far as she knew, he hadn’t moved her things out of his room and she had a keycard.

Charlotte patted her back. “Excellent. You look very dejected. Now, sit over there and look vulnerable. Chelsea, I need you to irritate my husband with a rant about how horrible men are.”

Chelsea brightened. “I can totally do that.”

Charlotte picked up her phone. Her whole demeanor changed and she went from smiling to screaming harpy in a second. “Ian, your friend is a rat bastard. Do you know what he did? Do you know? Were you in on it?”