Kathleen Creighton - Undercover Mistress

Roy closed his eyes. “You get all that?”

“Yeah, I got it.” Max’s voice was a good octave higher than it should have been, and Roy could hear him breathing. “Can I conclude from what I just heard that we might have ourselves a problem, here?”

“Yes, sir,” Roy said dully, “you sure could do that.”

He thumbed the disconnect button and carefully placed the phone on the nightstand. Celia went to sit on the foot of the bed and pulled her feet up under her.

“You’re upset,” she said. And she knew upset didn’t come close to describing the man’s state of mind just then.

It wasn’t that she didn’t understand, in her own heart, what he must be feeling-at least, she was pretty sure she did. An actress needed to be capable of recognizing and responding to a whole range of human emotions, and Celia considered herself more empathetic than most. But now it occurred to her that in terms of subtle shadings, the range of emotions she’d had to deal with in the past couple of days made all the rest of her emotional life so far seem like children’s crayon drawings in primary colors.

She said mildly, “I don’t know why you’re so upset. Just because I heard you talking in your sleep.”

“Delirious,” he growled, tearing his gaze from the tray on his lap and throwing her a black look. “I wasn’t asleep, I was out of my head. What you heard was garbage. It wasn’t real.” He picked up a fork and stabbed at a bite of pot roast.

“Max is real,” she pointed out. And completely independent of the tense conversation she was engaged in, a warm little spring of happiness-primitive and uniquely feminine-bubbled up inside her as she watched him put the food she’d prepared for him-all right, she’d only microwaved it, but still-into his mouth, and chew and swallow it with obvious enjoyment. It was a whole new experience for her.

“Yeah, well,” he said between quick, savage bites, barely tasting, “the rest of it isn’t. So you can just forget about it, you hear? It’s just…nightmares.”

“Then why,” she asked, “are you so upset that I know?”

He paused long enough to throw her another glare. “I’m not upset-just don’t want you getting a bunch of wrong ideas.”

His air of affronted masculinity amused her, and she couldn’t resist saying, with exaggerated innocence, “Wrong ideas? Oh-you mean like, that you’re a government agent working undercover trying to stop terrorists from bringing some sort of weapon of mass destruction into Los Angeles by boat? And that you were caught in the act of trying to sabotage some Arab prince’s yacht-” She broke off when her patient erupted in a paroxysm of coughing and leaned over to pluck a napkin from the tray and hand it to him.

“Thank you,” he muttered, voice muffled.

“You’re welcome.”

He dabbed at his eyes, tear-reddened and furious. “You…have one hell of an imagination.”

“I do. I also have a helluva good memory,” she said calmly. “Especially for dialogue-I have to memorize pages and pages of it every day, you know. I remember every word you said. It sounded like…” She paused to ponder it. “I think you must have thought I was this Max person, and you were giving him-me-a full report. With lots of details. In fact,” she added, returning his stony stare, “there wasn’t much left for me to imagine. Plus the cold hard fact that I found you washed up on the beach, half-dead from a gunshot wound.” Celia hated being patronized and belittled. Anger embers flared as she nodded toward the damp bandages stuck to his chest with adhesive tape. “Tell me I’m imagining that.”

Then, as a new thought occurred to her, she caught her breath and leaned toward him to peer interestedly at the wounds. “You know…I just realized…Doc said the angle was strange. He couldn’t figure out how the exit wound could be up here, and the entrance way down there, on your side. He said it was like you’d been shot from below. But you weren’t! I can see it now-you were diving!” She was up off the bed and on her feet, now, acting out the scenario. “Someone on the boat shot you as you were diving into the water. That’s the way it happened-right?” She spun toward him on the last word-then halted. “What are you doing?”

He’d set the dinner tray aside and was pulling his legs from under the covers. Aiming a smoky glare past her, he muttered, “Gettin’ the hell out of this bed, that’s what I’m doing. What does it look like?”

Her heart slammed against her ribs. “What does it look like? It looks like you’ve lost your mind. You’re not strong enough. You’re going to-”

“I’m fine.” Having succeeded in planting two bony bare feet squarely on the carpet, he transferred the glare to Celia. “Max’ll be here in a minute. I’m not gonna have him find me lying here like some damn helpless invalid.”

He’d never looked less like an invalid, in her opinion-or more like a buccaneer. Not a sick buccaneer, either, not any longer. The truth was, with his thickening beard and shower-rumpled hair, eyes throwing daggers, he looked more than capable of wreaking havoc on pretty much any venue he chose.

Her heart stumbled. She couldn’t bear to look just then at the reasons for the irrational protests and denials that were screaming inside her head, so she told herself he was simply too weak, too sick to go. She told herself he needed her. Because she couldn’t bring herself to admit the simple truth behind the protests, which was that it was she who needed him.

She stepped forward, reaching instinctively for him as he lurched to his feet, at that moment not sure in her heart whether she meant to help him…or stop him.

What happened next happened quickly. He swayed, uttering a muffled, “Whoa…” as his hands came up to clutch wildly at the only support within reach-which he did manage to grab hold of in the last instant before he toppled backward onto the bed.

As she felt his arms come around her, as she felt herself pitching forward, tightly wrapped in a surprisingly strong and wiry embrace, Celia had time for one electric flash of thought: Oh, please don’t let me hurt him.

She heard a sharp exhalation-whose, she couldn’t have said for certain-and the next thing she knew she was lying sprawled full-length on top of a hard masculine body. A thankfully no longer nude, but rather badly bruised, battered and recently gunshot body. A body, it further occurred to her, that had grown suddenly and alarmingly still.

Icy with fear, she carefully raised her head. Relief-and warmth-flooded back into her when she saw her patient’s eyes were open and focused. He appeared to be staring thoughtfully at the ceiling. Although she did think his breathing was somewhat shallow and constricted, and it seemed to her his heart was beating awfully fast. For that matter, so was hers.

“Are you okay?” she whispered. “I didn’t hurt you, did I?”

She felt his abdominal muscles clench as he lifted his head in order to see her. He shook his head slightly, and his voice seemed to rumble inside her own chest. “Uh-uh…how ’bout you?”

“I’m okay.” Which wasn’t quite true. For starters, was that raspy croak hers? Then there was the way her heart was banging against the walls of her chest-for all the world, she thought in dawning horror, as if it were trying to get through it, to get closer to him.

In fact, her whole body, waking up from the numbness of shock, seemed overjoyed with the circumstances it now found itself in. All across the surface of her skin, happy little nerve endings were springing to delighted attention-particularly those lucky enough to be in direct contact with some part of him. Pulses pounded through her veins like excited signal drummers racing to spread glad tidings. And who could blame them? It had been a long time since they’d had anything much to get excited about.

“I told you you weren’t ready,” she said thickly, desperately trying to throw a net over her voracious senses. “Naturally, you wouldn’t listen. What is it with men? Always think you have to-”

“Do you know,” he interrupted in a conversational tone, “that you are a damned exasperatin’ woman?”

Exasperating? For a moment she couldn’t think of a response; she’d never heard that word applied to herself before. She decided she sort of liked it. Warmth crept through her and into her face, bringing a smile with it. “Thank you. That’s very…John Wayne of you,” she breathed, gazing down into his eyes. Eyes…like dark vortices, pulling her in…

Her perspective…her world…slowly narrowed until nothing existed in it except for those eyes…then slowly it expanded outward again like a window spiraling open into a whole new world. A world that now included the hot, hard body beneath her, a furious pounding in her chest that seemed to leave no room for breathing, and the sweet, warm weight of his hands on her back. In this new world, she was deaf to reason and warnings of conscience. If, somewhere in the distant reaches of her mind, a voice was shrieking, Are you out of your mind? He’s injured, remember? she didn’t hear it.

And so, when his belly again tightened under hers, when his hand slid up to cradle the back of her head, when his head lifted and his mouth claimed hers, she was blissfully, eagerly waiting.

The kiss tasted like pot roast and hot, hungry man, and all Celia could think about was how delicious it was, and how long it had been since she’d indulged herself with either of those, and how sorry she was about that now, and…what had she been thinking, anyway? Because this-the hungry-man part-was as good as anything in life ever gets, and she kissed him back with blissful abandon, unhurried, aching with the unbearable sweetness of it, like someone savoring a bite of chocolate cake after a long, wretched denial.

When he pulled away from her-though not far-she licked her lips and let go a careful breath, vibrant with regret.

“Wow.” His voice was muffled, the word soft on her face.

“Yeah,” she said, eyes still closed, still smiling-before she remembered she was Celia Cross, a TV star, for God’s sake, and she ought to have some pride, dammit.

She opened her eyes and got them focused on the face so unnervingly near to hers, and was faintly surprised at the expression she saw there. Puzzled, she thought. Or maybe the word was…bemused.

“Tell me something…Roy,” she said, trying his name out loud for the first time-and again was surprised, this time by the queer little tremor that went through her when she said it. As when she’d seen his face in the light for the first time, it made him seem more real…brought her one step closer to knowing him…and did she really want that? She couldn’t think-didn’t want to. “Why on earth did you do that?”

His breath was warm on her face. “Tell you the truth, I’m not sure.” He was frowning; his fingers moved in her hair as if testing the texture of some fine, rare fabric.

Shivers cascaded through her; goose bumps prickled her scalp and poured over her body. Her nipples hardened. Solemn as a doctor delivering bad news, she said, “You’re badly injured, you know. You must’ve lost an awful lot of blood. You can’t stand up without fainting.” And then, sternly, “What were you thinking?”

“I dunno…something about…proving I’m still alive, I guess.” His lips tilted in a smile of charming irony that affected her the way the smell of baking bread would a starving man. She swallowed as he went on, “You know-the drive to survive…something primitive like that.”

She made a disparaging sound, but her heart wasn’t in it. Maybe because his hand had found its way under her shirt, and his fingers were brushing her back in that exploring way…as if acquainting himself with the feel, the unique texture of her.

“But…doesn’t it…hurt?” Her voice had grown breathless and hushed. His hand felt so good. “Your wound, I mean. I’d think-”

“Oh, hell yeah. But who-”

“Oh God-I’m sorry-you should’ve said-”

She was trying to shift her weight when his arms tightened around her with surprising strength. “Like I started to say, who cares?” His eyes seemed to smoulder as they looked at her. “Tell you what, though,” he growled. “You really want to make me feel better, you can kiss me again. And this time, come here to me. I’m an injured man-don’t make me come up there and get you.”

He is a pirate, she thought, quaking with laughter and a strange and delicious fear. At this moment, he could have just about anything he wanted from me, and I wouldn’t know how to defend myself against him.