Undercover Mistress

A book in the Starrs of the West series, 2005

In loving memory of HARLAND WEAVER HAND, “PAPA” to his children, and to me, lover of words, drama and poetry, teller of stories;

And with heartfelt thanks to his son, my uncle, TOM HAND, teacher and gentle soul, for encouraging me, so many many years ago, to use the gifts Papa bequeathed to me.


Chapter 1

Celia Cross was of the opinion that if you had to suffer from insomnia, there couldn’t be a better place for it than Malibu.

On those clear nights when she found herself wide-awake at three in the morning, there was the moon path beckoning just beyond her beach house windows, stretching off across the sea like a highway to China. And though she lacked the courage to follow the lure of that glittering path, there were still the seemingly unending expanses of beach to explore at a pace of her own choosing. At three in the morning, there was only the whispering surf for company, and little likelihood of any human presence, friendly or otherwise, happening by to intrude on her solitude.

At the same time, there was just enough of a civilized presence in the dark hulks and occasional lights from the beachfront houses of the rich and famous to reassure her she wasn’t entirely alone. And on nights like this one, when the fog lay thick as cotton batting along the water’s edge, enveloping her in its cocoon of cold silence, it was easy to imagine what it might feel like to be the last human soul alive on earth.

With or without fog, Celia never felt nervous about walking or running alone on the beach in the wee hours of the morning. To be truthful, nowadays there wasn’t much of anything-anything that walked, swam, slithered or flew, anyway-she did fear, though she had a sense that fact hadn’t pleased the therapist when she’d told him during the first months after the accident.

“Why do you think that is?” the doctor had asked probingly in the annoying manner of psychotherapists. Celia had replied with something flip and meaningless because, in the annoying way psychotherapists had of sometimes illuminating unwelcome truths, deep down she’d known the real answer: Maybe I’m not afraid of anything because I really don’t give a damn.

Then she thought, mentally smacking herself like a misbehaving puppy, Bad girl. Bad thoughts.

Pushing back the hood of her sweatshirt, she broke into a determined run, veering onto the sheet of firm wet sand left by the retreating tide. A moment later, though, limited visibility forced her back to a walk to keep from tripping over the piles of rubbery kelp that littered the sand. There was more of it than usual tonight, dredged up from the undersea forests just offshore by some tropical storm way off in the Pacific. There’d been big surf earlier in the week.

An especially large clump of debris loomed ahead of her in the fog, and she angled her path to go around it. Only a few yards still separated her from the mass when she halted suddenly, and her heartbeat quickened. Had it been a trick of her eyes, her vivid imagination? Or had something in that tangled pile moved?

She stood motionless, shivers of excitement cascading through her as her eyes strained to penetrate the darkness and fog. Thoughts of sick or injured sea lions crossed her mind-people did find them on these beaches now and then, though she herself had never been so lucky. She’d heard, too, of beachcombers finding pelicans or sea gulls tangled in fishing line, and even dolphins and whales beached on the sand.

What if it is something alive…sick…hurt? What do I do?

Here she was, alone on a beach at three in the morning, and she didn’t have her cell phone with her. How stupid was that?

She didn’t recall her brain telling them to, but her feet were moving again, carrying her toward that dark and shapeless mass. Nervous but curious, wishing she had, at the very least, a flashlight, she leaned cautiously closer, peering into the pile. Okay, there was a whole lot of kelp-the smell of it was sharp and raw in her nostrils. And…oh well, shoot, it was only driftwood after all-a big piece, gnarled and misshapen, like the trees from an enchanted forest. Was that all it had been? Just a piece of driftwood? With a hiss that was half relief, half disappointment, she straightened, laughing silently at herself and her overwrought imagination.

But-about to move on, once again she froze. Okay, no doubt about it. A branch of that “driftwood” had definitely moved.

She bent closer to examine it, holding her breath, poised to leap back out of danger at a split-second’s notice-and that was when she heard it, barely audible above the hiss and sigh of the surf. A sound. A low sound, like a moan.

She sucked back a gasp, and again without conscious decision, found that her hand was moving…reaching toward…whatever it was that was buried in all that debris. Nervously, she pulled it back. Chicken, Celia! Shifting, she edged herself closer, then put out her hand again-slowly, this time, and carefully…until she touched-Oh, ick! Her fingers had touched…something. Something cold and clammy. And smooth. It felt like…skin. Not scales or feathers or fur, but skin. Human skin.

Horror washed over her, as shocking, as breathtaking as if one of the waves curling onto the sand a few feet away had crashed over her head. She opened her mouth to scream, but the sound that emerged was more like a whimper. Oh God, oh God, oh God, it’s a body-a human body. Oh God.

Okay, but not a dead body. She’d seen it move-hadn’t she? She’d heard a groan. She had. Could something that cold, that still, possibly be alive?

Whimpering to herself, Celia tore with her hands at the masses of kelp until she was kneeling close beside the inert shape. Her hands explored, gingerly at first, and then, having so far encountered nothing particularly gruesome, with more confidence. Her search revealed a head covered with short, damp hair, a jaw rough with beard stubble. Okay, obviously a man.

She put her fingers against the side of his neck just below the jaw, the way she’d seen it done countless times on movie and TV screens-the way she’d even done it on camera herself once or twice, come to think of it. She searched for a pulse-and went clammy with a weird combination of relief and panic when she found one.

At least he’s alive!

Oh God. He’s alive.

Which meant it was now up to her to see he stayed that way. What do I do now?

Call 911, obviously.

Except she didn’t have her cell phone with her. Which meant she was going to have to leave the guy lying here on the sand and run back to her house to call for help. But what if he died while she was gone? What if he was badly hurt, bleeding to death even now?

“Badly hurt” was probably a given, considering he was lying face down and unconscious. Other than that… Quelling panic, she proceeded with her inventory. He seemed to be naked from the waist up; below that were sodden trousers-no, shorts-and below that, bony masculine legs that, as far as she could tell-relentlessly squashing horrifying images of shark attack victims-were intact. No shoes or socks, which, she supposed, wasn’t surprising, given the fact he’d almost certainly just come out of the ocean.

She ran her hands over a back dense with muscle-she could feel the indentation of spine between hard, rounded ridges, heavily crusted with sand. Moving her hands outward from there, she felt a rib cage…shoulder blades…all well-padded with that re-silient, though frigid, muscle. Her hands slipped down the sides of the torso-and recoiled. Cold horror sliced through her.

Simultaneously, the man uttered a sound, something between a gasp and a groan.

“Oh God,” Celia said in a breathy squeak, “I’m so sorry.” Shaking, she held up her hand in the darkness, trying to see what it was on her fingers. Something sticky. Sandy and sticky. But of course, even in the dark and the fog, even without seeing it, she knew what it was. What it had to be. She touched the man’s back and whispered it again. “I’m sorry…I’m so sorry.”

So, clearly, the man was injured. And bleeding. There was no way around it-she was going to have to go for help. But to leave him lying here like this-alone…so still…so cold…

Impulsively, she pulled off her sweatshirt and laid it across his naked back. As she tucked the hood around his neck, she leaned close to whisper brokenly in his ear. “Hold on, okay? You’re going to be all right. I’m going to get help. I’ll be right back-I promise. Don’t die, okay? I’ll be right back.”

She crouched, leg muscles tensed like a runner in starting blocks, but instead of rising, she sucked in air and froze once more. Something had clamped around her wrist, something cold and hard as steel. But it wasn’t steel. It was human flesh. A hand. A whisper, faint as wind-driven sand, stirred across her cheek.

“Please…help…me.”

Something-an emotion completely unknown to her-trembled through her chest. Tears-of nervousness? excitement? relief?-sprang from her eyes. “Yes, yes-I will, I’ll get you some help. I will.” She was babbling, half weeping. “I have to go, now, okay? But I’ll be back, I promise-” Again, she tried to rise.

Where the poor man got the strength, she couldn’t imagine, but his grip on her wrist tightened, holding her where she was. Beneath the sweatshirt she’d placed over them, the powerful shoulders bunched and succeeded in lifting his head barely an inch off the sand. His voice rose in volume to a raspy croak. “Don’t…call…police.”

“No, of course not,” Celia babbled, thinking only to soothe him. “You need an ambulance. Paramedics-”

“No!” The croak became a cry of desperation. “Don’t…tell…anyone. Nobody…can know. They…can’t…know. Promise.”

The grip on Celia’s wrist became painful. “Okay, okay, I promise,” she gasped. “No police-okay?”

“Promise…” The word sighed away into a whisper as his grip relaxed and his head dropped back onto the sand.

O-kay, she thought, shaken. What was that all about? She sat back on her heels, rubbing her wrist and chewing on her lip. No cops? They can’t know? Can’t know what?

Obviously, the man was delirious-out of his head. Obviously, she had to call 911, because if she didn’t, the guy was going to die right here on the beach. She had no choice.

She ran a hand over her face and let out a breath that was almost a groan. Okay, maybe she’d been in television way too long, but dramatic scenarios of every sort were running on fast-forward through her mind. Why would somebody in this kind of shape not want the police involved, unless they had good reason not to? Was this guy some kind of criminal? Was he running from the police? What if the police were the ones who’d shot him?

Celia, get a grip. You don’t even know that’s a gunshot wound.

But…somehow she did. A bullet, or maybe a knife-anyway, she knew that wound in the man’s side, the wound her fingers had touched, was the result of violence-human, not animal-and that it had been deliberate, not accidental. And sure, the man lying helpless in the kelp might be a dangerous criminal, but something told her he wasn’t.

And if he isn’t a criminal?

More scenarios sped across the video screen in her mind. What if he truly was in mortal danger, but for some reason couldn’t risk letting the cops know about it? Soap operas and television dramas and action movies were full of stories about good guys with good reasons not to involve the police. Just because those particular stories were fiction didn’t mean it couldn’t happen in real life. Well, it didn’t.

She cleared her throat and gingerly touched the man’s shoulder. “Hey, listen-can you walk?” She waited, but there was no answer, not even a moan.

“O-kay, I’ll take that as a no.” Swearing under her breath, she pushed herself to her feet. Muscles and bones only recently healed screamed in protest, and she took a moment to placate them with some hurried shakes and stretches before, with a worried look back at the still, dark lump on the sand, she set off back the way she’d come. After the first few plodding steps, she broke into a run.

It wasn’t all that far to her place-perhaps a hundred yards or so, though it seemed like a mile. Her legs were on fire and she had a stitch in her side by the time she left wet, packed sand to angle uphill across the soft, deep powder toward the carriage lanterns she’d left burning on the deck to light her way home in the fog. The lamps gave off a weird coppery glow that was more eerie than welcoming, and Celia couldn’t suppress a shiver as she thought of the man she’d left lying back there on the beach and the words he’d spoken in a raspy whisper, like death: Don’t tell anyone…they can’t know.