Kathleen Creighton - Undercover Mistress

Broth. That kicked in another memory, new and hazy like the last one. His head pillowed against something soft…firm…warm…and a heartbeat knocking against his ear. Breasts. Celia’s breasts. Something hard pressed against his lips…salty liquid, warm on his tongue. A voice…Celia’s voice…cracked and breaking. It’s all right…you’re safe, now.

“Coffee’s fine,” he said, his own voice dry and gritty as the sand he remembered chafing and burning his skin. “Black.”

Then he put his head back against the sofa cushions and closed his eyes. Max, where in the hell are you? What are you doing to me, Max? You’ve gotta get me out of here.

“Are you okay?” She was back, standing beside him holding a steaming mug and looking concerned. “Shall I go get Doc?”

“Nah, I’m okay-just…tired, is all.” He sat up and took the mug from her, sipped, grimaced, then said, “What’s the story, there, anyway? You said the doc lost his license to practice medicine. So, what’d he do, exactly? I asked him, and he just said, ‘Bad choices.’” He paused to put the mug down on a glass-topped coffee table in front of him. “I kinda think I have a right to know, don’t you? I mean, if I’m putting my life in the hands of some quack who’s committed malpractice-”

“Oh, no-it’s nothing like that. Doc’s a good doctor-really.” She sat on the sofa that matched his, opposite him, the shaggy tumble of blond hair feathering around her face as she leaned forward. “It was…” she closed her eyes for a moment, then said it: “Drugs.”

“Drugs?” Roy stared at her. “You mean the guy’s a drug-”

“No, no-he didn’t take drugs. Just…dispensed them. A bit too generously, it turned out.” She let out a breath and sat back against the cushions, casually pulling one leg under her. “It was a few years ago. Doc had been prescribing painkillers for some very famous people who happened to be addicted to them. When those people went public with their addictions…” Her voice trailed off, and she shrugged. “What he did was wrong, but he’s paid a very high price.”

“Yeah,” Roy said, “he told me.”

“Anyway,” Celia said, “he’s a good doctor, and a good man. I don’t know what I’d have done without him. Well-obviously, I’d have had to call somebody else for help-like the paramedics, for instance. And you’d be in a hospital right now, and the story would be in all the newspapers-Man Found Near Death On Malibu-”

“All right, all right, I get it.” He held up a hand to stop the tumble of words. “I’m grateful, okay? I am. I swear.”

She gazed at him, the fierce expression turning slowly to a smile. “His main concern was that he couldn’t give you antibiotics,” she said softly. “He was so afraid of infection. And when you turned feverish…”

“I did?” He felt feverish now.

She nodded, gazing into his eyes. “Yes. And Doc said if you weren’t better by morning, we’d have to take you to a hospital. So I sat up all night and put cold towels on you.”

“You did that?”

She nodded solemnly.

“Well…thanks.” His tongue felt thick, his lips were tingling. He felt light-headed.

“You’re welcome,” she whispered.

And then there was stillness. Not silence, because he could hear his nerves humming and his heart beating and the waves thumping the beach outside. But everything seemed muffled and far away, as if he’d been closed up in a box…a box filled with soft golden light, cream-colored suede…and Celia. And it didn’t matter that there were a couple of yards of space separating him from her, because a part of him-the essential part-seemed to have lifted out of his body and was floating across that space to where she was. He could feel her breath on his face…the soft caress of her skin…smell her light, sweet scent. He could see her eyes widen, her breath catch and her lips part. And in his mind-that essential part of him-he was kissing her, and she was kissing him back, her mouth opening under his, hot and hungry…

The doorbell rang.

Roy felt himself blow apart, then reassemble, all the essential pieces settling back into their customary places. Except he felt as if someone had set off a firecracker two feet from his head.

Celia said, “Maybe that’s Max,” and got up to answer the door.

Roy picked up the coffee mug, grimacing involuntarily as he took a sip of what had to be the worst coffee he’d ever tasted, and tried to figure out what in the hell had just happened to him.

He was a plain, down-home Southern boy. He wasn’t a fantasy kind of guy. Or he never had been, before now.

Behind him, somewhere not far off, he heard an unfamiliar voice say, “I’m Doctor Chan. Max sent me.”

And Celia’s voice replying, inviting him in-ordinary words…everyday words that in her voice sounded like musical notes from some exotic instrument-a wooden flute, maybe.

It had to be her, dammit. Celia. Something about her wild imagination, and the make-believe world she lived in. If he wasn’t careful, with all that beauty and charisma, the sheer power of her personality, she could very well suck him right into that world with her.

Celia couldn’t sleep.

Not that there was anything unusual about that-she almost always had trouble sleeping lately. Which, after all, was why she’d been out walking the beach at three in the morning the night she’d found Roy. Insomnia was insomnia. So, what was different about this night?

Well, for starters, she wasn’t alone-which was not to say she wasn’t lonely. There was a man-a stranger, and yet, somehow not a stranger-sleeping in the downstairs bedroom. The room that had been hers for almost a year. The room that held her past…her memories…her childhood. She’d been too busy to think about it, but now she realized because of the stranger’s presence in that room, with all it meant to her, she felt exiled. As if she’d been shut out of her own place…her own past.

And it occurred to her that maybe that was part of what was different about this sleeplessness. Because normally it was the past that haunted her, and tonight it wasn’t. It was the future.

Except, haunted wasn’t the right word. Preoccupied, perhaps. Excited. Galvanized. Yes-all of those!

There was so much to do. Her mind was a jumble of plans…ideas. She couldn’t wait for the new day to begin so she could get started-as soon as Max gave the go-ahead, which he would, she was sure of it.

Roy, of course, was another matter.

Her thoughts darkened, and some of the old, more familiar nighttime loneliness crept around her like a chilly draft when she recalled the way he’d looked when she’d made her proposal. Angry, of course. And…betrayed?

He’d called her devious.

He’d accused her of having an ulterior motive for kissing him. Implying he wouldn’t care to kiss her if she did. The thought that Roy might not want to kiss her again made her feel unexpectedly bad. Hollow. Empty and lonely and cold.

But you’re getting what you wanted. You’re getting to be a part of something important. Something real.

Yes, she was. And Roy, after all, was only a guy. The world-her world-was full of guys, most of them much better looking than Roy. Well, okay, some of them. A few. Maybe. Anyway, guys were just…guys. She had to keep her focus on what was important.

And she really needed to sleep.

Not that she wasn’t tired enough to sleep-she was, for a change, since she hadn’t spent most of the day sleeping, as she’d become accustomed to doing in the past year.

This day had been a long and eventful one. Waking up with Roy…fixing food for Roy…fighting with Roy…kissing Roy. Meeting Max…convincing Max…fighting with Roy some more.

This evening, there’d been that unsettling conversation with him out on the deck-and what was that about, anyway? Telling him about things she never told anybody. About her childhood, and her parents, and how much she missed them. Feelings. Real ones. Celia never shared those particular feelings. Ever.

Then, later, in the living room…that strange tension between them. Had she only imagined it? She did have a…well, a rather active imagination, admit it. But it had seemed so strong, so real…the feeling that there was some kind of connection happening between them…as if he were reaching for her across the void…touching her, even when he wasn’t.

But then Dr. Chan had come, and she would never know what might have happened if he hadn’t.

After the doctor had gone, Celia had tried to recapture the earlier mood of intimacy. Since Roy seemed to be getting a little testy over being treated like an invalid, she’d set the dining room table for two-even lit candles. She’d microwaved the chicken cordon bleu for Roy, and made a salad for both of them-one thing she was fairly good at was salads. She’d even opened a bottle of very good chardonnay. But he hadn’t wanted any, and after drinking one glass of it, she’d wound up pouring the rest down the sink drain. Conversation had been…awkward, to say the least.

Even after that glass of wine, she was simply too keyed up to sleep. And-which was weird, since it was her own-the bed she was in now felt strange to her. It had been a long time since she’d slept in it, true, but it was more than that. It was so…empty. Big…and empty.

My God, she thought, shocked to her very toes, I miss him.

It was true. She missed sleeping with Roy. For the past two nights, she’d slept cuddled up next to him-once practically naked, wrapped up with his chilled body cradled in her arms inside a cocoon of blankets. Then again fully clothed, on the outside of the blankets but close to him, with his body heat soaking through to keep her warm, and the reassuring thump of his heartbeat in her ear and her breathing timed to the slow, even tempo of his.

My God, two days and I’m hooked? Is that even possible?

She threw back the covers and got out of bed. Without turning on the lights, she found a pair of shorts and a tank top and put them on, then tiptoed downstairs. At the bottom of the stairs, she hesitated, and her heart quickened as she turned left, as she made her way silently past the kitchen and entryway, down the hallway to the den. Her room. Roy’s room.

The door was only partially shut. She pushed it with one finger and it opened without a sound. With her heartbeat thundering so loudly she wondered he didn’t hear it even in his sleep, she stood holding her breath and gazing at the dark mound of bedding, listening to the steady rhythmic breathing that was almost a snore.

Her mind filled with recent images and sensory memories, her body with a tight, hot arousal it hadn’t known in a long, long time. She saw herself walking across to the bed, easing back the covers and slipping between the sheets, breathing in the warm, musky scent of sleeping man as she stroked his lean, hard body to wakefullness, delighting in the sudden awareness…the blossoming of heat…the slow, sweet murmuring welcome…

Her stomach lurched, a sensation like having the floor drop out from under her. Dizzy with that, and from holding her breath, she pulled the door to, leaving it exactly the way she’d found it. She let the breath out, then went silently down the hallway and back upstairs, where she put on a pair of fleece pants and a zippered jacket over her shorts and tank top. Downstairs again, she slipped through the sliding glass door and out onto the deck.

The fog was a chilly caress on her fevered skin as she skipped unevenly down the stairs to the sand, the muffled thump of the surf a familiar rhythm. The tide was out-just as it had been two nights ago, she remembered. Her muscles protested as she slogged across deep, dry sand, until her feet found the wet, firm strip near the retreating waves. Then she began to run.

Max rang the doorbell at eight o’clock that morning. Since there was still no sign of Celia, Roy let him in.

“Did I wake you?” Max asked, grinning with cheerful malice. He took off the sunglasses he’d been wearing, even though the sun had a long way to go before it would break through the thick layer of coastal morning fog, and stuffed them into the pocket of his brown leather jacket.

“Nah,” said Roy easily, waving him inside, “I’ve been up a while. No sign of Sleeping Beauty, though. Want some coffee?”

Max raised his eyebrows. “Making yourself at home?”

“Self-defense, trust me. The woman makes the worst coffee I ever tasted.”

“Can’t have everything, I suppose.” Max followed Roy into the kitchen where he accepted a steaming mug, declining milk and sugar with a shake of his head as he hitched himself onto a stool next to the counter. He nodded at Roy’s chest. “You’re looking a whole helluva lot better. How’s the wound?”