Undercover Mistress

look like a member of the human race. Welcome back.”

“Thanks,” he said dryly as he moved past her.

“You’re welcome.” She came close to his side again but didn’t touch him, and he made his way slowly back to the bedroom without leaning on her.

Then he felt humbled again when he saw the bed had been freshly made for him-lavender sheets with scalloped edges, no flowers this time. He crawled between them, almost chuckling aloud with the sensual pleasure of that smooth coolness against his skin, thinking he was never going to take such a thing for granted again.

Thinking how much he owed this woman, this beautiful stranger. So she was a little bit arrogant, a little bit nutty-so what? Considering what she’d done for him, he thought he could forgive her that.

After he’d gotten himself settled, she picked up a cordless phone from the nightstand and handed it to him without a word.

He took it and thanked her, then sat there and held it, wondering how he could ask her for some privacy without sounding too ungrateful. He looked up at her, hoping she’d get the message, but she was fussing around with things on the nightstand, tidying up…avoiding his eyes. He took a breath, then let it out with a little bit of a laugh as some help came from an unexpected quarter. His stomach growled. Loudly.

Her eyes flicked toward him and her lips parted in surprise. Then she, too, gave a laugh-a charmingly childlike giggle. He felt the easing of tensions he hadn’t even been aware of, and it occurred to him she might have been looking for a way to ask awkward questions, too.

“Sounds like you might be ready for some real food,” she said, avoiding his eyes again.

“Yes, ma’am, I believe I could eat,” he said, falling back on his Southern ways.

She nodded, but before she could turn away, he surprised both of them by reaching out and catching hold of her wrist.

“I have to ask you somethin’.”

It was a true statement; he didn’t want to ask her, and all his training told him he shouldn’t. But she’d mentioned Max. And that was something she shouldn’t have known about. He had to find out how she’d come by that knowledge. He had to.

“A while back, you said something to me.” Yesterday? The day before? I’ve lost track of time. “You asked me about Max.” His voice grew rougher as he stared at her, willing her to look at him. “I want to know where you came up with that name.”

She didn’t answer, and her eyes stayed stubbornly on the place where his fingers were wrapped around her wrist. Following her gaze, Roy felt twinges of shame, enough to make him loosen his grip some, but not release it entirely, as he repeated with more urgency, “What do you know about Max?”

She hesitated, and he saw her throat move, her lips part. Then she lifted her lashes and her eyes met his head-on, and it felt a like getting slapped in the face by a cold ocean wave. He thought how easy it might be for a man to lose his bearings and his sense in those eyes…if there wasn’t so much at stake.

“You talked about him,” she said with an evasive little shrug. “When you were unconscious. Or delirious, I suppose.”

Even though it was only his own fears confirmed, Roy felt himself go cold. Her wrist slipped unnoticed from his fingers. “I…talked?” He shook his head, not wanting to believe it. But there it was. He’d talked. “How much?” he finally asked, in a voice deep and hollow with dread. “What did I say?”

“Quite a lot, actually.” Now there was accusation in her voice and in the lift of her chin. “You know, I have a question, too. I’d like to know how much of it was true.”

He ignored that. “Did Doc-”

She gave her head an impatient shake. “He heard some-not very much. He just thinks you were out of it.”

“And you?”

She looked at him for a long moment without speaking, then said quietly, “Well, there has to be some reason for the shape you were in when I found you. Doesn’t there?”

And with that she left him there, staring after her and listening to the rumble of his career as an undercover agent of the United States government crumbling around him.

Eventually, he became aware of the weight of the phone in his hand. He glared at it, as if it were solely responsible for the mess he was in. Then, with his thumb, he savagely punched in a number he knew by heart. Swearing under his breath, he listened to the universal answering machine voice telling him to leave a message. When the beep came, he said in a voice as calm and expressionless as the recording, “Yeah, Max, this is Diver…just got back…guess I’ll wait to hear from you.”

Then, instead of hanging up, he pressed the handset against his cheek and closed his eyes, visualizing Max’s computer running through its voice recognition software. After what seemed like a lot longer wait than usual, he heard a click, followed by a series of musical beeps, and a voice he knew well, sounding like nine miles of bad road.

“Diver? Jeez, where you been? I’d given you up for dead.”

Roy laughed without humor, then wished he hadn’t; he’d forgotten how sore his ribs and chest were. “Yeah, me, too,” he said grimly. “Listen, Max-” it wasn’t the man’s real name, of course, anymore than Diver was Roy’s “- I’ve got a helluva lot to tell you, but not over the phone. Okay? And, uh, I guess I’m gonna need you to come get me.”

“Sure, absolutely. Just tell me where.”

“Oh, shoot.” He broke off, swearing, since he had no idea in the world where he was, other than somewhere on the Southern California coast. “Uh, wait-let me see if I can find-”

“You’re in Malibu,” Celia said from the doorway, in a firm, clear voice, projected to carry to the telephone receiver in his hand. “Off the Pacific Coast Highway.” She continued talking as she prowled toward him, holding a tray before her like an offering to a pagan god, giving her address and some admirably concise driving directions, which she wrapped up just as she was bending over to place the tray on Roy’s lap. Then, with her mouth roughly a foot from the phone’s mouthpiece, she added, “Oh, and Max? You might want to bring him some clothes. Mine don’t fit him all that well.”

She straightened up, wearing a distinctly catlike smile of satisfaction, as Max screeched in Roy’s ear, “Who was that?”

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