Undercover Mistress

How dare he? I found him. Washed up on the beach like a chunk of driftwood. I saved his life. He talked to me-okay, he was out of his head, but still…I was there. He talked to me. How dare he shut me out now? Banish me like a child? I deserve a part in this, dammit! I earned it.

She stared down at the tray on the countertop in front of her, not seeing it, seeing instead images from the past thirty-six hours…a gaunt face, gray-frosted with sand…a bruised and battered body, dark against her flowered sheets…a naked body, lean and spare, coiled and tense, like a painting of some martyred saint. Remembering the way that same body had felt when she’d held it wrapped in her arms, sand-gritty and cold against her nakedness, and the strange, intense sense of ownership.

Okay…it was impossible to stay mad at him, remembering what it had felt like to be lying on top of that body, hot and vital and strong…wrapped in his arms. Remembering his mouth…the heat… the taste of it…

You’re pathetic, you know that? You’ve fallen for him. You have-admit it!

Impossible. I’ve known him what, two days? And most of that time, he’s been unconscious. I’d have to be crazy.

Yeah, but we’re not talking love, here. How long does it take to fall in lust? Face it, Celia. You’re not mad because you’re being excluded-you’re scared you’re going to lose him before you even have a chance to take him to bed. He’s going to leave and go back to his life, as exciting and dangerous as that may be, and you’re never going to see him again.

Celia found that she was shaking her head in silent denial. But even as she whispered, “No, uh-uh,” she knew it was true.

You’re like a little kid-“I found him, he’s mine!” Finders keepers, right?

All right, she thought, maybe I have fallen for him. Maybe I do want him. But it’s not just him I want. It’s the life he leads-a life that means something. Dammit, I want that, too.

This…thing-whatever it is-he’s involved in…there’s a part for me in it, too. I know there is. I’m not going to be shut out. I won’t let them shut…me…out.

She blinked the tray into focus and was surprised to find it laden with coffee cups and spoons and napkins. She had no recollection of having put them there. “Great,” she muttered aloud, “all I’ve done the past couple of days is fetch trays from the kitchen-now I’m doing it in my sleep.”

With that, she turned her back on the counter and the tray, opened the refrigerator, snatched up two bottles of gourmet iced tea-mango-flavored-and marched out of the kitchen.

Both men broke off talking when she entered the bedroom.

Ignoring their pointed silence and polite, waiting stares, Celia swept across the room and, like a grande duchess bestowing favors, handed each of them a sweating bottle of tea. Then she plunked herself down on the arm of the chair across from the two of them and folded her arms on her chest.

“You might as well let me stay,” she said, with an airy toss of her head to disguise the way her heart was pounding. “I know everything anyway.”

Max and Roy looked at each other. After a long and profound silence, Max said in an ominous tone, “Does she?”

Roy opened his mouth.

“Don’t blame him,” Celia said. “He was out of his head. He didn’t even know I was there. Well-actually, I think he thought I was you. He made a very good report-very complete. At least, it seemed like it to me. Lots of detail.”

Max tore his fascinated gaze from Celia and swiveled back to Roy. “Is that true?”

Roy cleared his throat. His eyes flicked toward Celia, and she felt an odd little thrill ripple through her. “I haven’t heard it all,” he said in a glum and resigned tone, “but from the part she’s told me, I’d have to say…yeah, it probably is.”

“Wow.” Max ran a hand back across his thinning hair, then left it clutching the back of his neck, which he began to rub as if he’d just developed an ache there. “This…could be a problem.”

“Tell me about it.”

Celia slid from the arm of the chair into the seat and leaned eagerly forward. “Actually…I think I can help you with your problem.” No stranger to the effectiveness of good timing, she paused, teeth clamped down on her lower lip, to let the suspense build.

Across from her, seated side by side on the bed, the two men exchanged “Is she for real? ” looks.

It was Max who spoke, in a polite and wary tone. “And…what problem is it you think you can help us with?”

Celia delivered her money line, shivery with triumph. “You need to get someone onto Abby’s yacht, right? Well…it just so happens…I can do that for you. I can get on board that boat.”

Roy snorted and threw up his head like a startled horse. Max frowned and said, “Abby?”

“Yes-the Arab prince? Abdul Fayed Amir Abbas-or whatever… anyway, it’s Abby, to his friends.”

“Friends…” Max said faintly.

“Good Lord,” Roy exclaimed, staring at her, “you mean to tell me you know him?”

Celia flicked a gaze toward him, but it was like touching hot coals and she quickly brought it back to Max where she felt much safer. She wasn’t used to having men look at her the way Roy did-unless, of course, such a fierce and smoky look happened to be called for in the script.

But this-this wasn’t anything like having some actor standing in front of her, reading lines, feeding her cues. And she had no lines to give back to him, lines cleverly written by someone else. She was on her own. This was real. She could almost feel the heat radiating from those eyes…hear the tension singing in that taut body. And she knew when she continued, whatever she came up with, her voice wasn’t going to be as steady as she wanted it to be.

But I still…somehow…have to make them believe in me. I have to make them believe I can do this.

“I don’t know him well,” she said, locking eyes with Max and finding it was much easier if she pretended Roy wasn’t in the room. “But I have met him. Several times. At parties, and things. Look-” she lifted a hand and gestured toward the pictures on the walls “-you have to understand-the house my parents left me is right up there in the part of Bel Air where Abby’s is. It’s like a small town. If I hadn’t sold the house when I did-it was about the first thing I did when I turned twenty-five and came into my inheritance-too many memories…” She gave Max a shrug and a sad little smile. “Anyway…if I hadn’t sold that house, Abby would be my neighbor now. But then,” she added, turning up the wattage on the smile, “I wouldn’t have had this place, and I wouldn’t have been here to discover Roy washed up on the beach and saved his life. It’s like…kismet…isn’t it?”

“Did she do that?” Max asked Roy in an awed tone. “Find you on the beach?”

“’Fraid so,” Roy said. It was the sound a dangerous animal makes, low in its throat…just before it springs. “I was about to tell you.”

“Good God. How the hell did she get you in here?”

“Carried me.”

“Not…by herself.” Max’s tone was flatly disbelieving.

“Well, of course not,” Celia interjected, “I had help. But even with Doc, it wasn’t easy.”

Max’s glare snapped back to her. “Doc? Who the hell is this we’re talking about?”

“Yeah, that’s another thing,” Roy said ominously.

“Oh, never mind that now.” She switched her focus to Roy, bracing herself, willing him to look at her. Then he did, and it was worse than she’d expected. Her heart stumbled and began to beat even harder and faster.

She said breathlessly, “I saved your life. Dammit, you-”

“Don’t…say it-” His face squinched up in a grimace of extreme pain.

“-you owe me.”

Roy clamped a hand over his eyes and let out a gust of breath. “She had to say it.”