Undercover Mistress

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?”

Roy rotated his arm experimentally, touched his side, then shrugged. “Better. Ribs are the worst. I’ll live.”

The two men sipped coffee in comfortable silence for a few minutes before Max said, “So, aren’t you gonna ask me about the director’s decision?”

Roy shrugged again. “Do I have to? He went for it, right?”

Max lifted his cup, drank coffee and put it down again. “How’d you know he would?”

“Because,” Roy said, pulling out a stool for himself, “it’s what I’d do. Hell, it’s the only thing to do. The stakes are high, we’re out of time, we have to use what’s available in order to get the job done. End of story.”

Max gave his head a wry half shake. “Gotta say I’m surprised. Relieved, but surprised.”

“Look-” Roy got comfortable on the stool “-if Celia says she can get us an invite into the prince’s social circle, if she thinks she can actually get us on board that yacht, then we’d be crazy not to let her try.”

“I’m sensing a ‘but’ in there somewhere.”

Roy swiveled to face him, frowning. “Okay, look-when the time comes for serious business, I don’t want her