Undercover Mistress

anywhere near that boat. That’s where I’m drawing the line.”

Max stared at him, eyebrows lifted. “You’re ‘drawing the line’? What’s this? If I didn’t know you so well, I’d think you actually care about her.”

Roy snorted. “Sure, I care about her, but not the way you’re thinkin’. The woman saved my life-now I’m gonna repay her by gettin’ her killed? Besides-she’s a civilian-an actress, for God’s sake. She’s got…I don’t know, romantic notions, like this is some kind of spy game, and she’s Mata Hari.” He picked up his mug and scowled into it. “Be like having a five-year-old tottering around in a war zone dressed up in her momma’s-”

He broke it off, warned by Max’s none-too subtle throat-clearing. That was followed immediately by, “Speak of the devil…” spoken in a ventriloquist’s undertone behind the toothy, “Good mornin’, sunshine” smile Max aimed past Roy’s head.

Roy swiveled around on his stool and even though he’d been warned, he couldn’t help but react-like he would if somebody had thrown a play punch at him and held up at the last second-with a catch in his breathing and a little squirt of adrenaline in his blood that made him tingle all over.

Celia was coming down the stairs…slowly…one step at a time, looking sleepy-eyed and tousled. All she needed, he thought, was a pair of footy pajamas, and she might have actually resembled that five-year-old he’d just been comparing her to. However, wrapped as she was in a slinky, slithery ice-blue robe, with some sort of satiny high- heeled slippers with silvery fur puffs on the tops that peeked through the front slit of the robe with each step she took, it was obvious the look she was going for was more along the lines of old-time Hollywood glamour queen. Names like Mae West or Carole Lombard came to mind. Maybe Rita Hayworth? One of those. Anyway, sexy as hell.

And Roy, watching her in appreciative silence, nevertheless couldn’t help but think of what he’d just been saying to Max, about a five-year-old playing dress-up in her momma’s clothes.

Meanwhile, as he sat in spellbound silence, Celia produced a warm smile and a husky, “Hi, Max,” and joined them. And was it Roy’s imagination or did the wattage of the smile dim a notch or two when she shifted it his way?

Then he thought he must have imagined the coolness, because when she said, “Oh, lovely-you made coffee. Is there any left for me?”, her voice had a warm and furry quality that made him think of something he’d like to nuzzle his cheek next to.

Without saying a word, Roy got a mug out of the cupboard and filled it for her. While he was doing that, she floated around the end of the counter and into the kitchen, trailing blue silk and a faint hint of fragrance and raising the temperature in the room by measurable degrees. She began opening doors, taking out little packets of artificial sweetener and flavored creamers, and a spoon to stir them with. Naturally, all this required Roy to keep dodging and sidestepping her, which he managed to do without once touching her or either of them saying a word.

All of which Max observed wearing a look of utter fascination. Roy decided then and there if Max said one word about it, he was probably going to have to deck him, whether the man was technically his boss or not.

“Sorry to wake you so early,” Max said, looking not sorry at all. “Thought you’d want to know as soon as I got the word.”

“Oh…yes…tell me,” Celia breathed, lighting gracefully on a stool and leaning toward him in a seductive way that elevated Roy’s temperature to simmer. “Did the director-”

“He did-and it’s a go.” Grinning, Max lifted his coffee cup toward her. “Looks like you’re ‘on,’ dear.”

She gave an excited wiggle accompanied by a delighted peal of laughter-then naturally couldn’t resist throwing Roy a little “I told you so” look across the rim of her cup.

“However,” said Max, pasting on a stern expression, “there are going to be some conditions.”

“Of course,” Celia said solemnly, picking up her cue from him like an eager-to-please child.

“First, there will have to be a security check-”

She gave a short, ironic laugh. “That shouldn’t be hard. My life is an open book-literally. Just check out the tabloids.”

“Then, you’ll need to learn some basic undercover skills. Call it a crash course in spying.”

Celia made a snuggling movement and murmured, “Cool…” as she caught her lower lip between her teeth to hold back a smile.

Roy couldn’t help it-watching her flirt like that made his mouth water. To cover it up, he gave an out-of-sorts “Humph.”

“And,” Max said, looking stern again, “there’re going to be some ground rules. Understand?” Celia nodded gravely. “Okay. Rule number one: You don’t do anything-and I mean anything-without running it by me first. You got that?” He waited for her nod before adding in a conciliatory tone, “That’s so we can get security measures in place-surveillance, backup, and so on.” He paused to put his tough-boss scowl back in place again, which Roy happened to know meant absolutely nothing anyway. “Rule number two: You make no contact whatsoever with these people-I mean al-Fayad, or anybody connected with him-unless Roy, here, is with you.”

Smoky blue eyes, veiled and unreadable, shifted toward Roy, and when they touched him, he felt a shiver go down his spine.

“Yes, boss,” she murmured.

Max stabbed a thumb toward Roy. “Uh-uh-in the field, he’s the boss. He’s the guy with the training and experience. You do what he says, no questions asked, you got that? Lives could depend on it- one of ’em could be yours. Other than that-the both of you answer to me. I answer to the director. Any questions?”

Roy saw Celia’s throat move and he thought sardonically, What’s that she’s swallowing, her pride? How hard must it be? After a moment, she shook her head. Roy tore his eyes away from her and looked over at Max and pointedly cleared his throat.

Max shot him back a look. “Oh, yeah-one more thing. This goes one step at a time. Which basically means, if at any stage along the way, we decide the situation looks bad, if we don’t like the risks, we call it off. We pull you out. Understand? We will not take any chances that might put you in harm’s way.”

He placed both hands palms down on the counter. “So-those are the rules.” He ducked his head in order to snare Celia’s eyes, which were studying her mug as if there were something in it far more fascinating than coffee. “Still want to play?”

“Yes,” she whispered, then cleared her throat and lifted her eyes to his as she repeated it in a normal voice, nodding, “Yes-of course.”

There was a bright smear of color on each cheek, but Roy didn’t know what that meant. Anger? Excitement? He didn’t know her well enough to read her. Considering how good an actress she was, he thought gloomily, most likely, he never would.

Max took a swig of coffee and waved his mug at her. “Okay, so…what’s the plan?”

In contrast to how subdued she’d been during Max’s “briefing,” Celia sat up alertly. “Plan?”

“Yeah-what now? You told us you can get yourself invited on board al-Fayad’s yacht. How do you propose to do that? What’s the plan?”

“The plan-” she drew it out as she threw a frowning look over her shoulder at the digital clock on the microwave oven “-is to call my manager. He’ll know what’s going on in town right now-where the best parties are, what everyone’s doing. But he’d kill me if I call him this early. So, I guess…” She swiveled toward Roy, wearing the well-fed kitty-cat smile along with a gleam in her eye that made the skin on his arms and the back of his neck tingle. He wasn’t exactly sure what hackles were, but he figured if he had some, they’d have been rising. “The first thing we should do,” she continued, “is figure out who you’re going to be.”

Roy wished he knew for certain whether the way her robe slipped open as she was moving around on that stool was as accidental as it seemed to be. As much as he didn’t want it to, his gaze dropped as if it’d had lead weights attached to it, down, down into the deep, narrow slash in the top half of the robe-a slash that had fallen more to one side than the other, so that it revealed one almost-hemisphere of soft round breast. Then a movement of her legs commanded a further shift in his line of vision. Down it went again…and down…

He felt a jolt, as if somebody had punched him under his ribs. Because, in the long, inverted V below the robe’s belt, where he’d expected to see the graceful line of feminine calf and knee and thigh clothed in creamy skin, lightly tanned, perhaps…instead, there was the ugly red weal of a scar.