Undercover Mistress

He thought he’d done a pretty good job of disguising the involuntary check in his breathing, and he knew his face wouldn’t betray the shock he felt-or the shame. Nevertheless, with a seemingly casual movement of hand and body, she twitched the robe shut, hiding her legs and the scar from his view.

“You can’t be you,” she said-and was it his imagination, or had her voice suddenly gone breathless? “You said yourself, Abby’s people got a good look at you and might even have identified you-I don’t pretend to know how they’d do that, but if you say so, I’m sure it’s true. So we have to give you a new identity, right?”

Though she hadn’t addressed the question to Max, he shrugged and made a gesture that said, basically, “This is your ball game-go for it.”

She slipped off the stool and walked slowly around Roy, studying him in a way that made his heart pound and his breath go shallow. He couldn’t have described the way he felt, but he sure as hell knew he didn’t like it. It was like…being in a car going way too fast, with somebody else driving-somebody whose driving he didn’t entirely trust. Come to think of it, he’d been having that feeling a lot lately.

Then she stopped directly in front of him, and-he couldn’t help it-his breath hissed between his teeth as she reached up to finger his hair back from his forehead. “The easiest way to change your appearance, would be to make you…older,” she said softly, and her eyes brushed past his to follow her exploring fingers. “We can give you gray hair-a nice silvery gray, right here at the temples, which will be very striking with your skin…and so distinguished. We can add a few wrinkles here…make your eyebrows a little heavier…”

Her fingers moved over his skin, light and cool as flower petals, touching each feature as she cataloged it, while he glared at her in helpless fury. His temperature rose and his pulse thumped low in his belly.

“Maybe a few more crow’s feet-contact lenses, naturally, to change your eye color.” Her own eyes seemed to shimmer…or was it his vision beginning to go, flickering like a faulty lightbulb? Her voice was a hypnotic murmur, like a cat’s purring. “Blue, I think-it will look stunning with the silver hair. You already have a little bit of a bump to your nose…no time for plastic surgery, but a mustache, maybe, to hide the shape of your mouth…” Her fingertips traced the still swollen and tender bridge of his nose…outline of his lips, and he felt a growl forming in the back of his throat as he held himself rigid and fought the almost overwhelming urge to capture those tormenting fingers in his mouth.

But almost as quickly as the impulse formed, the fingers moved on…the backs of them, now, lightly brushing the quarter inch of stubble on his jaws. Shock waves of shivers rippled down his back. His face felt on fire. His fingers curled, wanting to reach up and grasp her wrist so badly, it was all he could do to hold himself still. He curled the fingers into fists and fought to keep his eyes from closing, glaring into hers instead and seething helplessly.

“Or…maybe a goatee? No-wait! I know…” Something flared in her eyes, then smoldered. “A scar-right here.” Her fingers traced a line down the side of his face, from his cheekbone to his chin, her eyes never wavering from his as she said softly, “The thing about a scar, you see, is that it draws the eye, and people tend not to look past it. They see the scar, not the person. That’s what makes it the perfect disguise.”

She whirled abruptly back to Max, leaving Roy shell-shocked. A little humiliated. Definitely weak in the knees. “What do you think?”

“Sounds doable to me,” Max said, not even trying to hide his grin of delight.

After a moment, maybe in response to the murderous look Roy threw him, he coughed and got serious again. “Okay-what about a background story? We’ll need to get our people going on the paperwork as soon as possible.”

“I don’t see why I have to be old,” Roy muttered, picking up his coffee cup and scowling into it. He didn’t know quite what had just happened to him, but he felt like an invalid who’d been out of bed too long. Not to mention itchy and out of sorts, and vaguely abused. “What am I supposed to be, your father?”

“Of course not,” Celia said, giving him her kitty-cat smile. “You’re going to be my sugar daddy.”

Max guffawed. Roy choked on a swallow of coffee. “Like hell! Who’d believe that, anyway? You’re the one who’s rich, maybe you should be my…my-what the hell would you call it-my sugar momma?”

“Obviously,” said Celia dryly, ignoring Max, who was laughing so hard he had tears rolling down his cheeks, “you don’t read the tabloids. If you did, you’d know I’m supposedly broke.” Both men stared at her. “Oh, yes-after having squandered the fortune my parents left me on drugs and fast living. Trust me-showing up on the arm of a mysterious older man who also happens to be a millionaire will fit the public’s expectations of me to a T.”

“So,” Roy said gruffly after a moment, folding his arms on his chest and glaring down his ruined nose at her, “I’m a millionaire?”

She prowled closer. “Billionaire, probably. Nowadays, millions aren’t all that impressive. Canadian, I think-”

“Canadian!” Gun-shy, this time he reared back from her like a nervous horse. “Woman, you’re forgetting. I’m from Georgia-and I’ve got the accent to prove it.”

She paused, her smile flickering…and were the shadows of uncertainty in her eyes for real, or the products of her art…or merely his imagination? “Only a slight one, actually-most of the time. Anyway, we’re supposed to be disguising you, right? You want your new background to be as different from your real one as possible.” She tilted her head and studied him thoughtfully. “The real problem is going to be your actual voice. Voices are harder to disguise than faces.”

“She’s right,” said Max.

“I know-how’s this?” Though she was obviously speaking to Max, her voice was low and intimate, and her eyes never left Roy’s. “He can’t talk. He can only whisper. He was injured-in an accident. A hunting accident-in the Northwest Territories. That’s how I met him, you see-in rehab. We helped each other through…difficult times…and of course, it was inevitable that we should fall in love.” She whirled away from him, leaving him with the sensation of a man teetering on the edge of a cliff.

“And it explains the nose and the scar, too,” she said breathlessly to Max. “Oh, this is perfect. Americans don’t know anything about Canada, so any accent he might have, any odd habits, they’ll just think it’s because he’s Canadian.”

“You’re something else, you know that?” Roy said with half a laugh, desperately trying to ground himself. “Forget acting-you should be writing fiction.”

“I’ve thought about it, actually,” she said, throwing him a look that seemed to be serious-as if she really did want him to understand. “They’re not that different, writing and acting. Both are about making up characters and then crawling inside their skin. Getting to know them. Figuring out what makes them tick. Then, you figure out ways to let the audience in on the secret.” She gave a half shrug, along with a faint smile. “That’s all acting is. And maybe fiction writing, too.”

“Got it all figured out,” Roy said in a grating voice.

He wasn’t sure when his heart had begun to beat so fast, when he’d begun to feel like a hunted man, dodging through the woods, looking for a place to hide. He knew he didn’t much like the idea of anybody getting inside his skin…figuring out what made him tick…knowing him that well. And as for a woman like Celia…it scared him to death. Just as well the character she was trying to crawl inside of was only some fictitious Canadian billionaire and not the real him. So, fine, he thought, let her do that-so long as she lets Roy Starr and his secrets the hell alone.

The momentary fog of panic cleared from his vision slowly. He found that he was staring down into Celia’s eyes-dangerous waters if ever there were any-and a new question seemed to be lurking in those mysterious depths. He could hear echoes of it vibrating in the waiting silence.

“What?” he muttered thickly.

“A name,” Max said patiently. “You need to pick one.”

“Oh.” He frowned, thinking about it, but the only name in his mind seemed to be the one he’d been answering to for thirty-five years.

“I rather like…Cassidy,” Celia murmured, again not taking her eyes from Roy’s, but smiling this time. “It has a nice outdoorsy ring. Rugged.”

“Cassidy? Not bad…first or last?” It was Max’s voice, coming from far away.

Roy shook himself. “Last,” he said crossly. “Why can’t I use my own first name?” It was what he usually did