Undercover Mistress

Lately, every waking minute it seemed his mind was full of images and sound bites: some grainy and flickering like old black-and-white film clips-Celia blowing on a spoonful of broth before touching it to his lips…sitting cross- legged on the foot of his bed, laughing…tumbling with him onto the sheets…kissing him; others warm and glowing with color-Celia painting a scar and goatee on his face with her fingertips…mugging in a purple fedora in a Rodeo Drive menswear shop…sniffing a gardenia and smiling at him across it with her eyes in a candlelit garden cafe. Still others made him feel restless and uncomfortable, like watching a sad movie when other people were around who might see him cry: Celia saying, “Of course I miss them!” And her eyes shining with unshed tears…a scarred leg peeking through the gap in a silky robe…Celia walking along the water’s edge, pausing to throw a stick for a passing jogger’s dog, laughing…then looking up to see Roy watching her and the laughter fading to a bleak and lovely mask, impossible to read.

If only he could make some sense of it all! But the memories flashed by too quickly, always changing, so he never got a close, clear look, a chance to figure out what they meant. If only, he thought, memories could be more like photographs, so he could shuffle them around, lay them all out like snapshots in an album…maybe that way get a sense of the overall picture.

And supposing he did figure it out and, from Celia’s viewpoint, the answer was yes…what then? Would he want a real relationship, considering all that was sure to come with it?

From a purely physical standpoint, the quick and easy answer was: what red-blooded male in his right mind wouldn’t?

But again, this was where it got complicated. And Roy didn’t like complications, particularly where his own emotions were concerned. Having a “real” relationship with the likes of Celia Cross-meaning not make-believe-was one thing; having a real relationship, as in one that might put his heart in danger-that was something else.

The way Roy saw it, as long as he and Prince Abby al-Fayad’s bodyguards were walking around loose in the same city, he was in enough danger as it was.

Prince Abby al-Fayad…danger…loose in the city…

Sometimes he could almost manage to forget the nightmare cloud that might even then be approaching L.A.’s oblivious millions, hidden in the hold of one of the thousands of apparently innocent sailboats, fishing boats, pleasure craft and yachts that floated regularly in and out of Southern California’s marinas and boat harbors. He could almost believe his own nightmare on board the yacht Bibi Lilith and in the chilly waters of the Pacific had been only that-a bad dream. The fantasy role Celia and Max had created for him became less alien to him once he got used to the idea that nobody short of a mind reader was ever going to connect the battered, shivering wretch in the frogman suit, shot and thrown into the deep, dark ocean, with the silver-haired Canadian billionaire with a scarred larynx and a movie star mistress.

The truth was it should have been an easy part to play, putting him in no imminent physical danger, demanding nothing of him except that he appear at Celia’s side, present in her scene but not a part of it, indulgent and a little aloof, like a patient and loving parent watching children in a playground.

He did have a bad moment the first time photos of the two of them appeared in People Magazine.

“Shoot, my momma reads People,” he told Celia in an outraged growl. “What am I gonna do if she recognizes me?”

For an answer, she turned the magazine around and showed him the picture, snapped by some paparazzi on Rodeo Drive, then waited in silence while he studied it. After a long time, he nodded and muttered, “Well, okay, then…”

It was like seeing himself in the mirror at Art Milos’s party all over again. After that, he pretty much accepted the fact that Betty Starr’s little boy Roy was no more-at least until the current operation was over.

But, while the operation put little or no pressure on him personally, he was well aware that the same could not be said of Celia. After all, she’d claimed-bragged, really-she could get the two of them invited on board al-Fayad’s yacht. No doubt she would, eventually, but the problem was, it had to be sooner rather than later. According to Max, intelligence chatter was growing ever more insistent about a major west coast “event” planned for sometime during the “holidays.” And Celia and Roy had had no contact whatsoever with the prince and his retinue since the night of Art Milos’s party.

No one nagged-it wasn’t Max’s way, or Roy’s, either-but it was obvious to Roy that Celia was feeling the pressure. He was certain that was the reason for her growing moodiness, and her habit of sneaking out of the house at night to go for long walks alone on the beach, maybe even the way her smile faded whenever she looked at him…the way her eyes darkened and slid away from his. She’s afraid, he thought, that she might fail.

What surprised Roy most was, for reasons having nothing to do with terrorist threats against a sleeping city, he didn’t want her to fail.

In any event, as the Christmas holiday approached, Roy’s and Celia’s social calendar got busier and busier. The parties were bigger and glitzier, and nerves more and more on edge.

“Why can’t you just impound the damn boat?” Roy exploded one day to Max as they sat drinking beer on Celia’s deck. “I don’t know…make up a reason.”

“Wish we could,” said Max with a gloomy shrug. “But the man hasn’t broken any laws. Technically, he’s a member of the ruling family of a country friendly to ours. We can’t just confiscate a hundred million dollars worth of yacht on a hunch.”

“What about the guys that roughed me up-the bodyguards?”

“Nothing on them, either. Sorry.”

“Sorry?” Roy jumped up to pace in the confines of the deck, arms folded and shoulders hunched in spite of the fact that three straight days of Santa Ana winds had pushed the temperature into the low eighties. “What’s ‘sorry’ gonna do? Christmas is…what, four, five days away? And what am I doing? I’m going to parties.” He made a disgusted noise, then rounded suddenly on Max. “Send me back in. Let me check out the damn boat. Look at me-my wound’s pretty well healed, I’m strong…I’m fine. Getting caught last time was a fluke-I’ll be more careful this time. Come on, man…”

Max was shaking his head. “Even if I was willing to let you, you’d never make it. Security’s too tight-you found that out. The only way to put that yacht out of commission-other than her way-” he tilted his head toward Celia, who they could see on the other side of the sliding glass door, talking on the telephone “- would be with several well-placed packs of C4. And don’t even think about it,” he added, with a wry smile at the look on Roy’s face, “because we can’t just blow up a hundred million dollars worth of yacht on a hunch, either.”

“Why on earth would you want to blow up Abby’s yacht?” Celia asked innocently as she joined them, placing the cordless phone on the table among the beer bottles, as if it were a gift she’d brought them. She waited, returning their frowns with a maddeningly angelic smile.

Finally, when neither one of them asked who was on the phone, she relented, first helping herself to a sip from one of the beer bottles-Roy’s, as it happened. She wiped her lips, then said, “That was my-” she coughed delicately “-a reliable source, who tells me on good authority-” her smile came out like an irrepressible child playing peekaboo “-that Abby is planning to attend the premiere party tomorrow night.”

Max looked at Roy. “I take it this is one on your agenda?”

Roy nodded. “Yeah. I get to wear a tux. Can’t wait.” But a strange little quiver was running through him. Excitement? Foreboding? Anticipation? He lifted his bottle to Celia in a silent toast and saw warmth bloom in her cheeks.

At the time, he was sure he understood why.

“You look nice,” Celia said.

Under the circumstances she thought she might be forgiven the enormity of the understatement; Lord help her-help both of them-if Roy ever found out how her body warmed at the sight of him…how her heart stumbled and her skin prickled with the dangerous impulse to step close and feel his arms around her…

Instead, she gave his lapel a pat and moved one pace back, tilting her head judiciously to one side as she gazed at him. Amazing, she thought. Nude, his naturally thin, hard-muscled body had made her think of Greek statues and portraits of martyred saints. Clad in a classic tux, that same wiry grace assumed a natural elegance