Undercover Mistress

clasped the gold foil bag to her chest. Then: “Open yours first,” she ordered, clamping her teeth down on her lower lip to contain her excitement.

Quailing a little, recalling what he’d been told about her gift-giving tendencies, Roy shook his head. “Uh-uh-you first.”

She didn’t argue with him. Holding her breath, teeth clamped down on her lower lip, she opened the bag and peeked inside. The cry she gave when she pulled out the crystal heart about made his heart jump into his throat. She held it up, trailing all those little teardrops, then slowly turned, enraptured, as countless tiny rainbows splashed across the walls and the room filled with tinkling crystalline music. When she rotated back to him, he saw her eyes were bright with tears.

“How did you know?” she said in a wondering, catching voice. “When I was really little, I used to think sunbeams-you know, those little specs of dust in sunlight?-were fairies. This reminds me so much of that. Oh, I love it! Thank you!”

She sat on the couch and laid the wind chime carefully across the cushions beside her, then clapped her hands gleefully. “Now you.”

Filled more with trepidation than anticipation, Roy tackled the gift-wrapped box. He untied the ribbon, peeled off the paper, took off the lid…and with hammering heart, lifted what was inside up from its nest of tissue paper. Then, for a moment, he simply sat and stared at it.

“It’s your boat,” Celia said, her voice sounding small, vulnerable and far away. “Is it…all right? Do you like it?”

“It’s…” He couldn’t look at her, so he went on gazing at the boat…the perfect miniature replica, obviously hand-made, of his boat, The Gulf Starr.

It had hit him so hard, so suddenly. He felt like he was holding his other life…his real life…in his hands. Except somehow, at some point, this life-the one with Celia-had become his reality. Now, that life-his boat, his charter business, his buddy and partner, Scott, even his family-all that seemed like fantasy to him, far-off and unreal. When had that happened?

He shot a blind look in her direction. “How did you…”

“I got a picture off your Web site. There’s this old guy in Topanga Canyon-he makes all sorts of models, sailboats, mostly-I have one my parents gave me when I was small-but I gave him the picture and asked him if he’d make me one like it, and…” Hunched and breathless, she gave a shrug. “I hope he got it right.”

He swiped a hand across his nose, then cleared his throat. “It’s perfect. It’s amazing. Thank you.”

But he couldn’t look at her, or take his eyes off the boat. He was still sitting there staring at it when he heard her get up and go in the kitchen to start Christmas dinner.

On the subject of which-Christmas dinner-Roy figured the less said, the better.

He tried his best to help her, he really did. But she kept chasing him off, evidently hell-bent on fixing him that Christmas dinner with all the trimmings he’d told her about and without making him peel, cut up, crack or chop stuff the way his momma did. The turkey went into the oven around noontime-Roy didn’t know whether it ever had gotten defrosted all the way, and decided he didn’t want to ask. By midafternoon the good smell of roasting turkey was beginning to override the odor of things burning, and Roy’s hopes rose a little.

Doc wandered in around that time, bringing with him two bottles of wine and some red roses for Celia. She stopped what she was doing in the kitchen long enough to give him his gift, which turned out to be a box made out of ebony wood, carved and inlaid with gold, lapis and mother-of-pearl.

“It’s the one from Mother and Daddy’s movie Pandora’s Box,” she told him. “They had two of them made-I think the other one’s in the Smithsonian.”

Doc gave Roy a “What did I tell you?” wink.

After that, he and Doc retired to the den and the big-screen TV, and by the time Celia called them to the table, they’d both drunk enough wine that lumpy mashed potatoes, burned gravy, underdone turkey and various unidentifiable dishes probably wouldn’t even register on their tastebuds.

Not that any of that mattered. As far as Roy was concerned, the vision he was going to carry with him for the rest of his life was Celia across the table from him, bathed in candlelight, flushed and sweaty in a food-spattered apron, with wisps of golden hair escaping from her red ribbon and a smudge of flour on her cheek, looking exhausted, radiant, happy…and more beautiful than he’d ever seen her look before. That image made everything else fade to insignificance.

That…and wondering how it was that the absolute worst Christmas dinner he’d ever eaten in his life could also be the very best Christmas present he’d ever received.

The day after Christmas, Celia went for her morning jog, as usual. When she came back, she went straight to Roy’s room to ask him for help hanging her new wind chime. Surely, she reasoned, a man raised in the rural South who captained his own fishing boat must possess the necessary masculine skills for such a task. And, somewhere in the house, she was sure, there must be at least some basic, rudimentary tools.

His bedroom door was pulled almost shut but not latched, the way it had been the night she’d almost gone to his bed. Remembering that night and all that had happened between them since, as she raised her hand to knock her heart had already quickened, though she sternly told it not to. I can’t think of him that way. Not now. Not until this is over.

Her mind slammed shut on the tag-along question: And then?

With her hand uplifted, she took a steadying breath-and froze. Roy was talking on the phone. His voice was pitched low but sounded tense and angry, and she could hear him clearly when he spoke following a prolonged listening silence.

“I told you I drew the line at that. I told you I didn’t want her anywhere near that boat. That was the deal.” There was more silence. Then: “I know she has. I’m not arguing that. But she’s still a civilian, and she’s got no business being…dammit, Max, I don’t want her in the way when this goes down…yeah, well…uh-huh…” His voice dropped to a furious mutter.

Celia realized she was still standing with her hand raised to knock on the door and that her whole body felt stiff and cold-literally frozen. From the other side of the door came a sharp explosive obscenity, then the thump of angry footsteps. And still she couldn’t make herself move. Her face and neck muscles hurt.

The door swung open and Roy stood there, eyes black as midnight, hair wild, mouth set in a hard and angry line-once more a pirate, now poised on the gunwales of a ship, about to swoop down on the hapless crew.

Uttering the same sharp obscenity, this time softly and under his breath, he gripped the doorframe, making of himself a barrier against her. “I suppose you heard.”

Every instinct she had wanted to cut and run. Every nerve, sinew and muscle in her body cramped in protest against the iron will that held her there to face him down in icy, trembling anger. “You asked Max to take me off the…the…” Job? Mission? Operation? That she didn’t know what to call it, thus proving Roy’s point-that she was, in fact, a civilian-infuriated her. “How could you?”

“Celia-”

“After I told you how I felt about it.” After I told you things…feelings I’ve never told anyone else before. “You knew how much it meant to me.”

“Dammit, that’s got nothing-aw, hell. Look, if it’s any consolation to you, Max said no…”

The last part was shouted to her retreating back, as she finally found the strength to turn and walk stiffly and swiftly away and leave him there.

In the living room, she paused, breathing hard, and pivoting back and forth in indecision. Upstairs to take a shower? Or back to the beach to run off some of this excess adrenaline? Dammit, she didn’t need exercise. She needed someone to talk to.

Out she went, across the deck, down her stairs and up Doc’s. She was pounding with her fist on his sliding glass door before it occurred to her that, by Doc’s reckoning, it was barely the crack of dawn. Too late to retreat; she could see him making his way toward her through the murky twilight inside the house like someone swimming through molasses.

He squinted blearily at her through the salt-crusted glass, then swept the door open and croaked, “Celia-oh, good God, don’t tell me you’ve found another body.”

“No-though I just may create one shortly.” She pushed past him into the house.

“So, it’s only angry she is, then,” Doc muttered in a fake Irish accent as he pulled the door shut behind her. He