Undercover Lover

by Tibby Armstrong

  “I’ll do it if he won’t,” Simon volunteered, and Günter barely resisted the urge to choke the life out of his second. “In fact, I’m a better choice because I’m not as easily recognizable after Dublin. You won’t have to disguise me as much.”

  “No,” Günter repeated, but nobody seemed to remember he was there, much less hear him. “You’re both mad as snakes.”

  “Thanks, mate.” Ian directed his attention to Simon. “We’re not going to disguise him. We need Gun’s name recognition among the celebrity circles. He’d be a high-end supplier if the Tiger could tap into his connections. Plus, he has knowledge of this organization and the history of its leadership that can get him around a tight spot if need be.”

  “How about if I’m his New York connection?”

  “How do you mean?” Ian asked.

  “We work this from the angle that we nab the celebrity business on both sides of the pond.” Simon rubbed his hands together. “That way I can develop the initial contacts here before Gun goes in.”

  “Simon I’ll accept. Leave Ms. Ainsley out of it,” Günter tried.

  “No.” Ian shook his head. “She’s the most credible. Besides, three is better than one if things get dodgy.”

  “Dodgy?” Günter snorted. “The whole operation is dodgy. We don’t need a villain to bring it down on our heads. We’ll do it all on our own.”

  His skin crawled with unease at the plan. Too complicated. Too many opportunities for things to go wrong.

  “So what do we do?” The pink flush along Jenny’s cheekbones set off the sparkle of excitement in her eyes.

  He wanted to be angry with her for playing into MI-5’s hands, but could only stare at her mouth. Even in his flummoxed state he found her irresistible. If he weren’t so flabbergasted he’d have kissed her on the spot. Instead he drew on his indignation and focused on the conversation at hand—or out of hand as the case seemed to be.

  “Just a bleeding minute. Whose arse is this on the line?” he asked, belatedly. “Don’t I bloody well get a say?”

  “No,” everyone chorused and Günter slumped in his chair.

  “You’re still fired,” he muttered darkly at Simon, then glared at Jenny. “And you still have that smacked arse coming.”

  A wicked grin crinkled her nose and made her freckles dance as merrily as her eyes. She actually enjoyed the idea of danger. Of coming up against the Tiger…and him.

  “I’m serious,” he asserted even as his lust flared to life.

  “I know,” she whispered and broadened her smile.

  The scraping of two seats against the linoleum interrupted Günter’s staring contest with Jenny. He looked up to find Simon and Ian practically scrambling over one another to get from the kitchen.

  “We’ll plan tomorrow.” Ian gave a knowing grin that spared the swollen tissue around his injured eye. “You two…uh…you can work on your alter egos.”

  Simon snickered. “Yeah. I gotta go look for a new job anyway.”

  With that they were gone, leaving him alone with Jenny. Günter looked around the kitchen for something, anything, to occupy his attention. Suddenly he was a school kid with a crush and a stammer. He couldn’t remember any woman who’d ever made him feel that way—unsure, out of control, lost. Not even Alona.

  He’d wanted to protect Alona. With her flaxen hair and light skin she’d seemed so much more frail than Jenny. He’d never have manhandled her. With Jenny, somehow he’d always known that she’d give as good as she got. Her unpredictability and strength excited him much more than his wife’s fainting-couch disposition.

  Knowledge of Alona’s duplicity broadsided him along with her memory and he closed his eyes tight against the emotion. All this time he’d thought himself responsible, but she’d been the cause of her own demise. Not him. The information freed him from guilt, but the twin burdens of confusion and anger bore down upon him with an even greater weight in their newness.

  Old wounds ripped open and new ones simultaneously bloomed. Love died. Hatred grew. He felt ugly and evil and helpless inside his barren emotional landscape. Until he remembered Jenny… Opening his eyes he looked into the face of his momentary salvation and knew he couldn’t risk losing her the way he’d lost—no—the way he’d never had Alona.

  “Why are you agreeing to do this?” he asked.

  “As a kid…” She slumped in her chair and looked away. “As a kid I never had a chance to fight. It was taken away from me.”

  The drip of the tap and hum of the fridge sounded loud in the silence, their only companion the labored rhythm of Jenny’s tightly controlled breathing. Günter remained quiet, knowing she had more to say and needed to marshal her resources before she said it.

  “When they took my mother… I woke up the next morning. David was gone. Then there was the news of her death and his after the trial. They didn’t think I could read the big words in the paper.” Her voice lowered to a hoarse whisper he had to strain to catch. “And I always wondered. If I’d fought harder, been braver, could I have saved them?”

  “You were seven,” Günter stood to pull at the tap handle, giving her some space. “You weren’t responsible.”

  “David, at twelve, thirteen, helped put the monsters away. To save me.” Wide eyes a stark reminder of the frightened child she must have been, she finished, “While his troubles only grew.”

  “You want to confront the monsters? To save someone?” he asked, trying to understand even as he frantically cobbled together logical arguments against her involvement. Fighting, and perhaps dying, to save a man like him was a poor bet.

  Her chin came up. “Yes. I do.”

  His heart went out to this dichotomy of a woman. So strong, yet so fragile. Somehow he had to make her see that demons had a way of turning on you when you chased after them. He sat again and leaned his elbows on the table, rocking it with his weight.

  “Nietzsche said, ‘Battle not with monsters, lest ye become a monster’.” He shook his head, wondering if he was, in fact, the monster in this scenario. “You’ve known me for twenty-four hours—maybe thirty-six. You aren’t doing this for me. And there’s no good reason to do it for yourself.”

  Tilting her chair back on its hind legs, Jenny blew out a breath. “You got me involved. I’m staying involved.”

  She’d sidestepped his arguments entirely. He sat back and crossed his arms over his chest. Stared her down. When she only stared back at him, unblinking, he took a more aggressive tack.

  “You’ll get us both killed.” As effective as a slap, his insult brought twin spots of color to her cheeks. He went for the kill. “You know nothing—less than nothing—about covert operations. I don’t know what 5’s game is, but you’re a pawn. Nothing more than cannon fodder. I won’t have you bring me down with you.”

  “Teach me.” She licked her lips and his eyes riveted to her mouth. “Teach me how to be your undercover lover.”

  A kick to his middle couldn’t have felled him faster and he inhaled sharply at the bite of arousal.

  “Daydreaming of flowers and candy hearts, Ms. Ainsley?” He issued his riposte from behind the fog of lust.

  She shrugged and her bathrobe fell open to expose the creamy curve of one plump breast. “I think you’ll prepare me for the reality.”

  The thrum of blood in Günter’s ears accompanied the stiffening of his cock as he thought about all the things he could teach her. He leaned in until they were nose to nose, and pulled out all the stops in a last-ditch effort to save them both.

  “Do you have any memory of what your father did to your mother?”

  A hard swallow accompanied her nod as all the blood left her face.

  “You want me to do those things to you?” His whisper came out half threat, half regret.

  Eyes wide, she shook her head haltingly, light catching the burnished copper in her curls.

  “Because that’s what you’re asking for—me to pretend to treat you like dirt while I train you to be a prostitute
for MI-5. What exactly about that scenario turns you on?”

  Jenny paled and turned her face away.

  “You must think I’m a complete whore,” she whispered and swiped at her cheek with the back of her hand.

  He’d expected his dirty psychological warfare to flatten her, but it still twisted his gut to see her tears. “I was trying to show you the reality of the situation and it got out of hand. I’m sorry.”

  He reached for her, wanting to kiss her. He settled for brushing a tear from her cheek with the pad of his thumb. No matter how much he wanted her, he would not take advantage of a woman under his care. Not again. Not after Alona.

  “So, you won’t teach me?” she asked.

  For a moment he wondered if she were talking about sex or about working undercover ops. He shook his head. It seemed there was just no getting around her stubborn determination to be a part of this and, if she didn’t capitulate, MI-5 would send her to the front lines with him.

  “I have no desire to sleep with you,” he lied. “Among other things, however, it’s exactly what they’d expect. What we’d have to do to play the part.”

  Pink lips parted in surprise, Jenny blushed and stared at him, aghast, for more than a minute. He kept his poker face in place as thoughts of parting her thighs, piercing her with his tongue, battered his defenses.

  “Oh my God,” she said finally and dropped her face into her hands.

  “You need some sleep,” he said. “You’re tired. So am I.”

  “Look. I want to do this.” She gripped his arm. “I’m going to do this. And it has nothing to do with the sex we’ll have. I had no idea when I made the offer, but it doesn’t change things. I’ll try to make it okay for you, but somehow you’ll have to just grin and bear having me beneath you because I’m in this. All the way.”

  He shot up as if he’d sat on a tack, grabbed his beer and downed the rest of the brew.

  “You really don’t want me?” she asked.

  Günter turned to see her standing in the doorway, ready to leave. He knew she didn’t speak of their operation. Not specifically.

  His eyes flicked over her lush curves and pouting mouth. He tried to brush off her desire for him—to blame it on the heightened emotions of the past twenty-four hours. To tell himself she felt only a physical pull. Then he recalled her charging down the airplane steps, hell-bent on saving him—remembered her distress when Ian had Tased him. How could he blame those actions on lust?

  The tug on her bottom lip as she awaited his answer said he could crush her with a word or make her spirit soar with just a touch. Everything she gave to him she gave with trust and pure intention.

  He cared more for her in that moment than he ever had, and it shattered his heart into tiny, irreparable shards to coldly hold her gaze and say, “You’re a job. Nothing more. Nothing less. Good night.”

  Chapter Eight

  Jenny paused in the courtyard. Cold wind whipped at her cheeks, buffeting her hair around her face. She pushed the strands away and took in the gray sky—felt its leaden weight increase the heavy sadness in her middle.

  The SUV idled in the small drive, Ian and Günter in the front. Simon in the back. She knew what she looked like this morning—what she felt like—and if she got in that car, so would everyone else. Squaring her shoulders, she pulled up the collar on her coat and curled her fingers around door handle.

  “’Bout time, Ainsley. This isn’t the Girl Gu—” Ian shut up when he saw her face, puffy and blotchy from a night of crying.

  Simon looked up from the arts section of the Times he’d folded in thirds. Without saying anything, he reached forward and smacked the back of Günter’s head with the paper.

  “What the—” Gun turned around, ready to let fly a smack of his own, and froze before slowly lowering his hand.

  “What’d you do to her?” Simon asked.

  “Thank you for your concern, but…” Jenny cleared her throat when her voice cracked. Meeting the ex MI-5 agent’s shuttered gaze, she finished, “Günter didn’t do anything.”

  Günter pursed his lips into a firm line and faced forward again.

  Jenny thought, seeing him this morning, she’d feel anger and cold disinterest. Instead, the look he’d leveled at her only fanned the conflagration in her blood to blast furnace temperatures. Was she crazy? The man didn’t want her. Not really. Why couldn’t her libido take the hint?

  “We don’t have all day,” Ian said. “Let’s get to the range.”

  “A shooting range?” she asked. “In Oxford?”

  “On the outskirts.” Ian spoke to her over his shoulder as he backed into the street. “There’s a decommissioned military training facility we’ve taken over recently. It’s soundproofed and secure—won’t arouse mutterings amongst the locals—but isn’t fully used by 5 yet. We’ll have it mostly to ourselves.”

  “And what do you need with me?”

  “Two weeks. Training. You and me,” Günter answered for Ian. “I’ll teach you what I can. If you meet my standards, you’re in. If not…”

  The unspoken threat hung in the air between them and anger replaced Jenny’s sadness with head-clearing alacrity. She folded her arms across her chest and notched her chin.

  “Thanks for the training, but I’m not jumping your hoops. I’m in. Period.”

  “You do as I say or you don’t play. As of now you report to me. Meet my standards or this is off. I’m going to work you harder than you ever thought possible. And believe me, I’d like nothing better than for you to fail.”

  Günter’s voice rumbled over her, wrecking her ability to think rationally. The man alternately infuriated and attracted her in equal measure.

  “Prepare to be disappointed,” she shot back.

  He faced forward again.

  Focusing on the quaint Oxford city streets, she took in green garlands and white Christmas lights decorating ancient yellow stone buildings. The scene, which should have been warm and welcoming, only served to make her feel more lonely for a real family and a real Christmas. This was to have been her first holiday with her brother in almost two decades.

  “When are we going down to London?” Jenny asked, training her eyes on Ian, needing to anchor her expectations.

  The agent’s exotic eyes slid sideways to Günter. Only Jenny witnessed the look. Simon remained engrossed in his paper and Günter appeared wooden as he gazed straight ahead, unmoving.

  “We have two weeks to get you up to speed,” Ian answered finally.

  “And how long is our involvement expected to last?” Jenny pushed back.

  “As long as it takes.” The agent navigated a turn as tightly as he’d navigated her question, bringing them down a lane barely wide enough to admit the SUV and two gum-booted country walkers.

  “You’re hiding something,” she observed.

  Ian’s look of surprise—an expression she bet didn’t normally cross the chiseled lines of his poker face—quickly fell away.

  “I hide a great many things, Ms. Ainsley,” he replied. “It’s my job.”

  Simon snorted.

  “Speaking of hiding things, Simon,” Ian continued. “I didn’t know you’d been booted from the CIA for—”

  “Back off, Ian. Now,” Günter warned.

  Simon, who’d turned as red as his hair, blew out a breath and looked out the window. Jenny’s heart went out to him for the humiliation wrought by the obviously private and painful memories Ian had brought to the surface. She knew firsthand how awful it was to have your personal life pried into and splashed about for public consumption.

  Slanting the American a hard look, Ian said, “We do our homework on our operatives.”

  “What’s this now? A British invasion?” Günter shot back, his words forming an almost-visible protective barrier around his second. “Let the CIA handle their own.”

  Avoiding further argument, Ian exited and popped the hatchback. “Simon, you grab the ammo. Günter, you’re showing Jenny how to handle the guns.�
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  “Why all the concern about the Tiger now? Bengal has been hot for a decade,” Jenny asked, following Ian into the dark, chilly confines of the industrial building.

  “Government security.” Ian slung two cases and a duffel onto the table in the middle of the room. He turned and jammed his hands into his pockets. “Now that they’re back on their feet and their leadership has stabilized under the command of a new White Tiger, the organization is planning to take out a target in London as retribution for Dublin.”

  Günter froze. “You fucking bastard. No wonder you think I’ll draw them out.”

  Ian shrugged. “Many of the faces have changed. The ones that haven’t will be interested in what you…and Ms. Ainsley…might have to say against MI-5.”

  “You and me?” Günter asked, pointing a finger at Ian and jabbing a thumb at himself. “We’re going to have words someday.”

  “Like we did yesterday?” The cold question called Günter’s attention to Ian’s bruises, and Jenny held her breath as the two men faced one another down.

  “No. Alone. Just you and me.”

  “I’ll pencil that in.” Ian turned away.

  Günter took safety gear from a duffel—hearing protection, safety glasses, and baseball caps—and slammed it down on the table. Jenny knew from the set of his shoulders underneath his blue-and-yellow rugby shirt he probably heard more in Ian’s words than she could hope to know or understand.

  That he’d told her this—told them all—said more about the permanency of their involvement in MI-5’s operation than their chat last night. Facts like this weren’t simply entrusted to people like her and Simon. A chill trailed down her spine.

  “Are you going to kill us when this is over?” she asked.

  Ian fought a grin. “You’ve been watching too much television.”

  “But you would. If you thought we were a risk.”

  He sobered and his gaze slid to Günter who’d stilled, his back to them.

  “Is Günter a risk?” she asked.

  “We think the problem with Günter is also his greatest asset within the organization we’re trying to infiltrate,” Ian dodged.