Mission: Irresistible

by Sharon Sala

  East stood in the doorway leading out to the terrace, stealing a moment to watch Ally unobserved. At first glance, there wasn’t anything really remarkable about her. She was of average height, without an ounce of spare flesh on her body. Her clothes were ordinary; a pair of navy slacks and a white, linen shirt hanging loose about her hips. Her hair was short and capped her head in a thicket of auburn curls and her eyes were the color of new grass. And yet as he watched her methodically preparing her food, he understood her need for control.

  He could only imagine what it must have been like for a child such as she; born with an intelligence beyond understanding into a family that didn’t have time for her, she must have felt like a misfit from the beginning. He didn’t know, but he would guess she’d never had a “best friend” in her life and wondered if, as a child, she’d ever spent the night giggling with other girls or playing with dolls. Being a SPEAR operative wasn’t conducive to gathering close friends, either. Too many secrets that couldn’t be shared.

  When she slowly and carefully cut another perfect square of waffle and popped it into her mouth, he was struck by an overwhelming urge to lean over her shoulder and take a great big bite out of the middle of that waffle just to see what she’d do when things went out of control.

  At that moment, her waiter stopped at her table and topped off her coffee. When she lifted her head to smile and thank him, East pictured himself leaning down and tasting the peanut butter and jelly waffle on her lips. In spite of how physically resilient he knew she must be, there was something very fragile about her insecure smile and the curve of her cheek.

  But he’d been too accustomed to denying himself to do anything so foolish as to get involved with a woman—especially an operative. After what he’d done, he didn’t deserve happiness. It was enough that he was still alive. The kid he’d hit with his car was not.

  He shoved aside his personal feelings as he strode to their table and took his seat. “Looks good,” he said, pointing toward the food on her plate as the waiter filled his cup.

  “Umm,” she nodded, still chewing.

  “Your food is ready, sir,” the waiter said. “I’ll be right back with it.”

  “Good, I’m starved,” East said, taking a careful sip of the hot brew in his cup.

  Suddenly, Ally gasped as a seagull swooped into their line of vision, filched a piece of left-over toast from a nearby table that had yet to be bussed and then disappeared over the roof of the hotel.

  “They’re pests, but this is their territory and there’s little we can do about them if we choose to eat outdoors.”

  “I rather like them,” Ally said. “I just wasn’t expecting it, that’s all.”

  East watched her pick up her knife and start to cut through her food, again sectioning off that same three-by-three square bite. Her forehead was knotted in serious concentration and she was gripping her knife and fork so hard that her knuckles were almost white. He frowned, believing that she was closer to a breakdown than he first suspected. Instinctively, his need to help her kicked in and he leaned forward.

  “Why do you do that?”

  She paused and looked up. “Do what?”

  He pointed to the waffle. “Cut your food so precisely.”

  Startled, she glanced down at her plate then felt herself flushing with embarrassment. Freak. Always a freak.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I suppose it’s just a habit.” She laid down the knife and fork and then folded her hands in her lap, her enjoyment of her food suddenly gone.

  “Ah, damn, I didn’t mean to upset you,” East muttered.

  Ally made herself smile. “Don’t be silly. I don’t get upset.”

  That cold, emotionless wall had gone up between them again and East found himself resenting its presence. By God, he was going to get an emotional response from her, even if it was nothing but anger.

  “Yes, you do. Everyone does at one time or another.”

  Ally bristled. She hadn’t known this man even twenty-four hours and he thought he “knew” what she was thinking?

  “Listen, Mr. Kirby, you don’t know me, so how can you sit there and pretend you know my behavior patterns?”

  The flush on her face had gone straight to her cheeks. They were fiery with anger, matching the glitter in her eyes. East leaned back in his chair, satisfied with what he’d done. She didn’t know it yet, but she would thank him one day for putting her mind on something besides the hell that had driven her here.

  “You gonna eat that?” he asked, pointing to the leftover food on her plate.

  Prepared for another stinging rebuttal, his question took her off guard. “Umm…I, uh…don’t suppose.”

  “Good,” he said, and pulled the plate in front of him, then picked up the waffle like a piece of toast and took a hearty bite. As he chewed, his eyebrows arched in surprised appreciation. Then he swallowed. “Not bad,” he said. “Not bad, at all,” and opened his mouth again.

  Suddenly, Ally regained her sense of self and snatched the waffle out of his hands just in time to save it from another bite.

  “I changed my mind,” she said. “You eat what you ordered and I’ll eat mine.”

  Ally stared down at her plate and the chaos he’d made of the waffle. Sighing, she reached for her fork when she heard him clear his throat. She looked up, glaring at the smug expression on his face. Damn him. There’s nothing wrong with being a little bit fussy about one’s food.

  “What?” she asked.

  He shrugged, as if to say he didn’t know what she was asking.

  “That’s what I thought,” she snapped. As she began trimming off the uneven spot he’d bitten into, she heard him chuckle.

  “Just because I don’t want to share my food, doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with me,” she muttered.

  East’s grin stilled. He leaned forward. “Ally.”

  “What?” she mumbled, refusing to look up.

  “I was just teasing you. There isn’t a damn thing wrong with you, do you hear me?”

  She paused, letting an old pain resettle itself around the region of her heart. Then, just to prove she was as outrageous as the next, she set her jaw and cut a reckless swath through the chilling waffle, slashing off a diamond-shaped bite, rather than her usual, perfect square. Then she gave him a “take that” look and stuffed the bite into her mouth just as their waiter appeared with East’s breakfast.

  East hid a grin as the waiter set down his food. Moments later, he dug into his scrambled eggs and bacon. As he ate, he couldn’t help thinking they’d never tasted so good and wondered if it was the waffle appetizer that had piqued his appetite, or the company he was in. Either way, for a day that had started off so chaotically, it was turning into something very interesting.

  Chapter 4

  Rain drifted in blowing sheets, hammering against the windows of the two-story cabin overlooking the gorge below. Normally the view was magnificent and the isolation well suited to Jonah’s needs, but not today. The only way off the mountain was by helicopter or on foot, and until the storm passed, neither was possible.

  He paced the floor between windows and walls, his anger growing at the latest news he’d just received. A courier had just been arrested at the Iranian border carrying highly classified documents. Documents that led straight back to him. And if that wasn’t damning enough, there was the matter of one-hundred thousand dollars recently deposited into his personal bank account that he could not explain.

  “Damn, damn, damn it to hell,” Jonah growled, then pivoted sharply and slammed his fist into a wall.

  If it wasn’t for the President’s intervention, the Attorney General would already be issuing a warrant for his arrest. He didn’t know how much longer he could fend off these assaults on his credibility and character. Immediately his thoughts went to Alicia Corbin. Before, he’d been willing to give her plenty of time to play on Easton Kirby’s guilt, but this latest stunt with the foreign courier changed everything. Whoever was tr
ying to ruin him was escalating the incidents. Time was no longer on his side. She’d been there almost a week and he needed to know what was happening at Condor Mountain Resort, because if East couldn’t be persuaded to help, he was going to be forced to look to someone else. But to whom? The only reason he’d approached East in the first place was because he didn’t know who else to trust.

  A muscle jerked at the side of his jaw as he strode toward the fireplace. With a quick twist of his wrist, he turned the iron lion’s head finial on the corner of the mantel. Immediately, a portion of the paneling slid into a pocket in the wall, revealing its secrets—the main communication center for SPEAR. He wasn’t the first Jonah to occupy this place and he wouldn’t be the last, but if he didn’t resolve this mess and soon, his tenure would soon be over.

  In the corner, a state-of-the-art fax hummed silently as page after page was fed into a tray, while line after line of text scrolling on a nearby computer terminal was saved for later review. Every up-to-date communication option known to man was there before him and yet with all of it at his fingertips, he still couldn’t find the one man intent on ruining his life.

  A flat map of the world hung at eye level from the ceiling, imprinted on a large sheet of clear Plexiglas. The series of black intersecting marks were the locations of ongoing, world-wide investigations by SPEAR, but it was the red markings with which he was most concerned. They were the ones that pinpointed him as being involved in a subversive activity. He picked up a red dry-marker from the tray below and circled the border crossing where the courier had just been arrested, then stepped back to study the pattern. But the longer he stared, the more certain he was that there was no pattern, only a series of random incidents targeted for one purpose—to bring him down. At that point, a calm came over him. By God, he hadn’t survived this long only to be brought down like this.

  He moved toward his desk with purpose, then dropped into his chair, leaning forward and staring intently at the bank of phones within arm’s reach. But it was the red phone on which he was focused. Within seconds, his mind had skipped through a half-dozen scenarios and chosen one best suited for this task. Without hesitation, he lifted the receiver to his ear. Two hours later, a package for Alicia Corbin was delivered to the front desk of Condor Mountain Resort.

  The phone in East’s office rang just as he was entering the last set of figures for his quarterly report. Grateful for the interruption, he hit the Save button on the computer keyboard and reached for the phone.

  “Hello.”

  “Hey, Dad, it’s me.”

  The familiar growl of Jeff’s voice made him smile.

  “Hey, yourself, stranger. When are you coming home for a visit?”

  Jeff snorted with disbelief. “With my schedule, you’ve got to be kidding, right? The better question is, when are you coming to see me?”

  East stood abruptly, shouldering the wave of instant guilt. “It has been a while, hasn’t it, son?”

  “Almost two months.”

  “And, so you’re trying to tell me that you feel abandoned? What happened to that girlfriend you didn’t want to discuss? Is she history?”

  There was a brief silence, then Jeff laughed, but East thought it sounded forced.

  “No, I’m not feeling abandoned. I’m just tired, and heartily sick of my own cooking. And I’m not in the mood to discuss women, period.”

  East chuckled. “That bad, huh?”

  “Yes.”

  “So, let’s talk about something simple then, like maybe your classes or your rotation at the hospital. Which one are you on now?”

  Jeff laughed. Calling what he did “simple” was a joke and East knew it. “Pediatrics. And I’m ready for that to be over,” he said, and then sighed. “Which is not to say I don’t like kids, because I do, but there’s something about kids and incurable illnesses that I can’t get past.”

  East remained silent, sensing that Jeff just needed to talk, which he continued to do.

  “Dad, there’s this seven-year-old kid named Darcy. She’s got ten of the cutest little brown freckles across her nose and the biggest blue eyes I’ve ever seen and she asked me yesterday if I’d marry her when she grows up.” His voice broke. “Damn it, Dad, she’s missing her two front teeth and all of her hair and she’s dying, and there’s not a goddamned thing anyone can do for her.”

  “I’m sorry,” East said quietly. “That’s got to be tough.”

  Jeff took a slow, shaky breath. “Sorry, it’s just that sometimes this stuff gets to me…you know?”

  Images flashed through East’s mind—flashes of gun-fire, blood splatters on his shoes from the agent who’d just died at his feet, days and nights spent in swamps with nowhere to sleep.

  “Yeah, I know.”

  He stood abruptly and turned to the bank of windows behind his desk, staring absently through the glass without actually seeing the idyllic view of the beach below.

  “Look, if you’ll give me a few days to clear my calendar and make sure that my assistant can cover for me, I’ll make a run to L.A. Just fax me your schedule so I won’t interfere with your work or classes.”

  “Fantastic! I’ll get the info to you sometime within the next day or two.” The tone of his voice lifted. “I can already taste that steak.”

  East laughed. “Hungry for beef, are you? What have you been eating?”

  “My cooking and everybody else’s leftovers at work.”

  East frowned. “Are you short of money, son?”

  Jeff chuckled. “No, just time.”

  “You sure you want to waste it on me?” East asked.

  “Spending time with you is never a waste.”

  The unexpectedness of Jeff’s remark tightened the muscles in East’s throat. “Thanks,” East said. “Talk to you soon.”

  “Yeah, right,” Jeff echoed. “Talk to you soon.”

  The click of the receiver, then the silence that came afterward was telling. Suddenly, the distance between East and his son seemed farther than ever. He hung up the phone and started toward the door when he paused, standing for a moment in the middle of the room and contemplating the solitude in which he lived. It seemed odd to consider that a man could be lonely while living among a constant stream of people, but it was true. In that moment, the longing for a personal connection, for someone to laugh with—someone to share troubles and joys and long, lonely nights with—was overwhelming.

  The image of Ally Corbin’s face moved through his mind, then he sighed as he walked out of his office to relieve Foster Martin. Even if he chose to pursue her, and even if she reciprocated his feelings, there were too many reasons why it would never work.

  Ally breezed into the lobby, her arms full of packages. It was the seventh day of her stay at the hotel, but the first day she’d gone exploring since her arrival. Her hair was windblown and there was a small, brown stain on the knee of her white slacks from the chocolate ice-cream cone she’d been eating on the way home. But the light in her eyes and the smile on her face were too bright to notice such a small flaw. Somewhere between midnight and daylight last night she’d made a vow to herself that unless she began to act normal, East was going to suspect her motives for being here. And there was nothing more normal than a woman shopping. Thus the packages, thanks to the small arts and crafts community based at the foot of the mountain. And while she’d started out on the shopping spree as a cover, by the time she pulled into the parking lot of the hotel and began unloading her car, she realized how badly she’d needed the break. She hadn’t done anything this ordinary in over a year and couldn’t wait to get to her room and relive the joy of her new finds.

  “Ms. Corbin! Ms. Corbin!”

  She glanced toward the desk to the young man who was waving her down.

  “Yes?”

  “A package came for you while you were out.”

  Ally swerved toward him, laughing as she tried to juggle her load to allow for another item.

  “I don’t know where I’m going
to put it, but…”

  “Allow me.”

  She turned to find East behind her. Before she could argue, he’d relieved her of her bags, leaving her free to retrieve the package at the desk. Suddenly aware of how she must look, she nervously smoothed her hands down the front of her blouse and managed a smile.

  “Well…uh…thank you. I’ll just…”

  “Take your time,” East said.

  The clerk handed her the small package and she quickly dropped it into her bag and dug out her room key. She gave East another nervous glance. He was waiting patiently.

  “You don’t need to bother—”

  “It’s no bother,” East said. “Lead the way.”

  All the way to the elevator she kept resisting the urge to run a comb through her hair, then discarded the thought. What I look like doesn’t matter, she scolded herself. He’s just being helpful. It’s part of his job.

  When the elevator doors opened, she stepped inside then turned, giving him a quick, nervous smile as she inserted the key into the pad that would take the elevator straight to the penthouse.

  East stifled a sigh. She’d looked like a windblown kid when she’d first entered the lobby, all pink-cheeked with flyaway hair. And that smudge on her pants. It looked like chocolate. She’d seemed so happy and now so ill at ease. Was it just him, or did all men evoke such a response from her?

  “Looks like you’ve had quite a day,” he said.

  At his remark, her tension seemed to disappear.

  “Oh, yes! It was wonderful. I found the most marvelous things. I can’t wait to look at them all again.”

  He smiled. “That’s good. Glad you found something enjoyable to occupy your time.”