The Cinderella Mission

by Catherine Mann

  Clyde had started searching after a couple of hours, quickly discovering the blown generator. A tampered-with generator. And a missing handyman. The aging agent had immediately alerted headquarters, then charged ahead to the rescue on his own.

  Those lights coming back on had illuminated more than their way out once Clyde had tossed down a rope and reassurance. They’d cast a spotlight on the harsh reality of Ethan’s panicked expression.

  She wasn’t naive enough to think he didn’t want her. She could tell she turned him on, could see it in his eyes even now. And he hadn’t been repulsed by the attack, just predictably protective.

  But any tenderness from her? Forget it. He didn’t want it.

  She should be happy, right? She didn’t want anything long-term from Ethan Williams anyway. She wanted to focus on her career. And when her days in the field ended, she would find some scholarly guy to converse with in French for the rest of her life. She wanted a nice, reasonable man who would let her control her own world.

  She was through having people tell her what she wanted. She wanted an affair with Ethan. She’d walked away from that casino all those years ago with nothing more than a tattoo to show for her efforts. This time, she wouldn’t stop until she’d tattooed herself on that man’s memory.

  A man who looked like more than an avalanche of dirt and boards had crashed onto his shoulders. Waiting around like delinquent children for their boss to arrive obviously didn’t sit well with Ethan. By the time Clyde had pulled them from the mine and they’d checked in with ARIES, Hatch had already been airborne.

  Ethan rolled a stoneware mug of coffee between his hands. “About last night in the greenhouse, about what happened a couple of hours ago.”

  Kelly halted her rocker. “Ethan—”

  “Let me talk.” He set the steaming mug aside. “I want to apologize for taking advantage of the situation.”

  “There’s nothing to apologize for. There were two of us down there.” Even the memory sent fresh shivers through her, and more than a tinge of embarrassment. “Even if only one of us finished.”

  A smile picked at the corner of his mouth. “Still, I know you haven’t spent time undercover. When you’re working a deep cover 24/7, it’s easy to get caught up in the act.”

  He thought she was that gullible? That she didn’t even recognize her own feelings? “Pretense becomes reality?”

  “Something like that.”

  Maybe he spoke from experience, a thought that stung more than the scrapes from falling down a hundred-foot slope. “So you always roll around on greenhouse floors and abandoned mines with your partners, James Bond style, and I shouldn’t let myself get carried away.”

  Irritation stamped his lean face. “That’s not what I meant.”

  “What did you mean?”

  “Just that I know it happens.”

  “To you?”

  He stared at his hands, hands that had brought her such an incredible release. Silence echoed in the paneled room. The fire crackled in the grate, a log popped, snapping in two to release a shower of sparks. “We’re already friends. I think that makes us both more susceptible.”

  A blaze of renewed hope glowed to life in her with more warming power than the heater vent pumping underneath the dormant potbelly stove. “So you haven’t—rolled around with your partners before.”

  His head jerked up until he pinned her with a laser-blue stare. “No. You’re special, damn it. Is that what you wanted to hear? Well, there it is. I tell myself I’m too old for you and an honorable man would leave you alone. But damned if being honorable has ever been my strong suit.”

  He flung his head back, eyes closed. “Judas-freaking-priest, woman, you’ve blown my concentration to hell and back with no more than your voice for two years.”

  Two years? Those words opened the door on a possibility she hadn’t considered, one she wasn’t sure she wanted to ponder because it rocked her. Scared her.

  His eyes iced into the determined agent who never gave ground. “But does that mean I plan to do anything about it? No. No. And hell no. Because you are my friend, and I know a relationship with me is the last thing you need. If I were even a relationship kind of guy. Which I’m not.”

  She couldn’t stop herself from asking, “Why would that be?”

  He plowed his hands through his hair. “For some damned reason I can’t fathom, women seem to think when a man says he isn’t the marrying sort, that becomes an invitation to prove him wrong.”

  With a few words he had slammed that door shut again and she refused to acknowledge a sting of loss. She had her personal and professional wishes clearly lined up in her mind, and she wouldn’t let Ethan Williams distract her from any of them.

  “Marrying sort? You actually think I’m expecting you to whip some princess-cut diamond out of your pocket?” She let her snort of disbelief roll free and reveled in being the one to surprise him for a change. “Believe me, if I go fishing in your pocket, it won’t be for a wedding ring.”

  Chapter 10

  Ethan choked. Coughed. Struggled for air.

  What else could he do with words like Kelly’s pinging around in his head? Sizzling through him like embers taking flight from the fireplace.

  Demanding that he finish what they’d started in the mine.

  He tipped back in his chair, as if that might give him some much-needed distance, and studied her through narrowed eyes. Fading rays of sun through the window speckled over her, highlighting every exhausted line, every smudge.

  And every ounce of her determination sparking from her eyes with more vibrancy than the display cases of gems littering the walls.

  She wanted him. He wanted her. So why the hell was he so pissed off at her statement?

  Kelly had obviously decided to find someone with experience to relieve her of her virginity with no ties. Well, hell. There were men out there who would leap all over that offer. He should leap all over her.

  Instead he wanted to shake her, tell her not to sell herself so short. She deserved better than that. Better than him. “What do you mean you don’t want a ring? Don’t you want to get married and have kids some day?”

  Damn. Damn. Damnation! He needed to shut the hell up before he landed himself in a monkey suit, chowing down wedding cake. He’d been tied into more knots than a rope on a Boy Scout field trip. And all by one woman.

  He would zip his yap shut—as soon as he heard why someone as giving as Kelly didn’t want to settle down with a happily-ever-after of her own. If that bastard professor of hers had scarred her so much… Ethan cut the thought short before it fired the red haze of anger in his brain again. “Well, Kelly?”

  “Of course I want to get married. And I’d love to have children of my own.” Her face softened with a timeless Madonna glow that warmed the room.

  He searched for the answer and wondered why it had become so important to know. “You want to have your career first?”

  “I understand I’ll need to stay out of the field during pregnancy.” She tucked the Aztec blanket under her chin and kicked the rocker into motion again as if already soothing her first baby to sleep. “But afterward, I don’t see any reason I can’t do both.”

  Ethan disagreed with her there. “Field agent work is dangerous. What if you left a family behind? What if someone threatened you?”

  She cocked a gently arched brow, her rocker creaking against the wooden floor. “Abiding by that logic, no cop, firefighter, lawyer or military person could ever get married.”

  Bingo. He found the hole in her argument about no ring. “So you are ready for a ring.”

  She shrugged.

  He enjoyed three seconds of smug satisfaction. Until realization sucker-punched him with a brutal blow to his pride—and some deeper part of his emotions he didn’t want to consider. “You just don’t want to marry me.”

  Kelly picked fuzz balls off the blanket. “You said it yourself, Ethan. You’re not marriage material. Don’t worry. You’re off the
hook.” Her hands fell to her lap. Her spine straightened until the woolen blanket fell from her shoulders. “But I want you to be my first. I trust you, and you want me. Let’s have an affair.”

  “No.” Yes. Yes. Yes! his libido insisted.

  Frustration puckered her dirty brow. “You sleep with women all the time without commitment. Why not me, too?”

  He commanded his brain to take over before his body accepted her offer. With the scent of her still on him, not that he could ever erase it from his memory, he would be damned lucky to get out of here with his pants zipped. “Do you really think we could have a no-strings affair, Kelly? I don’t know about you, but I have no intention of throwing away two years of friendship.”

  “Haven’t we already done that?” She tossed aside the blanket and crossed to kneel at his feet. Her hands fell to rest on his knees. “I want to have something to show for it.”

  Damned if she wasn’t right, and the thought bit. Too much.

  He struggled for something, anything to keep distance between them. Control slipped a little further away every time she put those soft hands on him. The warmth of her touch filtered through his jeans to his skin. If she inched even a hint higher, he would lose it. He would toss her on her back and finish. He had to protect her from making a mistake.

  And sex with him would be a colossal mistake. He wouldn’t be able to walk away from her. He had enough trouble pushing her away after just kissing her, touching her. If he slipped inside her, he could damned well lose himself in Kelly Taylor for good.

  If he hadn’t already.

  Pure panic slapped him like a cold palm. He could love this woman. This woman who wanted to throw herself into a career full of daily risks and evil he understood too well. The realization popped sweat along his brow.

  Hell, he wasn’t just the wrong man for her. She was the wrong woman for him, and not because of her innocence.

  He didn’t want to love anyone like that again, not after he’d barely survived losing Celia. He most definitely didn’t want to love Kelly, not now. Maybe if she still worked in her cubicle and kept herself safe. Maybe.

  Meanwhile, they needed distance. Fast. He had to get through the next few days with his sanity intact. Then he could volunteer for an assignment somewhere in the far reaches of the universe.

  Where he would sit and worry about Kelly.

  For now, he had to wade through the next three days with enough mental distance to keep Kelly from getting killed by some screw-up of his own.

  Ethan tossed out the first argument that came to mind to keep Kelly safe from the greatest threat of all. Him. “Maybe you’re capable of seeing this mission through in spite of how we…” he searched for a safe word, any word other than the one pounding at his brain, “…feel about each other, but I’m not risking it. You mess with my mind, and I can’t afford that right now. You said back in the mine that you’ve got more to lose here. I wouldn’t be so sure of that.”

  Kelly studied Ethan through narrowed eyes and wondered what churned around in that gorgeous dark head of his. No doubt, he was running scared. And rather than upsetting her, it sent a rush of feminine power tingling all the way to her grit-filled hair.

  What excuse would he roll out to protect her this time?

  She sank back on her heels, her hands falling to her lap. “What do you mean?”

  He hesitated so long she wondered if he would answer her. He toyed with the old rotary phone on the dormant potbelly stove beside him. “I told you my parents died in a car accident.”

  His choice of topics stilled her. “Yes, I remember.” She remembered every word this man had ever said to her, knew she always would. Could she be as indelibly stamped on his memory?

  “That isn’t the whole story.” He scrubbed a hand along the scrape on his cheek. “There was a kidnapping attempt made on me. It went to hell during the car chase and my parents died.”

  The chill from the wood floor and his words seeped into her. Thoughts of seduction faded. He’d only been five years old. What must those young eyes have seen? How much had he understood? Regardless of how much he consciously remembered, the loss of his family would have scarred a part of his soul. Combined with losing his fiancée, my God, no wonder the man had fears about the danger of his job. He understood too well what it was like being the one left behind.

  “How awful for you.” She twisted her hands in her lap to keep from touching him, regretting that her bold approach had robbed her of offering a comfort she would once have given him easily. This assignment and their out-of-control attraction had damaged, if not ruined, their friendship. The years stretched out ahead of her with a strange pall without him in the picture.

  Ethan scrubbed a hand along his five o’clock shadow that had slipped somewhere closer to a seven o’clock beard. “The guy in the other car died, too. I’ve always been told my au pair, Iona,” a tic twitched his eye at the mention of the name, “was responsible for selling information, and that she died along with the other driver. Now, it seems there was more to it.”

  As if that wasn’t enough. “How did you find out?”

  “Hatch has more information on my parents’ deaths. For some reason, the CIA was involved in the investigation. That information is mine when this case is finished.” His elbows on his knees, he leaned toward her. “I want it, Kelly. More than anything. I have to know the rest of what happened that day.”

  The intensity of his need seared her. She’d focused on her own goals in this investigation, never once considering why Ethan might be so driven. “Of course you do.”

  “I’ve tried to find out what I could on my own, but without whatever Hatch has, I’m stuck.”

  A dangerous thought entered her mind. “You’ve tried to find out on your own?”

  “On my own time.”

  “Oh, I didn’t doubt that.” How long had he known? Her sympathy for him began a slow disintegration. “Did you ever consider asking me for help?”

  “No.”

  “Of course not.” The rush of surviving their fall into the mine, the afterglow of what they’d shared faded as reality intruded. They’d worked together for almost two weeks and still he didn’t value what she had to offer.

  Maybe her anger had more to do with the sting of rejection and a physical frustration bordering on pain. Her voice rose and she didn’t bother reining it in. “I have access to things in that office. Believe it or not, I’m actually damned good at chasing a paper trail.”

  “Well, yippee for you.” Anger seeped into his rising voice. “And did you ever think of telling me about that…” his jaw flexed, “…pervert in your past? I’m actually damned good at creep-chasing.”

  “No,” she conceded, begrudgingly. She hated hanging out her old hurts for the world to see, especially when she’d been trying hard to stay on her toes for her first field assignment. “I didn’t.”

  “Guess that doesn’t say much about our so-called friendship, does it?”

  “Guess not,” she snapped.

  So much for the afterglow. She took slow deep breaths to keep from hyperventilating on the anger and hurt.

  “He’s still out there, Kelly.” Ethan plowed a hand through his hair, dislodging a shower of dust. “What if he’s the one responsible for all these ‘accidents’?”

  The thought paralyzed her for three heartbeats. Then she remembered she wasn’t the same person she’d been then. Her frustration mushroomed. “It’s not likely after all this time, but I’ll look into that possibility when we’re out of here. If so, I’ll take care of it.”

  He grabbed her shoulders. “Like hell you will!”

  “Like hell you will!” She wouldn’t back down.

  “If you think just because we—”

  The door creaked open—admitting the boss himself. ARIES Director Samuel Hatch strode into the room, followed by Clyde.

  She cut off the flow of angry words begging to pour out and rose to her feet in the slow glide Eugenie had taught her for comman
ding a room. “Good evening, sir.”

  “Taylor,” he nodded to each of them, “Williams. I’m glad my trip out was precipitate and that you’re both all right.” He shrugged out of his trench coat, shaking snow free.

  Clyde tugged at his beard. “Sorry to be an alarmist. Those old instincts die hard. Never know who’s out there wanting to put a slug in your back.”

  Kelly’s mind filled with images brought on by two years worth of working files about cases such as Clyde would have seen. Like the one that had taken him out of the CIA. Yes, those experiences would mark a person even fifteen years after quitting the job. And she’d signed on for that.

  A high price she was willing to pay. But was there something to what Ethan said about not asking a family to take on the same burden?

  Clyde passed her a stack of clothes with a bar of soap and a travel-sized shampoo on top. “I rustled up some clean clothes for you, ma’am. Water heater’s all fired up, too. Y’all can take turns with the shower. Sorry the other water heaters are off in the other cabins for the winter, so there’s just the one.” He pointed with his finger stub. “Come with me and I’ll show you the way.”

  Kelly looked from Ethan to Hatch, feeling too much like a shuffled-aside piece of office furniture.

  Hatch nodded reassurance her way. “It’s okay, Taylor. We can’t talk here anyway. We’ll have a more formal debrief on the return flight where it’s secure.”

  “I look forward to it.” Kelly backed toward the door, Ethan’s eyes meeting hers with none of the warmth or smiles she’d come to recognize, yearn for, the past two years.

  She’d botched it big-time.

  Kelly turned her back on what she didn’t want to see, but couldn’t escape. She’d valued their easy friendship, every moment together over the past two years feeding that ridiculous crush. And now she had to face that it had all been an illusion. Some kind of shallow relationship with no basis in honesty or trust.

  What kind of person did it make her that she’d wanted nothing more than something so shallow? And what kind of person did it make her now that she would run from the possibility of pushing for anything more?