“It was one of the Hilton sisters.”
“Oh, so you keep up with the gossip? How does a spy have time to read The Buzz?”
“Actually, I didn’t read about it. I was there.”
“No kidding? You know the Hilton sisters?” Lucy had always been starstruck. She’d been addicted to celebrity magazines since junior high and had fantasized about someday being one of the beautiful people—or at least hanging out with them.
She’d learned the hard way that the celebrity scene wasn’t all parties and glamour. In fact, beneath all the glitz, it could get pretty rotten. But even after her unhappy brush with that life, she hadn’t lost her fascination with it.
Bryan didn’t answer, but he pulled his car around a corner and into an underground garage, inserting a pass card to gain entrance.
“Um, we’re not actually stopping to eat, are we?” Lucy asked, looking down at her orange polyester pants. “I mean, I’d love to go to that restaurant someday, but they wouldn’t let me in the door dressed like this.”
He grinned. “I could get you in. But, no, we’re not going there right now. This is actually your safe house.” He pulled into a reserved parking space and cut the engine.
“Seems a funny place for a safe house,” she commented. “I thought we’d be a little more…isolated.”
“A safe house can be anywhere, so long as no one knows about it.” He led her through a door that was marked Entrance Une Nuit. But once inside a small, featureless foyer, they didn’t follow the signs to the restaurant. They boarded a rickety-looking elevator. Bryan pushed a button that had no floor number on it.
“Password, please,” came a computerized voice.
“Enchilada coffee,” Bryan replied. The elevator started up.
The amazement on Lucy’s expressive face gave Bryan a rush of pleasure, and he had to admit that, despite the gravity of his situation, he was enjoying Lucy’s reactions. He’d expected her to be a basket case, a perpetually panicked paranoid. But she’d risen to the occasion, showing a presence of mind few civilians possessed.
“How James Bond,” Lucy said. “The elevator is password protected?”
“With the latest voice-recognition software. No one gets into this loft but me—and my guests, of course.”
“So this is where you live?”
“Yeah. You have a problem with that?”
“No, but it seems a little odd, that’s all. I didn’t think spies normally brought witnesses in protective custody to their homes.”
“They don’t. This is a special occasion.”
“Why? Surely this case isn’t a particularly big or significant one. You must have dozens, hundreds of people attempting to funnel funds to terrorists.”
He debated how much to tell her. But he decided she could handle the truth. He wanted her to understand she could trust no one but him. “I have strong reason to believe I’ve been betrayed by my own people—which means there’s not a safe house in our system that’s truly safe. This is the one place I could think of where no one could possibly find you.”
“You mean, the people you work with—the other spies—don’t know where you live?”
“They don’t even know my name. To the others in my cell, and even to my boss, I’m Casanova.”
“Wow.”
The elevator doors opened, and Bryan led Lucy into his private living space. A couple of years ago, he’d bought the entire building where Une Nuit was located. He’d renovated and expanded the dining area, used the second floor for offices and storage, and had the top two floors converted to living space.
He’d spared no expense—he hadn’t had to. Though he had some family money, and he was well paid as a top-echelon government agent, this was the home that Une Nuit had built. The restaurant, which he’d originally opened as a cover so that not even his closest friends and family would know of his true vocation, had become unexpectedly popular—and lucrative.
The apartment’s floor plan wasn’t completely open, but a few interior walls had been placed at odd angles so the place didn’t feel like a box. The foyer opened up on one side to an enormous, modern kitchen he’d designed himself, with the latest in brushed-steel appliances. The kitchen was open to the living room, which faced a row of tall windows looking out onto Columbus Avenue. The floor was the original warehouse planking, sanded and polished to a high sheen. Some walls he had left as natural brick, while he’d had others plastered and painted a pristine white.
The furnishings were ultramodern, comfortable but sparse. He did his entertaining in the restaurant, so he didn’t need lots of chairs or sofas. Original art adorned the space, but again, not too much—a small abstract painting here, a funky sculpture there. Things he’d seen, wanted, picked up. Mostly from starving artists getting their starts, although a few pieces might be worth some serious money by now.
“I love this place!” Lucy whirled around, trying to take it all in. “You live here? You actually live here?”
“When I’m home, which lately hasn’t been all that often.”
“How long will I be staying here? Not that I’m complaining, just trying to prepare myself. Will you want me to testify at a trial? Will I have to stay indoors all the time, or can I go out?”
He smiled at her exuberance, which radiated from her every pore. He’d thought her plain when he first saw her, but he could see that wasn’t true, even in those horrible orange pants. She had an infectious smile and bright, lively eyes in a shade of pale blue he’d seldom seen.
“I won’t keep you locked up like a prisoner,” he said. “We’ll be able to venture out some. I don’t imagine you’ll run into anyone you know this far from home.” As for his family, there was no way to avoid them. He would have to find a way to explain her sudden presence in his life.
“Um, actually, that’s not true,” she said. “I lived here for a while.”
“What?” This was news to him. The exhaustive background check he’d done on her hadn’t mentioned any residences in New York. “That’s impossible.” But then he remembered those two years when she’d disappeared from the system.
“Have you ever heard of a band called In Tight?” she asked.
“Sure. They’re hot right now. In fact, didn’t they play the Super Bowl half-time this year?”
She nodded. “I used to work for them.”
Now it was Bryan’s turn to be shocked. “You? Working for a rock band?”
“I answered an ad on the Internet, and I got a job working on In Tight’s finances—you know, helping to manage the money when they did concert tours, stuff like that.”
Bryan had a hard time picturing Lucy Miller hanging out with wild-haired musicians. Was it possible she was pulling his leg? Was Lucy Miller a pathological liar?
“I did a background check on you,” he said. “There was nothing about—”
“They paid me off the books. They weren’t as famous then. They gave me a place to live, too, so you wouldn’t have found an apartment under my name. I’m just telling you this so you’ll know that I might run into people who would recognize me.”
“We’ll just have to make sure that doesn’t happen.” He studied her from head to toe, thinking how she could be made to look different—different hair, different eyes. “How would you feel about a makeover?”
He was worried that he’d insulted her, but instead she brightened. “Oh, I’d love one. Can I be a blonde? I think Lindsay Morgan would be a blonde.”
“If you like. My cousin Scarlet is the assistant fashion editor at Charisma magazine. She can bring over a truckload of clothes and cosmetics, hair stuff. Do you need the glasses?”
“Only if I don’t want to run into walls.”
“We’ll get you some contacts. Maybe green ones, though it’s a shame to cover up those pretty blue eyes.”
She looked away, embarrassed. “Don’t tease me. My eyes are a very ordinary shade of blue—almost gray. Boring.”
“I don’t find them boring at all.
”
She peeked up at him. “You’re serious.”
Maybe he shouldn’t have said anything. He didn’t want Lucy feeling threatened, since she was forced to shack up with him. “Don’t worry, I’m not going to hit on you. But you do have pretty eyes.”
“Hit on me. Right. So when is the magical transformation going to take place?”
“How about after dinner?”
Bryan showed Lucy to the guest room, which had a private bath. “Where do you sleep?” she asked.
“My room’s upstairs, along with a study. I’ll show you later. My computer’s up there, and if you’re serious about deciphering the data you brought from the bank, you’ll be spending a lot of time at the keyboard.”
“Absolutely.”
“I’ll leave you to freshen up, then, while I do something about dinner.”
“Okay. Do you have a robe or something I can wear until your cousin brings me some clothes? I don’t really want to put Mrs. Pfluger’s polyester pants back on after my shower. In fact, I’d like to burn them.”
“I’ll bring you something.”
Bryan didn’t actually have a robe, but he found her a pair of pajamas still in the package, a gift from his gram. Every year she gave him pajamas, and he’d never had the nerve to tell her he didn’t wear them.
When he returned to Lucy’s room, the shower was running, the bathroom door open a crack. He felt a less-than-admirable urge to peek inside the bath and see what she looked like without clothes. Ever since she’d fallen on top of him, his imagination had been running wild.
He didn’t, then wondered why he was being so noble. He was a spy, used to peering at other people’s secrets. He set the pajamas on the bed and then went to see about dinner. A quick call downstairs to the restaurant took care of that. Then he had to deal with Scarlet.
“You know I love a makeover challenge,” Scarlet said, warming to the idea right away. “John’s away on business, so my evening’s free. I’ll stop by the office, grab everything I need and be there in an hour or so.”
“Are you guys getting married?”
“The wedding’s not till next year, and if you didn’t travel so much for the restaurant, you would know these things. Honestly, don’t they grow decent spices in America?”
Hmm. Maybe his standard excuse for his frequent absences—that he was seeking exotic spices—was growing a little thin. “I have to keep up with the latest,” he said blandly.
“So where’d you find this girl, anyway? What’s the story? Normally the girls I’ve seen you with don’t need any help in the clothes or cosmetics department.”
“Oh, she’s not my—” He stopped. How was he going to explain Lucy’s presence to Scarlet, and to the rest of his family? She could be under his protection for months. He couldn’t keep her under wraps all that time. “She’s not my usual type, true,” he continued smoothly. “But Lindsay’s special. Frankly, I think she’s perfect just the way she is. She’s a country girl, you know, the all-natural look. But she’s the one who wants a makeover. She wants to fit in better in New York.”
“I’ll be happy to help Lindsay any way I can,” Scarlet said, and Bryan read between the lines. She was going to pump Lucy for every shred of information she could get about Bryan’s new romance. He’d better go warn Lucy that she’d just become his girlfriend.
Three
Lucy couldn’t believe what she’d just overheard. She hadn’t meant to eavesdrop. But as she wandered into the kitchen fresh from her shower, she couldn’t help but hear Bryan talking to his cousin. And he’d passed her off as his new girlfriend.
Bryan turned, saw her and realized she’d heard. “Uh, yeah. Guess we need to talk about this. I’m sorry, but I don’t know any other way to explain what you’re doing here. My family doesn’t know I’m a government agent. No one knows. And they can’t know. I have to keep those two parts of my life completely separate, for the welfare of everyone concerned. You understand that, right?”
“Yes. But—”
“You’ve already proved you can be cool under pressure. When Scarlet gets here, just follow my lead. You’re okay with this, right?”
Oh, she was more than okay. The idea excited her. But there was a big problem. “Sure, I can deal with it, but who on earth is going to believe I’m your girlfriend?”
“Why wouldn’t they?”
“Because I’m just a mousy little banker from D.C. and you’re a…a…”
“I own a restaurant. That’s all anyone knows.” The phone rang and he picked it up. It didn’t escape Lucy’s attention that he didn’t argue about her self-assessment. Apparently he agreed with her description of “mousy.”
“Okay, thanks.” He hung up and turned back to Lucy. “That’s our dinner. I’ll be right back.”
While he was gone, Lucy tried to wrap her mind around the idea that she was going to be posing as Bryan’s girlfriend. Once upon a time she’d thought of herself as quite the hot chick. After all, she’d caught the eye of Cruz Tabor, drummer for In Tight, one of the hottest men in the country if the tabloids could be believed. She’d told herself when she took the job with In Tight that she wouldn’t behave like a groupie, that just being around the band was excitement enough for her.
Then Cruz had started flirting with her, and she was a goner. She’d believed every lie the bastard had told her. He’d said she was gorgeous, sexy, hot. He’d taken her on tour, letting her travel in first class with the band, buying her expensive presents.
But then she’d discovered he said all those things, did all those things, with every woman he slept with. And there were lots and lots of them. She’d been so naive, such a dumb bunny, to think she was anything special.
This was way different, though, she reminded herself. She wasn’t a hot chick, and she wasn’t deluding herself into believing she was. So how would anyone else believe she’d caught Bryan’s eye? Bryan was pretty hot himself. He could have any woman he wanted.
He knew the Hilton sisters. His trendy restaurant drew celebrities all the time. Did he sleep with any of them? How was she supposed to compete with that?
She found some dishes in the cabinets and set two place settings at the polished-granite bar. A few minutes later, the most wonderful aroma invaded her nose, followed by Bryan stepping off the elevator with two huge white bags.
Lucy’s stomach rumbled again. “What is that?”
“Shrimp and vegetable stir-fry Polonnaise. It’s not too spicy, and you can pick out anything you don’t like.”
“Stir-fry with a French sauce?”
“Right. That’s what Une Nuit is all about—Asian and French fusion dishes.” He set the bags on the counter, then gave her a quick once-over. She was wearing his pajama top with nothing on underneath. It was modest enough, covering all the important bits and hanging almost to her knees, so in deference to the fact it was summer in New York, she hadn’t bothered with the bottoms.
Now she wished she had. She felt suddenly vulnerable with her bare legs and a breeze from the air conditioner stirring around her private parts.
“Nice look,” he said with a wink. Then he turned and started unpacking the bags, stacking a mound of food on each plate and not even noticing that the hair on her forearms stood on end and her skin was flushed with awareness.
Oh, grow up, she scolded herself. He’d probably seen a hundred women wearing a lot less than a shapeless pajama top adorned with—yes, scenes from France.
He selected a bottle of chilled white wine from a climate-controlled wine safe as big as a refrigerator. “You like wine?”
“I don’t—Why, yes, I do.” She’d been about to say she didn’t drink. Alcohol was one of the things she’d given up when she’d made the decision to change her life, grow up, live like a conscientious adult instead of a wild, irresponsible teenager.
But after the day she’d had, a nice glass of Chardonnay sounded really nice. And it wasn’t as if she’d ever been an excessive drinker. But copious alcohol con
sumption by the people around her had been a big part of the life she’d left behind.
Bryan filled two crystal glasses and handed her one. “A toast. To your new life as Lindsay Morgan.”
“To Lindsay.” She clinked her glass with his and took a sip of the crisp, dry wine. This whole thing was so surreal.
She hopped up on a bar stool and dived into the food, which was absolutely the most incredible meal she’d ever eaten. “Oh, my God, this is so good. No wonder your restaurant is so successful. Did you start it, or buy it as an ongoing concern?”
“It was a moderately profitable French bistro when I bought it. Merging French with Asian started out as a joke, really, one night when the manager, the chef and I had a little too much to drink. Then I thought, why not? We all started experimenting in the kitchen, adding one thing and then another to the menu, and it just exploded in popularity.”
“I can see why.” Her taste buds were cheering over the subtle blend of exotic spices and the delicate textures, while the beautiful blend of colors and shapes and aromas engaged her other senses. She ate it all and didn’t regret it a bit, even when she was stuffed. If Bryan was going to feed her like this every day, she was going to have to use the home gym she’d seen tucked away in another bedroom.
When they finished, Lucy hand washed the dishes and put them away—no sense running the dishwasher for two people. A buzzer alerted them to Scarlet’s arrival, and Bryan went down to greet her and help her carry up her things.
Lucy was nervous about meeting Bryan’s cousin. She hadn’t had to deal with a boyfriend’s family since high school. She tried to tell herself it didn’t matter whether Scarlet liked her. Bryan wasn’t her real boyfriend, and this situation was temporary. When they caught the embezzler, she would start a new life away from here and she’d probably never lay eyes on Bryan or Scarlet again.
But it did matter. She still wanted Scarlet to like her. But she figured she would be found sadly lacking. The woman was an assistant fashion editor for one of the hottest women’s magazines in the country, after all. Scarlet was used to dressing supermodels and movie stars, not frumpy little bankers wearing oversize men’s pajamas.
Dynasties:The Elliots, Books 7-12 Page 3