Her Spy to Hold (Spy Games Book 2)

by Paula Altenburg

  A touch of pink colored her cheeks. “I figured that out.”

  “So you’ll understand when I do this.”

  He didn’t give her any other warning than that, because Dr. Glasov could poker up fast. Irina however…

  Such a contradiction.

  He bent his head. Her eyes opened wide, her long lashes fluttering. He slid a hand behind her neck, tilting her chin upward. He kissed her.

  This one wasn’t a casual greeting. Not even close. The second his lips touched hers, his half-assed plans for establishing a cover story deserted him. Her fingers clutched at his hips, no doubt to steady herself because he’d caught her off guard, the heels of her palms pressing too close to his groin. His body reacted. His free hand found the small of her back and he drew her against him so that she could feel his interest for herself. He ran the tip of his tongue across the seam of her lips, teasing it open. She tasted of cherry. A stroke of the pad of his thumb along the sensitive spot on her throat, beneath her ear, made her gasp. They were both breathless now. He wondered what sounds she’d make if he were inside her, and if he dared to find out.

  A helicopter flew low overhead on its flight path to the runway nearby, bringing him back to reality. They were in a parking lot at her place of work. And there was a fine line between establishing that they were couple and being cited for public indecency.

  Yes, his thoughts had definitely gone there.

  He lifted his head, although he didn’t let go of her. He couldn’t. Not yet. He scrambled to come up with some explanation for what he’d just done.

  She beat him to it.

  “That was very convincing.” She smoothed his shirtfront and stared at his chest, avoiding his eyes. “But you’re wasting your time. There’s no one from my office out here to see us, only the commissionaire on duty. And I’m fairly certain he’s not paying attention.”

  Kale could have told her that the commissionaire was the intended audience, and yes, he’d most definitely been paying attention. All he’d really needed to establish was a reason for being here in the mornings and afternoons, when people were coming and going.

  Instead, as he opened her car door for her, he said, “Then I guess we’ll have to try again Monday, won’t we?”

  * * *

  Irina slid into her chair at the Press Gang where her friend Beverley was waiting for her.

  By the looks of it, Bev was already a few glasses into the bottle of wine on the table. Irina could use a few drinks herself. It had been that kind of week and the intelligence officer assigned to her wasn’t improving it. He was good at his job.

  Too good. That kiss had seemed real.

  The waiter came over to pour her wine. She thanked him, her fingers trembling ever so slightly as she picked up the glass. Most nights she loved this restaurant. It was quiet and intimate, and the low-beamed room with its dark, polished wood gave a real feel for the history of the city. Halifax was an international sea port—the first European settlement here dating back to 1749—and a former naval stronghold. Irina had grown up on the Canadian prairies, so having the sea so close at hand was a novelty that never grew old.

  Tonight, all she wanted was to bury her head under her blankets until this whole mess was behind her. She had no idea who might be watching her or what harm they intended, either to her or her project. And Kale… Well, he’d completely messed with her head. She liked working with numbers and facts, not suspicions. She preferred her world neat and tidy. Her emotions too.

  The worst of it was, she couldn’t let on to her friend that anything was wrong.

  “You look like hell. I’m going to guess that work isn’t going as well as it could,” Bev said, her smile sympathetic, but she knew better than to ask too many questions. A mathematics professor at Dalhousie University, she was a number of years older than Irina—although Irina couldn’t have said how many with any degree of certainty. Her skin was too perfect and she covered the gray in her hair with a platinum rinse. They’d met at a conference in Ottawa and struck up a friendship. Women in the sciences tended to stick together.

  While Irina couldn’t get into her problems at work, Kale Martin was another matter. If they were going to be in a pretend relationship, then he was fair game when it came to gossiping with her friends. Bev had been married three times. This was one problem she could help with.

  It was new conversational territory for them however. Normally when the two women got together, they talked about the challenges of working in academia for Bev and with the military for Irina. She wasn’t sure how to approach it.

  “I met a man,” she blurted out.

  Bev looked at her over the rim of her glass. “It’s about time. I was beginning to wonder which team you played for. Not that it matters.”

  “I was starting to wonder about that myself.”

  She wasn’t, of course. She liked men. Her luck, however, hadn’t been great. The few men she’d gotten involved with over the years had been even duller than she was, and while she had no craving for excitement, there seemed little point in two people slowly boring each other to death.

  But Kale was at the extreme other end of the spectrum. Being with him was the equivalent of tandem skydiving with a single, shared parachute.

  Bev finished her drink. “So tell me about him. How did you meet?”

  They’d gone over their story in the car. “Stick close to the truth,” he’d warned her. “Don’t make it something your mother wouldn’t believe.”

  “We met at the beach. I was reading a book and he was surfing. He couldn’t fathom there was a woman alive and breathing who wasn’t paying attention to him, so he came over to see what was more fascinating than he was.”

  Bev laughed. “I bet he got a shock.”

  “He wasn’t the only one.” No point in getting so far into this fairy tale that she couldn’t escape. “I don’t see it going anywhere though. We don’t have enough in common. Right now I’m a challenge to him, but sooner or later, the novelty will wear off.” That much was true.

  “So what if it does?” Her friend dismissed those concerns with a shrug of her slim shoulders. She topped off Irina’s drink with the last of the wine and signaled to the waiter to bring them another bottle. “There are plenty more men in the world. Why not have fun while it lasts?” She waved the empty wine bottle at her. “Don’t marry him, though. Not unless he earns more than you do. Divorces are expensive.”

  Irina took a healthy sip of her wine and picked up her menu. Kale was driving and she might as well make the most of it. But if they were going to be drinking, she needed food in her stomach. “I’m fairly certain marriage isn’t on either of our minds.”

  “Then I don’t see your problem.”

  As the evening wore on, Irina no longer saw it either. Kale was hot. He didn’t seem to mind kissing her. She wasn’t so boring she couldn’t figure that out. But they weren’t really involved with each other, and nothing good ever came from mixing business with pleasure.

  One hour slid into two and she began to feel guilty. Surveillance might be part of his job, but at the same time, she didn’t need to be inconsiderate about it. He’d be waiting for her.

  “I should really be going,” she said, sneaking a glance at her watch. “I was supposed to meet Kale at 8:30.” Underneath the sapphire crystal, the numbers were blurry. It looked like they read nine o’clock, but that couldn’t be right.

  Bev’s eyes brightened. “He’s picking you up? Can I meet him?”

  Irina couldn’t see why not.

  They paid the bill. Outside, the brightly-lit street was noisy. They were in the middle of the downtown bar district on a Friday night. Cool, salt-scented air flowed off the harbor. Irina tucked her purse under her arm, her jacket in her hand, and looked up the steep street toward the Halifax Citadel. Kale and the car were right where she’d left them, about six parking meters up, on the opposite side of the street.

  He must have been watching for her. He got out of the car and sta
rted walking toward them. He wore tight jeans and a white cotton shirt, unbuttoned at the throat to expose a few inches of chest. The blond man bun showed off his high cheekbones. If not for the fading black eye, the whole image would have shouted something straight out of GQ.

  “There he is.”

  Her friend’s eyes widened. “If only I were twenty years younger…” she breathed. “That is a whole lot of man. You go for it, girl. You’re too smart to be passing that up.”

  Irina might be smart about some things, but in this particular instance she was so ignorant it hurt. She didn’t know how a real relationship worked, let alone a pretend one. She’d also had too much to drink. It might be best if she took her cues from him as far as introductions went. Or anything else, for that matter.

  “Hey,” he said, stopping in front of them.

  “How tall are you?” Bev blurted out, awed.

  Kale’s lips twitched. “Six five. And I’m guessing you ladies had a few drinks with your dinner.” He looked at Irina. Flustered, she dropped her purse. He bent to retrieve it at the same time she did and their foreheads collided. “Maybe more than a few,” he murmured to her, sounding amused as he returned her bag. His mouth hovered a few inches from hers. For a second she thought he was going to kiss her again and her heart skipped a beat. Instead he caught her arms and helped her straighten, his blue eyes smoldering with good humor as if he knew what she’d been expecting. “Why don’t we drive your friend home and call it a night?”

  She rubbed her forehead, which was now on a level with his chest. The intimacy he suggested with his use of the word we unsettled her far more than the bump. A little fresh air might be a good idea before she got in the car with him.

  “It’s still early. Why don’t the three of us go for a walk along the waterfront? Or get a coffee somewhere?” she suggested.

  From behind Kale’s back, Bev made a face at her and mouthed don’t be stupid. “You two go ahead without me,” she said out loud. “I’ll call a cab.”

  Kale’s eyes fastened on Irina’s. His simmered with heat. “I had a long night last night. I expect another long one tonight. I’m ready to go home.” He shifted his gaze to Beverley. “But first, we’ll see you safe to your door.”

  Irina’s cheeks burned at the implication, as well as the memory of their shared kiss in the parking lot, and the thought of him spending another night in her house. He wasn’t the only one who’d found last night long.

  Chapter Four

  Irina couldn’t think of a single thing to say in the car on the ride home, so she concentrated on staying awake. Finishing that second bottle of wine, especially on a Friday night when she was already exhausted from a bad week, had been ill-advised.

  Kale seemed OK with the lack of conversation. He’d pushed his seat all the way back to make room for his legs. He kept his eyes on the road and the mirrors, relaxed but alert. The tires hummed on the pavement beneath them. Traffic was light on the highway.

  She settled deeper in her seat. While she was far from as mellow as he seemed to be, the wine had done wonders for calming her nerves. The last few days had been hard ones, but at least her fear had receded. Her awareness of Kale had multiplied tenfold however. She tried not to think of the long night ahead, alone with him in her house. She studied his profile in the faint glow from the instrument panel on the dashboard.

  “You’re staring,” he said.

  “You’re very beautiful.” The words slipped out because they were what she’d been thinking. She wished she could retract them. Maybe they’d been too slurred for recognition.

  A hint of a smile softened the hard line of his jaw. He slid her a sidelong look. “That’s supposed to be my line.”

  “I wasn’t giving you a line, I was making an observation.” She curled her bare toes under the dash. At some point, she wasn’t sure when, she’d kicked off her shoes. Her brain, highly reliable in most situations, was having trouble formulating the right words for this one. “You know what I meant.”

  “Possibly. It’s your point I’m not sure of.”

  Since she wasn’t sure of it either, and she’d already made a fool of herself, she might as well carry on. “You’re obviously smart as well as attractive. You could have done anything. So why did you choose a career with CSIS? Why become an intelligence officer?”

  “Why did you choose to design nuclear weapons systems placement?” he countered.

  “I more or less fell into it. I like working with computers and I simply followed the opportunities being offered to me.”

  “You mean you followed the money.”

  He said it with enough neutrality that it was obvious he didn’t approve. She couldn’t fault him for having an opinion. Her work wasn’t popular with a lot of people. She supposed with Canada’s spy agency, even less. Still, defensiveness tightened her stomach even as she admitted the truth.

  “I did. I support my parents,” she hastened to add. “My father defected from Russia when he was a young man. He’d been a combination of journalist and translator—we don’t have the equivalent in Canada—but after he arrived here he couldn’t find work, so he drove a cab in Regina. My mother’s Canadian. She developed Guillan-Barré syndrome when I was twenty and he’s been her primary caregiver for the past twelve years. They gave up a lot to make sure I had better opportunities than they did. Now it’s my turn to look after them. Besides, I like what I do. It’s always interesting. Although granted, maybe it’s a little too interesting right now.” If she hadn’t been drinking, she’d never have told him about her parents. She rarely spoke of her private life. Canada’s relations with Russia had grown increasingly strained over the past few years and she was uneasy with too many people knowing she had family connections—even though they were stated in her security clearances. Kale, however, could find out anything he wanted about her. He might even already know all of this. CSIS would have investigated her before they gave an intelligence officer this assignment. They’d want to know her background and who might be in it. She tugged at the hem of her skirt, which somehow had hiked up a few inches too far. “Back to you. Why CSIS?”

  “Same as you, I guess. They recruited me. It sounded like fun.” He navigated into the lane for the next exit off the highway. They were ten minutes from her house.

  The wine made her bold. “CSIS recruits only the best. So what’s your superpower?”

  He shifted gears and veered right at the bottom of the ramp, checking his mirrors and merging with traffic. The slow rise of his lips sketched the hint of a smile. “No superpowers, I’m afraid. I’m good with languages.”

  That wasn’t at all what she’d expected to hear. She’d thought he’d claim to be some kind of mixed martial arts expert—but to be fair, she’d jumped to that conclusion because of his size and the black eye. She’d also assumed he was telling the truth when he told George his background was in kinesiology. Why would someone lie about that? It was such an insignificant detail.

  Her curiosity about him, already high, was further piqued. “What languages do you speak?”

  “French, Hindi, Farsi, and Urdu, as well as modern Standard Arabic and seven of its dialects.”

  She blinked. “Prove it to me. Say something in Urdu.”

  He uttered a string of unintelligible but very lovely sounding words he couldn’t possibly be faking. He cast another sidelong look her way. “In case you’re curious, I said, ‘Peace be upon you, lovely lady. You are very suspicious by nature.’ See? I’m more than just a pretty face.”

  She’d touched a nerve by calling him beautiful. As a woman, she could well understand how offensive it was. But she sensed he wasn’t offended so much as trying to shift the conversation—and she’d love to know why. Other than French, these weren’t languages one would expect an average Canadian student to study—and he’d learned them before he joined CSIS, not after.

  “I can’t really see you blending in with a crowd in Pakistan,” she prodded.

  “Gathering in
telligence isn’t always about blending in. Sometimes stereotypes make the best covers. When it comes to my skillset, I don’t fit a typical profile.”

  No, he didn’t. And it explained why he said he’d studied kinesiology. Based on appearances alone, it was easy enough to believe.

  “Besides, I don’t gather intelligence in places like Pakistan.” He braked at the entrance to her subdivision, allowing an approaching vehicle to pass by before turning in. Its headlights lit up their car’s interior as it went by. “I work mostly in Western urban centers where multinationals tend to congregate.”

  “So your job is to eavesdrop on people’s conversations?”

  “More or less. And that,” he added, “is more than you need to know, even if your security clearances are better than mine. Shame on you, Dr. Glasov. You’re nosy when you drink. Next subject.”

  She’d been put in her place, but in a manner that left her smiling inside. Personable as well as gorgeous. Kale Martin had great people skills.

  They’d reached her driveway. She felt around under the dash with her toes until she found her shoes, then wriggled them onto her feet. The car rolled to a stop and she opened the door to get out. As she did, she got her arm tangled up in the seat belt assembly.

  Before she could extricate herself, Kale had come around the front of the car to help. He held her elbow as she got both feet on the ground. Except for a neighbor’s dog barking, no doubt at a squirrel or raccoon, the night was quiet. He got her laptop out of the backseat of the car and slung it over his shoulder.

  The knot she’d fashioned her hair into that morning had long since ceased to be neat and tidy. A warm breeze, smelling of damp grass and turned earth, ruffled the stray tendrils sticking to the nape of her neck. He tugged one strand loose with the tip of a finger. She couldn’t imagine why she’d been so nervous of him. Right now he was someone to lean on. Literally.