“We’ll find out soon enough.”
Clay swung into a parking lot. At this time of night, the area was still crowded with work-weary mothers, harried fathers and teens just hanging out. He took her hand as they strolled through the crowd, the tape burning in her pocket.
As she and Clay walked into a department store and, under bright lights, toward the office and stationery section, she wondered if the rogue agents had yet discovered that the tape was missing. They strode past clothing, then towels and glassware, finally stopping before several brands of answering machines.
She scanned the various choices, recognizing that none of the machines matched hers. “Do you think those men have already listened to my messages?”
“Yes.” Clay pulled a box off the shelf. “This one looks as if she’ll work.”
“So if my brother did call—”
Clay opened the box and pressed a button; the tape slot opened. “Let’s not jump to conclusions.”
She placed the tape in his hand and he popped it into the slot. “It fits?”
“Yeah. Now, all we need is a little privacy and some electricity.” He paid for their purchase and held the box under his arm.
“Let’s hope they didn’t erase the tape,” she muttered, the last of the adrenaline from their escapade at the hotel wearing off and leaving her with a heavy fatigue that made walking an effort.
They retraced their steps to the car. Wearily, she forced one foot in front of the other, the very long, very complicated day suddenly catching up with her. Tapped out, emotionally and physically, her body demanded rest from her exhausting day. She fought to keep her eyes open once inside the car, but she lost the battle and fell into a deep sleep.
She slept dreamlessly and didn’t waken until Clay shook her. She opened her eyes, still slightly groggy, her lids fighting and winning their battle to stay open. A glance at the car’s clock told her she’d slept for at least an hour. Looking out the window, she didn’t recognize her surroundings on a dark street lit by one bright streetlamp on the corner.
The car sat parked in front of a beach bungalow, within a block of the ocean, she guessed from the distant sound of the waves and the salty tang of the breeze. The simple, weathered gray house with charcoal trim boasted a comfortable-looking front porch with cream wicker furniture, a worn welcome mat and yesterday’s newspaper.
Clay grabbed their bags, and they walked from the shell driveway along a stepping-stone path to the front door. She stumbled, and he grabbed her elbow to steady her. His touch on her arm felt natural, protective, and yet set up a little hum in her heart. When she suddenly realized they were about to spend the night together, her breath hitched. “Where are we?”
“It’s a beach rental. I’ve arranged to spend a few nights here through a real estate agency.” Clay reached under the mat, removed a key, unlocked the front door and flipped on the lights.
They stepped onto a polished oak floor softened with throw rugs. Beachlike and practical, the main room had cheery bright blue-and-white-striped cushions on the sofas, which matched soft curtains that framed screened windows. A tiny but useful kitchen led to a dining nook. The bathroom, located centrally, was convenient to the open areas as well as the bedroom.
Melinda ducked inside. One bedroom. One double bed with a patchwork quilt and lots of pillows did nothing to make her nerves settle. She returned to the living area to find Clay removing the tape recorder from the box, plugging the cord into a socket and popping the tape into the machine. The idea of him listening to her personal messages didn’t make her as uncomfortable as the knowing look in his eyes when he saw the flush on her face.
Mentioning the limited accommodations seemed petty. Yet ignoring them had consequences that loomed too large for her to ignore. A conversation to deal with the practicality of sleeping arrangements could be delayed for several more minutes. First, she needed to hear her messages.
She took a seat on the sofa, flipped off her shoes and tucked her feet under her. She appreciated that he’d waited for her to make herself comfortable before hitting the play button.
The tape ran silently for thirty seconds or so, and her former doubts blossomed into full-grown disappointment. “They erased the tape. Or nothing was on it.”
Had all that climbing up and down balconies been for nothing?
Clay pressed stop, then rewind. “Hold on a sec. Maybe we started in the wrong place.”
Again, he pressed play.
“It’s Sheila, hon. Can you come by and see me later?”
“That’s Sheila Hammerstein, my next-door neighbor,” she explained. The seventy-five-year-old lady was as spry as a teenager but couldn’t see well enough to drive. Melinda usually took her shopping once a week and looked in on her every other day or so.
“Matt Rosen here. I need to cancel my Friday appointment, sorry.”
His message needed no explanation. The out-of-shape business executive usually needed her services after he spent a day on the golf course.
“Hey, girl. Ladies’ night out at TJ’s Friday. Eight o’clock. Be there.” Melinda grinned at her friend Charlene’s brief and cheery message, which helped cut the tension arcing through her.
She didn’t know what she’d been expecting—a sinister message or maybe a threat. Instead, her messages reminded her how much her life had changed in less than twenty-four hours. Yesterday, she’d been an average working adult whose largest problem was saving enough money to open her own business. Today, she’d had her life threatened and was being hunted by the CIA. It made her realize how much she had taken for granted. She liked her life, her friends, her job, her home. And all that had been taken away from her with one malevolent slap of fate.
“Ms. Murphy.” A deep voice that Melinda didn’t recognize spoke huskily over the tape. “I’d like to talk to you. Please call me back at your convenience.” The man left his name, Sam Bronson, and a local phone number.
Melinda creased her forehead wondering if he was a client, a salesperson or even anyone she knew. While his message sounded mysterious, it also sounded normal.
Clay hit the stop button. “You don’t recognize his voice?”
She shook her head, puzzled. “I still don’t remember much of my morning.” While she yearned to reclaim her memories of those last lost hours, she had much to be grateful for, since the vast majority of her recollections had returned.
Clay hit the play button again. “Yo, Melinda, baby.” Brian Kelly, a fellow windsailer and a chiropractic physician who often sent business her way, spoke briefly. “I copped a pair of tickets to Dixie Chicks for Saturday night in Orlando. Wanna be my date, sweetheart?”
Clay slanted a glance at her, and for some reason she didn’t understand, she felt obligated to explain. “Brian and I are friends.”
“Do all your friends call you sweetheart?”
Before she could reply, Sheila left a second message. “Melinda, how about a pizza bash on the beach tonight? You, me and the guys.”
“Her dogs,” Melinda explained.
“Don’t let me forget to…” They heard a cat meow, several dogs started to bark and she muttered, “Got to go.”
Melinda caught Clay’s frown and realized he was worried about Sheila. “She’s fine. While she may not be able to see two feet in front of her nose, her German shepherd and rottweiler protect her. That chaos you heard was simply the boys chasing Lazy Days, her cat.”
Clay popped the tape out of the machine, handed it to her and then took a seat beside her on the sofa. “Sounds as if you have a nice bunch of friends.”
Something about the way he said it made her realize he hid a touch of loneliness behind his self-sufficient manner. He’d never mentioned any friends or family, and she’d assumed it was because he worked undercover and sought to protect those close to him from this dangerous assignment. He seemed such a loner, so complete within himself that she had difficulty picturing him with brothers and sisters or even a bunch of friends.
&n
bsp; Even sitting beside her on the sofa, he seemed isolated, and she suddenly wanted to break through the barrier he drew around himself. The flicker of vulnerability she saw in his eyes slid under her skin, and she ached to take him into her arms and hold him. Instead, she leaned against him and rested her head on his shoulder.
When he placed one powerful arm gently over her shoulders, she snuggled against his heat. They fit well together, and she took more comfort from his touch than she wanted to admit. Sitting close to him, breathing in his masculine scent, made her feel as if she had come home to a warm cozy place, an exciting place scented with cherry flavors that she could explore at her leisure.
She tipped back her head and, ever so slowly, he turned his head. She admired the hard slant of his jaw, the crisp outline of a muscle in his neck, the angles and planes of his hard face. No smile softened his mouth. And when she raised her eyes to his, she saw a mountain of longing, acres of desire and an ocean of hunger in the intensity of his gaze.
Inch by inch, he lowered his head, giving her plenty of time to avoid his kiss. She waited impatiently, and when he seemed determined to go as slow as humanly possible, she reached up and threaded her fingers into his dark silky hair and yanked him closer, reveling in how easily he allowed her to tug him to her.
She’d never known a nibble could spark such a storm of need. Her insides churned as if buffeted by the wind, her emotions swooping and gliding and spinning in a wild journey of steamy pleasure. Clay’s agile mouth slowly explored hers, delving into secret places she’d never known could be so sensitive. Greedy for more of him, she wound her arms around his neck, letting his heat kindle a fire inside her jeans, flames within her heart.
He smelled of leather and salt and pure male heat. He tasted of hot-tempered masculinity and man-fired need. She responded, by giving and by taking, with an urgency that came from a place so deep inside she hadn’t known it existed.
Breathless, stunned by her own hunger, she pulled back, knowing her eyes must have shown her astonishment at her reaction to him. Melinda had been kissed before, but she’d never responded with such an overwhelming appetite that she wasn’t sure whether to flee, or stay—and feast.
“That was some kiss,” Clay said with a huskiness she recognized as desire, his warm breath fanning her ear.
So he had felt it, too. The extraordinary attraction that had hummed between them all day had escalated into a full-fledged fury that both scared and excited her. Her heart thrummed with the possibilities while her mind kept telling her to back off.
Slow down, girl. Just because every rebel cell in her body wanted to make love to him with a soul-pulling gravity didn’t mean she would let herself fall into the trap of wanting a man who would ultimately prove unsuitable.
Clay’s workaholic tendencies would keep him away from a wife and kids every bit as much as her traveling-salesman father who had never been home. She didn’t want to let this attraction between them go one step further when there was no future for them.
Yet, as Clay dipped his head and trailed his lips from her sensitized earlobe to her quivering neck, she couldn’t resist his caress any more than her sails could resist a strong wind on a bright spring day. His ripping urgency swept her along, buffeting her objections, cajoling and teasing her with the exquisite promise of much, much more.
Planting her palms on his shoulders, she pushed herself back. Drawing a ragged breath, she shook her head, willing her good senses to return. But only her physical senses seemed to be firing on all cylinders, as her nose greedily breathed in more of his musky scent, her eyes found him more than attractive and her fingertips ached to explore the hollow beneath his jaw.
“We need to talk,” she told him.
He nipped a spot halfway between her shoulder and collarbone.
“You go right ahead.” He branded the hollow of her throat with a lick of pure heat.
“We aren’t right for one another.”
“Mmm.”
“I don’t know enough about you,” she protested, and then sighed in a delightful moan as his lips found an erotic spot along her jaw.
“What do you want to know?” he murmured, leaning back and pulling her with him until she sprawled across his chest, which gave his hands access to her back. He took advantage by rubbing slow, sensual circles on her appreciative muscles with his thumbs.
“I don’t even know your favorite color.”
His irises were a misty green fog with a hint of sparkling emerald chips as he stared into her eyes. “Toffee or amber.”
“Your favorite sport?”
He laced his fingers into her hair and drew her lips next to his. “Wrestling with a beautiful woman.”
Her mouth went dry. “Your favorite meal?”
“You.”
Chapter Seven
Clay’s stomach swooped, reminding him of his first free-fall jump from an airplane in the moments before he pulled open his parachute. He felt the same roaring in his ears, the same spurt of adrenaline, the same kick of his heart against his ribs. Only there would be no soft landing, since Melinda seemed to have cut his legs out from under him.
He’d fallen hard and had yet to regain his equilibrium after her mind-blowing kiss. She’d tasted like saltwater taffy with an invigorating hint of adventure. She’d smelled even better, reminding him of fine cognac and a flickering vanilla candle that put off more heat than he’d ever imagined possible.
Even now, he couldn’t resist exploring her smoothly soft and silky skin, taking pleasure as she let out a happy groan as he worked a kink out of her back. With her sprawled across his chest, her breath heating his neck, he felt contradictorily patient and impatient at the same time. He wanted so much more of her, yet didn’t want to rush.
He yearned to explore her, wanted to know what she liked, how to please her. But she made it difficult to think as she raised her head and left a nipping trail of tantalizingly tiny bites along the curve of his shoulder.
His hand slid to her waist, dipped under her shirt to explore her narrow waist, her delicately curved and muscular back. Tossing her hair out of her face, she peered up at him, placed a palm flat on his shoulder and pulled back.
Her eyes smoldered with passion and a tinge of caution. “I’m not ready to do more.”
“You will be.” He removed his hands from her back and laced them behind his head.
She arched an eyebrow, took a deep breath. “You sound very sure of yourself, mister.”
“I’m sure of what we’re feeling. You can’t deny you want me.”
“I want lots of things.”
“And you should have them all.” He remained on his back, keeping his hands behind his head, vowing not to gather her close again if she wasn’t ready, but admiring how good she looked with her pupils dilated with desire, her lips swollen from his kisses.
Her bottom lip quivered just a tad and then steel straightened her backbone. “Life’s not that simple.”
“It can be, if you let it.”
She sat next to him, her hip next to his. “This is too soon for me.”
“What’s really wrong?”
At his question, she looked down and twisted her fingers together. “I don’t want to like you.”
She didn’t? At first he wanted to demand why not. But then he realized exactly what her words and actions revealed. She may not want to like him—but she did. She might not want to kiss him—but she had. She might not want a physical relationship, but her flushed face and ragged breathing told him she’d responded to him in spite of her wishes. He couldn’t contain a satisfied grin.
“You’re laughing at me,” she accused him, but he didn’t feel the least bit guilty.
“Maybe.” He turned on his side to give her more room on the sofa, bent one elbow and propped his head in his palm.
She dusted off her hands and stood, her indignation making her raise her chin a notch. She looked so proper, keeping her resentment in check, that he couldn’t resist reaching out, bra
celeting her wrist and tugging her back.
“If you dare say I look good when I’m mad, I swear I’ll slap you,” she threatened.
“You always look good.”
In the flash of a heartbeat, her anger disappeared and she chuckled, shaking her head at him. “Did anyone ever tell you that you’re impossible?”
He failed to contain a grin. “I can’t help it if I’m charming.”
“Charming?” She picked up a pillow and flung it at him.
He ducked and tugged her closer until she leaned back against him. When she settled comfortably, he tried to keep the need from his tone. “So just how long do you figure you can keep fighting your feelings for me?”
“Until you give up?”
“I’m a very persistent man.”
“I noticed.”
“It took me six years to crack a Russian code.”
“Is that how long you’ve been with the CIA?”
“Actually, I first worked on the code while I was in military intelligence.” Worked wasn’t exactly the right word. He’d become obsessed with his job, coming home to shower and for a change of clothes. He’d finally thought his wife had stopped worrying over his workaholic tendencies, when instead he’d learned that she’d left him.
“And before that?”
“The usual. College.”
“Let me guess. You just studied in college and had no time for fun?”
“I did minor in music.”
“That’s how you relaxed?”
“Mathematical logic, linguistics and music are made up of patterns that fascinate me.”
“Most people study music because they enjoy listening to it.”
He shrugged. “When I listen, the notes form four-dimensional models in my mind.”
“Four dimensions?”
“Length, width, depth and their passage through time.”
She pulled away from him and he let her go. “Well, Dr. Einstein, it’s way past my bedtime. I’m going to turn in.”
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