Hero in Disguise

by Wilkins, Gina

Remembering her dazed expression when he’d left her at the door tonight with a kiss that could have blown all the fuses in her apartment building, he chuckled softly. He’d wondered if there was a way to penetrate her laughing composure. It seemed he had found it.

  There was only one problem with his method of controlling Summer. He liked it too much. Kissing Summer could rapidly become addictive. It compared easily with the adrenaline rush that had come just before he’d gone into situations in his government work that he’d known would be highly dangerous. He could imagine only one thing more exciting than kissing her. Imagining that one thing had sent him straight home to a cold shower.

  He thought of those dangerous situations that he’d faced with appalling regularity before he’d retired from the job that he’d always misrepresented as a safe, diplomatic attaché position. He wondered if his analogy of danger had been too close for comfort. Involvement in those situations could have cost him his life. Involvement with Summer could cost him… what? His peace of mind? His very soul?

  The hairs on the back of his neck used to stand on end when he’d sensed that an assignment would be particularly explosive. They were standing on end at this moment. But just as he’d been unable to resist the lure of danger for fifteen years, so he seemed unable to resist it now. Derek was taking on one more assignment. He wanted Summer Reed. He intended to have her.

  He’d tried to fight his attraction to her. Hadn’t he?

  Yes, he had. He’d lost the battle. He wanted her. She wasn’t exactly the type of woman he’d thought he was looking for when he’d decided to settle down into a more normal life, but what the hell. He wasn’t exactly the type of man he’d presented to the world during the past few months, either.

  Oh, yes, he wanted her. Defiant, eccentric, impudent, unpredictable and vulnerable Summer. But could he make her want him? Was she so convinced that he was a dull, regimented businessman that she would refuse to acknowledge there was something exciting between them? Would she be more interested in him if he told her about what he had really done for the government?

  No, dammit, he was no storybook hero, despite his past. She’d take him as he was now, or not at all.

  Derek Anderson was a man of action. Quick to make decisions, quick to act on them. He went to sleep still making his plans for his campaign to win the heart and I trust of Summer Reed.

  “LET ME GET THIS STRAIGHT. My brother invited you over for a swim and a barbecue and you went? You spent the entire afternoon and evening with him?” Connie stared across the tiny dinette table, her green eyes wide with surprise as they focused on her roommate.

  “Yep.” Summer swallowed her first sip of morning coffee, her eyes closing in momentary pleasure. How she loved that first sip of coffee.

  “And you had breakfast with him Saturday?”

  “That’s right. I’d have told you all about it last night, but you got in so late. I just couldn’t wait up for you.” Actually, Summer had not wanted to tell Connie everything the night before. She had needed the time to sort out her thoughts about what had happened between her and Derek yesterday. And she’d finally reached a conclusion. “Your brother is the most arrogant, high-handed, exasperating man I ever met in my life.”

  Connie laughed shortly. “I hear that,” she muttered, using an expression she’d picked up from her Arkansan friend.

  “Why didn’t you tell me that he takes revenge when someone manages to get the best of him?”

  “I’ve told you that he hates to be bested. What did you do to him, and how did he get his revenge?” Connie asked curiously.

  “All I did was demonstrate how frustrating it is for someone to try to tell a person how to live his or her life,” Summer explained rather obscurely, though Connie seemed to have no difficulty following the garbled explanation. “I thought I was helping you out, and you’ll be glad to know that I think he finally got the message about interfering.”

  “If you’re right, I’ll owe you my eternal gratitude. But I take it you demonstrated in such a way that he felt it necessary to take revenge?”

  “I’m afraid so,” Summer answered glumly.

  “Gulp. How’d he do it?”

  “He made a heavy pass at me—several of them, actually.”

  Connie choked, then sputtered with laughter. “Joke, right?”

  “No. Your brother assaulted me. The first time he said it was to shut me up, and after that I think he just did it because he knew I couldn’t think of a thing to say in retaliation.”

  “He kissed you?” Connie asked in awe. “Not once but several times? And you were at a loss for words?”

  Summer plopped her elbows on the table and cupped her cheeks in her hands. “Connie, your brother should be declared a lethal weapon. His kisses short-circuited my mental facilities. I mean, we’re talking smoke out of the ears and sparks flying and hair standing on end.”

  “Wow!”

  “You don’t have to look quite so proud of him,” Summer grumbled.

  “It’s just… Derek!” Connie shook her head, dazed. “Who’d a thought it?”

  Summer sighed deeply. “He must have had a good laugh when he got home last night. I was a basket case by the time he dropped me off here, and he knew it.”

  “Maybe he was serious. Maybe he really is interested in you.”

  “Connie, the man said I have an idiotic life-style, that I have kooky friends and that the Salvation Army would turn up its nose at our apartment and its humble furnishings. He also said that I have no ambition and that I’m wasting my life. Does that sound like he’s interested in me?”

  “No,” Connie admitted. “It sounds like something he’d say about me.”

  “Well, actually, he was talking about you, but it’s the same difference.”

  “Thanks a lot.”

  “Anyway, he told me himself that I’m not his type. So why else would he have kissed me except to punish me for being right about him not having any right to interfere in your life?”

  Connie kept her answer to herself, choosing, instead, to ask curiously, “He’s a good kisser, huh?”

  Summer turned soulful eyes at her amused roommate. “Connie, he’s the best. It’s a shame he’s your brother so you can’t find out for yourself.”

  “Hmm. I have to admit that he’s earned himself a few points in my estimation of him. I would have thought he’d kiss as properly and conservatively as he does everything else.”

  “Hah!”

  “What are you going to do now?”

  “I’m going to forget it ever happened,” Summer answered determinedly, wishing she believed her own words. “Maybe he will have forgotten it, too, by next weekend. Or at least he’ll probably have decided to leave me alone. The joke’s over.”

  “What’s next weekend?”

  “He’s having a cocktail party for some of his clients. He wants you to serve as his hostess.”

  “Me?” Connie exclaimed in surprise, then shot her friend a stern look. “Whose idea was that?”

  “His very own. He probably wanted to tell you about it himself, but I’m too annoyed with him to care.”

  “Well, he can just forget it. I’m not going to do it.”

  Summer blinked in surprise. Connie’s reaction was something she hadn’t expected. “You’re not? Why?”

  “Why should I?” Connie demanded belligerently, glaring down at her coffee. “Why should I do Derek any favors?”

  For the first time Summer was conscious of a genuine surge of vexation at her roommate’s attitude toward her brother. “Because he’s going to ask you to. He’s trying to make peace, Connie. Why won’t you at least meet him halfway?”

  “He’s got you taken in, Summer. This is just another way to manipulate me. He’s asking me to help out with his boring cocktail party to point out the contrast to the party you and I threw last week. He’ll probably lose no opportunity to inform me that his is the proper type of social entertainment.”

  “I think you’re overreacti
ng. He’s giving the party, anyway, whether you serve as his hostess or not,” Summer pointed out logically. “He’s trying to show you that he trusts you to help him out without embarrassing him. That he respects you, Connie.”

  “Why are you taking Derek’s side in this?” Connie demanded. “Are you in some kind of conspiracy with him? Just what did the two of you say about me yesterday, anyway?”

  “Connie!” Summer set down her coffee cup and glared at her roommate. “You know better than that.”

  Connie sighed. “You’re right. I’m sorry. I’ve just gotten too used to having to search Derek’s every action for ulterior purposes. You really think he’s doing this as a peace offering?”

  “Yes, I do,” Summer answered flatly, not certain herself of why she was so sure of Derek’s motives. She only knew that she trusted him and she had believed him when he’d said he wanted to be closer to his sister. And she knew that she wanted to help. “Will you do it?” she asked.

  Connie grimaced. “I’ll probably hate every minute of it, but I guess I will. But I warn you, we may all regret this.”

  “I don’t think you will,” Summer assured her, devoutly hoping she was right. “Anyway, he invited me to the party, as well,” she said, hoping that fact would make Connie more enthusiastic about the event. Forgetting that only moments before she had urged Connie to trust Derek, she added in a mutter, “He probably hopes I’ll do something to embarrass myself. Well, I’ll show him that I can conduct myself as properly and respectably as… as Joanne Payne.”

  Connie looked closely at Summer’s flushed face and gleaming blue eyes. “Summer, you’re not actually… interested in my brother, are you?”

  “Interested?” Summer tried very hard to sound incredulous. “Connie, does Derek seem like the hero-type to you?”

  “Well, no…”

  “I categorically refuse to give in to an attraction to a stuffy businessman. Even if he does kiss like an angel.”

  Again Connie remained wisely silent, though her eyes brimmed with sudden smothered laughter. “This should prove to be interesting,” she murmured after a moment.

  Summer glared at her and drained her coffee. “I’m going to get ready for work,” she announced haughtily, rising to her full height with immense dignity.

  Connie giggled and allowed herself to waste a few moments contemplating a tempestuous love affair between her sober brother and her happy-go-lucky roommate. It might definitely be interesting, she told herself gaily. Suddenly the idea of Derek’s cocktail party didn’t sound so bad.

  “ARE YOU SURE I look all right?” Connie fretted on the doorstep of her brother’s home. She smoothed the skirt of her dark green strapless cocktail dress over her well-rounded hips, then straightened the scanty bodice, which clung as if by magic to her full breasts. The auburn hair, which was usually worn in a heedless riot of curls, had been subdued into a sleek chignon at the base of her slender neck.

  “Connie, you look beautiful,” Summer assured her friend firmly. Summer hadn’t been present when Derek had asked his sister to attend this party, so she didn’t know exactly what had been said, but she assumed the conversation had been amicable enough. Connie was here. “Derek will be proud to have you as a hostess. How about me? Do I look okay?”

  “More than okay” Connie replied sincerely. “You look fantastic.”

  Summer had chosen an interestingly draped silk jumpsuit of a rich blue that made her eyes seem more incredibly vivid than ever, reflecting the sparkle of rhinestone buckles at her shoulders and tiny waist. A cut crystal pendant glinted from the deep décolletage, and matching earrings twinkled in delicate cascades from her earlobes. A spray of white baby’s breath was clipped at one side of her ultrashort hair to feminize the style for the evening, though Summer’s appearance left no doubt about her gender.

  Summer lifted one foot and scowled at it, eyeing the delicate straps of her silver sandals beneath the tight ankle-length hem of her jumpsuit. “If only I could wear those deadly four-inch heels like you’ve got on,” she mourned. “There’s just something dangerous about a woman in four-inch spike heels.”

  Connie laughed. “You would definitely be dangerous in four-inch heels, my friend. You don’t walk that great in flats.”

  Summer’s gurgle of laughter was cut short by a low growl from the door, which neither of them noticed had been opened during their mutual admiration. “That wasn’t funny, Connie.”

  Summer rolled her eyes at her friend, adequately concealing that she was a bundle of nerves at Derek’s sudden, silent appearance. Especially since he looked so damned sexy in his dark, European-cut suit. “I knew there was something we forgot, Connie,” she quipped. “Cue cards.”

  “Cue cards?”

  “Yeah. To tell Derek when to laugh. He has trouble recognizing a joke, you see.”

  Connie giggled. “He always has.”

  “Are the two of you going to stand on my doorstep and insult me all evening, or would you care to come in?” Derek inquired dryly.

  Connie swept past her brother with stylish panache. “Good evening, Derek. Is everything ready?” she asked in an exaggeratedly cultured voice.

  “Yes, everything’s ready,” he replied, watching Summer as she limped past him in Connie’s wake. “Both of you look beautiful.”

  “Thank you, dahling,” Connie returned with a regal nod of her red head. “And please take note that we are thirty minutes early, just as you dictated, er, requested.”

  “Connie.”

  “Yes, Derek?”

  “Stuff it.”

  Connie laughed. “What did you do to Derek last weekend, Summer?” she demanded of her unusually quiet friend. “He sounds almost like a normal older brother. You must have loosened him up.” She stumbled over the latter words, remembering too late how they must sound in light of what Summer had told her about the events of the previous weekend.

  Summer shot eye-daggers at her roommate, but her smile was convincingly natural as she glanced at Derek, automatically noting that his eyes were gleaming almost silver. So Connie’s remark had amused him, had it? Perhaps he thought that Summer would blush and stammer in confusion at the implied reminder of his devastating kisses. Well, she’d show the arrogant male that he wasn’t the only one who could keep his opponent off balance. “I certainly tried my best,” she murmured in answer to Connie’s comment, allowing her eyes to hold Derek’s for an extra moment before sliding coyly away.

  “Is there anything I can do before the guests arrive, Derek?” Connie interceded hastily, though her round face was alight with suppressed laughter.

  “You can make a run-through of the tables, if you like,” he replied. “The caterers have everything set up, but you could just check to make sure it’s all satisfactory.”

  “No problem.” Connie walked away, admirably confident on her spike heels. She winked back at Summer just before she disappeared through the doorway into the living room.

  Summer would have followed her friend, but Derek’s hand on her elbow stopped her. She lifted an inquiring eyebrow at him, finding him to be making a slow, thorough examination of her from head to toe—just as he had done when she had opened her door to him early last Saturday morning. Once again she had the sensation that the examination had been more than visual. She could almost feel the warmth of his touch on her breasts, her waist, her hips. She knew the warmth was reflected in her cheeks.

  “You look lovely,” he said at length, lifting his eyes back to her face.

  “Thank you, Derek.” She would have stepped away from him, but his hand tightened on her elbow, detaining her.

  “I’ve thought about you a great deal during the past week,” he informed her, his gaze holding hers as captive as his hand held her arm.

  She swallowed. “I’m sure you have,” she replied coolly. Probably laughed himself to sleep every night over the way he’d shattered her composure on Sunday. “Excuse me, I’ll go see if Connie needs my assistance.”

  “She do
esn’t,” Derek answered bluntly. “You’re not afraid to be alone with me, are you, Summer?”

  Determined to keep up with him this time, she placed a beautifully manicured hand on his dark sleeve and lightly rubbed his arm through the expensive fabric. “Of course I am, Derek,” she answered seductively. “You know I just don’t trust myself around you.”

  The gleam in his eyes became more pronounced, but he didn’t smile. Instead, he lowered his head to nuzzle her crystal-enhanced ear, murmuring softly, “You know what they say about playing with fire, Summer-love.”

  “Mmm,” she replied as quietly, her heart slamming against the walls of her chest. “Sometimes you burn exactly what you intend to burn.”

  “Meaning me?”

  “I don’t know. Are you feeling warm, Derek?” she asked sweetly.

  “I’m beginning to,” he answered, turning his face so that his mouth grazed her cheek.

  Her lids began to drift downward, then shot back up when Connie’s voice interrupted from the doorway into the living room. “If you’re hungry, Derek, the canapés look delicious.”

  “I prefer nibbling on your roommate,” Derek shot back easily though he stepped away from Summer and offered her his arm. “I seem to have kept you in the foyer, Summer. Please come in.”

  “Why, thank you, Derek,” she replied, resting her hand on his arm without a perceptible pause. Nothing about her relaxed, poised stance would indicate that her mind was reeling and her senses vibrated wildly from that intimate moment with him. Avoiding Connie’s quizzical look, Summer shot a glance at Derek to find him looking back at her with a hungry expression that made her gulp. There was definitely something different about the man tonight. Something that made her quite nervous.

  “May I get you a drink, Summer?” he offered smoothly.

  “Yes, Derek, thank you.” I hope it’s a strong one, she thought fatalistically. Something tells me I’m going to need it.

  Summer wasn’t sure if she was more nervous about the way Derek was looking at her or the idea of mingling with his guests tonight. She didn’t care for parties where she didn’t know many people. She infinitely preferred the loud, cheery bashes she and Connie usually attended, where most of the guests were from their crowd and the new ones blended in swiftly. Unless they were like Derek Anderson, she amended, who didn’t belong at those parties in the first place.