The Spy Who Kissed Me

by Pauline Baird Jones

  What was it that wasn’t happening here?

  “…association. I guess I’m just not used to it.”

  His hand was warm against the back of my neck. So naturally I shivered. Or it could have been a shudder.

  “Would you believe me if I told you this isn’t normal for me either?” he asked.

  I didn’t hesitate. “No.”

  He chuckled. We were so close together I felt it as a small, but very pleasant earthquake.

  “Ian Fleming has a lot to answer for.”

  “So, you’re saying you’re not Bond, James Bond with a babe in every exotic city and a Porsche that can fly?”

  “Exotic city babes carry disease and my car doesn’t have that much under the hood.”

  “So I just imagined that whole bed-Pavlov-dog-scene when you were under the influence of Mike’s doggie drugs?”

  His eyes lit the way they had that night, only without the foggy part. His mouth smiled the way it had that night. My bones started to melt the way they had that night.

  “I thought you said nothing happened that night?” he murmured, into my ear.

  My ear tingled, my body quivered.

  “Nothing did.” I swallowed dryly.

  Embarrassment and desire don’t mix very well. He had me blocked in. I couldn’t disappear. So I closed my eyes. Big mistake. Gave him a clear field to make his move. He found my mouth easily. He’d been there before. I knew this, even as I let him draw me deeper into his terrifying, safe embrace.

  It was like being in the eye of a hurricane, a place where I could experience the wild wonder of him without the danger.

  Danger was out there, I just wasn’t in it. Yet.

  Passive at first, I let him explore my mouth with his, shivered when his hands spread across my back. Then, made brave by the thick honey of desire in my blood, I launched my own quest for knowledge. It was necessary for my survival. If I hadn’t thrust my hands into the springy softness of his hair, they would have flailed about aimlessly.

  I kept my lips from idleness by tasting the skin at his temple. He was checking out my jaw line, so our explorations aided each other. Thought and feeling disconnected when I tasted and found him good. Like Baby Bear’s porridge, like Eve’s apple. My hands fanned out on his chest, absorbing the heady sweetness of silk over flesh and blood, both warmed by a strongly beating heart. He recaptured my mouth and I sighed my thanks. And learned the eye of a man’s passion isn’t endless.

  He matched my sigh, raised it a groan. Then took us out of the eye right into the storm. His mouth, his hands drove me back against the couch, tasting, touching, taking my passion and multiplying it so that I got back more in the exchange. No wonder no one wanted the secret to get out on just how delightful the delights of the flesh really are. All of the elements of a rampaging addiction were built right into my body, unleashed by his. I was on the fast track to biting the big one. You can imagine my surprise when I muttered, “I don’t—” when I obviously was.

  He paused. “Ever?”

  “Well, not,” I swallowed hoping to ease my dry throat, “yet.”

  “I thought girls like you were an endangered species?”

  Sanity was slow to return, but remarks like that helped. “Its guys like you that made us that way.”

  He laughed, his strong warm hand settling against my throat to register the giveaway pace of my pulse. “Why? You seem to have all the right instincts.”

  “Yeah,” I admitted. “I noticed.” It was hard to put into words what I was feeling. “I don’t know you,” I finally said, even thought it wasn’t quite right. I did know Kel, I just didn’t know him.

  “We already know what’s important.”

  “And that is?”

  “That we want each other.”

  He wanted me. No, not me. My body. The fact that my body had a heart didn’t matter. Not when passion was running the show.

  “Does it bother you that you want me?” he asked, huskily against my mouth.

  Instead of answering this loaded question, I said, “Maybe I should go to Bible Study with Reverend Hilliard.”

  “Reverend Hilliard?” He looked resigned. “Not another one?”

  “It’s not my fault.”

  The telephone rang, which was good because I had no idea how to explain the minister to the spy. It’s at this point I realized we were on the floor. I didn’t remember getting there. My clothing was askew. So were his. Didn’t remember that either.

  “You’re dangerous,” he said, before scrambling up to answer the telephone. I just hoped it was for him or I’d have some explaining to do.

  Reality began to inject cold sobriety into all the places Kel had so nicely warmed. I tucked my hands behind my disarranged hair. Though he was advancing my knowledge of anatomy and human response, and hopefully making romance writing possible for me, he was doing some serious damage to my principles.

  Not only had I unbuttoned his shirt, but I’d also started on his belt. If that telephone hadn’t rang right then, would I have let him take my theoretical knowledge into an actual experience field test? I wasn’t sure I wanted to know the answer to any of these questions. I was already way behind in my repenting. I got my Gumby limbs coordinated long enough to crawl up on the couch.

  Kel came back and told me he had to go. He looked sorry. I felt relief. He didn’t kiss me. We both knew what happens when you put a match to dry tinder.

  With the object of my passion gone, my arm started to hurt again. Rosemary called me down to supper. I went reluctantly. My stomach felt queasy and my legs weren’t steady. Downstairs both my former dates were digging into my mother’s lasagna with revolting enthusiasm. Had this really been my favorite dish? I must have been out of my mind.

  “Here’s your plate,” my mother said, her eyes on Steve.

  The room was airless and pain beat in my arm like ocean surf against a rocky beach. My collar felt tight and hot. My hands shook when I served myself. I almost dropped the plate when I sank into a chair, staring down at lasagna revolving in a slow circle.

  “Isabel?” My mother’s body wavered in front of me. I rubbed my forehead, my hand slipping wetly across clammy skin. She frowned. “Why are you smearing tomato sauce on your face?”

  I tried to focus. “What?”

  “That’s not tomato sauce.” Mike sounded grim and at least an ocean away. Darkness narrowed my view in a rush. My head, strangely weighted, fell forward. I saw the pasta coming at me and managed to turn my head to one side just in time.

  The pop of my ear filling with pasta exactly coincided with the total dark.

  NINETEEN

  Sunday morning I lay alone in my relatively virginal bed, staring at the ceiling and reflecting on life’s little ironies. How was it that I, wounded and smeared with lasagna, bandaged by a veterinarian who preferred my sister, assisted by the veteran who preferred my mother—how was it that I was the one in the dog house?

  Okay, I should have mentioned to my mother about getting shot. Was that grounds for ostracism? Rebellion raged in my soul as I dressed for church, moving as stiffly as an old woman. Had I recently felt young? Oh hubris!

  I collected my purse, eased on a coat, and flying the flags of defiance, I let myself out through the garage so no one could see me in time to ignore me. Perhaps Reverend Hilliard would be inspired to speak on repentance or compassion. The guilt needed to be spread around this house a little.

  My car was parked at the curb, where I’d left it yesterday in my hurry to contact the CIA. I inserted my key, then pulled open the door. As I stepped off the curb and bent to get in, the front door opened.

  “Stan!”

  What, was someone actually speaking to me? “I have choir practice, Rose. I’m almost late.”

  “You’re wanted on the phone.”

  I hesitated, then tossed my purse on the seat, closed the door and started to backtrack. “Do you know who it is?”

  “I’m not sure. I think it’s…”

&nb
sp; What she thought was lost when the world exploded behind me. Heat licked at my back. The sidewalk curled up, then slammed me in the face.

  * * * *

  Dry, brown stalks wavered in front of my face. There was the acrid smell of something burning. Were we barbecuing? I heard sirens wail, a long way away. And someone was screaming. Why was I spinning—into dark—

  Light opened above me, gray sky with the pale, fuzzy circle of sun replaced my faces floating over me. I heard voices, too, but they were so far away—

  “Stan? Stan, can you hear me? Is she going to be all right?”

  “Can you step back a little and let me find out?”

  “I’m her mother. She needs her mother. Isabel? You’re going to be fine, dear.”

  Oh, right. Now she’s speaking to me. Then all the faces broke up, like those kaleidoscope things. When it came back together again, I could see my mother’s face and she was crying.

  “I’m sorry.” I tried to tell her but she didn’t seem to hear. The light began to fade, sending me spiraling downward into deep, unending black…

  I was rushing forward now, bright lights, brisk voices coming at me in hollow waves and pain, lots of pain. I tried to sink back into oblivion but the sounds and lights called me back.

  This guy in green thrust a hand in my face and asked, “Can you see my hand?”

  Was he for real? I touched his hand, saying dreamily, “This little piggie went to market.”

  “…irrational…”

  Then clear and sharp I heard Rosemary say, “I hate to tell you this, doctor, but that’s normal for Stan.”

  I smiled. “Rosemary…” Her face wavered into focus. “Mother always liked you best.”

  “Get a life.” Were those tears on her face?

  * * * *

  I opened my eyes to semi-darkness, the silence broken by a steady beep-beep somewhere off to my right. I felt a little fuzzy around the edges, but not so much that I couldn’t deduce I was in a hospital and someone was rubbing my hand. I turned towards the touch.

  “Bel?” The dark figure moved closer and became Kel. Without waiting for instructions from my scrambled brain, my lips curved up.

  “We’ve got…to stop…meeting like this.” The smile that brightened his face was almost too much for my weakened condition. “What happened?”

  “Someone planted a bomb in your car. Delayed timer. Opening the door activated the device, shutting it triggered the timer.”

  “Oh.” Trust the CIA to tell you more than you wanted to know.

  “You were damn lucky, Bel. It was designed so that most of the explosive force was directed up, or you still might have been killed.”

  “Well, that’s a happy thought.” I shivered. “What I don’t get is, why? It’s over. You all said it was over.”

  “We thought it was. Or I wouldn’t have pulled off the tail.”

  “I’m not blaming you. I just want to know who wants me dead that bad…” I couldn’t go on.

  “Did you tell anybody about the computer sheets?”

  I frowned, trying to think, not an easy task with bomb echoes still reverberating through my cranium.

  “No, no one knew but you.”

  Kel stood up, restlessly pacing, his hand kneading the back of his neck. My hand felt bereft and cold.

  I frowned. “I drove that car yesterday. It didn’t blow up.”

  “The bomb had to have been planted last night.”

  Into my scrambled brain filtered the memory of my two, Datsun-related near misses. “I wonder…”

  “What? If you know something Bel, you have to tell me, even if it implicates someone you trust.”

  “It’s nothing like that. It’s just that, well, yesterday there were a couple of tiny accidents that could have killed me.”

  Kel’s face hardened to grim. “What happened?”

  I told him about the parking lot at church and the freeway near miss. He frowned.

  “I can see why you weren’t sure. Could have been accidents—if it weren’t for the bomb.”

  I didn’t want to think about the bomb, so I asked, “Did you find out what those papers I found meant?”

  Kel stalked to the window, then back to my bed, a caged frustration to his movements that really brightened the drab room. He looked at me for a moment, then sighed. “I don’t suppose it can hurt to tell you they’re computer models of embassies in the DC area.”

  “Embassies? That’s bad.”

  “It’s not good. Particularly since we’ve been expecting the Israelis and the Egyptians to be terrorist targets. Now we need to find out how and when.”

  For the first time I noticed how tired and drawn he looked. I wasn’t his only worry. “I’m sorry. I wish I could help you.”

  He looked at me somberly. “Someone thinks you can help us. Or they wouldn’t be trying to kill you.”

  “But I can’t. I don’t know anything.” It was practically the theme of my existence.

  “You may not know what it is that you know.” He sat on the edge of the bed and clasped my hands comfortingly. “It could be something that doesn’t even seem part of this, something that seems innocent.”

  “If I don’t know what it is that I don’t know, then how can I tell you what it is that someone thinks I know before they kill me?”

  My head spun with the effort of putting that sentence together. Which made me think of the pasta. I closed my eyes.

  “Well, try not to worry about it.” Kel stroked the hair back from my face. I focused on sensation, rejecting any attempt to conjure up a picture of what I must look like after nearly being blown up. “You just concentrate on getting well. If you can relax, maybe you’ll remember what it is.”

  The villain couldn’t be someone who knew me. He was seriously over estimating my capabilities. “If they hadn’t tried to blow me to pieces I’d write these bad guys off as buffoons.”

  Kel looked suddenly thoughtful, as if I’d said something useful. “There does seem to be a certain lack of cohesion to this whole enterprise. I wonder…”

  “What?”

  “I’ve been trying to make all the pieces fit into one, big pattern. But what if it’s not one pattern? What if it’s several smaller patterns, each with its own agenda, with only the final objective unifying them?”

  Wow, what a torturously devious mind he had.

  “You ever been taken in with a shell game?”

  I frowned and wished I hadn’t. “No?”

  “The thing about a shell game is, what you see isn’t the important part. It’s what you don’t see that matters.”

  Then again, he could be cracking under the strain. I knew I was cracking under the strain.

  He stood up. “I got some things to check out.”

  “You’re leaving?” I stared at him in alarm.

  “Just for a bit.”

  “You can’t leave me here in a hospital.” I tried to sit up.

  He tried not to smile. “Why not?”

  “It’s not safe!”

  “There’s a guard posted outside the door.”

  “Oh, right. Like that’s going to help. Why don’t you just shoot me yourself and get it over with. It would be more merciful.”

  “Bel, you shouldn’t get agitated—”

  “When you were unconscious and helpless did I take you to a hospital?” Let him answer that, if he could.

  “You took me to a vet who gave me dog painkiller. Is that what you want?”

  “What I want is to walk out of here on my own two feet. Not be carried out feet first in a black bag.” I flung back the covers but got tangled in the paraphernalia I was hooked to.

  Kel pushed me gently back in the bed.

  “Oh, no you don’t.”

  I became aware of the intimacy of our position. Faces close together, panting breaths and tangled limbs, the only thing left was for our mouths to meet.

  I’m not sure which of us jumped higher when the door popped open. Or who looked more surprised
. Me, Kel, or the two nurses in the doorway.

  “Your heart rate shot up so suddenly…” one of the nurses said. The other was too busy looking at Kel.

  My color shot up, too. I took my hands off Kel’s shoulders so he could get off my bed. “I’m doing just fine. In fact, I want to go home.”

  “The doctor will be in to check you soon, Miss Stanley,” one nurse said, soothingly, like I was a little kid. “Until then, try to stay calm, or we’ll have to sedate you.”

  “Oh great, make it easier to kill me.”

  Instead of helping me, they swished out again, but not before they gave Kel a sympathetic look. Kel grinned.

  “Traitor. Before you abandon me to execution, could you get me some paper and a pencil?”

  “Is it a good idea to draw scurrilous pictures of people who can sedate you?”

  “I’m not going to draw pictures,” I informed him, “I’m going to write my Will.”

  “Bel,” he sighed heavily, “you’re as safe in this room as…as—”

  “As my money in an S&L? My tax dollars with Congress?”

  “Nothing is going to happen to you in this hospital.”

  “Great,” I fell back with my arms crossed, “what little chance I had is gone.”

  “What?” He shook his head.

  I hated to do it, because I don’t like to use clichés, but he deserved it. “Famous, last words.”

  He kissed my forehead. “I’ll come back when you’re calm.”

  At least I’d confirmed what I’d always known. There’s no such thing as a perfect man.

  TWENTY

  A hospital is not the place you want to be if someone’s out to kill you.

  In the first place, everyone and their dog wants to take your blood pressure or look at your body parts. And then they want to drug you senseless. The only really useful thing anyone did to me was to remove the tubes and wires so I could sneak into the shower—with the Phisohex. My skin needed moisturizing, not disinfecting, but did they care?

  I dabbed most of the water from my person with a minuscule towel and then shuffled back to my bed, my wet hair slapping against my back and turning the hospital gown completely transparent. I didn’t even have a TV. I guess I shouldn’t have been in such a hurry to get unhooked from the heart monitor, at least I could have watched my heart beat.