I shut up before I could embarrass myself any further. Or drool conspicuously on the shiny table.
Kane raised an eyebrow. “Just what?”
“Focus attention… jeez, you know what I mean.”
“I’m not sure I do.”
I eyed his expressionless face with irritation. “You’re going to make me say it, aren’t you? Fine. They focus attention on the fact that you’re extremely well-hung.”
His lips quirked, and I leaned closer to whisper. “Can we please talk about something besides your penis now?”
“All right. Let’s talk about us.”
I recoiled. “So, about your penis,” I said a little too loudly as the young waiter appeared beside us.
The soup plate clanked on the table in front of me, clam chowder sloshing over the edge and onto the polished wood.
“I’m sorry, please excuse me,” the waiter blurted as he whisked the dish away, swiping ineffectually at the spill with his hand before stopping himself. “I’ll be right back with…” He turned and hurried away, his fair cheeks flushed.
Kane’s composed expression showed signs of crumbling. “About my penis,” he said gravely.
“Shut up!”
His lips twitched and he held onto his deadpan expression for another moment before leaning back in the soft leather banquette to give in to silent laughter, his broad shoulders shaking.
I twisted my wineglass between my hands as a substitute for throttling him while I tried to decide whether to be furious or relieved. Relief won, and I subsided into the upholstery while the young waiter cleaned the table and served two fresh bowls of soup, his eyes averted.
Kane wiped his eyes and emitted a chuckle before sitting up again. “All right,” he said. “I’ll admit I’m flattered.”
I offered him a tentative smile. “I don’t know why I said that to Lurene.”
“You were angry with me, and not unreasonably so. I’m sorry I broke in on you. You’re right, it was an invasion of your privacy.”
I sighed. “Not without reason, either, given our recent history. I’m sorry I flew off the handle and threatened you. You know I wouldn’t actually shoot you, don’t you?”
“I hope you wouldn’t. But you probably shouldn’t make promises you might not be able to keep.”
I felt a smile forming on my lips. “Coming from the man who was a hair away from shooting me a few months ago, I’ll take that in the spirit it was offered.” I gave him a shallow bow across the table. “I promise not to shoot you out of annoyance alone.”
He laughed, his sexy laugh lines crinkling. “I’ll hold you to that.”
We ate a few spoonfuls of the delicious soup before Kane spoke abruptly. “I wanted to tell you I’m sorry.”
I paused, spoon poised. “Um… okay. For what?”
“For the things I said at your house the other night. I’ve known from the beginning that you had other… activities. It was unreasonable of me to get so angry, and I hope you can forgive me.”
I waved a hand, hoping to forestall any more uncomfortable discussion. “Forget it. No big deal.” I started to say, “I’m not…” before realizing that denying I was an undercover agent would probably start the whole disagreement over again. “…um, it’s okay, let’s just enjoy the food tonight,” I finished awkwardly, and took a large mouthful of soup.
“Aydan…” He leaned across the table, lowering his voice. “Hellhound said you were trying to protect me from a mistake I made. What mistake? And when did I make it?”
I swallowed, tension knotting my stomach. “I really can’t tell you.” I dropped my gaze to watch my spoon swirl through my chowder, waiting for his explosion.
“Why can’t you tell me?” His quiet voice encouraged me to glance at his face before returning my attention to my bowl. He didn’t look mad. Yet.
“If I tell you, it’ll put both you and another person in danger. I’m not willing to risk either of you.”
In the silence that followed, I spooned through my soup with intense concentration, shifting clams over to the left, vegetables to the right.
“All right,” he said finally. “I wish you’d just let me deal with the danger, but if you say it has to be this way, I trust you.”
I jerked my head up to stare at him. “You do?”
“Of course. I made the decision to trust you back in March, the very first time I brought you into our bunker. My instincts are rarely wrong.” Kane gave me a wry smile. “Sometimes I second-guess myself, though. With uniformly bad results.”
“Uh.” Not quite sure how to respond, I stirred my segregated chowder together again and took another spoonful.
He sobered, watching me. “I know you don’t want to deal with this, and I don’t want to spoil a nice meal, but we really need to talk about us. Can we do that?”
“Can we do it later?”
His expression made me lay down my spoon to bury my face in my hands with a groan. “Okay,” I mumbled. “Let’s get it over with.”
His silence made me look up again to see that heartbreakingly vulnerable look. “I don’t want to be the cause of that look in your eyes,” he murmured. “That trapped, terrified look every time I say the word ‘us’.”
“I’m sorry…” I began.
“Don’t apologize,” he said gently. “I know what’s really going on. You don’t have to lie to me anymore.”
Oh God, had he discovered Robert was still alive?
“Uh… what do you mean?”
“I didn’t understand earlier, but now that I do, I won’t ask you to betray your loyalty. I know that relationship existed long before anything ever happened between you and me.”
Shit, shit, shit! I had to get to Robert before Kane did.
“Just don’t kill him yet, okay?” I begged. “Please? I just need to see him first…”
Kane sat back abruptly. “You really think I’d… Aydan, I’d never harm Hellhound. Is that why you didn’t tell me you’re in love with him?”
“In lo… what?” I gaped at him, doing some frantic mental backtracking. Thank God I hadn’t mentioned Robert’s name. “I, um… I’m not in love with Arnie.”
He frowned across the table. “Aydan, don’t deny it. I saw you together outside Blue Eddy’s on Thursday night. I saw the way you looked at each other. The way you touched.” He squared his shoulders. “This summer you said you loved me, and I wanted to believe that. But when you were in bed with me, you were… You touched me like you couldn’t get enough of me, but not as if you loved me. Not the way you touched him.”
“That was different, that was-”
He held up a hand to silence me and met my eyes, looking deeply. “That’s when I realized that when you need comfort, you always go to him, not me. You trust him with the truth, not me. So you can relax. I told him you and I had agreed it wouldn’t work between us and that he shouldn’t hold back from being with you. You both deserve a chance at happiness together.”
“John…” I resisted the urge to beat my head against the table and took a deep breath instead. “You’re not getting it. Yes, I lo-… trust Arnie. And I wasn’t lying when I said I…” I swallowed hard. “…L-love you. But it’s not the kind of love that leads to commitment. I explained that this summer.”
“Aydan…” he began, but I spoke over him.
“I’m not going to settle down with somebody and live happily ever after. My ‘happily ever after’ doesn’t have that kind of relationship in it.”
He shook his head. “But, Aydan, if you love someone-”
“Stop,” I interrupted. “Listen to me. I can count every lover I’ve ever had on the fingers of one hand, and that includes both you and Arnie. I’m at a stage where I want the freedom to sleep with whoever I please, or to go home to an empty bed if I want. Love is… it’s fine, but it’s… I can’t love anybody enough to do commitment again. I’m too old and selfish and fucked up.”
“That’s just an excuse. You’re-” He pressed his lips t
ogether as if to stop himself and frowned across the table for a moment.
“So what do you want?” he burst out. “You want to screw him on odd days and me on even days? Or swap us out halfway through the night?”
I winced at the bitterness in his tone.
“I’m sorry,” he said immediately. “Aydan, I’m sorry, please forget I said that. I just…”
I gave him a half-smile. “Your alpha-male is having serious issues?”
He gave me an intense look. “You have no idea.”
“I’m sorry.”
“You have nothing to apologize for. This is my problem, not yours. I’ll deal with it.” Kane let out a long breath. “Eat your soup. It’s getting cold.”
I picked up my spoon, trying to unclench my stomach. “Where do we go from here?”
I knew better than to believe his smile and shrug were as easy as they looked. “We go on as before. As long as you’re still comfortable working with me.” He raised a questioning eyebrow in my direction.
I nodded quickly. “Just tell me what ground rules you want. I don’t want to invade your space again the way I did in the sim.”
“You didn’t,” Kane said. He pushed his empty soup bowl aside, looking unaccountably embarrassed. “I owe you an apology for that, too.”
“It’s okay,” I said quickly. “Just tell me next time I’m out of line, and-”
“You weren’t out of line,” he interrupted. “I… uh…” He eyed me shamefacedly. “I was hung over that morning. Really hung over.”
His gaze sank to study the shining cutlery of his place setting. “I… After you left my house in the middle of the night, I was mad at myself for the things I’d said, but I still hoped we could work it out. But when I saw you with Hellhound the next night, I realized I’d been fooling myself all along. That I’d never had a chance with you in the first place.”
He gave me a quick glance before speaking to the table again. “So I went home and got rip-roaring drunk. Stupid. I felt like hell the next morning, and when you touched me, it was…” He trailed off. “I just lashed out. I’m sorry.”
“I never wanted to hurt you.” I swallowed the lump in my throat and reached across the table before stopping myself, not sure what our new rules were. “Is it okay if I…”
His hand closed gently around mine. “It’s always okay.”
I traced my fingertips over his knuckles in silence, letting the stress ease out of my body to be replaced by a melancholy ache in the vicinity of my heart.
“I wish…” My words came out on a sigh.
“Wish what?” he prompted quietly after a few moments.
I straightened and retrieved my hand when I spotted the waiter approaching with our entrées. “I hope you find your happily-ever-after.”
He smiled. “I will. It just might take me a while to recognize it.”
We dawdled over pecan pie that was just as delicious as the other restaurant’s ‘best in Macon’ version, idly chatting about nothing in particular. Soothed by wine, the return of our old camaraderie, and a magnificent meal nestling in my belly, I couldn’t suppress a cavernous yawn.
Kane studied me with a smile. “Ready for an early night tonight?”
I ignored my guilty spasm of conscience. “Yes. I think I’ll go to bed as soon as we get back to the B & B.”
I glanced at my watch, calculating times. Macon wasn’t a huge city. I still had over an hour to get wherever I needed to go. Wherever that might be.
Inspiration struck. “I need to find an internet connection first, though. I need to check my email and a few other things.”
“Me, too,” Kane agreed. “Lurene said we could use Winston’s computer if we needed one.”
“Oh, good,” I replied absently, admiring his unconscious authority as he flagged down the waiter. He could probably flag down a cab in New York with equal competence…
I sat up a little straighter. Hell, yeah. That’d work. Now I had a plan. Forget stealing the keys and car from Kane. Macon had to have taxis.
Chapter 33
Back at the B & B, I rapped at the front door and listened for an invitation to enter before stepping into the sitting area.
“Come in, come in,” Lurene warbled in her gravelly voice. “Honey-pie, you don’t have to knock. Our house is your house for as long as you’re here.” She shot a seductive glance at Kane through lashes even longer and thicker and blacker than before. “And you can come in my house any time, Big John.”
I was deeply impressed by Kane’s self-control. He returned his usual urbane smile and met her eyes as if nothing was amiss.
I, on the other hand, couldn’t stop staring. Lurene’s full figure had been compressed into an exaggerated hourglass shape, and the resulting overflow was staggering. Her low-cut neon-yellow top displayed an enormous acreage of boobs pumped up so high she could nearly rest her chin on them, while a zebra-patterned miniskirt might have covered the subject if she’d been careful about how she moved. Sadly, she wasn’t careful.
I averted my eyes from the scene of the crime as she sank into a chair and crossed plump legs encased in fishnet stockings. She had very shapely legs, but it was just too much of a good thing. And I really hadn’t wanted to know she wasn’t wearing panties. Really, really hadn’t wanted to know.
Her gravel-crusher voice jerked my eyes back in her direction. “Arlene, honey, do you think your producer would like this outfit on me?”
I swallowed hard. “I… don’t know…” I cleared my throat and tried again, hoping my voice would sound normal this time. “Those are great shoes, though.”
“Thanks, honeybunch!” She beamed and stretched out her leg to offer closer inspection of the six-inch faux zebra-hide platform stiletto. “Would you believe I got them on sale for ten dollars?”
“Wow. I don’t believe it.”
Lurene frowned, her gaze travelling from my sneakers up over my jeans and waist pouch to my sweatshirt. “Arlene, sweetie, don’t take this wrong, but you didn’t really go out to dinner dressed like that, did you?”
I squashed the urge to flee. I really needed that computer.
“Why don’t you dress up a little?” she continued. “Don’t you want to maintain an image for your fans?”
“No, I like to keep a low profile.” I turned quickly to Winston. “Do you mind if I check my email?”
He looked up from the screen with his usual pleasant expression. “Of course not. Help yourself.”
He did a few more clicks with the mouse while I took my time getting to the desk, sincerely hoping he was closing whatever he’d been watching.
He rose and wandered off to the kitchen while I sank into his chair, reaching for the mouse. Kane had stepped into the breach to chat with Lurene, seemingly oblivious to both her double-entendres and her anatomically complete zebra. I quickly fired up an internet search and punched in the address from my message.
When the map appeared, I drew in a breath of relief. It was right across the street from our original motel. If I hiked at a good pace I could easily get there by nine, and I wouldn’t even need a cab.
Excellent. I closed the map, made a pretense of checking my email, and then stood, yawning.
“Long day,” I mumbled, drifting toward the hallway. “I’m going to bed. Good night, everybody.”
“Wait, sugar, what time do you want breakfast tomorrow morning?” Lurene asked.
“Oh.” I cocked an eyebrow in Kane’s direction. “What do you think?”
“Would eight o’clock work?” he inquired.
Lurene leaned forward to squeeze his knee, making me cringe at the impending catastrophic failure of her clothing. The yellow blouse performed heroically, though, somehow containing those mountainous mammaries.
“Eight’s just perfect, sweetie,” she assured him. “Just wait ‘til you get your hands on my sweet Georgia peaches.”
I escaped down the hall before I had to hear or see any more.
In my room, I spent a fe
w minutes moving around as if getting ready for bed, making sure I walked over the creak in the floor a couple of times. In the bathroom, I flushed the toilet to cover the sound of the window opening.
The screen was uncooperative, and I struggled with it for long minutes, swearing softly while my blood pressure skyrocketed. I was beginning to consider slashing it loose from the frame with my knife when it gave at last, and I set it in the bathtub as quietly as possible.
Cell phone and tracker on the bathroom vanity, address in my pocket, I clambered onto the sill and hopped out into the warm night, thankful for the ground-floor room.
A brisk hike with only one minor wrong turn brought me to the address with a few minutes to spare. In an adjacent doorway, I blew out a breath and wiped the sweat off my forehead with my sleeve while I scanned the layout.
The address I’d been given was a coffee shop, its windows bright against the darkness. The thought of sitting conspicuously inside didn’t appeal to me in the least. I threw a glance up and down the quiet street before heading in the opposite direction to circle behind the shop.
The alleyway did nothing to calm my nerves. This didn’t seem like a particularly unsavoury part of town, but the dark shapes of garbage bins loomed threateningly. I pressed my hand against my gun, forcing myself to walk through and check each shadow.
My heart was pounding by the time I reached the other end and emerged into comparative brightness again, but I was sure nobody was hiding back there. And I’d identified the back entrance of the coffee shop, just in case.
I peered at my watch in the dim pool of light at the corner before settling into a casual stroll. Yep, I’m just a pedestrian on her way somewhere. Come on, stomach, settle down. Slow, calm breaths. Ocean waves.
The coffee shop’s brightly-lit interior displayed the patrons as if on an illuminated stage. There were only a few people inside, and none of them could be Robert, even in disguise. A small elderly lady sat at one table, two teenagers at another, and behind the counter stood a tall, angular woman dressed as though she shopped at the same store as Lurene. At the table closest to the window, a man with skin like chocolate leather turned to stare out at me with thousand-year-old eyes.
How Spy I Am Page 24