Dead Double

by Cooper-Posey, Tracy

  That got his attention. He lifted his head to look at her properly—possibly for the first time since that morning. “You shouldn’t trust me,” he said slowly.

  “Well it’s too bloody late! Can’t you see what it’s like for me? Can’t you see how much of a fish out of water I feel like? This—” she pulled at her dress, “all this-this…stuff. It’s overwhelming!” She realized that tears were running down her face and didn’t care. “On top of that I have to pretend to be someone I didn’t know and if you think I haven’t figured out that not everyone adored Micky by now, then you must think I’m totally stupid as well!”

  “Sahara….”

  But she was on a roll, now. She wanted it all off her chest. Every skerrick. She overrode him. “I can stand everyone else hating me like they hated Micky. I can stand the chilly little smiles and the polite sidesteps. I can take it all, as long as I don’t have to take it from you too!”

  His hand curled around the back of her neck and the other forefinger touched her lips. “Shhh….”

  She took a breath. Then another to calm herself. “I need you, Logan. Wherever you went to tonight, please come back. Please don’t hate me too.”

  He focused on her eyes, then his gaze traveled to her lips. “I don’t hate you.” His voice was rough with some emotion she had no time to analyze, for his lips touched hers and seared an imprint there that sizzled all the way to her toes. There was a taste of spirits but she barely minded it. The kiss deepened and Sahara was pulled into the power of it. Her tears were forgotten, her fear subsided, everything but the wonder of the kiss was pushed away.

  She gave a little cry as he pulled away. But Logan was looking at her face. “Not Micky,” he muttered. His arms curled around her.

  Sahara allowed herself to sink deep into the spell cast by his lips and arms. She was surrounded by warmth, security, peace. She wanted nothing more than to stay here forever. She wanted more of his kisses. She pulled him against her, coaxing him with her body to explore further, deeper.

  His hands were stroking her flesh, moving wherever bare skin could be found. She arched like a cat, encouraging him, even as she sought his lips with her own.

  Delicious…so delicious….

  She felt the car braking and a flood of more light through the smoked windows and paid it no mind.

  But Logan released her with a low curse and pushed away from her. He wiped his lips with the backs of his fingers as he stared at her. His fingers trembled.

  Then he closed his eyes. “God help me,” he groaned. He pushed his way out of the opening door of the car and was gone.

  “What…?” Sahara tried to follow him but Nelson thrust his head inside the limousine and smiled at her.

  “I’ll see you up to your room.”

  “Where did Logan go?”

  Nelson smiled reassuringly. “I don’t know, ma’am. I just work here. Please come with me. It’s more secure in the room than in here.”

  She allowed herself to be escorted to the suite door. Jacqui opened it when Nelson pressed the bell. She smiled when she saw Sahara and opened the door all the way. “You’re early,” she said and shut the door behind her.

  “Do you really have to work right up until I go to bed?” Sahara asked dully.

  “That’s what I get paid for,” Jacqui assured her.

  “That’s quite ridiculous,” Sahara responded. “From now on, you can finish at five like normal people, okay?”

  “Oh, I couldn’t do that,” Jacqui said, her hand at her throat. “Ms. Micky would never have—”

  “I don’t give two figs what Ms. Micky did!” Sahara cried. She threw the satin purse across the room and it hit something that shattered with a musical note. It was a satisfying sound. “I am so sick of Ms. Micky that if she wasn’t already dead, I’d strangle her myself!”

  Jacqui backed up a step, a horrified expression on her face.

  Guilt curled through her. Sahara waved her hand. “I’m sorry. I’m really sorry, Jacqui. It’s been a terrible night and I shouldn’t take it out on you. You’re probably the one person in the world who thought she was a decent human being and you don’t deserve my temper.”

  Jacqui cleared her throat. “I was quite well aware of Ms. Micky’s faults,” she said, her voice back to the even modulation of a perfectly professional assistant. “I know she would never have apologized for such an outburst.” She picked up her laptop. “Now shall we quickly go over tomorrow’s schedule before you retire?”

  “Do we have to?”

  “Of course not,” Jacqui said instantly, closing the computer.

  “Jacqui, where do you come from? I mean, where did you grow up?”

  Jacqui touched her hair. “St. Louis, Missouri,” she admitted.

  “Well, I spent my teenage years in Kansas. Some of them, anyway. When it’s just you and me in the room, can’t we just be two gals from the mid-west?”

  Jacqui considered this for a moment and an impish grin nothing like her professional smile lit up her eyes. “I’m not sure I’m capable of being ‘just’ a mid-west gal anymore,” she confessed. “This is too ingrained, now.”

  “Well, try. Because I’m sure as hell not going to do the Ms. Micky thing 24/7. Okay?”

  “I will try,” Jacqui answered. “But you must also try to be the perfect Ms. Micky when it is needed.”

  “You just keep giving me pointers,” Sahara said tiredly, heading for the bedroom. “I’ll work on making everyone hate me and I’m sure we’ll manage wonderfully.”

  Besides, Logan already hates me, she thought, as she slipped out of the glamorous dress.

  She lay beneath the soft, cool cotton sheets and thought of the kiss he had given her. “Not Micky,” he’d said. Was he disappointed that she had not been Micky? Was that why he had pulled away with such an agonized expression?

  She kept replaying the kiss and her body tightened with each repetition.

  Why had he pulled away? Why had he left? Was he coming back? Perhaps…perhaps he couldn’t face her, after all. Perhaps he was never coming back.

  * * * * *

  Logan held up his hand at Elias as soon as he stepped into the ops room. “I know,” he added, before Elias could speak. “Whatever you’re going to say, I know.”

  Elias got to his feet. “It was brilliant,” he said flatly. “Dumb lucky brilliant. Both of you. Nelson says she was so like Micky it was scary and she held it together even after you popped your lid.”

  “She did.” Logan pulled at his tie, loosening it.

  “It guaranteed you’d both end up in the papers—all of them. Malik can’t fail to find the picture he needs, now.”

  “So no lectures about hair-trigger nerves?”

  Elias paused. “I ain’t about to teach you what you already know. Besides, this operation is way outside normal specs. I know it’s gotta be stirring up all sorts of personal shit you thought you had locked down tight. But you gotta deal with it, Logan. Deal and get it out of the way.”

  Logan nodded, accepting the mild rebuke. He deserved more of a hounding than that and they both knew it. “I’m going to get some sleep,” he told Elias. It was a lie. He was going to bed but he knew sleep was a long way off, yet, and the taste of soft lips, the feel of a slender body and her delicate scent would follow him there.

  * * * * *

  Jacqui shook her awake a moment later.

  Sahara blinked up at the woman, feeling the grit of tiredness in her eyes and the solid ache behind them. “I just went to sleep,” she protested.

  “Yes, a good eight hours ago,” Jacquie assured her and showed her the face of her watch.

  “I can’t read that first thing in the morning,” Sahara protested.

  “It’s eight a.m.,” Jacqui told her. “We have to pack for the flight to Europe tonight. But, breakfast first.”

  “Ugh.”

  “You’ll feel better after,” Jacqui assured her. “Plenty of coffee and some protein.”

  “Eggs only,�
� Sahara said, alarmed.

  “I believe they have some vegetarian breakfast sausages for you.”

  Sahara pulled herself out of bed, wrapped the soft green gown around her and padded out to the main room barefoot. A waiter stood next to his trolley and the table was laid for two. Sahara looked at the two place settings, her hopes rising. Logan?

  But Jacqui pulled out the chair at the second place setting, then waited for Sahara to sit down.

  “You did say….” Jacqui reminded her.

  “Yeah, right. I did. I just thought…never mind.” Sahara sat down.

  “That Logan would be joining you?” Jacqui poured coffee for both of them as the waiter filled their plates.

  Sahara grimaced. “I think I might have scared him away or something.”

  “Very little scares Logan,” Jacqui said placidly.

  “But he’s not here, is he?” Sahara bit her lip, alarmed to feel that she was very close to tears.

  Jacqui patted her hand. “Eat,” she advised, “and read. You got into the paper last night.” She pushed a folded copy of the LA Times across the table. It was already open to one of the secondary entertainment pages, where a series of three photos showed Logan kneeling on the man with the cell phone, then being hauled off him by the guards, with Sahara in the background. The third was of the two of them getting into the limousine. Sahara didn’t remember the moment but the camera had caught her looking up at Logan as he held the door open for her. Her expression looked haughty, which surprised her. She had been feeling anything but regal right then.

  There was a short paragraph beneath, that gave pure facts and no speculation but with such dramatic photos, who needed speculation? The reader would supply that all by themselves. The caption said that Sahara was Micky Wilde.

  She looked up to find Jacqui watching her.

  “You did well, it appears.”

  “It didn’t feel like it at the time.”

  With little appetite, Sahara dug into her meal. The chef had outdone himself. The sausages were delicious and despite the fear in her that grew with each passing minute, Sahara managed to eat quite a lot of the plateful the waiter had served.

  There was a knock at the door just as she was finishing and Sahara caught her breath, waiting to see who stepped through…but it was only a second waiter who had come to help clear the table and move the dishes onto the huge round tray he carried.

  She hid her disappointment again and allowed Jacqui to work through the day’s schedule with her, although very little of the details stuck in her mind. She knew it didn’t matter. Jacqui would oversee all of it anyway.

  She showered and dressed in another new outfit. This one was a pair of tight low-rise designer jeans and a tee shirt that clung to her everywhere but was cut away across the shoulders, leaving them bare. There were high-heeled platform sandals to go with it but she left them off. Everything matched beautifully, including the earrings and shoulder bag and a scarf that was wrapped elegantly around the handle of the bag. Sahara tied it around her hair, instead, holding it up and out of the way, except for the bangs.

  Her mood was leaden, for her mind kept coming back to the same hard fact—Logan wasn’t coming back. She moved through the morning, taking her second make-up lesson and helping Jacqui with the packing of Micky’s clothes and possessions so she would know what had been put in which suitcase. As the morning wore on, the truth sank deeper. Logan really wasn’t coming back.

  Jacqui was her only contact with the apparatus that moved silently and invisibly around her, orchestrating the operation, and Jacqui was as puzzled as she.

  “Logan made it clear to everyone that he would stay on point for this operation. I really don’t know where he has gone to,” Jacqui said. Her quiet, “This isn’t like him,” didn’t help assure Sahara at all.

  Lunch was a perfectly prepared salad dish with nuts and beans. It looked delightful and Sahara couldn’t eat a bite. She finally pushed the plate away, sighed and went back to her packing.

  At six p.m. the hotel staff arrived with a baggage trolley, to carry the packed suitcases down to the lobby. Sahara donned her Micky outfit for travelling—a comfortable pair of stretch pants that nevertheless fitted like a glove and a matching three-quarter length coat and a designer tee shirt beneath. All her carry-on baggage matched what she was wearing, down to her shoes. Her hair was brushed out and fluffed and styled and she carefully applied her makeup the way they had taught her.

  She stepped out of the bathroom knowing she looked as much like Micky Wilde as it was possible for another person to do. She looked around the empty bedroom and knew that she was really on her own.

  “Ready to go?” It was Logan’s voice.

  She spun around from the window, her heart leaping, hoping she had not imagined it.

  Logan stood with his shoulder against the doorjamb. He was wearing another suit but this one looked far more ordinary. Despite the casual stance, he was watching her carefully, like a cat watches a mouse.

  “Are you here to wish me well?” she asked.

  He straightened up. “I promised you I’d stay nearby.”

  She walked right up to him and was pleased to find that the heels gave her enough height that she was very nearly looking him in the eye. “If you intend to continue to treat me as you did last night, then I release you from your promise.”

  He drew a breath through pursed lips. “Yeah, I deserve that much,” he agreed. “I’m sorry, Sahara. For everything that I did to you last night.”

  “Everything?” she repeated, recalling his arms around her.

  “Everything,” he said firmly. “I wasn’t myself—no, that’s a bad excuse.” He took a breath and she saw his chest lift the sweater he wore beneath the jacket. “You look so much like Micky, it kicked the props out from under me. I didn’t expect you to resemble her so closely, especially not after….” His gaze cut away from her. “Well, not after seeing you as a natural strawberry blonde beach girl.”

  He’s lying again. “Logan, do you hate me?” she asked, cutting to the chase.

  “Not even a little bit.” His answer was instant.

  “Then you wanted to punish me for looking like your ex-wife.”

  He pushed his hands in his pockets, hesitating. Then he lifted his gaze to look her in the eye. “I suppose…yes.” It was a reluctant admission.

  “But this whole operation was your idea!”

  Anger flicked his expression. “Yeah, recreating my ex-wife is definitely my primary ambition in life. Sahara, you have got to be out of your gourd if you think I masterminded this. Don’t you remember the conversation we had—” He looked around, sizing up the possibility of eavesdroppers. “The conversation in your apartment? About risk?”

  “That’s why I’ve been puzzling over this all day,” she shot back. “You weren’t behaving like you last night.”

  “Neither were you.”

  “I wasn’t supposed to be!” She tugged at her coat. “There’s a reason I’m wearing this, do you remember?” She stepped another few inches closer to him, challenging him. “Just who were you kissing last night, Logan? Me…or Micky?”

  “That was a mistake. It won’t happen again,” he growled.

  “Glad to hear it. But help me sort it out so we don’t have this same argument a second time. You said ‘Not Micky’ last night and in my vulnerable, pressured state, I assumed that meant you were pleased I wasn’t Micky. But it has occurred to me that maybe you were saying it because you were disappointed I wasn’t Micky.”

  His face tightened with fury, until white lines appeared on either side of his mouth and the scar beneath his eye stood out starkly. “You dare—”

  “You were as drunk as a skunk, Logan. Yeah, you hold it well but that doesn’t take away the fact that your judgment was impaired and you were working mostly on raw gut instinct. That thing with the guy with the cell phone would never have happened if you’d been stone cold sober. You saw your dead wife last night. The woman you ma
rried, the woman you fell in love with. Are you telling me that none of that prompted you to kiss me?”

  As abruptly as it had arrived, his fury vanished. His blue eyes seemed to be staring straight through her, as his lips parted as if he were about to speak. But he remained silent while Sahara’s heart thudded against her chest with a power that hurt. She’d faced down killer waves with more calm than this.

  Logan turned away. He reached for the door handle and said over his shoulder, “Are you ready to leave?”

  The lack of fury, the lack of resistance, left her almost winded. She stared at his back. “Logan?” she whispered.

  “Let’s go,” he said and opened the door. “It’s a commercial flight. You’re flying first-class but even the real Micky couldn’t get airlines to wait for her.”

  She hesitated. There was no way she could simply leave the conversation hanging here.

  But Logan had the last word. He looked over his shoulder. “If you miss that flight, you put the operation in jeopardy, Sahara. Don’t you want this show over and done with?”

  Hell, yes! She picked up her hand luggage and swept from the room as soon as Logan opened the door, brushing past him with her chin in the air. It was something she never could have done three days ago.

  “That’s the way,” he said approvingly.

  Chapter Thirteen

  They had no privacy after that. Jacqui joined them as they stepped out of the suite and two hotel staff pushed luggage carriers beside them. Sahara was forced to be Micky.

  As they stepped into the elevator, Jacqui unconsciously helped by pulling out her notebook and going over the itinerary of the journey in a soft, clear voice designed not to travel too far beyond Sahara’s hearing. Sahara was conscious of Logan standing beside her, absorbed in his own thoughts.

  Standing as close to her as he was, she caught a drift of his scent—not a commercial cologne but his own clean male aroma. It instantly snapped her mind back to the memory of last night when he had held her in his arms and the scent had been much stronger. It curled around her mind, zapping her senses. Deep inside her belly, something rolled over and sent a weakening wave of longing through her.