Express Male (16 page)

“Actually, that’s not true.”

Not true? Of course it was true. The way Marnie was beginning to feel, it wasn’t just the leather pants and low-cut sweater that were going to disappear, either. It was going to be all of her clothes. And then all of Noah’s clothes. And then the bedclothes. And then—

“I only said that about growing up in a house like this because I needed an excuse to nose around.”

Oooooooh.
Right. They’d been talking about…something else. Marnie couldn’t remember what.

“The house I grew up in was much, ah, newer, than this one.”

Right. Houses. Families. They’d been talking about that kind of stuff.
Not
being naked. She had to be careful not to get those things confused again. It could be embarrassing.

“So did you grow up in cleavage…Cleveland?” she hastily corrected herself.

But again, Noah was polite enough—or clueless enough—not to mention her blunder. “No, I told the truth about that part. I grew up in Cincinnati. Lived in a lot of places after I left home to attend college, then was happy to be transferred back to Ohio two years ago.”

“And does your family still live down there?” she asked, wincing at the double entendre. Of course, Noah hadn’t been privy to her thoughts, so he couldn’t know what other
down there
she’d been thinking about recently.

“One brother does with his family. That’s the nephew who gave me the Game Boy. He has a daughter, too. My parents live in Florida now that they’re retired, and my other brother lives in Seattle with his wife and kids. But I have a lot of family here in Cleveland, too.”

Marnie shook her head. She couldn’t imagine having such a large immediate family. She didn’t even have any extended family to speak of. Well, except for the ones in Pittsburgh Noah had mentioned. The ones she’d been trying not to think about, because it just reminded her that her father had lied to her her entire life. She lifted the glass to her mouth for another swallow and tried not to think about them again. Soon, she promised herself. After all this stuff with Adrian Padgett was settled. Then she’d find out more about them and maybe even go meet them. First things first.

“So when you were growing up,” she said, “did you do the family vacations every summer? Boy Scouts and soccer and all that?”

“Why do you ask?”

She shrugged, trying to look as if she was just making conversation, when in fact she was desperate to hear all about what it was like to have the sort of family she’d so badly wanted herself when she was a kid. “Just making conversation.”

“For the most part,” he said. “My dad was big on camping, so we did a lot of outdoorsy stuff. Though five of us in one tent, with two dogs, wasn’t always conducive to good family relations.”

She smiled. “I would have loved that. It was always just me and my dad when I was growing up. We did take occasional trips, but it was usually to some place of great literary significance. Mark Twain’s Missouri. William Faulkner’s Mississippi. That kind of thing.”

“Sounds…interesting.”

This time Marnie was the one to chuckle. He was so polite. “But it’s hard to meet boys when you spend most of your spring break in Key West touring Hemingway’s house.”

“Still, sounds like it was a nice way to grow up.”

She nodded, letting memory after memory wash over her. Her father teaching her how to eat crabs in Baltimore. She and her father marveling at the beauty of a Nantucket sunset. The two of them meandering through the National Gallery in Washington, D. C., while her father told her stories about some of the famous faces they saw.

“Yeah,” she said softly. “It was a nice way to grow up.”

She wondered about Lila then, and what her growing-up years must have been like. And she thought, too, about how close she had come to having Lila’s life herself. How had their parents decided which twin to take? she wondered. Had they flipped a coin? Said eeny-meenyminey-moe? Picked a number between one and ten? Only sheer dumb luck had landed Marnie in a cozy suburban home with her father while dumping Lila in a trailer park with an alcoholic mother.

“It could have been me,” she said softly.

“What could have been you?” Noah asked.

“Lila,” she said. “I could have been the one who was raised the way she was, and she could have been the one raised by my father, here in this house.” She looked at Noah, even though she could barely see him in the dark.

“If that had happened, would I have turned out the way she did? Would she be like me? Would I be out there risking my life and having indiscriminate sex, and would she be here teaching music to children? It just occurred to me how different my life could have been if my father had picked Lila instead of me.”

Noah said nothing, only looked back at her through the darkness. But then, what was there for him to say? Marnie had been speaking in hypothetical terms. Even if the questions themselves weren’t really hypothetical at all. The situation could have easily been reversed. She might never have known the life she lived, had her father chosen Lila instead of her, or had her mother chosen her instead of Lila. And now, through a different kind of sheer dumb luck, Marnie’s life had, in a sense, become Lila’s. Because Adrian Padgett thought that was who she was. And that wasn’t going to change unless Lila showed up, or Padgett went down.

“He’s not going to leave me alone, is he?” she said, putting voice to her worst fear in the hopes that it might rob it of some of its power. But speaking it aloud only made it sound more powerful, more real. More scary. She turned to look at Noah. “As long as he thinks I’m Lila, he’s going to be watching me. Waiting for an opportunity to…”

She couldn’t bring herself to finish the sentence. Noah had told her the man was unpredictable. But Marnie had seen enough of Padgett to know he was a man who, when he wanted something, did whatever he had to to get it.

“Marnie,” Noah began. But he never finished whatever he intended to say. Probably, she thought, because he couldn’t offer any words of encouragement. He knew even better than she how dangerous Adrian Padgett was.

“I can’t stay in this house,” she said. “He knows where I live. He could come back anytime. He could be watching right now, knowing you’re here and there are others outside, and he could just be waiting to watch you all slip away. Then, while I’m sleeping…”
As if I
could
sleep,
she thought dismally to herself. “While I’m sleeping, he could…He could…He could…” She exhaled a shaky breath. “He could do anything he wanted.”

“That’s not going to happen,” Noah said.

“How do you know? He’s already been here once. He could come back anytime.”

“We need for you to stay at the house,” Noah told her.

“For the very reason you just cited. If he thinks you’re Lila, eventually, he’s going to come back here looking for you.” She sensed more than saw him turn to face her. “But you won’t be alone when that happens. I promise you that. If I have to be here myself, 24/7, I will be. Because we
will
catch Sorcerer this time, Marnie. I promise.”

W
HY HAD HE
promised her? Noah wondered as the first rays of sunlight crept through the window blinds in Marnie’s spare bedroom Saturday morning. She’d scooted herself out hours ago to go to bed, but he’d stayed put until dawn, lest Sorcerer return to make good on his threat, just as he’d also promised her he would do. Because Noah always kept his promises. Always. That was why he so seldom made them. But he’d made more than one to Marnie Lundy last night. And now he would have to see them all through to the end. He felt obligated to do that for her.

He, Noah Tennant, felt obligated to someone. Somewhere in hell, someone with horns must be passing out parkas and lift tickets. He closed his eyes and leaned his head back against the wall, battling the fatigue that wound through him. And he wondered how many more promises he would make to Marnie before their time together drew to an end.

His head snapped forward again when he realized how he’d phrased that thought. He and Marnie weren’t spending time together, he told himself. He’d just been doing his job when she happened to stumble onto the scene and become a part of it. And he should be happy that there
would
be an end to their…their whatever it was they had. Their liaison.

No, that wasn’t what they had, he hastily corrected himself. That sounded too…too French. What they had was a partnership.

No, not that, either.
Partner
had too romantic a connotation these days. They had a working relationship.

No, not that, either. They did
not
have a relationship, working or otherwise. In fact, they didn’t have anything that ended in a
ship.
Unless it was a luxury liner headed for Tahiti. And even then, they’d probably be in separate cabins.

Probably,
Noah repeated to himself as he watched the sun seeping through the blinds melt from pink to yellow. A telling word, that
probably.
Especially when it crept into his thoughts the way it did just then. Because by virtue of having that
probably
in the mix, it indicated that some part of him rather liked the idea of spending time with Marnie Lundy outside a working situation. Like on a luxury liner. In a small cabin. Headed to the other side of the world where no one could bother them.

He told himself he shouldn’t be surprised by that. She was an attractive woman—beautiful even, if you were the sort of man who went for wholesome elegance and classic good looks. Noah, however, was normally more attracted to the dark, exotic, mysterious types who didn’t waste a lot of time talking. Marnie Lundy fit none of those descriptions. She was…comfortable. For some reason, that was the first word that popped into Noah’s head. Easy to talk to, good-natured, warm. She made him smile. Reminded him that there was more to his life than getting the job done. Made him want to do things like take a slow boat to Tahiti.

Not to mention she reminded him of Lila.

He blew out an irritated breath. He’d already admitted to himself that he liked Marnie Lundy. He liked her a lot. He might have even asked her out, had they met under different circumstances—like, oh, say, he had the time for a social life and she wasn’t living in fear for her own life. He just wished he knew if he was drawn to her because she was Marnie Lundy, the comfortable, classic beauty, or because she reminded him of Lila Moreau, the dark, exotic mystery.

Didn’t matter, he told himself as he stretched out his legs and maneuvered himself to standing. He wasn’t in any position at the moment to be attracted to anyone. Or, at least, in a position to
act
on that attraction. He supposed he couldn’t help it if he found a woman attractive. And interesting. And luxury-cruisable. After all, it had been…how long since his last sexual encounter? He did some mental math: carry the one, make the seven an eight…multiply by pi…add the square root of sixty-two…do the hokeypokey and turn yourself around…When he saw the final number, he immediately erased the blackboard. No way could it have been
that
long ago. Hell, no wonder he was booking mental cruises with women he had no business getting attached to.

But attached to Marnie he was becoming, he realized as he exited her spare room to follow the luscious aroma of brewing coffee. What could he say? He liked courageous women, too.

He liked them even more when he entered the kitchen to find Marnie pouring coffee into two generous mugs. Though, surprisingly, it wasn’t the coffee that made him feel that way. No, it was the picture of her standing in profile, dressed in baggy pajama bottoms that were spattered with cartoon penguins and a big, man-style shirt whose tail fell to mid-thigh, with thick woolen socks on her feet. Her hair was unbound, half of it cascading down to the middle of her back, the other half falling forward over the shoulder farthest away from him. The pale morning sun streamed through a nearby window, threading that loose fall with gold and silver, leavening her creamy skin with a rosy glow.

God help him, the moment Noah saw her there, his cock sprang to life, stirring against his boxers as if it were knocking on a door and saying,
Hey, lemme outta here. I wanna see, too.
And the pounding became even more insistent when Marnie glanced up from her task and smiled at him, and murmured a soft, “Good morning.” By the time she crossed the kitchen to hand him a cup of the fragrant brew, his johnson was trying to crawl through the window and get a good look for himself.

“Ah, thanks,” Noah said as he accepted the cup from her, shifting his weight to one foot in an effort to alleviate some of the pressure and hoping like hell she didn’t notice what was going down down there. Hoping like hell something
would
go down down there.

“Did you get any sleep?” she asked.

She’d told him to make use of the bed if he wanted, that, despite her fears, there was probably little chance Sorcerer would come to her in the middle of the night. But Noah hadn’t been as convinced as she and had continued his vigil. He could grab a few hours when he got home, and that would do him until nightfall tonight. His body had grown accustomed to his strange hours while he’d been a field agent, and had never quite slipped back to what normal daytime and nighttime hours were. As a result, he could almost turn on and off his consciousness like a lightswitch.

“I was fine without it,” he said. “I’ll get caught up later today.”

“Do you want some breakfast?” she asked. “I’m not a big breakfast eater, but there’s some yogur—”

She must have realized that yogurt was an affront to men everywhere and bit her lip to keep herself from finishing the offer. Noah’s attention flew instantly to her mouth, and damned if Mr. Happy didn’t become Mr. Joyful in that second.

“I mean, um…” she amended. “There’s bread for toast.”

“Coffee’s all I need right now.”

But Mr. Joyful took exception to that and began knocking on Noah’s fly again, as if he were saying,
Hey, buddy, I got your needs right here.

After giving Mr. Joyful a stern mental talking-to, Noah asked, “Were
you
able to get any sleep last night?”

“A little,” she said. “I think it’s going to be a while before I can feel completely comfortable in this house again.”

Yet another reason for Noah to loathe Sorcerer. He’d made a perfectly nice woman like Marnie feel edgy in the home that housed all her happy memories.

She sipped her coffee thoughtfully and said, “Do you think—” But her question was cut short by the ringing of the telephone on the counter behind her. “One of my students, probably,” she said as she reached for the receiver and murmured a breezy hello.

Instantly, Noah knew it wasn’t a student. Because her face went ashen, the hand holding the coffee cup began to tremble and the smile that had brightened her face fled. And for that last, if nothing else, Noah thought, Sorcerer was going to pay. To rob someone of her happiness and security was pretty heinous. To make sport of it, the way Sorcerer surely was, was just sick.

Noah made a motion with his hand for Marnie to share the phone, then leaned forward and pressed his head against hers so that he could hear, too. Strangely, though, it wasn’t Sorcerer’s voice at the other end of the line that captured his attention. It was the way Marnie smelled. Something sweet and floral, like powder or fabric softener. It shouldn’t have been arousing. But for some reason, Noah found it sexy as hell.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t come over last night,” the man at the other end of the line—who definitely sounded like Sorcerer—said. “I had a little problem in Cincinnati that needed my immediate attention, and I didn’t get back to Cleveland until just this minute. In fact, I’m still in my car, calling from the cell. I was hoping you’d be awake by now.”

Marnie turned frightened eyes on Noah, pleading for some guidance on how to handle this. He nodded silently his encouragement for her to continue.

“Well, of course I’m awake,” she said, only the shadow of a tremor muddying her words. “I never went to bed,” she added, sounding a little steadier. “I waited up for you all night.”

A satisfied masculine chuckle oozed out of the telephone. “Well, aren’t you sweet? Keep flattering me, and you’re going to make my…head…swell.”

Somehow Noah refrained from rolling his eyes. The guy was shooting straight to the top of the Most Wanted List, and that was the best he could do? Noah knew thirteen-year-olds who used better sexual innuendos. He was about to coach Marnie on a fitting comeback, but before he had the chance, she was doing it herself.

“Why don’t you come over right now and I’ll see what I can do about your…condition.”

Noah’s eyebrows shot up at that. Not just in response to the innuendo part, but in response to the low, throaty way Marnie had delivered it. Damn, she sounded sexy. He looked at her again and noticed that her cheeks were flushed and her pupils had expanded and an irregular pulse thrummed at the base of her throat. She was terrified, he thought. Yet she still managed to hold everything together and wasn’t backing down an inch.

“You’re too good to me,” Sorcerer said in his own low, throaty voice. Though this one made Noah’s flesh crawl.

“But as much as I’d like to come over there right now and do all those wonderfully wicked things you and I did before, I have some appointments this morning that I absolutely must keep.”

“But it’s Sunday,” Marnie said, somehow injecting a pout into the complaint.

“Alas,” Sorcerer replied, “in my line of work, there are no weekends. No vacations. No personal days.”

Yeah, Noah thought. ’Cause scumbags were scumbags, twenty-four hours a day.

“I’ll come over tonight,” Sorcerer said. “With an entire case of pinot noir. And a few…toys.”

Somehow, Noah didn’t think he was talking about Barbie and her pal Skipper.

“I remember how much you liked them last time,” Sorcerer continued. “Especially the one with the leather straps. Remember?”

Noah saw Marnie’s eyes flutter closed at that, but she rallied herself and said with surprising conviction, “I loved that one. I can’t wait to do it again.”

There was another low murmur of laughter at the other end of the line. “Excellent,” Sorcerer said. “Look for me at nine tonight. And, Lila,” he added before signing off.

“Yes, Adrian?”

“Wear something…interesting for me.”

He ended the connection just as the telephone slipped out of Marnie’s hand and went crashing to the floor. Noah waited for her to follow it, but she gripped the edge of the kitchen countertop with both hands, inhaled a deep breath and slowly, very slowly, released it.

Noah might have expected her to say a lot of things just then, few of them in any way polite. Once again, however, Marnie Lundy surprised him.

“I need to go shopping,” she said. “My wardrobe doesn’t provide for…interesting.”

A
S
N
OAH CAUGHT
some sleep in her spare room, Marnie shopped for something…interesting…while shadowed by two OPUS agents she never saw. And she did her best to hold herself together, even though she felt like crumpling into a heap of something even more interesting and staying there. Just hearing Padgett’s voice again had roused all the fear that had filled her the night of their first encounter, to the point where she didn’t think she’d ever feel safe anywhere again.

Actually, that wasn’t quite true, she immediately amended as she approached her car with her purchases, which were in one teeny-tiny bag that shouldn’t have been able to hold an entire outfit. She hadn’t been quite as frightened this morning when she was talking to Padgett as she had been the night she met him. She told herself it was because he hadn’t been there in person, so he’d been less of a threat. But somehow, she knew it was really because Noah had been with her. That was why she’d been able to sleep last night, too. The knowledge of his presence in her house had made her feel more secure. And not just because he was an OPUS agent equipped to deal with any danger Padgett might present. But because he was Noah Tennant, a man she trusted.

She’d been grateful when he’d offered to stay another day and night in the face of Padgett’s promise to return, instead of assigning the job to someone else. She couldn’t see herself feeling safe with anyone else. Mainly because she didn’t trust anyone else. It was just too bad Noah couldn’t stay in her house forever. She was beginning to think that was the only way she’d ever feel safe again.