Express Male (24 page)

Of course, being next-door neighbors, he hadn’t exactly been able to avoid her. And in the weeks that followed his moving in, they’d struck up a friendship. But that was the point. It was a
friend
ship with a nice, warm woman. Not a
relationship
with one. So it was okay that they talked and shared and, you know, related about stuff.

So it was okay—and in no way unmanly—for Daniel to ask her, “Can we talk about what just happened?”

“No,” she replied tersely. And, he had to admit, kind of manfully.

“Why not?”

“Because.”

“Because why?”

“No.”

“Are you going to keep answering every question I ask you with one word?”

“Yes.”

“Ellie…”

He strode to the desk and turned the light back on again, just in time to see her tucking some folded papers into the waistband of her pants at the small of her back. Sebastian’s notes. The reason she’d come here tonight. He’d forgotten about them after all that smokin’ sex.

“We need to talk,” he said, more adamantly this time.

She spun around to look at him, but her expression revealed no clue as to what she might be thinking. Her appearance, however, spoke volumes about what she’d been doing. Her nipples pushed through the fabric of her T-shirt, so agitated were they still. Her hair, which had been gathered at her nape in one of those plain Jane ponytails she liked to wear, was streaming around her shoulders, the clip that had held it having been flung only God knows where. Her mouth was red and swollen from the fierceness of their kisses and her neck flamed in all the places Daniel had nipped her.

He still wasn’t sure what had come over him there. He’d never been one for rough sex. But something about the situation, about Ellie, had brought out the beast in him. What was weird—not to mention incredibly arousing—was how enthusiastically she’d responded. He probably had a few red places on his own neck, not to mention a few lines on his back where she’d scored him with her fingernails. He never would have suspected such a raging tigress lay beneath Ellie’s nice, warm girl-next-door exterior.

“Talk,” she said. Still with the one-word answers.

He nodded.

“About what happened.”

Wow, three words. She was really starting to ramble.

“Daniel, I have a job to do.”

Whoa, that was a good half-dozen words in one breath. Motormouth. Unfortunately, the words she spoke didn’t cover any of the ground Daniel wanted to explore himself.

“You finished your job,” he said. “You got Sebastian’s notes. Now it’s Miller Time. And we need to talk.”

She was shaking her head before he even finished speaking. “This job is nowhere close to being finished,” she told him. “I’ve got to find out who at ChemiTech is leaking classified information. After that, the
assignment
will be finished. But this is the kind of job where I’m never off the clock.”

“No Miller Time?” he asked. “That sucks.”

She hooked her hands on her hips—hips that had only moments ago been bucking against his—and glared at him. “I’m serious, Daniel. People who work for OPUS don’t just work for OPUS. We’re on call all the time, ready to do whatever needs doing, wherever it needs doing, whenever it needs to be done.”

“So then it’s not a job, it’s an adventure?” he asked.

“Stop trying to reduce what I do for a living to a slogan,” she snarled. Actually snarled. Wow. That was even more arousing than the enthusiasm for rough sex.

“Being an operative for OPUS isn’t some nine-to-five occupation where, at the end of the day, I park my car in the garage and kick back with a beer. It’s dangerous work. There’s a reason agents work in the field alone.”

“So they don’t wind up humping like rabbits while they’re on the clock?” he asked.

“Dammit, Daniel. Stop it.”

“Stop what?”

“Stop trying to make light of what I do for a living!”

If Daniel hadn’t known better, he would have thought he saw the sheen of tears in hers eyes. But what the hell would she have to cry about? She’d done her job well and had some smokin’ sex at the same time. Any man would be proud of an accomplishment like that. Of course, Daniel also knew better—than just about anyone at the moment—that Ellie wasn’t a man. She was a nice, warm woman. Who’d had some smokin’ sex. Who would have guessed something like that was possible? Not Daniel, that was for damned sure.

And something else he wouldn’t have thought possible had happened, too. He wanted to have smokin’ sex with Ellie again. Lots and lots of times. In fact, he kind of didn’t want to have sex with anyone
but
Ellie for a while. It had been that good. He even wanted to talk to her about how good it had been, and how he wanted it to happen again, lots and lots of times. But all she wanted to talk about, evidently, was doing her job.

He sighed deeply and took a few steps forward, sorting his words carefully before speaking. He wasn’t trying to make light of what she did for a living. On the contrary, he respected her choice of occupation, and her passion for doing it, more than she knew. But what had just happened between the two of them was starting to feel kind of serious. And Daniel always reacted to things that were serious by making light of the situation. Obviously, that wasn’t going to work this time. So he’d have to try a different tack.

He stopped walking while he was still out of swinging range and very softly he said, “Here’s the thing, Ellie. This isn’t what you do for a living. Not yet. And even if this does wind up being your job, you can’t let it take over your life. Working isn’t a living. Living is a living.” He braved a few more steps forward, closing the distance between them. “But I don’t think my view of your job is what’s really bothering you right now, is it?”

She’d stopped looking at him as soon as he started talking, and the closer he’d moved to her, the more she had turned her head, until now she was practically looking over her shoulder. So Daniel reached out and cupped his palm over her jaw, gently urging her head back to where he could look her in the eye.

“Is it?” he asked again. “’Cause, see, that’s why we need to talk.”

She looked at him for a long time without speaking, her dark eyes fixed on his. Her lips were parted slightly, and it was all Daniel could do not to dip his head and kiss her. He already had another boner, one that was ready to party hard. Incredible. He never wanted a woman this much so quickly after having her. Usually, once he had sex with a woman, he lost interest in having sex with her again. The first time was always the best, and familiarity bred, if not contempt, then certainly indifference.

With Ellie, though, Daniel suspected the first time had only offered a taste of what was possible between them. Familiarity had bred a craving for more. He wondered how many times he’d have to have sex with her before he started losing interest. Strangely, he was pretty sure he already knew. And the answer both amazed and scared the hell out of him.

“No,
here’s
the thing, Daniel,” she said softly. “My job is more important to me than anything in the world. Anything. It’s what I do. It’s what I am. It’s what I’ve always wanted to be. Maybe I’m not in the field for OPUS yet, but I will be. And it will be the most important thing in the world to me. Always. I was fully prepared for this assignment when they gave it to me. I don’t need anyone’s help to complete it.”

“You needed me tonight,” he said. And he hoped she realized he was talking about a lot more than the job. Judging by the way her expression changed, she did.

Which was why it felt like someone hit him with a brick when she replied, “No. I didn’t.”

Daniel ignored the hot nausea that singed his belly at her reply. Where the hell was that coming from? “If I hadn’t come in when I did to warn you Sebastian was on his way—”

“I would have managed just fine,” she finished for him.

“I don’t need you, Daniel,” she reiterated. “From now on, I work alone.”

And since her work was her life, he interpreted, did that mean she wanted him out of that, too? The way she was looking at him now, he wondered why she’d ever let him in to begin with.

What the hell was going on? he wondered. A few hours ago, the two of them had shared dinner and conversation together the way they had a million times. Now, suddenly, they were at each other’s throats. The only thing that had changed in the meantime was that they’d enjoyed an incredible sexual encounter that should have had them reaching for each other again. Instead, there was a divide between them he wasn’t sure they’d ever be able to cross, never mind mend.

“Fine,” he said through gritted teeth, because, at this point, he had no idea what else to say. “Work alone. See what it gets you.”

“It’ll get the job done,” she snapped. “That’s all that matters.”

He nodded, clenching his jaw tight, pushing to the edge of his brain his fear that he was losing the best friend he had.

No, worse than that. He was losing Ellie.

M
ARNIE WASN’T SURE
how she made it through the rest of her training. Though certainly the fact that Noah had made himself scarce helped. In fact, he made himself so scarce he was invisible, and her training was instead completed by a female instructor, code name Sugarplum. Though had Marnie been the one handing out code names that day, she would have awarded the woman with the moniker Metamucil.

Still, the woman imparted a lot of information and skill training that second week. Enough so that, by the end of it, Marnie felt fully prepared and totally confident in her ability to take on criminal mastermind and international wise guy Adrian Padgett.

Well, okay, she actually only felt that way after consuming an entire bottle of wine in dubious celebration Friday night. At least she hadn’t been drinking to forget about Noah. She hadn’t done that since Thursday night. Anyway, that was all beside the point. By the time Marnie concluded her training, she
was
better prepared to face Padgett than she’d been on her first encounter with him three weeks earlier. Of course, since she’d been a quivering mass of goo three weeks earlier, that wasn’t saying much. Nevertheless, she
was
the best chance OPUS had to bring in Adrian Padgett.

And if that wasn’t enough to make the flesh of every American citizen crawl, Marnie didn’t know what was.

By the time she reported for duty the Monday morning of her third week in OPUS’s thrall—or, rather, employment…she kept getting those two things confused—she pretty much had a handle on how she felt about Noah. Which was a good thing since she had to report to him. She’d had a week to think about what had happened, and she’d sorted through her response fairly well. First, she’d been shocked by what had happened between them. Then she’d found herself denying that there had been any significance to it. Then she’d done some bargaining in her head to ensure it never happened again. Then she’d felt guilty about it. Then she’d gotten angry about it. Then she’d gotten a little depressed about it. Finally, though, she’d just accepted what had happened and tried to—

Wait a minute. Those were the seven stages of grief.

Oh, right. They were perfect for what she felt.

She sighed with frustration as she waited for the elevator in the lobby of a different OPUS facility than the one where she’d completed her training, this one in downtown Cleveland. Though, mind you,
nowhere
on or in the building was there
anything
to indicate a superspy organization was housed here. And she finally admitted to herself that she still didn’t know how she felt about Noah or what had happened, even having had a week to think about both. He’d never promised her anything other than a release for the sexual response they had to each other. And God knows he’d delivered that. She’d had a
very
nice, uh, release, at her house that night. Until she realized she wanted a lot more from Noah than a release. On the contrary, she wanted to be connected to him forever.

When an elevator opened, Marnie entered and pushed seven, having memorized the directions Noah gave her, just as a good spy should. It wasn’t his fault she felt as lousy as she did. She just wished she knew what to do to stop feeling so lousy. As if she would never be truly happy again. As if her life was meaningless unless Noah was a part of it. As if she wasn’t a whole person without him.

She knew it was ridiculous to feel that way. Before he entered her life, she’d been happy, productive, complete. She taught music to children. She volunteered for a number of good causes. She was an asset to society and contributed to other lives. She made a difference in the world, even if it wasn’t on a large scale. She had joy. She had balance. She had stability. She had security.

But she didn’t have love, she realized now. Not the kind of love that gives life the most meaning. The ceaseless, soul-deep, inalienable love shared by two people who know they’re better together than they are alone.

And maybe, Marnie thought as the elevator slowed, that was the problem. She’d fallen in love with Noah Tennant. She didn’t know when it had happened, or how, or why. She didn’t know what it was in him that touched and spoke to something in her. She only knew that at some point, he had become…important to her. She felt more alive, more human when she was with him. On the few occasions he’d been in her home—especially that last one—her home had felt…better somehow. More comfortable. More…right.

She’d met him under extraordinary circumstances, and he was quite a remarkable man. But what Marnie felt for him was the most basic thing a human being could feel. Love. Pure and simple. Immutable and eternal.

The elevator doors opened on a soft whoosh of air. Okay. So she did have a handle on how she felt about Noah. Now she just had to figure out how to deal with it.

She stepped into the hallway barely seeing it, having no idea what to do about her newly discovered feelings. She would be meeting the man she loved—the man who didn’t love her—in a matter of minutes, which didn’t give her much time to dissect and analyze her epiphany. She wasn’t even sure she was dressed appropriately for an epiphany. Then again, the salesclerk who had sold Marnie the black trouser suit and white blouse—and just when had she started dressing like a spy?—had assured her it was right for every business-related occasion.

But her epiphany wasn’t business related. And it wasn’t business she was worried about. Which told her exactly how far gone she was. She was less worried about the prospect of meeting Adrian Padgett face-to-face again, a man who frankly terrified her, than she was about seeing Noah. Then again, international criminals were just meaningless little grains of sand when weighed against the immeasurable ocean of true love.

Marnie bit back a groan. Please, for God’s sake, someone shoot her, before she turned into a flaming Flavia greeting card.

Expelling another long sigh of frustration, she smoothed a hand over her spy suit and made her feet move forward. Fifth door on the right, she reminded herself. With a brass nameplate affixed to it that read “Charles McAlistar, V.P. Public Relations.” That would be the fabricated Charles McAlistar, pretend V.P. of nonexistent public relations for the phony corporation Universal Ventures, Inc., which was the front for the OPUS Cleveland field office. Of course, as far as Marnie was concerned, they could have called the dummy corporation Spies ’RNT Us and been every bit as convincing. But, hey, that was just her. She stole another moment to collect herself before entering, then turned the knob and walked inside.

A woman Marnie’s age with dark brown hair and trendy, red-framed glasses smiled at her. “Can I help you?” she asked.

“I have an appointment with Mr. McAlistar,” she recited from the script she’d been given. “Though I’m a bit early. I’m Denise Borden. Of Global Megatrends, Inc.” She felt like adding,
We’re a subsidiary of ACME, Inc., which manufactures products that are popular with coyotes.
Honestly. OPUS could really use some new copywriters.

“Mr. McAlistar is expecting you,” Suzi Secretary said kindly, just as Marnie had known she would, since she was part of the script, too. And she was excellent at playing the mild-mannered role. Marnie never would have guessed Suzi was packing a bazooka under that desk, just in case someone—someone like, oh, say, Marnie—did stray from the script. “Go right in.”

“Thank you,” Marnie replied dutifully. And scriptfully. No way was she going to test that bazooka thing.

Although the script didn’t call for it, she braved a quick, light rap of her knuckles on the door to Noah’s office before entering, in case he needed a moment to prepare for their encounter, the way she did. But when she entered, she saw him hunched over his desk, writing something furiously on a pad of paper, so she concluded he hadn’t even heard her come in. So much for his needing a moment.

It was the first time she’d seen him since he left her house in the middle of the night, the two of them uttering clipped goodbyes like strangers in a grocery-store line. She hadn’t slept a wink afterward, and in the morning had stumbled bleary-eyed into the kitchen for coffee and opened the refrigerator to retrieve the half-and-half. But she hadn’t been able to see it for the forest of foam cartons left over from dinner the night before. One by one, she’d extracted the containers, dumping them into a black plastic garbage bag, which she’d double-knotted and carried out to the curb.

And she tried not to think about how significant it was that the only mementos she had from her one true love were rotting in a landfill on the north side of town.

She closed the door behind herself with a soft click, a sound that finally made Noah look up. For a scant second, she thought she saw something in his eyes that engendered some small hope inside her that they might be able to—

But then it was gone, so quickly she knew she must have imagined it.

“Right on time,” he said as she strode forward and folded herself into the chair in front of his desk. “Good to see you were listening during your training.”

“Yeah, I was at the top of my class in spy school,” she replied. “Valedictorian
and
salutatorian. And also homecoming queen. And calendar girl. And editor of the yearbook. Not to mention my own date to the prom.”

And if she didn’t shut up she was going to embarrass herself. Even more than she already had, she meant.

“Look, Noah,” she hurried on. “I don’t want to suggest that the last two weeks have been a waste of time, but how can you think I’ll be effective when Adrian Padgett hasn’t been spotted since that night he came to my house? How can you even be sure he’s still around?”

It was a question that had plagued her for two weeks. Why had Adrian Padgett come to her house that one night, promised to come back and then never returned?

“He’s still around,” Noah said with utter confidence.

“We’ve had people working on finding him since he showed up at your house, and one of them, a man named Joel Faraday, has identified an area where Sorcerer is most likely to be hiding out. We’ll be sending you to D.C. first, so he can fill you in on the details, and then you’ll be on your way to that area.”

“Then how can you be sure Padgett still thinks I’m Lila?” she asked. “If he still thinks I’m her, and he wants to be with her, then why hasn’t he come looking for me?”

Noah leaned back in his chair, looking totally relaxed, completely casual, utterly normal. Damn him. “There could be several reasons for that, actually. Maybe he’s still not sure where your…or, rather, Lila’s…allegiances lie, and he’s worried you might try to bring him in again. Or he might think you reported his appearance to OPUS that night he came to your house, and now you’re being watched too closely by other agents who might try to bring him in.”

Marnie leaned back in her chair, too, hoping
she
looked totally relaxed, completely casual, utterly normal. And feeling none of those things. Damn her. “You don’t sound like you think either of those possibilities is true,” she said.

He grinned, and she tried to find some vague hint of what he might be feeling for her in the gesture. But there was nothing. He only looked like a man at work, describing a working situation with a co-worker. Which, she supposed, was all the hint she needed.

“That’s because I don’t think either of those possibilities is true,” he told her.

“Then what do you think?”

“If I know Sorcerer,” he said, “I’m betting it’s because he wants
you
to come to
him.
”

Oh, Marnie really didn’t like the sound of that. “How am I supposed to go to him when I don’t know where he is?”

“You’re Lila Moreau, ace spy. You’re supposed to be able to figure out where he is.”

“No, I’m Marnie Lundy, B-list piano teacher in way over my head,” she corrected him. “How the hell am I supposed to locate him?”

“You’re not,” Noah said. “It’s only supposed to look like you’re the one who found him. That’s actually OPUS’s responsibility. And, as I said, we’re reasonably certain we’ve identified the area where you can find him.”

Marnie’s stomach knotted painfully. They knew where he was. And they were going to send her in to draw him out. “How did you find him?” she asked, hoping that the fear clawing at the back of her throat wasn’t audible in her voice.

“Philosopher’s manuscript was very helpful. While he was still working for OPUS, he kept meticulous notes about Sorcerer’s comings and goings after he went over to the dark side. Joel Faraday looked over the information and was able to make some connections and identify patterns in Sorcerer’s behavior. Coupled with some of the e-mails that we’ve intercepted between Sorcerer and other people he contacted online over the past year, we were able to narrow our search to a pretty specific area. Within that area, we’ve been able to identify a dozen or so establishments that would attract him. We figure if you start frequenting those, sooner or later, you’ll find him.”

Oh, God. It was actually going to happen, Marnie thought, panic pooling coldly in the pit of her stomach. She was really going to carry out an assignment. Put herself in the path of a dangerous man, on purpose, who had terrified her on two previous occasions. Her heart hammered in her chest, heat seeped through her body and she began to feel a little dizzy. She gripped the arms of her chair tightly and inhaled a deep breath, forcing down the fear and telling herself it would be okay.