Heart of a Hero (45 page)

She was fully clothed, looking out the window, but turned when he entered. “Where are we going?”

“Nowhere, yet.”

“Hey, better lose the granny glasses,” she suggested. “They make you look like Brad Pitt in that movie where he played a wimp.” Actually, he looked too scrumptious for words in those things. The glasses hinted at a hidden vulnerability that made him seem even more approachable, something she did not need at the moment.

He laughed at her insult and reached up, taking off his eyewear. When he had pocketed them, he looked directly at her, his expression growing almost fierce in its intensity.

A few seconds passed and he lightened up, shrugging and shaking his head as if what he saw in her disappointed him.

Damn the man, then. She tossed her hair back with one hand and could have kicked herself for the high-schoolish gesture.

For the remainder of the morning, Dawn shared the tension as they waited on the call from Mercier.

Vinland left her alone for a few hours, but he didn’t go out. Instead, he stayed in his home office on the phone and the computer.

The door remained open. She gave him a cursory wave as she passed on her way to the kitchen, but she didn’t intrude. What was it that agents like Vinland did to prepare for a mission? she wondered.

He joined her around four in the afternoon in his den, where she was clicking through the TV channels, finding nothing interesting to watch.

“Want some popcorn?” he asked, strolling over to thumb through his DVD collection. “How about pizza? I could order one.”

“No way,” she said, looking at him now instead of the television. He wore faded jeans and a T-shirt that simply said Navy with a tiny cartoon of a seal underneath the word.

“You don’t like pizza? Now
that
is un-American,” he stated categorically, shaking a finger at her. “You’re obviously some kind of alien. Not a foreigner, but a strange being from another planet.”

Dawn laughed and abandoned the remote. “I was going to say you’d better order
two.”

He clutched his chest and rolled his eyes. “Thank God.”

With a flourish, he popped in a DVD without asking her what movie she wanted to watch. It was a chick flick, an old one. Dawn smiled at his consideration, though she really preferred action/adventure.

She didn’t intend to watch it, anyway. This bit of
downtime was a perfect opportunity for her to find out what kind of agent, and what kind of man, she was dealing with.

So far, nothing about Vinland seemed consistent. One minute he acted stern and uncompromising, the next polite and considerate; then he’d tease her and make her laugh. Who was he, really?

She listened while he joked around on the phone with the pizza person and tried to con them into adding extra olives for free. He quirked an eyebrow at her, as if asking if she approved the request. Dawn nodded enthusiastically. He wound up paying extra, but apparently enjoyed the verbal exchange.

He seemed to enjoy practically everything, she noticed. Only once in a while did he go all serious, and then not for long. One thing about him: he didn’t exhibit the wary reluctance to reveal personal things about himself that agents in their business usually did.

He obviously loved his house and spent a great deal on it. Expensive antiques looked very much at home here, complemented by exquisitely framed original art. She noted he preferred realistic to abstract, traditional over modern. Though masculine in tone, the style of the place felt welcoming, warm, friendly. Like Vinland himself. Or, maybe he had simply hired a good decorator, she thought with a shrug. There were photos everywhere, a great many of them of women. Beautiful women.

She pointed to one in particular. “Is that who I think it is?”

He nodded. “Bev Martin.”

“The actress?” Dawn was impressed. “You know her?”

Again he nodded and added a grin. “She’s a good friend.”

More than that, Dawn would bet. Here was a man who had no trouble attracting females. Of all ages, judging by his collection of pictures. The one of the actress she recognized
was no publicity photo, but a candid shot of sexy Bev relaxing in the very recliner that sat across the room. “She’s very beautiful.”

“Yeah, nice person, too,” he admitted readily, then promptly changed the subject. Or maybe not. “You going with anyone in particular? I’m only asking in case you need to excuse your absence for a week or so.”

“Not at the moment.” Not in the last few years, but she wasn’t admitting that much to him or anyone else. “What about you?”

“No excuses needed,” he assured her without really answering the other part of the question. Maybe Miss Martin understood what he did for a living and knew better than to expect explanations for his absences.

Dawn curled her feet under her on the comfy suede sofa and lay back against the cushions, stretching her arm along the back. “I love your place. Have you lived here long?”

He glanced around. “Almost two years. Bought it just before I left the Navy.”

“You’re not from here, though,” she guessed. His accent was pure Boston. Upper class, too. No doubt an Ivy Leaguer, a Princeton or Harvard man. “Massachusetts, right?”

“Good ear,” he said, approving her skill. “And you…let me see…from New Jersey.”

“Right,” she admitted. “But you didn’t get that from my accent. I don’t have one.”

“Right, you don’t,” he admitted with a smile. “Read your file.” He plopped down beside her, his leg almost touching her knees.

“That is so unfair. I know nothing about you.”

“Sure you do.” He plucked at the front of his shirt. “I’m ex-Navy. I like old stuff,” he said, glancing around at the antiques gracing his den. “Vintage movies and pizza,” he
added with a nod at the television. “And I’ve just revealed that I’m unencumbered socially. So what else do you want to know?”

“How’d you get into this business?” Somehow he just didn’t seem the intelligence-agent type with that openness of his and the laid-back attitude. Or was that merely a front?

He pursed his lips for a minute, making her stare at their perfection. She hated it when a man made her gawk. He relaxed them and cut his gaze sideways. “Well, I kept getting seasick. The Navy tossed me out and Jack felt sorry for me, cast ashore like that with nowhere to go. Told me if I’d behave like a spy, he’d let me hang out with him and his team for a while.”

Dawn laughed. “So you try to behave.”

“Sometimes. I keep waiting for him to throw me back, but I guess he’d have nobody to razz if he did.”

“Don’t tell me you’re the team screwup.”

“No, but I do believe a sense of humor helps get you through the dark times. Take yourself too seriously and it’s harder to roll with the punches, don’t you think?”

Dawn did. Odd how he seemed to want her to understand him. He had divulged a lot about himself. “You take the job seriously, though,” she guessed.

“Damn straight.”

Right. She picked at the luxurious fringe on the pillow beneath her hand and caressed the woven tapestry fabric. She loved this room and everything in it. It suited him perfectly, or at least what she thought she knew of him now. “You have either great taste or a good decorator.”

“Thanks.” But he didn’t indicate which.

Dawn suspected he had chosen everything in his house himself, and did it with an eye for comfort and quality. The painting above the mantel was of a woman who looked a bit like him. “Who’s that?”

“My grandmother,” he said with an openly affectionate look at the portrait. “Also my favorite person. She died a few years ago and I still miss her.”

The woman in the picture told Dawn even more than Eric had. He was obviously from old money and from a family well established in society. She recognized his grandmother from articles in national news magazines and knew why Eric’s features had seemed a bit familiar to her.

“Of the Boston Pricevilles,” Dawn murmured under her breath, not realizing she had spoken out loud until he replied.

“Mother’s people,” he said. “The Vinlands are the outlaws.”

Dawn laughed at his wry expression, loving the way his brow wrinkled in one spot, right between his golden, perfectly arched eyebrows. “Now that sounds interesting. A mésalliance?”

“A disaster, but that’s a story for another day.” He pushed up from the sofa, tapped his temple with one finger and headed out of the room. “Pizza’s coming up the walk.”

How did he know that? There was no window facing the front of the house and she hadn’t heard a car outside. Still, the doorbell chimed before he reached the hall.

That was downright spooky, she thought, until the clock on the mantel beneath the portrait chimed, too. Twenty minutes since he had ordered. Of course. He was probably a regular customer. For a minute there, she’d wondered if he was psychic. Not that she believed in such things.

F
or the rest of the afternoon and evening, they tacitly agreed to place thoughts of the job on hold and try to relax. The mission would be exhausting emotionally, perhaps even physically, and they both knew it. It paid to go into something like this with a cool head and senses firing on all cylinders.

They talked of their preferences and opinions regarding current events, books and movies, things a couple generally did when getting acquainted. Dawn wasn’t certain why that thought came to mind. She certainly didn’t want to be half of a couple.

That certainty slid right out of her mind when they called it a night, however. He took her hand to help her up from the sofa where they had been sitting a circumspect three feet apart for nearly two hours. His fingers interlocked with hers, he raised their hands and planted a kiss on the back of hers as their eyes met and held. Her heart
stuttered and she leaned toward him, drawn by an unseen force.

Uh-huh, lust,
she reckoned when he stepped back and released her hand.

“Good night,” he said, gesturing for her to precede him out the door. “Breakfast is at six. Expect a long and busy day.”

Dawn felt so rattled, she couldn’t say a word. She quickly turned to go up the stairs and didn’t dare glance back at him. If she did, she knew she would have a look of invitation plastered all over her face. He might take her up on it, and that would be bad. Then again, he might refuse, and that would be even worse.

She hardly slept at all and when she did, she dreamed of him. As dreams went, these were definitely rated X, fantasies originating in a Georgian town house, sweeping across desert sands and landing in a silken tent with a Valentino-garbed Vinland doing what old silent-movie sheikhs are prone to do.
Prone
being the big word for her, too.

The next morning, Dawn consigned everything that had happened the night before to a file in her mind labeled Forbidden. No way would she take it out and study it in depth, not after what she’d dreamed.

Vinland had only been managing her, she told herself. Mentor to novice, agent in charge to junior agent. If it had been a test, then she had passed, kept her hands and thoughts to herself.

Breakfast proved to be simple. Coffee, cereal chock-full of vitamins, milk and a banana were all ready and waiting for her when she came downstairs. They ate in silence, he as lost in his thoughts as she was in hers, neither mentioning that brief moment when the current of longing had zapped them. She knew he had felt it, and he surely knew that she had.

“Go on upstairs,” he said when she had finished. “I’ll be up in a few minutes. We need to get started.”

She rose and escaped, or that was what it felt like. Maybe a few minutes alone would give her time to shore up her defenses. The man was majorly messing with her hormones, and she resented it.

He arrived ten minutes later, coming through the bathroom that joined their bedrooms.

“First thing we need to do is change your appearance.” He held up a kit he had retrieved from his bedroom and plucked out a box. “You want to dye first or shall I?”

Dawn quirked one auburn eyebrow at him and her lips softened into a natural smile. The way he made her feel was not his fault. Vinland couldn’t help being as handsome as he was and owning the drawbacks that went with it. She could be kind without losing her head over him. Look at all the practice she’d had.

“I’ll go first,” she offered.

“Leave your hair wet when you finish coloring it. I’ll need to style it.”

Somehow she could not imagine him as a hairdresser. “Multitalented, are you?”

“We’ll see how you feel about that when I’m done.” He grinned and tossed her the box of hair dye.

“Why are you disguising me? The guy didn’t see me, I’m sure of that. He’d have killed me if he had. And if someone else at NSA was working with Bergen, they could identify me, disguised or not.”

“No one will recognize you when I get through,” he assured her. “Besides, no one at your agency will be in on this, except you. They’re totally out of the loop until everyone who had contact with Bergen is cleared. Safe to say, you won’t be running into any of your fellow agents where we’re going.”

“Where will that be?” she asked, wondering if he was sharing all he knew.

“Waiting to find that out, but I can almost guarantee it won’t be this side of the pond.”

Vinland grinned his wicked grin and pointed at the hair dye she held. “It’s a good trick when going undercover, a self-perception thing. Changing your looks will alter your whole personality. See yourself differently and I guarantee you won’t act the same.” He spread his hands wide. “You’ll be a blank slate when we’re done, and become who I need you to be.”

Oh great.
“And just who is that?” she asked, fascinated by the concept, if not wild about participating in it.

“Wait and see,” he said cryptically. Then he added, “And try to be open-minded, will you?”

Dawn almost laughed, and bitterly at that. He really didn’t need to know all the things that crossed her mind when he was around.

An hour later, Dawn realized that her own father wouldn’t recognize her. And Vinland wasn’t finished with her yet.

Her hair was very dark brown now and straight as a stick. Vinland had expertly trimmed it in a blunt cut, several inches shorter than her former length, and used a flat iron to smooth out every vestige of curl. She’d been trying to do that for years. Amazing man.