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The Elliotts: Bedroom Secrets

UNDER DEEPEST COVER KARA LENNOX

MARRIAGE TERMS BARBARA DUNLOP

THE INTERN AFFAIR ROXANNE ST CLAIRE

www.millsandboon.co.uk

UNDER DEEPEST COVER

KARA LENNOX

About the Author

KARA LENNOX, a Texas native, has been an art director, typesetter, textbook editor and reporter. She’s worked in a boutique, a health club and an ad agency. She’s been an antiques dealer and even a blackjack dealer. But no work has made her happier than writing romance novels.

When not writing, Kara indulges in an ever-changing array of weird hobbies. (Her latest passions are treasure hunting and creating mosaics.) She loves to hear from readers. You can visit her webpage and drop her a note at www.karalennox.com.

For Melissa Jeglinski

Thanks so much for inviting me into the Elliott world.

The story was perfect for me—you know me so well.

One

“You have to get me out of this!” Lucy Miller hissed into her encrypted cell phone, the one that had been delivered to her home a few weeks ago. The phone had rung just as she’d left a staff meeting. She’d ducked into the ladies’ rest room, where she’d checked every stall to make sure she was alone.

“Relax, Lucy,” said the soothing voice Lucy had come to know so well. She had often fantasized about what the man who owned that deep, sexy voice might look like, but not today. Today she was too terrified to fantasize about anything but getting out of this situation with her skin intact.

“Don’t you tell me to relax,” she whispered back. “You aren’t the one stuck in this bank trying to act normal when she knows she’s about to get liquidated.”

“Liquidated? You must be watching too much Get Smart. No one is trying to kill you.”

“You didn’t see the man who was following me. I know a hit man when I see one. He was wearing a coat, and it’s like ninety degrees outside.”

“It’s also raining in D.C. today. He probably had on a raincoat.”

“Casanova, you’re not listening! My cover has been blown. Someone has been in my apartment. Either you get me out of here, or I’ll hop the first plane I can find to South America and I’ll take all my data with me!”

“No! Lucy, be reasonable—”

“I’m done being reasonable. I’ve done everything you asked without question. I’ve trusted you implicitly, though I’ve never met you and don’t even know your name. Now it’s your turn to trust me. I’m not stupid. If you don’t get me out, this very expensive little cell phone is going into the nearest sewer, and you’ll never hear from me again.”

“All right! I’ll be there by five-thirty, six at the latest. Can you hang tight till then? Can you make it home?”

Lucy took a deep breath, trying to calm herself. She’d spotted her tail three days ago, and she’d realized yesterday that someone had searched her apartment. But so far her observer was keeping his distance. Maybe she could make it a few more hours. She struggled for a reasonable tone of voice. “I’ll do my best. But if anything happens, tell my parents I love them, okay?”

“You’ll be fine, drama queen.”

Lucy disconnected before she said something she’d regret. Drama queen? Did Casanova think she was some flaky paranoid? Hadn’t she proved her worth over the past weeks? Casanova. Who’d come up with that handle, anyway, and why?

She put the cell phone back in her purse and started to exit the rest room, but then she caught a look at herself in the mirror. She looked like a mad woman, her wavy brown hair escaping from its customary bun and frizzing around her face, her cheeks flush with panic, eyes wild with fear behind her glasses. She took five minutes to neaten her hair, powder her nose and apply her pink lipstick. The shade did nothing for her, but that didn’t matter. She wasn’t exactly supermodel material these days. She only wore a little makeup because she was in an executive position and the other female executives did.

She’d been trying to fit in, not call attention to herself.

When she looked and felt more composed, she left the sanctuary of the rest room and headed for her office, hoping she could close the door and hole up in there for the rest of the afternoon. She was afraid that if she had to deal with anyone, she would fall apart.

Some spy you turned out to be, Lucy Miller. Disintegrating at the first sign of danger.

As luck would have it, she rounded a corner and ran right into the bank’s portly CEO, the man who’d hired her.

“Oh, hello, Lucy,” he said politely. “I was just looking for you.”

“Sorry, I was in the ladies’ room. My lunch isn’t sitting well, I’m afraid.” She figured he wouldn’t ask too many questions about that. He was easily embarrassed, she’d discovered.

He scrutinized her face with his one good eye. The other had been destroyed in some kind of accident, though she didn’t know the details. Her skin prickled with nerves. Could he see her fear?

“You don’t look well,” he said. “You’re very pale. Are you sure you’re okay?”

“I’m fine, really.” Just like Mr. Vargov to be concerned. He was a kind, fatherly man, a friend of her uncle Dennis who’d given her this job when she sorely needed a safe, stable employment. She’d been under-qualified for the fund auditor’s job, with her piddling bachelor’s degree in finance and no experience to speak of, but she felt she’d performed the job well.

Too well, in Mr. Vargov’s opinion. He thought she was too conscientious. He hadn’t taken her suspicions about embezzlement very seriously. That was why she’d gone to Homeland Security. That was how she’d gotten involved with Casanova.

“Why don’t you take the rest of the afternoon off?” Mr. Vargov suggested.

“Oh, I couldn’t. You said you wanted those reports—”

“The reports can wait. Your uncle would have my hide if he found out I was cracking the whip over you when you’re sick.”

“Thanks, Mr. Vargov. Maybe I will leave just a little early if I don’t feel better.”

“I think you should.”

And maybe, she thought, if she left early, she could fool the man or men who’d been following her. She wouldn’t mind saying goodbye to this place. She’d needed a place to recover, to heal, to get her bearings, and Alliance Trust had provided that. Her co-workers had been kind, the working conditions pleasant. Her boss hadn’t required too much of her, and the salary had been much higher than someone her age and experience normally earned.

But it was time to move on. She would spend another hour downloading as much information as she could onto her supercapacity memory stick, then leave here and never come back.

Casanova would take her to a safe house. He’d promised. And then, when all the arrests were made and the perpetrators were in jail, she could start over somewhere else. A new job, a new life.

It sounded like heaven.

At ten after three, she was ready. She stashed the memory stick in her bra. Taking only her purse and umbrella, she told Peggy Holmes, Mr. Vargov’s executive secretary and the woman who knew everything, that she was going home early due to an upset stomach.

“Oh, my dear, I hope it’s nothing serious. You’ve missed only one day of work since you started here, and that was for a root canal. On a lower-left molar, I believe.” Peggy was in her sixties and had worked for Mr. Vargov for twenty-something years. With her tightly permed hair and dumpy, big-bosomed figure, she was everyone’s grandmother. But Lucy knew she was highly intelligent with an astounding memory for detail and an efficiency that bordered on pathological.

“I’ll be fine,” Lucy said, hoping it was true.

The idea of walking into the parking garage alone held little appeal. One of the security guards would have been happy to escort her, but if a hit man was waiting for her there, she might just be dragging the guard into danger.

She shouldn’t behave as expected, she decided. She would take the bus. There was a bus stop just a block from her office.

The weather was warm and humid with an insistent, light rain falling, but Lucy felt cold inside as she exited her building. She put up her umbrella, taking the opportunity to glance surreptitiously around to see if she spotted the man in the raincoat. But she saw no one suspicious.

She walked up the block, her sensible low heels tapping against the wet sidewalk. She pretended to window-shop, not wanting to stand at the bus stop too long. When she saw the bus approaching, she hurried to the stop and dashed onboard just in time. The only other people to board with her were a mom with two small children. Thank God.

When she got off at the stop near her Arlington, Virginia, town house, she still saw no one. Maybe she’d outmaneuvered him. Or maybe he’d given up on her, decided she was no one to worry about. He wouldn’t have found anything incriminating in her home. She kept the memory stick with her at all times.

Her tiny town house had only one door, and this morning she’d rigged it so she would know if anyone had been inside. She checked; the tiny hair she’d caught between door and frame was still in place. She inserted her key and entered, pausing to close her wet umbrella and shake it off on the porch.

She’d lived here for two years. Her uncle had found it for her, and she’d committed to renting it without ever seeing it. It was nice but boring—like her life had been until a few weeks ago—and she’d made no effort to turn it into a real home. She wouldn’t mind walking away from it.

As she closed and bolted the door, a hand clamped over her mouth and a strong arm hauled her against a rock-hard body.

Panic rising in her throat, Lucy didn’t think, she just acted. The umbrella was still in her hand. She aimed it behind her and jabbed her attacker in the thigh as hard as she could.

Her attacker issued a strangled gasp and loosened his grip on her just enough that she could bend her knees and drop. As she did, she grabbed one of the man’s denim-clad legs and yanked, throwing him off balance. He fell onto the marble floor with a painful-sounding thunk. Still gripping the umbrella, Lucy straightened, swiveled toward her attacker and went for his throat with the sharp tip of her impromptu weapon.

He grabbed the umbrella and deflected it. “Lucy, stop! It’s me, Casanova!” He jerked the umbrella out of her hands and tossed it aside. Unfortunately, he also knocked her off balance. She fell on top of him and found herself staring into a pair of the most remarkable blue eyes she’d ever seen.

“Casanova?” But she knew it was him. She’d recognized his voice instantly.

“Jeez, woman, are you insane? You almost killed me.”

“You broke into my home and attacked me, I fought back, but I’m insane?”

“You’re not supposed to be home until later. I had no idea who you were. And where did you learn to fight like that?”

“I took a self-defense class. What are you doing in my house?”

“If you’re under surveillance, I couldn’t just come to the front door. I broke in.”

“How? I have an alarm.”

“Your neighbor doesn’t.” He grinned, and Lucy looked up and into the living room, where she saw a huge hole in her wall. “You came through the wall? You didn’t frighten Mrs. Pfluger, did you? And what’s my landlord going to say?”

“You won’t be here to find out. We’re leaving.”

That was the first comforting thing he’d said. “Then you believe me?”

“Your house is riddled with more listening devices than the American Embassy in Russia. Someone’s been here, all right.” His expression turned grim.

Lucy dropped her voice to a whisper. “Are they listening? Right now?”

“My guess is the bugs are connected to a voice-activated recording device. They—whoever they are—probably aren’t monitoring live when you’re not supposed to be home. But we don’t have much time. They’ll catch up with you soon. I want to be long gone by the time they get here. So if you could, uh …”

Lucy was humiliated to realize she was still lying on top of him, and she hadn’t made even a token effort to move. She could feel every hard-muscled inch of him pressed against her body, and she had to say the effect wasn’t unpleasant. It had been a very long time since any man had touched her more intimately than with a handshake.

She scrambled off of Casanova, managing to knee him in the groin in the process, though not intentionally.

“Damn, woman, you’re dangerous.” He sat up and shook his head as if to clear it, and she got her first really good look at him. In all her fantasies he’d been handsome, but nothing had prepared her for the reality. He was gorgeous—six feet of highly toned body, thick, jet-black hair and those incredible eyes. His hair was all mussed from their impromptu romp, the way it might look if he’d just gotten out of bed.

Oh, Lucy. Knock it off.

“You’ve got exactly three minutes to pack anything you absolutely need. Medications, a toothbrush, change of underwear. Don’t worry about clothes.”

Lucy believed him. She ran into the bedroom, grabbed a couple of pairs of underwear and socks, her toothbrush and her allergy medicine. All of it could be tossed into a tiny backpack. Since she had a couple of minutes, she peeled off her skirt and sticky pantyhose and put on a pair of jeans and her running shoes. She didn’t know where they would go, how they would travel or how long before they stopped, and she wanted to be comfortable.

She emerged from the bedroom with seconds to spare. Casanova was waiting for her, looking antsy, rolling up on the balls of his feet. “About time.”

“You said three minutes, I took three minutes.” Then she couldn’t help it. She grinned.

“You’re enjoying this.”

“In a way,” she admitted. It had been a very long time since she’d had adrenaline pumping through her veins and color in her cheeks. Years. She’d forgotten how good it felt. “And you enjoy it, too, or you wouldn’t be a spy to begin with.”

He nodded, conceding the point. “Let’s go.”

Casanova led Lucy through the hole he’d made in her sheetrock. “I’m glad Mrs. Pfluger wasn’t home,” she said. “You’d have probably scared her to death.”

“What makes you so sure she isn’t home?” And sure enough, sitting in the living room watching her TV was Lucy’s neighbor, Mrs. Pfluger, who was eighty-two years old. She smiled at Casanova. “So, you’re back,” she said with a bright smile. Although she was nearly incapacitated with arthritis, her mind was as sharp as any twenty-year-old’s. “Hello, Lucy, dear.”

Lucy stared, dumbfounded. “Do you two know each other?”

“We do now,” Mrs. Pfluger said. “He came to my door, and when he explained you were in danger from some terrorists, and that he needed my help so you could escape …” She shrugged helplessly, as if to say, Well, you know how these things are. Like they happened every day.

“But the wall. He ruined your wall,” Lucy said.

“He handed me a wad of cash to pay for it.” She turned back to Casanova. “Now, while you were busy searching Lucy’s apartment, I gathered the things you would need.” She gestured toward an old shopping bag. “They’re clothes and other things from my fat days. I won’t need them back.”

Casanova inspected the contents of the shopping bag, then grinned and looked at Lucy. “Excellent. Lucy, put these things on. You’re about to become Bessie Pfluger.”

Bryan Elliott, aka Casanova, tried not to grin as he watched Lucy Miller wiggle into a pair of huge orange polyester stretch pants and pin them at the waist. She’d turned out to be a surprise.

He already knew a lot about her from the background information he’d obtained—where she grew up, where she’d gone to school, her employment history. He’d pegged her as the perfect mole to work inside Alliance where the embezzling was taking place—dutiful, conscientious, intelligent. And she was all those things. Over the past few weeks she had proved amazingly helpful, downloading tons of information onto the supercapacity memory stick, following his instructions without question.

In person, though, she was surprisingly feisty—and damned efficient at defending herself. With the proper training—No, he shouldn’t even think about that. He’d let himself get sucked into a life of lies and shadows, and he was in so deep now he could never lead a normal life. He didn’t wish that on sweet Lucy Miller, who, by all accounts, was ignorant of the uglier side of life.

But she was no longer ignorant about the ugliest clothes in the universe. She’d topped the orange pants with a tentlike housecoat with rainbows all over it. She’d tucked her hair up into a silver, curly-haired wig and donned an old pair of Mrs. Pfluger’s glasses, which had red frames and were only slightly uglier than Lucy’s own.

“My old walker is over there.” Mrs. Pfluger gestured toward a corner of her living room.

“This will never work,” Lucy said on a moan. “No one will believe I’m eighty years old.”

“Eighty-two,” Mrs. Pfluger said.

“Trust me, if anyone is watching the place, they won’t look past the obvious at the place next door.” He unfolded the portable walker and set it in front of Lucy. “Let’s see you do an old-lady walk.”

Lucy hunched over the walker and did a creditable imitation of an arthritic senior citizen inching along.

“Oh, heavens,” Mrs. Pfluger said. “Please don’t tell me I look like that when I walk.”

“I’m exaggerating,” Lucy said. Then she turned to her neighbor and gave her a spontaneous hug. “Oh, Mrs. Pfluger, I can’t thank you enough for helping us out like this. I mean, you don’t even know this guy.”

“He showed me a badge,” Mrs. Pfluger said innocently, having no clue the badge he’d shown her was fake and could be bought on any street corner in D.C. “Anyway, he has trustworthy eyes. He’ll take care of you.”

“I’m counting on it,” Lucy said, giving Bryan a meaningful look. “Can we go now?”

Bryan thanked Lucy’s elderly neighbor, too, then “helped” Lucy out the door and down the wheelchair ramp.

“Keep your head down. That’s it,” he whispered. “You’re doing great. If I didn’t know better, I’d swear you were someone’s grandmother.” But he did know better. The body that had been pressed against his when she’d fallen on him was not the slightest bit grandmotherly. In fact, he’d been surprised at how slim and firm she was beneath the frumpy suit she’d worn.

His Mercedes was parked at the curb. Knowing the town house might be under surveillance, he’d made no attempt to be stealthy, walking right up to the neighbor’s door and ringing the bell. He’d known she would be home. He’d also known she’d been an army nurse in Korea and her husband had been a World War II veteran. He’d been counting on her patriotism to make her willing to help him out, and he’d been right.

As he usually was. He liked to cover all the bases.

As soon as the motor started and the car was underway, he relaxed slightly. If anyone had been watching, Lucy’s old-lady act had fooled them. No one was following.

Bryan drove to a mall parking lot and pulled the Mercedes into a spot fairly close to where he’d found it.

“Why are we stopping here?” Lucy asked.

“Switching cars.” He turned off the engine and pulled his Multi-Key from the ignition.

“What is that?” Lucy asked, pointing to the strange-looking device. Then she gasped. “Oh my God, you stole this car!”

“Just borrowed it. The owner is blissfully shopping at Marshall Fields. She’ll never know.”

“That is really scary,” Lucy said. “That such a device even exists, and that our government employees steal cars.”

“Government employees do a lot worse than steal cars, I’m afraid,” he said as they exited the Mercedes. Unfortunately, he’d just found out the hard way what certain government employees were capable of.

Lucy grabbed the walker from the back seat, but she didn’t use it. She walked beside him with a spring in her step, lithe and graceful. He led her to the car he’d arrived in, a silver Jaguar XJE. Since he’d been driving his personal wheels and not a “company car,” he hadn’t wanted to risk it being identified. Thus the switcheroo.

“Hmm, I liked this even better than the Mercedes,” she commented as she put the walker in the trunk. “Is this one stolen, too?”

“No, this one’s mine.”

“I hadn’t realized government employees earned enough money to afford a Jag.”

“We don’t. My government salary isn’t my only source of income.” He’d never imagined his cover business, the one he set up to satisfy friends and family, would turn so lucrative. He opened the passenger door for her. “You can ditch the disguise, now. We’re safe.”

“Thank God.” She pulled off the wig. Her real hair pulled loose from its bun in the process, spilling over her shoulders in a rich chestnut cascade. He’d never found brown hair all that exciting before, but Lucy’s was thick and luscious.

By the time he’d made it around to the driver’s side, Lucy was out of her housecoat, which she’d thrown on over her white tailored blouse. Then she cursed. “I forgot my jeans.”

“No, I put them in—” Then he stopped. He’d been so fascinated watching Lucy shimmy out of them, revealing a glimpse of her sensible white panties, that he had forgotten to bring the jeans along. “We’ll get you some clothes, don’t worry.”

He had no business thinking about Lucy’s panties, sensible or otherwise. He had a helluva problem here.

Finding the listening devices was disturbing enough. He’d been sure Lucy was exaggerating, that no one was following her or sneaking into her home. But she hadn’t installed those listening devices herself.

In fact, once he’d examined the bug in her telephone, the list of suspects who could have planted it had shrunk to a handful. That bug was the latest technology, purchased from Russia. So new, in fact, that only his agency had access to it. Besides the Russians, of course. And he didn’t think the Russians were involved in this.

Someone in his own organization had betrayed him, which meant his life and Lucy’s weren’t worth a used teabag unless he found out which agent was the Benedict Arnold—and neutralized him or her, fast.

Two

They drove in silence for a few minutes. Bryan took a circuitous route out of the city, darting on and off the freeway to be absolutely certain they weren’t being followed. Then he headed north on Interstate 95 as a plan slowly formed.

“Are you okay?” he asked Lucy. She was awfully quiet. He’d expected her to be peppering him with questions about where they were going and what would happen next, questions to which he didn’t have all the answers.

“I’m fine.”

“I’m sorry I put you in danger.”

“I knew what I was getting into when I signed on for this gig. You told me there would be some risk.”

She didn’t know the half of it. He’d never expected the risk to come from his own people. “You did great. I wish we could have finished the job, though.”

“I did.”

“Pardon me?”

“After I talked to you, I knew I wouldn’t be returning to Alliance Trust. So I threw caution out the window. Before, I was careful to cover my tracks when I downloaded information. I figured that didn’t matter anymore. So I just downloaded everything in sight. Practically the whole computer system. I can’t believe how much that little memory stick holds.”

“You downloaded everything?” he asked, hardly able to believe it.

“Everything I’ll need. It will take some time to go through it all. Whoever was embezzling from the retirement funds was very sneaky. But I’ve got calendars, phone lists, log-on and log-off times, passwords, who attended what meeting when. Using a process of elimination, I can figure out who made the illicit withdrawals—I know I can.”

“You won’t have to. The agency has some of the best minds in the country—” He stopped. Until he knew who had betrayed him, he didn’t dare turn this information over to anyone. One keystroke, and all of the evidence Lucy had risked her life for could be erased.

“I could do it,” Lucy said. “I’m very good at puzzles. Maybe your organization has experts and high-tech equipment, but I know the people involved. I know how everything worked at that bank. No one is more qualified than me to analyze this data.”

She might just be right. “What will you need?”

“A computer powerful enough to handle the amount of data involved. A quiet place to work. That’s it.”

The plan he’d been working on earlier became a bit firmer in his mind. It was kind of crazy. But he didn’t know any other way to keep Lucy safe. He had access to any number of safe houses, but safe from whom? Everyone who was part of this mission knew those houses, too—Tarantula, Stungun, Orchid and his immediate supervisor, Siberia. His list of suspects. Four people whom, until an hour ago, he would have trusted with his life.

“I think I can accommodate you,” he said.

“Okay, then.” She settled back into her seat, looking satisfied. “Where are we going?”

Finally. He’d wondered when she would get around to asking that. “New York.”

“Your home turf.”

Bryan felt a prickle of apprehension. How did she know that?

“Your accent,” she said before he had a chance to ask. “I went to school with a guy from New York. Long Island. You sound just like him.”

Observant little thing, wasn’t she? During his training, he’d learned to erase every trace of accent from his voice. His safety, and that of his wealthy family, depended on keeping every detail of his personal life separate from his life at the agency. It was like that for all the agents he worked with. They all used their code names, and they never revealed any personal information for any reason.

How had he let his guard down long enough that Lucy had figured out where he was from? Maybe he was slipping. Because of the intense pressure, a lot of agents didn’t last long in the field.

“You work for the CIA?” she asked.

He used to. They’d recruited him in college, when he’d been studying business management with every intention of joining the family business, Elliott Publication Holdings. They said it was because of his straight As and his uncommon athleticism. He’d worked a lot of undercover.

Then a nameless, faceless person had recruited him to a newly formed investigative arm of Homeland Security, an agency so secret it didn’t have a name. The agency had no central office, and it wasn’t mentioned in the national budget. Basically it didn’t exist.

Lying usually came easily to him. But for some reason he didn’t want to lie straight-out to Lucy. He settled for a partial truth. “I work for Homeland Security.”

“I didn’t know Homeland Security had its own spies.”

“Things are still evolving there.”

“How does one become a spy?”

“Why, are you interested in joining up?”

“Maybe. Anything’s better than what I was doing.”

He’d only been kidding, but she was serious. “So why did you work at a bank if you didn’t like it?”

She shrugged. “It was expected of me. And the money was pretty good. I’d been thinking about doing something else, though.”

“Like what?”

“I dunno. Running away and joining the circus, maybe. I’d make a good lion tamer.”

“You?” he blurted out, then wished he hadn’t, given Lucy’s reaction. He’d insulted her.

“Why couldn’t I tame lions?”

“I’m sure you could. You could poke them with umbrellas.”

“I think you’re making fun of me. But you didn’t think it was so funny when I had you on the floor. I almost gave you an impromptu tracheotomy with my trusty umbrella.” She looked around the car. “Oh, we left it behind. I liked that umbrella.”

“I’ll buy you a new one,” he said, feeling a bit sorry for her. Her life had been disrupted, and it would never be the same. He didn’t think that fact had sunk into her head yet.

“We won’t be going back, then,” she said.

“Not in the foreseeable future.”

“Good. If I’d had to spend one more night in that boring town house with its boring white walls, wearing those boring suits, I’d have slit my wrists.”

She’d surprised him again. He’d done a considerable amount of research on Miss Lucy Miller. She came from a solid Kansas farming family, had attended the state university, got good grades. She’d been working at a job for which she was underqualified, but her employee reviews had come up glowing.

The only mystery about Lucy Miller was a period of about two years shortly after her college graduation, for which Bryan could not unearth much information. Her passport indicated she’d done some traveling abroad. The best he could figure, she’d been soaking up some culture before tying herself down to a serious career. She had an older brother who lived in Holland, so she might have been staying with him.

“My family will be worried,” she said.

“You won’t be able to contact them.”

“Ever?” she asked in a small voice. “Am I going into the witness protection program?”

“Is that what you want?”

She sighed. “I could stand a new identity. I’ve always hated the name Lucy. But I want to pick the name.”

“What would you pick?”

“Certainly not something as silly as Casanova—though I guess given the way you schmoozed Mrs. Pfluger, it fits. She’s always been mean as a snake to me.”

“Casanova wasn’t my idea. You can call me Bryan.” She would have learned his real name soon enough.

“And you can call me … Lindsay. Lindsay Morgan.”

“Sounds very sophisticated. Does it have any significance? Do you know anyone named Lindsay? Or Morgan?”

“No. I’ve always liked the actress Lindsay Wagner. You know, the Bionic Woman. I catch it on late-night TV. And Morgan—I don’t know. I pulled it out of thin air.”

Exactly what Bryan wanted to hear. “Then Lindsay Morgan it is. Get used to it.”

Oh, God, she thought, he was serious. She was really getting a new identity. A new life. A new job, a new home, maybe somewhere exciting like New York. She knew she should be terrified. Ruthless criminals with ties to international terrorism had broken into her home and planted bugs. They might even now be searching for her, intending to kill her.

But she could feel nothing but anticipation.

She wished her parents didn’t have to worry, though. She wanted to ask Bryan if she would ever see them again. But she had a feeling he really didn’t know the answer to that question. Something was troubling him. She got the feeling he was on shaky ground, that the turn this investigation had taken had thrown him for a loop.

He hadn’t believed her when she’d told him she was being followed. He’d only come to her town house because she’d threatened to disappear with all the data. He’d been very surprised to discover she was right, that the operation was blown to bits.

Did he suspect she was the one who’d blown it?

“I didn’t give myself away,” she said abruptly, wanting to clear this up right now. “I was extremely careful. Until today I did the downloading only five or ten minutes at a time, always when I was alone in my office, the door closed. I never said anything to anyone. Ever. And no one had access to the memory stick. I kept it in my bra.”

He looked over at her. “Really? Is it there now?”

“Yes.”

The car swerved slightly, and not for any apparent reason. Lucy wondered if something as innocent as mentioning her bra had startled Bryan. But how could it? The guy was a spy—he’d probably seen things unimaginable to normal people. Surely the mention of women’s underwear wouldn’t faze him.

Especially her underwear, which was about as boring as underwear could get.

It had been a very long time since anything she said or did had any effect on the opposite sex. She had buried that flirtatious, reckless girl under a frumpy suit, thick glasses and mousy hair, and she’d done it for a reason, she reminded herself.

So Bryan had probably been avoiding a bump in the road.

They drove for almost five hours, but the days were long in July, so it was still daylight when they hit New York. Lucy had been to the city many times, but it had been a while, and she’d forgotten how much she loved it. New York had an energy unlike any other city in the universe. Even if she’d had her eyes closed, she’d have known she was here. The traffic noise and exhaust fumes were peculiar only to this place.

“Are we staying in Manhattan?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“Are you putting me up in a hotel?”

“No. I don’t want to go anyplace where ID is required until we get your new name officially established.”

“A safe house, then?”

“The safest.”

He flashed her a brief smile, and it was the first time she’d seen him looking anything but grim since they’d met. That smile did things to her insides. No wonder cranky Mrs. Pfluger had become so cooperative. If Bryan had taken ten more minutes, the older woman probably would have dropped her own pants. Jeez, Lucy couldn’t believe she’d taken off her jeans in front of a strange man. But she’d been just panicked enough not to care.

They’d crossed over to Manhattan via the Lincoln Tunnel, and in midtown they were surrounded by skyscrapers, buses, cars, taxis and pedestrians. People were everywhere. And such interesting people! All colors, shapes and sizes. Some were elegantly dressed—theatergoers on their way to catch the curtain perhaps. Some in bedraggled business attire, waving down taxis, looked like they were just getting off from a long day at the office. And of course there were the ubiquitous colorful characters—hot-dog vendors, shady men selling designer-watch knock-offs and bootleg DVDs, and your garden-variety vagrants.

She’d forgotten how much she loved this city, though it held some painful reminders, as well. Normally she didn’t allow herself to think about her last time here, when she’d made a headlong dash home, crying the entire way. But now she did, and she found the pain wasn’t so sharp anymore. She felt more sad and wistful than anything.

She’d healed during the past two years. She’d needed the downtime, the safe haven her job at the bank had provided. But she was ready to move on now—older and wiser. She was actually grateful to the embezzler, whoever he or she was, for shaking her out of her boring, complacent life, or she might have remained there indefinitely, afraid to live again.

She was living now, that was for sure. Riding up Tenth Avenue in a Jaguar with a spy. Not your everyday occurrence.

Lucy cracked open her window, and the wonderful city smells assailed her. She got a whiff of some exotic food—garlic, tarragon, curry—and her stomach rumbled. It occurred to her she hadn’t eaten since breakfast, and even then she’d barely managed to choke down some yogurt. She’d been too nervous about her situation.

“I’m starving,” she said. “Any chance this safe house will have food in the fridge? Or maybe we can order in Chinese?” she asked hopefully.

“Don’t worry, I’ll feed you.”

They were driving through the Upper West Side now, the street lined with posh shops, trendy restaurants and bodegas, and residential high-rises where the beautiful people lived. Most of her time in New York had been spent around here, near Cruz’s apartment.

They passed a restaurant called Une Nuit—“One Night” in French. Though it was early by Manhattan standards, a line of trendily dressed hopefuls was already forming at the door.

“I read about that place,” she said, nodding toward it. “In People magazine, I think. Or maybe The Buzz. Some movie star had a birthday party there or something.”

“It was one of the Hilton sisters.”

“Oh, so you keep up with the gossip? How does a spy have time to read The Buzz?”

“Actually, I didn’t read about it. I was there.”

“No kidding? You know the Hilton sisters?” Lucy had always been starstruck. She’d been addicted to celebrity magazines since junior high and had fantasized about someday being one of the beautiful people—or at least hanging out with them.

She’d learned the hard way that the celebrity scene wasn’t all parties and glamour. In fact, beneath all the glitz, it could get pretty rotten. But even after her unhappy brush with that life, she hadn’t lost her fascination with it.

Bryan didn’t answer, but he pulled his car around a corner and into an underground garage, inserting a pass card to gain entrance.

“Um, we’re not actually stopping to eat, are we?” Lucy asked, looking down at her orange polyester pants. “I mean, I’d love to go to that restaurant someday, but they wouldn’t let me in the door dressed like this.”

He grinned. “I could get you in. But, no, we’re not going there right now. This is actually your safe house.” He pulled into a reserved parking space and cut the engine.

“Seems a funny place for a safe house,” she commented. “I thought we’d be a little more … isolated.”

“A safe house can be anywhere, so long as no one knows about it.” He led her through a door that was marked Entrance Une Nuit. But once inside a small, featureless foyer, they didn’t follow the signs to the restaurant. They boarded a rickety-looking elevator. Bryan pushed a button that had no floor number on it.

“Password, please,” came a computerized voice.

“Enchilada coffee,” Bryan replied. The elevator started up.

The amazement on Lucy’s expressive face gave Bryan a rush of pleasure, and he had to admit that, despite the gravity of his situation, he was enjoying Lucy’s reactions. He’d expected her to be a basket case, a perpetually panicked paranoid. But she’d risen to the occasion, showing a presence of mind few civilians possessed.

“How James Bond,” Lucy said. “The elevator is password protected?”

“With the latest voice-recognition software. No one gets into this loft but me—and my guests, of course.”

“So this is where you live?”

“Yeah. You have a problem with that?”

“No, but it seems a little odd, that’s all. I didn’t think spies normally brought witnesses in protective custody to their homes.”

“They don’t. This is a special occasion.”

“Why? Surely this case isn’t a particularly big or significant one. You must have dozens, hundreds of people attempting to funnel funds to terrorists.”

He debated how much to tell her. But he decided she could handle the truth. He wanted her to understand she could trust no one but him. “I have strong reason to believe I’ve been betrayed by my own people—which means there’s not a safe house in our system that’s truly safe. This is the one place I could think of where no one could possibly find you.”

“You mean, the people you work with—the other spies—don’t know where you live?”

“They don’t even know my name. To the others in my cell, and even to my boss, I’m Casanova.”

“Wow.”

The elevator doors opened, and Bryan led Lucy into his private living space. A couple of years ago, he’d bought the entire building where Une Nuit was located. He’d renovated and expanded the dining area, used the second floor for offices and storage, and had the top two floors converted to living space.

He’d spared no expense—he hadn’t had to. Though he had some family money, and he was well paid as a top-echelon government agent, this was the home that Une Nuit had built. The restaurant, which he’d originally opened as a cover so that not even his closest friends and family would know of his true vocation, had become unexpectedly popular—and lucrative.

The apartment’s floor plan wasn’t completely open, but a few interior walls had been placed at odd angles so the place didn’t feel like a box. The foyer opened up on one side to an enormous, modern kitchen he’d designed himself, with the latest in brushed-steel appliances. The kitchen was open to the living room, which faced a row of tall windows looking out onto Columbus Avenue. The floor was the original warehouse planking, sanded and polished to a high sheen. Some walls he had left as natural brick, while he’d had others plastered and painted a pristine white.

The furnishings were ultramodern, comfortable but sparse. He did his entertaining in the restaurant, so he didn’t need lots of chairs or sofas. Original art adorned the space, but again, not too much—a small abstract painting here, a funky sculpture there. Things he’d seen, wanted, picked up. Mostly from starving artists getting their starts, although a few pieces might be worth some serious money by now.

“I love this place!” Lucy whirled around, trying to take it all in. “You live here? You actually live here?”

“When I’m home, which lately hasn’t been all that often.”

“How long will I be staying here? Not that I’m complaining, just trying to prepare myself. Will you want me to testify at a trial? Will I have to stay indoors all the time, or can I go out?”

He smiled at her exuberance, which radiated from her every pore. He’d thought her plain when he first saw her, but he could see that wasn’t true, even in those horrible orange pants. She had an infectious smile and bright, lively eyes in a shade of pale blue he’d seldom seen.

“I won’t keep you locked up like a prisoner,” he said. “We’ll be able to venture out some. I don’t imagine you’ll run into anyone you know this far from home.” As for his family, there was no way to avoid them. He would have to find a way to explain her sudden presence in his life.

“Um, actually, that’s not true,” she said. “I lived here for a while.”

“What?” This was news to him. The exhaustive background check he’d done on her hadn’t mentioned any residences in New York. “That’s impossible.” But then he remembered those two years when she’d disappeared from the system.

“Have you ever heard of a band called In Tight?” she asked.

“Sure. They’re hot right now. In fact, didn’t they play the Super Bowl half-time this year?”

She nodded. “I used to work for them.”

Now it was Bryan’s turn to be shocked. “You? Working for a rock band?”

“I answered an ad on the Internet, and I got a job working on In Tight’s finances—you know, helping to manage the money when they did concert tours, stuff like that.”

Bryan had a hard time picturing Lucy Miller hanging out with wild-haired musicians. Was it possible she was pulling his leg? Was Lucy Miller a pathological liar?

“I did a background check on you,” he said. “There was nothing about—”

“They paid me off the books. They weren’t as famous then. They gave me a place to live, too, so you wouldn’t have found an apartment under my name. I’m just telling you this so you’ll know that I might run into people who would recognize me.”

“We’ll just have to make sure that doesn’t happen.” He studied her from head to toe, thinking how she could be made to look different—different hair, different eyes. “How would you feel about a makeover?”

He was worried that he’d insulted her, but instead she brightened. “Oh, I’d love one. Can I be a blonde? I think Lindsay Morgan would be a blonde.”

“If you like. My cousin Scarlet is the assistant fashion editor at Charisma magazine. She can bring over a truckload of clothes and cosmetics, hair stuff. Do you need the glasses?”

“Only if I don’t want to run into walls.”

“We’ll get you some contacts. Maybe green ones, though it’s a shame to cover up those pretty blue eyes.”

She looked away, embarrassed. “Don’t tease me. My eyes are a very ordinary shade of blue—almost gray. Boring.”

“I don’t find them boring at all.”

She peeked up at him. “You’re serious.”

Maybe he shouldn’t have said anything. He didn’t want Lucy feeling threatened, since she was forced to shack up with him. “Don’t worry, I’m not going to hit on you. But you do have pretty eyes.”

“Hit on me. Right. So when is the magical transformation going to take place?”

“How about after dinner?”

Bryan showed Lucy to the guest room, which had a private bath. “Where do you sleep?” she asked.

“My room’s upstairs, along with a study. I’ll show you later. My computer’s up there, and if you’re serious about deciphering the data you brought from the bank, you’ll be spending a lot of time at the keyboard.”

“Absolutely.”

“I’ll leave you to freshen up, then, while I do something about dinner.”

“Okay. Do you have a robe or something I can wear until your cousin brings me some clothes? I don’t really want to put Mrs. Pfluger’s polyester pants back on after my shower. In fact, I’d like to burn them.”

“I’ll bring you something.”

Bryan didn’t actually have a robe, but he found her a pair of pajamas still in the package, a gift from his gram. Every year she gave him pajamas, and he’d never had the nerve to tell her he didn’t wear them.

When he returned to Lucy’s room, the shower was running, the bathroom door open a crack. He felt a less-than-admirable urge to peek inside the bath and see what she looked like without clothes. Ever since she’d fallen on top of him, his imagination had been running wild.

He didn’t, then wondered why he was being so noble. He was a spy, used to peering at other people’s secrets. He set the pajamas on the bed and then went to see about dinner. A quick call downstairs to the restaurant took care of that. Then he had to deal with Scarlet.

“You know I love a makeover challenge,” Scarlet said, warming to the idea right away. “John’s away on business, so my evening’s free. I’ll stop by the office, grab everything I need and be there in an hour or so.”

“Are you guys getting married?”

“The wedding’s not till next year, and if you didn’t travel so much for the restaurant, you would know these things. Honestly, don’t they grow decent spices in America?”

Hmm. Maybe his standard excuse for his frequent absences—that he was seeking exotic spices—was growing a little thin. “I have to keep up with the latest,” he said blandly.

“So where’d you find this girl, anyway? What’s the story? Normally the girls I’ve seen you with don’t need any help in the clothes or cosmetics department.”

“Oh, she’s not my—” He stopped. How was he going to explain Lucy’s presence to Scarlet, and to the rest of his family? She could be under his protection for months. He couldn’t keep her under wraps all that time. “She’s not my usual type, true,” he continued smoothly. “But Lindsay’s special. Frankly, I think she’s perfect just the way she is. She’s a country girl, you know, the all-natural look. But she’s the one who wants a makeover. She wants to fit in better in New York.”

“I’ll be happy to help Lindsay any way I can,” Scarlet said, and Bryan read between the lines. She was going to pump Lucy for every shred of information she could get about Bryan’s new romance. He’d better go warn Lucy that she’d just become his girlfriend.

Three

Lucy couldn’t believe what she’d just overheard. She hadn’t meant to eavesdrop. But as she wandered into the kitchen fresh from her shower, she couldn’t help but hear Bryan talking to his cousin. And he’d passed her off as his new girlfriend.

Bryan turned, saw her and realized she’d heard. “Uh, yeah. Guess we need to talk about this. I’m sorry, but I don’t know any other way to explain what you’re doing here. My family doesn’t know I’m a government agent. No one knows. And they can’t know. I have to keep those two parts of my life completely separate, for the welfare of everyone concerned. You understand that, right?”

“Yes. But—”

“You’ve already proved you can be cool under pressure. When Scarlet gets here, just follow my lead. You’re okay with this, right?”

Oh, she was more than okay. The idea excited her. But there was a big problem. “Sure, I can deal with it, but who on earth is going to believe I’m your girlfriend?”

“Why wouldn’t they?”

“Because I’m just a mousy little banker from D.C. and you’re a … a …”

“I own a restaurant. That’s all anyone knows.” The phone rang and he picked it up. It didn’t escape Lucy’s attention that he didn’t argue about her self-assessment. Apparently he agreed with her description of “mousy.”

“Okay, thanks.” He hung up and turned back to Lucy. “That’s our dinner. I’ll be right back.”

While he was gone, Lucy tried to wrap her mind around the idea that she was going to be posing as Bryan’s girlfriend. Once upon a time she’d thought of herself as quite the hot chick. After all, she’d caught the eye of Cruz Tabor, drummer for In Tight, one of the hottest men in the country if the tabloids could be believed. She’d told herself when she took the job with In Tight that she wouldn’t behave like a groupie, that just being around the band was excitement enough for her.

Then Cruz had started flirting with her, and she was a goner. She’d believed every lie the bastard had told her. He’d said she was gorgeous, sexy, hot. He’d taken her on tour, letting her travel in first class with the band, buying her expensive presents.

But then she’d discovered he said all those things, did all those things, with every woman he slept with. And there were lots and lots of them. She’d been so naive, such a dumb bunny, to think she was anything special.

This was way different, though, she reminded herself. She wasn’t a hot chick, and she wasn’t deluding herself into believing she was. So how would anyone else believe she’d caught Bryan’s eye? Bryan was pretty hot himself. He could have any woman he wanted.

He knew the Hilton sisters. His trendy restaurant drew celebrities all the time. Did he sleep with any of them? How was she supposed to compete with that?

She found some dishes in the cabinets and set two place settings at the polished-granite bar. A few minutes later, the most wonderful aroma invaded her nose, followed by Bryan stepping off the elevator with two huge white bags.

Lucy’s stomach rumbled again. “What is that?”

“Shrimp and vegetable stir-fry Polonnaise. It’s not too spicy, and you can pick out anything you don’t like.”

“Stir-fry with a French sauce?”

“Right. That’s what Une Nuit is all about—Asian and French fusion dishes.” He set the bags on the counter, then gave her a quick once-over. She was wearing his pajama top with nothing on underneath. It was modest enough, covering all the important bits and hanging almost to her knees, so in deference to the fact it was summer in New York, she hadn’t bothered with the bottoms.

Now she wished she had. She felt suddenly vulnerable with her bare legs and a breeze from the air conditioner stirring around her private parts.

“Nice look,” he said with a wink. Then he turned and started unpacking the bags, stacking a mound of food on each plate and not even noticing that the hair on her forearms stood on end and her skin was flushed with awareness.

Oh, grow up, she scolded herself. He’d probably seen a hundred women wearing a lot less than a shapeless pajama top adorned with—yes, scenes from France.

He selected a bottle of chilled white wine from a climate-controlled wine safe as big as a refrigerator. “You like wine?”

“I don’t—Why, yes, I do.” She’d been about to say she didn’t drink. Alcohol was one of the things she’d given up when she’d made the decision to change her life, grow up, live like a conscientious adult instead of a wild, irresponsible teenager.

But after the day she’d had, a nice glass of Chardon-nay sounded really nice. And it wasn’t as if she’d ever been an excessive drinker. But copious alcohol consumption by the people around her had been a big part of the life she’d left behind.

Bryan filled two crystal glasses and handed her one. “A toast. To your new life as Lindsay Morgan.”

“To Lindsay.” She clinked her glass with his and took a sip of the crisp, dry wine. This whole thing was so surreal.

She hopped up on a bar stool and dived into the food, which was absolutely the most incredible meal she’d ever eaten. “Oh, my God, this is so good. No wonder your restaurant is so successful. Did you start it, or buy it as an ongoing concern?”

“It was a moderately profitable French bistro when I bought it. Merging French with Asian started out as a joke, really, one night when the manager, the chef and I had a little too much to drink. Then I thought, why not? We all started experimenting in the kitchen, adding one thing and then another to the menu, and it just exploded in popularity.”

“I can see why.” Her taste buds were cheering over the subtle blend of exotic spices and the delicate textures, while the beautiful blend of colors and shapes and aromas engaged her other senses. She ate it all and didn’t regret it a bit, even when she was stuffed. If Bryan was going to feed her like this every day, she was going to have to use the home gym she’d seen tucked away in another bedroom.

When they finished, Lucy hand washed the dishes and put them away—no sense running the dishwasher for two people. A buzzer alerted them to Scarlet’s arrival, and Bryan went down to greet her and help her carry up her things.

Lucy was nervous about meeting Bryan’s cousin. She hadn’t had to deal with a boyfriend’s family since high school. She tried to tell herself it didn’t matter whether Scarlet liked her. Bryan wasn’t her real boyfriend, and this situation was temporary. When they caught the embezzler, she would start a new life away from here and she’d probably never lay eyes on Bryan or Scarlet again.

But it did matter. She still wanted Scarlet to like her. But she figured she would be found sadly lacking. The woman was an assistant fashion editor for one of the hottest women’s magazines in the country, after all. Scarlet was used to dressing supermodels and movie stars, not frumpy little bankers wearing oversize men’s pajamas.

The elevator opened, and Bryan returned carrying an enormous armload of clothing. Following him was one of the most beautiful, exotic creatures Lucy had ever seen. She was almost as tall as Bryan, reed slim, with a gorgeous head of light-auburn hair that fell in abundant, bright waves around her shoulders and down her back. She wore a bright-green, gauzy off-the-shoulder shirt and snug pants in a coordinating print, all of which set off her pale-green eyes—eyes that zeroed in on Lucy and missed nothing.

“So you’re my victim,” she said cheerfully, dropping her own armload of clothing, a shopping bag and a cosmetic case the size of an industrial tool chest. She came forward, hand outstretched. “Hi, I’m Scarlet. You must be Lindsay.”

Lucy uttered some pleasantry, but inside she was trembling. What had she gotten herself into? She was living a lie, starting right now. What if she couldn’t pull this off? Bryan had been very clear about how important it was to keep his secret agent life separate from his family, and she wouldn’t be able to live with herself if she messed that up for him.

“Stand up,” Scarlet said. “Let’s see what we have to work with.”

Bryan leaned one elbow on the bar and watched, obviously interested in the proceedings, and Lucy felt her face heating again. This was going to be embarrassing enough without him watching, seeing her every physical flaw pointed out.

Scarlet apparently sensed Lucy’s unease, because she turned to her cousin. “Don’t you have something to do? A restaurant to run? Stash was complaining to me that you’re piling too much work on him with all your gallivanting around Europe and Asia.”

“I want to see what you’re going to do with her.”

“No,” she said firmly. “Lindsay’s makeover is about her, not your fantasies of the perfect woman. Now go away. And stay gone at least until midnight.”

Bryan grumbled, but he turned and headed for the elevator. Then he abruptly changed direction and walked up to Lucy. “Have fun, okay? I’ll see you in a while.” And then he touched her cheek, gently angling her face toward him, and kissed her lightly on the mouth.

The kiss lasted maybe half a second, but it electrified everything inside Lucy from her toes to her scalp, and she had to grip the back of the bar stool she’d just vacated to keep from keeling over.

Oh, Lord, she was in trouble. She knew deep down that it was all an act, that Bryan had been working undercover for years and that the ruse of a girlfriend came as easily as breathing to him. But it was all new to her. The casual possessiveness he’d treated her to had felt awfully damn real.

Scarlet, apparently oblivious to the tidal wave of feelings coursing through Lucy, was testing the weight and texture of Lucy’s still-damp hair.

“You’ve got great hair,” she said. “Thick and healthy. It’ll do just about anything you want. I assume you’ll want to keep most of the length, but we can do some layers—”

“No. I want it short. I want it to look as different as possible. And blond.”

“You want highlights?”

“Oh, no. I want to be radically blond.”

Scarlet grinned. “I’m so glad you said that. I was prepared to be cautious, but if you’ll trust me—let me go crazy on you—you’ll be ready for a Charisma cover shoot when I’m done.”

Lucy laughed self-consciously. “Well, I hardly think that.”

“Why not? You’ve got excellent bone structure, regular features, good teeth. The glasses, though, have got to go.”

“I want contacts,” she said, remembering Bryan’s instructions. “I want green eyes. Bright green. But I’m afraid there’s not much you can do about my figure.”

“Hey, most of our models have even less in the chest department than you do. You’d be surprised what good foundation garments can do. You’re slender, which means the clothes will fit you. Help me carry all this stuff into the bedroom and we can get started.”

“I’m staying—” Lucy almost blew it in the first five minutes. If she was Bryan’s girlfriend, she wouldn’t be in the guest room; she would be sharing the master bedroom with him. “I’ll be staying here for quite awhile, I guess, and I don’t have any clothes at all. I’ll need everything.” There. She congratulated herself on a skillful recovery.

“What happened to your clothes?” Scarlet wanted to know, obviously sensing a juicy story. “And don’t worry, nothing you could say would shock me. My twin sister is marrying a rock star.”

“Really? Which one?” Please, dear God, don’t let it be anyone she knew, anyone with In Tight.

“Zeke Woodlow.”

Lucy was infinitely relieved—until she put it all together. She’d read about Zeke’s engagement in The Buzz. “Your sister is Summer Elliott. You’re the Elliott family, the ones who own all those magazines.” One of the richest families on the Eastern Seaboard.

Scarlet looked startled. “You didn’t know that?”

Maybe she’d just better shut up. “I didn’t know Bryan was one of the Elliotts. I’m a little slow—just putting it together now. We haven’t been dating for long,” she added, hoping that would explain away her cluelessness. “As for my clothes, I, uh, burned them. I need a fresh start.”

“Burned them? Where?”

Belatedly Lucy remembered you couldn’t burn anything in New York—it was against the law.

“Back home.”

“Where’s home?”

“Kansas. On a farm.” That much, at least, was true. She’d grown up in a small, conservative Kansas farming town, and her parents were still there.

“What was Bryan doing in Kansas? I thought he was in Europe.”

“Oh, he was. We met in Paris.”

“Then you went home to the farm, burned your clothes and came back here? Naked?”

Lucy smiled as if this wasn’t the most ridiculous story anyone had ever tried to pass off as the truth. “Right.”

“Girlfriend, I like your style.”

Bryan was still trying to recover his equilibrium as he headed down to the restaurant. He’d realized he was going to have to make it look good if his family was ever going to believe Lucy was his girlfriend. He’d never had a serious relationship before. Well, he’d tried once, but he’d quickly found out that women didn’t like it when he disappeared for weeks at a time. He’d decided that as long as he was in the spy business, it wasn’t fair to any woman to try to have a relationship. Not only would they have to put up with frequent absences, but there was always the chance he wouldn’t come home.

If that ever happened, the poor woman would probably never find out his fate.

So he dated casually. He occasionally slept with a woman if she was hot, willing and understood the ground rules. He’d seldom brought a woman into his loft, and he’d certainly never installed one as a live-in mistress. For his family to buy “Lindsay’s” sudden presence in his life, he was going to have to claim he was utterly smitten. And that meant acting the adoring boyfriend, with public displays of affection, longing glances, the whole nine yards.

He probably should have prepared Lucy better for the role she was playing. They hadn’t even gone over a cover story—where Lucy was from, where they’d met.

Oh, well, Lucy was smart enough to wing it. As long as she reported back to him any details she’d given Scarlet, so they could keep the story consistent, it would be okay.

As for that kiss, Lucy had looked like the proverbial deer in the headlights when he’d swooped in for the light smooch. But he was the one who’d been surprised. Her lips had been soft and warm, and her vulnerability had somehow transmitted itself straight from her soul to his, all in the half second of contact between their mouths.

It had been the merest brushing of lips, so innocent, yet it had shaken him to his shoes. No kiss had ever done that.

He’d mostly composed himself by the time he entered the restaurant kitchen, but the memory of the kiss remained in the back of his mind.

“Hey, boss, you’re back!” one of the sous-chefs greeted him.

“Monsieur Bryan!” called out another. “Hey, those Florentine eggrolls are going like hotcakes.”

The head chef, Kim Chin, who ran the kitchen like a marine bootcamp, looked up from his sauté pan and grunted a greeting. “’Bout time.”

All right, so he’d been neglecting his business lately. No one said it was easy working two jobs, and the Alliance Trust case had been occupying every waking hour these days. While Lucy had worked it from her end, Bryan had been tracking down the people receiving the embezzled funds, working with two French agents to prevent any of the illicit funds from reaching terrorists in Iraq while not tipping off the bad guys on the American side. Not until he had them all rounded up could he assemble the evidence needed to put them away for a good long time.

“Where’s Stash?” he asked Kim.

“Out schmoozing the beautiful people, of course, the worthless Frenchie.” Which was pretty funny, since Stash practically lived at the restaurant, keeping everything running, paying the bills, meeting payroll, handling all the hundreds of details that kept Une Nuit at the top of everyone’s list.

“Bryan, you’re back!” Stash greeted him with a hearty hug and a double air-kiss. Stash Martin was an energetic Frenchman in his thirties. With equal parts stubbornness and optimism, he was the perfect manager for an often absent owner. “What keeps you away for so long, eh?” he asked with a French accent. “The place could have been turned into a hot-dog stand while you were gone.”

Bryan had prepared a long, shaggy-dog story about his exploits in Europe. Instead he said, “I met someone.” He had to set up Lucy’s cover story, he reasoned. Lying came easily to him, given the number of years he’d worked undercover. But the scary thing was, he didn’t have to manufacture the edge in his voice when he talked about Lucy. What had started as a fairly routine job had turned into something exciting and challenging—and for all the wrong reasons.

Lucy stared at herself in the mirror, then stared some more. Scarlet hadn’t allowed her to watch the transformation, so her own image was a complete surprise. No, a shock. Her mother wouldn’t recognize her—which was the point, of course.

Her brown hair lay in piles on the floor. Scarlet had cut it to chin length, dyed it to a pale blond, then blow-dried it straight so that it fell in a shimmering fringe that bounced with her every move. Her eyebrows had been plucked and reshaped, and the artfully applied cosmetics had sculpted her face and redefined the shape of her mouth. She now had cheekbones.

Then there were the clothes. After sorting through the piles and piles of glamorous outfits, Scarlet had decided that Lucy needed a look, and had chosen an array of clingy knits in a palette of soft colors—mossy green, plum, cantaloupe, tawny gold. The outfit she wore now was a pair of green low-rider pants and a cropped tank top that clung to all her curves. A second shirt in a paler green, with a front zipper and short sleeves, went over the tank. Wedge-heeled sandals and bold jewelry completed the look.

The most amazing thing, though, was the fact that she had cleavage. Scarlet had found her a really clever push-up bra that made her A cups look like Cs.

Lucy kept putting her glasses on to look at herself from far away, then taking them off and peering at her face from close up. She just couldn’t believe it. She did look like someone who could be Bryan Elliott’s girlfriend. Someone who belonged in New York. When she’d lived here before, she’d never felt quite at home, never really shed her Kansas persona.

“This is just amazing,” she said for about the third time.

“The models you see in magazines don’t have anything we don’t have,” Scarlet said. “Hairstylists, makeup artists, good lighting and a skilled photographer can turn the plainest-looking woman into a knockout.”

Lucy was convinced. But she wasn’t sure the Lucy Miller on the inside matched the one on the outside. Beautiful women—like Scarlet—had an inner confidence, a way of moving and talking that Lucy lacked.

“What if I can’t carry it off?” she asked in a small voice.

“You’ll manage. Listen, I can’t imagine Bryan hooking up with a woman who isn’t really, really special. He saw something in you, something inside. Just remember that, and you’ll be fine.”

Oh, yeah. What Scarlet didn’t know was that Bryan didn’t pick her at all. She’d dropped into his lap, and now he was stuck with her.

“So are you close to Bryan?” Lucy asked, figuring this was a golden opportunity to find out more about her supposed boyfriend.

“All the Elliott cousins are close. Here, stand up on the bed and let me shorten those pants. You’re as slim as a model, but not quite as tall as one.”

“Do most of you work for the magazines?” Lucy asked, trying not to think about the fact she was standing on Bryan’s bed, trying not to think of him sleeping there. Or doing something else.

“We all work for Elliott Publication Holdings in one capacity or another. Except Bryan. He’s the only one to escape that fate.”

“Why is that, do you think?”

“Oh, he had other ideas from the time he was young. His heart problem kept him somewhat separated from the rest of us, I think. Until he had his operation, he couldn’t run and play with us, and we were an extremely active bunch. Turn.”

Lucy obediently turned, but her mind was reeling. Heart problem? Bryan?

“By the time they fixed his heart, his interest in food and cooking had already developed. Then he got into sports, bigtime—had to outdo his brother and all his cousins, as if he was making up for lost time. The magazines just didn’t hold any appeal for him, I guess. Oh, he studied finance in school with some vague notion of going to work for the company, but that didn’t last long. He wanted to do his own thing. He may have been the smartest one in the bunch.”

“Why would you say that? Working for Charisma must be like a dream.”

“Ordinarily, yes. But with the competition going on—Oh, Bryan probably didn’t tell you about that, and why would he?”

Lucy was intrigued. “What competition? Tell me.”

“My grandfather has decided to retire and make one of his children the CEO of the corporation. Each is currently head of one of the magazines—Pulse, Snap, The Buzz and Charisma. So the one whose magazine shows the biggest profit growth by the end of the year wins the top spot. Needless to say, everyone is at each other’s throats. My boss, Aunt Fin, practically lives at the magazine, she’s so obsessed with winning. And Uncle Michael—Well, his wife, my Aunt Karen, is recovering from breast cancer and he should be focusing on that, not worrying about a stupid contest.”

Scarlet had gotten a bit worked up, and she stopped suddenly. “I’m sorry. Bryan would skewer me like a shish-kebab if he knew I was airing family laundry to his new girl.”

“I won’t say anything,” Lucy assured her.

Lucy glanced at her new watch—a big, copper-colored bracelet thing—and was surprised to see it was after 1 a.m. Bryan wasn’t home yet. What was he doing, she wondered. He obviously wasn’t anxious to get back to her. It was probably a relief to be free of her for a while.

“Well, I hate to undo your hard work, but I think I’ll take off all this makeup and turn in,” Lucy said. “It’s been a long day. Thank you so much, Scarlet. It was really nice of you to spend your evening this way.”

“My pleasure, believe me. It was nice to get away from family and work pressure for a while.” The two women embraced, and Lucy felt a rush of warmth and gratitude to Scarlet. She hadn’t had any close girlfriends the last couple of years since moving to D.C. A few women at work had invited her occasionally to join them for dinner or drinks or a movie, but she’d kept her distance. She’d told herself it was because she wanted to keep her focus on work and not get distracted until her career was better established. But she could see now she’d been punishing herself. Having fun had gotten her into a lot of trouble. Therefore, fun was bad and it had to be eliminated from her life.

She imagined Scarlet already had a full complement of friends, though. Anyway, Lucy probably wouldn’t have time for socializing. She had to go through all the data she’d downloaded from the bank and figure out who the embezzler was.

She helped Scarlet pack up her things and walked her to the elevator. “I’d walk you down and help you carry all this, but I don’t know how to get back in.”

Scarlet rolled her eyes. “Bryan’s silly elevator. He does have some pretty valuable artwork he doesn’t want stolen, but he so overdid it with the security.”

Maybe, but Lucy was grateful for it. They said goodbye. Then Lucy headed back up to the loft’s upper level, which housed the master suite and Bryan’s study. She wanted to move all of her things back down to her own bedroom before Bryan returned.

No such luck. She heard the elevator as she was heading down the stairs with an armload of clothing, her new wardrobe.

“Lucy?” he called out as he strode into the living room. “Oh, there you are. It took longer than I thought to go through the—” He stopped midstride and stared at her. “What have you done to your hair?”

“You … you don’t like it?” Lucy squeaked. Scarlet had pointed out that men liked long hair, and Bryan might not be too keen on the short ‘do. Her hair barely skimmed her jawline. Lucy had hesitated only briefly. The point was to look different, not to please Bryan.

But now she realized how badly she wanted him to like the new Lucy. Or rather, Lindsay.

“You just look so—Come down here. Put those clothes down and let me have a look at you.”

Lucy did as asked, laying the beautiful new clothes on a chair and standing there, feeling enormously self-conscious as Bryan looked her up and down, then walked behind her and all around her, his expression unreadable.

He came closer and reached toward her face. She tried not to react as he removed her glasses and studied her features.

“Scarlet gave me the name of an optometrist who can fit me with green contacts. I can do that tomorrow.”

“Okay.” He didn’t give her back the glasses. Instead, he stuck them in his shirt pocket.

“Well?” she said impatiently. “Will I do? Or do I just look ridiculous?” Maybe she was a sow’s ear that couldn’t pass muster as a silk purse.

A smile spread slowly across Bryan’s face, which was a bit blurry to her. “Oh, you’ll do, all right. Lucy, you look like a movie star.” His gaze on her was like a heat lamp. Or maybe the heat was coming from inside her. She couldn’t see him all that well, after all. She was probably imagining the blatant interest in the way he looked at her.

Suddenly, all she could think about was the way he’d kissed her earlier, so casually, and how she’d almost melted on the spot. It was all a game to him, but she wasn’t used to being deceptive.

“Don’t you think you should start calling me Lindsay all the time?” she said, sounding testy even to her own ears. “And if you’re going to kiss me like you did, at least give me a little warning.”

“We’re supposed to be besotted with each other, so you can expect me to kiss you just about any time.”

“O-okay.”

“You don’t sound too sure.” He grasped her upper arms with both hands and looked deeply into her eyes. “Do you think you can pull this off? If not, we’ll have to think of something else. My family can’t suspect the truth. That would be a disaster.”

Lucy was disturbed by the idea that he might change his mind, take her somewhere else, dump her in some hotel or something. In a very short time, she’d accustomed herself to the idea that she would be posing as Bryan’s live-in lover.

“I can pull it off,” she said. “But if we could rehearse—I mean, get our stories worked out, so I could, you know, know what to expect—”

He was watching her mouth. She stopped self-consciously. “Have I smeared my lipstick?”

“No, sweetheart, you look perfect. I was just thinking that we can’t have you looking like a startled cat every time I touch you or kiss you. So you’re right, of course. We need to rehearse.” And with that, he slanted his mouth against hers and kissed her as if he meant it.