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“He might have been. The thing a lot of people don’t understand about students from some less-than-friendly nations is that they’re not spies exactly, but they’re expected to report back to their embassies about every person they meet. So say this student reported his brief meeting with you, as he’s reported a hundred others, but this one caught the eye of somebody in intelligence. So he was told to make a further contact with you. If he can manage to become just slightly acquainted with you, then he can introduce someone else to you without arousing your suspicions.”
Jessica nodded unhappily. “Then if it really wasn’t an accidental meeting, I can expect to run into him again sometime.”
“Absolutely. And if you do, I want you to go along with his suggestions.”
Jessica’s eyes widened, and she drew a sharp, disbelieving breath. “You’re kidding! Tell me you’re kidding!” But from the expression on his face she knew he wasn’t. The unease she’d felt over the missing document was nothing compared to the nervous fluttering in her stomach right now. “Arlen, I don’t have the nerves for this!”
“No nerves are required,” he said calmly. “The man asks you to lunch, and you go. He may or may not introduce you to someone else. At each stage, you’re always free to continue or bow out. Nothing commits you for the long haul, Jessica.”
“But—but—” How could she adequately express the terror she felt? “I’d be too scared to do it.”
“There’s nothing to be scared of. Nobody who’s been a double agent for us has ever, ever, been harmed. In fact, a few have found the KGB protects them as carefully from the FBI as we try to protect our double agents from them.”
“We’re not talking about the KGB here, Arlen.”
“It doesn’t matter. I’ll look after you. The whole damn Bureau will look after you. And if the opposition tumbles to the fact that you’re a double agent, all they’ll do is skedaddle so fast your head’ll spin. They would have absolutely nothing to gain by harming you, and everything to lose.”
Jessica shook her head, frantically trying to find an objection that would convince him.
“Look.” Reaching out, he caught one of her hands in each of his and stilled their nervous motions. “Just think about it, Jessica. You don’t have to answer right now. Just think about it and how important it is.”
He saw the fear in her bright brown eyes and felt guilty for what he was doing. He was positive she wouldn’t be hurt in any way, or he wouldn’t be suggesting it. It was important that she do this, damn it, but not important enough to put her life at risk. The problem was, people’s heads were full of Hollywood notions of espionage, notions that had little to do with reality, particularly the reality of domestic espionage. In fact, Hollywood aside, foreign intelligence operations had more to lose than they could ever gain if they even once harmed an American citizen who was working for either them or the FBI.
Her fingers felt so small and fragile within the confines of his large hands, and her skin was so smooth and satiny. Her wrists were small and delicate, certainly less than half the size of his. She would be small and soft and satiny, hot and tight and—
He abruptly released her hands, schooling his thoughts to less inflammatory paths. What a damnable time for his libido to resurrect itself!
“Just think about it,” he said, relieved to find he sounded natural. “I promise I won’t pressure you.”
That was fair, Jessica thought with relief. She understood the importance of what he’d asked her to do, but she seriously doubted she had steady enough nerves for anything of the sort. In many ways, she was simply a mouse. Still, she thought wistfully, she might almost consider it—if he would hold her hands again. She had known so little caring physical contact in her life.
“I’d better be getting you back,” Arlen said, signaling the waitress. “I’ll come by this evening, unless that will interfere with your plans.”
“To ask me about what happens this afternoon?”
He nodded and gave her a reassuring smile. “And that’s all, I promise. Unless you want to talk about something more.”
“All right.” She tried to look indifferent. “I’ll just be trying to straighten up the place. Someday I hope to have all those boxes emptied.”
When they were driving back toward MTI through the steady rain, Jessica thought to ask, “What do you want me to do about that document?”
Arlen braked for a stoplight and rubbed his chin before glancing at her. “Leave it undiscovered until tomorrow,” he said after a moment. “Tonight I’ll give you a crash course in how to lift a fingerprint. I’m willing to bet, though, that the prints will be wiped off. Anyone with half a brain would have thought of that once the hue and cry was raised over that document.”
“But if I find one?”
“It may be yours. Whatever you find, you can bring it out to me tomorrow. Why don’t I meet you for lunch again?”
Jessica looked sideways at him. “Is your expense account up to this?”
He chuckled. “When it starts complaining, I’ll let you know.”
When he pulled up before MTI’s main entrance, he set the car in Park and turned to her. “Take care, Jess,” he said and bent forward, giving her the lightest, gentlest kiss on her lips. “See you tonight,” he added in a husky murmur.
It was all for show, but it didn’t feel like playacting, not to Jessica. Her heart stopped in her throat, and electric sparks shot out from that brief, light caress, dazing her.
Somehow she climbed out of the car. It was only as she was stepping into the lobby that she realized someone had been watching. Bob Harrow, her project chief, stood just inside the doors, grinning like the Cheshire cat.
“Something wrong, Bob?” she asked him, feeling annoyed that he’d seen the gesture. That in fact he’d probably precipitated it.
“Not a thing,” he said, suddenly all innocence. “Not a thing, Jessica.” But there was a knowing glint in his eye as he rode the elevator upstairs with her.
Chapter 3
Bob Harrow hadn’t been the only one to notice Jessica’s lunch date. Frank Winkowski, another of the project’s programmers, had seen her departure and Arlen’s kiss on her cheek. Before the afternoon was over she had endured some merciless teasing, and naturally she made it worse by insisting that Arlen was just a good friend.
She wasn’t entirely comfortable with teasing. She’d been an only child, raised by a mother and grandmother who’d had little use for her. Since coming to work at MTI, she’d seen a lot of teasing among her coworkers, and on occasion she’d been the gentle butt of some of it. It was easier to handle now, but she couldn’t take it as casually as others did.
The teasing, however, had taken her mind off other things, and she got through the entire afternoon with only occasional thoughts of the document in her drawer or the security inspection that surely had begun somewhere in the building.
Unannounced inspections were permitted by the terms of the security agreement a defense contractor had with the government, so the Defense Investigative Service needed to give no excuse for showing up. No one knew that this inspection was a direct result of Jessica’s report to the FBI, and Arlen had assured her that DIS would be careful not to draw any attention to her. She would be treated exactly like everyone else, and since these inspections always took at least three days, she didn’t really expect to see an inspector for another day or so.
When she got home she changed into jeans and a sweatshirt, ate a quick salad for dinner and dug into the packing boxes that still waited all over the house. She’d accumulated quite a few possessions over the years since she left college. Most of them had been bought by chance when she stumbled on some item that she knew would be perfect for the home she dreamed of owning someday. Now she owned the home, and she was a little surprised to find how much of the furnishings and bric-a-brac she’d already acquired.
She had just dragged the last of a series of boxes to the foot of the stairs to be carried up when the doorbell rang. Arlen. This time she didn’t imagine herself slinking away. This time a swift image flashed across her mind that left her aching. Giving herself a mental scolding, she dusted her hands against her jeans and went to open the door.
If she’d been jolted by his charisma last night, tonight she came close to being stunned. Tonight he wore snug, faded jeans and a black sweater that awoke swashbuckling images in Jessica’s hyperactive imagination. She wouldn’t have thought that a man who could look so elegant and conservative in banker’s gray could look like an outlaw in a pair of jeans.
“Hello, Jessica.” He smiled, deepening the creases at the corners of his eyes. Unaware of the effect that expression had on her pulse rate, he scanned her from head to foot. Her jeans, unlike last night’s slacks, were worn from many washings and were a closer fit. Her sweatshirt, also worn thin from many washings, hugged her breasts with more familiarity than he suspected she realized. This lady was womanly. She would fill a man’s hands and arms; she would cradle him in softness and surround him in heated satin. And he sure as hell shouldn’t be thinking about things like that when he was supposed to be working.
Jessica stepped back, achieving a smile despite her heart’s hammering—the way he’d looked at her!—and invited him in.
“This isn’t a bad time, is it?” he asked as he stepped into her foyer. Immediately he noticed the boxes lined up at the foot of the stairs. “Do you need those carried up? Let me do that for you.”
“Oh, I couldn’t really—”
Turning, he smiled down at her. “Sure you can. You’re helping me, and I’d like to do something in return.”
Jessica’s knees rubberized instantly. That crooked, warmly intimate smile did things to her insides, tweaking, pulling, tingling. Before she could gather her wits to respond, he squatted and hefted the first box. His sweater pulled up in the back, exposing a band of smooth skin and the fact that he wore no belt on his jeans. Why did the absence of a belt cause a deep, slow pulsing inside her?
“Where upstairs?” Arlen asked as he began climbing.
“First room on the right.” Was that really her voice, sounding so husky?
Arlen set the box out of the way against the wall in the designated room. As he straightened, he knew with sudden, deep certainty that this was Jessica’s room. It was, he supposed, prying, but nevertheless he looked around him with interest, noting the ruffled dotted swiss curtains on the tall windows, the white satin comforter and white dust ruffle on the maple four-poster. Embroidered linen doilies decorated the top of her maple dresser, and dotted swiss skirted a dressing table with a matching mirror. The only colors in the room were the bright area rugs scattered around the polished wood floor.
Virginal, he thought. The room of a sixteen-year-old. He started to turn away, wondering what had arrested Jessica’s development, when he suddenly had the most erotic image of bare skin on white satin and dark hair that tumbled to her waist. How long was her hair? he wondered, then shook himself and headed downstairs for the next box. Damn it, Coulter, this is business!
Five boxes later, he’d seen the other two bedrooms, one of which held a desk, bookcase and personal computer with all the necessary peripherals. And he was still as randy as the old goat he was beginning to feel like. Bare skin on white satin. He cursed the randomly firing brain cell that had brought that image to mind.
Jessica awaited him at the foot of the stairs. “Coffee’s ready,” she said brightly.
“Great.” He descended the last few stairs wondering what she would do if he pulled her into his arms and kissed her. By the time he reached the bottom she’d started to move into the living room, unwittingly giving him a view of her gently swaying rear that only compounded his problem.
Once again she served coffee in the delicately patterned china cups. Seated in an armchair, Arlen gave himself a few minutes to savor her really excellent coffee and to bank some of his unwanted urges.
“How’d it go at work this afternoon?” he asked finally.
“Like always.” She flushed. “Well, not exactly. It seems you were right that we might be observed. Two of the guys I work with saw us, and I got teased about it.”
One corner of his mouth lifted. “But I bet they didn’t ask who I was.”
“Of course not. They had that all figured out.” Her voice was tart, and then she laughed softly. “You were right. Once they saw you kiss me, they filled in all the blanks. Nobody even asked your name.”
“It’s an old magician’s technique. Misdirect the attention of the audience. Works every time.” His smile broadened. “What about the inspection?”
“It never got anywhere near our section today. The grapevine didn’t even get the word to us until almost quitting time. The only thing different that I noticed was that the security stations were performing random briefcase checks for the first time in an age.”
Arlen nodded. “I expected that. Just like I expect that tomorrow you’ll have to show your ID to get past the front desk, even if it’s a security crew that knows you.”
He sipped coffee and let his head rest against the chair back. “This chair is too comfortable, Jess. You may never get rid of me.” Heavy lidded, his eyes watched her lazily. “I’ve got the fingerprint kit out in my car. I suppose I should get it.”
“There’s no rush,” she said. “I’m not going anywhere.”
They sat for a while in companionable silence, and he began to feel more relaxed than he could remember feeling in quite a while.
“Arlen?”
“Hmm?”
“How can I carry fingerprints out of the building tomorrow if they’re doing briefcase checks?”
He rolled his head a fraction so that he could look at her. “There’s no law that says you can’t carry fingerprints around with you.”
“But what if they ask?” Her small face was worried.
“Tell them your boyfriend’s a cop, and they’re his. Or tell them you’re taking a night school course in criminology. Relax, Jess. They probably won’t even look in your briefcase tomorrow, but if they do, they’ll know better than to bother you about things that are none of their business. They don’t want any trouble with their bosses.”
He spoke lazily, his eyelids still drooping, and Jessica’s wild imagination suddenly presented her with the image of a panther lazing in the sun, deceptively sleepy but very much alert.
“Where are you from originally?” she asked him abruptly.
Arlen heard the shortness of her tone and wondered if he’d said something to disturb her. No, he was sure he hadn’t. And then coiling through him like liquid heat was the memory of the way her lips had parted at his touch earlier in the day. Could she be bothered by the same impulses that were troubling him? Turning his head a little more, he looked at her fully.
“I hate to admit this,” he said, “but I’m a damn Yankee from New York.”
Jessica’s lips curved. “New York? Do you miss it?”
“Hardly. One of the Bureau’s rules is that you can’t be stationed anywhere too close to home. I knew when I signed on that I’d never go back.”
“How long have you been here?”
“Long enough to know you Texans have the same opinion about Yankees in general and New Yorkers in particular that the rest of the country has about Texans.”
Jessica laughed. “So you’re a big-city boy?”
“Oh, I’m not from the city,” he said. “I’m from a sleepy little dairy-farming community upstate. What about you? Did you grow up right here?”
She shook her head. “No, I’m a hayseed, too. From a little town in West Texas where we had a lot more dust storms than we had rainstorms. Let me get some more coffee.”
At the door she paused and looked back. “Are you hungry? I think I have some coffee cake in the freezer. It’d take only a minute to zap it in the microwave.” Actually, she more than thought the coffee cake was there. She had bought it on the way home this afternoon just so she could offer it to him.
“Sounds good,” he admitted. He’d stayed late at work tonight, and by the time he got away he’d decided on fast food so he wouldn’t arrive at Jessica’s too late. The food had been tasteless, though, so he’d ditched his dinner, stopped by his apartment just long enough to change, then dashed over here. Coffee cake sounded very good. In fact, relaxing sounded very good. It was Thursday evening, and so far he’d worked every night this week, not to mention last Sunday, when he’d had to help one of the agents iron out some wrinkles in a bribery investigation.
“Do you work all the time?”
The soft question caused him to look up at Jessica. She was standing beside him, holding out a plate with one hand and his freshly filled cup with the other.
“Thank you.” Smiling, he took both from her and set them on the coffee table.
“Do you?” she asked as she resumed her seat on the couch.
“Do I what?”
“Work all the time.”
He shrugged. “Sometimes it seems that way. Aren’t you having any cake?” His plate held a large piece. She had no plate at all.
“I can’t afford the calories. Don’t worry about me.”
She said it as if she’d been saying it for a very long time and had come to accept it, and somehow Arlen found that utterly intolerable. “Are you trying to lose weight?”
“Of course.” She smiled faintly. “All the time.”
“Why?”
She gaped at him. “Why?” she repeated stupidly. “Why?” Anybody could see that just by looking at her.
“Yes. Why?” And somewhere between images of pink satin skin on a white satin bed and the understanding that he was being driven out of his mind by the sexual appeal of a woman who believed she didn’t have any, Arlen lost the first iron layer of his self-control. Having been, for more than four years, unable to hold and love a woman probably added considerably to the stress of the moment. Since Lucy had become too ill to love, he hadn’t wanted to love. Not until this plump little partridge entered his life. And here she was trying to waste away the very charms that were driving him wild.
“You have no idea,” he said flatly, “just how beautiful your healthiness is. How attractive you are—just the way you are.”
Jessica’s hand fluttered to her throat, and she stared at him disbelievingly. “I, um, th-that’s very kind of you to say,” she squeaked. Her heart was hammering so hard there was no room in her chest for air. He was just being nice, she told herself. But, oh, how she wished…
The wish was plain on her face, and Arlen was just tired enough, just pushed enough, just frustrated enough, to forget he was an agent on a case. Rising, he walked with a deliberate tread around the coffee table and just as deliberately sat beside Jessica on the sofa. Her head had turned as her eyes followed him, and now she looked at him with wide, wondering brown eyes. Bright eyes, he noticed, that were far more hopeful than fearful.
“I’m going to kiss you, Jessie,” he said huskily as he reached up and removed her glasses, setting them aside on the table. She blinked uncertainly at him while he noticed that her eyes were even larger without the lenses in front of them. And her lashes were long and silky.
Gently, he cupped her face between his hands. “I’m going to kiss you because I’ve been wanting to for the last half hour,” he told her, stroking her cheeks lightly with his thumbs. “I’m going to kiss you because you’re so damn sexy, and because those soft pink lips of yours are just begging for it.”
She seemed to have stopped breathing, but now she drew a shaky breath and her eyelids fluttered down. Arlen smiled as he saw her consent. The hunger in him was strong, but gentleness tempered it. This woman needed gentleness as surely as she needed to be desired.
Bowing his head, he brushed his lips lightly against hers, gently questing like a bee seeking nectar, again and again, the lightest brush of lips against lips, his breath as much a caress as his touch. It had been so long since he’d kissed a woman for the first time that he wasn’t really sure he remembered how. He was coaxing because she seemed to be as uncertain as he was. His tongue touched her upper lip, stroking its length enticingly. Next her lower lip, a sweep to incite.
Arlen heard her swift intake of breath, felt her lips part beneath his. And then, so good, her arms wound around his back and reached upward to cling to him, to embrace him. Ah, God, it had been so long!
To Jessica the moment was a miracle. She simply didn’t know what pleased her more, the strength of his muscular back beneath her hands or the sinuous, sinful enticements of his tongue as he plundered the depths of her mouth. She’d never dreamed there were so many sensitive nerve endings there, nerves that were mysteriously linked to other parts of her. Her entire body felt as if it were being kissed. This was what she had believed she could live without?
Arlen lifted his head a fraction, looking down into her hazy eyes. His voice was a husky whisper. “More, Jessie?”
She nodded, dazed by the sensations he was evoking in her. “Please,” she whispered.
Her head had fallen back, bespeaking her surrender to the moment. He moved, cradling the back of her head in one hand, wrapping the other arm around her back as he lowered her to the sofa cushions and stretched out beside her.
“More, Jess,” he said roughly, a statement this time.
And this time, when he took her mouth in a kiss, he took it deeply, with a rhythm so primitive that her very cells responded to it. She opened her mouth wider to receive the bold thrusts of his tongue and responded in kind with a need she didn’t even know how to name.
Her hand somehow found its way to his hair and combed into the dark silk, finding the warmth of his scalp. His mouth slanted to a new angle over hers, giving her a chance to catch her breath a little, giving her a moment to feel her whole body pulse in time to his kiss. Giving her a moment to feel his pelvis rock against her hip. Giving her a moment to feel the evidence of his desire.
A new thrill trickled through her, the thrill of being wanted, but the trickle was accompanied by a stronger thrill of fear. She’d met this man only last night. A chill clamped over the throbbing ache in her body, cleared the fog from her brain. What was she doing?
Sensing her mood change even through the hazy red layers of his hunger, Arlen clamped down on his needs and began, by gentle stages, to withdraw himself without causing embarrassment. Damn! he thought. He’d been celibate for too long if he could lose control like this.
Before long Jessica sensed his intent, and her fear dissipated, leaving her with a dissatisfied ache and a dawning sense of wonder. He had wanted her! She’d felt the proof of it.
Arlen raised them both to a sitting position and cradled Jessica’s cheek against his shoulder, his arm around her. It was exactly the embrace she’d fantasized about on the way to lunch that day, and it was so much better than her imaginings. His shoulder was firm beneath her cheek, his distantly sensed heartbeat a steady, somehow reassuring thud. Even the faint scratchiness of his sweater was somehow stimulating. And the weight of his arm around her shoulders—there just weren’t words to adequately describe how good it felt.
“Are you all right, Jessie?” he asked presently, touching her cheek with gentle fingertips.
“Yes.” The word sounded lost and breathless against his shoulder.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I shouldn’t have done that.”
A long moment passed before she could find her voice. “Why not?”
“Any number of reasons.” His voice had returned to normal, and his heart rate was coming into line. “In the first place, it wasn’t very professional. I don’t think there’s a specific rule against it, since you’re not a suspect, but I still don’t think an agent is supposed to be kissing someone who’s involved in his case.”
“I won’t tell,” Jessica murmured, still too swamped by emotions to speak cautiously.