The Cinderella Mission (Family Secrets #1)(21)
Author: Catherine Mann

Not Kelly with her Eugenie-chosen clothes she would wear for the dinner party tomorrow, but Kelly in bulky work-out pants, hair a mess and any hint of makeup sweated off hours ago.

“Kelly.”

“What?”

His eyes heated over her with a blue flame. “Just Kelly.”

Uh-oh. Somebody must have given her a straight shot of IV ylang ylang because sweet longing pulsed through her veins. The near miss with the weights had her heart pounding against his. “What are we doing?”

Damn, she should shut up. But if she reached for him, she feared he would pull back and the desire in his eyes would disappear.

“I don’t know,” he growled. His forehead fell to rest against hers. “I do know I feel like I’m going to die if I can’t see your tattoo.”

“You want to see my tattoo?” Which would involve quite a few less clothes.

He nodded without ever taking his eyes off hers. “I want to know what it is. Why you got it.” His fingers toyed with her hair, along her scalp, stirring as much heat as his other hand on her hip. “Where it is.”

She couldn’t deny him his answer, feared she might not be able to deny this man anything. “You’re touching it.”

His hand tightened around her hip. She watched his throat move in a slow swallow.

Ethan’s chest pumped against hers, drawing in air. “Tell me what it is,” he demanded.

She slid her hand from between them to trace the pale line on the side of his neck. “If you tell me how you really got this scar, because I’m not buying the shaving accident story.”

His skin chilled beneath her touch. Ethan’s fingers convulsed in her hair, pulling almost too tight until she couldn’t stifle a wince.

Slowly, his fingers relaxed their grip as shutters closed over his eyes, shielding any further glimpses of the man inside. “On-the-job hazard. I made a mistake and lowered my guard.”

The terrifying reality of a knife at his throat doused her passion. But then what had she expected when she asked that question? She’d known full well the sort of answer she would receive.

Had she subliminally sabotaged the moment? And still she couldn’t stop herself. “What were you doing?”

Please, Lord, she hoped he wouldn’t say he’d been with another woman. “Ethan?”

“Sleeping. I was sleeping.”

Only sleeping. The lone word punched through any glorified dreams of fieldwork. Not some even-odds knife fight at all. He’d been ambushed in his sleep.

All his self-defense training the past week came crashing around her like those disks raining down. Rules and precise form didn’t count. Only fighting to win.

He carried a scar, and somehow she knew the other person hadn’t lived long enough for his wounds to heal into any such marks.

Chilling realization prickled over her. Forget hormones and tattoos. These were actual life-and-death stakes with her as his partner. And apparently Ethan had remembered exactly the same thing.

He rolled off her and to his feet, visibly shutting down the desire that had been in his eyes only moments before. “We’re done for the day.”

Kelly suspected they were done for a lot longer with that. Thanks to her need to know more about Ethan and her penchant for asking questions, she’d just stripped away any possibility for seeing where the desire in his eyes might lead.

For the best, since her intent was to get over the man.

Right?

Ethan stood at the edge of the indoor pool and nudged a candlelit lily pad with the toe of his shoe. Over twenty-four hours since his tangle with Kelly on the weight-room floor and he still hadn’t been able to wash away the feel of her body pressed to his.

The last thing he wanted was to sit around at some dinner party and make nice. Of course his life seemed to consist of nothing more than wheel-spinning lately. He’d wasted hours on the phone with one of his old Holzberg contacts—a guy who obviously knew nothing about Alex Morrow and even less about a long-ago kidnapping attempt on Ethan in Switzerland.

Ethan shook the water off the tip of his shoe. He wanted a quick ending to this case and his life back in order.

He wanted to strip Kelly down and find her tattoo.

Instead, he had to suffer through some lame social engagement to solidify his cover.

He paced around the kidney-shaped pool, the entire area encased in a glass solarium with thriving plants. Fluorescent lights and moonbeams streamed through the glass roof, glistening off the water.

His aunt had planned the evening to include two other couples. People he socialized with more than anyone else but who knew nothing about the real Ethan. Not like Kelly.

What would his old college buddies Matt and Jake think of her?

Ethan’s restless feet carried him to the corner bar. No doubt White House advisor Matt Tynan would fall over laughing at seeing Ethan brought down. Of course, his old frat brother couldn’t understand why anybody would want to commit to one woman.

Commit.

Where the hell had that come from? Not out of him. He must be falling victim to sinking too deep into his cover.

Ethan snagged a cracker off a silver platter and scooped through caviar, reminding himself to keep perspective. Chewing, he rubbed a hand over his shoulder and worked to ease the ache from where the weight had grazed him. He needed to check in with Hatch about all Kelly’s recent “accidents” that Ethan’s gut insisted were nothing of the sort.

Agents who believed in coincidences died.

The defective weight machine. An overheated hot tub. And a tail during one of their runs that Kelly didn’t even know about.

What the hell was going on?

Whatever it was, he had enough on his plate finding Alex Morrow, stopping a jewel heist, and figuring out what the hell one had to do with the other. He didn’t need to waste brain cells trying to uncover Kelly’s tattoo.

An outside door to the pool area clicked, then swung open, admitting a cold blast of air and a bundled duo. Matt Tynan and Samantha Barnes made a damned striking pair, even if they were friends rather than a couple.

A rogue thought snuck into Ethan’s mind. How could he know these people well enough for them to be comfortable letting themselves in the back entrance to his home, when they knew so little about him personally? What kind of life had he set up for himself, keeping secrets beyond what even ARIES demanded?

Matt strode toward him with urbane assurance, brushing snow off his shoulders. “Good Lord, it’s as cold out there as the mother-in-law I’ll never have.”

Ever the charming playboy, Matt played hard, worked hard and lived large. He might be fickle as hell in the romance department, but the guy made a fiercely loyal friend. He’d jumped right in to support Samantha, ambassador pro-tem to Delmonico, after her ambassador husband had died…six or so months ago? Matt made a better friend than Ethan ever had.