Three Marie Ferrarella Romances Box Set One Page 23

  A smile curved Charley’s lips. Well, Allison’s meticulous search had been for nothing. Charley had made sure that everything identifying her as a special agent had been left with Max. Charley didn’t like to take chances.

  So what was she doing with Reese? she asked herself sternly.

  She didn’t have time to sink into another internal argument, for Allison called out, “Who’s there?” in a sleepy voice.

  Charley turned, quickly replacing the book and shutting the drawer. “It’s only me, Allison. C’mon in.”

  The door swung open and Allison walked in. Her golden hair was disarrayed, and Charley couldn’t help thinking that she was the embodiment of every man’s fantasy. Some women had all the luck. Well, not all, she amended. These enemy agents were a pretty cutthroat lot to have gotten mixed up with. Allison would have been better off trying to rely on her beauty to get her somewhere in the acting world. But then, ambition was not always coupled with common sense.

  “I was worried about you,” Allison said, sitting down on the bed. “I’ve been reading some horrible things in the papers. I thought maybe somebody kidnapped you or something.” She rubbed her eyes. “What time is it?”

  “A little after nine,” Charley said. “Did you have a nice time last night with Peter?” she asked, hoping to draw Allison out about her date.

  Allison shrugged. “It was okay. Actually, the evening ended rather early. So I came home to study my lines.” And look around, Charley added silently. “And call my boyfriend.” Allison said.

  Charley began to riffle through her closet for a change of clothes. “You have a boyfriend?” Was that innocent-sounding enough? she wondered. She peered out of the closet for a moment. To her relief, there wasn’t a hint of suspicion on the other woman’s face.

  Allison’s blond head bobbed up and down. “His name’s Ethan,” she said.

  “Is he from back home?” Charley asked, shedding her clothes and pulling on a fresh pair of jeans and a sweater.

  “Yes. I’m not lucky enough to have one right under my nose.”

  Time to nip this in the bud, Charley thought. “Neither am I,” she said firmly, walking past Allison to the bureau. She took some makeup from the top drawer.

  Allison cocked her head as if she were confused. “What about the stage manager?”

  “Reese?” Charley laughed and shook her head. “He’s just a good time, that’s all. No strings, no commitments ...” She let her voice trail off as she applied her eye shadow. She could see Allison watching her in the mirror. Charley pretended to be preoccupied with her makeup and fervently hoped that she had thrown Allison off the scent. She didn’t want anyone, least of all Allison, to suspect that she was emotionally involved with Reese.

  “Then you wouldn’t mind if I went out with him?” Allison asked innocently.

  Charley almost dropped the eye-shadow pencil, but managed to recover without missing a beat. “Why should I mind?” she asked. “But what about your boyfriend, what’s-his-name?”

  “Ethan. To tell you the truth, he’s kind of, well, you know—dull. Now, Reese,” she went on, her voice sounding dreamy, “really looks like he’s something else.”

  Good-bye Mary Poppins, Charley thought, applying her blush with a heavy hand. She realized what she was doing and pulled out a tissue to whisk away some of the pink dust. “Yes,” she said, trying to keep her inner turmoil from surfacing. “You might say that.”

  She attempted to tell herself that Allison’s interest in Reese was all for the best. It would keep the blonde off track. So why did she feel so miserable about it? One look at Allison in her baby-doll pajamas answered that question.

  “Well, as long as you don’t mind,” Allison said brightly, hopping off Charley’s bed. “I think I’ll drop by rehearsal this afternoon. Maybe I’ll have him help me with my lines.” She unconsciously stroked her hips and smiled.

  Charley’s hand tightened around her hairbrush as she picked it up, but she never batted an eye.

  The following two days were extremely busy for Charley. Because Chalmers had suddenly demanded a rewrite, she found herself with a part that was far larger than the one she had originally taken on. When she had started, her character had only appeared in a few scenes. That had left her plenty of time to carry on her real work. But now she was faced with pages and pages of dialogue and another song to commit to memory. Even more, Chalmers seemed to derive a sadistic pleasure in riding her harder than anyone else in the show. She knew from experience that directors could sometimes be brutal to certain actors in order to get better performances out of them. Her ego was bolstered by the thought that Chalmers considered her worthy of special attention. On the other hand she wondered if the enlarged part and Chalmers’s demands that she work again and again on certain scenes was a way to keep her occupied and away from Allison.

  With the added work, Charley’s time was greatly limited during the day. Whenever she had a free moment, she snapped pictures of the cast and crew, saying that she was making a scrapbook of the production. No stone left unturned, she thought. As Max had said, one of these photographs could be the key to identifying their unknown agent.

  Chalmers, however, had refused to be photographed, saying he had no time for such nonsense. So far he had eluded all her attempts to get him on film. Friday afternoon she was standing in the wings, surreptitiously trying to get the director in focus, when he bellowed out her name.

  “Tremayne,” he shouted, “that was your cue.”

  Charley’s head jerked up, and she dropped the camera into her purse. Had he seen what she was up to? No, she was sure he’d been too busy with the actors onstage to be aware of her.

  “Sorry,” she muttered, taking center stage. “I was just thinking about my motivation.” She offered him a contrite smile.

  It had no effect on him. “I’m considering some motivation of my own,” he said, twisting the script in his hands.

  Charley felt a shiver go down her back. Was Chalmers’s aversion to being photographed just another of his unpleasant habits? Or did he have a more sinister reason for avoiding her camera? Could he be the unknown agent, and if so, was he aware of her own identity?

  Chapter Eight

  “How’s it going?” Max asked, cutting into his thick steak. He raised his gaze from his plate momentarily to watch Charley’s face as she responded.

  She shrugged. “Okay, I guess. I don’t have anything to report. She’s been as dull as dishwater. “

  “You were home last night,” he commented.

  “Yes, I was. But she wasn’t. It gave me time to go through her things. Nothing,” she added before Max had a chance to ask her if she had found anything.

  Charley munched on a piece of lettuce from her Caesar Salad. She had encouraged Allison to make advances toward Reese, avoiding him as much as possible herself. Allison had convinced him to take her to an art show at a gallery in Greenwich Village Thursday night, and Charley had spent the evening biting her nails. Her “encouragement”, she thought, had gone a little too far. She found she was not willing to see Reese fall under Allison’s spell.

  “She went out with Reese,” she finally said.

  “I know. Branigan tailed them.” Max didn’t appear to sympathize with the anxiety she was experiencing.

  “What happened?” she asked, forcing the words out.

  “They looked at paintings a lot,” he said without glancing up.

  “After that,” she said impatiently.

  “You want to know if he made love to her, is that it?”

  Charley closed her eyes and sighed. “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I’m a masochist, that’s why. And you’re a sadist. Now tell me,” she insisted, fighting hard to keep her voice low.

  “Not unless they did it on a tabletop in the Peacock Caffe,” Max said wryly.

  Charley slumped back in her chair. “The Peacock Caffe?” she echoed.

  “Branigan said they just had coffee.”<
br />
  “Is he sure?” she asked, leaning forward and holding on to Max’s hand. His fork was momentarily stilled.

  “Yes, Branigan’s sure. Except for five minutes when the man succumbed to the effects of a very poor chili dinner he had hastily consumed earlier while watching them. I’m sure that if anything untoward had happened within those five minutes, there would have been enough of a commotion among the other guests of the establishment to have given Branigan a clue. Now can I have my hand back?”

  Relief flowed through her as she released Max’s hand. Reese hadn’t touched Allison. A gorgeous, oversexed woman ready and eager at his side, and he hadn’t touched her.

  Terrific, she thought. Back to square one. She still couldn’t let him into her life. Charley took a sip of wine and sighed. Get your mind back on business, she told herself. “Get anything back from the Bureau on those pictures I sent you?” she asked.

  Max shook his head. “Negative. No match. The search, I’m afraid, is still on. Anyone acting suspiciously?”

  She shook her head in frustration. “Everyone’s beginning to look suspicious,” she confessed.

  “Healthy attitude,” Max said, and looked up from his baked potato. “Stay a little closer to Miss Iowa. We’re going to need her as a witness and we don’t want anything to happen to her. Understand?” His tone was easy, but Charley knew that in his own way, Max was reprimanding her for her lapses with Reese.

  “Yes,” she answered, her voice tight. “I understand.”

  “Good. Then you won’t be spending any more time with Reese.”

  “Max, I—“

  “Charley,” he began reprovingly. “I’m not the one to tell you what to do with your personal life—unless your personal life affects your work, and it does in this case. You can’t carry on a love affair and keep your eyes wide open to all possibilities.”

  She wasn’t sure she liked the way he’d said that. “Possibilities?”

  “Did you ever consider the fact that Reese might be the enemy connection?”

  She almost choked on her wine. “Not in a million years, Max. I’d stake my life on it.”

  “You might very well be doing that,” he said mildly, leaving it to her to interpret his words. “Give him up.” Suddenly he groaned. She looked at him quizzically. “Don’t look now, but I believe the object of your affections is standing next to the philodendron plant by the entrance.”

  “What?” Her head turned in first one direction, then the other.

  “Not very subtle, Charley. He really is bad for you.” She thought she detected a note of compassion in his voice. Max was right. This was all wrong. She couldn’t get involved with Reese, no matter how much she really wanted to. This was not the time to come to terms with her own fears of emotional commitments. The simple truth was that both of them could get killed if she allowed herself to become a sloppy agent because of her romantic entanglements.

  “Sorry,” she muttered, embarrassed at her unprofessional display. “But what’s he doing here?” she asked in a muffled voice.

  “Probably spying on you,” Max said. “Not very good at it, I’m afraid. Maybe he’s not an enemy agent after all.”

  “Great,” she muttered, reaching for her purse.

  “My sentiments exactly,” Max said dryly. “By the way, Charley, there are indications the agent we’re looking for is one of the organization’s top men. He’s particularly ruthless. They want this information badly and will do absolutely anything to get it.” He gave her a long, serious look. “I don’t have to tell you to be careful.”

  “Oh, Max,” she said, feigning surprise, “you care.”

  “I just don’t want to train a new partner. It’s too time-consuming,” he explained, turning his attention back to his meal.

  “Time better spent eating.”

  “Exactly. Now go tend to your Eagle Scout over there. I’ll see you in Boston.”

  She nodded, rising. Her Eagle Scout, she thought. What on earth was she going to say to Reese? Well, she had bluffed her way out of difficult situations before. She could do it again.

  She made her way out of the dimly lit restaurant, purposely passing by the huge philodendron plant and pretending not to see Reese.

  “Charley,” he said, taking hold of her arm as she passed.

  She opened her eyes just wide enough to exhibit pleasant surprise. “Why, Reese, what are you doing here?”

  “Following you,” he said, pushing open the leather padded doors leading out of the restaurant. The street was already colored by the long shadows of evening.

  “Why?” she asked. She hadn’t expected him to be so direct.

  He took her hand, and because he wasn’t moving she was forced to stop walking. “Because I think you’re in trouble.” She tried to laugh his serious expression away. She failed. “You’re acting strange. Something’s wrong, isn’t it?” It wasn’t a question so much as a statement.

  “No,” she insisted. “I have to get home, Reese.” To her relief he released her hand, and they began to walk. “I truly appreciate your concern,” she added. “Really I do. But I’m not in any trouble.” She glanced at his profile to see if he was convinced. His face didn’t relax. Oh, please, don’t start playing detective, she thought. Not now.

  “Whom were you eating with?” he asked.

  She could tell by his tone that he was concerned, not jealous. Besides, no one in his right mind would be jealous of a man who looked like Max. If his beard and hair had been white instead of brown, he could have passed for Santa Claus.

  “That’s Uncle Max,” she said lightly.

  Reese took her hand again. “Charley, we’ve been all through that. You don’t have an Uncle Max, remember?”

  “Yes, I do,” she insisted. She tried to keep the note of desperation out of her voice. “Look, there are a lot of things about me that you don’t know.”

  “Okay,” Reese said, stopping abruptly and preventing her from crossing the street. The opposing light turned green and a sea of cars flowed into the intersection, all vying for the chance to make it to the next red light. “Tell me about all these ‘things’ I don’t know.”

  She sighed, looking straight ahead and focusing on the “Don’t Walk” sign. “I can’t.”

  Reese managed to keep his growing frustration under control. Losing his temper with her wasn’t going to accomplish anything. “What’s the worst thing you could tell me?” he asked.

  The light changed and Charley darted out into the street. Reese hurried after her.

  “That you’re a thief?” he asked, laughing. Several people around her gave Charley a quizzical look. Reese guessed again. “That you’re a spy?”

  Charley was proud of herself for not flinching. Resolutely she continued toward the other corner.

  Reese caught up to her, took hold of her arm, and turned her around. “C’mon, Charley, I know you. I know what’s inside. Nothing you could tell me is going to throw me,” he said, looking into her eyes.

  She couldn’t help smiling. “You’d be surprised,” she said quietly.

  “So?”

  “So nothing.” She turned and began making her way up the avenue.

  Two strides and he was at her side. “Running away never solved anything.”

  “No, but it sure limits confrontations.” She bit her lip, wondering if she should have said even that much. It was time, she told herself, to “do the right thing.” “Look, Reese, you’re crowding me.”

  Her bald statement surprised him. Hadn’t things been on the upswing? he wondered. “Charley, I thought it was going to be all right between us,” he said, feeling both irritated and confused as they turned east onto Sixty-fifth Street.

  Charley began walking more quickly, trying to keep up her courage. It was a role. She was playing a part, she reminded herself, just as if she were on a stage.

  “Well, you thought wrong,” she said. “It isn’t going to be all right. We’re too different.”

  “What do you
mean?” He wasn’t going to let her get away without an explanation. He needed to know what he was up against. If he didn’t find out what the problem was, he hadn’t a prayer of solving it.

  “I like leaping off buildings and you like holding up nets.”

  He grabbed her arm just as she opened the outer door to her building. “What kind of a crack is that supposed to be?”

  She stared at his hand and he let her go. She walked into the foyer and stabbed the elevator button with a stiff finger. “It’s not a crack. It means that you like things nice, safe, predictable.”

  The elevator came and she got in. To her dismay, so did he. She hadn’t put him off.

  “And to me that’s a trap,” she continued, trying to get him to understand. “I like excitement—danger, even.” In her desperation she had blurted out what was really troubling her about their relationship. It was true, wasn’t it? Oil and water. They didn’t mix. “Reese, why can’t you understand?”

  The elevator door opened, and she prayed that he wouldn’t follow her. He did.

  “All I understand,” he said, “is that you’re letting go of something precious because you’re afraid. Afraid of yourself, me, commitment, something. And I’m not giving up until I get you to talk about it.”

  “But I am talking about it,” she insisted.

  “You’re talking in circles,” he said, trying to be patient. “You know, maybe I’m not as staid and predictable as you might think.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” she asked, surprised.