Secret Agent Affair Read online

  “My dad used to watch the reruns. I watched with him. Quality time,” she added.

  Kane had turned to help the nurse back to her feet as the intern scrambled to his. The other orderly was massaging a sore jaw. “Whatever floats your boat,” he told her.

  Marja took the opportunity to inject the sedative into the gang member’s arm, sinking the needle into the mouth of the red devil he had tattooed there. That would keep him out for a while, she thought, putting the needle on the tray. And then she took a closer look at the man’s neck. There was an angry red line where Kane had applied pressure.

  “Seriously, how did you do that?” she pressed.

  “I’ll give you a demonstration sometime,” he promised. He had no intentions of following up on that.

  There was a great deal more to this “orderly” than met the eye, she thought. Marja quickly glanced around at the other occupants in the room. “Let’s just keep what happened here to ourselves, all right?”

  The nurses and the orderly nodded, a chorus of “sure” and “fine with me” meeting her request. But the intern frowned, confused. “Aren’t we supposed to write up reports about everything that happens during our shift?”

  “Yes, but there’s no reason why you can’t write down the Reader’s Digest version.” She winked at the intern who looked flustered. “All right, let’s hurry and get this bullet out before Neanderthal Man comes up for air and round two.”

  “Benson was right, you know.” Marja addressed the words to Kane as they walked out of the trauma room twenty minutes later. The patient, properly handcuffed to the railing, had been taken, still unconscious, to X-ray to make sure that there weren’t any internal injuries that were being overlooked.

  He stopped by the vending machine and counted out the right amount of change to secure a pack of gum. He’d given up smoking five months ago. The craving, however, had not given him up. So he chewed and pretended that satisfied his craving.

  The coins jingled melodically as they made their way into the bowels of the machine. He punched the code numbers marked above the pack of gum. “Who’s Benson?”

  “The intern.” The yellow pack fell with a soft thud. He pushed the glass back and claimed his prize. “Hospital orderlies aren’t supposed to act independent of instructions like that.”

  “Better than punching him out,” Kane told her. “That was my first thought.” Pulling the wrap off the gum, he offered her one. She shook her head. Kane pulled out a stick, shoving the rest into his pocket. “Besides, he didn’t look like someone who would exactly listen to reason. That kind doesn’t understand anything but force.”

  She studied his face. Who are you? she wondered not for the first time. “You sound as if you’re speaking from experience.”

  “I’ve spent my time on the streets,” he allowed.

  Marja shifted to the other side of the vending machine. It was a tiny alcove that gave them a minimum of privacy. “Tell me about it.”

  His eyes met hers. “I just did.”

  “The long version,” she prodded.

  He shrugged. “Maybe some other time.” It was a throwaway line because there wasn’t going to be “some other time.” His life, past and present, was a private matter, something he wasn’t about to share with anyone. He started walking away.

  Marja fell into step beside him. “The same time you’ll show me that maneuver you performed on the patient?”

  “Yeah, the same time as that,” he agreed.

  “No, you won’t,” she said with such finality it told him that in some small way, she was on to him.

  Kane stopped walking. There was a supply closet at his back. His eyes swept over the rest of the floor. No one was looking their way. Grabbing her hand, he opened the door and then pulled her inside with him.

  The breath rushed out of her lungs as tension raced in, accelerating her pulse. Adrenaline flowed through her. She didn’t say a word.

  “Why do you want to know?” he asked.

  She chose her words carefully. “Because sometimes talking about things that bother you helps.”

  “What makes you think it bothers me?”

  “You won’t talk about it,” she answered simply.

  He could feel her breath on his face as she answered. Could feel his gut tightening in anticipation of something he wasn’t supposed to be anticipating. “That’s kind of a catch-22, isn’t it?”

  Her eyes were smiling at him. Stirring him. She nodded. “Uh-huh.”

  He shook his head. “I can’t quite figure you out, Doc.”

  She tried to spread her hands and managed to brush them against his chest. She dropped them to her sides again. “Not much of a puzzle there,” she told him. “I’m an open book.”

  Not from where he was standing, he thought.

  And then, despite the logical way he normally conducted his life, despite the ultimate urgency of the situation he’d been sent in to handle, there was nothing else on his mind except for one thing.

  Finding out what her lips tasted like.

  He’d always been a man to meet a problem head-on.

  Chapter 7

  She’d known the second Kane had pulled her into the closet that this wouldn’t be just some sudden consultation. Nor was it a desperate attempt to secure a measure of privacy for the sole purpose of the exchange of words. And they certainly weren’t going to take impromptu inventory, either. At least, not of the supply closet.

  So when Kane stopped talking and suddenly framed her face with his hands a pulsating, quick second before he brought his lips down to hers, Marja wasn’t surprised. She had been holding her breath until his mouth finally made contact with hers. Which was fortunate because he immediately stole every molecule of air away.

  Her air, her thoughts, her very being.

  Marja was far from a novice at this. There were a number of relationships, some even semiserious, in her past. But she couldn’t recall a single one of those men shaking her down to the very tips of her toes, or making her pulse hammer like the middle passage of The Anvil Chorus.

  The velvety-soft dimness within the supply closet swiftly tiptoed into total darkness, allowing her to slip into a netherworld where there were no borders. No walls, no ceilings, just space.

  Just him.

  She could feel her body heating as it moved into his, seemingly on its own power, guided by the gentle yet urgent pressure of his hand against the bottom of her spine.

  He was pulling her closer to him.

  Or had she fallen into him?

  She didn’t know, she couldn’t tell. She just desperately wanted for this to go on as long as humanly possible.

  Forever.

  She wrapped herself around him, intensifying the kiss. Giving as well as getting.

  This was a mistake.

  He tried not to make mistakes, carefully avoiding them because mistakes cost him. Always cost him, one way or another. And yet, knowing this, he still couldn’t make himself pull back.

  Couldn’t break contact.

  Couldn’t do anything except deepen the kiss and seek out more. Holding her against him like this acutely reminded him just how long he’d been about the business of a covert operative and nothing more.

  He wanted more.

  He wanted her.

  To such a degree that it alarmed him. He’d never, ever been one to lead with anything but cold, hard logic and cold, hard logic dictated that there was no place for this on his immediate agenda.

  That didn’t seem to matter right now. Not with every inch of his body feeling as if it was on fire.

  His mouth still sealed to hers, Kane ran his hands slowly up along the sides of her body. Felt her small, eager breasts as she pressed them hard against his chest. An urgency filled him that was almost impossible to subdue.

  More than anything, he wanted to take her. Right here, right now. Take her to rid himself of this damn feeling, this damn itch that was growing to almost unmanageable proportions.

  But he
couldn’t, wouldn’t, let himself give in to the demands of his body. Because he wasn’t a rutting pig. But most of all, because she deserved better.

  So, with more willpower than this sort of a situation had ever required before, Kane forced himself to put his hands on her shoulders and pry the two of them apart. Still holding her shoulders, his breath feeling like this hard, physical entity in his throat, he tried not to sound as if he’d just come up for air after diving down too deep.

  But he had.

  It was damn difficult getting his breath regulated enough to venture a word.

  Kane could just about make out her lips in the dim closet. They were curved.

  “What?” he asked, needing to know what prompted the smile.

  Marja took in a long breath before answering. The man had to know that as a kisser, he probably had no equal. Not on this planet. She wasn’t telling him anything he wasn’t already aware of.

  Still, she forced herself to refrain from running her tongue along her lips, even though she wanted to taste him. “You certainly do go to great lengths to keep from talking.”

  She was referring to his avoiding her probing questions just before he’d pulled her into the closet, he thought. He played along. “Did it work?”

  Marja slowly moved her head from side to side, her smile never wavering. “No, all it did was bring up a whole host of other questions.”

  Like when they were going to make love, because she knew that was going to happen. Soon. She could feel it in her bones—the ones that hadn’t melted down to the consistency of butter.

  “Then I’d better get out of here before you start asking them,” he said.

  And before I start ripping off your clothes, he added silently.

  Right now, he had little control over himself and he couldn’t allow anything more to happen. Things had a way of snowballing and he was not about to be buried beneath an avalanche, even if she was packed in snow beside him.

  His hand on the doorknob, Kane paused and then looked at her over his shoulder. “Why don’t I let you go out first?” he suggested. “You don’t want people to see us in here together.”

  Was he bothered by gossip? Or was there some other reason for secrecy? As for herself, she’d never really cared what people had to say. If they were going to talk about her, they’d talk. Gossip was part of the workplace. For the most part, however, she got along with the people on staff at the hospital. In a way, because her sisters worked here, it almost felt like a second home to her.

  But she liked the fact that he was sensitive to gossip on her account. Apparently, the man with the hard exterior had a soft center.

  Not to mention he was one incredible kisser.

  Amused, touched, she smiled at him and lightly ran her fingers along his cheek. “No, we wouldn’t want your reputation to suffer.”

  Then, with a wink, she was gone.

  Damn woman, he thought, uncomfortable with the way she’d shaken things up.

  Kane remained in the closet, giving himself to the slow count of twenty. As he mentally ticked off the numbers, he struggled to get his body, and his head, under control again. It wasn’t as easy as it should have been.

  He couldn’t afford to let anything personal get in the way of his assignment. A lot more was riding on that than any sort of trivial physical gratification achieved on his part.

  He justified hanging around Marja by telling himself he was trying to build as many contacts throughout the hospital as possible. Justification. He was pretty certain that if there was danger tied into the ambassador’s daughter’s arrival, someone with Marja’s background wouldn’t have a hand in it. For one thing, the woman was too involved with her family and with the community.

  He’d done his homework on her, again under the guise of gathering information and not because of the crackling electricity between them. He’d discovered that her parents were as patriotic as they came, that she and some of her sisters volunteered at a free clinic whenever possible, caring for people who couldn’t afford to pay for medical insurance. There wasn’t a hostile, resentful bone in the woman’s supple, tempting body. Terrorists were made of different stuff than this.

  In addition, she didn’t strike him as someone who could be talked into blindly following orders. Terrorists were malcontented masterminds and sheep. She fell into neither category.

  …Twenty, he silently declared. Kane reached for the doorknob, only to have it suddenly moved out of his hand. Someone on the other side was opening the door. His brain scrambled for a plausible excuse as to what he was doing here.

  Grabbing the closest thing to him—a blanket—he was about to say that the door had closed on him as he’d gone to get a blanket for one of the patients.

  He needn’t have bothered coming up with the excuse.

  Marja was on the other side of the door. “Would you like to grab some pizza tonight?” she asked him, acting as if it were perfectly normal to carry on a conversation with someone standing in the supply closet.

  His eyebrows drew together in slight confusion. “You asking me out?”

  She backed up so that he could exit the closet. Kane tucked the blanket back into its place. “No, I’m asking you in, actually. My place,” she specified. “I believe you already know where it is. Or do you need directions?” she deadpanned.

  “No directions,” he confirmed. And then he paused. He couldn’t let this go any further, no matter how much he wanted it to. “Actually,” he told her, “I’m busy tonight.”

  “Oh.” The single word dripped with surprise mingled with disappointment. And then her smile brightened again. “Well, if you change your mind—or stop being busy,” she added, tongue in cheek because she just knew it was an excuse, “the offer still holds.”

  And with that, she hurried off to put out the next fire, deal with the next crisis—trying very hard not to dwell on the fact that ten minutes after he had stopped kissing her, her body was still tingling, still wanting to leap to the next level with this man who had come into her life like a huge Christmas surprise.

  “Sure you don’t want to come with us?” Tania asked for the third time as she stepped into the shoes she’d selected after more than a ten-minute debate.

  Marja leaned against the doorjamb leading into her sister’s bedroom. She scanned the area, thinking that she’d seen tornado sites on the news that looked more orderly than Tania’s room. In response to Tania’s question, she shook her head.

  “Yes, I’m sure. I have a date with a pizza,” she said glibly. Marja glanced at her wristwatch. “The delivery boy should be here any minute.”

  “Dinner at Le Crepe would be a whole lot better,” Tania murmured, distracted.

  Tania fumbled with her left earring, trying for the second time to get the backing mounted onto the minuscule gold post. Succeeding finally, she surveyed the results in her mirror. The earrings hung down to just above her shoulders. She moved her head to watch them swing.

  “Agreed,” Marja said cheerfully. “But I don’t think that Jesse will be overly thrilled to have his sister-in-law-to-be tagging along. He probably has a romantic evening in mind. That usually means two, not three, for dinner.”

  Tania’s eyes met hers in the mirror as she checked her makeup over one last time. “Jesse likes you, Marysia. He likes the whole family,” Tania reminded her. “I couldn’t marry Jesse, much as I love him, if he didn’t get along with all of you,” she pointed out.

  Marja knew that. Knew that all four of the men her sisters had chosen had miraculously fit neatly into the family structure, even if it hadn’t seemed like it at first. Tony, Sasha’s husband, had been pretty much of a loner. But they’d all taken him in hand and now he was one of the family as much as any of them. Marja couldn’t have been happier for her sisters—and her parents since she knew how much it meant to them to have this kind of harmony.

  But it also made her realize that good romantic matches were exceedingly rare. And, most likely, she didn’t have one in her fu
ture. The men she seemed to gravitate toward were rebels, outsiders. Men who had no talent at fitting in nor the desire to learn. The problem, she knew, was her, not them, because the few down-to-earth, decent-to-the-bone men she’d gone out with had bored her to tears. Her blood hadn’t rushed when one of them had kissed her, it had simply sighed—and not in a good way.

  Not like with Kane.

  Marriage and kids were definitely not in her future, she decided as she watched Tania reapply her lipstick. The thought made her feel oddly sad, which surprised her because, until this very moment, she hadn’t realized that she actually wanted that. To have someone other than one of her sisters to come home to. To have children with that someone.

  But she still didn’t want to settle. Better to give up the dream than to live a life of quiet desperation. She was getting maudlin, Marja silently upbraided herself. Rousing, she forced a smile to her lips as Tania turned away from the bureau.

  “You just have yourself a good time.” Marja followed Tania to the living room. “Are you two coming back here?” she asked.

  Checking through her purse, Tania looked up at her. “Why?”

  She just wanted to know if she had the apartment to herself, but saying so would probably make Tania think she had someone coming over and the questions would start. So she made something up.

  “I just want to know so I can be presentable instead of sitting around in my cutoffs.” She indicated the faded, tattered pair she wore.

  Tania grinned and patted her face. “If we come back, little sister, it’ll be way past your bedtime.” Her eyes shone as she added, “I’m not on call tomorrow.”

  Good, it was about time Tania took a day off. At times it seemed like all they did was work. “Planning on dancing until dawn, huh?”

  “Or something like that,” Tania told her, punctuating her statement with a wink.

  Now that didn’t make any sense. “And you were inviting me along?”