The Cinderella Mission (2 page)

Nix the emotions. Just as on the basketball court, he needed to keep his head clear and his emotions locked up tight. He would plant his eyes firmly on her sweet, wholesome face at all times as a reminder that the voice was a red herring.

The rush of an impending job simmered. Every life saved brought the thrill of cheating death, a beast that had already taken too much when it had snatched Celia, when it took his parents.

Ethan plowed around the last curve, the brick quadrangle of ARIES buildings slipping into sight behind a deceptively decorative fence. He only had to endure the next few hours—one day, max—and he’d be back out in the field, far away from Kelly Taylor’s romanticized notions.

Kelly Taylor hated Valentine’s Day.

After having spent all twenty-four of hers alone, she dreaded the season when Cupid shoved her social ineptitude in her face like a Boston cream pie. And this one promised to be a whopper.

Perched at the conference table, Kelly clicked away on
one of the laptops beside Hatch while they waited for Ethan Williams to arrive. She’d hoped the Gastonia assignment would keep Ethan occupied through the holiday.

Apparently Cupid had ignored her wishes yet again.

She still couldn’t believe she’d given herself away to Ethan with one silly look. After two years of keeping the ridiculous infatuation to herself, she’d let a single moment of weakness betray her.

As if the whole crush wasn’t embarrassing enough.

Ethan, with all his playboy ways and bad-boy smiles, was totally
not
the sort of guy she wanted for anything other than friendship. Not that her hormones seemed to care one bit what she wanted.

At least she wouldn’t be stuck out there with him and all those Valentine’s Day decorations some romantic fool had plastered through the stark ARIES lobby in an incongruous display.

Part of her insisted she bore partial responsibility for her dateless status. Years spent in the classroom conjugating verbs from every European language imaginable left her with minimal real-world experience.

So what if she cared more about her career than clothes? Who could keep up with all the trends anyway? And if her mother waved one more make-up gift pack in her face, Kelly vowed she would scream. She’d tried lipstick once and had paid a price far too high for the wrong kind of attention it brought her way.

Never again would she be the helpless graduate student at the mercy of a stalking professor.

The CIA job offer had seemed like a liberating gift from the gods. She certainly hadn’t expected to spend ten hours a day behind a desk in operational support. The closest she’d come to a weapon was her docu-binder.

The speakerphone buzzed on Hatch’s desk, announcing Ethan’s arrival. Kelly’s stomach clenched around her breakfast bagel.

Hatch pushed away from the conference table as Ethan
sauntered through the open door. She allowed herself a weak moment to soak up the image of him.

How strange that a man who’d made it to ARIES headquarters in half the normal time still looked as if he’d strolled the whole way. His charcoal-gray suit over a turtleneck hung from his lean body with a negligent élan.

Jet-black hair gleamed with molten life under the sterile office lights. She always liked his hair right after a deep-cover assignment, the longer length giving him a more reckless air—if that was possible.

Deep-blue eyes glinted with the knowledge of things she dreamed of experiencing, places she knew all about but never visited. Ethan Williams personified every risk she’d ever wanted to take and didn’t dare, all wrapped up in one dangerous, six-foot-three, bad-boy package.

“Good morning, sir.” Ethan shifted toward her, jammed his hands in his pockets and nodded. “Kelly.”

Heat crawled up her face and for once she was glad she always forgot to pull her hair back. She longed to duck under the conference table and die of embarrassment over the awkwardness she’d brought to their friendship. But she wouldn’t. She was through backing down from life.

“Welcome home, Ethan. Congratulations on the Gastonia mission,” she managed to say.

“A simple in-and-out operation. Nothing to worry about.”

Her accidental
be careful
warning loomed between them like a big pink elephant on the plush navy carpet.

Director Hatch motioned for him to sit, taking his own seat at the head of the table with a fresh mug of coffee. “Thank you for coming in so quickly, Ethan. I’m sorry to pull you off R and R.”

“No problem, sir.”

“You’ll be rewarded.”

Kelly admired the director; he looked more like an old gumshoe with fashion sense almost as bad as her own. Knowing his rumpled appearance covered a man rumored
to have more power than the vice-president and the CIA director combined gave her hope for herself.

Appearances weren’t everything, damn it.

Man, she wanted to trade her docu-binder in on a SIG-Sauer 9mm. She yearned to step out from behind her desk and into the world reflected in Ethan’s world-wise eyes.

Hatch’s piercing green gaze met theirs. “Have you heard of Dr. Alex Morrow?”

Ethan hooked an elbow on the chair next to him. “Some kind of rock doctor, right?”

Kelly shoveled her hair out of her face. Typical Ethan to make a multi-degreed scientist sound like a
Rolling Stone
magazine shrink who’d obtained his Ph.D. over the Internet. “Dr. Morrow is a world-renowned geologist.”

Ethan nodded. “Right.”

Hatch rolled the mug between his palms. “Dr. Morrow has gone missing from a conference in Holzberg. You may have run across Morrow while you were in Gastonia.”

“Never met the guy. But I heard some buzz about Morrow attending a European conference on environmental issues. American civilians make too damned tempting targets for terrorist factions these days.”

Hatch’s hand clenched around his mug, a small but telling gesture from the man who showed so little. “Morrow is one of ours. One of ARIES.”

Kelly’s head snapped up. “Morrow?”

“You’re surprised?” Hatch tipped back his mug for a sip.

Were his hands shaking?

Ethan and Kelly exchanged a quick glance across the table. Who the hell was this Morrow person to warrant such a strong reaction?

Ethan straightened in his seat. “Of course not. I’m a prime example of how the CIA and ARIES both recruit from the civilian sector. I’m sure I’ve crossed paths with more than one ARIES agent without knowing it.”

His cover focused on his wealthy background, giving him
blanket acceptance to travel anywhere as one of the idle rich. Sometimes he donned a deeper cover, as he had in Gastonia. Other times, he simply played his role of rich playboy to gain access into the upper echelons of the corrupt wealthy. Once in place, ARIES operatives fulfilled the legacy of their mythological namesake who rescued the persecuted Greek twins Phryxius and Helle.

Lucky Ethan busted bad guys while she sat behind her desk decoding encrypted messages in multiple languages. “How long since we last heard from him?”

“Dr. Morrow went silent three days ago.” Hatch clicked through a series of keys on the laptop in front of him. “I’m transferring copies of all the transmissions to your data bases. They’ve already been decoded, but I’m hoping you’ll be able to find something more.”

Why all the worry about an agent going silent for seventy-two hours?

Hatch shoved up from his chair, his restlessness apparently winning out as he poured more coffee from a corner bar. “Two hours after the last transmission, we lost total contact. The signal on Morrow’s tracking device went dead.”

Silence echoed, broken only by the drip of the coffee maker and the low hum of fluorescent lights. The covert transmitters were virtually undetectable, and so pricey only operatives in deep cover warranted the expense. Even super space-power countries with access to a constellation of satellites barely stood a chance of detecting the nanosecond microburst of data from the tracking device, activated only when an agent disappeared.

Just three causes came to mind for a surgically embedded transmitter to fail. Satellite interference. Physical removal.

Or complete destruction of the agent.

Kelly’s breakfast bagel weighed like lead in her stomach.

Hatch turned to face them. “I’m employing agents throughout Holzberg to search. Now I need to work the stateside angle. Morrow’s last transmission points to a
shakedown of some sort at an upcoming European summit in DC. Ethan, your social connections make you the obvious operative to slide in place.”

Damn. Kelly mourned the impending loss of that gorgeous hair of his about to be sacrificed for appearances. “And why am I here, sir?”

Hatch could have easily sent the transmissions along with a memo.

“The summit ends with a gala celebration and jewel display. We’re fairly certain from Morrow’s intel there will be a hit. With any luck, tracking those responsible for the attempted heist will give us a lead back to Morrow. For safety’s sake Ethan’s date needs to be one of ARIES.”

He couldn’t mean—

“And what better partner than an expert in the regional languages of the dignitaries attending?”

“Partner?” Ethan’s eyes narrowed.

Already Kelly could feel the constraints of her desk loosening their hold, the weight of that SIG-Sauer in her hand. Excitement tingled over her. Only because of her first real field assignment, right? Not because of her partner on that assignment.

“For the next two weeks, you’ll be joined at the hip 24/7 right up to the night of the gala.”

Ethan half stood. “But, sir…”

“You and Taylor will make the perfect couple.”

C
ouple?

Ethan dropped back into his chair. “A couple?”

Just as he chose his women with their eyes wide open, he preferred his partners with more experience. Kelly sat across from him, her peaches-and-cream complexion shouting innocence. She studied him with those doe eyes for three seconds before her head fell forward. All that sable hair glided onto the open file in front of her.

Hatch couldn’t really expect to throw her into a Code Delta with only her entry-level training. Ethan’s instincts screamed a red alert. A missing agent linked to missing jewels? Something didn’t add up.

The ARIES director cupped his mug with both hands. “The couple cover is common, but effective. Hopefully you’ll be able to avert a heist attempt prior to the gala. If not, I need you both in place. Taylor’s facility in European languages will prove invaluable.”

Fan-freaking-tastic.

He would get to spend the next two weeks exchanging language-of-love quips with her.

Kelly looked up. “Sounds like a practical application of my specialty.”

Her do-me-honey tones wrapped around languages with as much power as they twined through a man’s libido.

His
libido.

Ethan reminded himself to stare squarely at her innocent face for his reminder that the voice was a red herring.

Except her warm brown eyes deepened to onyx with excitement over the impending assignment, and he couldn’t help but wonder if sex would bring the same heat to her eyes. “Sir, with all due respect, I can handle this one alone.”

The spark in Kelly’s eyes muted to muddy brown. Ethan refused to let her wounded-puppy look sway him. He was just thinking of her safety.

Yeah, right.
“I don’t need backup. Kelly can perform any language analysis from here without the risk of putting her in the field.”

“Maybe, maybe not.” The director’s restless feet tracked the room, taking him past a line of mementos down one wall that included diplomas from his scientific background. The man had been a grassroots planner in everything from missile programs to genetic testing. “I’m not willing to risk it. Davidson and Juarez will be at your disposal to coordinate anything you need back here at headquarters. Anything.”

Finally the director stopped by a four-drawer safe. Reaching toward the back, he pulled out a bottle of vodka. “Do you know what this is?”

Ethan worked to follow the director’s train of conversation. “Aside from the obvious? No, sir.”

He turned to Kelly. “Taylor?”

She shook her head, staunchly avoiding Ethan.

Hatch held the bottle up to light. “There’s an old tradition in the agency and the military. Many leaders keep a bottle
similar to this. Whenever an agent or soldier dies, a toast is lifted in honor. The weight of responsibility is as strong as if a family member has been lost.” He traced his finger along the empty space a quarter way down the bottle as if remembering a face with every shot glass. “I don’t want a drink with Alex Morrow’s name attached.”

Ethan watched remorse flicker through his mentor’s eyes and surrendered to the inevitable reality of two weeks with Kelly. Aside from being honor-bound to protect his fellow operative like family, he owed Hatch for giving him a reason to live after Celia died.

If Hatch needed a kidney, Ethan would start cutting. “Consider Morrow found.”

Hatch nodded. He replaced the bottle with cradling care before turning back to face them, all traces of emotion long gone. The director had returned. “Taylor, this will be your testing ground. Succeed and I’ll expedite your request for upgrade to full operational status.”

She sat straighter, her hair sliding back over her shoulders, swinging along her bulky sweater. “I’m ready for the challenge.”

“Take the afternoon to review the directives uploaded to your computers and let me know if there are any questions.” Hatch stepped behind his desk in tacit dismissal.

Kelly stood, swiping wrinkles from her ankle-length skirt. “Thank you for this opportunity, sir. I won’t let you down.”

Ethan gave himself a three-second window to avoid bumping into her outside the door and rose slowly.

“Ethan?”

Hatch’s voice stalled his steps. Ethan pivoted. “Sir?”

The director pinned him with a calculated look that made Ethan want to check his back for an ambush.

“I realize you’re going above and beyond coming in off R and R. I consider this a personal favor that deserves to be rewarded. I pulled something for you from the CIA archives.” He nudged a battered-looking file forward. “The file on your parents’ deaths.”

The file’s ragged state declared it to be original, copies no doubt scanned and stored. All the same, those dog-eared documents from a time so close to his parents’ deaths brought phantom whispers of deep laughter and lilac cologne. Muddled memories quickly followed of the kidnapping attempt gone wrong that had left his parents dead and Ethan alone except for his father’s sister. He ached to know every detail his mind hadn’t been able to absorb at five years old.

Hatch’s words slowly filtered through the memories. Why would a simple kidnapping attempt on a
Fortune
500 offspring warrant CIA classified status?

“Finish this for me, and it’s yours.”

To some it might seem cruel for Hatch to hold that file just out of Ethan’s reach. But he knew the rules of the office and that included nixing emotions to get the job done. He respected the man’s use of all weapons at his disposal, even as he longed to wrestle the file from the director’s desk.

Ethan’s elusive edge returned with a full burn. “I see now how you rose to your position.”

Hatch’s hand fell to rest on the edge of a potted plant beside his desk. “Family is everything.”

Kelly charged toward her cubicle, tears and anger battling for domination. Anger won by a long shot.

How dare Ethan try to ruin her chance with his poorly disguised—hell, blatant—disdain at the prospect of working with her?

She wanted to kick him right in his overblown ego. Instead, she took out her frustrations on her office furniture. She yanked her chair away from her government-issue metal desk and flopped down. A wall calendar grinned back at her with a dimple-butted angel.

Kelly ripped a Post-it Note off a pad and slapped it over Cupid’s face so hard the divider walls shook.

“Problems, sugar?”

Kelly inched her chair back to look at the woman in the
next cubicle. “Not really, Carla. Thanks for asking, though.”

No one would suspect the willowy brunette punching away on the keyboard had once been a field operative—until a bullet to the back during dark ops in eastern Europe had left her in a wheelchair. Now she worked with Kelly in the operational support division, developing high-tech toys for the agents she used to stand alongside.

Carla always insisted she enjoyed her new position since operational support had direct contact with field agents, a fact that had soothed Kelly through two years of waiting for her chance. Hundreds of agency workers never knew the identity of a single agent. In fact, many agents never knew other agents.

All the same, Kelly knew that hadn’t stopped the yearning in Carla to step into the field any more than it had in her. Suddenly Kelly felt damned small for being angry when she had the very thing Carla wanted. “I’m fine. Nothing to worry about.”

“Men can be a real pain.”

“Men?”

“I couldn’t help but notice Ethan Williams joined your meeting. I assume he’s the reason you’re out of sorts.”

Carla Juarez’s pitying look stoked Kelly’s temper back to life. This ridiculous crush had gone on long enough.

With impeccable timing, Ethan rounded the corner. Of course, he would choose now to make his appearance.

And walk toward her.

There’d been a day when she’d waited for him to lounge on the corner of her desk. She’d lived for the occasional invitation to join him for a sandwich in the cafeteria where they would discuss his latest overseas jaunt. Not today.

Not anymore.

Ethan cruised to a stop beside her. The spicy mix of aftershave and masculine sweat wafted her way. Her heart pitched. Damn.

“Kelly, I guess we should get together and review before
meeting with Director Hatch later.” He sat on the corner of her desk like countless times before.

“Whatever you say.” She scraped stray paper clips into her hand and dumped them into the magnetic holder as if cleaning her desk might somehow restore her chaotic emotions to order. “You’re the hotshot agent. I’m just a desk jockey.”

Confusion flashed in those sapphire eyes. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

The docu-binder suddenly looked like a not-so-shabby weapon after all if she used it to clock him upside his thick head. She spun her chair to meet him face on—and came a little too close to his knees for her comfort level. “Could you have been any more obvious in there?”

“What do you mean?”

“Quit being dense.” She inched her chair back. “You know exactly what I mean.”

His face blanked. “Help me out here.”

She forged ahead. “Can you imagine how embarrassing it was for me?”

Still he didn’t move or speak. No emotion showed at all, darn his strong, stubborn chin. He was going to make
her
spell it out.

“That you don’t want to work with me.”

He scooped up her Eiffel Tower paperweight, studying it as if the snowglobe held answers. “You’re a top-notch informations agent, but you’re still operational support. You’re a rookie in field craft. If you can’t pull your own load, it puts me in danger.”

That gave her pause. The story of the mythological Aries teased through her mind, how the ram was sacrificed after his mission to save the Greek twins. She wouldn’t be able to live with herself if Ethan died or ended up with a bullet in his back because of her. Old insecurities marched over her.

Careful, Kelly. You know how easily you break things.

Watch your step, Kelly. Don’t trample Mama’s flowers.

After a litany of warnings, the dance had left her feet altogether until she found her sedentary refuge in books, the one place she never stumbled.

Cubicle walls threatened to close in on her with a familiar loneliness. Something she refused to let happen again. She wasn’t thirteen anymore, and no one would ever steal the dance from her steps again.

Kelly snatched the paperweight from Ethan and slammed it on her desk. Did he even remember he’d bought it for her? Was he laughing inside over her keeping it?

She launched to her feet. “Director Hatch wouldn’t have put me on the assignment if he didn’t have faith in my abilities.”

The cubicle closed in on them both now in a totally different way. She tried to inch away from the insistent heat of him radiating toward her belly.

Kelly backed farther until she bumped the wall. A picture on the other side rattled, then thumped. Kelly winced at her clumsiness. She would apologize to Carla later.

Ethan rose from the desk, brows pinched and his eyes filled with concern or sympathy. She didn’t know which but couldn’t bear either.

She’d had enough of that from Carla and everyone else in the office. No more hiding behind her hair and her fears. Kelly flipped the too-convenient camouflage of her brown mane over one shoulder and met him nose-to-nose.

Well, nose-to-neck actually, given their height difference. “Can’t you at least be honest with me?”

“About what?”

Damn him, always the agent on the job answering a question with a question. She would give him some answers guaranteed to knock him on his fine butt. “About why you don’t want to work with me.”

His jaw flexed with his gritted teeth for a few telling seconds too long.

Fine. She wanted it out there and acknowledged so they
could sweep it away. “It’s because of that ridiculous moment before you left for Gastonia.”

His head angled toward her, his voice lowering. “Kelly, there’s no need to—”

“My work is the most important thing in my life.” This assignment offered hope for finding her voice. She refused to give ground, even though the scent and heat of him swirled through her until she could have sworn she’d pirouetted herself dizzy. “There’s no great risk in saying you feel the same about your position here. That being the case, there certainly is a need to discuss anything that interferes with job performance.”

He glanced down the length of twenty cubicles, then grabbed her elbow. “Okay, you want to talk, we’ll talk. But not here.”

She jerked free. “Why not here?”

“Geez, Kelly.” The force of his whisper caressed over her. “Do you really want to unroll this for everyone to overhear? Even if they’re polite enough to slap on their dicta-phones, every word spoken in this building is taped.”

“So what?” She rubbed her tingling elbow.

“Kel, I’m just thinking of your feelings here.” He reached toward her hair, then stopped midair.

That ripped it.

There was only so much pity a woman could be expected to take in one day, even a woman well-versed in submerging her feelings. First Ethan in Hatch’s office. Then Carla. Even Cupid in his fuzzy felt heart, mocking her from behind his Post-it Note mask.

She hated the way her body reacted to Ethan almost as much as she hated the new awkwardness between them. She wanted this dead-end infatuation gone so she could move on with her life and her dreams.

Kelly cursed Cupid yet again for threatening to ruin what should be an incredible day. Nothing, especially not Ethan Williams, would stand in her way. She wasn’t the studious mouse any longer, afraid to leave her room for fear of caus
ing ripples in her mother’s perfect world. She wasn’t the shy student afraid to report a pervert professor to the dean. Time to take charge of her future.

Kelly climbed up onto her chair and filled her lungs for a proper roar.

Ethan watched Kelly climb up on the chair and wondered what he’d missed. He liked to think he understood women, but this had him stumped.

Other than the fact he’d somehow managed to piss her off. A lot.