You've Got Male (30 page)

Stu hesitated for a moment—obviously he hadn’t forgotten the ass-kicking he’d received on Flatbush Avenue—but he moved to the edge of the bar again and leaned closer to his brother. Sort of. And where what Tanner really wanted to do just then was smack Stu upside the head, all he did was take the ten spot out of his brother’s hand and stuff it back into his pocket.

“This round’s on you, Stu,” he said. “Don’t forget to tip yourself. Not that you deserve it for the lousy service.” He started to pull away and return his attention to Carly, who, he noted, had a very curious expression on her face. But he held up one finger to her in a just-a-second kind of way and turned around to face his brother again.

“And don’t forget that time I kicked your ass on Flatbush Avenue, either,” he warned his brother. “Carly is with me. And she’s special. Get used to it.”

But Stu wasn’t the cowering seven-year-old he used to be. More was the pity. Because instead of being intimidated by Tanner’s warning, he only sneered and said, “Not only is she a rich bitch, but she’s probably only five or six years younger than Mom.”

“Actually, Stu, she’s only three years younger than Mom.”

And with that, Tanner spun around and gave his brother his back. That was all Stu deserved right now. Later, though, Tanner intended to give him an ass-kicking that would make Flatbush Avenue look like cotillion class.

N
EVER IN HER LIFE HAD
Carly felt the way she did standing behind Tanner at Ed’s, eavesdropping on his conversation with the man who was his little brother. Not so much the fish-out-of-water thing. That feeling was no stranger. Though she had to admit, the water at Ed’s was a lot different from the water in the Hamptons. No, it was the Mrs. Robinson thing she didn’t recognize.

Funny, but she honestly didn’t feel older than Tanner. That first day, sure. He’d looked every inch the Eagle Scout. But since meeting him and talking to him, he’d seemed to grow older. Plus, she didn’t feel thirty-nine. She’d decided somewhere in her late twenties that she was as old—mentally and emotionally and psychologically, anyway—as she was ever going to get. At some point, they’d each crossed a line in the other direction, until they were roughly the same age.

And really there were times when Tanner even seemed older than she. He had more confidence and was more comfortable with himself than most men she’d met who were much older. Although his life experience wasn’t up there with her own, he’d been taking care of himself since he’d gone off to college at seventeen. Carly, at thirty-nine, still lived at home. She’d never taken care of herself in her life.

After listening to his brother’s comments, however, she was reminded that there was indeed a significant difference in her and Tanner’s ages. She remembered cultural and social milestones that had happened a full decade before he was born. They’d grown up listening to different music, watching different TV shows, seeing different movies. The social history he remembered started much later than the social history she recalled. As a couple, they’d be killer at Trivial Pursuit. But romantically…

She just hadn’t anticipated a problem, that was all. Tanner obviously hadn’t, either. His family, however, did see one. Or at least one family member did. Still, Carly knew from experience that families tended to band together on things, regardless of how each individual actually felt. But in her experience, it was the father who stipulated where the chips would fall, so maybe the brother was an anomaly.

Or maybe the father—and the rest of the family—would feel the same way.

But then, why did she care? It wasn’t as if she and Tanner planned to have anything more than a good time together, right? It wasn’t as if she would have any contact with his family beyond this evening, right? Of course, having just eavesdropped so shamelessly on his conversation with his brother, she got the impression that Tanner’s having brought her to this place tonight was tantamount to his declaring to the world that he had dibs on Carly Nesbitt, nyah nyah nyah nyah nyah.

In which case, she should be pissed off. She didn’t
do
dibs. Men knew better than to become proprietary toward her. At least, other men had known better. Then again, Tanner probably knew better, too, but he’d become proprietary anyway. Instead of pissing her off, though, it made her feel…well, kind of aroused, truth be told. Maybe it wasn’t so bad to have a man feeling proprietary about one. Provided one also felt proprietary toward the man. And it was with no small amount of astonishment that Carly realized she did indeed feel proprietary toward Tanner. She had dibs on him, too. Nyah nyah nyah nyah nyah.

So evidently there would be a problem, since his family obviously felt a bit proprietary toward him, too. At least, they did when they didn’t approve of the woman who had dibs on him.

He turned from the bar and jerked his thumb toward the other side of the room. “Air’s nicer over there,” he said.

“After you,” she told him.

Not because she was trying to be polite. But because he had such a cute butt and she loved watching him when he walked. She followed him to the far side of the bar, where the music was louder but there were fewer people sitting down, since most of them had fled to the dance floor. A couple at a tiny table in the very back was standing to put on their coats, so Tanner quickly usurped their table. He helped Carly out of her jacket, then shed his own, hanging both on a hook affixed to the wall. When she sat down in her wobbly chair, she saw that the table was sticky with bottle rings and scarred from cigarette burns and crudely carved profanity. The bar was smoky and humid and loud, not at all the sort of environment Carly normally enjoyed. But Tanner was here.

Truly, it was just enchanting.

She waited for him to sit down opposite her, then asked point-blank, “Does it bother you, the difference in our ages?”

He had been lifting his beer to his mouth, but his hand stilled as she completed the question, and he lowered it back to the table. “You heard what my brother said.”

“I did,” she told him. “So does it? Bother you?”

He grinned at her, and she released a breath she hadn’t even been aware of holding. “Why would that bother me?”

She shrugged. “It seems to bother your family. A lot.”

He lifted his beer again, and she knew he was completely unconcerned about his family’s reaction. “They don’t know you,” he said before enjoying a sip.

“You don’t know me, either,” she told him.

He grinned even more broadly at that. “Oh, I know you pretty well, Carly. Probably even better than you know yourself.”

She told herself she should be offended by the comment. Instead she was intrigued. “How so?”

“For one thing, I know you’re not nearly as bitchy as you act.”

“Says you. I’m a raging bitch. Ask anyone.”

“Knows me,” he countered. “I don’t have to ask anyone. They might call you a bitch, but they don’t realize you act the way you do because you want to have a reason for why people don’t like you. This before you even give them a chance to like you.”

“There’s nothing in me
to
like,” she said simply. It was a statement of fact, not a poor-poor-pitiful-me whine. Carly knew what she was. And she didn’t try to be anything else. Nor did she blame anyone else for being the way she was. She’d put her baggage on the train a long time ago and bid it farewell. These days, she didn’t carry around anything more than would fit in an elegant little evening bag. Comb. Compact. Lipstick. Breath mints. Okay, and a minor Electra complex. Hey, they were in fashion this season. All the girls she knew had one.

“Oh, I don’t know about that,” Tanner said.

She had to backtrack a bit to figure out what he was talking about, then remembered she had told him there was nothing in her to like.

“Well, I’ll grant you there is one thing to like about me,” she conceded. “But it’s the same thing men have always liked about me.” She glanced down at her torso. “Okay, the same
two
things men have always liked about me.”

Tanner enjoyed another swallow of his beer. “News flash. Men usually get beyond the physical thing eventually. If a woman lets them.”

“I haven’t let you,” she said.

“Sure you did. That first day. With one look.”

“What look?” she asked, genuinely wanting to hear the answer. She’d always thought she was extremely good at hiding herself from people. “I don’t have a look.”

“Yeah, you do,” he said. “But a man has to be awfully good at what he does to see it.”

“Ah,” she said, understanding now. “He has to be a spy.”

Tanner shook his head. “No. He has to be good at what he does.”

She narrowed her eyes at him for a minute, having no idea what he was talking about. But little by little it started to make sense. Tanner was right. It had nothing to do with his being a spy. When it came to being a man, nobody did it better.

“What happens if your family keeps not liking me?” she asked.

“I think they’ll like you. If you let them.”

“But what if they don’t?” She needed a serious answer from him on that. Because for the first time in her life Carly felt serious, too.

Tanner looked over at the bar, where his brother was pulling a beer for someone and his sister was loading drinks onto a tray. Then he looked back at Carly again. “If they don’t, then it will be their loss.”

“You’re sure?” she asked. And somehow she hoped he realized she was asking about a lot more than his family’s approval.

He smiled. “I’ve never been more sure of anything in my life.”

Carly nodded at his response. Then she smiled, too. It was nice to know they were on the same page.

U
NTIL HE MET
A
VERY, THERE
was only one person in the world whose presence Dixon could sense whenever she came within a one-hundred-foot radius. So when he returned to his room from Cowboy’s shortly after midnight on Sunday night, he knew immediately that he wasn’t alone. He also knew it wasn’t Avery who was with him.

“She-Wolf,” he said just loudly enough for her to hear him.

She stepped out of the darkness where he wouldn’t have seen her until he turned on a light—when it would have been too late for him had he been anyone else. She was only a shadow against the pale moonlight filtering through the window behind her, but Dixon knew better than to turn on a light, in case anyone was outside watching the house. And of course, he knew there was someone outside watching the house.

“You’re under surveillance,” she said quietly, as if she’d read his mind. Which wasn’t outside the realm of possibility, since they were both prone to such a thing after having worked so closely together for so many years. “You have been since yesterday afternoon. They knew you’d be the first person I’d look for.”

“Luckily you had no trouble staying under their radar,” Dixon said. Really, he wondered why OPUS even bothered. She-Wolf was legendary at the organization. She’d eluded some of the most arcane, hush-hush spy networks on the planet. She sure as hell wasn’t going to get caught by the one whose workings she knew backward and forward.

“Yeah, lucky,” she echoed quietly. “That’s me.”

“Where the hell have you been? And what the hell is going on?”

When Dixon had telephoned his boss last night, he’d been told his partner had, to put it in pop-culture terms, gone over to the dark side. She’d been out of touch with OPUS for days, ever since an especially explosive exchange with none other than He Whose Name Nobody Dared Say. Dixon had been told she’d tried to kill the other man. Somehow he’d managed to keep his laughter in check. There wasn’t an operative in OPUS who hadn’t wanted to murder the Big Guy at some point. But that it should be She-Wolf who finally tried it? Not bloody likely. She was too smart. And too cool. As often as Dixon had seen her in extreme situations, he’d never known her to lose control. It was kind of scary, really, how little emotion she showed. But that was doubtless what made her so good at what she did.

His boss had told him, too, that if Dixon saw She-Wolf, he was to take her into custody and notify them immediately. And that for the remainder of their assignment he and Gillespie were to take Avery into hiding at an OPUS safe house and continue their quest for Sorcerer from there. Nothing else was to change, especially in light of their having come so close to drawing their subject out. But he and Gillespie were to close up shop in East Hampton immediately, so as not to put the Nesbitt family at risk while a rogue agent was at large, looking for her partner.

Dixon had told his boss he would need at least twenty-four hours to break everything down because he’d known it wouldn’t take any longer than that for She-Wolf to contact him. He didn’t know why she’d been marked the way she had, couldn’t imagine what she had said or done to generate this kind of reaction within the organization. And he wouldn’t accept any excuses or explanations unless they came from her.

She took a few steps forward, away from the window, into a slice of moonlight that flowed over the floor. Dixon caught his breath at the sight of her. A petite woman to begin with, she looked even thinner than the last time he’d seen her. Her hair, normally a rich fall of platinum-blond, looked dull and unwashed, swept back from her face—mostly, anyway—in a bedraggled ponytail. Her features were pinched and pale, and her eyes, usually vivid blue, looked flat and gray in the moonlight. Over the years he’d seen her dressed in just about everything for the job, from elegant evening gowns to black commando camouflage. But never in a security guard’s uniform designed for a man twice her size.

And never with handcuffs dangling from one wrist.

“What the hell is going on?” he demanded again, taking an involuntary step toward her.

Immediately, she took a step in retreat. And that, more than anything, told Dixon everything he needed to know. She didn’t trust him. She was no longer certain of their partnership. She might even be afraid of him. And She-Wolf had never shown fear of any kind. That she should do so now, with him, was more than a little alarming.

She-Wolf had been assigned her code name by their immediate superior because that was the closest the woman could get to the word
bitch
and still stay within the organization’s parameters. Most people at OPUS thought the moniker was appropriate. Including She-Wolf. Dixon had never been of that opinion himself, but his opinion scarcely counted. Although he’d never seen a softer side to his partner, he’d always sensed there was one inside her somewhere, beneath layers of emotional armor she’d spent her entire life erecting.

Dixon knew little of that life. But he knew a lot about She-Wolf, thanks to having worked with her for a half-dozen years. Although they didn’t work shoulder to shoulder saving the world, they were in constant contact with each other when they were on assignment. Where Dixon’s job was to assimilate, evaluate and articulate, She-Wolf’s was to investigate, infiltrate and communicate. He couldn’t do his work until hers was finished. But somehow the communication part never quite was. They met in person when and where they could, but more often they worked apart. Physically, anyway. Nevertheless, the trust and, yes, affection, they’d forged over the years ran deep in them both.

She-Wolf was smart and vigilant and resourceful. She played by the rules as long as they suited her and bent them to her needs when they didn’t. She was a survivor. And she didn’t take shit from
any
body. But she also felt things deeply. She had a keen sense of right and wrong. But Dixon had never known her to feel fear.

And he didn’t know why she was here now, without warning, when he’d been told she’d gone rogue. Not that he’d believed any of that crap for a minute. But she had disappeared from everyone’s radar—even his own. And that had troubled him. Seeing her here like this only compounded that concern. She was supposed to trust him no matter what, the way he trusted her. To realize she didn’t…Well. She wasn’t the only one feeling fear at the moment.

He forced himself to stay where he was, even though he wanted to approach her. He knew better than to touch her—she had real issues about being touched, even casually, and always insisted on taking the initiative there. So he stayed where he was and watched her.

“The last anyone heard,” he said, “you were in Vegas burying your mother. You were supposed to be back at work by now. Instead OPUS has a price on your head.”

“It doesn’t matter where I’ve been,” she told him. “But I need to be able to trust someone right now, Binky.”

Dixon squeezed his eyes shut tight. Dammit. He hated it when she used his code name. She was the only one who’d ever used it and lived to tell the tale. Well, could he help it if he’d pissed off the guy in charge so bad during his basic training that he’d been saddled with such a code name? Just because of a harmless little panty raid? Through the commanding officer’s bedroom? When he was entertaining his mistress while his wife was out of town? Thereby bringing every MP in a half-mile radius to the guy’s house? Not to mention a half dozen television news crews? And a reporter for
Military Times?
Man. Some people had no sense of humor whatsoever.

Before he could say a word in objection, she corrected herself. “Oliver. I need to be able to trust someone right now.”

Whoa. That bothered him even more. She’d
never
called him by his first name. Whatever was up, it was bad.

“You know you can trust me,” he said. To emphasize that, he called her by her first name, too. “I’m always here for you, Lila. Always.”

“You put our partnership before OPUS?” she asked.

“Yes,” he replied immediately. Honestly.

She hesitated only a moment, then nodded slowly, once. To see if she meant it, Dixon took another step forward. She flinched a little but didn’t move. So he completed another and another, until he stood right beside her. Close enough that he could have grabbed her if he’d wanted to and turned her over to their superiors. Not that he could have done that without a fight from her, since he and Lila were pretty evenly matched there. But where nature had given women an emotional edge over men that they could generally work to their advantage, when all was said and done, the physical edge the men had received usually won out. Had Dixon wanted to, he could have brought Lila in for questioning—or whatever else OPUS wanted to do with her. But she was his partner. He wouldn’t have given her up for anything.

“Tell me what’s going on,” he said, making it an order this time instead of a question.

She inhaled a deep breath and released it slowly, then ran a shaky hand—the one decorated with half a handcuff—over her unkempt hair. “They lied to me, Binky,” she said.

“Who lied to you?”

“All of them. Everyone at OPUS.”

“Oh, well, color me astonished,” he said sarcastically. “Golly, they always tell us the truth about everything.”

“No, I don’t mean about a case,” she said. “I’m not talking about threat levels or the need-to-know stuff. I’m talking about
me.
”

Dixon narrowed his eyes at her. “I’m not following you. How could they lie to you about you?”

She said nothing for a moment, then continued, “I have a sister.”

Dixon wasn’t sure why that was significant, other than that she’d never mentioned having a sister before.

When he said nothing, Lila clarified, “See, here’s the thing. Until a few weeks ago, I never knew I had a sister.”

Ah. Okay. But he still didn’t know what that had to do with her going rogue. Or her appearance at the Nesbitt estate under cover of darkness. Or her appearance once she arrived. She was a mess.

“I’m not sure I’m following where this is going, Lila,” he said.

She closed her eyes, inhaled another deep breath and released it as an impatient sound. “I’m an identical twin,” she said. “I have a sister out there in the world, someone who looks just like me, and I never knew it. But OPUS
did
know about her. They’ve known about her for years. They found her when they did the background check on me before accepting me into the program. And they never told me about her.”

“They probably just assumed you knew about her.”

“She and I were separated at birth.” Lila chuckled a little nervously. “Oh, God, this is going to sound so maudlin and clichéd.”

“Look, just start at the beginning,” Dixon said. “I have no idea what a missing sister has to do with why you’re here looking like this.”

Lila lifted a hand, palm up, as if she were either groping for some way to explain or half surrendering to not being able to make herself clear. Finally, though, she said, “Okay. From the beginning. You know about my life in Vegas.”

“A little,” he conceded. “I mean, I know about your mother and the situation there.”

And he only knew that because once, when he and Lila had had too much to drink after an especially grueling assignment, Dixon had told her about his father and she had told Dixon about her mother. About how she’d made her living as a showgirl and part-time prostitute and about the boyfriends and johns who’d wanted a piece of Lila, too. It was why she’d left home at sixteen and never returned. And it was why she was…well, it was why she was She-Wolf.

Lila continued, “After her death, I was going through her things—what few she had—and I found some letters written to her. By my father. I never knew who he was, Binky. When I was a little kid, I used to ask about him. But my mother would always answer me by saying that someday, when I was older, she’d tell me all about him and that I’d understand. Finally, when I was about thirteen and I asked her again, she told me she didn’t know who my father was, that he could have been any of a dozen men. By then, I knew what kind of woman she was, so I didn’t have any reason to doubt her answer. I figured I was the result of some one-night stand or some job she had, some guy whose name she probably didn’t even know.”

She licked her lips, and her voice was quieter when she continued. “But when I was going through her stuff, I found some letters in a box in the back of one of her closets from a man named Elliot. There were only four of them. The first was dated a month after the day I was born. The last one was dated six months later. I don’t think my mother replied to any of them, because Elliot mentioned in each one that he hadn’t heard from her. Long story short, from what I gather, Elliot was my father and he and my mother decided that they would each take one daughter to raise, since they didn’t want to marry but neither felt as if they could handle raising two kids.

“I don’t know how they met or what their relationship was like,” she continued, “but he
wasn’t
some one-night stand. He seemed to have genuinely cared for my mother and for me and my sister. But he took my sister somewhere else to raise her. And OPUS knew all about it, Binky. But they never told me.”

“Well, like I said, they probably figured you already knew.”

She shook her head. “No, I told them during the initial interview that I’d left home before graduating from high school and rarely spoke to my mother. That I didn’t know who my father was. That I didn’t have any family. It was one of the reasons they were interested in taking me on. You know how they are about that stuff. They love it when we’re mongrels with no family or friends. They love it when we don’t have anything to risk except ourselves.”