Sleeping With The Enemy

The last vestiges of sleep were nudged aside by the return of her customary common sense. The gorgeous male specimen was probably her new upstairs neighbor. She’d recalled seeing a moving van two days ago, but although she’d been too busy at the clinic all day Friday, she recalled hearing Netta and a couple of the younger, single Cole Harbor residents speculating on the social, and marital, availability of the Cougars’ new football coach.

Still, she hesitated and did another quick once-over as he turned around, his back to the door. He didn’t have that spit-and-polished FBI look, she decided. At least not through the fish-eye lens of the peephole he didn’t. In the flesh could be a different story.

She ran her hands through her hair in a vain attempt to smooth the tangles, then opened the door. The peephole didn’t do him justice. As up close and personal as the safety chain allowed, she couldn’t help noticing his blue jeans were exactly as she’d imagined them, hugging a masculine posterior she found way too intriguing to be written off as her professional medical opinion.

“Can I help you?” she asked, managing to keep her tone cool and remote. The last thing she needed was for him to suspect she considered him a mouthwatering example of masculine perfection.

He turned around and locked the clearest, most startling gaze she’d ever seen on her. Maybe it was the exhaustion, but she could swear this man, a total stranger, with the sexiest pair of lilac eyes she’d ever had the pleasure of gazing into, could see clear down to her soul.

Dangerous, she thought the second he flashed her a breathtaking grin. Way too dangerous, especially for a woman with something to hide.

2

AT FIRST GLANCE, SHE WAS exactly what Chase expected. Dr. Destiny Romine had the look of an upper-middle-class professional from an upper-middle-class family, the only surviving daughter of a brilliant neurosurgeon and world-renowned psychologist, both dead before their time. She did not look like the Bureau’s last hope to bring down a murdering agent. Even dressed in a thin cotton robe and peering at him through the small gap in the door allowed by the safety latch, there was something about her that exuded elegance.

And not just elegance, class, he thought, unable to take his eyes off her. Sex appeal. Lots of it, too.

“Can I help you?” she asked again, pulling his thoughts away from a very interesting and far too dangerous path for a guy in his position.

Despite the slightest hint of irritation, her voice was even more silky-smooth than he’d imagined.

“Sorry to bother you so early,” he said, taking advantage of the chance for a closer second look. The FBI photos hadn’t come close to capturing an earthy beauty that belied her privileged upbringing. Nor had the photographer managed to seize the exact way her green eyes flared with color in the early morning sunlight or how tiny flecks of gold highlighted her irises. “I was hoping I could use your phone.”

She flicked that intriguing gaze over him, as if he was nothing more interesting to her than a lab specimen. He wondered what she’d think if she knew she was simply a means to an end for him.

“My phone?”

“Mine’s out,” he lied easily. The first of many, he suspected. “It was supposed to be hooked up last week before I moved in, but it looks like it didn’t happen.” How many more lies would he tell to this woman until she finally gave him what he wanted?

Chase knew the answer…as many as necessary.

Her gaze slipped away, darted around the area, then zeroed in on him again. “And you are?” she asked, her sable eyebrows lifting quizzically.

He extended his hand, but she continued to stare at him through the small opened space between the door and the jamb. What he could see of her expression gave absolutely nothing away. She didn’t so much as budge the safety catch, either.

He shrugged and dropped his hand. “Your new neighbor,” he said, hooking his thumb upward to the apartment over hers. “I’m the new defensive back coach for the Cougars.”

His second quasi lie. He was the Cougars’ new coach, and no one, not even the administration at Cole Harbor High knew his true identity, or his reason for being in town.

Small towns put a lot of stock in gossip. He was counting on Cole Harbor fitting the stereotype of down-home southern hospitality, even if it was part of the Atlantic coastal region where the people tended to be slightly more cautious than their inland counterparts.

A wry twist transformed her mouth into the semblance of a brief grin a half second before she closed the door. Relief shot through him at the rattle of the chain sliding off the security rail.

First rule of undercover work, sell your cover.

And she’d just bought his.

“Come on in.” She swung the door wide and stepped back to let him into her unit. “You’re Coach Bracken.”

He nodded. “Call me Chase,” he said, stepping into her apartment. “And you are…?”

He let his voice trail off, while his eyes took in everything, mentally cataloging the layout of her unit, which was similar to his own but smaller. Dr. Romine’s apartment hosted only a single bedroom while his larger upstairs unit held two bedrooms and a minuscule dining area in the kitchen visible from his living room. From the look of things, the good lady doctor took her meals at the breakfast bar that separated the kitchen and small living area. Thanks to the building plans tucked inside his closet, he knew the remaining unoccupied unit next door to Dr. Romine’s was identical, only reversed.

Her gaze slid to the red digits on the VCR’s clock—it was a few minutes past ten—then back to him. “Dee. And shouldn’t you be at football practice at this hour? I thought it was Hell Week.” She remained near the door, her hands disappearing into the side pockets of her robe.

Cursory interior surveillance achieved. He turned and gave her a smile. “Next week,” he supplied. “The Cougars are just starting to condition in gear this afternoon.”

Upon entering her living room, he’d immediately surveyed most of her uninspired kitchen, her equally sterile bathroom and a portion of her bedroom with only a rumpled double bed visible. He didn’t have to look again to recall that the tangled sheets of the bed had been the only sign that a living, breathing person resided in the downstairs apartment. From what he’d seen already, not so much as a decorative throw rug covered the hardwood floors. Serviceable off-white miniblinds, rather than frilly, feminine lace curtains covered the windows; the blinds blocked out the hazy morning sun. There weren’t any boxes stacked along the walls to indicate she was moving.

She’d lived here a long time. Where were all the normal trappings a person carried with them from place to place, the ridiculous souvenirs people collected and displayed? There wasn’t so much as a cheap framed print from the local five-and-dime hanging over the institutional-looking sofa. The walls were as bare and vacant as the unit next door.

The reports indicated Destiny Romine had resided in Cole Harbor a little over two years after finishing her residency in L.A. She’d played it smart and had taken the government up on their offer to forgive a large portion of her student loans in exchange for practicing medicine in the small seaside town for two and a half years. According to the bank statements he’d reviewed, she also worked two weekend shifts a month at the Berkeley County Hospital for extra cash. He also knew that at the age of fifteen she’d been left virtually penniless when her parents died and that her then eighteen-year-old brother, Jared, had raised her. It was that bond, the one forged between Dee and her brother when they’d had no one but each other to depend on following the unexpected death of their parents, that practically guaranteed Chase would be the agent to stamp a big red Closed on the Bureau’s most frustrating, not to mention embarrassing, case.

One thing he could say for Destiny Romine: she was a survivor. He admired survivors as much as he admired intelligence, even in the criminals he busted. She was a smooth one though, and she’d talk. They always talked when Bend-the-Rules Bracken finished with them.

“There’s a wall phone in the kitchen,” she said. “By the window.”

“Thanks.” He headed into the kitchen, his sneakers silent on the bare wood floor. A faded half-moon rug with colorful berries lay in front of the sink, the only personal touch in the place.

He waited for her to follow him, but instead he heard the distinct click of a door. Unable to believe his luck, he peered around the corner. The bathroom door was shut, probably to afford him the illusion of privacy.

He dialed the 800 number to the Bureau, waited for the automated response, then quickly punched in his voice mail number. Water ran in the background as he waited to hear his own voice instruct him to leave a message. He didn’t have much time. Fishing in his pocket, he pulled out a pocketknife, then used it to pry the face off of the telephone receiver.

The water stopped.

Chase muttered a curse, then started talking to his voice mail, asking the make-believe telephone company to please do whatever necessary to initiate service today. Yes, he could be reached at the high school after one o’clock.

He paused, and counted to ten.

Silence.

He felt like an idiot, but continued the one-sided dialogue anyway.

In the watch pocket of his blue jeans, he eased out two credit-card-thin silver discs, and wedged them inside the guts of the receiver. He slid the white plastic, protective covering back on the phone, then snapped it in place.

“Thank you,” he said into the mouthpiece, as the door to the bathroom swung open. “I’d really appreciate it.”

He turned, pressed the button to disconnect the call and mentally counted to ten before sliding his thumb over the six button, followed by two hits to the number one to erase the Bureau number from the redial memory. It wouldn’t do for Dr. Romine to become suspicious. The last thing he needed was for her to end up with the Bureau’s automated recording instead of the phone company he’d been pretending to call.

“Should be taken care of now,” he said, hanging up the telephone just as Dee walked into the kitchen.

“They’re usually pretty good about service,” she said, giving him the hint that occasionally the small regional phone company wasn’t as prompt as she’d sometimes like. “Someone probably just forgot to flip a switch somewhere.”

She’d brushed her hair, he noticed, and pulled the long silky strands into a ponytail, which swung over her shoulder when she bent to pull a teakettle from a low cabinet. Chase couldn’t help himself. He was a man. A man alone with a beautiful woman. When she bent over to look under the cabinet for the teakettle, his gaze landed right on her backside. A very curvy backside, too, he thought.

She moved to the sink to fill the kettle with water, then set it to boil on the stove. He reluctantly dragged his attention away from the curves beneath her robe and flashed her a grin when she looked his way.

“Sorry I can’t be more neighborly and offer you a cup of tea.” She lowered the flame under the kettle. “I really have to get to the clinic soon.”

“No problem.” He’d gotten luckier than he’d hoped by being able to place the dual transmitters in her telephone. He still couldn’t quite believe a woman who’d learned to be suspicious of just about everyone she came in contact with would leave him alone for any length of time in her apartment. “I better get going. More unpacking to do.”

The space between the stove and the sink was incredibly narrow. Whether she just didn’t think about the cramped space or she was playing some game of territorial one-upmanship he wasn’t privy to, he couldn’t say. All he knew was that she didn’t move and he’d have to touch her in order to pass. With no other choice but to squeeze between her and the speckled counter, his hand automatically landed on her hip as he attempted to ease his way around her.

Nothing could have prepared him for the electrical charge of sexual awareness that shot from the tips of his fingers straight to his groin. His fingers weren’t the only body parts that flexed, either. Telling himself she was the final piece of the puzzle to the whereabouts of her brother didn’t help. Pulling his hand back and putting some much needed physical distance between them was equally useless.

His body acknowledged hers with a fierce surge of good old-fashioned lust. He hoped like hell it’d just been a long time since he’d been with a woman. The instantaneous desire collided with his staunch denial there was nothing else to his physical reaction to Dee. She was a means to an end. The very nature of his job, his reason for even being in her apartment at ten in the morning on a late-summer day, forbade any emotional involvement with her whatsoever.

That didn’t stop the blood from pumping hard and fast through his veins.

“You work at the clinic?” he asked, putting more distance between them while attempting to redirect his thoughts.

She frowned. Had she felt it, too? he wondered.

“Yes,” she said, the note of awareness in her voice striking him right in the midsection with a ball of heat that burned, then shot lower and simmered.

Damn.

He edged out of the small kitchen into the living-room area. “So are you the one I call if I need an appointment to see the doc?” He already knew everything there was to know about her. Everything, he thought, except the way his body reacted to the nearness of hers. That had been a complete surprise.

“Are you asking me if I’m the receptionist?” she asked, settling her hands on the counter. Her hip, the one he swore he could still feel the imprint of against his fingers, tilted slightly to the side.

“I guess I was.”

A brief smile canted her mouth. “No. I’m not the receptionist.”

“Nurse?”

Her smile deepened. “Wrong again.”

He frowned, then lifted his eyebrows as if surprised. “You’re the town doctor?”

“And would you believe it? I went to school and everything,” she countered. An interesting light flashed in her gold-green eyes that matched the sass in her voice.

He grinned. “Sorry. I didn’t mean—”

She closed her eyes briefly, then shook her head. “It’s not your fault. I’m just a little tired this morning.”

She folded her arms in front of her. “I don’t mean to be rude, but you’re going to have to excuse me. I really need to get ready for work.”

“How about you let me buy you lunch?” he asked quickly. Whether his invitation stemmed from his need to solve the case or something more interesting he had no intention of pursuing, he couldn’t say. He opted for case related. “It’s the least I could do since I woke you up to use your phone.”

She let out a puff of breath and padded across the bare floor to the door. “That’s not necessary,” she said, swinging it open in a silent, but pointed, invitation for him to get out.

“I insist,” he pushed, walking toward her. “I feel bad about waking you.”

She looked away as he passed in front of her. He stepped onto the front porch and turned around, his hopes climbing a notch at the regret in her eyes.

“I’m sorry,” she told him. “I have to work.”

“You get a lunch break, don’t you?”

“Yes, but I’m really busy today. But thank you anyway.” She let the door swing closed. The rattle of the safety chain told him she wouldn’t be changing her mind anytime soon.

He let out a frustrated stream of breath. The morning hadn’t been a complete waste. He’d managed to get the transmitters placed in her telephone. All incoming or outgoing calls from that telephone would be recorded. While any information he learned would be inadmissible, he couldn’t risk a leak, which was a real possibility if he attempted the legal route by obtaining a court ordered tap. She didn’t own a cellular telephone, but she did have a beeper. He also hadn’t been able to determine whether or not she had another extension in her bedroom.

He reined in the baser thoughts that readily flowed through his mind when he considered the means by which to gain entrance to Dr. Romine’s bedroom.

Shoving his hand through his hair, he stepped off her porch into the bright morning sunlight and headed across the small concrete courtyard bordered with overgrown, neglected foliage to the stairs leading up to his apartment. He’d stretched the boundaries of the law before to suit his own ends and he wasn’t above doing so now. When it came to tracking down those on the FBI’s most wanted list, he wouldn’t hesitate to stretch the rules to the point of breaking. Every now and then, he’d even managed a few stress cracks, but never had he ever completely ignored the laws he’d sworn to uphold. That didn’t mean he didn’t enjoy a challenge, and the Romine case definitely qualified.

Except Chase Bend-the-Rules Bracken had a problem. A problem that consisted of his body’s reaction to his only lead in the case he had to solve, or he’d be donating his dark blue suits to the Goodwill.

With a sigh of self-disgust, he walked into his apartment and headed straight for the locked spare bedroom. He flipped on the light and crossed the room, ignoring the high-powered scope set up near the window. Without bothering to sit, he leaned over and punched a series of keys on the computer keyboard. In the recorder next to him, surveillance tapes whirred to life then paused until triggered by the subject’s telephone. The red lights on the recording devices glowed.

He was ready, in the preliminary sense. If Jared Romine contacted his sister by telephone, Chase would know about it. His gut told him the rogue agent wouldn’t be so careless; it wasn’t Romine’s style considering he’d been underground for almost three years without so much as a hint to his whereabouts. The Bureau knew that somehow Romine maintained contact with his sister. Chase needed to determine exactly how the murdering agent did it. Then and only then would he be able to track the suspect down.

He arrogantly figured within two weeks he’d know everything he needed to finally apprehend Jared Romine.

A slow smile spread across his face. He wouldn’t uncover the information by using any of the high-tech surveillance equipment lining the walls of the spare bedroom. He’d learn it the old-fashioned way, by interrogating the suspect’s sister, in ways Chase was positive would never be found in any reference manual.

LONG HOURS WEREN’T NEW to Dee. Nor were shifts that extended long beyond her scheduled twelve hours. She learned to survive the grueling pace by napping whenever possible and drinking as much strong black coffee as her stomach lining could tolerate.

After the weekend she’d spent at the county hospital, followed by the fourteen-hour labor and delivery of Erma Dalton’s sixth child, she should be exhausted, but serving her internship in a busy Los Angeles emergency room two years ago had conditioned her for the endless hours young physicians often handled in the beginning of their careers.

Every other weekend she served as an E.R. resident at the Berkeley County Hospital, but this past weekend had been particularly rough as she’d had to pull a double shift to cover for a colleague away on holiday. After that, she only had a four-hour break before starting her own second shift of the weekend. Sneaking what little sleep she could manage during the occasional lull, she’d made it through the roughest forty-eight hours she could remember since her early intern days. Her plans to sleep until noon, however, had been effectively derailed by her new upstairs neighbor.

Her very handsome and sexy new upstairs neighbor, with wavy black hair, eyes such an interesting shade of blue they looked almost lilac. Add in the sweet musky scent that clung to his skin, and her dormant feminine instincts had awakened from slumber.

Just what she didn’t need. Or want.

At first she’d tried to write off her physical reaction to the newcomer as nothing more than sheer exhaustion. So what if she’d experienced an accompanying thrum of anticipation when she’d first looked into his intense gaze. She’d had an extraordinarily busy weekend and probably only slept seven out of the last sixty hours. As dog-tired as she’d been, was it so unusual for her to feel a rush of longing when a tall, gorgeous stranger asked to borrow her phone?

For her, yes. He made her uneasy, in a man/woman, sexual desires running in high gear sort of way. As far as explanations went, she couldn’t find one worthy enough to rationalize the way her heart had ricocheted around in her chest when he’d laid his hand on her hip as he squeezed past her in the kitchen, or the way her thighs had tingled when he’d brushed against her.

No doubt about it. Coach Bracken made her hot.

Too bad a cool shower, followed up with a steaming cup of herbal tea and a crispy toasted bagel slathered with her favorite strawberry cream cheese, did nothing to alleviate the sneaking suspicion that sexual deprivation, not lack of sleep, was her problem.

At five minutes before noon, she pulled into the rear of the clinic and parked beneath the voluminous shade of an ancient elm. After locking her used Honda Civic, she followed the concrete path along the side of the building to the front door. There wouldn’t be any patients waiting for her, with the exception of Erma Dalton, whom she hoped to send home soon, which would give her time to get caught up on paperwork.

She climbed the wooden steps of the old Victorian where the Cole Harbor clinic was housed. The bottom floor had been converted to a medical office over sixty years before by the first Doc Claymore, with the living quarters taking up the two top floors. Three generations later, the clinic still existed, but the gruff old buzzard Dee put up with was the last of his line.

She pushed open the door and breathed in the sterile scent of disinfectant mingled with the more tantalizing aroma of the mulberry scented candle burning in the reception area. Netta, the clinic’s receptionist, was just pulling her oversize canvas bag from the bottom drawer of the filing cabinet.

“Good afternoon, Netta. Any messages?”

Netta, who dressed like a twenty-two-year-old, although Dee and Lucille both swore she couldn’t be a day under thirty-five, dropped her bag on the desk. She gave the short hem of the black knit skirt hugging her ample bottom a tug, followed by a dramatic put-upon sigh. The receptionist’s job was to take messages and schedule appointments. In Dee’s opinion, they were lucky to get that much from the five-foot-two bottle blonde, and had learned early on anything more taxing than answering the phone was asking for trouble. If it was up to Dee, Netta Engels would be history and she’d hire a real front-end person capable of taking the administrative load off the shoulders of Lucille, the registered nurse who’d worked for Doc Claymore the last twenty-five years. The decision wasn’t Dee’s, however, and for reasons that defied common sense, cantankerous old Claymore liked Netta.

As did ninety-eight percent of the male population of Cole Harbor, Dee thought with disgust, certain Netta’s talents went far beyond the kind best put to use in an office.

Two more months, Dee told herself. Provided she came to a decision about where she wanted to practice medicine once her contractual obligation with the government ended. One thing she knew for certain, no matter which offer she accepted, it’d be in a very large metropolitan area where she’d just be another face in a very large crowd. She had managed to narrow her choices down and was seriously entertaining offers from Presbyterian Hospital in New York, Boston’s Massachusetts General and a rather lucrative offer from a private, smaller bed facility in Miami, which would include a gradual partnership buy-in with stock options. Since living on the Atlantic Coast, she decided she preferred the eastern coastal regions to those on the Pacific, and was even beginning to like the idea of a white Christmas, a feature which would effectively eliminate Miami from her list. So, she wasn’t sure she was quite ready to narrow her choices just yet.