Satisfaction Guaranteed

Chapter 7

Something was digging into Beth’s side when the alarm woke her. She sat up, feeling strangely good, a smile of forgotten, but delicious dreams playing at the corners of her lips. She rubbed the sore spot on her side absently and then felt around the slick surface of her sheets, searching for the culprit.

Her hand closed over the cordless phone.

And everything came flooding back. Her sense of well-being vanished to be replaced with horror.

She’d had phone sex. With Ethan Crane. She grabbed the sheet to her chin as if he were going to walk into the room from the bathroom at any second. Which he couldn’t, of course. He was home…in his own bed. Or his shower.

The image of that perfect body showering was enough to make the still sensitive flesh between her legs throb. This was ridiculous. Totally out of hand. She reacted to him and thoughts of him like he was a walking aphrodisiac, but he was just a man.

A man who had managed to talk her through the most amazing orgasm of her life. Had it been as good for him? Phone sex. She still could not quite grasp that she’d done that with Ethan. Nice women didn’t do that kind of thing, did they? But then she’d long since decided her sexual fantasies were anything but nice. Which was one reason it was so much safer to dream than to do.

So, why hadn’t she thought of that last night when she was flashing him? She couldn’t even use the excuse she’d been tipsy, because she hadn’t. She didn’t need alcohol to be so affected by Ethan that her finely honed inhibitions went flying to parts unknown. She only needed him…or thoughts of him.

It had never been like this with Alan. Sex with him had been good, but not mind-blowing, knock-your-socks-off, out-of-this-world incredible. And that had only been teleintimacy.

What would it be like tonight, when he was actually touching her? When she could touch him. When she could taste him. Her mouth watered and she groaned at her reaction. This was so not good. It was too much. Was she really going to his apartment for dinner…and sex?

Originally, she was supposed to be doing her own investigation of who he was, what he liked, what his home life was like…reconnaissance. Only they’d turned the evening into so much more. Or was it?

Was Ethan’s sexual interest in her connected to the case? He said the relationship had to look real to fool the adversary. He knew she wasn’t an agent. Was he doing what needed to be done to make sure his case was not compromised, even in a twisted way…protecting her from her own lack of experience in playing a role?

She wished she could dismiss the idea as paranoid, but not only was he a great agent, he was beyond dedicated. He would do whatever he had to make sure he successfully executed a mission. She was absolutely sure it would not be the first time he’d manufactured a relationship for the sake of his cause. Her dad had done the same thing. That’s how her parents had met.

They had fallen in love. Which some might say was a happy ending, but Beth had always wondered how her mom had felt about being pursued initially as a means to an end. She’d never asked and her mom had never offered. They didn’t have that kind of cozy girl-chat-type relationship. But Beth knew that her mom had fallen in love with her dad and they had married, despite the fact her dad had not been the politician her mom had always thought she would marry.

Her mom had modified her dreams for her dad. Beth had never seen the opposite in action, but it could have happened. Who knew what plans her dad had treasured in his heart before he met and married a woman wed to the lifestyle in D.C.? As Vannie from TGP was fond of saying, that was their lookout.

But did Beth want to risk a similar scenario? What if she fell in love with Ethan? What then? Every fear she’d ever had about getting involved with an agent came flooding back. She’d be stuck in the very sort of relationship she’d spent so many years avoiding.

Just as painful a prospect, what if she fell in love and he didn’t? Which was all too likely. He could walk away with his life and heart in tact while she was left to bleed and hurt again. She wanted it to be simply sex, but the chemistry between them was so strong. Intimacy with him was bound to engage her emotions. Deeply.

She knew some people saw lust as a purely physical reaction and maybe it was…for them. But there was a reason she’d only ever had one lover. Sexual desire went hand-in-hand with an emotional connection for her. And the way she’d felt last night-talking to Ethan and touching herself-had almost been spiritual. Which was really silly.

How could something as earthy as phone sex be that affecting? Maybe she was imbuing it with more than what it really was. Was it possible that because she’d always connected emotions with sex that she was doing so again now, but it would be possible not to? She was twenty-nine years old, not a starry-eyed teen. Surely she should be able to control her emotions while having wild-monkey sex with Ethan.

If she was going to make love with him, she would have to. Not to do so would be to court disaster of a magnitude that could outstrip her aborted wedding three years ago. One dose of that kind of humiliation and pain in a lifetime was enough.

And unlike Alan, who had wanted her for herself, Ethan’s motives were murky at best.

The more she thought about it, the more certain she became that he was pursuing her sexually for the sake of the case. He’d never made an overture before and now all of a sudden, he wanted her naked. She couldn’t be sure that the attraction was even for her. It wasn’t that she doubted her sexual desirability, only his timing in discovering it.

He said he got a hard-on from going through her sexy lingerie, but he could have been fantasizing about someone else. He was a professional…he’d know how to do whatever it took to get the job done. Including how to project a façade of sexual desire when he was actually indifferent. He’d as much as said so the night before.

Certainly, she’d always perceived his reaction to her as more indifference than attraction. Why after two years was he suddenly breaking thermometers in his sexual pursuit of her? The most logical answer was that he was using it as a way to guarantee the viability of his case.

If the sexual need on his side was manufactured for the sake of the case…did she want it?

Would that make it better or worse for her? Would she be less likely to fall in love with someone who she knew was using their intimacy as a way to do his job better? Or would it matter? Love wasn’t exactly a rational emotion, but she was a rational being. For the most part.

Could her own innate streak of emotional realism protect her from making the same mistake with Ethan that she had made with Alan? Did she even want to take the risk?

One of the kittens meowed and she jumped. It was time to get ready for the day and feed her furry friends. Only with the plaintive quality of the mewling coming from the kitchen, she’d better reverse the order of those actions.

She padded naked into the kitchen to put out their food, her mind twisting with thoughts she could not tame into any semblance of order.

She was no closer to a sense of certainty by the time she sat down at her desk at work an hour later and started going through her e-mail.

“Good morning, Beth.”

Her head shot up and she gave Alan a weak smile. “Good morning. How is your first case coming along?”

“Fine. It’s more research than anything else. No sweat. You look peaked this morning. Stressed about your upcoming assignment?”

“A little.” Which was the truth, if not all of it.

His hair gleamed almost blue-black under the fluorescent lights, his gray eyes narrowed under dark brows. “I was surprised your dad pushed you into it. Are you sure it’s something you should be doing?”

She manufactured a smile, not sure at all, but unwilling to back out of a commitment she’d made. Keeping her promises was one of the things that Beth insisted on for her personal sense of honor. She’d had too many promises broken to her as a child, and then later, to ever dismiss her responsibilities for the sake of even roiling emotions.

“I’ll be fine. It’s not like I’m pretending to be something I’m not. Only something I used to be.”

“What about the relationship with Ethan? That’s pretense…isn’t it?”

She opened her mouth, but nothing came out. She wasn’t sure how to answer. Did the visual intimacy they had shared in her apartment and the wild encounter on the phone later constitute a relationship, or mistake?

“Not anymore.” The words were Ethan’s and his voice carried a warning note that made Alan’s expression tighten and Beth’s heart rate increase.

Her gaze jerked to Ethan, who had approached silently from his office. He was dressed in his signature dark jeans and a body-hugging, ribbed knit silk T-shirt. His blond hair was in its usual sexy style and his features did not show any of the ravages of lack of sleep. His eyes were filled with the warning his voice had implied as he met Alan’s gaze.

Ethan must have come in early because he had not walked by her desk since she’d arrived. She’d been so caught up in her thoughts, she hadn’t done her usual check to see whose computers were active when she arrived. She clicked a shortcut to a macro she’d created to do just that, while her mind grappled with his presence and what his words and attitude implied.

Alan’s frown was more thoughtful than accusatory. “If that’s true, you move fast.”

Ethan shrugged and Beth felt a betraying blush climb up her skin. There was such a thing as keeping a private encounter private. He was from Texas…didn’t they teach gentlemanly discretion down there?

Alan’s eyes assessed Ethan and his expression turned forbidding. “Or is it that you move with necessity?” he asked in a tone that could have stripped paint.

“Not your business, old son.”

Which was practically an agreement in her opinion. And an unnecessary one at that.

Alan faced Ethan head-on, his entire manner aggressive and borderline threatening. “Beth is a friend. I don’t want to see her hurt.”

“Don’t worry…I have no plans to leave her standing at the altar,” Ethan said with derision.

Alan flashed a look of surprise at Beth and then looked back at Ethan. “You do move fast, but you’re smart enough to know that the past is going to make me more protective of her, not less.”

Ethan shrugged in acknowledgment of a fact that Beth found highly suspect herself. What gave Alan the right to play her protector? He’d abrogated all rights in her life the day he left her standing alone to face three hundred wedding guests and try to explain the inexplicable, all the while wondering if her groom had been killed in the field.

“I am a grown woman and I can make my own decisions and fight my own battles when the need arises,” Beth said acerbically. “I don’t need, or want, a protector.”

Alan’s eyes filled with concern that grated. “Honey, you don’t have experience with men like Ethan. You’re twenty-nine, but you’re still so damn innocent. He’s not above creating a sexual relationship to give a sense of reality to your role in the case.”

“I’m aware of that and I’m not that innocent.” Especially after last night.

“I repeat, this is not your business,” Ethan said to Alan, his drawl pure ice.

But she could not miss that he had not bothered to deny the accusation.

“Patently, I don’t agree.”

Beth stood up and leaned forward so she could speak low enough her voice would not carry down the hall to any interested listeners. “I don’t really care what either of you think. You will stop talking about me and any potential relationship between myself and Ethan publicly and as if I’m not even here right this second.”

They both looked at her like she was speaking in ancient tongues.

She could feel her facial muscles stiffen as her glare went sulfuric. “I mean it.”

“After last night, our relationship is not a potential. It’s a done deal,” Ethan bit out, sounding offended.

“You know I care about you,” Alan added, managing to inject injury into his voice.

She wondered which neck she’d rather wring first.

“Was a conference called that I’m unaware of?” her dad asked from behind Ethan as he walked up.

Beth turned her ire on him. As far as she was concerned, his actions had spawned the whole sorry mess. “No conference, just a couple of your agents stepping out of line. Care to rein them in?”

Both Alan and Ethan stiffened in affront, but her dad’s eyes glittered with a suspicious triumph. “Is that right? What are they stepping out of line about?”

“My private life.” This time her frown was mostly for Ethan. “Some men have not learned to adhere to the adage of kiss and don’t tell.”

“I didn’t say a word about kissing,” Ethan drawled.

Beth had never had homicidal tendencies. She only knew how to shoot a gun because it had been required in her training. But right now, she could cheerfully have shot him…or at least threatened to.

“Face it, Sunshine,” Ethan went on, obviously ignorant of his bodily peril. “Right now…I am your private life.”

“And if I shoot you? What are you then?” she asked sweetly.

“Was she always this bloodthirsty?” Ethan asked Alan.

“I don’t remember that particular trait, but it could have been latent.” Alan shrugged. “Maybe you bring it out in her.”

“Maybe you both do,” she inserted.

“So, this is a bad time to ask if you’ll have lunch with me today…for old time’s sake,” Alan said.

“She’s having lunch with me.” Ethan’s voice dared Beth and/or Alan to argue.

Which she promptly did. “I don’t remember agreeing to lunch and I certainly have no intention of doing so now.”

“You’re not eating lunch with Hyatt.”

“I’m not?” she asked neutrally.

“She’s not?” her dad asked, his voice laced with amusement that scored her nerves like nails on a chalkboard.

“She’s not?” Alan asked, his own voice dangerously soft.

Ethan crossed his arms, his stance one of absolute purpose. “We need to discuss the case.”

Beth took perverse and delighted pleasure in thwarting him. “I need to get the new admin as up to speed as I’m able and according to my e-mail, she’s going to arrive any minute. I plan to spend the lunch hour with her.”

Her dad had been busy and she’d thought again that he could have warned her he’d been prepared to act quickly. Apparently, he’d already screened applicants for the job and the new hire had accepted sometime yesterday.

“Another time,” Alan said.

Ethan’s eyes narrowed to green slits. “She’ll be busy on the case.”

“The case won’t last forever,” Alan replied, his voice laced with meaning-the implication being that the relationship would last only as long as the case.

“What you two had is over. Accept it.”

Beth could not believe Ethan had just said that.

Neither could her father, if his expression was anything to go by. “She told you about their past?”

“Yes,” Ethan replied shortly to Whit and then focused on Alan again. “You blew it. It’s over. Forget about rekindling old flames because I’m here to put them out.”

“For how long?”

“That’s between Beth and me. Whatever you two had in the past has no bearing on the present.”

“And if I’m not willing to accept that?”

“I don’t plan to give you a choice in the matter.”

Okay. That was it. She was dreaming. Men like Ethan did not have these kinds of discussions. He wasn’t the type to kiss and tell. Which made his comments all the more jarring to her. Nor was he the type to announce his most recent liaison to the office staff. He was too suave…not some primitive Neanderthal who warned other men off what he considered his woman.

Definitely a dream. Because even primitive men didn’t have this sort of discussion over her. Not Beth Whitney, who would have made an ideal small-town librarian in another life.

The dream had started yesterday morning when her dad practically ordered her to take an agent’s role in a case. That just wasn’t normal either. No…maybe it had started when Alan showed up in front of her desk and her dad said he was the new hire. Yes, she liked that scenario better. She nodded to herself. That’s definitely when she’d started dreaming.

So, he wasn’t here. Neither was Ethan. It was all just a really involved, really long dream. And she should wake up any second now to two hungry furballs and an apartment that had never been invaded by Ethan Crane.

“Are you okay, Sunshine?” the dream Ethan asked.

The dream Alan’s brows furrowed. “She looks odd.”

“Elizabeth.” That was not a tone she liked hearing in her dreams and she frowned her disapproval.

She let her gaze slide to her dad. “I’m dreaming and I want you all to disappear right now. There are other ways I prefer to spend my fantasy time.”

The dream office environment did not dissolve to make way for a more pleasant subconscious exercise in imagination.

And all three men now looked at her with varying levels of concern.

Until Ethan’s face creased with a slow, knowing smile, his green eyes lit with wicked lights. “This isn’t a dream, Sunshine. Neither was last night. You’re no longer fantasizing your way through life. You are living it.”

“Last night?” her father asked in an ominous voice, as if he’d just gotten the implication of all that Ethan had been saying.

Ethan shrugged. “We’re working together, Whit. Don’t get in the way.”

“She’s my daughter.”

“And you assigned her to my case. Live with it.”

The outer office door opened and Bennett Vincent walked in, an older woman following him. “I’ve brought down the new hire like you said to, boss.”

The lines on the woman’s face declared she was easily in her sixties, but her fiery orange hair and lively expression said she was far from retirement. She gave the men a once-over, sizing each one up with keen blue eyes before nodding briskly toward Beth. “I’m Maude and I hear I’ve got two days to learn my job before you go gallivanting. My favorite kind of challenge, but we’d better get to it, missy.”

Maude had the voice of a drill sergeant and for some reason, that struck Beth as hilariously funny. She burst into laughter. If the sound was a bit hysterical, she could be forgiven. No way was this a dream because this woman had too much presence not to be real. Which meant everything else was real too. Darn.

She’d almost convinced herself otherwise.

Maude nodded approvingly, her head moving in a single bob of military precision. “I like to work with a woman who has a sense of humor.”

Beth got her mirth under control and stuck her hand out, relieved her unrestrained humor had not offended her new assistant. “Beth Whitney. It’s a pleasure to meet you. As you said, we’ve got a lot to do…”

She turned to the men standing around her desk. “If you will excuse us, gentlemen.” Then without waiting to see if they took the hint, she dismissed them by turning toward Maude. “We’ll start by familiarizing you with my setup. We’ll train you on my computer system and then set you up with your own when I get back from my upcoming assignment.”

“Sounds efficient.”

And Beth got the distinct impression that to Maude, that was high praise. Beth launched into an explanation of her early morning routine to which the older woman listened to avidly. However, part of Beth was attuned and waiting for the men to leave. She didn’t know when her dad and Alan left, but she could tell when Ethan did. The air around her stopped crackling.

“Well done,” Maude said.

Beth looked up. “Excuse me?”

“You handled the testosterone brigade with just the right amount of authority. An admin has to establish her boundaries and let the suits know where she stands from the get-go.”

“I agree,” Beth said, certain that Maude would have no issues with that aspect of her job.

By the end of the day, she was confident the older woman wouldn’t have any problems, period. She was an absolute dynamo and Beth felt better about leaving than she had since agreeing to the assignment. Maude even finalized her travel arrangements to Portland International Airport. She booked a seat for Ethan on her father’s instructions as well, though Beth didn’t understand why he was accompanying her to the interview.

She asked about it immediately after arriving at his apartment that night. It was actually the entire ground floor of a three-story brick house on the outskirts of the city on a street lined with trees and pristine sidewalks, though the neighborhood was older. He had chosen a similar color scheme to hers, but with a very different overriding theme. The influence of his home state was subtle, but unmistakable. His dark chocolate leather furniture and solid wood tables had a western feel that was both stylish and comfortable.

He had few knickknacks and almost no artwork on the walls, and yet the living area did not feel sanitized, simply uncluttered.

He hung her jacket in his entry closet as he answered her question. “Your dad and I decided I would play the possessive boyfriend.”

He came back into the living room, where she sat at one end of the long sofa. He was wearing the same dark jeans he’d had on earlier, but he’d put on a snug-fitting Henley with them and taken off his boots and socks. His feet were very masculine. And dark. Like he’d been barefoot in the sun a lot. He hadn’t gotten that way in D.C. But she knew his extreme sports took him south frequently.

He poured her a glass of wine from the bottle chilling in a bucket on his big, square coffee table. “I’ll call you several times a day, show up to take you to lunch almost every day, drive you to work, and pick you up. That sort of thing. It will give me a chance to be on-site more than I would otherwise and will establish a precedent for you staying in pretty constant contact with me.”

She took a sip of the wine. It was a Riesling and the tangy sweetness slid over her tongue with familiar pleasure. “Mmm. This is my favorite kind of wine.”

“I know.”

“You do?” She didn’t remember telling him. “I didn’t think we’d discussed culinary preferences last night. Though we probably should have.”

“We’ve known each other for two years, Beth. My knowledge of you is not limited to what we discussed yesterday.”

“Of course.” She just thought he hadn’t noticed. “Do you think Prescott will buy the overly possessive boyfriend bit?”

Ethan shook his head, his expression remonstrative. “I’m good at my job, Beth. I’ll be very convincing as the jealous, possessive boyfriend. Trust me.”

Suddenly the events of the morning started to make more sense. “You and Dad talked about this yesterday, didn’t you?”

“Yes, why?”

“You were getting into character,” she mused, both relieved and somewhat deflated at the same time.

“What are you talking about?”

“This morning. When you were going all macho primitive with Alan. That was all about you being in character.” She took another sip of wine and tried to squelch even the tiniest niggle of disappointment at the realization.

Ethan leaned back on the sofa and put his bare feet up on the coffee table. “You don’t see me as the macho, primitive type?”

“Macho yes, primitive no.”

He did that thing with his eyebrow, lifting one in silent inquiry. “Hmmm…”

She couldn’t tell what he was thinking. He shifted a little and her gaze traveled down his body involuntarily. Muscles bulged against the black denim on his thighs, but those bare feet snagged her attention and held on. It felt intimate, sitting there like that. Was that because of last night, or because there was something personal about seeing a man’s feet? Maybe if they lived in Hawaii, or even Southern California, it wouldn’t feel like this. But D.C. was not a barefoot town. Far from it. Which made this little scenario feel intimate…just like the night before.

Had she really flashed him with her panties?

She’d lost her mind, but that was better than losing her heart. And she wasn’t convinced that organ was invulnerable.

“And if I told you that I don’t consider it primitive to tell the man who stood you up at the altar three years ago to mind his own business?”