Catherine Mann - The Cinderella Mission

Without breaking stride, he swiped his water bottle off the bleachers. Ducking into the locker room, he poured the water over his head and pitched the bottle in the trash. A towel across the face cleared away sweat and blood. A quick hand through his hair slicked back the shaggy length he hadn’t bothered to trim since his deep-cover assignment in Gastonia. He snagged his clothes on the way out.

A rogue thought diluted his adrenaline. What the hell would he say to Kelly when he saw her for the first time since his return? God, he hoped he’d read her wrong.

He knew he hadn’t.

Ethan took the winding hall at a slow jog, flashing his ID through multiple security checks. With any luck, less than an hour from now he would be back on line for his next mission, away from Kelly Taylor and the feelings in her eyes he didn’t know how the hell to handle.

Bitter February wind moaned through the parking garage. Ethan thumbed his remote, disarming the car alarm. He threw his change of clothes over to the passenger side and slid into the embrace of the leather seats in his retooled vintage Jaguar.

Fifteen minutes later, he broke the city limits and opened up the engine. Deserted roads zigzagged in front of him with trees alongside creating a twisting icy tunnel into the Virginia hills.

Steering with his knee, he whipped his T-shirt over his head. He reached to the seat next to him for his black turtleneck. He accommodated for his disdain of ties with great suits.

His car phone chimed over the heater blast.

Ethan yanked the shirt over his head, only blinded for a second before he reached to jab the speakerphone. “Williams, here.”

ARIES’s number flashed across the screen. He alternated hands on the wheel to slide his arms through the sleeves while waiting for the communications operator to speak the code.

“Confirming your dentist appointment with Dr. Brown.”

Ethan rolled out his answer that signified he was alone. “Tuesday at eleven.”

“Thank you, sir.”

An answer of “I don’t have my day planner with me” would have signaled that he could not speak freely because a passenger could overhear.

Modem sounds drifted through the speakerphone in their digital dance to link encrypted lines for secured conversation. Ethan activated cruise control along the empty expanse of rural highway. He kicked off his Nikes and shucked his sweatpants.

The telecommunications squeaks ended. “Confirm we have a secure line. Stand by for your party from Director Hatch’s office. Go ahead, ma’am.”

Ma’am? Hatch’s office?

A burn started in his brain, firing an instinctive awareness that fate had targeted his mojo again. He had a fair guess who the agency ma’am from Hatch’s office would be. That ma’am would be the freaking icing on his bad-luck cake that had started with someone shooting at him as he hurtled through the sky dangling from a streamer parachute.

Foreboding made a drive-by in Ethan’s brain with a mere second’s warning before her voice flowed through the speakerphone in the last kind of distraction he needed today with a Code Delta in his future.

“Ethan?”

Kelly Taylor’s single word swirled through his car and conscience.

“Roger, Kel. I’m here.” He kept it light. No way would she discuss anything too deep with the agency monitoring their call. “What do you have for me?”

“Director Hatch requested that I let you know he’s waiting in his office when you arrive. Something to do with your Gastonia assignment.”

Damned if she didn’t have the most incredible voice caressing the airwaves with a richness that could make reading a menu sound like foreplay. And she thought she wanted him when he knew damned well he couldn’t have her.

He still remembered the impact of hearing her for the first time two years ago. He’d nearly crawled through the phone line. In five seconds flat, he’d planned seventeen ways to romance her into his bed where he would tangle himself up in that smoky suggestiveness for a solid week.

Then he’d found Kelly Taylor’s voice didn’t fit the rest of her. At all. Face-to-face, the woman personified innocence and happily-ever-after. He might have wanted those things once, but since Celia, he preferred his women with eyes wide open. Liaisons with innocents were especially taboo. And Ethan suspected they didn’t come any more innocent than Kelly Taylor.

So instead of a lover, he’d found a friend, a much more valuable commodity.

“Ethan?” Her voice glided over his name like bourbon swirled on the sides of a glass. “Are you still there?”

“Yeah, Kel.” He grabbed his pants off the seat beside him, steadying the wheel as snowflakes dotted his windshield. “Just kinda busy right this second.”

“Anything I can help you with?”

Ethan glanced down at his bare legs and boxers. “No, thanks. I’ve got it under control.”

His body tightened.

“I’m always here to give you a hand.”

Ethan stifled a groan.

“Are you okay? Should I tell Hatch we’ll debrief later?”

Debrief? Ethan resisted the urge to cover himself. He drove one-handed down the lonely stretch of road while sliding into his Brooks Brothers pants. “No thanks.”

“If you’re sure you’re up for the meeting.”

He was seconds away from being “up” for a hell of a lot more if he didn’t finish this call. He resolved to focus on her words rather than her voice. “I’m only five minutes out. Once I upload my after-action report from the Gastonia assignment—”

“Already done. I had a head start to get on top of things.”

An image of her on top of other things nearly sent Ethan into a snow-filled ditch.

Apparently her words posed a hazard after all with each syllable blanketed in her intoxicating tones. The afternoon promised to be long and painful. “Thanks, Kelly.”

“My pleasure.”

Ethan swerved short of driving up a road sign.

Now that would be a hell of a way to go, pants down and totally turned on by the equivalent of encrypted phone sex.

A voice like that should come with some kind of warning label. Don’t use while others are driving or operating heavy machinery.

Ethan buckled his belt while driving past the agency radar detector at the designated speed to signify he wasn’t under duress. “Need to sign off. Approaching the perimeter.”

“See you soon.”

The connection died.

Silence echoed in his car. Ethan accelerated around the corner back up to eighty, steering one-handed while exchanging his diver’s watch for a Cartier timepiece.

His senses cleared and a mental image of Kelly overlaid the sensual torture of her voice. Large chocolate eyes invited a person to climb right into her soul.

Those vulnerable eyes, too full of some misguided infatuation, offered all the reminder he needed to leave her the hell alone. He knew firsthand how a broken heart crippled a person and wouldn’t deal the same blow to anyone else.

Especially not to Kelly.

Besides, he had enough on his agenda with a Code Delta—make or break for a man testing his ability to stay at the top of his game.

Ethan squashed doubts and slowed over the grate in the road that held the covert camera to check the Jaguar’s undercarriage for explosives. He would simply keep his mind on the mission. He’d identified his weakness, right? No softening, none of that sensitivity garbage.

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.