Cara Summers - Risking It All - The Proposition / The Dare / The Favour / The P.I. / The Cop / The Defender

“I’m too nervous,” Sierra said. “I just feel so responsible for this. I suggested the plan.”

Rory reached out a hand to pat her sister’s arm. “I’m sure Dr. Frankenstein felt the same way right after he threw the electrical switch for the first time.”

“Not funny.”

Rory rolled her eyes. “Nat is going to be fine. And your plan is brilliant. Pretending to be someone else is the perfect ticket for her. For a little while, she can leave all of her responsibilities behind and be someone entirely different. As soon as my job at Celebs is more secure, I may try a masquerade thing myself.” She tossed a morsel of food into her mouth. You’ve really got to try these crab puffs.”

Masquerade. Chance tried to make sense of the thoughts swirling through his mind as he replayed the snatch of conversation he’d just heard. Natalie Gibbs was adopting a new persona? She was going to be someone else for a while? Chance scanned the crowd, this time more carefully than he had before. He’d seen Natalie Gibbs in an undercover disguise twice. She was good, but he should be able to spot her.

He made one full circuit of the store and came up empty. Frustrated, he moved out onto the patio. Immediately, a ripple of awareness moved through him. Natalie. But when he turned, it wasn’t Natalie he saw. It was his blond mystery woman from the balcony. Even then, he might have continued his search for Natalie. But the blonde chose that particular moment to shove her hair behind her ear, something that he’d seen Natalie Gibbs do countless times. He dropped his gaze to her feet. Sure enough, one of them was tapping. That was another habit Natalie had.

Then he simply stared. Could it be? Was this the disguise that Sierra and Rory had been referring to? Could his blond mystery woman be Natalie Gibbs?

Chance accepted a drink from a passing waiter and sipped without tasting what he’d chosen. He had to think, and the first step would be to unglue his eyes from his mystery woman’s legs. He was not going to find the answer to his question there. He shifted his gaze slowly upward.

Gestures aside, this woman was a sharp right turn from the Natalie Gibbs he knew. But his gut instinct, which rarely failed him, was telling him that the detective he was searching for and the blonde he was looking at were one and the same person. The light was no better than it had been before, but he was closer, and there was no balcony blocking his view.

Over the years, he’d honed his observation skills, but they’d seldom brought him more pleasure. Her eyes were heavy-lidded, her mouth slick and cherry-red. During the time he’d spent with Natalie, she’d either been disguised as a man, or had been wearing muted makeup colors. He wasn’t close enough to make out the color of her eyes. Natalie’s, he recalled, were a deep shade of bottomless green, but he was willing to bet that the blonde’s were a different color. When a professional put on a new persona, he or she went all the way and changed everything that could possibly be changed.

Like the hair. Natalie’s was red and long and curly. He’d thought of an exploding sunset the first time he’d seen it. The blonde’s hair, shorter and straight, with the finish of newly spun silk, held its own attraction. The slick fall of it tempted a man to touch, and once he did, there would be all that smooth skin to explore. Then there were those legs—his gaze slipped back to them. They were nothing short of miraculous.

It occurred to him that he’d never seen what Natalie Gibbs looked like in a dress because she’d always hidden her feminine figure beneath trousers and a jacket. His mystery woman didn’t seem to believe in hiding anything. The contrasts fascinated him. Natalie Gibbs was all work. His mystery woman shouted “play.” Detective Gibbs’s sex appeal, out of sight beneath pantsuits, was muted like the steady hum of a current along a wire. The blonde’s sex appeal snapped and crackled around her like static electricity.

A man was bound to be burned if he got too close. And he was being drawn as inevitably as a moth. He’d already moved halfway across the patio toward her, and he still hadn’t decided how he was going to handle her. Oh, this was Natalie Gibbs all right. Hadn’t he known it on some level from the first moment he’d spotted her and felt that tiny click of recognition? This Natalie was the one he’d discovered when they’d made love in her apartment that night three months ago.

Just what kind of a game was she playing?

A warning voice told him to wait until he’d weighed his options and come up with a strategy. But the inner voice he’d always trusted was reminding him that he did his best work when he played it by ear.

NATALIE KNEW the moment that Chance spotted her, and she struggled to keep the tension out of her shoulders. It was bad enough that her stomach was jittering again.

She could feel his eyes on her and sensed the instant they moved from her face down her body to her legs. Though it took some effort, she stopped tapping her foot. He was sharp, and he knew all about disguises. This would be the supreme test of just how good her persona was. She signaled a passing waiter and took a glass of champagne. As yet no one had known who she really was.

As a preliminary test, she’d asked Sierra and Rory to introduce her to Tracker McBride and Sophie Wainwright. They’d been pleased to meet the Gibbs sisters’ cousin, but she’d detected no gleam of recognition in their eyes.

When the short, bald man to her left said something, she shoved her hair behind her ear and smiled down at him. Before she could catch his name, she found herself surrounded by the two other men he was with. Instantly, she was ankle-deep—no, make that waist-deep—in a discussion of a new water pollution bill that was going to the house floor the next week. Because it was part of her job to know who was who in the nation’s government, she recognized all three of the men. One was a congressman who’d been elected as an environmentalist; the two others were senators who had coauthored the bill under discussion.

“Darling, I’ve been looking all over for you,” said a voice at her side. Then Chance took her arm in a firm grip, and shot a five-hundred-megawatt smile toward the three men who’d boxed her in. “Sorry, gentlemen, but I have to borrow back my wife. I have a proposition to make her. We’re still newlyweds.”

Natalie made no protest as Chance led her back into the store. Instead, she used the time to remind herself that she was Rachel. And Rachel Cade would never object to a man who looked like Chance leading her away. Nor would Rachel Cade care a fig if Chance Mitchell saw through her disguise. And any minute she would know if he had or not.

When he stopped in front of one of the display cases, he turned to her. “Aren’t you even going to thank me?”

“For what?” she asked in the low voice she’d chosen for Rachel.

“I saved your life. Another five minutes and they would have bored you to death.”

She felt her lips twitch, and some of her tension eased. She saw no hint of recognition in his expression. He hadn’t seen through her yet. “What if I told you that I find environmental problems sexy?”

“I’d immediately find a job with the E.P.A.”

She couldn’t prevent the laugh, and she didn’t stop him when he placed a finger under her chin and tipped her face up so that their eyes met for the first time.

“Blue,” he said. “I wondered.”

For five whole seconds, Natalie held her breath. Chance’s dark, smoky gray eyes held no knowing look. All she could see was curiosity…and the tiniest flare of heat. The heat she understood because his hand on her arm had created a flame that was spreading over her entire body. “Why did you wonder about my eyes?”