Elizabeth Bevarly - Overnight Male

“Good,” she said. “Because the car will be here in twelve. And we still have a couple of things to go over.”

“Come upstairs,” he said as he closed the door behind her. “We can talk while I shave and finish dressing.”

They did both in ten minutes, Lila leaning in the doorway of first Joel’s bathroom, then his bedroom as he completed his morning ritual. She’d never done that before—watched a man go about his morning routine—and something about sharing the experience with Joel now, even though she didn’t know him well, made her feel as if the two of them were sharing some strange kind of intimacy. She especially enjoyed watching him shave, and not just because he removed his shirt to do it to keep from messing it up.

Still, the way the muscles in his left arm bunched and relaxed with every stroke of the razor across his face was rather intriguing, she had to admit. And the spicy scent of the sandalwood shaving soap he used was more than a little sexy. But it was the act of standing there talking business in such a personal setting that really seeped into her awareness. In all the times she’d opened her eyes in the morning after a sexual encounter, she’d never hung around any longer than it took to get dressed and bolt. There had been times—rather a lot of them, actually—when she hadn’t even woken her partner to say goodbye. Sex and intimacy had nothing to do with each other as far as Lila was concerned. But she hadn’t realized that something as simple and nonsexual as this could be intimate, either.

When Joel finally emerged from the bathroom capping his toothbrush holder, Lila was tossing the last of his things into his bag and getting ready to close it. She paused long enough for him to toss the toothbrush into the bag, then finished with a soft zzzzip that punctuated their race for time quite nicely. They both seemed to realize it, chuckling as one at the sound.

“Nicely done,” she told him.

“Couldn’t have managed it without you,” he conceded.

She didn’t say what should have been the obvious next remark. So Joel took it upon himself to say it.

“We make a good team.”

Lila said nothing in response to that, either. The team thing remained to be seen. So she drove her gaze around the room, looking for something that might change the subject. Ultimately, her gaze fell on the collection of childishly executed artwork. There were primitive sketches of stick people and stick animals, a few more progressive ones of houses and trees and suns, and a handful of portraits that actually weren’t half-bad. Provided they’d been drawn by someone under the age of fifteen. Which, judging by the rest of the exhibit, they most likely had been.

“Who drew all the pictures?” she asked, jutting her chin up toward the one nearest them.

Joel’s features softened at the question in a way that made his entire face seem as if it was smiling. That should have diminished his masculinity, too, she thought. But somehow it just made him even more potent.

“My sister’s kids,” he said. “She sends me a lot of their work. Since she became a mom, she thinks everyone needs the influence of children in their lives. Makes them more human, she says. The grown-ups, I mean,” he hastily qualified. “Kids, any kids, she thinks are already pretty much perfect.”

“Well, except for the part about them being odious little miscreants,” Lila said.

He laughed at that, as if she’d made a joke. Funny thing was, she hadn’t been. She didn’t much care for children. She supposed they had their purposes—mostly to serve as warnings to always use birth control—but she didn’t want any in her own life. She studied Joel more closely, trying to discern if he was being sarcastic or maudlin when he talked about the alleged perfection of his nieces and/or nephews. Neither, she finally decided. Weird as it seemed, he was just being matter-of-fact. He actually agreed with his sister.

Huh. How about that.

She asked, “So are you one of those people who doesn’t think life can be complete without the Dutch Colonial in the suburbs, the two-point-five kids and the dog named Sparky?”

He smiled in that should-have-diminished-his-potency-but-didn’t way again. “Well, the house could be a Tudor and the dog could be named Pal and life would still be complete, but…” He left the sentence unfinished, but the gist of his feelings came through just fine.

Lila was surprised by the little stab of disappointment that jabbed her chest when she heard him voice the sentiment. So what if Joel Faraday had bought into that suburban myth of home, hearth and riding mower? she asked herself. So what if he was the settling-down kind? So what if he wanted a traditional life with a traditional partner in a traditional community? What did she care? If that was the sort of thing he wanted, it just hammered home how ill suited the two of them were. Because that kind of life would strangle her.

And why the hell was she even thinking in terms of the two of them suiting each other in the first place? That was beyond nuts. Nobody suited Lila. And she sure as hell wasn’t looking to suit anyone herself.

He started to speak again, even got as far as saying, “But the thing is—” when the doorbell chimed, heralding the arrival of their driver. By the time they were seated in the back of the big black Town Car, however, Joel must have forgotten what he’d intended to tell her, because he never revisited the topic. Instead, he started a new one.

“So since you and I are going to be working together so closely for this assignment—”

“You mean living together?” Lila interjected, already knowing that the plan OPUS had outlined would involve their sharing living space. She’d read the entire dossier through last night and knew all the particulars of their undercover operation—at least, the particulars to which OPUS had decided she would be privy for now. There was no telling what Joel knew that she didn’t. He was, after all, the one in charge.

Talk about your odious little miscreants.

“Yeah, that,” he said. And if she hadn’t known better, she would almost have sworn he sounded a little flustered about the prospect of shacking up, even as a job requirement. “So maybe we should know a little more about each other’s habits ahead of time.”

“Like what?” she asked.

He looked at her in a way that indicated he didn’t like her asking him the question he’d intended her to answer first. But he replied anyway, “Like the fact that I’m the early-to-bed and early-to-rise type, but I suspect you’re not.”

“Oh, really?” she asked. “So what happened to Mr. Early-to-Rise this morning?”

Joel expelled an exasperated sound. “Okay, so today Mr. Early-to-Rise overslept a little.”

“Actually, he overslept quite a bit.”

“He hasn’t been getting as much sleep as usual,” Joel continued as if she hadn’t spoken. “People keep breaking in to his house in the middle of the night and trying to cuff him.”

Lila smiled. “Some people are so rude.”

“Aren’t they, though?”

“If I were you, I’d want a piece of someone’s hide.”

He arched his eyebrows at her suggestively, opened his mouth to say something in retort, then seemed to think better of it. Which was a shame, because Lila found herself looking forward to that retort. Among other things.

Ultimately, he only said, “I think I’ll just settle for alerting the authorities.”

“Oh, good idea,” she said. “The authorities always know the right thing to do.”

“Anyway,” he said, circling back to the original topic, “as I said, something tells me you’re not the early-to-rise type.”

She grinned. “Wow, you’re really good at this fieldwork. I can see why they gave you this assignment. That was a brilliant deduction.”