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Riley cursed.
Obviously he’d let the gripe session cloud his mind. This was an ops, he firmly reminded himself. And the woman he was gawking at was his partner.
He quickly got his mind on something else.
They walked through the master suite and into the bathroom. Their weapons and other assorted communications equipment were there; all the items they might need over the next few days. Agent Ingram had even hung some of their clothes and had placed their luggage in the adjoining dressing room.
Tessa turned on the shower full-blast and, without removing her underwear—something Riley was truly grateful for—stepped inside the steamy spray. Since there was a showerhead in each corner, and since the space was large enough to accommodate an NBA team, Riley got in, too, to save some time.
He kept his attention focused elsewhere—on the ornate mosaic tiles, on the beveled glass of the shower door they’d left open.
On anything but Tessa.
He was pretty sure she was doing the same thing. Well, she was until she shifted to her right and bumped into him. How that happened, he didn’t know. After all, it wasn’t as if they ran short of space. But it happened. Her slick, wet, right butt cheek swished against the front of his slick wet boxers.
Man, she couldn’t have touched him in a worse place. That particular part of him was having a tough time accepting that showering with an attractive woman wasn’t anything less than foreplay.
“Sorry,” she mumbled.
“Me, too,” he mumbled back.
She glanced over her shoulder at him. “Why are you sorry?” she whispered, her nearly silent words muffled even more by the shower.
“Believe me, you don’t want to know.”
He watched that register. Frowning, then scowling, and finally shrugging, she turned off the water. Tessa stepped out and snagged a couple of thick, white, terry-cloth robes from a nearby rack. She tossed him one.
“Start explaining,” Riley demanded before he even caught the robe.
Thankfully she didn’t ask for clarification. Riley was dead certain Tessa knew exactly what he meant. Well, hopefully she did. He didn’t intend to discuss their shower and his reaction to it. Nope. It was time to settle some business.
“If I’d refused the insemination outright, Fletcher would have canceled everything.” As if she’d declared war on it, Tessa latched onto her shoulder-length blond hair and squeezed it. Hard. The water snaked down her nearly naked shoulders and arms before she put on the bathrobe. Finally. “And you know it as well as I do.”
“I don’t know any such thing. But what I do know is that it didn’t solve anything by you agreeing to a procedure you can’t have.”
She picked up a comb from the vanity and raked it through the tangles in her hair. “I’ll figure a way around it.”
“And if you can’t?”
“I’ll figure out a way, okay?” But this time her words weren’t quite so calm or so quietly spoken.
“Oh, yeah. That’s really convincing.” Riley caught onto her arm and whirled her back around to face him. “Once we’re inside that facility, Tessa, you might not be able to refuse it. Hear me? If you do, Fletcher might get suspicious and try to kill you.”
Which couldn’t happen. It couldn’t. He refused to lose another partner. Just the thought of it turned his stomach.
“So, what are you saying? You want to call off the mission?” Tessa asked. That was obviously a rhetorical question since she didn’t give him a chance to answer. “You want to let Fletcher walk because of a contingency that may or may not arise?”
“No. But I don’t want you to get pregnant, either.”
She paused. Mumbled something indistinguishable under her breath. And combed her hair again. “There really is little chance of that happening.”
Just because she said it with such certainty, that didn’t convince Riley. “If you’re thinking about using some form of birth control, it’s too risky. Lab tests would detect—”
“Trust me. It’s not an issue.”
He was about to say something along the lines of I beg to differ, but there was something in her tone that stopped him cold.
“This isn’t about birth control, is it?” he asked cautiously.
“No.” And that was all she said for several long moments. Tessa slowly put the comb back on the vanity, aligning it with the soaps and other bottles of cosmetics. “If you must know, I had endometriosis when I was a teenager. It’s a problem with tissue growing where it shouldn’t. I had surgery. But the damage had already been done.”
Since he had no idea what to say to that, he just stood there and listened.
“I have slim-to-none odds of getting pregnant even under ideal circumstances,” she continued. Not easily though. Her bottom lip trembled. Just a little. And her voice wavered slightly. It was more than enough for him to realize this was no well-healed wound. “So Fletcher’s procedure poses no risk whatsoever. For once, Murphy’s Law is on our side.”
Ah, hell.
Riley thought about reaching for her. Maybe even a touch to her arm. Some kind of human contact to let her know he was here for her. It’d make him feel better, that was for sure, but he didn’t think it’d do a thing to help Tessa.
“That’s the nerve I hit,” he mumbled.
Her gaze lifted, meeting his. “Excuse me?”
“In the limo when I was talking about people screwing around with Mother Nature to get a baby. Or not get one. I hit a nerve.”
She dismissed that with a shrug.
Riley knew better.
There was no way to dismiss the pain in her eyes.
“It’s old baggage,” she mumbled. “A dream about recreating a childhood, my childhood, with the child of my own. A dream where mothers don’t leave one day and never come back.” Suddenly looking disgusted with herself, she cleared her throat. “The kind of dream that sends people into therapy.”
Oh, yeah. Definitely wounds.
“The bottom line is, the only thing I’ve ever wanted more than being an SIU agent is a baby, and I can’t have one. So, there. You know all my deep, dark secrets.” She flexed her eyebrows. “Guess that means I’ll kill you now.”
Her attempt at humor didn’t diffuse anything.
Riley disregarded his veto about touching her and slipped his arm around her. Before she could protest, or before he could change his mind, he hauled her to him. Right against him.
“Don’t,” Tessa said, already trying to break out of his grip.
Riley held on. “This isn’t sexual, Tessa.”
She pulled back and faced him. “It’d be safer if it were,” she countered.
That was one hundred percent true.
Riley still didn’t let go.
“Does your father know about your infertility?” he asked.
“Of course.”
Okay. It took him a moment to get his teeth unclenched. “And he let you come on this mission anyway?”
This time she did step away from him. But Tessa didn’t just put some distance between them, she stared at him with accusing eyes. “Don’t blame him.” She hitched her thumb against her chest. “I lied to you this morning. I did have a choice. But I wanted to do this. For Colette.”
“And for him,” Riley added.
Her mouth tightened. “Maybe.”
“There’s no maybe about it. You don’t want dear old dad to have an unsolved case on his docket. Don’t get me wrong. It’s admirable, especially since clearing that case will mean getting Colette’s murderer.”
Still, this went above and beyond duty to father, to country. This was a side to Tessa Abbot that he wouldn’t have thought existed.
A side that made him feel…
Riley refused to let the rest of that thought enter his head. There was no place for personal feelings here. Live and learn. He’d already made that mistake once.
“Don’t you dare question my ability to do this mission,” she snarled. Gone was the wavery voice and the uncertainty in her eyes. Now, this was a look he was familiar with. Agent Tessa Abbot, the gung-ho, pain-in-the-ass operative who put duty above all else.
The facade might have worked, too, if only moments earlier she hadn’t given him a glimpse of her heart.
“No questions or doubts, Tessa. Because it’s my guess you have enough of those for both of us.”
Tessa would have almost certainly denied that if the phone on the vanity hadn’t rung. She reached over and jabbed the speaker button. Her father’s image appeared on the small screen attached to the phone.
“Is this a good time to talk?” John Abbot asked.
“It’s safe,” Tessa told him. She paused only long enough to take in a breath. Probably so she could give the briefing her own personal slant. “We have a rendezvous time with our suspect. Per his instructions, in three days we’ll be taken to a clinic and then to another medical facility. Both are unspecified locations. By then, we’re anticipating you’ll have a way for us to transmit any information we might find.”
“There’ll be off-site video and audio-feed capabilities. That’s as much as we can risk with Fletcher’s security. And we’ll have a secondary team follow you to the locations for surveillance and backup.” Abbot paused. “We’re not sure if this is a problem yet, but Fletcher might have dug a little deeper in your records than we originally thought.”
That was not what Riley wanted to hear. “Are our covers intact?”
“Yes. From all indications, they are.”
But it wasn’t a hundred percent. Of course, in their business, nothing was.
“There are also some indications that Fletcher is setting up some thermal infrared equipment so he can scan the estate,” Abbot added.
Definitely not good. Visual eavesdropping. And a royal pain because there’d be few breaks from deep cover. In other words, it would require Tessa and he to touch. A lot. Or, at least, they’d have to be close enough to each other so they could pretend to touch.
Yet one more concern to add to Riley’s growing list of concerns.
“Until we’ve heard any indication to the contrary,” Abbot went on, “things will proceed as planned. Let me emphasize—your mission is to locate and retrieve evidence. According to Fletcher’s profile, he’ll probably keep detailed records in his personal computer or on surveillance tapes.”
“You don’t think he’ll still have the tape of Colette’s murder, do you?” Tessa asked.
“No. At least not at the clinic where he’ll be taking you. Elsewhere, perhaps. But it’s possible Fletcher will mention Colette, and there’ll be either a computer record or tape of that. He’s an arrogant man who likes to boast about his…accomplishments. That arrogance will almost certainly help us bring him down.”
Riley could only hope. And if Fletcher’s arrogance wasn’t his Achilles’ heel, then he’d find another way to get that evidence.
“Once you’ve completed the assignment,” Abbot continued, “and we have the two of you out of the facility, then the FBI will move in and make the actual arrest.”
Riley would have preferred to cuff the doctor himself, but he didn’t mind passing that honor along to his fellow law enforcement officers. As long as they nailed Fletcher, it would be a successful mission.
Too bad there was an if that threatened the success.
Riley waited a couple of seconds to see if Tessa would complete the briefing, but it soon became apparent she’d decided to leave out a critical detail.
“Do you plan to mention that part about Phase One of Project Ideal Baby?” Riley asked her. “Or should I?”
That earned him another of her lethal glares. However, her glare relaxed significantly when she turned back to the screen to face her father.
“Our suspect indicated that he’d be performing a routine, nonanesthetized procedure on me when we arrive at the first location.”
Man, talk about breezing right over the problem. “What Tessa’s trying to sugarcoat is that the doctor wants to inseminate her before he takes us to the second location.”
If her jaw tightened any more, she’d probably chip her pearly whites. “And what Riley and you both know is that there is no chance of my becoming pregnant. Without the insemination, we won’t be able to get inside Fletcher’s organization or gather evidence about the murders. In other words, our mission will fail.”
“I don’t want that any more than you do,” Riley firmly reminded her. “But your father needs to know what you’re up against. It’s still a medical procedure. And even though I suspect Fletcher’s whole operation is a scam, you have no idea what he might do to you, all under the guise of inseminating you. You’ll be at his mercy, and believe me, I don’t think you’ll care for Fletcher’s brand of mercy.”
“Is the operation a scam?” Abbot questioned.
Tessa nodded.
So, she’d picked up on the inconsistencies, as well. No surprise there. She was smart and probably better versed in fertility issues than he was.
“Evade the insemination if possible,” her father instructed. There wasn’t any change in his tone to indicate he was even slightly concerned about his daughter’s well-being. “If the suspect insists that it be done, then it’s your call as to whether or not to continue the mission.”
Your call. Translation? You’re a serious wuss if you wimp out because of an almost-nil risk. Even if “almost nil” amounted to something significant because Fletcher would be able to do pretty much anything to her under the guise of a simple insemination.
Tessa wouldn’t wimp out.
That full-steam-ahead, push-for-success mentality would have normally pleased Riley. But there wasn’t much that was normal or pleasing about this. That said, it wouldn’t stop him from doing this job, either.
So, the number-one solution was to avoid the insemination.
Somehow.
Even if it meant calling Fletcher and renegotiating the whole deal. Maybe he could convince the doctor that Tessa had a phobia about such things. After all, the Tates were supposed to be neurotic and self-absorbed, so he’d try to get some mileage out of that.
“Contact me with your situation report at 0800 tomorrow,” Abbot concluded, and the screen went blank.
“How did you know Fletcher was running a scam?” she asked Riley when she clicked off the phone.
