field craft. Sometimes the simplest tricks are the most effective.”
“Having a car with Wash Me scrawled across the back is field craft?”
“Actually it is.” He turned another corner, downshifting. His legs flexed as he worked the clutch, brake and gas pedal. “Think about it. What happens if someone rubs away those words?”
“It leaves a big smudge,” she answered absently, admiring the impressive play of muscles beneath faded denim.
“And if someone tampers with other parts of the car…”
His words sank in, pulling her attention back to chilling reality. “Their handprints will be noticeable—or smudged.”
“Exactly. Sure, ARIES provides plenty of the high-tech gadgets. But sometimes simple works well, too.”
He existed in a world of constant threats and car bombs, and all for a higher good. How could she not admire him? Even his freshly shorn hair reminded her that every facet of his life bowed to the demands of his job.
Her plan was not going well at all. Time to dig deeper into his real life for those flaws.
“How long have you lived with your aunt?” she asked, envisioning some teenage rebellion that led him to being shuffled to another relative.
“Since elementary school.”
“That young?”
His hands clenched around the steering wheel. “My parents died in a car accident.”
How did she not know this about him? “I’m so sorry.”
“Me, too.”
Much more of emotion-tugging Ethan and she’d leave this assignment with a marshmallow heart. “I’m sorry for laughing earlier, about you living with your aunt, I mean. It’s really sweet that you stayed on to take care of her.”
“Take care of her?” Ethan snorted. “Better not let Aunt Eugenie hear you insinuating she needs help for anything. She’s sixty-five going on twenty.”
“Oh, okay.” Was his aunt some kind of socialite poster-girl for plastic surgery? Panic tickled her lungs. She might like herself just fine the way she was. That didn’t mean she wanted to spend the next two weeks with Ethan’s aunt questioning what he saw in such a quiet wallflower. “She knows this is just a working relationship, right?”
“Yes.”
Her panic faded. “Good.”
“But the servants don’t.”
“Servants?” Kelly pulled her gaze away from Ethan and looked out the window. Sprawling houses loomed on either side of the road—brick, columns, even the occasional turret. Plots of land acres large spread between gates and towering homes. With every block, the houses grew bigger and Kelly grew more uncomfortable.
“We need to protect the cover,” Ethan continued. “The servant network is tight in my aunt’s world. We don’t want them wondering and passing along their doubts. If we expect to pull this off, they need to think we’re a couple and we can use the practice.”
A couple? How had she gone from getting over him to pretending to be his girlfriend for two weeks? “What have they been told?”
“That you work for an embassy as a translator. I met you through a friend. We fell for each other, and you’re taking an extended vacation to meet my family.”
The sense of having been maneuvered washed over her and she didn’t like it. If he’d told her this the night before, she would have shot down his plan.
And he probably knew it. “When were you going to tell me?”
“I’m telling you now.”
Kelly stared out the window and counted passing houses to calm her temper. Of course she didn’t get to count very many since the yards were so darned big. No snowmen littered these lawns like in her Nebraska hometown.
She’d realized he was wealthy. But this neighborhood wasn’t just rich. It was filthy rich. Beyond-her-comprehension rich.
He obviously didn’t have to work. She recognized his thrill-seeking need, but he could have channeled that into any number of expensive hobbies. Instead of swimming with sharks in Aruba, he dodged bullets to make others safe.
Damn. He grew more admirable with each passing Mercedes.
“This didn’t have to be so complicated.”
“It isn’t,” Ethan insisted. “If anything, there will be fewer questions and more acceptance than if I’d just shown up at the summit ball with you. People would have been curious about you, which would attract too much attention. This gives everyone two weeks to become accustomed to the idea.”
“And afterward?”
“We break up.”
Breaking up with a guy she’d never gotten to enjoy. That depressed her as much as the loss of his longer hair, the lost chance to test the length and texture with her fingers.
Ethan turned off the road, pausing at a security gate to punch in a code. Kelly peered through the metal bars.
This wasn’t just a big house. It was a mansion.
A white-columned palatial home sprawled before her. Towering evergreens with snowcapped branches proclaimed age and heritage. An iced-over fountain bigger than most pools perched in the middle of a horseshoe driveway.
All of Ethan’s altruistic qualities aside, he came from a different world. He might as well reside on a different planet. She’d harbored dreams and fantasies about this man for two years, and yet she didn’t know the first thing about him.
No doubt, their break up would be completely believable.
Steering up the drive, Ethan thought through the round of introductions he would have to make—housekeeper, chauffeur, cook. Thought of all the times he would touch Kelly like an attentive boyfriend. Like a lover.
His great plan had a serious flaw.
Too late now. Bottom line, this would protect Kelly on a number of levels. Not only would she be better prepared by his aunt, but Ethan also fully intended to follow through on the plan to teach her self-defense. Who knew what their digging into foreign embassy workings might stir? All the more reason to have her close by where he could guard her.
At least her voice wasn’t tormenting him anymore since she’d started clamming up four blocks ago. The tension emanating from her had increased with the size of the houses. He dreaded the moment she would turn and look at him differently, when she wouldn’t be able to see past the stacks of money to the man anymore.
The house might be his but it wasn’t him, and for some reason it became important that Kelly understand that.
Forget front-door welcomes. He didn’t want her first impression of his home to be some three-story winding staircase and a cathedral ceiling. He sped past the horseshoe driveway
