The Cinderella Mission

Ethan lurched forward. The basketball jarred free. He landed with a teeth-jarring thud on the slick wood floor, his pager ramming into his side like a brick. He rolled to his back just in time to see the guy sink a three-pointer.

“Oh, yeah.” Davidson punched the air with his fist. “Nothing but net.”

Ethan sank back on his elbows. If this had been a real-life operation, that lapse could have cost a life.

Number-one rule, nix the emotions.

He’d pretty much mastered covering the ice block inside himself with a smile. Sure everyone considered him a bud, but he knew the truth. Only with a select few—three to be exact—did he reveal a genuine glimpse of himself. With his boss. With his aunt who’d raised him.

And with Kelly.

Shy Kelly, Hatch’s top informations assistant and languages specialist in the operational support unit. Seeing her innocence always reminded Ethan of all the reasons he’d joined the CIA in the first place, back in his idealistic days. Their office friendship had been a real port in the storm for him in his messed-up world.

Until he’d realized she harbored a damned misguided infatuation for him. He’d been with too many women to miss the look that had crossed her face as she’d whispered, be careful, just before he’d left for the Gastonia assignment.

Gastonia?

His bullet wound stung.

Ethan swept the rolling ball back into his grasp.

No way was there a correlation between his missing mojo and discovering Kelly’s crush. Even considering a link gave too much importance to their friendship when he simply didn’t have it in him for anything more.

Ethan leapt to his feet and shook off doubts with a laugh, his most reliable cover for facing the world.

Davidson thumped him on the back. “If style counted for points, my friend, you’d have won hands down.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Ethan tempered his grousing with a grin. “Go shove your sympathy along with those style points.” He smacked the ball out of Davidson’s hands.

A humming sound started, low, the buzz of a pager. Ethan and Davidson both slapped their hands on the waistbands.

Ethan glanced down at the LCD screen.

Code Delta. Highest level of urgency. Report to ARIES immediately.

Adrenaline surged double-time.

Davidson’s hand fell away. Disappointment shadowed his face. “Just you, rich boy.”

“Let ’em know over at the shooting range I won’t be making it in this morning. Catch you later,” Ethan called, already four steps closer to the door. The drive to the remote ARIES underground compound outside of DC would give him time to get his head together.

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.”