Between The Sheets

Unfortunately, she hadn’t been nicknamed April Accidentally for no reason. She was high-strung by nature and whenever she got nervous, accidents were the likely result, which didn’t make her prime undercover material.

Of all the crosses she might have to bear in life, April considered this one tame, if rather unfortunate. She accepted her flaws right along with her strengths and coped with them.

“John, this isn’t a good idea.”

He arched a grizzled brow at her. “Is the sex part making you uncomfortable? I was sure you could handle it.”

Before her breakup with Jeff, April might have been able to handle glory holes and bedding companies. But now…

“The sex does bother me a little, to be honest.” Unwilling to elaborate on the reason why, she quickly added, “I’ll have to be close to spy on this guy and you said everyone in the company has sex on the brain…shouldn’t you send a man?”

“I told you, I checked him out. He’s okay. This is a baby-sitting job, April, plain and simple. All you have to do is make sure Rex Holt doesn’t make contact with any rival manufacturers. This is not difficult stuff.”

“A baby-sitting job?” She tried not to sound panicked or resentful and didn’t think she succeeded on either count. “Since when have you had baby-sitters on your payroll?”

John steepled his hands before him and looked at her over his fingertips. “This is the perfect job for you. Wilhemina needs a professional in place and she trusts you. She asked me to send you specifically, if that makes you feel any better. If anything unusual catches your attention, you report it. Should any questions be raised about this guy’s integrity, you’ll be able to testify that he conducted good business on the road.”

Both Wilhemina and John had lost their minds, April decided. It wasn’t that she wasn’t well trained or competent, but just the thought of heading into the field made her adrenaline pump so hard she could barely hear past the rush of blood in her ears.

“I know you’ve said Wilhemina’s people exhausted the computer angle, but give me a crack at it. They’re not as good as I am. I can track those posts. I’m sure of it.”

“We’re not being hired to investigate. We’re being hired to baby-sit. Wilhemina wants you. Besides, who else in this firm will be able to hold his own with nibbies, piles and pills?”

“Nibbies, piles and pills, oh my!” She pushed off her perch on the chair arm and started pacing again. Babbling was not a good sign, it usually indicated another step toward panic. If John had been paying attention, he’d have noticed.

He wasn’t. Or perhaps he was just ignoring the symptoms.

April could have appealed to him to send someone else. If she was pathetic enough, she might just wear him down and she wouldn’t have to make excuses to Wilhemina until Easter. But that would mean standing up for herself and she wasn’t so hot at standing up for what she wanted on the best of days. And especially not with John.

So she scowled instead.

He scowled right back.

Whoever lasted the longest would win.

Unfortunately, John had the edge. If he was determined to send her to the Luxurious Bedding Company how could she possibly refuse him? Besides being her boss, John Patrick Mooney was also the closest thing she had to a father. He’d come into her life at a time when she’d desperately needed a friend, after her adoptive parents had died tragically in a ski-lift accident during a long-anticipated second honeymoon.

Learning of her situation through their church, John and Paula, whose own daughters had been either married or attending college at the time, had opened their home to April so she could avoid toughing out four years of foster care until reaching eighteen and adulthood.

A very decent thing to do, considering the circumstances of their first meeting.

She certainly hadn’t meant to trip John as he welcomed her into his home, but she’d nearly sent him sprawling right through the decorative glass door. The poor man had still been sporting the goose egg a week later when she’d moved in.

Fortunately, he hadn’t held the accident against her. He’d taken her under wing through the ups and down of her high school years, including her decision to pursue her birth parents.

Though she’d been unable to locate her birth parents, April had found a family with the Mooneys. They’d become her family-by-love, as she liked to call them. She’d become a friend to John’s daughters and Auntie April to the grand-kiddies. Aside from occasional bouts of too much concern for her well-being, they were perfect. She honestly didn’t know what she would do without them.

No, she wasn’t going to practice her standing-up-for-herself skills with John. And he knew it.

Leaning back in his chair, he stared at her with dark eyes that saw right through her.

“Why are you so worked up about this job? What’s the real problem? I can’t help unless you tell me.”

Busted. April clasped her hands behind her back and stared hard at the Mooney family portrait. The last thing she needed was a case that would put her in direct contact with sheets—which would invariably lead to thoughts about what couples did between them.

But she couldn’t tell John that now, could she? Telling the truth would mean admitting she’d sworn off relationships that involved sex for the rest of her life because she was a disaster in bed. Bonafide hopeless. Evidenced by the fact that Jeff had nearly aspirated during their last sexual encounter, in the very whirlpool tub he’d sworn would help her relax.

In all fairness, April couldn’t have known he was going to lick her there. He’d been underwater, after all, and if she’d known he’d been perched so precariously on the bench, she would never had jumped, no matter how ticklish she might be.

But she hadn’t known, so she had jumped and Jeff had lost his balance, cracked his head and almost drowned.

Bum luck? Not exactly.

She’d had three lovers in the space of six years and enough near-misses to come to the conclusion that April Accidentally was simply too high-strung to have sex. She could barely stay in one place long enough to run a background check on a suspect.

She worked in front of a computer all day, true, but she didn’t sit, she stood, with the keyboard taped to a treadmill no less. The only time she ever got horizontal was while sleeping.

She simply couldn’t handle another romantic encounter that wound up with some form of CPR, or worse yet, a body. Jeff had claimed she was being ridiculous, accidents happened—especially to her, she’d silently agreed—and had refused to let her break up with him.

But that was a refusal more easily made than kept. April had broken off with him and sworn off men—for their protection and her peace of mind. After serious soul-searching, she’d made the decision to give up the one thing that she’d wanted all her life—her very own family. She’d never have a husband or children. She’d never even have an orgasm, for goodness’ sake.

But this was all need-to-know information that John didn’t need to know. Not only didn’t he need to know, she was fairly certain he wouldn’t want to know. The idea of his own daughters having sex had him waxing poetic about storks flying around with pink and blue bundles. She had no intention of admitting any of this. Not even to get out of this case.

April had handled losing her beloved adoptive parents to tragedy. She’d handled the defeat of sealed state records after an exhaustive search for her birth parents. She’d handled accepting that her future didn’t include her own family or happily-ever-after or mind-blowing orgasms.

She could handle going undercover to spy on Rex Holt. Even surrounded by sexy bedding and a slew of raunchy e-mail posts.

All things considered, life could be a lot worse.

She met John’s searching gaze and forced a smile. “I don’t have a problem with the sex. No problem at all. I’ll go undercover as the in-house marketing assistant.”

And try not to get nervous, cause accidents or think about the family she’d never have and all the sex she was missing.

2

To: Rex Holt (mailto:consultant@luxuriousbedding.com)

Date: 7 Mar 2003 08:55:41-0000

Subject: Interoffice Relations

Weekly group sex sessions will promote teamwork between departments!

Studies prove that sex promotes closeness and cooperation; group sex will offer a budget-friendly method of improving interoffice relations. The confidentiality clause of the P&P manual will protect all parties from personal repercussions.

Rex Holt frowned at his computer screen, right-clicked his mouse button and forwarded this and the accompanying 162 e-mail posts to the Luxurious Bedding Company’s president, Wilhemina Knox. Contemplating group sex as a viable support skill wasn’t exactly how he’d planned to start off his Monday morning. While he could live with the thought of two women pleasuring a male co-worker, the flip scenario made him cringe.

He found the effects of the sexy Sensuous Collection and these suggestive posts far too distracting for his taste. Trying to concentrate on work when his blood was maintaining a constant temperature somewhere between simmer and boil was proving damned difficult.