The Elliotts: Bedroom Secrets: Under Deepest Cover

When he didn’t answer at once, she felt panic creeping over her. “Bryan? What is it?”

“It’s my grandparents. They’re holding a dinner tonight at their house on Long Island. It’s a command performance. We have to be there.”

“Oh.” Word had apparently gotten out about Bryan’s new girlfriend, and she was being summoned for inspection.

“The good news is,” he continued, “my cousins and aunts and uncles will be there, and they’re all at each other’s throats these days, so there’ll be lots of drama to keep everyone distracted. The focus won’t be solely on you—though you’ll receive your share. Are you up to it?”

“Sure. As long as no one asks me how I got from Kansas to New York with no clothes.”

Bryan waited nervously in the living room while Lucy got ready for dinner at The Tides, the home where he’d spent a lot of his growing-up years. She’d been very nervous about what to wear when he’d told her the Elliotts dressed for dinner.

His grandparents could be a bit pretentious, no two ways about it. And controlling? They gave new meaning to the word. The competition Patrick Elliott had set up among his children and grandchildren was a perfect example. He liked to make them jump through hoops.

Still, they were good people, and they wanted what they thought was best for their loved ones.

When Bryan heard Lucy’s bedroom door open and shut, his gaze went immediately to the corner around which he knew she would soon appear, and he caught himself holding his breath. Having seen some of the clothing Scarlet had picked out for his “girlfriend,” he couldn’t wait to see how Lucy had tricked herself out tonight.

He wasn’t disappointed. When she came around the corner, she wore a clingy halter dress in a muted, burnt-orange color. It came almost to her knees, the hem ending in a flirty little ruffle, but that didn’t make it conservative. It showed every delicious curve of her body. She’d draped a silk fringed shawl over her bare shoulders, the color ranging from pale peach to a dark orange. A bold silver necklace called attention to her long neck and the enticing curve of her breasts.

“Too slutty?” she asked. “I don’t want your family to think I’m easy, although if I’ve moved in with you after knowing you only a couple of weeks, I guess I must be.”

“You look terrific, not slutty at all.” He wanted to touch her. He wanted to untie the little bow at the back of her neck and peel that dress right down to her waist. He wanted to kiss the shiny gloss off her lips and tease her breasts until her nipples were hard against his palms—

“Bryan?”

“What?”

“Shouldn’t we go? I don’t want to be late.”

Bryan forced himself to think about the time he’d crash-landed a plane in a Greenland blizzard and had survived for two days on four granola bars. Cold, very, very cold. He’d gotten frostbite and had almost lost his little toe.

Better. “Yes, let’s go.” He offered her his arm in a courtly gesture, and she took it, smiling uncertainly. “You look like a goddess, you know.”

“Oh, stop.”

“You do. And it’s not just the designer clothes and trendy hair. Since your makeover, you carry yourself differently.”

“It’s my inner Lindsay,” she quipped, though he could tell she was pleased with the compliment.

On the drive out to Long Island, Lucy worked at memorizing their story. They’d met at a Paris café where Bryan was swapping recipes with a chef. She’d gone there thinking she would write a novel but had found out she couldn’t write. Now she was trying to find herself. She’d inherited a bit of money and so was in no hurry to get a job.

They invented fake names for her parents and a fake Kansas town as her home.

“You can say you worked at a bank, since you know that world, but make it somewhere besides D.C.”

“What about my education? I have a finance degree.”

“Keep it, but say you went to … I don’t know. Loyola. None of my family has ever been near Chicago.”

“I’ll just try to steer conversation away from me. I’ll ask questions about you instead. That worked pretty well with Scarlet.”

“Oh, really? And what did Scarlet say about me?”

Lucy put on her most innocent face. “She said when you were a kid you liked to pull the wings off flies and burn things.”

“What?” The look on his face was priceless.

“I’m kidding. She said you were the only one who didn’t go into the magazine business. Why is that?”

“I’d planned to. I actually studied finance, with some vague idea of working in the EPH home office. But the government recruited me before I graduated. I knew I couldn’t tell my family I was training to be a spy—they’d have gone through the roof. So I bought a restaurant instead.”

“Why a restaurant?”

“I met Stash when I was still in school. It was his dream, and I knew I liked food. So I bought the café and hired him to run it. I had no idea I would enjoy it so much. I’d planned on being more of a silent owner, but it hasn’t worked out that way.”

“Tell me more about your family. Who will be there tonight, besides your grandparents?”

“No telling. Most of the family comes when Granddad calls, unless they’re testifying before the Supreme Court or vacationing in Sri Lanka. But with everyone so tense these days, I’m not sure.”

“Will either of your parents be there?”

“Not Mom. She doesn’t set foot at The Tides. Dad will probably be there, though.”

“Your parents don’t get along, then?” Lucy was saddened at the thought of Bryan and his brother growing up with two feuding parents. Scarlet had let it slip that Bryan’s parents had split when he was about twelve.

“Oh, no, actually they get along fine. It’s Patrick my mom can’t stand.”

“Your grandfather?”

He nodded. “I don’t think she’s spoken to him since I was a kid. She’s kept in touch with my aunt Karen, but no one else in the family.”

“Why the feud?” Lucy wanted to know.

Bryan shrugged. “She never said, but I think she blames Granddad for the divorce somehow. Like I said, he is controlling. And when I was—Well, you don’t want to hear all that.”

“I do, really. Unless you’d rather not.”

He continued only reluctantly. “When I was a kid, I had to have an operation—the kind our insurance wouldn’t pay for because it was considered experimental. Granddad paid for it—and I’ll be forever grateful to him, because it saved my life, literally. But I think he felt my parents owed him after that, and he used that debt to keep them under his thumb. Ultimately, I think that’s what caused the divorce.”

Bryan looked so sad, almost shattered, that Lucy reached over and laid her hand on his arm. “Surely you don’t blame yourself. You were just a little boy. You had no control over a health problem.”

“I know. But the fact remains, if I hadn’t gotten sick, our lives would have been a lot different.”

“And maybe you wouldn’t have pushed yourself to become a super athlete, and you wouldn’t have been recruited by the CIA, and you wouldn’t have been assigned to my case, and whoever was watching me would have killed me. You can’t play the what-if game. It’s silly.”

He looked over at her and smiled. “You’re an amazing woman, Lucy Miller.” He took her hand and squeezed it, then didn’t let it go.

“Lindsay Morgan.” She felt the warmth of his touch all the way to her heart. If it felt this fantastic when he touched her hand, what would it be like if he touched her other places?