The Spy Who Left Me: An Agent Ex Novel Read online

  * * *

  Treflee had recovered enough to get control of her senses again. No wonder she didn’t like intrigue. She couldn’t believe she’d developed a phobia of Chinese people. Ridiculous! She was certainly no racist and she refused to be. She’d fight this phobia with everything she had. First, though, she had business to attend to.

  She let the curtains fall back into place in front of the window where she’d been watching Ty and Greg from her room. They were out on the beach talking.

  They looked way too chummy. Which made her doubly suspicious of Greg. He probably was an NCS agent. She wondered if Tita was, too. Next time she got a chance, she was going to ask Ty. Not that he’d tell her if he didn’t want to.

  Back to the task at hand. With Ty occupied, now was the time to hide the papers.

  She glanced around the room, looking for the ideal spot.

  Under the mattress with her locket? Too obvious? Maybe. But then again, he didn’t even know she had the papers. Why would he be looking for them?

  She grabbed her beach bag from the chair where she’d tossed it and opened it up, smiling with the thrill of success and power as she peered in.

  What? Her mouth went dry. Where are they?

  Her hands were ice, shaking as she rifled futilely through the bag, fighting off the trembles.

  Noooo! My pretty blue legal file is gone! Disappeared.

  She dumped the contents of the bag on the bed and pawed through them as if dumping the bag would make them reappear. Pineapple mug, lipstick, sunblock …

  No divorce papers! They were gone, gone, gone! All gone!

  Oh, no, this can’t be. She was in big, big trouble now. If those papers fell into the wrong hands …

  * * *

  Thirty minutes later, Treflee had searched her room, the lobby, and the grounds—no papers. She stood in the shade of a magnolia tree next to the plantation van and hit the electronic key to unlock the dang thing. This was her second reconnoiter of the van. The first time the thing had been locked tight.

  She’d already peered through every window, trying every angle and contortion she knew to try to get a look under the seat or down the crack between the seats. At least the papers weren’t flaunting themselves openly in plain view. Finally, she’d had to go to Tita with a lame story about leaving her pineapple mug in the van. Could she have the key so she could retrieve it?

  Fortunately, Tita had been distracted and mumbling something about having to send Mrs. Ho a gift to make up for ill-treating her guests. And she’d have to deliver it personally because that’s what you did, not send over some errand boy. She hadn’t asked a single question, just handed over her car keys and asked Treflee to bring them right back.

  As Treflee slid the passenger door open, her beach bag slid off her shoulder. In it was the trusty mug. She pushed the strap back up. Every good spy needed to keep up the cover and avoid suspicion. If Tita asked about her success, Treflee would produce the mug. A glow of happiness wouldn’t be out of place.

  Treflee hoped Ty hadn’t cleaned out the van.

  If Ty found them first …

  Better not to think about that.

  She scoured the van—the seat she’d sat in, the surrounding seats, everywhere. Nothing!

  She took a deep breath and tried to reassure herself.

  So what if they were lost? What damage could those papers do? Seriously. They were simply papers that, when properly signed and notarized, voided the marriage of Elizabeth and Ty Miller. Floating around loose in the world, how could such innocent-looking papers possibly blow Ty’s cover?

  The more she thought about it, the more she came to the conclusion that Ty had overreacted about her sending for them. That really, unless someone actually saw her stuffing them under his nose, or saw him signing them, or compared his signature on them to one of him playing Ty Smith, what harm could they do?

  Ty had always been able to pull one over on her and make even the most outlandish story convincing. That’s the way he was, why he was successful as a spy.

  But it sure seemed like he didn’t want a divorce. What other reason did he have for not signing the papers and making her a free woman? Maybe he really did still love her?

  The thought sent her heart racing out of control. Sometimes hope and optimism were abysmal companions.

  Even if he loved her, Ty was still Ty. He didn’t want a baby. And she couldn’t tell him why it was so important to her to have one. Why she needed one. Right or wrong, she’d kept that secret too long. Telling him now would only hurt both of them and make things worse.

  And even if he loved her, he didn’t love her enough to put her above the job. So it was all futile and pointless.

  Seriously, if you loved a woman, did you throw her unsuspecting into the arms of an enemy spy, mole, or all-around bad guy and listen in?

  Yes, she was still peeved at him. And better off without him, even if her heart protested, she reminded herself.

  She weighed her options. Embarrassment and cost aside, she could simply ask for another set of papers. Which would have been a perfectly reasonable thing to do if she thought she could get away with picking them up again without getting caught. But more importantly, as she scoured the van, getting more desperate by the second, she became convinced that she hadn’t dropped the papers and they hadn’t fallen out of her bag. She’d been so careful, had clutched her bag so tightly.

  She sat on the van floor and went back over every move she’d made since picking them up. She had put the papers in the bag at the lawyer’s office. Hooked the bag over her shoulder. Not so much as even one strap had left her shoulder until she’d looked in the bag in her room and the papers were gone.

  Except for when that stranger bumped into her and one strap slid off …

  She felt a sudden chill that wasn’t due to the cool shadow of the shade or the ocean breeze coming in through the open van door.

  Why would someone pickpocket my divorce papers?

  * * *

  Treflee wasn’t in her room. Ty went looking for her. He spied her searching the lobby and grounds for something. He tailed her when she asked Tita for the van keys.

  Concealed in the trees, he watched Treflee toss the van. Time to shake things up.

  * * *

  Treflee stepped out of the van and slid the door closed, heart pounding. She’d been carrying her wallet full of cash and credit cards in the bag. The thief had ignored it in favor of a bunch of legal papers?

  No, she’d stepped into something deep and sinister. And she wasn’t sure what it was or what to do. Her mind elsewhere, she spun around and started. “Ty!”

  He stood not five feet away from her in the shadow of the magnolia, eyes dark and searching as he dropped his cloaking device and spoke. “Looking for something?”

  She hoped he didn’t know about the divorce papers already. But she wouldn’t put it past him to have had her followed and ordered the theft himself.

  He stepped toward her. She kept her chin up and tried not to give her fear away.

  She still wasn’t used to the goatee and shaggy blond hair. He always came home from his missions clean shaven and with his hair his natural color. So normal seeming and routine. The new look gave him a dangerous, sexy edge, as if he were a man she didn’t know, but reacted to all the same.

  She flushed. “Found it.”

  She pulled the plastic pineapple mug from her bag and waved it at him. She felt like flaunting it in this handsome husband-stranger’s face. How dare he send her out on a dangerous date and still think he had the right to spy on her? “A little souvenir from lunch. From my date.”

  Before she could react, he grabbed the mug from her and slammed it into the trunk of the tree. It hit with a thunk that made her jump and tumbled to the base of the tree, where it rolled to a stop.

  “Hey!” she protested, and lunged forward to retrieve it. “That’s mine.”

  He caught her arm and stopped her. “Cheap. And probably bugged.” He spoke
evenly and calmly, with that tone he used to charm people. “That should give whoever’s listening in a headache.”

  Because she knew him so well, she saw the almost imperceptible tick in his jaw and the slight thinning of his lips. He was angry. Or jealous. And he doesn’t know about the papers. If he did, he would have accused me as soon as he smashed the mug.

  Relief only reminded her of why she was mad at him.

  “Ass!” She shook his hand off and glared at him. “Don’t send me off to do your spying again. I could have been hurt or kidnapped.”

  “Don’t be so dramatic. I taught you how to take care of yourself.”

  She frowned at him. “You didn’t give me a weapon. Or a warning.” She took a breath to calm herself. “Just who is Hal?”

  He shrugged. He didn’t have the good grace to look contrite or even make a lame attempt at denial.

  When he didn’t reply to her question, she grew madder still. “And don’t flirt with that redheaded ditz my cousin calls a best friend in front of me again, either. I thought the cover story was supposed to be you and me”—she pointed between them—“having a flirtation. What happened to that plan?”

  Wrong thing to say. His eyes lit up and he took a step into her, pressing her up against the van door. Heat radiated off him, giving life to his cologne and the smell of sand and sun on his skin, igniting feelings in her that she was trying to forget.

  He smelled like Ty. He felt like Ty. Her Ty. Her heart skipped a beat.

  He lowered his voice. “You want flirtation…”

  He lifted her long hair off her neck and ran his fingers tenderly through it.

  A breeze cooled and kissed her neck. She quivered, remembering a hundred other times he’d stroked her hair in a way that made her feel like the sexiest woman alive. He hadn’t lost the knack.

  “Poor, bruised baby. Don’t be angry. I had you covered.” With one hand, he softly stroked the ringed bruise the lei had made. “When I catch who did this, he’s going to pay.” He caressed the words, making the threat sound like a declaration of his undying love for her.

  He lowered his lips to her neck and softly trailed kisses up toward her ear while a breeze cooled her neck.

  She shivered, mesmerized. He knew what she liked. It had been so long since he’d kissed her neck like this. Kissed her anywhere like this. She must be crazy. Yes, she was crazy, but she didn’t push him away. She leaned into him.

  And then, out of the corner of her eye, she caught a glimpse of red hair and fair sunburned skin as Laci stepped out onto the lanai. Laci’s head turned, and she froze. Yes, Laci definitely saw them. All Treflee’s possessive instincts kicked in.

  When Ty let her hair drop to run his hand along her thigh, she relaxed into him. She sighed as he kissed her jawline and turned her head into his kiss until his lips found hers. She wrapped her arms around his neck, welcomed his tongue to dance in her mouth, and pulled him into her.

  This was her Ty, and just as he knew how to kiss her, she knew how to kiss him. She ran her fingers through his tousled hair, traced the soft, delicate rims of his ears with her fingertips, ran a fingernail lightly down the back of his neck until he shivered beneath her touch, and pressed her breasts against his rock-hard chest.

  This was her Ty, but new and exciting. She’d never kissed a man with a mustache. Never kissed him with a mustache. Deep down, she realized that’s what made its tickle erotic, the scrub of his beard tantalizing.

  He cupped her butt and pressed his pelvis against hers until she felt his hardness. She tilted her head, opened her mouth more fully to him and kissed him back, deeply, with all the hunger she’d felt since coming to Hawaii.

  He let go of her bottom and put one hand behind her head, tantalizing her with his tongue as he took the offensive, holding her as if he’d never let her go.

  She looped her arms around his neck and moaned softly, losing all track of time, all track of everything but Ty.

  “Uh-hum.” A man cleared his throat.

  Thanks to Ty’s skill with his hands, lips, and tongue, she hadn’t even heard the man approach.

  Ty dropped his hand from her neck. She pulled back from him guiltily and looked at the ground.

  “We should probably get a room,” Ty whispered in her ear. “Your bed. Tonight. Don’t lose the mood.” He took her hand and squeezed it.

  Then he dropped her hand and turned to greet the man with an exterminator logo on his shirt who’d just walked up. “Hey, dude. What’d you find? Are we being overrun with roaches?”

  Saved from my own folly by the exterminator.

  Heart pounding wildly, Treflee turned and walked away, toward the plantation house. She was so confused by her reaction to Ty, she barely registered that Laci had disappeared from the lanai. Why should she be so disappointed by the appearance of the exterminator and having to cut their act short? Ty had just been running with the cover story, hadn’t he? He was joking about bed. He had to be. But she was shaking.

  Halfway to the house, Faye and Brandy ran out to greet her. They flanked her, joining her in lockstep. She acknowledged them with a nod of her head.

  “Going back to the house?” Faye asked.

  Ignoring the warning look Treflee shot them to leave her alone, Brandy caught her arm. “I wouldn’t go in there just now. Laci is hacked off at you.”

  “At me?” So she had seen. Treflee slowed down. “Why? What have I done to her?”

  From her other side, Faye cleared her throat. “She thinks you’re poaching.”

  Poaching? Poaching! Treflee wanted to scream. Poaching her own husband, stupid pigheaded man. She was trying her best to get rid of him. Sort of.

  She opened her mouth to give them a piece of her mind, and shut it again just as fast. Call her patriotic or simply foolish, but even as upset and confused as she was, she couldn’t out one of the U.S.’s top spies. She refused to be involved in a Valerie Plame–type affair.

  “I didn’t know she was so into Hal,” Treflee said evenly instead. “All we did was have lunch.”

  Brandy applied enough pressure on Treflee’s arm to draw her to a halt. “She saw you kissing Ty.”

  Treflee took a deep breath. “He kissed me.” She shrugged and shook her arm free from Brandy’s grasp. “He’s a player. Half his job around here is to flirt with us.”

  “It’s a big deal to Laci,” Faye said. “Look, we aren’t the enemy. We’re just trying to help you out and keep the peace around here. Laci’s great on so many levels. Really a good, loyal friend. But she’s possessive about guys. You don’t cross her. Things get ugly.”

  Brandy nodded along as Faye talked. “Why don’t you take a nice stroll on the beach until the storm clears? Give us a little time to talk her down.”

  Treflee’s gaze bounced between the two of them. She didn’t care two nickels if Laci was hacked off. “I’m going to my room.”

  She strode off toward the house. The other two girls hung back.

  Just inside the door, Laci confronted her. “I saw you kissing Ty.” She blocked the way to the stairs and rooms above.

  “Yeah?” Treflee tried to push past her.

  Laci was a brick house, totally unmovable. Her green eyes flashed wildly with fury. And her sunburned face turned an even darker shade of red. She should have worn sunscreen. She was going to pay for her folly with a fresh batch of freckles.

  Treflee held her ground, getting angrier by the second that some other woman had designs on her husband. For as long as Ty refused to sign those papers, he was still hers, which gave her the right to kiss him if she damn well felt like it.

  She glared at Laci. “It was just a kiss.”

  She meant it. Contrary to what Laci thought, it was just a kiss. Treflee would be a fool to think it was more.

  Without warning, Laci shoved Treflee. Caught off guard, Treflee tumbled back against the wall, rattling the house and knocking a hanging glass vase full of plumeria off its hook in the process.

  The vase crashed to
the floor and shattered on the hardwood just as Tita waddled into the room from the kitchen, carrying a large gift basket filled to overflowing with home-baked goodies, fruit, and macadamia nuts. “What’s this!”

  Laci backed off and away from Treflee. Treflee shook herself, a prize fighter loosening up after a blow.

  Tita set the basket down on a sofa table and surveyed the damage. “What happened?”

  Laci shrugged. “Sorry.” She pointed to the mess. “Put this on my bill.” She glared at Treflee and stalked off, leaving her to explain.

  Treflee squatted to pick up the pieces of glass and avoid Tita’s intense gaze. “Vacation jitters.” She tried to laugh it off, make light of it. “She got too much sun today. She got burned. Badly. She could use some aloe from your garden.”

  “I’ll cut some for her and bring it up to her.” Tita put a hand on Treflee’s arm. “Leave it. You’ll cut yourself. I’ll call the maid to clean up.” She reached beneath Treflee’s arm and tugged to pull her up.

  When Treflee stood, she found Tita studying her. “This is about Ty?”

  The woman was perceptive. Treflee nodded.

  Tita shook her head and let out a deep sigh, mumbling beneath her breath in Hawaiian. “Fighting over a man is bad business. When will you learn, my little ipos?” She shook her head again. “It will only get you into trouble.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  Treflee begged off the afternoon and evening activities to rest. But there was no rest for the weary.

  Carla popped in to check on her when she got back from snorkeling. “You shouldn’t have crossed Laci. The girls warned you.” She checked Treflee again for late-breaking signs of a concussion from her smack-down by the surfboard. “She’s making life miserable for all of us! You don’t know how she can pout and rant.”

  Treflee had a fair idea.

  Carla pronounced her concussion-free and sat on the edge of the bed next to her, pleading with her. “Look, I know you’re going through a bad divorce. Hot guys falling all over you has to be a big boost to the old ego.” She paused, looking like she was trying to properly frame her words. “But what’s a vacation romance to you, in the long run? It’s not like it’s going to last.”