Fontanas Trouble (4 page)

Chapter Five

By 8:30 p.m., Fontana sat on a
barstool at Rick’s, an old-fashioned in a tumbler and a pack of reproduction
Pall Mall filterless cigarettes resting by her elbow. A smoky haze hung in the
air, but she detected no real smoke.

Rick’s was comprised of three
vast rooms, one with a bar where she sat, another with tables and an upright
piano where a guest had been playing
As Time Goes By
with one finger when
she walked in, and a third room with a clicking and clattering roulette wheel
where people were placing their bets. Waiters in white suits bustled between
tables. Actors in French police period uniforms prowled the room. The only
things that broke the movie-quality spell were the four Ingrid Bergman
look-alikes, six Humphrey Bogarts, and two Paul Henreids playing Victor Laszlo.
Evidently, nobody wanted to play the part of Claude Rains, the corrupt French
official.

Fontana loved
Casablanca
,
but it wasn’t Bogie’s best.
To Have and Have Not
took that honor.

“Of all the gin joints in all the
towns…” Brent’s voice drifted over her left shoulder.

She glanced in the mirror behind
the bar. He wore a white suit and shirt and a black bow tie. Handsome. Much
more handsome than Bogart. “You had to walk into mine,” she said, her gaze
still locked with his in the mirror.

“How did you know
Casablanca
was my favorite film?”

She rotated on the stool and gave
him a sideways look from beneath the brim of her hat. “Lucky guess.”

“This place is fabulous. It even
has Vichy police.”

Vichy was the name of the
Nazi-controlled French officials. Somehow it pleased her that he remembered the
small detail she’d forgotten. How many other insignificant details might he
know? What would it be like to find out? She could fall for a guy like Brent—or
at least the idea of falling in love. The real man was probably a womanizing
arms dealer. But she wasn’t Major Fontana Marks of the Galactic Coalition. This
was Earth, twentieth-century Morocco, and she was Ilsa Lund in love with the
cynical Rick Blaine.

Fontana pulled a cigarette from
the pack on the bar. Brent reached into his breast pocket and produced a pack
of wooden matches. Synthetic wood, for sure, but they looked as real as in the
movies. She held the cigarette to her lips. He struck the match against the
wood and cupped the flame to the tip of the cigarette as if he’d done it a
thousand times before. Gaze locked with his, Fontana drew in without inhaling
and blew smoke toward the ceiling. It vanished into a light fixture, an
inverted cone of some green, glasslike material hanging by a thin rod from the
ceiling.

Brent bent and kissed her
lightly, totally out of Rick’s character. He leaned against the counter. “I’ve
dreamed of doing that again ever since this morning.”

She set the cigarette in the
nearby ashtray. The cigarette smoke vanished into tiny vents in the ashtray,
which released another substance resembling smoke that curled up toward the
ceiling and added to the room’s smoky ambience.

Fontana set her gaze on Brent.
“Why are you being chased and hunted? Did you buy the wrong adventure package,
or is that what gets you off?”

“Besides you?” He raised an
eyebrow.

She gave him a deprecating look,
despite the satisfaction that rippled through her. She could accept the robot
as part of an adventure package, but she still had trouble believing it was
legal for shock troopers to have blown off the back door of Spacer Jack’s.

“Why the shock troopers and
sentry robots?” she asked.

He flashed a smile. “I’m
misunderstood by so many.”

From the corner of her eye,
Fontana noticed a slim blonde enter the restaurant. She clutched a small
evening bag, and the tight wool dress that covered her from neck to calf forced
her to take short, balanced steps in her high heels as she threaded her way
between the tables. Fontana gave a mental groan. Not a Lauren Bacall
look-alike. Not in Rick’s Café Américain. Bacall hadn’t starred in
Casablanca
.
Fontana realized the woman was headed toward them. Once she’d drawn near
enough, she met Brent’s gaze from beneath thick eyelashes.

“Rick. I’m so glad I found you,”
she said, her voice a sultry purr. She was a stunning replica of Bacall.

Brent split a glance between
Lauren and her. “I, ah…”

Fontana didn’t mind a little competition,
even when the competition was so beautiful, but she hadn’t considered the
possibility Brent had another woman, or wife, even. Miss Bacall acted as if she
and Brent had a history. Complications were the last thing she needed. Despite
the rationale, her heart squeezed.

Fontana picked up her cigarettes.
“I’ll leave you two alone.” She started to rise.

The woman placed a hand on
Brent’s arm. He shook her off. Fontana tensed when anger flashed in the woman’s
eyes.

Brent grasped Fontana’s wrist.
“Let’s get out of here.”

Before she could reply, he’d
pulled her off the stool and started toward the front exit.

“Brent,” she began, with the
intention of saying he couldn’t run—after all, he wasn’t naked—but was cut off
by the hulking body that rammed into them.

She was wrenched from Brent’s
grip and stumbled back, plowing into another couple. The woman squealed. A heel
on Fontana’s shoe broke. She tried to catch herself but crashed to the floor.
Mayhem broke out in the room. A man stepped on her hand. Fontana seized his leg
and brought him, ass first, to the floor. An arm grasped her waist and pulled
her upright. She came face-to-face with Brent.

He grinned and looked down at
where her skirt had hiked thigh high. “Can’t even wait until we get back to
your room, huh?”

Vichy police whistles blew shrill
over the shouts and mayhem inside. Brent swung her into his arms, then hurried
forward.

“I can walk,” she said.

He ignored her and pushed through
the crowd. He stepped outside and whistled for the autonomous cab parked by the
curb.

“Put me down,” Fontana ordered,
but the door opened, and Brent slid inside still holding her.

He settled her sideways across
his thighs and ordered the cab to drive. The car started forward.

“What was that all about?” he
demanded.

Fontana didn’t miss the rock-hard
erection that pulsed beneath her ass. The brim of her hat brushed his face, and
he leaned back. She pulled the hat off and tossed it on the seat.

“You’re the one racing through
Rick’s.” Dammit, was that a breathless note in her voice?

He gave her a deprecating look,
then slid her off him and pulled her foot into his lap. He gingerly turned the
ankle.

Fontana stiffened when soreness
tugged. Dammit. She’d tweaked her Achilles’ heel.

Brent fingered the ankle.

“Why run from Rick’s?” she
demanded.

“You were the one running out on
me.”

Fontana stared. “Me? Running out
on you? Twice, now, you’ve run out on me, the second time from my bed.”

His attention was still on her
ankle, but a corner of his mouth twitched. She had the urge to box his ears.

“No swelling, but you could have
twisted something. Better see the medi-bot when we get back to your hotel.”

“Sure,” she said. He couldn’t
know her body contained Corps standard-issue bionanobots. The nanobot control
center implanted in her left lung where it had an ample supply of oxygen and a
place to exhaust waste gasses would already have detected her body’s chemical
messengers and dispatched the microscopic robots to the injured area.

Brent’s eyes shifted to her face.
“I didn’t run out on you. I was chased away.”

“How about an explanation, then.”

“Explain what?”

Anger rose in a mix of adrenaline
and stupidity. She knew her reaction was as much about the fact she’d been
looking for a reason to be angry ever since leaving Rigil IV as the fact that
his actions ran on the eccentric side. But knowing didn’t bring reasoning into
the mix.

“Taxi, take me the Hotel Baba
Ghanoush,” she said; then she narrowed her gaze on Brent. “Explain why you were
running naked through Spacer Jack’s? Explain why shock troopers blew down a
door to get to you? Explain why you ran away after I let you fuck me?” Ah,
there it was. She hadn’t had a man in her bed in over a year, and the first one
after her sex hiatus had bolted.

His gaze bore into her. “You’re
serious?”

“Dead serious.”

A moment of silence passed, and
she hadn’t the slightest idea what he was thinking.

“You’re telling me you’re not
part of the Rogue Agent package?” he asked.

She blinked, then frowned.

“You chased me into the alley
and—” He looked confused. “You invited me into your room and—” Regret washed
over his features. “Fawn, I never dreamed—”

Understanding hit like ice. “You
never dreamed a stranger who wasn’t paid would chase you into an alley and fuck
you.”

Brent laid a hand on hers. “I
never dreamed I’d get that lucky with someone as smart and beautiful as you.”

She wanted to laugh. He thought
she was a prostitute. She thought he was an escort.

“I’m just a warp engineer,” he
said. “I spend months in deep space, troubleshooting some glitch or aberrant
behavior in the ship’s main drive.”

“You’re not built like any
engineer I’ve ever known.”

He grinned. “You like me.”

The cab slowed to make a turn.

She eyed him. “You really paid
money to run naked through the streets?”

“I did have a towel. The Lauren
Bacall back at Rick’s was the woman I’d tried to burgle yesterday. She caught
me and made me strip. I thought she was going to seduce me. When she called the
troopers, I ran. It’s strange, her showing up at Rick’s, though.”

The cab picked up speed.

“What do you mean?” Fontana
asked.

“Lauren Bacall doesn’t belong in
Casablanca
.
They must know that.”

“Did she expect you to be
somewhere else, somewhere Lauren Bacall was supposed to be? Like on Key Largo?
From the looks of things, you forced her to come looking for you.”

His brow furrowed. “I guess I
did, didn’t I?”

A car horn blared up ahead.

“How does a warp engineer afford
a luxury fantasy?” Fontana asked.

“I don’t drink, do drugs, or buy
expensive toys. Getting away from my mundane life and playing a secret agent for
a week is my reward at the end of a year in deep space.”

She grimaced. Sounded too much
like her real job.

“What do you do?” he asked.

“I work for the Coalition’s
Office of Customs and Immigration,” she said and couldn’t help wondering who
was now the liar? “I’m a courier, and I do other miscellaneous tasks.”

“Like saving men like me?” He
waggled his eyebrows.

Like letting Corps members get
killed, she silently said, but replied, “What is a man like you?”

“A boring engineer, who doesn’t
usually get the girl.”

He could get this girl. “Well,
we’re all dressed up and nowhere to go,” she said.

He slid closer and traced circles
on her calf with a forefinger. She shivered.

“I would like to make up for my
mistake,” he said. “This time, it’ll be the real thing.”

Fontana blinked. “Was the last
time a dream?”

A corner of his mouth twitched.
“Not a dream, but now we know we’re two people who want to enjoy one another.”

Enjoy one another.
That
was the best idea she’d heard in over a year.

He slid his finger farther up her
leg. “If you cancel your last order, the cabbie will drive until we instruct it
to stop.”

She shifted her gaze out the
window to the car keeping pace beside them. If the cab drifted closer, the
passenger, a man in his early thirties, would get an eyeful. By the time she
and Brent were finished, they could have a caravan following them. Fontana
almost laughed. She was willing to ride his cock in an alley where everyone on
the arounder could have watched them. A cab was far more private, yet she was
having an attack of modesty.

A finger curled around her chin
and turned her face back toward him. They passed beneath a streetlight, and she
discerned his blue eyes were dark with desire.

“You promise to make it worth my
while?”

“Yep.” His mouth covered hers.

He slid one arm around her neck
and wound the other hand into her hair. His fingers twisted through the locks;
then he tugged her head back. She remained motionless as his tongue traced the
seam of her lips. Then he plunged inside. His groan reverberated through her.
Her clit throbbed. Damn, how could an engineer with this much talent stay
locked away on a ship for months? And how could he possibly not have a woman at
every port? She didn’t care if he had a harem. He was here with her right now,
and he made her feel like she was the only woman in the world.

Fontana opened his jacket and
flattened her palms against the thin fabric separating her hands from his body.
His kiss turned more heated, his tongue twining with hers. She tugged the
Velcro buttons open on his shirt and slipped her hands inside. Muscles quivered
beneath her fingers. The feel of the silky-soft chest hair made her want to rub
herself all over his body. That would drive him to the edge. She would make
sure he wasn’t thinking about any other woman for a long, long time.

He broke the kiss. “Taxi, cancel
the last order. Just drive.”

She stroked his cock through his
trousers. Brent covered her hand with his. The steel beneath the fabric was
just as she remembered. He pressed her fingers closer as he undulated his shaft
against her fingers.

“You’ll drive me crazy,” he
muttered.

That was the plan. God, she’d
forgotten the thrill of driving a man insane. He pulled her legs over his lap,
then grasped her skirt and shimmied the fabric upward. Fontana lifted her hips,
and he pushed the skirt thigh high. Then he leaned forward and pressed a soft
kiss to her knee. She spread her legs as wide as the dress allowed. He gently
sucked with his mouth while tracing lazy circles on her inner thigh. Her heart
pounded.