Her Spy to Hold (Spy Games Book 2) (6 page)

“Why did you choose to design nuclear weapons systems placement?” he countered.

“I more or less fell into it. I like working with computers and I simply followed the opportunities being offered to me.”

“You mean you followed the money.”

He said it with enough neutrality that it was obvious he didn’t approve. She couldn’t fault him for having an opinion. Her work wasn’t popular with a lot of people. She supposed with Canada’s spy agency, even less. Still, defensiveness tightened her stomach even as she admitted the truth.

“I did. I support my parents,” she hastened to add. “My father defected from Russia when he was a young man. He’d been a combination of journalist and translator—we don’t have the equivalent in Canada—but after he arrived here he couldn’t find work, so he drove a cab in Regina. My mother’s Canadian. She developed Guillan-Barré syndrome when I was twenty and he’s been her primary caregiver for the past twelve years. They gave up a lot to make sure I had better opportunities than they did. Now it’s my turn to look after them. Besides, I like what I do. It’s always interesting. Although granted, maybe it’s a little too interesting right now.” If she hadn’t been drinking, she’d never have told him about her parents. She rarely spoke of her private life. Canada’s relations with Russia had grown increasingly strained over the past few years and she was uneasy with too many people knowing she had family connections—even though they were stated in her security clearances. Kale, however, could find out anything he wanted about her. He might even already know all of this. CSIS would have investigated her before they gave an intelligence officer this assignment. They’d want to know her background and who might be in it. She tugged at the hem of her skirt, which somehow had hiked up a few inches too far. “Back to you. Why CSIS?”

“Same as you, I guess. They recruited me. It sounded like fun.” He navigated into the lane for the next exit off the highway. They were ten minutes from her house.

The wine made her bold. “CSIS recruits only the best. So what’s your superpower?”

He shifted gears and veered right at the bottom of the ramp, checking his mirrors and merging with traffic. The slow rise of his lips sketched the hint of a smile. “No superpowers, I’m afraid. I’m good with languages.”

That wasn’t at all what she’d expected to hear. She’d thought he’d claim to be some kind of mixed martial arts expert—but to be fair, she’d jumped to that conclusion because of his size and the black eye. She’d also assumed he was telling the truth when he told George his background was in kinesiology. Why would someone lie about that? It was such an insignificant detail.

Her curiosity about him, already high, was further piqued. “What languages do you speak?”

“French, Hindi, Farsi, and Urdu, as well as modern Standard Arabic and seven of its dialects.”

She blinked. “Prove it to me. Say something in Urdu.”

He uttered a string of unintelligible but very lovely sounding words he couldn’t possibly be faking. He cast another sidelong look her way. “In case you’re curious, I said, ‘Peace be upon you, lovely lady. You are very suspicious by nature.’ See? I’m more than just a pretty face.”

She’d touched a nerve by calling him beautiful. As a woman, she could well understand how offensive it was. But she sensed he wasn’t offended so much as trying to shift the conversation—and she’d love to know why. Other than French, these weren’t languages one would expect an average Canadian student to study—and he’d learned them before he joined CSIS, not after.

“I can’t really see you blending in with a crowd in Pakistan,” she prodded.

“Gathering intelligence isn’t always about blending in. Sometimes stereotypes make the best covers. When it comes to my skillset, I don’t fit a typical profile.”

No, he didn’t. And it explained why he said he’d studied kinesiology. Based on appearances alone, it was easy enough to believe.

“Besides, I don’t gather intelligence in places like Pakistan.” He braked at the entrance to her subdivision, allowing an approaching vehicle to pass by before turning in. Its headlights lit up their car’s interior as it went by. “I work mostly in Western urban centers where multinationals tend to congregate.”

“So your job is to eavesdrop on people’s conversations?”

“More or less. And that,” he added, “is more than you need to know, even if your security clearances are better than mine. Shame on you, Dr. Glasov. You’re nosy when you drink. Next subject.”

She’d been put in her place, but in a manner that left her smiling inside. Personable as well as gorgeous. Kale Martin had great people skills.

They’d reached her driveway. She felt around under the dash with her toes until she found her shoes, then wriggled them onto her feet. The car rolled to a stop and she opened the door to get out. As she did, she got her arm tangled up in the seat belt assembly.

Before she could extricate herself, Kale had come around the front of the car to help. He held her elbow as she got both feet on the ground. Except for a neighbor’s dog barking, no doubt at a squirrel or raccoon, the night was quiet. He got her laptop out of the backseat of the car and slung it over his shoulder.

The knot she’d fashioned her hair into that morning had long since ceased to be neat and tidy. A warm breeze, smelling of damp grass and turned earth, ruffled the stray tendrils sticking to the nape of her neck. He tugged one strand loose with the tip of a finger. She couldn’t imagine why she’d been so nervous of him. Right now he was someone to lean on. Literally.

“Thank you,” she said, a little too breathlessly. “I’m not usually this clumsy.”

“I’m going to go out on a limb and assume you aren’t much of a drinker either.”

“Is it that obvious?”

One of his arms came around her, helping her stay upright as they walked toward the steps leading to the side kitchen door. His voice shook with the laughter he couldn’t quite hold back.

“Well, now. I am a highly trained observer. But even if I were blind, the answer would still have to be yes. Yes, it is.”

She was torn between laughter and embarrassment. “Sorry about that.”

Immediately, the light teasing tone turned to one of understanding. “Don’t be. You’ve had a rough week. Everyone needs to unwind.”

The reminder sobered her up a little. A question had been niggling at the back of her mind, bothering her all evening. “What if whoever accessed my computer already got what they wanted?”

“Then you’d have nothing more to worry about.”

That would be nice. But simply because the problem was no longer hers didn’t mean it didn’t exist, and she felt responsible. Her data should have been better protected.

She frowned. It
was
well protected. “I can’t think of anything they might have gotten off my office PC that would be of any use.”

They stopped at the foot of the short flight of steps. He let his arm fall to his side. She wobbled a little as she started to dig in her purse for her keys.

“And…we’re back to my original theory. Maybe it’s personal,” he said.

She gave up on finding the keys and handed him her purse. “If it came down to a choice as to which would be more worth the effort, my work or me, as much as it pains me to admit it, my work is the likeliest candidate.”

“I disagree. Well,” he amended. “When you’re being all ‘Dr. Glasov’ you’re a little uptight and self-important. But you know what they say about still waters. I’m confident most men would find your depths well worth exploring.”

Moths fluttered against the yard light above the door, casting shadows that stretched into the semi-darkness beyond the carport. She hadn’t been able to find her keys because he’d been driving. He already had them in his hand.

“Do I come across as self-important?” she asked.

“I read it as insecurity.”

He was so wrong. She wasn’t insecure when it came to her work. Social situations that didn’t involve other scientists or research projects were a different story entirely. And she had no experience at all with men like Kale. “For a woman, sometimes being smart can be tough.”

“For a man, being beautiful ain’t no picnic either.”

He was making fun of her. She liked it. Scientists might be smart, but they weren’t always clever. He stretched her intellect in whole different ways. “Really? I’m sure you had no trouble getting a date for your high school prom.”

“Don’t tell me your cousin took you to yours.”

“I didn’t go to my prom. I was fourteen. It was past my bedtime.” That was another confession she wouldn’t normally have made. At the time she’d been crushed. But being smart didn’t equal maturity, and when she looked back on it, she really had been too young. Her parents had made the right decision by keeping her home.

“
Fourteen
?”

The way he said it made her feel like a freak. “Someone didn’t do his homework.”

Wait
.

He hadn’t. She squinted at him, sobering a little faster. “Why didn’t you know that?”

There was the briefest of hesitations. If she hadn’t been looking for it, she might well have missed it.

“Because you aren’t under investigation.”

“But I’m part of it,” she said. “And a significant piece too. Which means one of two things—either you aren’t working for CSIS, or CSIS isn’t working on the information I gave you. You’ve been lying to me.”

* * *

She’d had too much to drink. He’d assumed that meant Dr. Glasov, her official persona, had checked out for the night.

He wouldn’t be making that mistake again.

They faced each other, still standing quite close. She had to tip her head so far back to glare at him that he was ready to grab her if she fell over. That light dusting of freckles across the bridge of her nose was really distracting. She was cute when she was indignant. And a whole lot of fun to torment.

Because she wasn’t afraid of him anymore.

She had no idea how much that small but significant gesture of trust on her part made him feel. He was tempted to kiss her again, but knew better than to make any move as stupid as that.

“I lie for a living,” he hedged. “That’s what CSIS does.”

“You aren’t supposed to be lying to
me
. What’s going on?”

He tucked her purse under his arm and placed his hand over his heart. “I swear I’m not lying to you.”

“Why should I believe you?” she demanded. “You just said you lie for a living.”

A pale gray moth, delicate and light, landed in her hair. He flicked it away with a careful sweep of his fingers. “You can’t talk about your work,” he reminded her. “I can’t talk about mine either. I guess you’re going to have to trust your instincts right now.”

She held out her hand. “My instincts say to get my house keys and my laptop and tell you to sleep in your car.”

He dangled the keys above her head, an inch or so out of her reach. “You’re a mean drunk, Dr. Glasov. I was up most of last night. I spent the past five hours driving you around and waiting for you. I was really looking forward to sleeping on that fluffy pink sofa of yours, not in the backseat of my car. Besides, we’re supposed to be a couple. What will the neighbors think?”

Her gaze sharpened. “I think we should see other people.”

So-o-o
tempted to kiss her… Like hell her work was the likeliest candidate for someone to be harassing her.

“Look at us. We’re having our first fight. And do you know what the first rule for couple fights is? Never go to bed angry.”

He shouldn’t push her this way, or tease her and flirt with her. She really believed he’d kissed her in the parking lot as part of their cover. She’d graduated high school at
fourteen
. She might be highly educated academically, but when it came to boy-girl relationships, she’d skipped the core classes. She didn’t know what the rules were. She could be too easily hurt by someone like him. He hadn’t had a serious girlfriend since college because he was never in the same city for long.

There were reasons he shouldn’t get involved with her either. His career was as important to him as hers was to her. He believed in the work he was doing. He wanted world peace.

So yeah, maybe he thought his job was a teensy bit more important than hers.

“Tell you what,” he relented. “This isn’t a conversation we should be having right now. You let me sleep on your sofa, and in the morning after we’re both better rested, we’ll have a serious talk while you’re making me breakfast.”

That would give him a few uninterrupted hours to do some discreet investigating into her background, and by investigating, he meant snooping through her personal belongings. Her mention of a Russian father hadn’t escaped his notice. He wondered how much she knew about his history. If he was Cold War era, then as a journalist, he’d most likely worked for his government. He would also have been young, and quite possibly idealistic, although Kale didn’t know enough about him or his circumstances for an accurate profile. Chances were good that he’d been some sort of spy, but given Irina’s security clearances, he’d also been debriefed and cleared by the Canadian government.

Which meant nothing. People passed those clearances every day. Irina’s career, too, would have progressed faster than her background checks could be updated. And tensions between Canada and Russia had increased in recent years. She might not find her next security clearance as easy to pass.