Heartbreak Hero. Frances Housden

was Kurt. The link between them went both ways, like one of those old phones they’d made as kids with a tin can at each end and a string carrying vibrations.

      “I guess I’ll have to take your word for that.”

      As he began to answer Jo, Ngaire started dressing and robbed him of speech. He’d been sure Ngaire didn’t wear a bra, and now he knew for certain as she slipped a baby-blue T-shirt over her head. It wasn’t as short as the crop top she’d worn yesterday, but as it barely covered her waist, and she’d still to put her pants on, it did nothing to help his predicament, which was rock-hard.

      Seemed his sister had taken his heavy breathing and sighs as something else. “Well, you can’t blame me for being skeptical. I’m a cop, it comes with the job. I wish we could meet, though. I really wanted to speak to you about Dad.”

      One leg at a time, Ngaire’s oh-so-tempting skin disappeared from view behind navy capri pants. “Thank God!”

      “What?”

      He realized Jo had thought his heartfelt exclamation was meant for her and quickly turned it to fit his feelings about his father. “I mean, thank God we can’t meet, because he’s the last person I want to talk to you or anyone else about.”

      “The situation isn’t going to go away, Kel. You have to face it some time. I’m sure Kurt would agree.”

      “Leave him out of it. Kurt knows my feeling on this better than anyone else.” The screen showed Ngaire gathering up a few things, then she disappeared from view inside the wardrobe. What seemed like an age later, she reappeared holding her small navy day pack and a light nylon yellow raincoat.

      “So, have you been in touch with him? Did you know he was living near Queenstown?”

      “No, but I knew he was depressed. I thought it was because of his accident. Talk about shades of masochism, what’s he doing surrounding himself with mountains?”

      “He’s building a lodge down that way to cater to skiers in the winter and climbers in the summer.”

      “Damn, it’s worse than I thought.” He knew instinctively that Kurt had no intention of ever climbing again, so what the hell was his twin up to? The sight of Ngaire opening her bedroom door brought his speculation to a halt. “Gotta go. Talk to you on the way back and we’ll sort out Kurt.”

      He slipped one foot, then the other into his boots, pulling them up blind as he checked the clock on the bedside table, then lifted the cell phone that Chaly had left beside the wallet and gun. It only took a second to straighten his khaki pants over his boots and cover the S & W in its holster.

      He allowed himself another minute to shut down the computer while he removed the lens from next door, because of an inborn belief that people would as soon take a shortcut as not, housemaids and himself included. That minute and the few others it would take him to search her room should give Ngaire time to descend the five floors to the restaurant for the breakfast included in the tour package.

      Kel punched the requisite numbers into his cell phone on the walk to the elevator. He’d found nothing in Ngaire’s luggage but some underwear, and that had made him feel a regular letch as he pawed his way through it with the scent she wore floating up from a pile of silk fancies. The clothes she’d hung up in the wardrobe were easier on his concentration, and though his search was swift, it was thorough and there was no evidence of the formula.

      “Heartbreaker,” he said, giving his code name to control. Gordie’s idea, because Kel pulled the girls yet brushed them aside.

      Heartbroken would have been more appropriate, but he hadn’t told Gordie that. His buddy had thought it funny, but with him gone the joke had worn thin. There was no room for relationships in his life; his work didn’t lend itself to anything permanent. If he’d discovered anything about love it was that the two Ds, death and divorce, would take care of it for him.

      “Anything new?” He listened as the guy on the other end gave him what little information Chaly had already passed on. This assignment had him fumbling around in a fog, half blind. Whoever said “No news is good news” was in a different line of work.

      “No, nothing to report at this end. She had room service, no calls in or out and went to bed early.” Almost naked.

      “A woman, huh? I’ll add that to what I’ve got here.”

      “Right. I’ve just made a fruitless search of her room. Whatever she’s carrying she has it on her. I’ll be out most of the day. No contact unless it’s an emergency. I’ll have company. Heartbreaker signing off until 2200 hours.”

      He was the only one waiting, and was amazed when the elevator arrived empty. No distractions. Nothing to stop him questioning the unfamiliar sensation curling in his gut.

      Guilt? That would be a new one. It never bothered him spying on the people he investigated. They were the scum of the earth and asked for everything they got.

      His father included?

      Usually, he avoided going down that road, but Jo had set his memories stirring. One thing for sure, his father’s children hadn’t deserved the fallout from Milo Jellic’s brief flirtation with drug dealing. Sure, in a one-parent unit they’d been halfway dysfunctional before his death, but the final years of childhood, with only Grandma Glamuzina in charge of five teenagers had completed what his mother’s early demise had started. There’d been times when he’d thought suicide—the option his father had taken—put Milo Jellic one up on the rest of the family. They’d had to take all the crap that followed.

      Although he hated to admit it, the military had given him some sense of what he’d been missing, and when he met Carly, his ex-wife, he’d been certain he had it all.

      So, he couldn’t be right all the time. About two years after his divorce was finalized he’d been offered the chance to join GDE and jumped at it.

      Payback time. Payment for the devastation his father had helped wreak on the families of addicts, and more personal, for being robbed of what little childhood he’d enjoyed.

      So, why the guilty feelings about watching Ngaire?

      Why did the guilt feel stronger when he thought of her going to bed in the white, opaque silk nightdress that hid none of her lush charms, than when she’d been naked? Was it the hot blood pulsing in his groin while doing his job that sent tentacles of shame spreading through his veins?

      He shook off the feeling as the silent disappearance of the elevator doors brought the second-floor lobby into view.

      The word tentacles was a dead giveaway to the state of his subconscious. Ngaire was making a sucker of him with her exotic looks, white virginal silk sleepwear over a siren’s body sculpted in pale copper with her shoulders cloaked in the shining jet veil of hair she’d left loose. Under his breath, he let out a wry curse at the direction his mind was taking.

      As if written in headlines, A Mata Hari for Our Times flashed across his retina in a subconscious warning. One thing for sure, unlike James Bond he had no intention of sleeping with the enemy.

      Sleeping with the enemy.

      The echo flirted with his memory. Chaly saying, “I hear the target’s built,” then later, “Sleep with her if necessary.”

      When had his boss discovered the courier was a woman? And why hadn’t he passed the news on to either him or control earlier? Come to that, what else did he know that he hadn’t passed on? Time had taught him that when the top brass started keeping secrets from you it was essential to watch your back.

      His gaze zoomed in on Ngaire’s table, an automatic response from some sort of residual magnetism, useful even if annoying.

      “I’d like a table at the rear by the window,” he told the hostess, knowing the restaurant wasn’t busy enough for her to mind him choosing.

      Ngaire was supping cereal as he approached her table. He caught her with the spoon to her mouth as he said,