The Elliotts: Bedroom Secrets: Under Deepest Cover. Barbara Dunlop

itself straight from her soul to his, all in the half second of contact between their mouths.

      It had been the merest brushing of lips, so innocent, yet it had shaken him to his shoes. No kiss had ever done that.

      He’d mostly composed himself by the time he entered the restaurant kitchen, but the memory of the kiss remained in the back of his mind.

      “Hey, boss, you’re back!” one of the sous-chefs greeted him.

      “Monsieur Bryan!” called out another. “Hey, those Florentine eggrolls are going like hotcakes.”

      The head chef, Kim Chin, who ran the kitchen like a marine bootcamp, looked up from his sauté pan and grunted a greeting. “’Bout time.”

      All right, so he’d been neglecting his business lately. No one said it was easy working two jobs, and the Alliance Trust case had been occupying every waking hour these days. While Lucy had worked it from her end, Bryan had been tracking down the people receiving the embezzled funds, working with two French agents to prevent any of the illicit funds from reaching terrorists in Iraq while not tipping off the bad guys on the American side. Not until he had them all rounded up could he assemble the evidence needed to put them away for a good long time.

      “Where’s Stash?” he asked Kim.

      “Out schmoozing the beautiful people, of course, the worthless Frenchie.” Which was pretty funny, since Stash practically lived at the restaurant, keeping everything running, paying the bills, meeting payroll, handling all the hundreds of details that kept Une Nuit at the top of everyone’s list.

      “Bryan, you’re back!” Stash greeted him with a hearty hug and a double air-kiss. Stash Martin was an energetic Frenchman in his thirties. With equal parts stubbornness and optimism, he was the perfect manager for an often absent owner. “What keeps you away for so long, eh?” he asked with a French accent. “The place could have been turned into a hot-dog stand while you were gone.”

      Bryan had prepared a long, shaggy-dog story about his exploits in Europe. Instead he said, “I met someone.” He had to set up Lucy’s cover story, he reasoned. Lying came easily to him, given the number of years he’d worked undercover. But the scary thing was, he didn’t have to manufacture the edge in his voice when he talked about Lucy. What had started as a fairly routine job had turned into something exciting and challenging—and for all the wrong reasons.

      Lucy stared at herself in the mirror, then stared some more. Scarlet hadn’t allowed her to watch the transformation, so her own image was a complete surprise. No, a shock. Her mother wouldn’t recognize her—which was the point, of course.

      Her brown hair lay in piles on the floor. Scarlet had cut it to chin length, dyed it to a pale blond, then blow-dried it straight so that it fell in a shimmering fringe that bounced with her every move. Her eyebrows had been plucked and reshaped, and the artfully applied cosmetics had sculpted her face and redefined the shape of her mouth. She now had cheekbones.

      Then there were the clothes. After sorting through the piles and piles of glamorous outfits, Scarlet had decided that Lucy needed a look, and had chosen an array of clingy knits in a palette of soft colors—mossy green, plum, cantaloupe, tawny gold. The outfit she wore now was a pair of green low-rider pants and a cropped tank top that clung to all her curves. A second shirt in a paler green, with a front zipper and short sleeves, went over the tank. Wedge-heeled sandals and bold jewelry completed the look.

      The most amazing thing, though, was the fact that she had cleavage. Scarlet had found her a really clever push-up bra that made her A cups look like Cs.

      Lucy kept putting her glasses on to look at herself from far away, then taking them off and peering at her face from close up. She just couldn’t believe it. She did look like someone who could be Bryan Elliott’s girlfriend. Someone who belonged in New York. When she’d lived here before, she’d never felt quite at home, never really shed her Kansas persona.

      “This is just amazing,” she said for about the third time.

      “The models you see in magazines don’t have anything we don’t have,” Scarlet said. “Hairstylists, makeup artists, good lighting and a skilled photographer can turn the plainest-looking woman into a knockout.”

      Lucy was convinced. But she wasn’t sure the Lucy Miller on the inside matched the one on the outside. Beautiful women—like Scarlet—had an inner confidence, a way of moving and talking that Lucy lacked.

      “What if I can’t carry it off?” she asked in a small voice.

      “You’ll manage. Listen, I can’t imagine Bryan hooking up with a woman who isn’t really, really special. He saw something in you, something inside. Just remember that, and you’ll be fine.”

      Oh, yeah. What Scarlet didn’t know was that Bryan didn’t pick her at all. She’d dropped into his lap, and now he was stuck with her.

      “So are you close to Bryan?” Lucy asked, figuring this was a golden opportunity to find out more about her supposed boyfriend.

      “All the Elliott cousins are close. Here, stand up on the bed and let me shorten those pants. You’re as slim as a model, but not quite as tall as one.”

      “Do most of you work for the magazines?” Lucy asked, trying not to think about the fact she was standing on Bryan’s bed, trying not to think of him sleeping there. Or doing something else.

      “We all work for Elliott Publication Holdings in one capacity or another. Except Bryan. He’s the only one to escape that fate.”

      “Why is that, do you think?”

      “Oh, he had other ideas from the time he was young. His heart problem kept him somewhat separated from the rest of us, I think. Until he had his operation, he couldn’t run and play with us, and we were an extremely active bunch. Turn.”

      Lucy obediently turned, but her mind was reeling. Heart problem? Bryan?

      “By the time they fixed his heart, his interest in food and cooking had already developed. Then he got into sports, bigtime—had to outdo his brother and all his cousins, as if he was making up for lost time. The magazines just didn’t hold any appeal for him, I guess. Oh, he studied finance in school with some vague notion of going to work for the company, but that didn’t last long. He wanted to do his own thing. He may have been the smartest one in the bunch.”

      “Why would you say that? Working for Charisma must be like a dream.”

      “Ordinarily, yes. But with the competition going on—Oh, Bryan probably didn’t tell you about that, and why would he?”

      Lucy was intrigued. “What competition? Tell me.”

      “My grandfather has decided to retire and make one of his children the CEO of the corporation. Each is currently head of one of the magazines—Pulse, Snap, The Buzz and Charisma. So the one whose magazine shows the biggest profit growth by the end of the year wins the top spot. Needless to say, everyone is at each other’s throats. My boss, Aunt Fin, practically lives at the magazine, she’s so obsessed with winning. And Uncle Michael—Well, his wife, my Aunt Karen, is recovering from breast cancer and he should be focusing on that, not worrying about a stupid contest.”

      Scarlet had gotten a bit worked up, and she stopped suddenly. “I’m sorry. Bryan would skewer me like a shish-kebab if he knew I was airing family laundry to his new girl.”

      “I won’t say anything,” Lucy assured her.

      Lucy glanced at her new watch—a big, copper-colored bracelet thing—and was surprised to see it was after 1 a.m. Bryan wasn’t home yet. What was he doing, she wondered. He obviously wasn’t anxious to get back to her. It was probably a relief to be free of her for a while.

      “Well, I hate to undo your hard work, but I think I’ll take off all this makeup and turn in,” Lucy said. “It’s been a long day. Thank you so much, Scarlet. It was really nice of you to spend your evening this way.”