Love Undercover_A Romance Compilation Read online

  As soon as she sat down, I asked, “So it’s part of a set, right?”

  For a second, Kathryn looked as if she didn’t know what I was talking about. She dipped her eyes down before returning to me with a dirty smile, and she shook her head.

  “You’re relentless!”

  I shrugged, twining my fingers around her forearm.

  “If I told you I was sorry, I’d be lying.”

  Kathryn’s gaze longingly followed the movements of my hand as it wound up and down her lower arm until it stopped and I clasped her hand.

  “Seriously though,” she said, tearing her gaze away and fixing it on my face, “we need to talk.”

  My easy grasp slouched. What exactly was Kathryn getting at? Her face looked somber enough, but not as determined as I’d expect if she was telling me we couldn’t see each other anymore. That couldn’t be what she was going to say, could it?

  “Okay,” I said, forcing my voice not to betray the hurricane inside my head. “Let’s talk. I’m all ears.”

  Kathryn glanced around at the busy Arabian restaurant I’d gotten us a table at. She shook her head.

  “Not now.”

  “So instead I’m gonna have to worry all through dinner?” I whined, crossing my arms.

  Kathryn shrugged, pursing her lips.

  “Guess so.”

  Rapid-fire rage bubbled through me, and my grasp tightened on her wrist.

  “Careful,” I said.

  With the tip of her tongue, Kathryn licked her upper lip. I could see how much my grip was turning her on already.

  The rest of the dinner passed fairly uneventfully, although Kathryn ate as much as an anorexic girl I’d taken to a seafood joint one time.

  “Are you sure you’re okay?” I asked her, glancing at her nearly untouched kibbi and rice. “Do you hate Arabian food or something?”

  She shook her head.

  “I just don’t feel like eating.”

  Although I suspected it had to do with whatever she was going to tell me, I didn’t make any further comment. There was no point in pushing the issue now. I’d find out soon enough.

  After all, having a scene in front of the rich diners around us didn’t appeal to me.

  Even as I drove her back to my place, Kathryn wouldn’t say anything.

  “Soon” was all she would say in response to my insistent questioning.

  Inside the house, I couldn’t help but give her ass a good squeeze.

  “I was wanting to do that all through dinner, and it was just about killing me,” I confessed.

  Kathryn giggled. But when my lips went to hers to follow up, she pressed them away.

  “We need to talk.”

  “As you keep telling me,” I said with exasperation, flinging up my hands.

  Kathryn looked around uncertainly, her gaze stopping on the stairs. She went over and sat down on the bottom step. I sat down beside her.

  Her eyes now held a faraway expression. It occurred to me that despite how much time we’d spent together, we really didn’t even know the half of each other yet. The thought both thrilled and terrified me all at once. What was Kathryn going to tell me? What was it that could get her this upset?

  “I just want to say,” I blurted out, “that if you don’t like this whole mistress thing, we can cut it out. I mean, I still want to keep seeing you, but—”

  When Kathryn turned to me, she had tears in her eyes.

  “That’s not it,” she said. “I haven’t been honest with you, Eric.”

  All my worries drove a stake into my heart.

  “What do you mean?” I asked slowly.

  “Just that.” She shook her head. Gazing at her little hands, she said, “I’m an undercover detective. I’ve been investigating you because of embezzlement allegations started a year ago by your former employee, Trisha Nichols.”

  Her words slapped like an empty pop can against the side of my head. They just didn’t compute. Kathryn, the sexy mistress I had found through an online ad, was an undercover cop?

  “Nice one,” I said, laughing thinly.

  But the expression on Kathryn’s dismayed face was as far from laughing as you could get.

  “I’m so sorry, Eric,” she said in a broken voice, her hand darting to mine and squeezing it. “I’m so sorry for misleading you. It was what my department thought we had to do in order to get to the truth.”

  The hand clutching mine was not Kathryn’s, not the Kathryn’s I knew anyway. It was the hand of a robot, a cold, hard, unfeeling creature of necessity. It might as well have been that of Trisha Nichols. I stood up.

  “Get out.”

  Kathryn lurched to her feet, her hands reaching for me.

  “Please, Eric, let me explain.”

  Stumbling up a few more steps, I wasn’t even able to look at her, at this stranger I’d been sleeping with for weeks on end.

  I couldn’t seem to voice what was slapping around in my head. The words that finally came out of my lips were a croak. “Get out of my sight. I can’t stand to even look at you.”

  Waiting on the top step, I stood there until the quietly sobbing creature at the bottom gathered herself up and went out the door. Then, I went downstairs to get myself a drink. It seemed like the only thing to do now.

  Chapter 25

  Kathryn

  You can do this.

  I said that to myself as I sat in the questioning room, gaping at my reflection in the black pane of glass. I’d been saying it all morning, each time more uncertain than the last.

  After what had happened, how could I face him? Eric had ordered me out of his house and told me he couldn’t stand the sight of me.

  Although he hadn’t had to say it even. When he’d found out the truth about who I was, he had looked at me in a way that was unspeakably cutting, as if his Kathryn had died and I had killed her with my bare hands. In a way, maybe I had.

  Maybe this was all my fault. Maybe I should have listened to Sgt. Williams in the first place. Maybe this time I’d gone too far.

  In any case, it was too late now. What was done was done, and now I had to face the music. Namely, the music of whatever Eric would or would not now say to me.

  This morning, I’d almost backed out of being the one to question Eric formally, the last step in wrapping up this case. But when I’d seen confusion on the face of Sgt. Williams, I’d started to waver, so I’d soldiered ahead and accepted the duty I had agreed to in the first place.

  Sgt. Williams was right to be confused. Eric’s reaction shouldn’t have jarred me. No one liked being deceived, people you were romantically involved with most of all. And it wasn’t like this whole deceiving and getting in deep thing was new to me. I’d gone undercover on tons of other cases before, from befriending murderers to kleptomaniacs. As a result, I’d encountered my fair share of emotional meltdowns and explosions. The only difference was that this time, my own emotions seemed knotted up in the whole mess of things.

  The door opened and in sauntered Eric Black. Now he was the picture of how I’d expected him to be the first time we met: an arrogant jerk. He pierced me with a condescending look before he ripped his gaze away. He sat down on the plastic chair positioned across from me, turning it so he could face the wall, glaring at his own stony expression.

  He spoke first in a voice that could have cut glass.

  “So how does this thing work?”

  “How it works,” I squeaked in a voice I could hardly recognize as my own, “is that I’ll be giving you a debriefing and telling you what’s going to happen from here on out. I should start by saying that my name is Kathryn Munn. I’ve worked here at the New York Police Department for three years now, mostly on undercover cases. My case involving you was jumpstarted by some anonymous tips given to us a year ago. Before the actual undercover portion of this case, we were looking into the allegations through other means, mostly online.”

  “And you found nothing,” Eric spat, his hands balling into fists and then loose
ning into rigid claws, “because the allegations were completely bullshit, made by an absolute nutcase—which you should’ve checked on in the first place.”

  “Since the allegations were made anonymously,” I reminded him, “that unfortunately wasn’t an option for us. At any rate, you have been fully cleared and have the full apology of the NY Police Department for the suspicion and interference in your personal life.”

  A jarring laugh came from Eric. It was a sound so bitter, it made my blood run cold.

  “The sincerest apologies of the NY Police Department,” he aped back to me. “That does me a shit ton of good now.”

  Leaning forward, I aimed a beseeching look his way, although I knew he couldn’t see it from his position.

  “Eric, I’m really sorry. If you could just give me a minute to explain—”

  “I don’t want to hear it,” he snapped. “Give me the rest of the damn debriefing so I can get the hell out of here.”

  Swallowing back the despair trembling in my voice, I continued. “We have traced back the anonymous reports to a cell phone owned by Ms. Nichols, as well as an IP address. We arrested her last night and currently have her in custody. You’ll be happy to know that she’ll be going to jail for false reporting and a few other things as well.”

  At the good news, Eric’s head only gave a single shake of acknowledgement.

  “Right now, I’m not happy to know anything. Is that all?”

  He jerked over to look at me for the second time, although with the eyes of a stranger.

  With a nod, I exhaled, steeling myself to try again. As he got up and headed for the door, I made one final plea. “Eric, please. Would you just give me a few minutes to expla—”

  I stopped when I realized I was talking to the door that had slammed in my face.

  Sitting back down, I turned back to the black pane of glass. I wanted to punch the stupid emotionless reflection I saw there. Kathryn fucking Munn, the idiot who had ruined everything. The idiot who had fallen for the man she was supposed to be investigating. The fool who had ruined everything.

  Suddenly, I could no longer bear the sight of her. I couldn’t bear any of this. Sgt. Williams was probably on his way in here by now, and I couldn’t bear that either. Throwing myself out of the room, I bailed into the nearest washroom.

  As I slumped in the peach-colored stall, it occurred to me that my period was almost two weeks late now. This whole case had been taking a bigger toll on me than I had realized. Unless—

  I shook my head furiously, as if physically shaking the thought away. No way. Oh god, that couldn’t be it.

  The fat tears dribbling down my cheeks suggested otherwise.

  There was no denying how I felt about Eric, either. My lips trembled at the unfairness of it all, how the wisps of feelings twirling in me finally crusted into certainty just when things with Eric blew up.

  I liked him, and not just as a good lay or a hot guy. I really, really liked him. Liked him in the way that made me want to call him every few hours, even right now when I was sobbing over losing him.

  I liked spending time with him, whether we were having crazy sex or just laughing over something stupid together. I liked how irreverent he was and how he also somehow made me feel like the most special woman alive. I liked how he was honest. I liked how he was funny. I even liked his ridiculous mac and cheese. I liked how he’d gotten me red gummy bears. I just, well, liked him, really, really liked him. And now I had screwed things up for good.

  Ripping off a square of toilet paper, I began ripping it into smaller and smaller pieces. For some reason, that made me feel better. It felt like what was happening to my heart. It was being shredded.

  The last remaining part of me that had held out hope in the idealistic view of love and finding someone you really liked to settle down with, the part that had fallen for Eric—that part was disintegrating out of necessity.

  It seemed like the pain tearing at me was the sort that killed dreams, the sort that produced life-long apathy. It was the sort you could only live with by giving up hope in some essential way.

  All these years of dating casually, part of me had instinctively felt that one time it would work out. One time there’d be a guy I didn’t mind spending a weekend with, a guy I missed as soon as I stepped out of his front door, a guy I woke up excited to see. Eric had been that guy. He had been my guy, the man of my dreams I didn’t even know I had. He was the guy.

  Now, if what had happened today was any indication, I had fucked up things between us well beyond repair.

  I flung the torn-up handful of toilet paper into the toilet bowl below me. The sound of the main bathroom door opening startled me. Of course someone else had to use the bathroom as I was trying to quietly cry my face off in peace.

  Taking another few squares of toilet paper, I hastily dabbed away the rest of my tears. Might as well get this over with. If I could zombie through the rest of the day, then I could curl up tonight with Sadie, binge on Ben & Jerry’s, and forget my problems for at least as long as whatever movie we chose lasted.

  A few steps away from the bathroom, however, I ran into Sgt. Williams. He was wearing a white pair of pants and a white dress shirt for some reason. With his white hair, the effect was almost holy, although I didn’t tell him that.

  “Are you going to come into the lunch room?” he asked with a held-back smile.

  “Wasn’t planning on it,” I said dismally. “Why?”

  He just shrugged mysteriously, casting a significant glance in that direction.

  “I don’t know,” he said, a hidden smile still twitching on his face. “It’s just that I would if I were you.”

  I couldn’t say no to whatever Sgt. Williams was hinting at. So, walking as fast as I could get my feet moving, I headed there.

  With one foot inside, I found it was empty, but there was something weird about it.

  “Surprise!” everyone cried, jumping out from under tables, behind doors, and even a curtain.

  I looked at the delighted faces of my colleagues and couldn’t decide if I wanted to cry out of happiness or despair.

  “You guys,” I said, “you didn’t have to do this!”

  “Right you are,” Sgt. Williams said from the doorway behind me, raising his furry brows significantly, “but I think everyone needed an excuse for cake.”

  I followed his gaze to a huge rectangle of chocolate cake sitting by the sink.

  “The superstar of the case gets the first piece,” Sgt. Williams announced as he cut a piece from the thick, gooey mess. Using the bottom of his thick knife, he carefully transferred the chocolate slice to a paper plate and held it out for me.

  “I’m not really…” I accepted the cake regardless.

  Surrounded by all these expectant and grinning faces, I couldn’t just refuse the cake outright, even if all I felt like doing was sinking my teary face into it and bawling some more.

  For the next few minutes, I sat hunched over my slice at a table in a daze. People filtered by me one after another, coming up and saying things I was certain I didn’t give the right responses to. I nibbled at the cake as much as I could muster.

  Then, after a good ten minutes had passed, I slipped out. By then I didn’t think anyone even noticed. That whole time, I hadn’t really been there anyway. That sad girl hadn’t been me.

  On the way home, I stopped at Walgreens in a dazed sort of autopilot. The fluorescent lights hurt my eyes, but I managed to find it. In a mockingly pink and cheerful looking box, there it was: Clearblue, a pregnancy test.

  Once I got home, I walked straight into the bathroom without saying a word to Sadie, who was in the kitchen munching on some caramel corn.

  Nothing mattered until I knew the truth.

  Perched on the toilet, staring dismally into the slick of blue hair gel on the wall, probably from Sadie this past week, I willed myself to pee. Once I did, I stabbed the applicator in the stream. Then, I waited.

  There was a knock on the door.


  “Hey, you okay in there?” Sadie’s concerned voice asked.

  “Yep. Fine,” my clipped tone came back.

  A pause.

  “You sure?”

  “Yes, Sadie,” I said through gritted teeth.

  Another pause, almost as if she were considering pressing the issue further. Then she left.

  My body broke out in shivers. If that applicator showed what I was afraid it was going to show—I might as well resign from my job right now. Resign from my life, really.

  Because screw maternity leave, screw abortions, screw everything. I could not have a baby. Most of all, I could not have Eric’s baby. It just couldn’t happen.

  When I checked the applicator, I dropped it back into the toilet.

  My body went numb. There, on the applicator, had been two lines. I whipped back the little cardboard box half an inch from my eyes so there would be no mistaking what it read. One line for negative, two lines for positive.

  Still unable to believe it, I ripped another applicator out of the box, shoved it under myself, and squeezed my pelvic muscles, forcing another trickle of pee out.

  I shook it and placed it facedown on the same little piece of toilet paper the other one had been on while I’d waited for the results to load. I prayed. I hadn’t prayed since I was probably about five. We had stopped going to church, but now, I put my hands together the only way I knew how, and I prayed. I prayed that the applicator wouldn’t show my greatest fear. I promised I’d be a better person, a more honest one, a safer one. I promised I’d only sleep with safe people, good people, people who were right for me. I prayed that just this once, I would get away scot-free.

  And then, I picked up the applicator.

  I squinted at it and shook it in my hand so furiously that my wrist cracked. I banged it against the counter. I chucked it against the wall. And still, those two stubborn, mocking blue slashes wouldn’t budge. There was no getting out of this. I was pregnant.

  Chapter 26

  Eric

  Ow.

  One throbbing regret. That was what my mind was right now. The weekend existed as a haze. Despite the prolific drinking spree I’d been on with Mark, the clearest thing in my head was still her, those perky little lips uttering the ugliest truth possible: “I’m an investigator.”