Secrets, Lies & Lullabies

So even though she knew she should be running a hundred miles an hour in the opposite direction, she opened her mouth and made the biggest mistake of her life.

“All right.”

Three

Jessica didn’t get many opportunities to dress up these days. But she was having dinner this evening with a very wealthy, very handsome man, and even though she knew it was a terrible idea, she wanted to make the most of it. Not so much the man and the dinner but simply the act of going out and feeling special for a little while. Putting on something pretty rather than functional. Taking extra time with her makeup and hair. Wearing heels instead of ratty old tennies.

She even went so far as to dab on a couple drops of what was left of her favorite three-hundred-dollar-an-ounce designer perfume, Fanta C. Alexander Bajoran might not be worth a spritz or two, but she certainly was.

She was wearing a plain black skirt and flowy white blouse with a long, multi-strand necklace and large gold hoop earrings in her primary holes. The others held her usual array of studs and smaller hoops.

As she strode down the carpeted hallway, she fiddled with every part of her outfit. Was her skirt too short? Did her blouse show too much cleavage? Would the necklace draw Alexander’s eye to her breasts? Or worse yet, would the earrings pull too much of his attention to her face?

Flirting—even flirting with danger this way—was one thing. Truly risking being recognized by her family’s greatest enemy, though … No, she didn’t want that.

Which was why she’d chosen to meet him here, in his room at the resort, rather than going out to a public restaurant where they might be seen by someone they—especially she—knew.

Getting caught in a guest’s room after work hours would be bad, but being spotted out on a date with Alexander by one of her relatives or somebody who might tell one of her relatives would be exponentially worse. She would rather be fired than deal with the familial fallout.

Reaching the door of his suite, Jessica stopped and took a deep breath. She straightened her clothes and jewelry for the thousandth time and checked her small clutch purse to be sure she had her cell phone, a lipstick, a few bucks just in case. She didn’t know if she would end up needing any of those things, but wanted to have them, all the same.

When there was nothing left to double-check, no other reason to put off the inevitable, she took another deep, stabilizing breath, held it and let it out slowly as she tapped on the door.

The nerves she’d tamped down started to wiggle back toward the surface as she waited for him to answer. Then suddenly the door swung open, and there he was.

Six foot something of dark, imposing good-looks. Slacks still smooth and pressed, despite being worn all day. Pale, pale lavender dress shirt unbuttoned at his throat and sleeves rolled up to his elbows, but no less distinguished than when he’d been wearing a tie and suit jacket.

He smiled in welcome and a lump formed in her throat, making it hard to swallow. Suddenly she was almost pathologically afraid to be alone with him. It was two mature adults sharing a simple meal, but almost as though she was watching a horror movie, she could see around all the corners to where scary things and maniacal killers waited.

A thousand frightening scenarios and terrible outcomes flitted through her brain in the nanosecond it took him to say hello—or rather, a deep, masculine, “Hi, there”—and step back to let her into the suite.

She could have run. She could have begged off, hurriedly telling him she’d changed her mind, or that something important had come up and she couldn’t stay.

She probably should have.

Instead, a tiny voice in her head whispered, What’s the worst that can happen? and showed her images of a lovely, delicious meal at an establishment where she worked but never got the chance to indulge, with an attractive man the likes of which she probably wouldn’t meet again for a very long time. Not given her current circumstances.

So she didn’t run. She told herself she was here, he was a gentleman, and everything would be fine.

“Thank you,” she murmured, surprised when her voice not only didn’t crack, but came out in a low, almost smoky tone that sounded a lot sexier than she’d intended.

She stepped into the suite, and he closed the door behind her with a soft click. More familiar with these rooms than she cared to admit, she moved down the short hallway and into the sitting room where there was already a table set up with white linens and covered silver serving trays.

“I hope you don’t mind, but I took the liberty of ordering,” Alexander said, coming up behind her. “I thought it would save some time.”

True enough. Mountain View employed one of the best chefs in the country and served some of the best food on the West Coast, but room service was room service. It sometimes took longer than guests might have liked for their meals to arrive, especially if the kitchen was busy trying to get food out to the dining room.

Cupping her elbow, he steered her around the table and pulled out her chair. She tried not to let the heat of his hand do funny things to her pulse. Of course, her pulse had a mind of its own.

He helped her get seated, then began uncovering plates of food. The smells hit her first, and they were divine. Even before she could identify them all, she saw that he’d ordered a sampling of some of the very best culinary creations the resort had to offer.

From the appetizer section of the menu he’d asked for watermelon gazpacho with tomato; cucumber and borage; seafood tomato bisque; eggplant ravioli; and oysters in red wine mignonette.

As entrées, he’d gone with pheasant with green cabbage, port wine-infused pear and black truffle shavings, and something she could rarely resist—crab cakes. Mountain View’s particular recipe consisted of large chunks of Dungeness crab, tiny bits of lobster, corn and faro lightly seared to a golden brown.

He had no way of knowing they were one of her all-time favorites, though. Most likely he’d ordered them because they were nearly world renowned and one of the most popular items on the resort’s menu.

But her stomach rumbled and her mouth began to water at the very sight. She might work here, might have skated past the kitchen or dining room a time or two, but since she couldn’t exactly afford fifty-dollar-a-plate dinners any longer, she’d never been lucky enough to actually taste them.

“I hope there’s something here you’ll like.”

Like? She wanted to take her clothes off and roll around on the table of food, then lick her body clean.

Because she wasn’t certain she could speak past the drool pooling on her tongue, she merely nodded and made an approving mmm-hmm sound.

“I ordered dessert, as well, but let’s wait until we finish this before we dig into that.”

Oh. She’d heard wonderful things about Mountain View’s desserts, too.

“So …” he murmured, “where would you like to start? Or should I just hand over the crab cakes before someone gets hurt?”

The mention of crab cakes and the slight amusement in his tone brought her head up, and she realized she’d been concentrating rather intensely on that particular platter.

“Sorry, they just … smell really good.”

He grinned at her candid response. Reaching to the side and lifting the plate, he set it back down directly in front of her.

“They’re all yours,” he told her. “As long as you don’t mind if I keep the pheasant to myself.”

Well, she would have liked at least a tiny bite—she’d never had the pleasure of trying that particular dish, either—but if the crab cakes were as delicious as they looked, smelled and she’d heard they were, she supposed it was a sacrifice worth making.

Her silence seemed to be answer enough. He moved the pheasant to his place setting, then reached for the bottle of wine in the center of the table and pulled the cork. While she shook out her napkin and laid it across her lap, he poured two glasses of the rich, dark liquid and handed one to her.

She took it with a murmured thank-you and brought it to her nose for a sniff. Mmm. It had been a while since she’d enjoyed a glass of really good, expensive wine. This one was full-bodied, with the scents of fruit, spice and just a hint of chocolate.

She was tempted to take a sip right away, but didn’t want to ruin her first taste of the crab cakes and had also promised herself she would be careful tonight. A little bit of wine with dinner wouldn’t hurt, but she didn’t want to risk drinking too much and forgetting who she was … who he was … and exactly how much was on the line if she accidentally let any part of the truth slip past her lips.

So she set the glass aside and picked up her fork instead.

“At the risk of scaring you off now that you’re already here,” Alexander said, shaking out his own napkin and placing it across his lap, “it occurred to me that I invited you to dinner tonight without even knowing your name. Or introducing myself, for that matter.”

Jessica paused with her first bite of crab cake halfway to her mouth. Uh-oh. She hadn’t been concerned with introducing herself to Alexander because she already knew who he was. And keeping her own identity under wraps was critical, so she hadn’t exactly been eager to share that information, either.

Now, however, she was cornered, and she’d better come up with a response soon or he would start to get suspicious.

To buy herself a little bit of time, she continued the trajectory of her fork and went ahead with that first bite of food she’d so been looking forward to. Her anticipation was dampened slightly by the tension thrumming through her body and causing her mind to race, but that didn’t keep her taste buds from leaping with joy at the exquisite spices and textures filling her mouth.

Oh, this was so worth the stress and subterfuge of pretending to be someone she wasn’t. With luck she would only have to lie to him for one night, and not only would he be none the wiser, but she’d have the experience of a lovely meal with a handsome, wealthy playboy-type tucked away in her memory banks.