Champagne & Chaps (15 page)

She glanced at Zane again to see him frowning. He parked then opened his truck door and climbed out. She hurried out her side, her camera strap securely around her neck and she hopped onto the dry ground.

As soon as she was out of the truck she took in their surroundings, picking out what she felt would be the best shots in the beautiful scenery. She took a deep breath of the clean air and let it fill her entire being as she closed her eyes. She let all tension leave her body as she connected with the land.

“It’s wonderful here.” She opened her eyes and looked at Zane who was staring in one direction.

“Let’s go this way. I can see some tracks leading up the road in this direction. We’ll try and stay in the open and visible,” he said as he looked over his shoulder at her. “The last thing you want is to get shot by mistake.”

“Gotcha.” She made sure she followed him and stayed out from behind the occasional oak tree or bush. “What’s in season this time of year?”

“Whitetail called Coues deer.” He paused and she almost ran into him as he gave a nod in the direction they had been walking. “Over there.”

She peered past him and spotted two men, one wearing a cap, and another in a brown cowboy hat, walking toward them.

A flash of irritation caused Zane’s gut to burn. The men should have stopped by the ranch to ask permission to shoot on his land. It was the proper thing to do, but then the signs were down.

“How do you do?” one of the two men said as they met up and the man held out his hand. “I’m Bud Harper and this is Joe Cullman.” Bud was tall, but Zane still had a good three inches on him. Joe was a little shorter and stockier.

“Zane Cameron.” He took Bud’s hand and shook it before taking Joe’s and releasing it. “Did you know you’re trespassing on private land?” Zane’s tone kept his tone even, not showing any anger. “There’s no hunting on this part of the ranch.”

Joe pushed up his ball cap. “This your land?”

Bud glanced around. “We’re sorry. We’ve been real careful to not trespass. We didn’t see any signs.”

“I own the Bar C.” Zane gave a nod. “We’re pretty welcoming to hunters, but we want to keep them out of this area of the ranch this year. Someone has taken down the signs and we’ll be fixing that.” He pointed toward the west. “If you take the dirt road another mile and a half, there’s a sign that says Jones’ Mesa. I’ve seen plenty of deer in that area and there are some great places to glass from and see a lot of country,” he said. “Just do me a favor and go under the fences if you can rather than climb over them. Hunters damage a lot of fences. It’s the only gripe I really have about you guys.”

“Sure thing. We understand. We’ll head on over there.” Bud moved his gaze from the direction Zane had pointed to and looked at Zane again. “Much obliged.”

Zane gave a nod and then Bud and Joe headed back to the beat-up red pickup, climbed in with Bud on the driver’s side. The truck gave a rusted hiccup and then rumbled as Bud started it.

He noticed Jessie photographing the truck as the men left. She lowered her camera and looked at Zane. “You were pretty nice to those guys.”

He rested his hand on the hood of his truck. “Nothin’ wrong with a little hunting as long as it is in the right area and as long as they respect things.”

“What does ‘to glass from’ mean?” she asked. “That’s a term I’ve never heard before.”

“Hunters use binoculars and spotting scopes to search the country for deer,” Zane said. “It’s called glassing. When they see deer through the binoculars, they stalk them.”

“That’s interesting,” she said. “So what’s next for a day in the life of a cowboy?” Her smile caused a stirring in his gut. “After chasing off hunters and all.”

He studied her and it felt as if there was a war going on in his chest. “While we’re out here I can give you a little more of a tour of the Bar C.” Something about Jessie made him want to spend as much time as possible with her.

Not a good idea, Cameron.
He mentally chided himself.
Run fast and run now.

“Sure.” She smiled. “I’d love that.” She pointed in the direction of the fence line. “I saw a group of some kind of cool looking feathery looking plants over there that I’d like to photograph on the other side of the fence.”

He gave a nod then watched her as she walked away from him. She had a cute little ass and gentle curves that were made for a man’s hands to caress. And those long legs that weren’t covered by her shorts. They were enough to make a man’s mouth water.

Damn.

Jessie reached the barbed wire fence. He watched as she carefully grabbed a top strand between barbs and then did the same with her feet so that she was standing on the bottom strand and balancing as she took pictures.

Concerned that she might fall, he moved closer to her. Before he reached her, she lowered the camera and let it hang on the strap around her neck. She started to climb back down when he heard a ripping sound and then a curse.

He reached her and put his hand on her shoulder. “You okay?” he asked just as he looked down and saw that she’d shredded her T-shirt on the barbed wire.

His mouth went dry as he got a good look at her bare breast and the pert nipple. He swallowed and met her gaze.

Her cheeks had gone red hot and she held her T-shirt over her breast the best she could. “So much for this thing,” she said, trying to make light of an embarrassing situation.

“We’ll get you back to the house and you can wear one of my clean shirts.” His touch set her on fire as he took her arm and she stepped down from the fence with his aid. “For now you can wear this one.”

He released her then unbuttoned his shirt and slipped it off. Her jaw almost dropped as she got a good look at his tanned physique and the powerful play of muscles in his chest and arms.

If he wasn’t about to be married she would have jumped him in two seconds flat.

“Thanks,” she said as she took the shirt from him and smiled.

He helped her slip into the shirt as she fought to keep the scrap of cloth over her breast. His shirt had his scent, warm and masculine, and she found herself inhaling and savoring it.

Once the shirt was on, they walked back to his truck and he helped her into the cab. She kept her hand firmly over the tear as he shut the door behind her.

He climbed into the driver’s seat and started the truck before glancing over at her. “Need a little help with that?” he said in a teasing voice.

“I think I’ve got it.” Her cheeks had cooled but threatened to heat up again. “What happens on Cameron property stays on Cameron property, right?”

He laughed. “No problem.”

# # #

Cheyenne McCray

Available Now!

What a fabulous weekend. Logan had spent all day Sunday with her and they’d had sex more times than she could count. She felt pleasantly sore and well used.

She found herself humming as she headed to the agency she often freelanced for, to check out a possible assignment. The agency had sent her a text this morning to come in ASAP, so she’d left home not long after she received the message.

If it was possible to fall in love over a weekend, then she had. Love at first sight was one of those inexplicable things that had always happened to other people. Hey, at least she had more going on here than just love at first sight.

And if she hadn’t been mistaken, he’d been feeling it, too.

The only thing that gave her pause was the memory of how his entire body had seemed to flicker when he’d taken her hard and fast up against the wall. Crazy. She’d just been so hot and horny that of course she’d imagined it. Probably too much caffeine in her coffee that night. She shivered with desire just thinking about him taking her.

Tori sighed as she walked into the lower level of Psion’s headquarters. The HQ was a four-story building with the business and research levels on the upper three floors. The main floor served as a reception area in front and human resources and accounting in the back. Psion had nothing to do with the organization that she worked for. The company served as a cover for what went on down below.

She waited for an empty elevator then inserted her key card the moment the doors closed behind her.

Rather than going up, the keycard instructed the car to go in the opposite direction. It traveled down, down, down to a lower level that no one knew about. No one but those who worked for the Paranormal Intelligence Agency. The PIA, not to be confused with the CIA, was a secretive government agency that few were aware existed.

The PIA was responsible for paranormal undercover ops and in some cases black ops on both national and international levels. They worked covertly for the U.S. government and did what other agencies weren’t willing to or couldn’t do—and that covered a whole hell of a lot.

Although most of the operations were legal, if there was a need to break a few rules that the CIA could not—say, take out a rogue leader, or a need to break into a high security area to obtain important information—the PIA was that group. The operatives on the ground could only speculate who gave the orders and who knew about the details of such operations.

Few were even aware that a paranormal world existed at all, much less an agency that dealt with it in some fashion. Even though the agency worked with those aspects, not everyone in the agency had paranormal talents.

Tori frowned. Lately the assignments had gone beyond her comfort zone. But everything the PIA did was for the safety of the people of the United States… So she did what she had to do.

She used the key card again and the eye recognition device when she reached the bottom level and the elevator doors swished open. She walked into a stark security corridor with a door on the far end that would remain closed until the computers verified that it was her. A moment later, after she was examined by the computers, the door at the end of the corridor opened and she walked through the yawning opening.

A wall of monitors and a host of agents working in a dimly lit room greeted her along with a cacophony of sounds. People talking, electronics chirping.

“Tori.” Ellis Martin strode in her direction then caught her by the elbow and started leading her to one of the glass doors in the back of what they referred to as the War Room. “Janice needs to talk with you.”

“What’s going on?” She looked up at him.

“Janice will explain.” Ellis was intimidating in stature but she wasn’t easily intimidated. He was about as tall as a front line player on the LA Lakers, and as big as an NFL linebacker. His pale bald head gleamed as they passed under dim lights, his ice-blue eyes fixed ahead, his hulking form clad in jeans and a pale blue polo shirt. He was as cool a customer as any undercover agent she knew.

When they reached the glass door to the large office, she saw her sometimes boss, Janice Harper, a slim and beautiful woman with the personality of a Bengal tiger. Janice sat behind her desk and across from her in the roomy area were a man and a woman Tori didn’t recognize. Her partner when she took on a PIA assignment, Brian Eckhart, was standing behind the seated man and woman.

Her stomach flipped as Ellis pushed the door open, released her arm when she was inside, then he stood beside Brian.

Tori remained near the door, an icy hand crawling up her back to her nape as the gazes of all five people in Janice’s office rested on her. For a moment no one said a word.

Not wanting to show any emotion, any sign that she was concerned, Tori turned her gaze on Janice but didn’t say anything. The woman’s shining black hair was pulled back into a knot as usual, her dark piercing eyes fixed on Tori as if she could see through her every emotion, every thought.

“You spent this weekend with a man named Logan Savage,” Janice stated, her expression flat. “Is that correct?”

Surprise then a flash of anger flared within Tori. The agency was keeping tabs on her activities?

“Yes, that is correct.” She kept her emotions hidden. “May I ask what my personal life has to do with this agency?”

“It’s no longer simply your personal life,” Janice stood and braced her hands on her desk as she stared down Tori.

What the hell? Tori didn’t flinch and managed to keep from clenching her hands into fists.

“Meet Agents Reynolds and Carter.” Janice gestured to the woman and to the man. Both agents remained expressionless. “They’ve had Logan Savage under surveillance for some time.”

More surprise flooded over Tori. She glanced at the two agents then returned her gaze to Janice. “What for?” Tori asked, keeping her voice even.

“You are going deep undercover to monitor Savage’s activities that fall in line with a special project,” Janice said.

Tori inhaled and slowly let out her breath. “I barely know the man. He’s in some form of high tech development.” This was not the time to hedge around the truth. “He knows I’m law enforcement, although he has no idea what branch or what kind. That’s reason enough for me to not be the right agent for the job.”

“We’re aware of what you have and have not told him.” Carter spoke up and Tori cut her gaze to the man. “We monitored your activities the moment you began associating with Savage.”

Tori could barely contain her surprise as she looked at the agent.

“Agent Adams,” Reynolds said, “Savage is one of the bad guys.”

She felt like she’d been stabbed in the gut. She’d fallen for an enemy of the United States, because that’s what he was if her agency was involved. The enemy. But what had he done? Or what was it that he was doing now to place him in that category?

Janice raised her hands and blue light flared between her palms.

Great. Demonstration time.

The ball expanded, turning into a big clear bubble that had an iridescent glimmer to it. The bubble floated in the air between Janice and those gathered in the office.

Logan’s image appeared in the bubble. “Logan Savage,” Janice said, repeating Tori’s thought, “is a threat to the United States.”

Tori’s jaw tightened as she looked at the image of the man with whom she had spent the entire weekend with. The same man she’d fallen hard for in just a matter of a few days. It felt like the knife in her gut was being twisted.

Why did she have to go and fall for him?

No, she told herself. It was nothing more than lust.

A foot-tall image of a woman appeared in the center of the bubble.

“You will take the place of this woman, Carla Winston.” Janice’s attention was fully on the image, as if to hold it there.

Whoever Carla Winston was, she was certainly a gorgeous woman. It was a full-length image and Tori sized up the woman. Tori’s own talent allowed her to analyze images of people and know what their perfect proportions were.

The blonde, statuesque woman that they wanted her to replace was a good six inches taller than Tori, making her about five-eight. Opposed to Tori’s short dark curls, the woman had long, straight golden blonde hair. Tori mentally shook her head. Taking the place of this woman would require some effort on her part.

“Who is this Carla person?” Tori looked away from the image.

“Savage’s former girlfriend, who also works for his company.” This came from Reynolds. “He owns Savage Industries.”

She had heard of Savage Industries. Even read a feature article on them. So Logan owned one of the most respected private tech firms around? Tori shifted her stance. Her morning had gone from great to crap in a matter of moments.

“Carla Winston knows things that you need to know.” Reynolds said, “We want you to seduce him as that woman.”

Confusion still muddled Tori’s mind. She still had no idea why he was one of the “bad guys” and why they wanted her to go undercover in his company. “What details do you have regarding the assignment?”

“You will keep eyes and ears open about a special project called ‘Cerebral Voices’, or CVP as it’s known within the company,” Janice said. “We know the device reads minds, but there is much we don’t know about it. You will learn everything you can about the project and become as familiar as you can with both the hardware and the software. And then we will go from there.”

Janice’s attention focused on the bubble and the image inside of it changed. Now the image was of an electronic device that looked like some kind of silver camera, the length and height of a playing card and about an inch wide, floating in the air between them.

“Savage is reportedly planning to sell the technology to another country.” Carter’s tone was grave. “If he’s successful, it would go to the bad guys. There are trade restrictions on what countries he can sell it to, but the fact is, there are middlemen who broker these deals for Iran or rogue factions in the Middle East. We cannot have his technology fall into the wrong hands, including the Chinese.”

Shit. Tori’s words were tight as she spoke. “What about the real Carla?”

“She’s in a coma.” Reynolds’s tone was flat and for some reason it made Tori wonder exactly how the woman had ended up in the coma.

“How will this work, since they are no longer dating?” Tori frowned. “Are they on speaking terms?”

“There is a good relationship between them,” Reynolds said. “He trusts her without question. She broke up with him, rather than the other way around, so we believe the seduction will not be difficult.”

Tori had done this for her job before and she’d never had a problem doing what she needed to in order to complete missions. Having been with Logan as Tori made this a little different. She was a pro though, and she would do what she needed to do.

“No one has noticed her disappearance as of yet,” Carter added. “Shortly you will go to the agency’s infirmary to obtain from the subject’s mind what you will need to perform your job.”

The image in the center of the bubble changed back to Carla’s.

Most of the information that Tori could gather was intuitive. If the woman was in a coma, there was only so much that Tori could get.

But what she could gain was more than she let on to her employers. That was something she kept to herself. She had her reasons.

More than likely she would have access to the woman’s most recent memories and feelings, any abilities she had developed and that she used on a daily basis, but that was it.

As a Changeling, a rare ability, Tori could shift into almost any human form, but if she didn’t touch that person, she had no knowledge of them beyond what they looked like. She had to touch him or her in order to take what she needed or as much as she could.

Some people she got much more out of than others. She never really knew until she came in contact with the person. There were a few she hadn’t been able to get anything from and a couple whose form she hadn’t been able to take at all. There wasn’t an explanation for this as far as she knew. She wondered if she could take Logan’s form.

As if reading her mind, Janice said, “If possible, take Logan Savage’s form once you’re in as Carla.”

“Maybe that would be best.” Tori nodded. “What would you do with the real Logan?”

“That could be a problem, so let’s start with Carla.” Janice looked at Tori and gestured to the bubble and Carla’s image. “Now.”

So much for freelance. This was one job she didn’t feel she had a choice but to take. If the man who’d rocked her world this weekend had a black soul, then she’d be glad to bring him down.

Then why did the thought of working against Logan make her feel sick inside?

Tori hesitated only a moment before she extended her arm. She touched the image and it made a sizzling sound.

She lowered her arm and began to tremble, and she gritted her teeth as her body started to change. Pain shot through her limbs as her arms and legs lengthened. Her breasts became larger, her feet a little bigger. Her scalp tingled as her hair lengthened and the bones in her face moved.

Her clothing changed along with her body, shimmering and then forming so that she was wearing clothes similar to what Carla had on in the photograph.

When her body finished changing, she was an exact duplicate of Carla Winston.

# # #