A/N: Okay, so I'm updating slightly out of order, but my newest friend in the fandom shabbytiger (who is writing the most awesome E/P fic right now) told me that she loved this fic and that just made me want to update it already! lol So here it is, along with thanks to all the wonderful people who reviewed the previous chapter. Hold onto your hats, kids, its gonna get a little hot on here! ;-)
(For disclaimer, etc. - see chapter 1)
Chapter 13
"So, let's start with the most basic question" said Daniel Ritter with a wide smile that Eliot just didn't trust at all, "Why do you think you're here at Twin Souls?"
"Well, we're..." the undercover hitter began to answer only for the psychologist to interrupt him with an annoying chuckle and a wave of his hand.
"No, no, Mr MacDonald" he told him, "Why do you think you're here?" he impressed the point upon him, "I mean, it's all very well you and your wife making decisions and choices together, but you don't have to share the same opinions, do you?" he advised, "You must have your own personal reasons why you wanted to come here. Or perhaps you don't want to be here, at all?" he suggested, watching Eliot a little too closely until he answered.
"I wanna save my marriage" he said simply, thinking it was the easiest and most simple answer to the straight-forward question.
Besides, Eliot knew he had to answer in the least words possible since all had to be forced out through gritted teeth. This guy was already getting on his last nerve after just two minutes spent in his company. Hell, even Hardison had never learnt to be quite this annoying!
"I'm sure that you do" the annoying man smiled too widely, "but what is it you're trying to save, Paul?" he asked then, "Do you fear being alone?"
"No" Eliot answered on automatic, "You don't wanna talk to me about fears, son" he promised him, realising perhaps a little too late that he was getting way out of character.
Grifting came fairly easy to him, bare-faced lying in the faces of criminals and bad guys was an easy enough thing, but only until his anger got the better of him. Eliot learnt a long time ago how to control his temper to a point, but he still had limits and those weren't really as far as most normal people's anyway.
"Look, I'm here because I love my wife and I want my marriage to work" he said, trying for normal and forcing a smile, "What's wrong with that?"
"Absolutely nothing" Ritter smiled back, though Eliot got the distinct impression he didn't really mean it.
In complete contrast to Dr Laura Matthius who genuinely seemed to want to mend fractured relationships, Dr Daniel Ritter seemed hell-bent on having Paul see why he did not want to stay married to Alice. At this point, there was no doubt in Eliot's mind that here sat one of the main culprits in the whole scandal of the Twin Souls Retreat. That didn't exactly help with him controlling his anger since that made Ritter partially responsible for the suicide of their client's husband, but he had to try, because they had to nail this son of a bitch to the wall for what he'd done.
"So, let's talk about the lovely Alice" the psychologist grinned too much, "She must be one hell of a woman to have held onto you this long"
"She is" answered Eliot easily, wondering at how simple it really was to lie about Parker's good points as he went on, "She's complicated to understand sometimes, but she's honest in a lot of ways that most people aren't, and she doesn't play dumb games"
"That's wonderful" Ritter enthused for all of five seconds, "but you used the word complicated" he noted, jotting that down on his paper, "In what way?"
Eliot knew he had to pick his words carefully now, since he was Paul and Parker was Alice for as long as they were here. He couldn't talk about things as they were, only as they were supposed to be for the couple he and the thief really weren't.
"She's... she's not like any other woman I ever met" he admitted, "Which is a good thing, most of the time, because I'm not always exactly like most other guys..."
Ritter nodded along with everything the undercover hitter said, his expression mostly unreadable as was the plan presumably. Mostly Eliot didn't look at him, not least because it was easier to lie to a person when you weren't looking directly at them, but also because he knew if he kept seeing that smug face he was going to put his fist in it. This was the guy, or one of the guys, working his ass off to break up the couples in this place. Eliot was never more sure of that fact than right now, as he finished what he'd been saying and Ritter once again latched on to the slightest negativity in his words or tone.
Eliot wasn't the only one to notice. The devices through which the team were managing to record all that happened in this supposed therapy session showed in glorious Technicolor and surround sound just exactly what was going on. Sat around the table in the conference room, Sophie and Nate watched the vid-screen intently, whilst Hardison kept an ear open as he worked away on his laptop that he seemed to have been attached to for days, ever since this job started.
"With this Ritter guy trying so hard to make Paul leave Alice, he has to be in on this scam to break up couples" Sophie considered aloud, as she sipped on a cup of tea.
"Hey, I don't know about your gay vibe from before" said Hardison, only half listening as he continued to work on his computer, "but these guys sure are call-buddies" he shook his head, switching the view on his screen up onto the vid-wall, pushing the footage of Eliot and Ritter into a corner, "Check it out - that's a serious amount of talk time"
Nate looked up at the scrolling list of times and numbers from Ritter's cell. Each call to a number that seemed to be Jeremy Kendall was highlighted in yellow and the vast majority of the entries were that colour. It was pretty damning evidence that they had a relationship of some kind going on, whether that be business or something else. Right now all roads pointed towards Ritter and Kendall working together, with the genuine possibility of Laurie Redfern herself having no idea of what her husband and employee were up to. Laura Matthius certainly seemed to want to help every couple in trouble that she met, though they would have to wait for Parker to report back on her latest meeting with the female therapist today to be sure.
"I still don't understand why Parker has no audio" he muttered, mostly to himself, "but that's okay, we're recording this footage of Ritter with Eliot, right, Hardison?" Nate checked.
"Absolutely" the hacker confirmed, "but it ain't worth Jack if we can't catch him and Kendall making plans" he shook his head.
"He's right you know" Sophie sighed, "Us knowing, or thinking we know, what these bastards are up to doesn't help. We don't have hard evidence to present to any authorities, only suspicions, and unless you've got another plan up your sleeve, I don't see how we're going to expose this place..."
"We'll figure it out" Nate interrupted her, though his eyes remained on the screen that was half covered in cell phone records, the other half displaying Parker chatting away to Matthius is silence and Eliot and Ritter all but arguing over Paul's marriage to Alice.
"He's really getting into this" said Sophie thoughtfully, "Listen to him, defending Parker's honour" she said, turning up the volume as Eliot ranted over Ritter's barely veiled accusations of 'Alice' possibly cheating on her 'husband'.
"Wow" said the mastermind, a little surprised himself, "That's, er, that's good commitment to the role"
"So long as that's all it is" muttered Hardison, not at all thrilled at the prospect of Eliot actually caring too much about Parker.
The idea was ridiculous, of course it was, almost as insane as Parker liking Eliot that way. Those two were the least likely to form a stable relationship with anyone, never mind with each other. Strange then why Hardison suddenly couldn't keep two remembered images out of his head, the first when he walked into the undercover couple's room at the retreat to find Eliot almost on top of Parker, and the other, the two of them fake making out on a desk in the Retreat's Staff Only office...
Parker headed back into Paul and Alice's room before Eliot, and the rest of the team entirely expected her to put her earbud back in and explain what was going on in her meeting with Dr Matthius, for which they had perfect visual and yet no audio. Instead of this, Parker paced up and down the carpet, giving Sophie, Nate, and Hardison a strange view from the button cam she wore, with the bedroom going back and forth before their eyes.
"This is ridiculous" said the grifter shaking her head, "Something must be wrong. This is strange behaviour, even for Parker" she told Nate who looked somewhat concerned himself by now.
"There's not much we can do if she's not on comms" he pointed out, not liking the feeling of helplessness any more than Sophie did, but then he had a drink in his hand to calm his nerves at least.
"Hey, I think she..." Hardison began to say, pointing to the screen as the view on the camera shifted suddenly... and then went black.
What the team couldn't see (and were therefore somewhat concerned about) was that Parker had abandoned not just the camera and switched off mic she had been wearing, but the clothing they were attached to.
Alone in the room, she had come to a decision, based on the conversation she'd had with Laura just now. She liked Eliot, a lot, way more than Parker had ever really considered she could like anybody. She didn't know much about love and yet from what the therapist had been telling her, she was seriously starting to wonder if that was what she was feeling here. One thing she did know was that she wasn't going to be happy until she knew for sure how Eliot was feeling about her. From there she might be able to unscramble her own mixed up emotions about him.
Stripping off her clothes, Parker went to pull out more that Sophie had helped her to pack for Alice, eyeing the underwear choices with suspicion. This really wasn't her style, the black lacy bra and panties set, since she rarely wore the top half of the ensemble and had been known to go without the bottom half quite often too. Still, Elliot seemed to be of the opinion that women should wear underwear to sleep in and since Laura said that 'Alice' should take any opportunity to show her 'husband' how much she cared, Parker wanted to try.
When Eliot strolled back into the room, telling the team in a once-sided conversation through his button cam and hidden mic that he was offlining for the night and everything was fine, he found his last sentence became somewhat disjointed from shock. Thankfully, the camera and mic were both switched off simultaneously as he came upon Parker, looking like she was trying to strike a pose of some kind on the bed, in what Eliot could only describe as sexy lingerie he honestly hadn't expected her to own.
It took the hitter a moment to get past what his eyes were seeing and make his brain function properly. He was just a man after all and it wasn't as if Parker wasn't totally hot, not least in the lacy underwear she was currently wearing. These past couple of days he had gotten used to her company, come to be almost comfortable with her presence and her closeness. They had woken up in each others arms twice now and remembering the feel of her body against his wasn't exactly helping now as he stared at her. The moment he realised his gaze hadn't shifted in a while, and the fact his jeans were starting to feel uncomfortable, Eliot told himself he was being a fool.
"Parker, what the hell...?" he asked her with obvious annoyance as he threw Hardison's gadgets into the nearest chair.
"You wanted me to wear underwear" shrugged the thief as she moved, gesturing to her body that Eliot was already having trouble keeping his eyes off, "I'm doing what you asked"
There really was no arguing with Parker-logic, Eliot had found, since there was always proper sense at the root of it. The trouble was, that sense was generally buried under a good few layers of crazy. He had asked her to wear underwear when they went to bed, and she was complying, though it hadn't really occurred to him to want to sleep this early. He was almost too afraid to wonder if she had anything else but rest on her mind.
"Well, yeah" he considered what she was saying and was forced to agree she was right, "but I didn't mean..."
"Ssh" she told him, the surprise coming less from the fact she was shushing him and more the feel of her finger at his lips as she knelt up on her knees before him, "You're thinking too much" she said simply, turning Eliot around by his shoulders and pushing so he had little choice but to sit down on the edge of the bed.
He meant to ask her again what the hell was going on, but Eliot soon realised that he had no words left to use as Parker's hands stayed at his shoulders, working out the stress-related knots that had formed too easily today.
"What are you doing?" he managed to ask, though his voice came out much less angry than he meant.
"It's relaxing" said Parker in her usual tone, as if he was dumb for asking the question, "I'm showing you I care. That's okay, right?" she checked.
Though she didn't get an actual answer, Parker took Eliot's lack of reponse as a positive sign. After all, he certainly did seem to be relaxing, not yelling at her or trying to get away. Of course, she didn't know that whilst parts of him were getting totally relaxed, there were other areas that Eliot was finding reacted differently to this odd experience with Parker.
As if her hands massaging his shoulders wasn't distracting enough, knowing what she was wearing, or rather what she wasn't wearing, certainly didn't help at all. He could see her bare thighs either side of him, could feel the heat of her body against his back, and none of it was doing anything for his concentration or will-power. If they went on like this, Eliot knew he was going to lose control, that his mind was going to give in, in favour of base instinct taking over.
"Parker..." he all but whispered, in such a tone as she had never heard from him before.
Her hands ceased movement on his shoulders as he turned to look back at her, and Parker saw a look in Eliot's eyes she really hadn't expected. She wasn't naive, she knew about guys and sex and all, but it hadn't exactly occurred to her that her being nice to Eliot would get him this worked up. Perhaps with anybody else she might've been worried, with another guy that had a rep like his, but this was Eliot who she knew and liked, maybe more than liked. He was obviously hot, less obviously sweet, and from what she could tell right now, he really, really wanted to have sex with her.
Reacting on instinct alone, as was Parker's usual way of handling things, she moved to put her lips on Eliot's own, and fell into a passionate kiss that was by no means one-sided. Twisting her body around his, assisted by his arms that reached to hold her, Parker soon ended up sat in Eliot's lap, straddling him, the two of them getting hot and heavy so suddenly it shocked them both.
They stopped as fast as they started, staring wide eyed at each other and breathing hard. Neither of them were so dumb they didn't know where they were headed if they carried on, and yet Eliot was determined to be the responsible one out of the two of them, the one to take care and be sensible even in this situation where he'd kind of like to just lose himself.
"Parker" he breathed, "You do get that we're not really married, right?" he checked, just a little concerned that she was confused somehow, since she had a habit of that, especially when they were on the grift.
The look on her face told him he was being an idiot long before she ever spoke.
"Duh!" she rolled her eyes at what she considered to be his stupidity, "I just... I wanna do this" she told him plainly, same as she said everything.
Eliot didn't need anymore encouragement than that as he pulled her into another kiss, the pair of them falling back onto the bed in a tangle of limbs. God only knew what the consequences of this might be, but right now, neither Eliot or Parker were thinking about that. Honestly, they really weren't thinking much at all, but feeling everything so strongly and, right now, not wanting it to end.
To Be Continued...