by Anne Stuart
Ah, Chloe, Bastien thought. She’d turned to look at Hakim in surprise, and he could read what was going on in her mind. Why should the importation of grocery products and livestock be of monumental importance? Why was their leader assassinated? She was either impossibly gauche or incredibly clever.
“So we’ll work,” the baron said.
“Those of us who need to. Miss Underwood, your services will be dispensed with tonight. We can manage without you.”
Chloe took that as the dismissal it was, and she rose. “I’m sorry I forgot the books,” she said.
“What books?”
“The ones you sent me to buy.”
Hakim waved a dismissive hand. “Unimportant. We’ll be working in the conference room—I’m sure you’ll be most comfortable in your own rooms.”
It was as clear a directive as possible, a warning, but Chloe was still performing her artless act. “I wondered if there’s a computer around I might use? I wanted to check my e-mail.”
Dead silence, and Bastien leaned back, wondering how Hakim planned to deal with it. To his surprise Hakim nodded. “In the library just off the stairs on the first floor. Feel free to browse all you want.”
“Just my e-mail,” she said, rising from the table. The rest stayed put—no courtesies for the hired help, Bastien thought, resisting his own urge to rise. And if she only wanted to check e-mail then he was the prima ballerina with the Ballet Russe. But would she be smart enough to cover her tracks?
The door closed behind her, and conversation broke out immediately. “I don’t think having the woman here was a very good idea,” von Rutter said in German. “We could have muddled along well enough without a translator. Why bring a stranger into the place?”
“The woman I originally hired was an airheaded blonde with just the marginal skills to make things easier and the self-absorption not to notice anything unusual,” Hakim replied in the same language. “I’m not so sure of this one.”
“Not sure?” Monique said sharply. “I never thought you were the kind of man who left things to chance, Gilles. You should get rid of her, immediately.”
“If necessary,” Hakim said. He wouldn’t like being told what to do—he thought his time had come and he was ready to sit at the power table. “You know I have no qualms about doing what needs to be done. But I never act rashly. If an American disappears without a trace there might be too many questions. I need to be convinced that either no one would miss her, or that her presence was too incriminating. I’m not sure of either. As soon as I am, Miss Underwood will cease to be an issue.”
“English or French, please, if you can’t speak Italian,” Ricetti grumbled. “What are we talking about?”
Monique turned and smiled sweetly. “We’re discussing whether Miss Underwood is a danger, and if so, how we can neatly dispose of her?” She spoke in her flawless Italian.
“Kill her and set up a fake auto accident,” Ricetti said.
“Perhaps,” Hakim responded. “But she’s traveling with my chauffeur, and I’m not sure I want to give up my Daimler just to cover an execution. I would have a hard time replacing my driver as well.”
“Just kill her and stop fussing about it,” Mr. Otomi said. “If you are too squeamish I can have my assistant take care of it. We are wasting our time arguing when we have more important things to do. I want to know how we are going to transport the four dozen Legolas weapons into Turkey without anyone noticing.”
“That’s your problem, Otomi-san,” Bastien said smoothly. “I want to know where the money’s coming from before I put my goods on the table. And trust me, they’re very impressive. The finest that American military research can come up with.”
“No one trusts you, Bastien,” Madame Lambert said. “None of us trusts each other. That’s why we work so well together. Between us, we control the selling and buying of illegal weapons throughout most of the world. Trust would simply interfere with things.”
“Most of the world,” Bastien echoed. “But not all of it. Where the hell is Christos? I don’t like this delay—it makes me edgy. Shouldn’t we be worrying about him, not a hapless young woman with the guile of a rabbit?”
Monique laughed. “She is a bit of a bunny, isn’t she? All big eyes and twitching little nose. We just don’t know if that’s an act or not. And I, for one, don’t propose we endanger our enterprise by waiting around to find out. If Christos were here he’d say the same thing.”
“Christos isn’t here, and we’re wasting too much time on the girl,” Hakim said, clearly displeased. “Bastien, go after her, see what you can find out. I don’t want to attract any official attention, but neither do I want to waste our time squabbling about her. We’ll start with Ricetti’s proposal for redividing our Middle East customers—that should give you enough time to make a determination. If she’s a danger, kill her. If not, come back to the table and we’ll get some work done.”
Bastien raised an eyebrow. “And why do I get charged with this little assignment?” he demanded. “I already spent the whole damned day with her and didn’t find out anything.”
“You didn’t push hard enough. You’re the one who’s spent the most time with her—you’ll have the best chance of finding out what’s going on.”
“Besides,” Monique purred, “she has a crush on you. Any fool can see that.”
He didn’t bother denying it. Any fool could see that she was almost hypersensitive to his presence. He drained his wineglass and pushed away from the table. “My pleasure,” he said lazily.
And he strolled from the room, hands shoved in his pockets, entirely at ease with his task.
There was no sign of her in the upstairs library, but the computer was out of sleep mode, proving she’d just been there. She’d made an inadequate attempt at covering up her Internet snooping, but it didn’t take much to find her footprints. She’d been looking up Legolas, and she’d found the right site to tell her just how very dangerous and illegal those weapons were. She’d also looked up half the people in the room, including him.
He didn’t bother to check—he knew exactly what she would and wouldn’t discover in her clumsy tripping through the Internet, about the others and about him. Bastien Toussaint was thirty-four years old, married, no children, rumored connections with various terrorist organizations, never proven, suspected to be an international dealer in illegal weapons and drugs. Connected to the murder of three Interpol agents. Considered to be a very dangerous man.
She would have read that, but then, it should be nothing new to her if she’d been properly briefed. If it was news to her he was going to have a hard time getting any closer to her, to find out exactly who and what she was.
And he was going to find out just how hard to get she was. And exactly how good his performance, as Monique termed it, was. No more graceful little dance. The time had come to find out why she was really here.
And then to do something about it.
Chloe was scared shitless. Sitting in the middle of her elegant room, crying. Her freshly applied makeup would be running down her face, she thought, and she’d look like a raccoon all over again. And this time Bastien wouldn’t be there to mop up the mess with one of his soft, clean shirts. He wasn’t going to get anywhere near her.
She had to get out of here. How in God’s name had she managed to land in such a nest of vipers? She should have realized something odd was going on, but her parents had always told her she had an overactive imagination, and she’d decided they were right. An addiction to thrillers and fantasy novels probably hadn’t helped.
But this was no imaginary danger. These weren’t grocers, and why the hell she’d ever thought they were was a total mystery. Did Bastien Toussaint look like a chicken importer? Did Baroness Monique von Rutter buy her designer clothes and magnificent diamonds with the proceeds from soybeans?
“Idiote!” she said aloud. She needed to get the hell out of there, fast, before they decided she was a liability. She’d left the dining room
immediately, not even pausing when she heard her name in the midst of a German sentence. Getting to the Internet before anyone could catch her was too important. Baron von Rutter was a sweet old man—he wouldn’t allow them to harm her. Unless, of course, he was equally ignorant of what was actually going on here.
Her suitcase was in the bottom of the armoire. She dragged it out and began throwing Sylvia’s clothes into it, including the ruined silk blouse and shredded stockings. It was simple enough—she would tell Monsieur Hakim that she’d received an e-mail from her roommate informing her that her grandmother was desperately ill and she needed to fly home to her family immediately. She could even tell them her ticket on Air France was already booked, and she was due to fly out in less than twelve hours. Just enough time to get back to Paris, throw a few things in a bag and fly home. For the first time in her adult life she was actually frightened.
She was hardly set for travel. She’d picked the plainest dress Sylvia had sent—a clingy black wrap dress that showed too much cleavage, though she’d managed to pin it closed. Beneath it were black French lace underthings that belonged on a rich man’s mistress, and if she had to put another pair of too-small heels on she’d cry.
But she did have to, if she was going to get out of here alive. She could hide her panic—she’d never been a very good liar but the stakes had never been so high. Just think of it as an act, she told herself. Like Blanche Dubois in A Streetcar Named Desire…No, someone more self-sufficient! She wasn’t going to find any strangers with kindness to rely on in her situation.
The suitcase was a jumbled mess, and she didn’t care. She went into the tiny bathroom, swept the toiletries in the embroidered satchel Sylvia used, and went back to toss it into the suitcase before she closed it.
“Going somewhere?” Bastien Toussaint drawled from the open doorway.
8
Chloe Underwood stared at him as if he was an axe murderer, Bastien thought lazily. She was in a panic—a tear-streaked, mindless panic, which seemed one more bit of evidence that she was a complete innocent who’d accidentally got caught up in this mess. Except that Bastien didn’t believe in accidents.
It was like looking into a hall of mirrors, he thought. You couldn’t tell where the original began, and what was merely a reflection of the real thing. Was she an innocent? An inept agent? A very good agent pretending to be an innocent? Pretending to be inept?
Time was running out, and there was only one way to get to the truth of the matter. Hurting her would get him nowhere—she’d be trained to withstand pain and she’d give up nothing she didn’t want to give up.
But there were other, much more pleasurable ways of finding out what he wanted to know. He kicked the door shut behind him, watched the alarm in her eyes grow.
He knew where the security cameras were—he’d scoped them out last night when he’d searched her room. They covered almost the entire room, including the bed and the bathroom, and he had little doubt that if they didn’t have an avid audience they were at least being taped for posterity. He was going to need to put on a good show—Hakim and company wouldn’t be easily fooled.
That didn’t mean he had to have an audience. There was a corner of the room that was mostly out of range of the cameras, a little foyer with a gilt Louis XV chest. Probably a genuine Louis XV. It would do.
She was standing in the middle of the room, unmoving, but when he came toward her she moved back nervously. She thought she knew who he was, what he was capable of. She didn’t know the half of it.
He opened the armoire, exposing a television set, and turned it on. Turned the sound up, loud, and then switched channels until he came to what he wanted. Hakim would have hard-core pornography running twenty-four/seven, and the moans of simulated pleasure filled the room.
“What are you doing?” Chloe demanded, aghast, averting her gaze from the low, wide television screen. Two men were servicing one woman, not his favorite fantasy, but the sound was enough to drown out most of their conversation.
He stood there, saying nothing as he stripped off his jacket, tossing it onto a chair. He was just out of range of the camera, and the sounds emanating from the television would muffle anything they said. “Come here,” he said.
He might as well have suggested she jump off a building. She shook her head stubbornly. “I don’t know what you’re doing here, but I want you to leave.”
“Come here.”
She wouldn’t have started to move if she didn’t want to. He’d laid the groundwork well—she was mesmerized by him and he knew it. It was a good thing he hadn’t finished what he started in the car—he still had a major advantage. She was afraid, and yet her body still felt the power of her arousal. And that was almost stronger than her fear.
She stopped short of him, still in camera range. “I don’t enjoy watching porn,” she said. She was clearly hoping for a cool voice, but it came out strained anyway.
“I didn’t think you would. After all, Americans tend to be squeamish about sexuality.”
“I’m perfectly healthy when it comes to sexuality,” she snapped, momentarily forgetting her fear, as he’d wanted her to. “I’m not some repressed little American virgin, no matter what you might think.”
“Then come here.”
She hadn’t noticed that he’d been moving back, drawing her out of range of the camera. Then again, she might have no idea there were cameras in the room, in every room in this renovated château.
She came right up to him, shoulders squared, like someone going into battle. “I’m not afraid of you,” she said.
“Of course you are, my pet,” he said. “That’s half the fun.” He slid his hand behind her neck, under her heavy fall of hair, and drew her face up to his. She was looking up at him, her eyes wide and panicky, and he almost felt…something. Pity? Reluctance? Mercy? There was no room for any of those emotions.
He kissed her. He remembered the taste of her mouth, the soft, sighing sound she made, the way her lips moved against his. Remembered, and wanted it. He was suddenly very glad that he’d decided to do this, been forced into it. Otherwise he would have had to find some other excuse.
He deepened the kiss, putting his arm around her waist and lifting her. She was clinging to him, and he swung her over to the alcove, pressing her up against the mirrored wall as he reached for her breasts.
She’d pinned the dress closed. He drew back for a moment, breathing heavily. “What the hell did you do with that dress?”
She didn’t try to escape. “It was too loose. I pinned it.”
“It’s supposed to be loose. Undo it.”
She blinked, her only sign of hesitation. And then she reached up and unfastened the tiny safety pin.
“Now open it,” he said.
He thought she was going to balk. But she didn’t. She pulled the silk wrap dress open, and he recognized the silk and lace underwear beneath it. From the most expensive lingerie store in all of Paris, they were the sort of thing no mere translator could afford, the sort of thing bought to entertain wealthy lovers. Another lie.
Then again, hadn’t he already figured out she was wearing the wrong bra size? Her soft skin looked pinched against the black lace, and he wanted to take it off her. But time was running out.
So he simply kissed her again, pulling her up tight against him, her nearly nude body hot against his open shirt, and she kissed him back with enough enthusiasm that he believed it when she said she was no tremulous virgin. Even though she was shaking in his arms.
The moans were coming from the television, loud and heartfelt, punctuated by screams and grunts. It didn’t matter what kind of sound they made—no one would be able to tell the difference between the film and the real thing.
Her skin was hot to the touch, soft as silk against his hands. She had her arms around his neck now, holding on to him as if she might blow away in a strong breeze, and he liked that. “Take off your underwear,” he said.
Her eyes, which had been half-close
d in dreamy delight, shot open. “What?”
“What do you think we’re doing, Chloe? Take off your panties. You can leave the bra on if you insist.”
She had frozen, and the color had drained from her face. “Get away from me,” she said, shoving at him.
But it was too late. It had been too late since he’d set foot in her bedroom. Perhaps it had been too late from the moment he’d first seen her.
The upscale underwear was meant to be easily disposed of. He reached between them and caught the lace in one hand, yanking hard, and the ties tore.
“No,” he said. Merciless, he reminded himself, as he pulled her up against his body. This was a job, something he had to do. He kissed her again, and while her hands tried to push him away her mouth answered his.
And then it was too late. He picked her up, moved her to the antique chest and set her down on it, moving between her legs. He didn’t know if she realized what was going to happen, or if she was capable of rational thought. It didn’t matter.
She was wet, as he thought she’d be. It took him only a moment to unfasten his pants, and then he was inside her, deep inside, and he felt the unmistakable shock of a tiny orgasm ripple through her before she was able to stop herself.
She was going to cry, going to push him away from her, and he wasn’t about to let that happen. He stopped her mouth before she could protest, wrapped her legs around his hips and began to move, not releasing her mouth until he knew he had her with him, that she was trying to get closer to him, wanting to thrust back but unable to because of her seat on the chest of drawers. He could feel the shivers building, knew that whatever her consciousness was telling her, her body had overruled it, and all she wanted was completion. Satisfaction. Him.
And he pulled out, almost completely, drinking in her anguished cry like the honey it was. “Who are you?” he whispered in her ear. “What are you doing here?”