"Is it terribly dangerous?"
"Incredibly dangerous," he teased.
There was a pause, and when she spoke again, her voice was different. Quieter. "You're being careful, right?"
For several seconds, George was silent. She actually sounded as if she cared. "Yeah," he finally said. Damn, maybe she did care. Wouldn't that be an ironic twist? He finally finds the perfect sexual relationship, one based purely on twisted psychological needs—both his and hers—and she begins to develop a warm spot in her heart. "Of course I am."
"When am I going to see you?" she asked, still in that quiet voice. It frightened him, that voice. But at the same time, he liked it. Too much. God knows Nicki had never spoken to him in a voice like that.
"I don't know," he admitted. "It could be another week. Maybe longer." He glanced at his watch, wishing he could talk longer, desperately glad he couldn't. "Look, babe, I've got to go."
"George."
"Kim, I'm sorry, I've really got to—"
"Call me as soon as you can. I've got a surprise for you." She then completely blew any chance of surprise by telling him, in exact detail, exactly what she was going to do to him when she saw him next.
By the time George hung up the phone, he was gripping the privacy divider so hard his knuckles were white. He took a deep, shaky breath and let the air out all in one whoosh.
He lit a cigarette and took his time walking back to the hotel, feeling the fresh spring air cool against his face. This next week was going to pass far too slowly. But it would pass. And then he would see Kim.
And he would close his eyes and pretend he was with Nicki again.
"Gentlemen and ladies," Nicole said as she opened the car door and stepped back to let the passenger out, "may I introduce Mrs. Barbara Conway."
Harry coughed to hide his laughter as Alessandra gracefully emerged from the backseat of the town car.
She should have had her long hair dyed a nondescript shade of brown and cut into as unflattering a style as possible. She should have been wearing ill-fitting department store clothing and little to no makeup at all.
Instead, she looked like some kind of movie star. Dressed in a curve-hugging black turtleneck and slim-fitting black pants, with a funky pair of heels that made her a solid inch taller than he was, she was about as un-noticeable as a parade of elephants marching through the Holland Tunnel. Her hair was long and dyed sleekly black. The new hair color made her eyes stand out, making them seem brighter and even more startlingly blue. It framed her pale face, accenting her carefully made-up features, her long elegant nose and full, graceful, very red lips. It was pretty damned remarkable. The new hair color actually made her even easier to identify.
Harry glanced at George, who was having a sudden coughing fit, too. The other agents, Christine McFall and Ed Bach, looked embarrassed. This entire operation would succeed only if they did their jobs badly, and Alessandra was living proof that they'd done just that.
If Trotta were looking—and Harry knew he would be looking, particularly since they were about to drop some not-too-subtle hints about this location in his lap—he'd have absolutely no problem finding Alessandra Lamont in this hick-town haystack.
Alessandra slipped a pair of sunglasses on over her pretty eyes as she took a look at her new home.
Paul's River, New York.
It was upstate, along the Connecticut border, about twenty miles north of the end of Route 684. It was rural, with plenty of houses like this one, which sat separated by two very wide acres of land from its nearest neighbors. Farmland dotted the gently rolling hills, making for extremely picturesque landscape—and plenty of room to ward off a mob hit while only risking the lives of a few stray cows. And the big bonus: It was within a two-hour drive of New York City—a manageable commute for hitmen and agents alike.
As Harry watched, Alessandra took in the postage stamp-size white Cape Cod cottage, from the peeling paint on the twin dormers to the peeling paint on the faded red door. It wasn't much of a house—at least not compared to the palace she'd lived in in Farmingdale. But to her credit, she didn't gasp in horror or exclaim in dismay. She didn't even curl her lip in disgust.
She simply looked.
The front flower beds were overrun by weeds, the lawn—if you could call it that—was knee-high in places, barren and dusty in others. There were no trees at all on the half acre of land surrounding the house, and the spring sun shone glaringly down. In the summer the house and yard would be as hot as hell. The backyard was surrounded by an ugly high chain-link fence. It was the kind of fence you might put up after installing a swimming pool, but there was no pool in sight.
One of the front windows was broken, the glass taped. The garage—a stand-alone structure—looked as if it would collapse in the next mild gust of wind. Compared to Alessandra's house in Farmingdale, this was a big—a very, very big—step down, indeed.
She turned to watch as the town car pulled away.
"We should go inside," Nicole told her. "For the first few weeks, you'll need to keep a low profile."
Alessandra looked away from the dust being kicked up by the disappearing car, her eyes hidden by her sunglasses. "I thought I'd be safe here." Her voice was low and controlled. "Are you telling me I'm going to have to hide inside the house?"
"It's just a precaution," George said smoothly. "Just for these first few days."
"Days?" Alessandra asked. She looked at Nicki. "Or weeks?"
"I've got the key to the back door." Nicole sidestepped both Alessandra and her question, heading down the long driveway, toward the gate in the chain-link fence.
Bach and McFall both turned away, too, uncomfortable with the part they were playing in this task-force operation. George had already followed Nicole.
That left Harry.
Alessandra didn't look at him for more than half a second before she turned, clearly believing that he, too, would dodge her question.
"Weeks," he told her, and she turned back, surprise temporarily breaking through the nearly expressionless Imperial Princess face she'd been wearing since she stepped from the limo.
He gestured for her to precede him down the cracked tarmac of the drive. Your Majesty. "It'll probably be weeks."
She didn't like his answer, but she liked it better than not getting any answer at all, so she nodded. "Thanks." Her smile was very small and slightly crooked, and not at all part of the princess act. It was quite possibly sincere.
Harry caught a whiff of her perfume as she went past. It was sweetly fragrant, deliciously fresh, and very familiar. It was the same fragrance she'd been wearing when he'd first gone to her Farmingdale house, the night of the break-in and vandalism.
If Trotta's team of hitmen didn't see her coming from a mile away, they could always sniff her out.
God, this setup made him nervous. Harry didn't know what it was—if it was the situation, or the timing, or the target.
The target. Alessandra Lamont made him nervous in more ways than one.
But he'd worked protecting beautiful women before. What was it about this one that had gotten under his skin?
Nicole had been fumbling with the lock on the fence, but she finally got it open and pulled back the gate, gesturing for Alessandra to go in first.
Harry saw the dog before Alessandra did, before any of them did.
It had been standing silently, menacingly, in the fenced-in yard, in the shade of the garage, but now it lunged, an enormous German shepherd with sharp-looking teeth and a very convincing snarl.
Harry threw himself forward, pushing Alessandra back and out of the way as he kicked the gate shut just in time.
Even Nicole squeaked in alarm as the dog hit the fence with a crash, shock waves rattling it against the posts as Harry wrestled with the latch.
Alessandra had fallen down, onto the driveway, and George and the two other agents helped her back to her feet as the dog began to bark and snap viciously at Harry's fingers. The noise was deafening—nearly
as loud as any burglar alarm he'd ever heard.
Finally, finally, with Nicole's help, he got the latch secured with all his fingers still attached.
George had pulled Alessandra out of immediate ear-splitting range. She clung to him now, her face buried against his jacket, her body trembling. She'd torn her pants and skinned at least one of her knees, but she didn't seem to notice. She just hung onto George as if she'd fall thirty thousand feet to the earth below if she let go.
Damnit, that could have been him with her arms around his neck.
Harry pushed that thought away as quickly as it had arrived. Stupid. It was completely stupid to think about this woman that way. And although he was no genius, he sure as hell wasn't stupid.
"Who put in an order for a guard dog?" he barked even louder than the dog in question.
Nicole's face was flushed with anger, but Harry bet she was more pissed at making that decidedly female shriek when the dog first attacked than the fact that an unauthorized guard dog had shown up on the premises.
Bach rustled through the paperwork on his clipboard, frantically looking for someone to blame. He didn't have to look far because McFall stepped forward.
"I did," she said, calmly ready to face both Nicole and Harry's wrath. "We knew Mrs. La—Mrs. Conway had a problem with dogs. It was part of the information in her file. We thought a watchdog would provide a good cover, simply because of that. Anyone looking for her wouldn't expect her to have a dog. I put in the order before…" She glanced at Alessandra, aware she was about to say just a little too much.
She'd put in the order before she knew this entire assignment was going to be a setup, before she knew that the task force wanted Michael Trotta to find Alessandra Lamont.
"The dog's name is Schnaps." To Harry's surprise, George spoke up, raising his voice to be heard over the racket. "Joe Harris is her trainer. I worked with them both about three years ago." He tried to pass Alessandra off to Bach, but the flustered agent could barely juggle both his clipboard and his pen, so she was thrust in Harry's direction instead.
Harry tried. He really did. He first tried to step aside and then to push Alessandra toward Nicole, but Nicki was busy being the irate boss.
That meant that Alessandra was all his. She seemed to be okay standing on her own, so he held on to her arm with only one hand, touching her with as few fingers as possible.
"Take her around to the front," Nicole ordered him sharply before glaring at George. "Can you make this dog shut up?"
Alessandra was all too eager to go toward the front of the house, and she broke free from Harry and headed for the cars at a near run. He had to jog to keep up. As he turned back, he saw George make some kind of hand signal and, as if by magic, as if he'd flipped a switch, the dog stopped barking.
George Faulkner had worked with dogs. Go figure. Harry would've thought his partner would be completely adverse to getting dog hair on his designer suits.
"I'm especially good with bitches," Harry heard George say with his usual, soft-spoken, deadpan delivery.
Harry had to laugh, picturing Nicole's slow burn, knowing she'd be unable to respond to her ex-husband's subtle barbed remark in front of the two other agents. But she'd want to. Man, would Nic want to blast him.
Alessandra was holding on to herself, arms tightly folded across her chest, as if she'd fall apart if she let go. "You think this is funny?"
Harry instantly sobered up, well aware that the last thing she needed was to think he was laughing at her. "No," he said. "No, I was just… It was just George. I didn't know he'd ever worked with dogs."
She was shaking. She had to sit down on the cracked concrete of the front steps, she was shaking so hard. Her left knee was definitely skinned and bleeding through the hole in her pants. Her hair was rumpled and her sunglasses had broken. Sitting there, she looked forlorn—nothing like the cool, confident woman who'd stepped out of the limo just minutes earlier. It was as if that woman had deflated like a balloon the instant her elegant facade had been torn.
"You all right?" Harry sat down beside her, feeling sorry for her despite the fact he'd vowed not to. She wasn't a victim. She'd gotten herself into this as surely as she'd given her wedding vows to Griffin Lamont.
"That depends on whether you define someone who's about to throw up on your shoes as 'all right.' "
Harry looked down at his shoes. "These are old. Do what you gotta do."
Alessandra laughed, but then, almost instantly, her eyes filled with tears and her lower lip trembled. Just his luck. She was going to cry.
But she fought it, trying to blink back the tears. He had to give her credit for that. "I hate this," she told him. "I hate this house, I hate my hair, I hate you."
"I know," Harry told her. She hated him. It shouldn't have mattered, but it did. "And I know you're not going to believe this, but I am sorry."
Sonya had been one of those women who looked even more beautiful when she cried. Harry'd expected—and hoped for—the same from Alessandra. Perfectly shed tears no longer had the power to move him.
But Alessandra's tears came in a flood, in an unchoreographed rush, complete with swollen eyes and a drippy red nose. She savagely swiped at them, fighting them, even though it was obviously a losing battle.
Harry's battle was a losing one, too. Cursing, he put his arm around her. He half expected her to stiffen and pull away, but she was completely overwhelmed. She grabbed on to him, clutching his jacket, her face pressed tightly against his neck.
She was warm—much warmer than she looked when playing the Imperial Princess. She was soft, too. And she smelled so damn good his throat ached.
He cursed again, softly, gently this time, as he couldn't keep himself from touching her hair. As he ran his fingers through its baby-fine softness, he knew he wasn't doing this merely to provide comfort. He'd been dying to touch her hair from the first moment he'd laid eyes on her.
"Is this dog going to stay here forever?" she asked, her voice muffled.
Forever. It was a relative term, considering that contrary to what Alessandra believed, she wasn't going to be in Paul's River for very long.
Besides, after Trotta attempted to kill her, after they got all they needed to put the bastard away for a good long time, she'd be moved again. Even then, there'd be no guarantee she'd stay in that new place for long. There were never any guarantees. Forever was an unrealistic concept—except when it came to death. Being dead, or grieving someone who had died, those were the only things Harry knew would last forever. Relentlessly, endlessly forever.
"If you want," he told her, "the dog'll go."
"I want."
"The dog really scares you that much?"
She held out her hand, tried to hold it steady but couldn't. "No, I always shake like this."
Harry smiled. He liked her attitude, her bitchiness, if you will, better than the emotionless chill of the Imperial Princess. "I've read the file Chris McFall mentioned. You told the agents you had a problem with dogs, that this was something that was well known by both your husband and his friends—presumably also Michael Trotta."
"Michael Trotta knew," she said flatly.
"So okay," Harry said. "That's why Chris thought it would be a good idea to have a dog here, why it's in your best interest for Schnaps to stay. If you really don't want Trotta to find you, you've got to look and act completely different from Alessandra Lamont. You've got to become Barbara Conway in every possible way. And if Barbara is more securely hidden because she has an enormous dog, well…"
She lifted her head. Her mascara was smudged around her swollen eyes and her nose was running. She looked almost human. "You probably think I should have let them keep my hair that ugly brown, right?"
He had to smile. "Is that what happened? You didn't like the color, so you talked them into dying your hair this darker shade?"
She wiped her face with her hands. "It was really bad. It looked realistic, but who would ever actually want hair that drab?"
&nb
sp; "Someone trying to hide from a mob hitman?" he suggested.
"Do you have a handkerchief?"
"Do I look like a guy who carries a handkerchief?"
She shook her head and, giving up, wiped her nose with the back of her hand.
He still had his arm around her shoulders, and he gave her a reassuring squeeze before he pulled away. "Why don't you give yourself a few days to get used to the dog and—"
"I'll never get used to it. Little dogs terrify me." She drew in a deep, ragged breath and drooped dejectedly, her chin in her hands, elbows just above the torn spots of her pants. "I'm so tired."
"It's been a tough couple of days. I'm pretty tired, too."
They just sat for a moment. As Harry gazed out at the unkempt yard, she stared down as if fascinated by an anthill being pushed out of the hard-packed dirt at the bottom of the stairs.
But then she spoke. "I didn't get a chance to say this yesterday." She glanced up. "But I'm really sorry about your son. I can't imagine what it must feel like to lose a child that way." She laughed, but there was no humor in it as she went back to her perusal of the industrious ants. "I know all about what it's like to want one and not be able to have one, and I know what it's like to try to adopt and get turned down, but that's hardly the same thing."
"Wait a minute." Harry turned toward her. "You wanted kids?"
"Griffin and I tried to have a baby for two years." She shrugged expansively but her lip trembled again, and he knew she felt far from matter-of-fact about what she was telling him. "I went through just about every test in the book before being declared sterile. God, I hate that word. The doctors think a case of scarlet fever I had when I was in sixth grade might've done the trick."
Well, there was a new spin on the story. Griffin Lamont hadn't started divorce proceedings against his wife because she refused to have his child. Lamont had left her because she couldn't have his child. The son of a bitch.
"Christ," Harry said. "I'm sorry. I can't believe you and Lamont tried to adopt and were turned down."
"Griffin refused to adopt. I only tried after we split up. There's this baby named Jane Doe—can you believe someone in the hospital actually named her that? Nobody wanted her because she would probably never be able to walk, and she had to have all these operations on her heart. But I love her, and they still thought she'd be better off in an institution than with me. That's why I got so crazy at the thought of losing my new clothes."
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