Orange Blossoms & Mayhem (Fantascapes)

by Blair Bancroft

I recalled our conversation in Agua Calientes, when I failed to mention my connection with a Russian named Viktor. But the whole concept was absurd. My Russian bear and his Fabergé eggs a menace? Viktor Kirichenko, the romantic bridegroom, a villain? I’d refused to consider it.

  You blew it, Laine. It was entirely possible Viktor had knifed a man to death on the Golden Beach fishing pier.

  Feeling an utter incompetent idiot, a failure to Fantascapes and the family, as well as an obvious Interpol reject, I accepted that I had to tell Rhys everything. “There’s a large Russian-Ukrainian population in Three Rivers—a town about ten miles from where I live,” I began. “I never thought anything about it, but . . .”

  Rhys listened attentively, as police officers do, carefully avoiding the slightest nod or shake of his head. Not even one significant look that might indicate what he thought about my gross failure in communication. When I finished, all he said was, “Tomorrow you’ll go through photos, see if you can pick him out.”

  Sorrowfully, I shook my head. “Without the beard, I doubt I can. That brush heap covers everything but his eyes. If you had voice clips . . . ?”

  Rhys leaned back in his chair. “Our files are huge. Anything is possible. After all, that’s what we do—keep track of international criminals. Interpol—just a bunch of file keepers and paper pushers. I’m willing to bet that’s what your brothers told you.”

  I tossed him a rueful smile, and nodded.

  “There’s a great restaurant on the top floor here,” Rhys said in an entirely different tone. “Three-sixty view. Or would you rather order room service?”

  I know hearts don’t really turn over, but mine sure felt like it. Was that offer good manners, or a declaration that he was staying?

  “Dare we be seen in public?” I asked.

  “The top floor of a skyscraper is not a good setting for an assassination,” Rhys assured me. “Too hard for the bad guy to get away. And the only blessing in this is that we don’t seem to be dealing with suicide bombers.”

  I looked down at myself and made a face. “I’m a rumpled mess. Give me a minute to change.” I popped to my feet, started across the room toward my suitcase.

  “You do that, and we’re never going to make dinner.”

  Definitely not the same voice he’d used when discussing Viktor Kirichenko. I suffered a severe butterfly attack from my brain all the way down to the tips of my toes. Whew! I swayed in place—probably the scotch. No way was I going to make this easy. It was bad enough I’d come crawling to Lyon. “Down, boy. “I’ll change in the bathroom. I wouldn’t want to miss the three-sixty view.”

  “Better view right here.”

  I tossed my suitcase on the bed, unzipped it with a rather vicious flick of my wrist. “The only thing you could have done worse than not delivering that check in person,” I informed him as I hauled out my cosmetics, my brush and comb, jewelry and the basic black dress I’d brought with me, “is if you’d come to Golden Beach, then left the check on the dresser in the morning.”

  He choked on a swallow of scotch. Was still coughing as I took my pile of clothing into the bathroom and locked the door.

  Ten minutes later, when Rhys opened the door into the corridor, I nearly slammed into him when he came to an abrupt halt. Though no more than a soft, sharp hiss, his basic Anglo-Saxon expletive fit the occasion. Whatever was happening, there was no respite, no escape.

  “Sir!” said the younger of the two men standing outside my door, his eyes revealing a hint of kicked puppy. I gulped a breath, tucking away my frantic regrets that I carried no arms on this trip to Europe. Rhys may have slipped his leash, but these were friends, not assassins.

  “We’re only going upstairs to dinner, Alain,” Rhys told him. “No need for all this fuss.”

  “Orders, sir.” Both of our watchdogs trailed us to the elevator. A third man materialized from down the hall, taking up a position outside my door.

  Okay, maybe Rhys didn’t like it, but I could live with it. Obviously, the hierarchy at Interpol not only had highly suspicious minds, they valued my guy. And that was rather nice to know. We could sleep well tonight.

  I ducked my head so my three male companions wouldn’t see my lips twitch. It was highly unlikely there was going to be much sleeping, but whatever Rhys and I were doing, we were going to be damn secure while we were doing it.

  For a while at dinner, I was so insulated by the euphoria of seeing Rhys alive, well, and in one perfect piece, plus the ambiance of an elegant French restaurant surrounded by a panoramic view of Lyon, that I convinced myself nothing else mattered. A bottle of Cristal added to the sparkle. Rhys listened attentively while I described the heroic rescue of Jorge and Julieta Gaudio, and responded with a couple of stories of his own. And then, as we devoured our crème brulée and sipped our coffee, the guy I was seeing through starry eyes, undoubtedly enhanced by all that champagne, interrogated me about every wedding involving foreigners in the last six months, every international trip I’d made for Fantascapes, until I felt like I was a suspect in a major international conspiracy.

  My euphoria shriveled and died. My mind shouted, Stop! My body shrank from some joyous Valkyrie doing whirls and loops through the dining room’s rarified air to the devastated fourteen-year-old Lainie Halliday who’d just moved to Florida and hadn’t a friend in the world. Sexual excitement and intense anticipation drained away with an almost audible whoosh, like the sound of the skyscraper’s elevator making the long journey down its concrete tunnel to the street. By the end of our meal I was back in the nasty clouds of doubt and confusion that exploded into life when Grady let me see that check from Interpol.

  I struggled to adjust. I lived with a family of cops. I ought to be able to understand what Rhys was doing. His life was on the line. We needed to find out why. It was also more than just Rhys. It was possible evil had penetrated our sleepy little niche on Florida’s Gulf Coast. I had to accept that romance came in dead last in our list of concerns. I’d pushed my way into Lyon, inserted myself in an Interpol investigation, causing great angst in the international policing kingdom. I was the interloper, Rhys on his home turf.

  The female hick from Golden Beach versus the man from Interpol. Definitely more cringe-worthy than my fourteen-year-old self. Bad enough for me to consider fishing out my phone and looking for the next flight out.

  As my responses dried up, Rhys’s voice finally stopped battering me, his face going as blank as Darcy’s when he’d tried to remember his name. “Sorry,” he muttered, and called for the check.

  Too little, too late. Radiating the chill of an iceberg, I refused to look at Rhys as our elevator descended the short distance to the thirty-fourth floor. I refused to look at our keepers. I knew I was being difficult, but my mood stuck with me as Rhys bolted and chained the door to my room. I’d fought for this moment. I’d wanted . . . I’d needed . . . and now I was ruining everything.

  Surely I had a right to be angry. I’d never been a suspect before. Not even a catalyst—whatever that was supposed to mean.

  Oh, blast it! I threw my evening purse on the king-size bed and stalked over to the gracefully curved window. Lyon was closer from here than from the dining room, its lights enticing, mocking, as if to say, Mademoiselle Halliday, all this might have been yours.

  “Do you want me to go?” Rhys asked.

  Nice. He wasn’t one of those oblivious types who couldn’t sense an atmosphere. But then he wouldn’t have been a Criminal Intelligence Officer for Interpol if he couldn’t spot trouble from a distance of ten feet.

  “Is it the guards? I can send them down the hall a ways, where they won’t be so obvious.”

  Where their ears wouldn’t be aquiver for every salacious sound. Lord, I was turning into such a cynic! Before Rhys Tarrant, my life had been fun. And yet . . . send him away after all we’d been through together? Send him away when I’d come to Lyon to find him? Send him away when, earlier, we’d both been so certain about what we’d be doing after
dining in the Meridien’s penthouse restaurant?

  “The guards are a bit . . . awkward,” I said without turning around, “but I can live with it. I’m just having a hard time swallowing the theory that the attacks on you have anything to do with me.”

  Rhys’s breath whooshed out in a rush of comprehension. “I’m sorry, Laine. I should have left the interrogation ’til morning, but you said this Fabergé wedding is ten days away. I needed to eliminate other possibilities. If the problem is the wedding, then we have to move fast.”

  “You treated me like a suspect,” I hissed, swinging around to face him. “At our beautiful, supposedly intimate dinner, you interrogated me!”

  Rhys dug his fingers into his forehead, then swung both arms away from his body, palms out, in a marvelously Gallic gesture, particularly for an Englishman. “Mea culpa,” he snapped, temper swamping his apologetic stance. “Mea maxima culpa! But fighting wasn’t what I had in mind for tonight either, you bloody termagant. I was pushing too hard, and you’re too effing sensitive. Can we stop this two-cats-snarling-on-a-fence and get down to what we both have in mind?”

  I sat down hard in one of the chairs at the table by the window. I lowered my head into my hands, trying hard not to laugh. It wasn’t funny, damn it! But it was. I could either laugh or throw the dregs of the ice bucket at him. “Honey,” I drawled in my best imitation of a Southern Belle, “that surely has to be the most unromantic proposition a girl ever had.”

  Rhys dropped onto the edge of the bed, running one hand through his dark brown waves of hair and waggling the other at me, as if to say, I hear you but at this point I know better than to open my mouth.

  “Tell me,” I said, “are we having the inevitable encounter of two people titillated by prolonged proximity, or is there perhaps something more going on here?” I raised a hand to indicate I wasn’t quite through. “Truthfully, there’s someone back home, and there’s no way a man like you doesn’t have a girlfriend or three over here, so what are you and I doing here in this room, so certain only an hour ago—or at least I was—that we were going to share that bed as if there were no tomorrow? Curiosity, Rhys? The satisfaction of flat-out good sex? Tell me, please, because I’d really like to know.”

  While I was twisting the knife in our relationship, Rhys lifted his head. He actually managed an infinitesimal smile, the steel in his eyes softened to liquid silver. “Surely,” he said, “you have to acknowledge there’s something immensely attractive about a woman who keeps saving your life.” I scowled at him. “All right, all right, nothing but the truth.” Rhys paused, took his time, as if seriously considering my question. Slowly, he removed his suit jacket, tossing it carelessly onto the empty chair, stating without a single word his intention of staying.

  “It all started with your brother Logan,” he said at last. “We’ve–ah–worked together a couple of times, and one night he happened to mention his world-traveling little sister. So I looked up Fantascapes on the Net. That’s a good photo of you, by the way, the one with your mother and your aunt. I was . . . intrigued. The idea of recruiting you as an informant came from a desire to meet you, not the other way around.”

  I’d thought doubts about Viktor were my surprise for the day, but this topped it. Rhys Tarrant had been attracted to me before I even knew he existed?

  “On the Trail—even though I had no idea who I was, or who you were—my sub-conscious must have been working overtime, because I took one look at you and fell hard. I was in pain from head to toe and my mind was out to lunch, but it was like my eyes had been touched by that magic potion in Midsummer Night’s Dream. I was lost.

  “And then you turned out to be more than I could ever imagine. Smart, tough, feisty, a survivor in a world that was falling apart around us. When you called today, I slipped my leash so fast, I was here before anyone knew I was gone. But not for long, of course. The world crashed in, and I had to face that there’s no chance for us until we straighten out whatever’s gone wrong. I guess I was overeager to get that part over, so we could get on with our lives.”

  He looked me straight in the eye. “I’m sorry, Laine. My motives were pure, but I was a fool not to call, even though I was ordered not to.”

  I’d melted several sentences back. of course. I mean, there’s a limit to how long a girl can stay in a pout when a man is all but coming right out and saying, “I love you.” I hadn’t thought we could salvage this evening, but . . .

  Not that I wasn’t terrified by the L-word. Thank God Rhys hadn’t actually said it. I could be charmed while telling myself it was only passion, lust, infatuation. With my brother Logan playing Puck and casting enchantment over our eyes. I was dazzled. Rhys Tarrant was a plum that had fallen into my lap, bruised and battered, exciting my Protect and Serve gene into active service. He was, therefore, mine. And I was free to enjoy him to the fullest.

  From my chair to the bed was only about four feet. I’m not sure how I got there, maybe I flew or drifted on a cloud of stardust. Who cared about tomorrow when the here and now was a shiny golden moment just waiting to be plucked? I settled myself down beside him and was nearly certain I felt my heart stop. Maybe people really did die of love.

  I laid my head on his chest, snaked my arms around his back. Slowly, Rhys did the same. “Are we okay now?” he whispered.

  Oh, yeah! I was several thousand miles from Florida, but I’d come home. This was supposed to be a fling—scratching the itch that had sprung to life in Peru—but it was beginning to feel like a whole lot more. Rhys had charmed away my truculence, but I’d be damned if I was going to let him cajole me into giving up control as well.

  I yanked up his shirt and gave him shove. With a surprised chortle he fell back on the bed, arms extended out, palms up. Okay, girl, come and get me.

  So I did.

  Chapter Thirteen

  With a wicked little smile, I slipped off the bed. “Legs up,” I ordered. Hands on my hips, I watched as Rhys, gray eyes smouldering, shifted his long legs onto the bed. Leisurely, as if my heart weren’t pounding and my fingers itching to strip him bare, I removed his black shoes, which were shined to businessman perfection, showing no sign of cop rough and tumble. I tossed them across the room, where they thunked onto the hall carpet with two satisfying thuds.

  What was I doing? I’d spent ninety-five percent of my interactions with amorous men avoiding, even fighting off, the touchy-feely. Laine Halliday was never the aggressor. Except for the few men I’d allowed to get lucky, I’d always been too busy turning a cold shoulder to ravenous mouths and octopus arms to ever consider any other side to sex. But with Rhys . . .

  Rhys—who knew I was angry, hurt. Uncertain. Who recognized that I had to work my way back to the rapport we’d had in Peru. He was being sensitive . . . considerate. Damn him! He was drawing me into a tighter net than I had ever imagined.

  Slowly, deliberately, I gave him the once-over, from his dark head resting on the pillow to the feet beneath my hand. Deep inside, where I hoped it didn’t show, I quivered.

  Experimentally, I wiggled one of his big toes, encased in a black silky sock. Rhys sucked in his breath, gray eyes flashed. Sitting down beside him, hip high, I walked my fingers up his leg. All the way. He groaned and breathed my name.

  No way was he going to get away with graciously tolerating the little woman’s eccentricities. Rhys Tarrant was going to suffer.

  I walked my fingers up his other leg and watched his hands clench. His groan became a moan, particularly when my hands failed to take the next logical step to the growing bulge at the apex of his thighs.

  Abandoning that line of attack, quite naughtily, I undid the bottom button of his shirt. I bent my head and pressed a kiss just above his belt buckle. Rhys’s hand jerked up and fisted in my hair.

  “Back!” I commanded.

  “Laine, you’re killing me!”

  “Not very tough, are you?” I taunted. “Guess the brothers were right.”

  For a moment his whole body w
ent tense as a bow string, and I thought he’d call the game when it had barely begun, strong-arming me into missionary position or simply grabbing his jacket and stalking out. Not Rhys Tarrant’s kind of woman, no way, no how.

  But his hand dropped back to the bed, and he lay there, arms outstretched, almost as vulnerable as he’d been on the Inca Trail. I knew I was in trouble, not of having him run from me, but of being bound by wires of steel that could never be severed. I wanted a grand adventure with a fascinating man. Not commitment. Not this horrible, welling caring. The certainty this was a relationship that, in spite of wide oceans and separate continents, could last a lifetime.

  Blast! This wasn’t the moment for deep thoughts. Logic, personal demons, the future could go hang. This was Rhys, this was me. And this was meant to be.

  With each button, I spread the front of his dark blue shirt farther apart, licking and nipping my way up his hard nearly hairless chest until I found a nipple and did to it what men so love to do to women. There might not have been much beyond a swelling of muscles, but the results were most satisfactory. Rhys broke out in a sweat, murmuring my name and some very nice things in French, which is definitely the language of love. I didn’t make the mistake of allowing my hands to stray south, as I would have liked. His erection was turning his full-cut slacks into something resembling a pup tent. If I touched him now, we weren’t going to make it to the best part.

  I worked my lips up his throat to his mouth and settled in for a good long exploration. He felt so good, smelled so good, tasted so good. I was lost, drowning in sensation, with Rhys’s hands now closed around me, urging me on, his legs tangling with mine, warning that his stoicism was running out, his takeover imminent.

  “Merde!” He went absolutely still. I could hear his teeth grind.

  “It’s okay,” I murmured, “I never leave home without one.” Or a whole pack. I may not use condoms much—did they have expiration dates?—but I always traveled prepared.