Tempting. But no. She had business.
“Tarini, get in the car,” he said, leaning across the passenger seat.
“Forget it. I’m a free agent. I’d thank you for saving my life back there, but you’re the one who put me into danger by dealing with Karinolov tonight. So I’ll just say goodbye here.”
She kept walking, but the shiny red shadow stayed with her.
“You’re under my protection,” he said.
“Fat lot of good it’s done me so far.”
“I got you out of there.”
“You also brought them there by shooting off your mouth at the Nigerian mission. You would have protected me a helluva lot better if you’d stayed home.”
She’d hurt him with that. She didn’t like doing it, but it was necessary if she was going to get rid of him. Telling him he had put her in more danger instead of less might make him mad, plant the seeds of self-doubt. She could run with that.
But he didn’t drive off in anger, didn’t even look perturbed at the idea that he had let her down. Instead, he laughed, so sure of himself, so seemingly amused by her anger.
“Get in the car,” he repeated.
“Look, I understand the Constitution. You have no right to make me do anything I don’t want to do. Go away or I’m calling the police.”
“You can’t do that. You draw attention to yourself and, knowing Karinolov, he’ll figure out a way to get you deported to Byleukrainia or worse.”
“Maybe that’s what I want.”
“I know what you’re thinking, but you can’t bargain for Vlad if you’re in a prison cell.”
“So I promise not to call the cops if you promise to leave me alone.”
“Get in the car,” he growled.
“I don’t take orders from my fiancé’s underlings.”
“Get in the damn car!”
She knew he wasn’t used to her ignoring him. He had always chosen what restaurants they’d eat at, what movies they’d see, and if he ever thought to ask her what she wanted to do on a Sunday afternoon, she had always answered, “What would you like to do?” Her mother’s training on how a woman deferred to the man she loved had been nearly unbreakable, even for a woman as independent and strong-willed as Tarini.
If the situation weren’t so desperate, it would be kind of fun to disobey him. But it wasn’t fun, it was the difference between life and death for Vladimir.
“I’m not going with you!”
“I’ve got a nice warm jacket,” Austin said enticingly. Though the days were warmer, the night was cold.
“Look, Austin, there are a few things you oughta know,” she said, tossing her hair back and trying for a good dose of contempt. “I played you for a fool and I betrayed you with your best friend. Twotimed you. Strung you along. Then when I was tired of you, I threw you away like yesterday’s newspaper.”
“And I thought you were such a nice girl,” he said laconically.
Tarini swallowed and plunged ahead. “If you can’t take a hint, let me spell it out for you. Austin, I don’t need you, I don’t want you, and I don’t give a damn about what happens to you…” And here she faltered in her barrage of carefully constructed lies. But she had to go on. “I don’t care what happens to you. And while I care about Vlad, I’m not risking my life for his. I was just out for a good time. Party’s over. Time for you to go home. You can find Vlad on your own. I’ve given up. Girl’s gotta think of her future.”
His eyes narrowed and she thought she had gone too far. He eased out of the car and held out the jacket to her.
Some emotion transformed him, washed over him, changed the natural superior edge of his jaw. It was something—subtly humble yet completely powerful—she had never seen on his face before.
“I don’t care, Tarini,” he said grudgingly. “You’re a…witch and you two-timed me and you know what? I don’t care about any of that. I’m here for you and I’ll sacrifice my life for you if I have to. And that’s the best offer you’ve had all night.”
She stood still, feeling more vulnerable than she had at any time since…since the night at the mission. He was offering an unconditional promise of everything. Everything but love, of course.
“Tarini, just take the jacket,” he said gently, holding it out to her without coming a single step forward, as if sensing her limits. “You’re freezing. We can negotiate whether we stick together—but at least stay warm while we’re doing it.”
She hesitated and then grabbed. The jacket felt warm and comforting. She pulled it around her shoulders, capturing his scent on it, and zipped it. It was big, way too big, but warm.
“You didn’t really mean it about Vlad, did you?” he asked.
“No,” she admitted. “I love him.”
And she did, but not in the way Austin thought she meant.
“The other stuff I don’t care about, but he deserves better,” Austin said. “From both of us.”
Tarini blinked back tears. He could think the worst about her, or at least nearly the worst since he hadn’t swallowed the idea of abandoning Vlad. He could think the worst and it didn’t stretch his credulity.
He thought she was a double-crossing, lying, two-timing, cold-blooded witch. And it didn’t shock him anymore.
And-she had been the one who had led him to that conclusion.
Someday, maybe after Vlad was free, she would tell him he was wrong. But for tonight, she’d have to let him hate her.
“What now?” she asked. “What do we do for Vlad?”
The featherlight lines on his forehead deepened and she knew that their troubles had gotten worse. He looked scared. And that, on Austin, wasn’t something she’d ever seen before.
“They’ve been to my apartment,” he said. “It’s trashed. Karinolov must have figured out that I’d come for you—and he’ll stop at nothing to find us. I say we get out of town. Together and fast.”
There he was again—cocky and sure.
The vulnerability in that moment of confessing their shared love of Vlad had evaporated, but with the new understanding that he was her protector, at her service, for as long as it took. And her betrayal of him counted for nothing, at least for tonight.
It was a fantasy to think that he could forgive her, that he could forget what she had done to him. A fantasy to think she could trust him, to think she could place her life in his hands and give up the struggle inside her and forget the one that was unfolding on the streets even now.
It was a fantasy to ever think that he could have loved her. It might be a fantasy, but it was enough, she decided. At least until morning.
Silently, she got in the car and he closed the door behind her.
“I can’t make it much longer,” she said finally as he slid into the driver’s side and started the engine. She hated the admission, but she couldn’t fight her own body any longer. “I need some sleep. Only a few hours, then I’ll be fine.”
“I know just the place,” he said confidently, and drove off.
Chapter Four
Karinolov leaned back in the plush leather armchair in the private apartment of the United Nations mission. He absently played with an onyx ring emblazoned with the Romanov crest.
The ring, and everything else in the eight-room suite on the top floor of the mission, had belonged to Vladimir Romanov. Now it was his.
It thrilled him to touch, to hold, to claim as his own everything that had once been Romanov property. Soon he would own the Romanov woman.
He spoke softly but firmly into the phone.
“Find her,” he said.
“Look, I have no idea where she is.”
Karinolov hated whining.
“She is with him. Find him and you’ll find her. You have to know where he is.”
“He hasn’t contacted me.”
“He will. And when he does, I want to be the first to know.”
“I don’t know…I don’t know if I can. I love him.”
“I own you. Remember? The mone
y. Think about the money.”
There was a soft groan on the other end of the line.
“I can’t do this to him. He’s my own…”
Loyalty. There it was again. The insufferable idiots he had to deal with!
“He won’t come to any harm,” Karinolov interrupted, thinking of how Austin was his to deal with. It had become personal. Karinolov was not leaving Austin to his underlings, but there was no reason to explain all of this now.
“I don’t want him. He won’t come to any harm. I want the girl,” he said. “The girl means nothing to you—or to his ultimate safety. But she means everything to me and to my country.”
Karinolov hung up without hearing out the sputtering reply. He looked at the onyx ring appreciatively and remembered that he needed to cover his tracks. He dialed again.
“Tanya?” he whispered into the phone. He carefully modulated his voice to communicate sorrow, empathy and concern. “Tanya, I didn’t get to her in time. The Royalists got to her apartment first, but, luckily, she escaped. If you hear from her, you must call me immediately. I want to help her, truly I do.”
AFTER THE FIRST three calls made from the phone on the nightstand, Austin wished he had the luxury of making them from a lobby phone of the Plaza Hotel. Having Tarini curled in bed with her almond-shaped eyes tracking his every move made him self-conscious.
He found himself being more jovial and lighthearted on the phone than he meant to be, more than the situation called for. But he knew she was tired enough that despair had a foothold.
He wanted to comfort her with good news—but there was none.
Phone call after phone call dug up bad news. Finding a safe house was going to be impossible. And he knew she knew how desperate her plight was.
Buddies from the State Department, from other missions and from embassy offices in Washington were uniform in their assessment. Word had gone out from the Byleukrainian military government. Karinolov wanted her. Her connection to the Romanov family made her an official “traitor” to her country.
Tarini was hot. A wanted woman. Dead but preferably alive. She was still a Byleukrainian citizen, even if she had lived in America for years, had even loyally worked with the American government as a special agent. She was still a Byleukrainian, and that country wanted her back. The military regime was determined to take her.
Anyone caught helping her risked retaliation. And there wasn’t anybody who didn’t understand that the retaliation would be much more severe than simply not being invited to the next Byleukrainian mission ball.
“Can’t, Austin,” a high-school buddy who was now a top member of the Moroccan mission replied when Austin asked him to give Tarini sanctuary for the next several days. “I’ve gotten word from our capital. There are enough Moroccan nationals living in Byleukrainia that—well, you get the picture. Our government couldn’t put those people in danger.”
Austin wanted to hold her and comfort her and remind her that he would lay down his life before any of those goons touched her.
Then he caught himself. She was the woman who had betrayed him, who had two-timed him with his best friend, who had taken his heart and thrown it away. She didn’t deserve his sympathy.
Oh, he meant every word he’d said about it not mattering that she had betrayed him. It didn’t matter when it came to protecting her and the baby within her and finding Vlad.
But that didn’t mean he had to like her, had to give a damn about her feelings.
And after the child was born, what then?
It didn’t matter, Austin thought ruefully as her eyes blinked once, twice and finally closed in sleep.
Austin called Bob Kearner, waking his friend from a sound sleep.
“Austin, where have you been, buddy?”
“Can’t tell you. Won’t tell you. Nothing personal.”
“But you’re still in the city?”
“Yeah, stuck here for now, but I’ve got to get Tarini out of here. Look, Bob, how bad is it on the streets?”
“There’s a contract for her from Karinolov’s crowd. A tidy reward for bringing her in—bonus if she’s alive. Anybody can collect. Austin, buddy, if you dump her now, they might not kill you, too. I’d seriously consider the consequences of being with her right now.”
Austin looked over at Tarini. Asleep, she didn’t look capable of the betrayals she had wrought. Her skin was smooth and barely tinted with warm brown undertones. Her lashes were thick and dark, her hair sleek and dark. He knew it would feel warm and silky in his hands. She looked thinner than he remembered her, her cheeks more prominent, the hand that held the blanket to her shoulders seemed more delicate. She was beautiful—worse, she was bewitching.
She had been his downfall.
He wanted to touch her, to kiss her cheek and tell her, as he used to, that he wanted her. But now his wanting was not something he felt exclusively as a physical hunger. There was a tenderness, something he had not felt with any woman…
The Romanov diamond blinked on her left hand. A five-carat wake-up call. He looked away.
“No, I can’t dump her,” he told Bob. “Even if she deserves it She’s pregnant.”
Bob whistled. “It’s Vlad’s?”
“She’d have every reason to tell me it isn’t his,” Austin said, not trusting himself with the answer he would have given months ago—that she was too honorable to lie.
“The last of the Romanovs.” Bob whistled. “Does she know that makes her a dead woman?”
“Oh, yeah, she knows the story. If she said it was anybody else’s, she wouldn’t have a price on her head.”
“Listen, bring her here. I’ll take her. She can spend the next few days with my wife.”
“No, Bob, really, I don’t think—”
“Come on, drop her off now. Tonight”
“No, you’ve got those little ballerinas to think of. I can’t let you take her in. She’s too damn hot”
“All right, Austin, but keep me informed. All right?”
They talked for a few more minutes, agreeing that Austin would call the next day and that Bob would make a few discreet inquiries.
They both agreed. Situation: hopeless.
Austin hung up the phone and felt the weariness he had held off for so long. He pulled off his shoulder holster, took his keys and wallet out of his jeans pocket and put them on the nightstand. Then he found the handcuffs that he kept in his back pocket.
He thought about cuffing her to the bed, remembering the panic he had felt when he’d come back from the ransacked apartment to find her missing from the parking garage, amazing himself as he listed the many different ways she was untrustworthy.
But it was a terrible thing to do to a woman, to cuff her like a criminal.
Still…
He slipped one cuff on the wrist she held up next to her head, and the other on the headboard.
There!
She wasn’t going to leave him now, unless she planned to take a queen-size bed with her.
He sat on the armchair by the nightstand and put his feet up on the bed. He leaned back and tried to sleep.
Then he jerked out of his near rest. He studied Tarini, who slept unaware of her captivity. He had never known much about her—she had so carefully avoided questions about herself, her family and especially her past And maybe he hadn’t really asked.
Their physical need for each other seemed to wipe out any chance of unwrapping the many layers of intimacy—how many times had they planned a night of theater, of dinner at a new restaurant, of a movie—and ended up in bed instead?
Besides, what little he did know about her he wasn’t sure he could trust. Maybe even her desire for him had been a lie, maybe even the moan she made when she climaxed was part of an act.
He didn’t torture himself replaying the memories—he had done enough of that already.
He simply remembered that she didn’t like to feel trapped. He knew that emotion wasn’t faked. He unlocked the cuffs without disturbing her and
put them next to his wallet. He’d have to hang on to her some other way.
He carefully eased into the plush hotel bed and put his arm around her waist. Her stomach felt as flat as he remembered it—and he marveled at how little he knew about pregnancy. He had expected her to be softer, rounder, fuller. But what would he know about pregnant women?
He slipped his fingers beneath her. His own personal brand of cuffing.
She stirred and he held his breath, fearful she’d awaken and then he might have to change his tactics. But she snuggled up against him, just as she had done short months ago.
Oh, how it made him hard to feel her against him!
He wondered if this was a good idea, to be so near her. And for several minutes he cataloged her faults. There were a lot of faults, not the least of which was that she might get him killed.
But she was his only link to his friend. If Vlad didn’t get through this mess alive, at least his child could live on.
This time, he promised, he wouldn’t let Vlad down.
As he fell into an uneasy sleep, his hardness unrepentant but under control, he was certain that he heard her murmur his name in her sleep.
Chapter Five
Tarini opened her eyes to blinding sunlight as Austin flung open the heavy hotel-room curtains. Beyond the window came the sounds of early-morning traffic around Grand Army Plaza. The budding trees of Central Park were barely visible above the windowsill.
What ever happened to sleeping in? she wondered, shoving her head into the pillow.
And then she remembered—everything.
It was horrible to recall the night before, and yet, there was some part of her that thrilled at being with Austin again. He was here, his voice nearby humming a Mozart sonata.
Squelching a frisson of pleasure, she pulled her head up and glanced around the room. The armchair cushions looked perfectly arranged and not nearly big enough for a man of Austin’s size. She jerked her head back to the other side of the bed.
He couldn’t have…he wouldn’t have…he didn’t, did he?
If he had slept next to her, that would explain all the disturbingly erotic dreams she’d had. She had to ditch this man—but fast! Having him around was trouble.
His Kind Of Trouble Page 6