by It Girls
Chloe heard Renee, knew she believed everything she was saying, but she was wrong. Chloe wasn't strong. Or brave. Or smart. And what did that leave her to fight with?
For four years, she'd been following Emma's "fake it 'til you make it" advice. And until today it had served her well. Even on dangerous assignments she could play the roles. Hell, she was good at playing roles. But they weren't real.
Her mother was real. This assignment was real.
And neither pretending to be strong and brave and smart nor confessing her fraud would save her or those Russian women.
Renee cupped her face and smiled. "You can do this, Chloe. I have every faith in you."
Renee did. It burned in her eyes, clear and certain. She always had believed in Chloe, even when she'd been falsely accused of possession at Harvard and had been asked to leave. Her own mother hadn't believed her, but Renee had. She'd been appalled, indignant at Chloe's mother's reaction to a daughter in trouble, and had appointed herself as a surrogate mother to Chloe. Renee had been one— a great one— ever since. Now, the fear of disappointing her, too, had Chloe sick inside.
"Believe, Chloe." Renee stroked her cheek. "See the strength I see in you."
Chloe's eyes stung. Renee made it seem so easy to see the best, to believe the best. "You're a wonderful mother, Renee."
"You make it easy, my dear." Renee smiled, patted her knee. "So Jack is with you?"
"He's gone to London on assignment for two weeks."
"Now?" Renee frowned.
"He had no choice," Chloe defended him. "He had to go or send an expectant father."
"Well, that's different, then," Renee said, drawing the same conclusion Chloe had. "Chloe, be careful on this mission, my dear. And don't let your preconceived notions about Marcus blind you to the truth, okay?"
Chloe nodded. She honestly had to worry more about going the other way and blaming the man for everything she saw.
Renee stood up. "Now, you'd better run. Kristi and Alan are waiting for you."
Chloe nodded and picked up her purse. Kristi Burke was the Roses' dresser, the queen of magical transformations, and her brother Alan was a master of electronics, all types of weaponry, high-tech tools and equipment needed to carry out undercover assignments. "I will do my best to be objective, Renee." Chloe promised but didn't smile.
Neither did Renee. "You always do, darling."
Chloe would try. But even with Emma's help, her odds on this assignment were dismal. To succeed, she had to actually become all the things she had pretended to be— smart, strong, cunning— and she had to do so fast, or she would die— or end up enslaved with the other women.
Given a choice, Chloe would rather be dead.
Chapter 3
On the way to the dressing area, Chloe received a cell call.
"Chloe?"
Jack. She smiled. "Where are you?"
"Getting ready to board a flight. I just needed to hear your voice." Husky. Sexy. "I miss you already."
Her heart fluttered, and she stopped and leaned against the hallway wall. "Me, too."
"This morning was…" He grunted in pure male appreciation. "Incredible."
She felt the sizzle, flushed from the heat. "Yeah." Kristi Burke stepped into the hallway and waved Chloe over. Chloe nodded, then said to Jack, "Definitely incredible."
"It's going to be a long two weeks."
A shot of pure pleasure rippled through her and settled in her chest. "Rush."
"I will," he promised. "Bye."
"Bye." She closed her phone and dropped it into her favorite Prada bag, sighing contentedly.
"Will you hurry up?" Kristi waved at her again. "We're running late."
"I'm coming." Chloe picked up her steps and entered the dressing room.
Ten minutes later, she was flushed again. This time there was nothing sensual about it. "Oh, no, Kristi Burke. No way." Dabbing on her signature fragrance, Remember Me, Chloe resisted an urge to shout. "I'm carrying a record twenty extra pounds and you want me to wear a skirt I can't bend over in, a red wig and fricking crystal-studded sunglasses?" Chloe glared at her dresser in the long mirror. "What are you trying to do, force me to put my mother in the grave?"
Emma folded her arms and groaned at Chloe's back. "Red wigs are Renee's orders. We're vulnerable, not well-heeled, remember? And those fricking sunglasses are Gucci, and very hot. Ash wore a pair at lunch yesterday."
Ashley Thompson, a fellow Rose agent, was also a fashion editor for Chic magazine and the undisputed queen of fashionistas. "Terrific." Chloe shot Emma a glare. "Then she can wear them."
Kristi sighed from the heart out, pleading for help, and Emma rescued her. "For pity's sake, Chloe, just put the damn things on. Alan's waiting and we're going to be late." She dropped her voice to a whisper. "Did you not hear me? We're vulnerable and broke. Escorts might not write apologetic notes, but they do suffer consequences for being late."
"What's wrong with crystals?" Fellow Rose Samantha Adams— whose hair was hunter-orange today and had been grape two days ago— peered over Emma's shoulder. "I love crystals."
Emma smiled. "You look adorable in them, too, Sami."
"Well, sure." She hiked her chin and exaggerated a look down her nose, then crossed her eyes. "I'm an adorable woman."
"And modest, too." Chloe rolled her eyes. Samantha loved anything funky. It suited her. But none of this suited Chloe. Not the escort cover, not the long red wig— though she had to give Kristi points for quality— and, while when it came to style she worshipped Gucci as a third religion, not the fricking crystal-studded sunglasses. "Nothing's wrong with them, Samantha, I just hate crystals and diamonds. They remind me of tiaras." And tiaras reminded her of being a princess, and that reminded her of all she wasn't and would never be.
Fingering a flowing, sheer white curtain, Tatiana Guttmann glided across the floor in her South American slink. Her killer eyes glittered gold. "So the It girl princess has a record?"
Oh, great. Just great. Chloe did not need Tatiana's claws in her back right now. She was nervous enough. A fricking escort? Fricking Duke and Marcus? Fricking white-slave trade? "That's old news, Tatiana." As old as her $500 million inheritance from her grandmother carrying a provision that Chloe never set foot in Denmark: a penalty due to her heir-to-the-throne father abdicating to marry a lowly fashion designer. The press had covered it all, in degrading detail.
Yet, even if the royals ignored her branch of the family tree other than to privately berate it, Chloe's special social standing awarded only to those in high society bearing a title grated at the mere coffee heiress in Tatiana.
Chloe often wondered why. Tatiana had a history rich in Colombian culture. The only thing Chloe had found being a princess good for was its use as a measuring stick, and considering she always fell short on the damn thing, she didn't need it. She had plenty of shortfall indicators without the title.
Emma leaned to whisper near Chloe's ear. "You shouldn't have taken the hit for Boy Wonder then, and you shouldn't take it now. Set her straight."
"Shut up, Emma." Chloe dragged her lips back from her teeth in a pasted-on smile. Her parents adored Erik. They didn't know about Chloe's companies and financial success, or about Erik blowing his inheritance on bad land deals, gambling and lousy, high-risk investments and Chloe paying his way for five years before putting her foot down, giving him $1 million and telling him to make or break himself. They did know Erik had hooked up with Ryan Greene and was supposedly doing great.
If Boy Wonder fell off his pedestal, her parents would blame Chloe— his screw-ups were always her fault— but when they did, she was going to deny blame and, by God, be telling the truth. But she could chew on that later.
Now, she needed a lie. "Being arrested is a status symbol for royals, Tatiana." Scratching that vanity should dull the kitty's claws a bit. "Of course, I've got a record. Possession of marijuana. I got photographed, fingerprinted and even placed in a cell— maximum royal treatment." Chloe suppre
ssed a cringe at the memory, and her heartbreak at Erik's sacrificing her. Why hadn't he confessed the truth and taken responsibility for having the marijuana?
Renee had offered her comfort. We all pay for our mistakes, Chloe. Sometimes it shows, and sometimes it doesn't. But no one escapes their conscience.
Chloe had believed her then, and did now. Still, the experience had been bloody awful. It had cost Chloe Harvard and earned her more of her mother's disgust. She regretted that, though she wasn't foolish enough to believe anything would change it. Tilting her head, she looked at Tatiana in the mirror. "You lack a record, I take it."
Tatiana hesitated, unsure if her proverbial chain was being yanked, but just for a second, thanks to Emma biting a smile from her lips. That smile was a dead giveaway to Tatiana's internal lie detector. "Don't even try to mess with my head, Chloe St. John," she said. "You're not in my league."
For which Chloe would forever be grateful. "Of course not, darling." She gave her a broad smile. "I'm the It girl princess with a record." Stuff that hairball, Ms. Superiority.
Tatiana's tanned face flushed. She clamped her jaw and squared off at Chloe's back. "Emma, I'm pissed at you."
"Me?" Emma turned on her. "What did I do?"
"You stole my appointment at LaBella."
"Sorry," Emma said, doing her demure demeanor stuff. "I really needed a peppermint foot treatment, and I knew you wouldn't mind."
"I mind."
Chloe sighed. "If you mind, then you shouldn't have stolen her appointment last week."
Tatiana glared at Chloe, then lifted her coral lips in a thinly disguised smirk. "You're advising me? You can't even do pot without getting caught— and you couldn't even talk your way out of it! The royals had to love that." Tatiana looked down her nose at Chloe and sniffed. "Not that I'm surprised. You've always lacked flair and style."
Bent on giving Tatiana a swift kick that'd acquaint her backside with the heel of Chloe's Jimmy Choo, she tried to spin around, but Kristi grabbed the front of her skirt and Emma locked down on her shoulder. Chloe couldn't move.
"Don't do it!" Emma whispered. "She's pissed because Renee gave you this assignment."
"No blood on this skirt, Chloe St. John," Kristi muttered from between her teeth. "I mean it."
It took a long minute, but Chloe managed to bury her anger. "All right." When the others let go, she turned toward Tatiana. "Actually, the royals were overwhelmed." They had been, and ticked off to their blue-blooded gills. "I made international news for three days. My story, darling, had legs." Chloe dropped the hand planted at her hip to her side and softened her voice. "As for being bright— well, I guess it only matters that I'm bright enough to have your number, Tatiana, and I do. So long as tearing me down makes you feel better about yourself, you just go right ahead. I can carry anything you need to throw my way." Her mother had been the master of this kind of destruction. Compared to her, Tatiana was on training wheels. "Now, do you want something, or are you just hanging around because it's what you do best?"
Tatiana blew off the insult and smoothed a hand down her marmalade Dior sheath at her slender hip. It suited her exotic skin tone. "And Renee thinks you can handle my assignment."
Such a predictable kitty. Chloe put a bite in her tone. "If you have a problem with Renee or her assignments, then take it up with her."
That got Tatiana's attention, but her sense won out. "You're not even out of the G.R.C. and you're already screwing up. The job is as an escort. You're dressed like a hooker."
"Excellent observation." Freshening her lipstick, Emma answered first. "We're going to one of your old haunts."
Tatiana's slanted eyes narrowed. "Which one?"
"Hollow Hill Hotel, in the Meatpacking district." Flustered, Kristi reeled off the hotel bar and threw up her hands. "That's where they're going, okay?" Kristi turned to Chloe. "Now will you please be still. If I stick myself one more time because you're wiggling, I'm going to stab you right in the ass with this needle."
Tatiana laughed and walked off. Her singsong voice carried back to them. "The It girl princess is going slumming."
Chloe frowned at Emma. "Shoot her."
"First thing tomorrow." Emma crossed her heart with a pastel pink fingertip. "She's analyzing my finances tonight."
"I'll shoot her," Samantha volunteered, taking a bite of apple. "She's already done mine."
"Don't you dare, Sami," Emma said. "We have to wait until my investments are secure." She shot Chloe an apologetic look. "My loyalties are divided. You're excellent with money, but Tatiana is pure Midas. I'm protecting my retirement."
"You're not even forty."
"But a gazillion years from now I will be, Chloe. Besides, I don't feel like cleaning my gun tonight."
Renee's law. If you fire it today, you clean it today. Chloe sniffed and looked down at Kristi. "It's always something."
"Always." Kristi took a last stitch, cut the thread, then checked the skirt hem with a critical eye. "Perfect."
Chloe turned to the mirror and gasped at the scrap of black leather. "Good grief. I don't mind showing a little leg, but if this skirt was any shorter, my ass would be hanging out."
Kristi let out an exaggerated sigh. "It's always something."
Alan Burke walked in and over to Chloe and Emma, carrying a small plastic vial and a pair of tweezers. "And today, that something is this."
Chloe met his eyes in the mirror. "What is this, exactly?"
"Your secret weapon, angel face. Wipe off the lipstick." He stepped in front of her, unscrewed the cap, and waited.
She swiped at her lips with a tissue.
He pulled a thin film out of the vial with the tweezers and pressed it against her lips. "If you get into a jam, this will allow you to leave Hollow Hill tonight with your hide intact."
"I'm all for that," she said. "Is it lethal?"
"Not lethal, not legal." Alan's eyes twinkled. "But kiss a man and it will knock him on his ass for hours. He'll wake up with a hell of a headache and little memory, but he will wake up." Alan moved to Emma and repeated the process. "It produces short-term amnesia, like when you have surgery."
Emma grunted. "Sounds like a roofie."
"Oh, it's much better." He pinned a small gold rose on each of their tops.
"What are these?"
"Tracking devices," Alan said. "We'll know where you are at all times. He backed up and checked his work. "Excellent. Now reapply your lipstick and you're good to go."
"You're a wizard," Emma said, smiling.
"Don't you know it?" Alan winked. "You two make remarkable redheads." He looked at his sister. "Not bad, Kristi."
"Why are we redheads?" Chloe asked. The three Russian women had all been brunettes.
"I told you. Renee's orders," Kristi said. "The name of the service is Special Reserves Escorts. Harvey Walker manages the escorts and sets up the interviews. There are eight offices in the metropolitan area. Hollow Hill is the home office. It's on the lobby level. Emma, you're Kira. Garrett is your interviewer. Chloe, you're Oksana, and you meet with Warren. You two are smart, vulnerable, sophisticated, broke and Russian. Okay, great." She shot Alan a look. "We all agree, brother dearest, that you're a genius and you have excellent taste." Kristi shoved the crystal-studded glasses onto Chloe's nose. "Now, go. Jimmy's got the limo waiting in the alley— and for goodness' sake, be careful."
"We'll be fine," Emma said. "Don't worry, Kristi."
"I'm not worried." She hung the measuring tape around her neck. "You two can handle this or you wouldn't be assigned."
"She's wringing her hands, Emma." Chloe pointed. "She knows I'm going to bomb."
"You're not going to bomb." Emma slid Chloe a wicked grin. "Look at it this way. You get to be a virgin again. How many women get that chance?"
"Glenda Huntsberger's been one three times," Samantha interjected, then wiggled her eyebrows. "Just ask her exes."
"Stupid men don't count." Chloe stretched over to a chair and grabbed her han
dbag, then swung her gaze to Emma. "Explain."
"You're a rookie escort, right? Rookie. Virgin. See the connection?" Emma snapped the top on her lipstick tube, then lifted her hand. "Fake it 'til you make it, baby."
"Right." Faking it was daily life. But this kind of faking it? "Hanging with you is going to get me killed."
Emma turned serious. "If this investigation takes us to the top and the Duke's sitting in the chair, it might."
More afraid than she cared to admit, Chloe dipped her chin and looked at Kristi over the rim of the glasses. "For the record, on the off-chance I live— "
Kristi lifted her eyebrows in an unspoken question.
"I'm really not bulletproof, and I hate fricking crystals." Chloe tapped the frame at the bridge of her nose and strolled out the door.
*
Well, Warren wasn't older than God and he wasn't a dog, even if he was wearing a knock-off Ralph Lauren suit in a low-quality fabric Ralph would never approve of. Somewhere in his thirties, the man who'd opened the hotel door at her knock had blond hair, blue eyes, a face with a little character and a small paunch that suited him. Maybe she wouldn't throw up. Maybe she could even get through this interview stone sober.
"Kira?" he asked.
That was supposed to be Emma's name. Chloe was supposed to be Oksana. Damn it. It was too late to make a switch now, so Chloe nodded. Did that mean he was Garrett?
He stared at Chloe's red wig and frowned. "I specifically told Harvey to send me only brunettes." Stepping back, he slammed the door in her face.
Rude jerk. As she stood in the hallway of Hollow Hill Hotel's fifth floor, an alarm in her mind strung her nerves even tighter. If he called Harvey or Warren, she and Emma both would be out on their asses and the Russian women, if here, would be screwed. Why had Renee ordered them to wear red wigs, anyway? She knew the women being abducted were brunettes.