by Cindy Dees
It wasn’t that she hated being beautiful. She just wished people saw more than some beddable blonde. She supposed most women would bitch-slap her for whining about her looks, and maybe they were right. Maybe she should just enjoy her beauty while she had it.
A tall, dark-haired man stood up from a table in the corner and advanced toward her. He had to be her date. The short hair, stern jaw and direct stare were a dead giveaway.
Sure enough, he murmured, “Miss Dupont. I’m Brady Hathaway. It’s nice to meet you.” He held out a big, calloused, tanned hand. Where did anyone get a tan in this part of the world at this time of year? She’d give her eyeteeth to be on a hot beach somewhere, soaking up some rays.
And then his accent registered. American, huh? She didn’t tell people often that she held a dual American-French citizenship. Her mother had been American, and she’d been born in the States. But she mostly considered herself to be French. Her countrymen hadn’t tortured her in a while. What did they want with her now? She ignored his big, powerful-looking hand and looked him square in his steel-gray eyes. “Let’s get this over with, shall we?”
He looked momentarily taken aback, but nodded evenly enough. “As you like. This way.”
Those Americans did grow their men big and muscular. She was struck by how he towered over her, and she was no shorty herself, standing almost five-foot-nine. He guided her to his table, which was predictably tucked into a dark corner with no other patrons nearby. He held her chair for her. She almost registered it as a kindness before recalling he was yet another official type who wanted something from her.
It didn’t take a rocket scientist to spot his wingmen. They were seated on the other side of the restaurant with perfect sight lines to her and all the exits. Based on the bad suits and worse haircuts, she’d guess they were MI6. Low-level administrative types pulled off desk jobs to babysit the visiting American.
“Can I get you a drink?” the visiting American asked politely enough.
“Sure,” she drawled. “Gin and tonic.” The poison of choice in her family. It had put Maman six feet under. Eve stared into the drink when it arrived. Was she headed down the same road? Would she grow bitter and cynical at life’s disappointments and give up someday like her mother? She took a sip of the drink, savoring its sharp bite. Heck, she already had the cynical part wired.
“Thank you for agreeing to speak with me,” her companion said in a pleasant rumble.
Like she had any choice? The first time she refused to cooperate with one of these government bureaucrats was the moment she got put on every terrorist watch list in the world. She could forget ever going through an airport in peace again or getting a visa for, oh, anywhere. Not to mention this sort of harassment would increase exponentially in frequency and severity.
She dipped a manicured fingernail in her drink and stirred the ice cubes around idly. She pulled her finger out and sucked it seductively as she glanced up at him out of the corner of her eye. It might be mean to intentionally throw her questioner off balance by flirting with him, but she was sick to death of being hassled.
Usually the ploy worked like a charm, but Brady Hathaway did the strangest thing. He leaned back in his chair and studied her as if she were a mildly interesting insect. “Does that come-hither crap work on most men?”
Shock poured through her. He wasn’t interested in her sexually? She didn’t know whether to be insulted or profoundly relieved. She settled for scowling. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“You don’t lie very well. We would have to work on that.”
He wanted her to lie? Huh?
Intelligence glinted in his piercing gaze. “Look. I’m not here to talk about what your deceased brother may or may not have done or to argue the relative merit or insanity of his political views. I’m here to talk about you.”
Well, now. This was a new approach. Interested, she waited to see where he took the line of questioning.
He glanced over at his British minders and lowered his voice, “I’ve been sent here to ask for your help. But I happen to think it’s a terrible idea and that you would fail spectacularly. I have no intention of letting you harm me or my men in the process.”
Stung that he’d automatically assume she was a screwup, she demanded, “Why are you so sure I’d fail?”
He shrugged. “You strike me as the kind of woman who knows exactly the power of her looks and won’t hesitate to use them…”
How dare he? That was so not true!
“…I need a woman of substance and strength for my mission. With courage and smarts and guts…”
Hey! She had all those things!
“…confess I was ordered to speak to you. I’m afraid this has been a waste of your time and mine, Miss Dupont. I will be happy to pay for your meal, of course.”
She stared at him, genuinely shocked. “That’s an impressive set of snap judgments you’ve made about me, Mr. Hathaway.”
“I did my homework on you. I’m not wrong,” he replied bluntly.
At a loss, she finally blurted, “So you’re seriously not here to quiz me about my brother?”
One corner of his mouth turned up in a sardonic smile. “There’s nothing you could tell me about his final years that I don’t already know.”
Indignation at getting brushed off like this flared in her gut. “Oh, so you think I’ve taken up the family business where he left off? Are you going to put a tracking burr on my clothes and follow me to see if I meet with any known terrorists in the next few weeks? I should warn you that I burn my clothes after these sorts of meetings along with tossing my cell phone and getting a new number.”
He made a sound of approval. “If you didn’t look like you do, I might say there’s some hope for you. But as it is…” he trailed off regretfully.
Her looks were preventing him from giving her a shot at his mission? That was a first. The waiter came to take their order and she chose the most expensive dish on the menu—imported fresh lobster tails.
Their food came and she picked at it unenthusiastically. An emotion that took her a moment to identify coursed through her. Why was she feeling despair? Maybe because she was so bloody tired of living under the stigma of her brother’s illegal activities, so tired of carrying the burden around. Why couldn’t anyone just cut her a break? Give her one lousy chance to prove that she wasn’t like Viktor.
“What’s this mission of yours?” she demanded belligerently, praying her tone would disguise the ache in her soul.
He shrugged. “It’s classified. I can’t talk about it with you.”
A little voice in the back of her head yelled that he was playing her. He was blatantly manipulating her into accepting whatever he was about to offer. But something in her gut wanted to play ball with this man. The very fact that he wasn’t stumbling all over himself trying to figure out how to ask her out on a date was intriguing.
Frustrated, she asked, “Then why did you invite me to lunch?”
“I told you. I’m following orders. My superiors insisted I meet with you, in spite of my objections. They want me to verify that I pegged you correctly from your dossier.” A pause, and then he added, “And I did.”
He had a dossier on her? He was the first of his kind to openly admit it. She leaned forward and made deep eye contact with him. “And what did you decide from my dossier?”
His gaze, locked on hers, didn’t waiver, not even for an instant. “You’re too sure of yourself. You wouldn’t take the work seriously. You’re impulsive. Unpredictable and possibly unstable. You wouldn’t do at all.”
“You can stop with the reverse psychology, Mr. Hathaway. I have no interest whatsoever in helping any government with any mission.”
He took a sip of the Guinness stout sitting before him and said grimly, “Then we are in agreement. We’ll sit here and eat our lunch, and afterward we’ll each return to our regularly scheduled lives.”
“Agreed,” she replied tightly. But something disa
ppointed twisted in her gut. She’d always been such a compulsive overachiever. She hated walking away from a challenge. A psychologist would probably say she was compensating for her brother’s spectacular failures. The psychologist would probably be right, too.
She sighed. When would she learn? Nothing she or anyone else could do would make Viktor’s mistakes right. He’d harmed, even killed, dozens of people while chasing a ridiculous notion that the little guy could make a real difference. He had been desperate to be a major player on the world stage. But he’d failed to understand that heroes die young…and usually painfully.
No matter what heroic impulses pulsed in her veins, she was no dummy. She’d learned from big brother’s premature demise. No way was she going to play hero for the man seated across the table from her.
“So. Tell me about your job,” he said casually.
“We’re going to make small talk?” she asked incredulously.
“Indulge me. This way the men watching me will report to my superiors that I made a good-faith effort to talk you into doing the mission.”
She might have refused him out of general principles, but then he flashed her a smile so sexy it totally derailed her train of thought. She mumbled, “I’m currently working as an artist for a major advertising firm. It’s not a great job, but it’s a job.”
“Is it better or worse than sketching tourists on Montmartre for a few bucks a picture?” he asked.
He knew about that? She hadn’t lived a hand-to-mouth hippie’s life in Paris for years. “That’s a good dossier you’ve got on me, Mr. Hathaway.”
He shrugged in response. “You should see the one I’ve got on your brother.”
“What would surprise me in his dossier?”
He studied her for long enough that she didn’t think he was going to answer. But then he said, “Would it surprise you to know our profilers think your brother didn’t believe the majority of the political drivel he spouted…and ultimately died for?”
The comment confirmed what she’d suspected for years. Hearing it from an expert on her brother lifted a weight off her shoulders she hadn’t even known was there it until it went away.
“Thank you,” she said quietly.
“For what?”
She didn’t particularly care to explain herself to this man she would never see again. She shrugged. “Just thank you.”
He gazed at her as if he knew exactly what she was thanking him for. “You’re welcome.”
“What else did the dossier say about him?” she asked.
“It said he was mostly responsible for raising you.”
She frowned. “Did it now?”
“Is that true?” Hathaway asked.
Was it? She wasn’t sure anyone had actually raised her. Their mother had always been a heavy drinker. Apparently, the practical reality of being swept off her feet by a romantic French tourist and uprooting her entire life to a different continent had been too much for her mother. The four of them had lived on a small pension her father had earned from serving in the French military. When he’d died, the pension benefit had decreased, along with their already poor standard of living. Viktor had spent most of his youth hustling the tourists who flocked to the French Pyrenees. He’d used the English their mother insisted on teaching them to take advantage of the unwary. And she—she’d just tried to get by. It had been a daily struggle to find food, get clothes to fit her ever growing frame, and to deal with her mother’s increasingly erratic and violent behavior.
Eve blinked. Hathaway was studying her intently, his gray eyes clearly seeing far more than she’d like. She answered slowly, “It’s more accurate to say that Viktor and I raised ourselves. Yes, he was older, but he had his own problems to deal with.”
“Like abandonment issues with his mother and lack of a parental role model in his life?”
This stranger was cutting far too close to the quick for her taste. She snapped, “What right do you have to comment on our lives? You weren’t there. You have no idea what we went through.”
His gaze went dark. Closed. “Everyone has issues to deal with growing up. You’re not unique in that.”
She leaped on the opening he’d given her with all the predatory intensity of a shark on the hunt. “What issues did you have to deal with?”
He didn’t answer right away and she glared at him. How dare he sit there, all perfect and sure of himself, safe in his superiority, hiding behind being in charge of this interview and so quick to judge her?
“Your mother was one kind of a nightmare. But there are plenty of other flavors of maternal failure.”
Her eyebrows lifted. This self-assured man had a crappy mother, too? “Tell me about her,” she replied.
He shrugged. “Old history. And we’re not here to talk about me. We’re here to talk about you.”
“No, we’re not. We’re here to pretend to talk about me.”
He nodded, conceding the point. “How long have you lived in London?”
“I suspect you already know the answer to that one. Is this a test?”
“Just making small talk, Miss Dupont.”
“Five years. Ever since your soldiers killed my brother.”
Hathaway retorted, “He signed his own death warrant when he hijacked that cruise ship. Do you think he was suicidal or merely deluded by his girlfriend? Our profilers debate the issue among themselves.”
She leaned back, startled by the bluntness of the question. “Maybe a little of both. I wasn’t there, so I don’t know.”
“That’s my take on it, too. I think he knew he was in too deep with a woman and had no other recourse. Maybe he was trying to escape his entanglement with Annika Cantori and figured death was his only way out.”
From what she remembered of Annika, that was entirely possible. Her mother had always believed the female terrorist was responsible for Viktor’s death. But then, her mother spouted all kinds of crazy ideas when the gin was talking.
Hathaway was speaking again. “Either way, I’m sorry for your loss. Regardless of his politics or his stupid decisions, I know your brother meant a lot to you.”
She stared at him, genuinely stunned. In all these years, he was the first official to express real sympathy over Viktor’s death.
Hathaway turned his attention to his steak after that and they finished the meal in companionable silence. He made no effort to look down her sweater, nor did he make any offensive propositions to her, for which she was immensely grateful. And the man was not hard on the eye. Under other circumstances, she might have been interested in this too-perceptive American.
The check came, and he broke the silence with, “I’m sorry to have disrupted your day.”
“You’re seriously not going to ask me to help you in any way?” she blurted.
He looked at her steadily. “I’m seriously not.”
“Are you really so sure I’d fail?” she couldn’t resist pressing.
“You’re not tough enough to see it through. You would most likely die, and I or one of my men would get hurt. I’m not willing to risk my men on you.”
She stood up, offended that he cared more about putting his men in danger than her dying. Out of the corner of her eye, she noted that the MI6 men lurched in response to her abrupt movement.
“You don’t know anything about me, Mr. Hathaway. You’re wrong about me on several levels. I would wish you luck with your mission, but honestly, I hope you fail. And by the way, tell your minders to roll their tongues up and tuck them back in their mouths. I’m way out of their league.”
She turned to storm out but was not fast enough to miss the flare of amusement in the American’s dark eyes. Jerk.
Brady watched Eve Dupont sail out of the restaurant with all the drama of a movie star. Her rear end twitched angrily, and she gave one last toss of her hair as she disappeared from sight. A force of nature that woman was.
The two MI6 men joined him at his table. “Strike out, did you?” one of them asked sympatheti
cally.
Brady smiled up at his hosts. “Not at all, gentlemen. It went swimmingly well, in fact.”
“But she said no,” the younger agent blurted.
“All in good time,” Brady replied serenely. “She wanted to say yes, and that’s all I needed to know. I hate to impose on you, chaps, but there’s one more thing I need you to do for me….”
Eve napped on and off as the Gulfstream jet chased the setting sun across the Atlantic Ocean. As the plane descended, twilight turned the thickly forested island beneath her into a mound of violets and grays. The pilots wouldn’t say anything more than her destination was a private island somewhere in the Caribbean.
The plane bumped onto the runway and taxied to a stop. The engines shut down and one of the pilots offloaded her luggage while the other one opened up a garagelike building and drove an electric golf cart out into the deepening dusk.
“You want us to take you up to the house, Miss Dupont?” one of them asked.
“Where is this house?”
“Top of the mountain. That track over there takes you to its front door.”
“Actually, I’d rather head up alone if you don’t mind,” she replied. She wasn’t crazy about having an audience for the big I-told-you-so from Brady Hathaway when she showed up unannounced on his front porch.
Damn MI6, anyway. She still couldn’t believe they’d threatened to revoke her visa and detain her as a suspected terrorist unless she agreed to work with the skeptical American. She’d tried to explain that he’d refused to work with her, but the Brits had completely ignored her, arranged a leave of absence from her job and given her a choice. Jail or a jet bound for Brady Hathaway.
She wasn’t entirely furious that the Brits had forced her into this trip. The meeting with the American had gnawed at her. Not only did she resent his intrusive questions about her upbringing, but his accusations that she was unstable and incapable of seeing a project through grated on her nerves.