Seduced by the Operative

by Merline Lovelace

  With the midafternoon visit to Cardinal Tuma, St. Benedict’s tumble and extended sessions with various police officials, it was now past 5:00 p.m. According to Father Milosec, the drive to Sedlec was a good hour each way. And that assumed they didn’t get lost on the unfamiliar roads with unpronounceable names. Claire wasn’t sure how much time she’d need in the ossuary but didn’t want to constrain herself by a rushed visit.

  She’d already called Major Talbot to advise the pilot of yet another delay. The major hadn’t sounded too disappointed at spending another night in Prague. The prospect roused mixed emotions in Claire, however. She hated the thought of Stacy Andrews suffering more nightmares while her psychologist was an ocean away, still digging for clues to the cause of her dreams.

  Then there was Claire’s mounting indecision regarding Luis. Cool logic argued she should stick to her insistence they take their relationship one step at a time. After last night, though, she couldn’t seem to decide what that step should be. She needed to analyze her dream more dispassionately. Determine its implications. Assuage the guilt buried in the nightmare’s complex layers. Yet logic seemed to be taking a backseat where Luis Esteban was concerned.

  The detective broke into her thoughts with a promise and a request. “We will look on the roof again. Here is my card. You will call me and I will tell you if we find anything, yes?”

  Nodding, Claire slid his card into her shoulder bag. She and Luis kept a wary eye on the pediment when they left the archbishop’s palace a second time.

  Fortunately, the Savoy was able to move them right back into the same suite. After the porter brought up their bags, Claire dropped into a chair and voiced the thought she knew had to be uppermost in Luis’s mind as well hers.

  “If that wasn’t an accident—if there was someone on that roof—what do you think the odds are that this incident is related to the attack outside my condo?”

  “Extremely high. If there was someone on the roof.”

  She nodded, her eyes grave. “I think so, too. And since the only reason for our visit to Prague is Stacy Andrews, I’m becoming convinced that both incidents are related to her nightmares.”

  “But how?” Luis paced the elegant suite, as tense as a coiled tiger. “I tell you, Claire, I’m not a superstitious man. One cannot be, in my business. Yet these dreams of flesh melting away. Saints falling or being pushed off their pedestal. The shadow Father Milosec attributes to angels’ wings. I begin to wonder…”

  He paused, started to say something, cut himself off. Frowning, he shook his head. “I begin to wonder who—or what—we’re dealing with.”

  Her eyes widened. She wouldn’t have thought he would buy into Father Milosec’s theory of angels and demons. Then again, she didn’t have any better theory to put forward.

  “Maybe we’ll find the answers in Sedlec.”

  “I hope so,” he replied with considerable feeling.

  Claire dug her cell phone out of a shoulder bag weighted with the familiar feel of her Baretta. Not that it would do her much good if they were battling supernatural beings.

  “I need to advise Lightning of the latest developments and bring him up to speed on the results of our interview with Cardinal Tuma. I suppose I’d better contact Tom Fogarty at the White House, too.”

  “While you make your calls, I’ll take a walk. I want to stretch my legs.”

  Judging by his sweat-drenched clothes after his workout at the hotel’s spa earlier this morning, he’d already stretched them to the max. But Claire didn’t question his decision. Like her, he was still trying to sort through everything that had happened in the past few hours and days.

  “I won’t be long,” he told her. “Don’t leave the hotel while I am gone.”

  “Excuse me?”

  Her cool reply jerked him out of his preoccupation. One corner of his mouth curved in a rueful smile.

  “Please do not leave the hotel.” His glance dropped to the silver medal resting just above the neckline of her dirtied and torn silk blouse. “I wish I could trust St. Benedict to protect you, but…”

  She didn’t remind him she’d been extremely well trained to protect herself. But what good was that training against saints falling out of the sky?

  The same thought swirled through Luis’s mind as he wove through late-afternoon pedestrians and tourists. His route took him down winding streets to Lower Town, and then onto the Charles Bridge. The statues gazing down at him as he crossed received several scowling glances.

  He’d spent most of his life in uniform, first in the ranks of Cartoza’s army, then as its chief of security. By inclination and training, he was a man of action. This cat-and-mouse game with an unseen, unidentified foe was beginning to wear on his nerves. He didn’t buy into the absurd notion that their foe might be some supernatural force maliciously directing events from above. Not for an instant.

  Yet when he approached the bookshop where Claire had purchased her guide to the ghosts and ghouls of Prague, his brisk pace slowed. Against his better judgment, almost against his will, he reached for the door handle.

  The same elderly clerk who’d assisted them yesterday was once again manning the cluttered desk that served as a counter. The tinkle of the doorbell brought his head up. Peering at Luis over his rimless glasses, he smiled a greeting.

  “Blaho odpoledne. You come to my shop yesterday, yes? With the beautiful American lady?”

  “I did.”

  The shopkeeper pushed away from the desk and rose. “How may I help you?”

  Luis almost couldn’t bring himself to voice his request. It was so ridiculous, so outside the reality he lived and worked in every day, he cringed at the mere thought of what he was about to ask. Then he remembered Claire’s terrified face when he’d burst into her room last night and the words spilled from him.

  “Do you have any books dealing with methods to ward off evil spirits?”

  He half expected the shopkeeper to laugh in his face, or at least lift a politely derisive brow. Instead, the man nodded solemnly.

  “But of course. Prague is a very old city. Many spirits walk our streets. Not all of them are benevolent.”

  Luis didn’t really want to hear that. Still, he spent an intense half hour at the café on the next block, skimming the two volumes he’d purchased. What he read sent him on a determined search of several shops before he took the tram back up to the Savoy.

  The uniformed doorman recognized him on sight. Smiling, he reached to open the ornate glass doors.

  “Did you have a good walk, Colonel?”

  “Very good.”

  “Excellent. Welcome back to…er…”

  He broke off, his polite smile disintegrating as he caught a whiff of the powerful scents emanating from the plastic sack Luis gripped in one hand. The doorman shot a disbelieving glance at the bag before making a valiant attempt to recover.

  “Have, uh, a good evening, sir.”

  “Thank you.”

  Luis didn’t blame the man. His own eyes had been watering since his last stop at a small shop tucked away in a narrow lane in Prague’s centuries-old Jewish Quarter. Feeling two parts ridiculous, one part utterly determined, he made a beeline for the elevators.

  When the elevator door slid open, a couple of businessmen hurried across the lobby to get on with him. After one whiff, they took a sharp detour.

  Claire’s reaction mirrored theirs. She was coming out of her room when Luis entered the suite. Their paths would have crossed, if she hadn’t wrinkled her nose and taken a hurried step back.

  “What on earth is that stink?”

  Acutely embarrassed but determined to see this through, Luis lifted the plastic bag. “Garlic, for protection against vampires. Hair of a yellow dog, to ward off werewolves. Fennel root, to keep the dead in the ground where they belong. A knotted cord soaked in white clover and urine.”

  Claire’s jaw dropped. She gaped at him, utterly confounded for several seconds, then said faintly, “And you brought
all this back with you because…?”

  “For the same reason Father Milosec gave you the St. Benedict medal. To keep you safe.”

  Luis couldn’t believe he’d actually said that, much less hunted down all these absurd talismans. Yet the mysticism he’d ruthlessly suppressed for so many years now had him by the throat. Or more correctly, by the heart. That, Luis thought wryly, was what love did to a man.

  Depositing the bag on a table, he approached Claire. Enough stink came with him for her to blink several times, but she gamely stood her ground.

  “My head tells me we’re dealing with very human opponents, querida. Person or persons unknown who, for whatever reasons of their own, don’t want you to uncover the cause of Stacy Andrews’s nightmares. Yet, as much as I wish to, I cannot one hundred percent dismiss the ridiculous notion there may be other forces at work.”

  Claire bit her lip. Of all the strange and unexpected happenings that had occurred since her first call to the White House, this had to be the most bizarre!

  Was this really Luis standing there, giving off such a stench? Charming, sophisticated Luis? The hardheaded colonel who believed first in the skill of his troops and second in the strength of their firepower? Had he really resorted to hunting down charms and remedies straight out of the Dark Ages?

  “I know,” he said with a twist of his lips. “I hear myself saying these things and can hardly believe my ears. All the while I searched for these objects, I told myself I how absurd the hunt was.”

  Blowing out a long breath, he cupped her chin. “My only excuse, mi corazón, is that I would give whatever remains of my soul to keep you safe.”

  Her mind whirling, Claire tried to corral her chaotic thoughts. She’d seen this man in so many different guises. The lethal, no-holds-barred operative. The ultrasuave diplomat. The incredibly skilled lover.

  But she could never remember seeing him so vulnerable. In that moment, with his dark eyes holding hers and his hand ripe with an aroma that clogged her nostrils, she knew that she loved him. Wholly. Completely.

  Yet…

  Yet…

  Her precise, logical mind refused to shut down and surrender to emotion. An insidious whisper deep in her psyche reminded her there were no guarantees in life. Given Luis’s predilection for tricky and occasionally dangerous missions on his country’s behalf, he regularly put himself in the line of fire. She could lose him, too, as she’d lost Dave. Any day. Any op. This afternoon was a prime example.

  Could she survive another wrenching loss? Did she want to open herself to that kind of pain again by tearing down the last barrier and laying it all out there? Her head battling fiercely with her heart, Claire took refuge behind a smile.

  “No one’s ever brought me fennel or a piece of urine-soaked rope before. I’d kiss you for that, but I’m afraid I might gag. Why don’t you put that stuff out on the terrace and take a quick shower so I can thank you properly?”

  “I have a better plan.”

  He retrieved the bag and deposited it outside. When he strode back into the suite, he scooped Claire up his arms.

  “I’ll take a very long shower, and you can thank me by scrubbing my back.”

  The hot spark in his eyes suggested he had more than back-scrubbing in mind. Claire’s pulse leaped in instant response, and her belly went tight with hunger. After their near death at the castle, all thought of keeping the man at arm’s length during their mission had evaporated.

  “Sounds like a plan to me.”

  Her husky response spurred him to swift and very direct action.

  A swift kick sent the bathroom door back on its hinges. With a low growl, he set her on her feet and found the clip that held her hair in its usual neat twist. His hands were rough, almost clumsy, as he released the clip, but Claire barely felt the sharp pull on her scalp.

  Her pulse raced, and her hands were as clumsy as his. She had his shirt buttons undone and was attacking his belt, when he reached inside the open-stall shower and gave the control lever a swift twist. Water hissed against the glass-block wall. Before she guessed his intent, he tugged her inside fully clothed.

  Laughing, she kicked off her shoes and didn’t bother to protest the instant demise of her silk blouse. Especially when Luis backed her against the glass blocks. Her mouth open and greedy under his, she angled her elbows so he could peel off the wet silk. He tugged down the zipper of her slim skirt next. It slithered over her hips and landed with a plop on the tiles.

  “Have I told you how beautiful you are?” he growled as he cupped her lace-covered breasts.

  “Not recently.”

  “You, my darling, are exquisite.” He bent to drop kisses on her mounded flesh. “So smooth, so warm, so delicate. Like a porcelain figurine come to life.”

  Claire didn’t feel “smooth” or “delicate,” and she’d shot past “warm” five seconds after he tugged her into the shower. She was hot for him, blazing with desire. She drew his head up, intending to smother him with kisses, but Luis preempted her.

  “I meant what I said, Claire. I would give my soul to keep you safe from all harm.”

  “I know.”

  His dark eyes burned into hers. Blocking the water with his body, he propped a hand on the glass blocks behind her head. His soaked shirt molded his powerful shoulders. Rivulets ran down its open front and glistened on his bronze chest.

  “Marry me, querida. Let me love you. Today. Tomorrow. Always.”

  Claire swallowed. Hard. The fierce battle between cool reason and hot emotion still raged inside her. She wasn’t ready to declare a victor.

  But if not now, when?

  If not with Luis, then who?

  There was only one answer to that. She blinked the water from her eyes, dragged in a deep breath, and crossed her own personal Rubicon.

  “Yes.”

  His face took on a look of almost comical surprise. Silencing her inner battle once and for all, Claire smiled and framed his face with her hands.

  “Yes, I’ll marry you. Today. Tomorrow. Whenever you say.”

  She expected him to swoop in for a triumphant kiss. A savage light leaped into his eyes and she could feel the muscles quiver in the arm brushing her temple. But he exerted the iron control she so admired, and searched her face.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes,” she said again, loud enough for him to hear her clearly this time.

  Still, he held back. “Just yesterday you wanted to go slowly. What made you change your mind?”

  “The hair of a yellow dog.”

  His jaw went slack, but she was too hungry for him to explain the complex rush of emotion that gripped her. All she could do was hook her arms around his neck and plaster her body against his in a kiss that rocked both their worlds.

  Chapter 9

  Luis woke to the sonorous bong of cathedral bells, his woman curled into his side. He lay still for a few moments, savoring the feel of her sleek body nestled against his.

  In the hazy light of dawn, he couldn’t quite believe he’d blurted out a proposal last night, with no romantic lead-in or finesse. Much less that Claire had really agreed to marry him! Yet she had, and Luis was damned well holding her to that reckless promise—as he proceeded to inform her some moments later when her lids fluttered up.

  Propping himself up on one elbow, he brushed a strand of pale gold hair from her cheek. “Good morning, mi esposa.”

  The endearment produced a startled look, but she recovered with a smile. “Good morning.”

  “So, what are your thoughts on where and when we shall have our wedding?”

  “We kept kind of busy last night. I haven’t had time to think where and when.”

  “Think now.”

  “Can I go to the bathroom before we get into any heavy discussions?” she asked dryly.

  “As long as you come back to me.” He patted the mattress. “Here.”

  Sleep had coated Claire’s teeth with fuzz and her body still felt the aftereffects of a long
night of love, but the unmistakable invitation in his eyes gave her sluggish pulse a decided kick. It accelerated several notches during the short trip to the bathroom, only to hit a speed bump when she faced herself in the mirror above the marble sink.

  “Dear God! What have I done?”

  A flutter of sheer panic rippled along her spine. She suppressed the shudder almost as soon as it hit. She knew exactly what she’d done. She’d agreed to marry the man who refused to let her keep him at arm’s length any longer.

  The rationale for her decision came easy this morning. She’d been an observer for too long now. Too content to listen to other people’s doubts and fears. Too ready to sublimate her own needs in her practice, with the occasional adrenaline spike of her missions for OMEGA.

  “It’s time to get back in the game,” she told the tousle-haired woman in the mirror. “Past time!”

  And Luis was just the man to do it with. He challenged her. Aroused her. Irritated her immensely at times. But always, always, intrigued her.

  Gripped by a suddenly overwhelming impatience to get back to him, she splashed water on her face and grabbed her toothbrush. Mere moments later, she slid between the sheets. He welcomed her with an arm curled around her shoulders.

  “Are you ready to discuss arrangements now?”

  “Actually,” she countered, skimming her nails over the hair dusting his naked chest, “I have something else in mind at the moment.”

  He lifted a brow but didn’t argue. Relaxing against the pillows, he let her explore the planes and ridges of his upper torso. His loose sprawl tightened considerably when Claire ran her palm over his belly.

  The hair at his groin was thicker, stiffer. She used her nails again, lightly, teasingly, and smiled when he jerked to life under her fingertips. Her breath catching on a rush of pure desire, she cupped his sac.

  Claire emerged from the bathroom for the second time thirty minutes later. Showered, shampooed and dressed in gray slacks and her lemon-colored tank top, she had already shifted mental gears to the task ahead.