Honeymoon with a Stranger

by Frances Housden

  Besides, she’d heard nothing to suggest the man had followed her, no shambling footsteps that signaled his approach.

  The open square she’d crossed appeared dependent on the windows facing down into it for light. Luckily, the bleak weather had kept people at home and the lights showed her the way as she ran.

  By now, she’d come to the sensible conclusion that the man was un clochard, one of the homeless, who’d been sheltering in the entrance to escape the worst of the weather.

  Still breathing hard, she stood at the foot of the stairs and heard a door close, and wondered which floor the men ahead of her in the gloom had been going to.

  As the apartment door closed, Mac decided that for the moment, he had nothing to fear from these wiseguys.

  The dealer running Zukah and Co. was asking an arm and two legs for the weapon, and only the wealthiest terrorist groups could afford that kind of lump sum.

  Al Qaeda hadn’t come sniffing around as far as IBIS knew, but then they preferred their weapons to go off with a bang, not the whimper of dying vegetation.

  That was one of the few facts on Mac’s side.

  The Palestinians couldn’t afford it, and since most of North Africa was pretty barren, anyway, the Israelis weren’t interested.

  No, this weapon was designed to turn lush green countries, thanking God for their daily bread, into yellow deserts.

  From what he’d been told, one miniscule drop could do more damage than a planeload of Agent Orange had done in Vietnam.

  Perching on the arm of the only easy chair, Mac nonchalantly waved Zukah toward the sofa. “Asseyez-vous.”

  “I prefer to stand.”

  Stubborn, Mac concluded as the Algerian held his ground, the two men with him ranging themselves on either side like a pair of fierce black cats guarding a king’s ransom.

  The closemouthed Frenchmen weren’t strangers to Mac. He’d seen them at previous meetings, always dressed like twins in dark suits and ties.

  Mac stood, saying, “Your choice. Have you brought the goods?”

  Zukah sniffed derisively, and had Mac still been seated he would have looked at him down the length of his nose.

  “You think I would carry it around in my pocket? I am not foolish. It would be far too dangerous. I enjoy living in la belle France. If I had a passion for desert sands I could have stayed in Algeria.”

  Mac caught a hint of something in Ahmed’s explanation that tightened the skin at the back of his neck.

  Damn, the weapon sounded worse than he’d heard. “It’s really that potent?” he probed. “I was led to believe its specifics named grain crops, wheat, corn…?”

  The Algerian shrugged. “Believe what you like. I refuse to take chances…and, anyway, I haven’t decided who gets it yet.”

  Mac whirled toward the door. “Then don’t waste my time!” he snarled, privately wondering if another buyer had come on the scene to make his life more complicated than it already was.

  Roxie took the stairs on the other side of the courtyard entrance and began to climb. A mumble of French drifted down from an upper landing, then cut off abruptly.

  Though it was dark enough to make her want to hurry, she took her time, just in case the men she’d seen thought they were being followed. At this time of night most deals being done in Le Sentier would be dirty.

  At the top of the first flight, the sign on the door facing read Claudette’s Lingerie. Not as startling as it might sound since Le Sentier was the garment district of Paris.

  Halfway up a third flight, she heard raised voices and, nearing the top, was relieved to see light leaking under a door.

  Her pace quickened with revived confidence,

  Charles had trusted her to do this for him.

  She hurried the last few stairs, the four-inch heels of her boots sounding an uneven tattoo on the wooden treads.

  The Algerian soon made it known he hadn’t done with Mac. “I want to know what makes this your fight? You tell me you want to bring the Russian bear to its knees, yet you were born in America.”

  Zukah spoke urgently, the soft sibilant accent of his home-land making it hard to follow. “The Cold War is over and those two old enemies are already swapping pillow talk. I would be a fool to take you at face value.”

  Mac’s tempered flared; though he kept his voice low, it sounded harsh, in keeping with the role he’d taken on. “When you were selling guns, did you always ask who your customer was going to shoot with them?”

  Mac had learned to be particular about his cover story, to fit into the skin of the character. Lip curling, he asked, “In your small conflicted world, did you ever hear of Grozny?”

  Zukah gave him a blank stare, but Mac noticed one of his men nod as if remembering the siege.

  Mac’s nose flared as he looked down on the Algerian. Zukah had a lot of native cunning but obviously wasn’t interested in events that didn’t affect him personally.

  “Not that it’s any of your damn business, but my mother’s family were there. Not one of them survived the siege.” A single step brought Mac chest-to-chest with Zukah. “So, you might say I have a large stake in acquiring that weapon.”

  It was a one-sided pissing match with only Mac speaking, but he continued, “And before you sell to someone else, it would be in your best interest to discover the punishments we mete out to those who cross us Chechens.”

  The uncomprehending expression reminded Mac that a threat was redundant if the one being menaced lived in blissful ignorance, but the same guy shifted his feet as if in discomfort.

  Mac reckoned it would pay to remember which one could be more easily unsettled, anything that gave him an edge.

  Not to be outdone, the Algerian blustered, “And we have to be sure of your—” All at once Zukah broke off and as one their heads turned in the direction of the swift footsteps outside.

  Mac spat out a curse and cast a murderous glance toward the door, wondering what else could go wrong. “If this is another trick, Zukah, it doesn’t sit at all well with me, so be warned.”

  It was silent as Roxie crossed the landing, as if someone had turned the sound down on a TV. Roxie put her ear close to the door and heard nothing. Not a sound.

  It could be the wrong apartment.

  She knocked lightly. Nothing.

  About to reach for the handle, she hesitated, thinking it could be very awkward if she was wrong. Then told herself, don’t be a coward. All you have to say is you’re looking for Madame Billaud, the seamstress who’s doing some specialized work for Charles Fortier, the couturier.

  Everyone had heard of Charles.

  Yes, if she made a mistake, she would simply ask them to redirect her. She tried the handle.

  The door to the apartment opened easily. She took a deep breath and called loudly, “Bon soir. C’est Roxie….”

  The rest of her announcement stuttered to a halt in the face of a deadly looking gun. She blinked in the bright lights for a few seconds, and still none of the men facing her spoke a word.

  It was she who broke the ominous silence by blurting out, “Bloody hell!” in English, the second of the languages she’d grown up speaking.

  The gun never wavered an inch.

  Not even when the thin, hollow-cheeked man grabbed the shoulder she was desperately trying to ease back through the open door. He pulled her into the room.

  Her eyes winced at the sudden transition from dark to light. But all the same, it looked as if she’d stumbled into the middle of a home invasion.

  Four strange men and one solitary woman. Latent instincts stirred in her brain, telling her that the danger she felt could come from more than just a gun.

  Chapter 2

  At first, Roxie’s shocked eyes merely grazed the others in the room. Now her gaze lit on the largest man, who held it with the fierce, glittering-gold intensity of his own.

  She drew a shuddering breath to still the mind-numbing fear crawling under her skin.

  The Kincaid family never sho
wed weakness, and Grandmère had bred strong women. Yet she doubted if they’d ever met anyone like the huge, broad-shouldered man dominating the others.

  Not with physical force, but by the leashed power of his expression and the glittering light in his eyes.

  Consumed by a frantic need for survival, she latched onto the notion that this was the man to deal with. The one who could mend the faux pas she’d made by barging in without permission.

  Might this be the time to mention her muddle with the directions?

  As though in a dream, she watched the big man’s lips purse, a wry expression softening the sharp angles of ruggedly blocked features. Handsome features.

  She felt hypnotized, compelled to react, though her intense response to the fiery shimmer in his eyes lost its impact when she felt the thin guy holding the gun tighten his grip on her.

  It was as if she was caught in limbo, between sheer unadulterated terror and bewilderment. Pick one.

  Her intuition told her it was entirely reasonable to expect the big guy to take her fear in the palm of one large hand and crush it into extinction.

  But what did he want, expect, from her in return?

  Yet, he was the antithesis of everything she’d built her career around. Miles away from the tailoring that made her designs work and had caught Charles’s eye at her grandmother’s funeral.

  Madame Fortier accompanied Charles to Père-Lachaise, the old Paris cemetery where Grandmère had been buried. It was then Roxie discovered that Grandmère and Charles’s mother went way back, even before they fought together in the French Resistance.

  That meeting had changed Roxie’s life.

  And though she had left the London School of Design for Charles’s workroom to a chorus of it’s-not-what-you-know-it’s-who, Grandmère had brought her up to be practical, not stupid.

  A survival trait she’d always managed to adhere to until now. She stared at the guy with slicked-back hair, designer stubble and a black leather jacket that shouted “Biker!”

  She must be mad. Her normal reaction would be to run a mile, not beg for this huge stranger’s help.

  “Roxie.” When he spoke, none of the softness she had noticed before lingered in the rasp of his voice, but he knew her name!

  It took a second to remember he’d heard her call out.

  “Didn’t I tell you I would be out tonight and not to bother me?” Once he’d spoken her name, each dry consonant that followed cut her hopes into rags with the sharpness of a knife.

  Through the mists of apprehension clouding her mind, she perceived he expected something in return for the verbal lifeline he had thrown her…but what?

  She metaphorically reached out with trembling hands, certain beyond all reason that her future depended on her response. “I saw the light from the courtyard…and, I thought…that, well I would surprise you.”

  He strode lazily toward her, as she desperately tried not to cower while watching him pocket a gun that hadn’t registered with her before.

  And though her every instinct screamed it was a bad move, her hand flew to her lips as her stomach somersaulted nearer to her mouth.

  Behind him, the narrowest hand on the utilitarian clock counted out what might be the last seconds of her life.

  His long legs covered the distance in half the steps it would have taken her. But she wasn’t fooled by the perception of indolence; this big man was more dangerous than the razor-jawed creature holding her shoulder.

  “So, chérie,” he drawled as he halted in front of her, “I guess I surprised you instead?”

  His fingers prized her hand away from her mouth as she nodded, unable to deny the obvious. Then her head whirled as the man she hoped was her savior grabbed the wrist of the one holding her.

  Without effort he sent both clinging hand and its owner spinning back a few feet. “Your kind of help we can do without.”

  Such blatant force was alien to Roxie. In fact, she’d never encountered even a suggestion of the energized enmity circling, gathering, waiting to ambush them all without provocation.

  Her hopes took a dive as the shortest man of the group barked out, “Who is this woman? Why is she here?”

  She hoped the big guy had a good explanation up his sleeve, for she was too frightened to see past her blunder, or to worry how annoyed her boss was going to be with her when she reported back, if ever.

  With his leather-covered arm casually circling her shoulders, Roxie’s heart raced out of control.

  Her designated protector gave the appearance of nonchalance, yet she wasn’t too dumbstruck to notice the hand closest to his gun was kept free, as she stared at the broad-palmed hand cupping her shoulder.

  Dark gold hairs softened the wide sinewy shape. His fingers were long, blunt-tipped, more like a carpenter’s than a gunman’s.

  As she glanced across at the other armed men, she wondered if his hand was large enough to hold his life as well as her own.

  “This is ma petite amie.” Girlfriend. He directed the conversation to the fat man. “If you’d waited where we originally arranged, her being here wouldn’t be a problem. But if it bothers you, Zukah, speak up.”

  Roxie was scared out of her wits, yet as she was pressed close to his side as he uttered his unequivocal statement, and though the situation more closely resembled a funeral than a wedding, she wanted to say, “Or forever hold your peace.”

  Though trembling inside, she felt grateful this man had ranged his overwhelming presence on her side.

  By the tension in the air, she could tell the game they’d been playing when she arrived hadn’t been going too well.

  She mentally crossed her fingers.

  Dear God, please let her be on the side of the angels.

  The Algerian made a grudging concession. “As long as she doesn’t interfere in matters that aren’t her concern, she’d better stay.”

  Angels, she decided were in a minority of one.

  She looked up, hoping for reassurance as the big guy’s fingers squeezed her arm to attract her attention.

  “You’ve always known what I was, chérie,” he said, “Though you tried to ignore it. Now the blinkers are off, tell me once more.”

  Utter confusion made her stammer, “T-tell you what?”

  “Say, I still love you, Mac.” Wow, she knew his name.

  Her heart climbed back to her throat, fluttering in panic.

  Uh-uh, this wasn’t the time to be chickenhearted. She would say the words as if her life depended on it.

  Which it just might?

  Fear of failure sent her pulse thundering in her ears as his face lowered to hers. Massive shoulders loomed, shaded her.

  Unpredictably, his open jacket seemed like a place she could hide. Her throat felt bone-dry, unused. “I still love you, Mac.”

  “That’s better,” he murmured.

  The touch of his mouth was cool, dry and almost impersonal. Yet too much to ask of synapses scattered by feeling herself being lifted as if she were no bigger than a doll.

  Her hand clutched a fistful of supple leather to make it look real as well as for support. They were being watched.

  She clung as she’d never clung to a man before, praying her association with this man named Mac wouldn’t make her continue the wild, scary ride that had begun with staring down the muzzle of a gun.

  Mac was fit to be tied.

  It wasn’t often he allowed himself be cornered, and until now he had never been locked into an impossible situation with a woman hardly big enough to be an armful.

  He’d brought it all on with his insistence he meet with Zukah’s boss. His mistake was evident the moment the Algerian agreed, saying, “You will of course consider yourselves our guests.”

  Right about then, Mac felt the trap close.

  Hell, he personally didn’t give a damn. He wanted to meet the fourth man, but he’d lumbered himself with an unknown quantity, albeit a frightened one who trembled like a mouse facing a cat.

  All he knew abou
t her was her big gray eyes had made his heart constrict and take pity on her. Bizarre reactions from a guy who hadn’t known he could feel that stupid kind of emotion.

  To cap it off, Zukah had failed to mention they would be unarmed guests, though if his head had been on straight he would have realized.

  The Algerian waved his pistol around laconically as if directing his foot soldiers was an effort. “Jean-Luc, collect his weapons and, Yves, you can search the woman.”

  Comprehension that they were about to be taken hostage had come slowly to Roxie. He caught the first flash of new panic lightening her eyes to silver as she turned, hand tightening on his sleeve while the Algerian concluded his gruff orders to his men with, “Vite, vite.”

  If she could read his mind she’d have even more reason to be apprehensive. No way could he allow her to act on the impulse he sensed racing through her.

  A moment’s madness on her part could send a month’s work crashing down on him.

  This was his game and they’d play it by his rules.

  He didn’t have time for niceties, or considering her sensibilities as if she were indeed simply someone who had blundered into a fraught situation, which he didn’t believe for a moment.

  He pulled her closer, whispering words as harsh and hard as their meaning in her ear. “Don’t you dare try to escape. They’ll shoot you like a dog and I’ll let them because today’s horoscope said nothing about taking a bullet for a beautiful bimbo.”

  So? He wasn’t actually sure about the beautiful, and most likely the bimbo was out of line, but his words had the desired affect.

  Her face darkened as he let her go, and now it was a question of which one of them she was more annoyed with, him or Zukah.

  Relieved, Mac watched her shoulders straighten as she pulled herself together, instead of hiding her face inside her high-collared coat.

  Bottom lip pouting, she lifted her chin. Mac sighed. Looked like he might have whispered the magic words to put some much-needed fire in her belly. Anger suited her better than panic.

  About time, too. Mac had never been a great believer in coincidences. Roxie’s arrival at his door couldn’t have been accidental. No woman in her right mind wandered around the back streets of Le Sentier in the dark without a special reason.