by Dana Marton
She’d come from the mansion. Sam was sure of that. And she was also sure she wasn’t there for a quickie with one of the security guards. She’d had business folders. Most likely, Philippe had called her for a meeting, then the lovesick guard had escorted her back to the guesthouse to plead his case.
The question was, what was so important to Philippe that he needed to discuss it with Eva in the middle of the night? Was she stressed out by that or by the security guard’s words?
Up until now, she hadn’t acted like a woman who would be distressed because a man wanted something from her. On the contrary.
But if her upset was due to Philippe—Sam stepped back from the railing. She would have given anything to find out what their meeting was about. Was the woman simply Philippe’s real-estate agent or was she more, an accomplice perhaps? Was she part of his shady businesses? Was she another link to Tsernyakov?
They had to find a way to figure out what had happened at the Cavanaugh mansion tonight.
SAM AND REESE WERE GOING for their morning run on the beach when they saw Eva and her boyfriend—a term that could be only loosely used as both had switched partners freely during the week—packing up their car. The boyfriend went inside for the rest of their luggage.
“I’d better go talk to her,” Reese said and left Sam to continue on her own. The strained silence between them had been driving him crazy, anyway.
He’d been up all night, an arm’s length from her as she tossed and turned, missing her body snuggled against his. He’d gotten used to her sleeping in his arms each night, even if he had carefully pulled away each morning before she woke. She hadn’t had any nightmares since that first time. Neither had he.
But tossing and turning and walking around wasn’t all she’d done the night before. He’d followed her onto the roof, making sure he was there if she needed him, making sure she got back down okay. She was sexy as hell, crawling in a crouch like a superspy in nothing but some skimpy sleepwear. If frustration could kill a man, he would be joyriding a hearse right now. What in the hell was wrong with him?
She was a contrast of vulnerability and strength, simmering hot beauty and innocence. Combinations that drove him crazy.
Why couldn’t he put her out of his head like he had been able to do with all the others since Natalie?
Because she isn’t like all the others.
Good luck trying to maintain professional distance when she was sleeping in his bed every night. The sooner the mission was over, the better. The temptation was getting too difficult to resist. He would see she got out safely then hop on the first plane back to Africa.
He kept his attention on Eva, who was leaning against the car, looking sullen. Sam had told him about seeing her leaving Cavanaugh’s place a little after 3:00 a.m. with a stack of folders, looking distraught. Chances were, Eva would be more likely to talk to him than to Sam, for whom she seemed to hold a politely veiled dislike.
If that didn’t work, their backup plan had been to break into her room when everyone was at the beach. Which seemed unlikely now since she appeared to be leaving.
“Morning. Need any help?” He put on the best, most charming smile he could eke out. David was the resident charmer in the family. Reese had no patience for putting up a charade and playing down the list of all those courtship rituals. Either someone liked him for who he was or they didn’t. According to David, he was a little rough around the edges. The assessment didn’t bother him a bit.
“You’re so nice to offer.” Eva’s smile didn’t reach her eyes.
“You’re not leaving early, are you?” He lifted a suitcase into the trunk.
“Business calls.” Now she looked decidedly annoyed.
He put a look of regret on his face. “Don’t you get to take a little vacation? Turn the phone off.”
“Wish I could.” She ran her fingers over her hair, assuring everything was in order. “But this cranky client, I need to keep. Can’t afford to tick off someone who brings in eighty percent of my business.”
“Right. We all have those.” He nodded. “So some big real-estate coup is going on? Are prices about to skyrocket? Should I buy a little something quick so I can be in on it?”
She shrugged and rolled her eyes. “Nothing’s going on. The man is just insane. One day it’s buy everything you can get your hands on, the next it’s, sell everything you can get rid of in a hurry, must complete all transactions ASAP. Like I’m some miracle worker and can offload millions of dollars’ worth of property in a matter of days.” She caught herself. “Sorry. Didn’t get much sleep last night. I’m a little on the cranky side.”
“Last one,” the boyfriend, Derrick, called as he came out the door with a suitcase large enough for a person to fit inside.
How much clothing did Eva need for a weeklong beach party? Sam had only brought a gym bag. He liked that about her, that she was a down-to-earth, no-nonsense, no-frills type of woman.
“Well, we’re off. Have fun.” Derrick nodded to him.
“Good to meet you both.” Reese shook their hands. “If I make up my mind about that vacation home near the beach, I’ll give you a call,” he told Eva. She’d been trying to talk him into one the day before.
“Please do.” She got into the open-top convertible. “You have my card. I’m about to list a dozen more properties. You could probably get a decent price since the seller is in a hurry.”
Derrick pulled away from the house and up to the gate.
Reese watched them leave before he turned and jogged back to Sam, unable to stop reflecting on the differences between the two women. Then he got angry at himself for doing nothing but thinking of Sam all morning. What was wrong with him? He was here to do a job.
He needed to keep that first and foremost in his mind.
“SO WE PRETEND that we had a fight and I’m going to cozy up to Cavanaugh out of spite.” Sam summed up her plan.
Reese put down his fork. He had inhaled his eggs in seconds. “I don’t like the idea. You agreed that whatever had to be done we’ll do together.”
She tried to be patient. “We can’t seduce Cavanaugh together.”
“You’re not seducing him.” His nostrils actually flared as he said that.
Well, duh. Not all the way. “What other choice do we have? We need information.” The call list on Cavanaugh’s phone had been informational, but didn’t net them an immediate connection to Tsernyakov. The last phone number they tracked belonged to a fictional businessman who worked for a fictional business at a fictional address in the backwoods of the Republic of Georgia. No other calls had been made before or since. Was Tsernyakov so paranoid that he used a new cell phone for every call he made? He could certainly afford it.
“What we know is that Cavanaugh likely got a call from someone who might be connected to Tsernyakov, or the man himself, the day before yesterday. Then last night, in the middle of the night, he decides to sell a bunch of property he owns on the islands. Why?”
“He got some interesting piece of news.”
“Why wait a day to act on it?”
“Maybe he wanted to get confirmation, or maybe he got another call.” Reese shrugged.
“Eva said he was obsessed with buying up property on Little Cayman. Now all of a sudden he’s selling it? Whatever he found out has to be big.”
“We don’t know for sure that he is the client Eva talked about.”
“Ninety-nine percent sure. She was with him till dawn, leaving with a stack of folders. Why would Philippe want to sell?”
“There could be a fantastic new investment opportunity somewhere else and he might need the money in a hurry, although that is not likely.”
“Why?” Seemed plausible to her.
“He has enough collateral. He could borrow from a bank or from one of his shady friends. Why sell prime property he had painstakingly collected over the years? And selling in a hurry won’t be to his advantage. He’s unlikely to get top price.”
“Then what
? Is he afraid something bad will happen?”
“That would be my guess. He found out that his investment might lose value.”
“Soon,” she added. “He is in a hurry.”
“We need to know what is going down and when. Okay?”
“Okay.”
He held her gaze. “We’ll have a fight.”
Chapter Nine
Tsernyakov’s body hummed with adrenaline as he walked through the doors of his suite. He’d been in the business for so long he had thought he’d seen just about everything. But this current deal topped it all. He was about to change the course of history. He loved the heady rush that came with the thought.
He set the box he’d been carrying by the door and kicked off his Italian-leather loafers, tossed his silk tie on the back of the Louis XIV chair in the foyer, his suit jacket on top of it.
Alexandra came from her room, wearing the cream-colored silk pajamas he had picked out for her on their last trip to Marks & Spencer. “It’s you.” Her face brightened at the sight of him.
“Can’t sleep?” It was two in the morning. “Are you well?”
She took a deep breath and pushed her hair behind her ears. “Fine. Just restless.”
So was he. He smiled. “I have a present for you.”
Her full lips stretched even wider as she came to him. “You don’t have to give me presents all the time.”
“I like seeing you smile.” He took her hand and led her to the box. “Go on, open it.”
Her squeal of delight told him that his present hit the mark.
“She is beautiful.” Alexandra was hugging the furry white puppy with the pink bow around her neck. “What kind is it?”
“Kuvasz. A rare Hungarian breed. They are endlessly loyal and fiercely protective.”
“She’s perfect. Thank you, thank you, thank you.” She pressed her lips to his cheeks.
And he decided that was no longer enough.
“I need to wind down. Want to watch a movie together and play with the puppy for a while?” He headed for his wing of the spacious apartment and she followed.
She sat on the floor with the puppy and he sat next to her. He’d been trying hard to keep up a youthful appearance. And it wasn’t all appearance. He was in good shape, had always taken care of himself. The two plastic surgeries designed to alter his face enough so video profiling at airports couldn’t identify him also took off a couple of years. And being with Alexandra made him feel younger.
He played along, watching her, laughing with her until the puppy finally knocked herself out and curled up to sleep in the middle of the antique Chinese rug.
He leaned closer to Alexandra and drew a hand down her silk-covered arm. “You grow more beautiful every single day.”
Her shy smile brought out a response in him. He’d been sitting there, mere centimeters away from her all night, watching the way her top hung on her pert breasts, the way the pants hugged her buttocks. She wore nothing under her pajamas. He was primed and ready.
“I have to confess something.” He looked away. “But I’m worried that it might ruin our friendship.”
“Nothing could ruin our friendship.” This time it was she who took his hand.
“The last few weeks, months, since you came into my life—I cannot tell you how much happiness you brought to me. I realize you probably can’t ever look at me as anything else but—I should never have told you this.” He held her hand. “I think I might be falling in love with you. There, now I scared you. I’m sorry.” He looked away.
“No. No. I just—” She sounded genuinely surprised.
He took advantage of that and leaned in for a kiss.
She didn’t push him away immediately. And then he made sure she wouldn’t. Her body was restless, her mind sleepy—the perfect combination. His hand came up and cupped her breast, and he was gratified to feel her nipple harden against his palm.
She had a healthy twenty-year-old body that responded well to skillful stimulation. And he had plenty of experience. Slowly, so that she was probably not even aware of what was happening, he pushed her down to the carpet. Tonight, he would get what he wanted.
“ONE OF PHILIPPE’S MEN IS TAKING everyone out for an afternoon of deep-sea fishing.” Reese was coming through the door.
Sam yanked the ruffled top over her head. She’d just changed out of her bikini to go to lunch at the main house. She caught a flare of heat in Reese’s gaze as he turned his back to her. Her pulse quickened. She kept her eyes on his wide shoulders as she pulled her shorts right over the bikini bottom.
“Sounds like fun, right? I’m done.”
He turned around, looked her over. “You look nice.”
How stupid that the small comment would fluster her. “Thanks.” She busied herself straightening up the room.
“The question is why.”
“Why what?” She looked at him.
“Why does Cavanaugh want everyone out of the way?”
“He has some business to take care of?”
He nodded slowly.
She considered that. “Maybe someone he doesn’t want us to see is coming here. Why would he have a party with a ton of guests if he is expecting some secret partner in crime?”
“Maybe it’s unexpected business.”
“I think lunch is going to make me sick to my stomach. I can’t go out on the boat like that,” she said.
He gave her an approving grin. “The attentive kind of guy that I am, naturally, I’ll stay to take care of my woman.”
Her heart gave a little thud at the “my woman” part.
THE TROUBLE WITH faking sickness was that she couldn’t be out there frolicking in the surf, keeping an eye on who was coming to see Cavanaugh. Neither could Reese, who was supposed to be holding her hand and all that. And they didn’t have a direct line of vision either to the front gate of the estate or to the front door of the mansion from any of the windows in their suite.
Reese watched Sam pace the living room. She was a bundle of nervous energy. “I think it’s time we brought out the secret weapon,” he said.
She stopped and stared at him. “How do we know where they’ll be meeting?”
“My bet would be Cavanaugh’s living room.”
“And if they used his office?”
He shook his head. “From what you said, it looked like his private lair. Had only one chair, his.”
She nodded, but still looked doubtful.
He understood. “There is no guarantee where the meeting will be, if there is a meeting. Could be he just wants a quiet day for himself.”
She took a slow breath. “But most likely, there is something going on. And if there is, it will be here somewhere. If he was going to an off-site meeting, he wouldn’t need to send everyone off fishing.”
He nodded.
“And if there is a meeting and it’s here, the most likely place is the living room. We have to prepare for the best possible scenario and have a backup plan in case plan A doesn’t pan out.”
He grinned at her. She was beginning to talk like Law and Tarasov. Obviously, she’d paid attention during her training. He had a feeling Sam paid attention to a lot of things. She was sharp and capable, quick on the uptake and not easily intimidated. He was as comfortable working with her as with his team, which was saying something.
“So I go over to ask for some antinausea medicine for you. When nobody’s looking, I’ll spray something in the living room with the microtransmitters. Then we hope for the best.”
“Are the odds always this long? In your work,” she asked.
“Pretty much. My mother tells me I gave her every single gray hair she has.”
“I bet.” She was smiling, shaking her head. “You seem like the wilder of the two.”
He took that as a compliment. “Wildest of the bunch. I have three sisters.”
She seemed surprised.
“Everyone is married, except me. Eleven nieces and nephews.” He wasn’t sure why he was
telling her that. He normally didn’t share any of his private life with the people he protected.
“So what’s it like to have a big family?” Her tone had a wishful tinge to it.
“Crazy.” He grinned. “Wonder why I spend most of my time out of the country?” But then he grew serious as he thought about them. “I love my family. They’re the most important thing to me in the world.”
“More important than your job?”
“No contest.”
“Are you close?”
“Very. Most of us live in or around Boston.”
“That must be weird,” she mused.
“We like to think of it as normal.”
“Didn’t mean it in a bad way,” she said quickly. “To me, normal just seems weird. You know what I mean?”
He nodded because he did, and wished it could have been normal for her in the past. His family would swallow her up, in a good way. Not that they would ever meet. And even if they did, could Sam handle the boisterous Moretti bunch?
“So what’s it like to have someone worry about you? Does it stop you from doing stuff?”
“Hardly.”
“Nobody ever worried about me,” she said pensively, then shrugged as if it didn’t matter. Then a moment later she was smiling and rolling her eyes. “God, that sounds like I’m wallowing in self-pity. I’m not. Really. There are plenty of people out there who have it a lot rougher than I did.”
“You’re not wallowing,” he assured her. And even if she were, she would be entitled to it. “And I do worry about you.” He pointed to his temple. “See this gray hair? I got it since we’ve been working together.”
She held his gaze for an endless minute, a range of emotions flitting across her face. Then she shut them off and put them all away, turning toward the window.
“You’d better get over to the estate before whomever Philippe is expecting gets here. They might not let you in later,” she said.
“YOU WANT ME to take over the hatchery?” the visitor was asking.
Sam pressed a finger to the chickpea-size receiver in her ear. Reese had a matching one. The inconspicuous little gadget could be ground into dust under the heel of a shoe in a fraction of a second if there was any danger of it being discovered. The matching set came with Ferrarella’s “secret weapon.”