Mission: Irresistible

by Lori Wilde

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  “WHEN I GET OUT OF THE CAR, I WANT YOU TO SLIDE BEHIND THE WHEEL AND DRIVE IMMEDIATELY TO THE NEAREST POLICE STATION.”

  Harrison ducked his head and fumbled for the door handle. Round the back of the Volvo, shove up the trunk lid, grab the tire iron, and start swinging.

  Cassie unsnapped her seat belt, leaned across the console, and planted a kiss on his scarred cheek.

  He was so startled that he jerked his head toward her, and her mouth slipped from his cheek to his lips. Lush and full and ripe and sweet. Throbbing and heated and humid. His mouth sizzled as Cassie’s tongue glided over his lips. Nibbling, licking, tasting, teasing.

  And then a fist knocking hard against his window slammed Harrison back to reality. He jerked his head toward the driver’s-side window, expecting to see a knife-wielding carjacker, a brass-knuckle-wearing loan shark, or members of the Minoan Order … their faces hidden behind Minotaur masks.

  To my cousin Ginna, you’re the best! Love you bunches.

  To the people who painstakingly helped me brainstorm this book—Carolyn Greene, Jamie Denton, and Hebby Roman. Thank you for your high tolerance for my whining. Your insight and talent astound me.

  And to my research team who came through like gangbusters—Fred and Maxine Blalock. Keep surfing the Net!

  PROLOGUE

  Egypt, Valley of the Kings

  Sixteen years ago

  Who is my father?”

  It was late. The oil lanterns burned low, casting flickering shadows against the walls of the tomb of Ramses IV. The air smelled of dirt and musty decay. Nothing met sixteen-year-old Harrison Standish’s question but the sound of a shovel steadily scooping sand.

  Except for the armed security guards posted outside the pyramid, he and his mother, Diana, were the only ones left at the excavation site. The rest of the archaeologists, dig workers, and college students had long ago returned to their quarters at the university compound.

  They were searching for the lost grave of Ramses’s oldest daughter, Kiya, and her lover, Solen, a Minoan scribe sold into slavery to the Egyptians. According to lore, Solen and Kiya had been separated by Ramses’s vizier Nebamun. The Egyptian title of vizier was a very important position, administratively just under the pharaoh himself. In fact, a vizier could even be elevated to pharaoh, often by marrying into the royal family.

  For his loyal service, Ramses had promised Nebamun Kiya’s hand in marriage, but when the vizier found her in Solen’s arms, he poisoned them in a jealous fit of rage.

  Nebamun had buried each lover separately with one-half of a magical brooch amulet in an attempt to avoid the curse Solen cast upon him with his dying breath—even though he’d been too superstitious to destroy the amulet entirely. Mythology held that if the two rings of the brooch were ever brought together again, Solen and Kiya would be reunited in the Underworld, and Nebamun’s descendants would be forever damned.

  For months Diana had been working from dawn until midnight. She was immersed, focused, fixated on her goal. She glanced over at Harrison. Her eyes shone with a feverish light.

  He pushed his glasses up on his nose and held his breath. Would she answer him this time?

  She did not. Her jaw tightened and she returned her attention to what she was doing, squatting on the ground, meticulously sifting through sand.

  “Was my father Egyptian?” he asked. “Is that where I get my coloring?”

  Scrape, scoop. Scrape, scoop.

  “Mother?”

  “He was an asshole,” Diana said. “You’re better off not knowing him.”

  “What about Adam’s father?” Harrison asked, referring to his younger half brother.

  “What about him?”

  “How come he gets to know his dad?”

  Diana groaned, rocked back on her heels, and lifted a dirt-stained hand to brush a lock of blonde hair from her forehead. “Because Tom Grayfield insisted on being part of Adam’s life.”

  “And my father didn’t insist on being part of mine?”

  It was a rhetorical question. The absence of a father was explanation enough.

  “No. Your father was already married. Already had a son. Although I didn’t know that when I met him.” The bitterness in Diana’s voice echoed throughout the cloistered chamber.

  “Oh.”

  He swallowed the ugly information. His biological father was married to a woman who wasn’t his mother. His father had another son. A son he obviously liked better than he liked Harrison.

  Disappointment weighted Harrison’s shoulders. Slowly, he rose to his feet.

  “Look, son.” His mother’s tone softened. “You’ve got to trust me. For your own good, stop asking questions.”

  “But I need to know the truth.”

  “Why?”

  “Because everyone deserves to know where they come from,” he said.

  “Does this have something to do with your little friend Jessica? Are her hoity-toity parents refusing to let you date her because they don’t know your heritage?”

  His face flushed hot. He fisted his hands.

  “I must be right,” Diana scoffed. “You’re blushing.”

  He did not reply. He was too angry, too frustrated, too confused. He sucked his emotions deep inside his lungs, held them down with the indrawn breath, and stared at his mother. He couldn’t believe she had withheld such vital information from him for so long.

  “I deserve to know. I’m sixteen now. A man.”

  “Okay.” Diana relented after a long pause. “I’ll tell you this much. Your father was born of noble blood, and he holds a very powerful position.”

  Harrison expelled his breath along with his emotions. He felt as drained as if he’d sprinted fifty miles without stopping.

  And as empty.

  “Did you ever love my father?” he asked.

  Diana snorted. “Love is for suckers. What you’re feeling for Jessica is nothing more than raging hormones and teenage angst. Take my advice. Forget about her. Concentrate on your work, your schooling. Science will free your mind. Not love.”

  It was as if his mother had sliced open his head, peered inside his brain, and voiced his greatest fear out loud. He loved Jessica with an intensity that scared him, but he didn’t like out-of-control feelings. They clouded a man’s reason, and he thought of himself as a reasonable man.

  But his heart refused to stay silent. Something unexpected inside him rebelled against logic. Something wild and scary and exhilarating.

  “You’re wrong. I love Jessica, and she loves me.”

  Diana shook her head. “My poor, naive boy.”

  “If you don’t believe in love, then how come you’ve spent your entire life searching for Kiya and Solen to prove the legend of the star-crossed lovers?”

  “Is that what you think we’ve been doing?” She looked surprised.

  He shrugged. “What else?”

  “Harrison, all these years I’ve been trying to disprove the legend.”

  “I don’t understand.” He frowned. For as long as he could remember, his mother had been consumed by the story. How could he have been so mistaken about her motives?

  “H
aven’t you been listening?” Diana clicked her tongue. “There’s no such thing as soul mates and undying love. No such thing as love at first sight, or even second sight, for that matter. It’s all romantic bullshit concocted to entertain the masses. When we find Solen and Kiya and join the two pieces of their amulet together again, absolutely nothing is going to happen.”

  He blinked at her, incredulous. “You dragged Adam and me to Egypt when we could be having a normal life, staying in one place, making friends, all to prove nothing?”

  “Exactly! Now you understand.”

  “Nihilism. How Nietzsche of you, Mother.”

  “Don’t get smart.”

  “Why not? Apparently intelligence is the only quality you value.” Harrison pivoted on his heel and stalked toward the exit.

  “Where are you going?”

  “Back to the campus. To see Jessica. To tell her how much I love her. Because I’m not bitter like you. I do believe in the legend of the star-crossed lovers. I do believe in love.”

  “Don’t do it, Harrison. It’s a mistake,” she called after him, but he just kept marching.

  Tonight he would take a chance. He would give Jessica the promise ring he’d been carrying in his pocket for three weeks. Waiting for the courage to speak what was in his heart.

  In the illumination from the fat yellow full moon high in the velvet-black sky, he rode his bicycle into town. His stomach was in his throat. He wanted this. He did, he did. He was no longer afraid.

  I love you, Jessica.

  Thirty minutes later, he pedaled through the gates of the university, his pulse pounding in his ears. He parked his bike in front of the girls’ dormitory.

  He intended to sneak around the side of the building and throw pebbles at her window to wake her up, the way guys did in romantic movies. He stuck his hand in his pocket, fisted his fingers around the delicate promise ring. The smooth feel of it gave him courage.

  Jessica, Jessica, Jessica.

  He started across the veranda, but then he spied a couple locked in an embrace on the porch swing. He shuffled to the right, giving them a wide berth, but a familiar scent caught his attention and stopped him in midstep.

  Cherry blossom cologne. Jessica’s signature scent.

  He froze, rooted to the spot, to that horrible moment in time. Harrison stared while the young lovers kissed.

  They must have sensed his presence, because they raised their heads, and in the bright moonlight he saw clearly the thing he most did not want to see.

  Jessica in the arms of another guy.

  And not just any guy, but his half brother, Adam.

  The emotions were too much to handle. Betrayal, anger, disappointment, bitterness.

  He shut down his feelings. Shut down his heart and stalked away.

  “Harrison, wait,” Adam cried out. “It’s not what you think.”

  But it was. They both knew it.

  At that moment Harrison realized his hand was still clenched around the promise ring. With a curse, he pulled it from his pocket and flung it into the darkness.

  Mother had been right all along.

  Love was for suckers.

  CHAPTER 1

  No question about it. The mummy was following her.

  Cassie Cooper slipped past King Tut, who was chatting up Nefertiti beside the lavish hors d’oeuvre table, and cast a surreptitious glance over her shoulder.

  Yep.

  There he was. Peeking from behind the Sphinx’s chipped nose, his mysterious dark eyes following her as she meandered around the main exhibit hall of the Kimbell Art Museum.

  Stifling a triumphant grin, she readjusted her Cleopatra Queen of the Nile headdress, which kept slipping down on her forehead and mussing up her wig. Just to tease, she moistened her lips with the tip of her tongue.

  Who was lurking beneath the swaddling linen?

  Her pulse quickened. She had a lot of admirers. No telling who was in the costume.

  Maybe it was an old flame. Maybe a new one. Maybe it was even a stranger.

  Goose bumps dotted the nape of her neck.

  A mystery. How exciting.

  Don’t let yourself get diverted. Forget the distractions; you’ve got a job to do.

  The voice inside her head sounded exactly like her straight-arrow twin, Maddie.

  Cassie sighed in wistful longing. Apparently she missed her sister’s lovable nagging so much that her own conscience had taken over the job. She was happy Maddie had married her true love, hunky FBI agent David Marshall. What she wasn’t so thrilled about was David’s getting promoted and dragging Maddie off to live in the urban wilds of Washington, D.C.

  Focus on your goal.

  Okay. All right. She was focusing.

  Cassie turned her back on the mummy and managed to tamp her libido down a smidgen. If she had any hope of landing her dream job in the public relations department of the Smithsonian, she would have to make sure this charity masquerade to promote the legend of the star-crossed Egyptian lovers exhibit went off without a glitch.

  After getting laid off as the PR director for Art World Today magazine four months ago, she’d been grateful just to get her old job back at the Kimbell, but now her wanderlust had kicked up again. She was hungering for something new and different. Cassie wanted the change not only because bagging the Smithsonian represented the pinnacle of her career, but also because she would get to live near her twin again.

  Unfortunately, achieving her dream job would require a glowing recommendation from her new boss, Phyllis Lambert. And old Prune Face was not her greatest fan. In fact, if Cassie hadn’t been instrumental in helping capture the charming art thief who had robbed the Kimbell the previous year, she knew Lambert would have convinced the board of directors to show her the door.

  She must perform flawlessly. All she had to do was keep her mind off Mummy Man and firmly fixed where it belonged.

  On the party.

  With a discerning eye, she assessed the room. Exotic Egyptian music trickled through the state-of-the-art surround sound system. Large navy blue banners with ivory lettering adorned the walls of the exhibit hall. Underneath the lettering on each banner was the amulet’s double-ring emblem, encircling an embossed silhouette of two lovers kissing beneath a blanket of golden stars.

  “UNDYING LOVE,” declared the banner along the north wall. “INTRIGUE” bordered the south. “DANGER” flanked the west. “BETRAYAL” along the east wall, completed the quadrangle.

  Tuxedoed waiters moved throughout the assembly carrying trays of champagne. Armed security guards manned the exits. Caterers dished up bacon-wrapped water chestnuts, assorted puff pastries, grilled prawns, Russian caviar, and the finest pâté.

  Cassie had spared no expense. A hundred patrons of the arts had shelled out a thousand dollars apiece to witness the reunion of the ill-fated lovers separated in death for the past three thousand years.

  Great. Perfect. Everything was running like a precision Swiss timepiece as they anticipated the arrival of the guest of honor, the illustrious Dr. Adam Grayfield from Crete, who was bringing with him Solen’s portion of the exhibit.

  Until then, Cassie found her concentration drawn irresistibly over her shoulder again. She scanned the guests, searching for the mummy.

  Impromptu romance had landed her in trouble more times than she cared to count, but she couldn’t seem to help herself when it came to the first rich blush of potential amour.

  Putting an extra wiggle into her walk just in case the mummy happened to be watching, Cassie sashayed over to where several high-profile patrons, an eminent Egyptian from the Ministry of Antiquities, and various members of the press were clustered around a red velvet cordon. They were oohing and aahing over the feminine segment of the main attraction.

  Princess Kiya’s sarcophagus and the section of amulet found among her artifacts.

  The amulet, displayed on black velvet draped over a granite pedestal, was nothing spectacular to look at. After all the fanfare, seeing the amu
let in person was a bit of a letdown. The talisman was a simple half-dollar-sized copper brooch, and there was a small jagged tear in the pliable metal ring where a second circle had long ago been ripped away.

  Kiya was patiently awaiting the return of her Minoan lover, Solen.

  Tenderness clutched Cassie’s heart. Damn, she was a sucker for romance. But secretly, while at the same time she dreamed of finding her own true love, deep down she was conflicted about the reality of such intimacy. The whole one-man-for-the-rest-of-your-life thing gave her the heebie-jeebies. For crying out loud, how did a girl ever know for sure if the grass wasn’t greener in another pasture?

  From her peripheral vision she caught furtive movement through the crowd. The mummy was creeping closer. He was most definitely following her. He edged around a collection of canopic jars before ducking behind a guy in a hawk mask dressed as Horus the Sky God.

  Aw, he was shy. How sweet.

  She was normally attracted to bold, daring types, but there was something about shy guys that made her feel all soft and squooshy and maternal inside.

  Face it, Cassie, Maddie’s voice teased inside her head. You have a talent for finding something to like about any member of the opposite sex.

  True enough. She did love men.

  Well, except maybe for the annoying Dr. Harrison Standish skulking at the back of the room. He was petulantly tossing from palm to palm that odd miniature replica of an ancient Egyptian battery that he always carried with him. She tilted her head and met his gaze. He glowered at her through the smudged lenses of his round, dark-framed glasses.

  Dr. Standoffish. That was what Cassie called him behind his back.

  The truth was, the guy intimidated her with his intellect. He was a Rhodes scholar, and he used so many big words, she often felt the need to lug a dictionary around with her just so she could figure out what he was saying.

  Harrison had arrived from Egypt the previous Monday with Princess Kiya and her artifacts in tow, giving Cassie dark and brooding looks right from the beginning. Two years ago he had resurrected Ramses IV’s oldest daughter in the Valley of the Kings, and ever since then he had been diligently searching for her eternal soul mate, Solen.