She couldn’t, plain and simple. That road was a one-way trip to the Heartbreak Hotel. Not to mention career suicide, if she still had a career worth saving. Even leaving out his SVR credentials, he was a heavy-handed tyrant, complicated and arrogant. Even if he was also brilliant, sophisticated, canny, and a good ally in a tight corner.
Never mind that he was gorgeous, that the guy made love to her like world peace depended on it.
How many times had she promised herself she’d never wind up with a man who fired out orders and dictated every facet of life like her aristocratic father? And now she’d gone ahead and fallen for the worst possible guy, in every sense: professionally, politically and personally. Even though he was flat-out amazing…
No, this couldn’t be happening. If—against all odds—it was happening, she needed to stop it.
“Take your time,” he said gruffly, clearly thinking she was still broken up over her dad. Shit, she had to get a grip.
“Right.” She cleared her throat and pulled herself together. “At the time, I thought I was marrying Geoff for Dad’s sake. But later on, after he passed, I started to wonder if maybe I’d married Geoff because I was afraid to stand on my own at State. If maybe I’d married him just to lock in another protector for my career after Dad was gone.”
And if she’d needed any further evidence to prove that, yes, she was falling for Victor when she damn well shouldn’t—there it was. She never talked about why she’d married Geoff to anyone, barely even acknowledged it to herself. All this time she’d been worrying that everyone thought she’d married Geoff for protection. And she had, but she realized now that she hadn’t needed to. The only missing instrument in her professional toolbox had been self-confidence.
“Even if you married him to advance your career,” Victor pointed out, responding to her comment, “eventually you left the man. You must have been confident you could survive it.”
“Maybe.” Alexis rubbed her temples to ease the ache of tension. “But Geoff was a serial cheater, Victor, and everyone knew it. It was painfully obvious to the entire diplomatic community that I…wasn’t enough for him. Maybe I only left him to salvage my pride.”
“If the man thought that, he’s a bloody idiot,” he said gruffly, scowling as he worked the gears. She shifted in her seat to stay out of range, though what she really wanted was to move closer.
“Yeah, well, maybe I do need a protector. You’ve saved my ass at least twice in the past week.” She forced a laugh, tried to keep it light.
Perhaps you’re the one I can’t get along without. Though I’ll have to manage that trick, won’t I?
“You did well today, Alexis.” Thank God his attention was on the road, because she hadn’t been doing a great job so far keeping him out. “Excellent technique, and an unusual degree of flexibility. You more than compensated for your opponent’s superior strength.”
“Thank you, sensei,” she murmured, trying to tamp down a buoyant lift of pride.
“Although you need to know how to fire a pistol,” he said relentlessly. “When we stop for a stretch, I’ll show you.”
“I don’t think that will be necessary.” Apprehension rushed through her at the thought of trying to handle that ominous-looking Walther PPK, with its lethal payload. You’ll end up the same way as Chris. “Probably we shouldn’t, ah, waste the ammunition.”
“There are spare magazines in the pack.” He shot her a searching look that told her she hadn’t fooled him. “I’ll help you squeeze off a few rounds. There’s nothing to be afraid of.”
“I’m not afraid,” she said tightly, turning away to stare blindly through the passenger window. “I simply don’t think it’s necessary.”
“A gun is just a tool, Alexis. I keep mine in perfect working order, and it’s entirely safe. You’ll be safer yourself if you know how it works.”
Time to change the subject. “Your own martial arts technique was pretty impressive back there. Frankly, I’m wondering if there’s anything you’re not good at.”
She’d meant the question to be flippant, to steer the conversation back to safe terrain, away from the deep emotional currents that were sucking at her. When the silence stretched, she snuck a glance at him. A muscle was flexing in his jaw, and she realized she’d hit another nerve. He was quiet while he dug out his cigarettes and lighter.
“Growing up, I spent a lot of time alone,” he muttered around the Davidoff he’d clamped between his lips. “No woman in the house, no siblings, and my father was often at sea. Had to fill up the days somehow.”
Yeah, there’d been some question in his dossier about the utter absence of a mother in his life. She hated to call him on it, despised that she might be doing it to bulk up his file. But wasn’t that the only solid reason to get into his personal life?
“So?” she pressed gently. “Your mother…?”
“Left when I was eight.” The lighter flared as he lit up. “We didn’t hear from her again. I’m told she died while I was at sea with my first command. Really, I barely recall her.”
And his wife had left him too. Jesus, no wonder the guy was a loner.
Obviously he shared her desire to find safer terrain, because he started talking about diving, evidently a favorite among the skills he’d learned to fill the empty hours. He described the sensation of floating in liquid sunlight, warm turquoise water lapping against the skin. The bright flash of coral against powder-white sand. The glitter of a thousand crimson fish reversing course on a breath.
Apparently it was pretty different being encased in seven thousand tons of double-hulled steel, knifing dark and silent through arctic seas, more than a hundred men who worked and fought and sometimes died at his command. He made her feel the power and the crushing weight of responsibility. The way he’d felt when every nerve and molecule in the body fused to achieve an impossible mission.
He didn’t say as much about how he’d felt when he lost his command, the devastating shame and guilt of having his boat yanked away for an act of treason he hadn’t committed. A perception that was purely a function of what he was—a man of mixed descent, and his father’s son.
When he fell silent, she watched him pilot the hatchback, his hands quiet and confident on the wheel, burnished hair falling over his forehead as he drove, electric-blue eyes narrowed on the road.
Aware of her scrutiny, he slanted her a wary glance. “Organizing your thoughts for my dossier, Ms. Castle?”
Screw the dossier, she wanted to tell him. You’ve achieved another objective for the Motherland, Captain Kostenko. Because I’m pretty sure I’ve fallen in love with you. And, if I have, it’s going to be me that’s screwed.
CHAPTER TWELVE
When Victor pulled off the barren stretch of highway onto a thread of unpaved road, a fresh prickle of apprehension crawled through Alexis. Warily she glanced around at the dark green-and-gray mass of coniferous forest as their road burrowed into it. Beneath them, the tires whirred and spun through snowdrifts which clearly had never seen a plow. She guessed he wasn’t driving them away from the faint footprint of habitation in Russia’s cold-blasted wilderness for a bathroom break.
Several minutes later, when the hatchback crawled off the road and nosed into a secluded clearing, her suspicions were confirmed. Killing the engine and rummaging through the battered backpack, Victor shot her a keen glance.
“Ready for a bit of target practice, Counselor?” he said briskly, in the voice of a submarine captain ordering a rookie crew to weapons practice.
Alexis hunched into her coat and stared through the salt-crusted window at the hidden clearing, striped by bands of blue shadow and pallid sun. As arctic cold crept through the car and dispelled the heater’s faint warmth, she shivered.
“I’m not sure this is a good idea, Victor. I’m, ah, probably breaking some Russian firearms law if I even touch a gun without a permit.”
“No one’s going to arrest you here—or even know you’re practicing. I promise not to t
urn you in.” Pointing the muzzle away from them, he checked the Walther PPK with sharp, efficient motions. “There’s nothing to be afraid of, Alexis. I’m going to take care of you.”
Despite the fear lodged like a lump of oatmeal in her belly, she noted the confident way he handled the weapon, and some of the tension eased its clamp on her shoulders. She knew he wasn’t going to let anything happen to her. If he’d wanted to hurt her, or see her detained by the Russian security services, he could have let the goons have her, or just dropped a word in the ear of the suspicious Kholodnogorsk militsia.
Well, she’d wanted to liven up her staid government life with one last adventure, hadn’t she? A tingle of reckless courage swept through her, firing her system like a vodka shot hammered on an empty stomach.
“You’ll have to show me what to do.” She swung her door open.
By the time he’d identified a broad-trunked pine tree for their target and positioned them at a range that satisfied him, her misgivings were trickling back. She listened but said little while Victor explained how to handle the PPK, giving extra attention to its safety features.
Still, when he offered her the gun, muzzle down, she thrust her hands deep in her pockets and took a step back. Pure reflex, but she found she couldn’t overcome it.
Hating her fear, she said hoarsely, “Sorry. But I’ve changed my mind.”
Beneath his sable hat, a furrow dug between his brows as he studied her. Feeling defensive over her failure, she looked away. She wasn’t used to backing down from a challenge, damn it, but Chris…
“All right,” he said calmly, after a moment. “You don’t have to fire the pistol if you don’t want to. How about if I show you how to hold it safely? You never know when you might encounter one, and at least you can avoid having it go off by accident.”
She flinched, the long-ago memory of those stark police photos flashing before her eyes. When she’d visited Chris’s parents after the funeral, the crime scene photos had been left on his father’s desk—
“All right,” she whispered, breath frosting white as she chafed her arms for warmth. “Show me.”
Making no sudden moves, giving her the space she needed, Victor came around behind her, the bulwark of his body protecting her from the icy wind. He nudged up against her, showing her how to stand, arms wrapping over hers as he settled the pistol in her hands. Murmuring instructions, he showed her how to hold the deadly weapon—dark muzzle pointed away, both arms extended straight before her toward the target.
Despite the nervous hammer of her heart, the realization seeped through Alexis that she felt safe in his arms. His steady strength pulsed through her like sonar, his warmth buffering her against the biting winter air. His gloved hands wrapped around hers to hold the weapon steady, tucked her index fingers around the trigger. When an errant gust of wind pushed her hood off, his measured breath heated her ear and ignited shivers of another kind, low in her belly.
“Very good, Alexis,” he murmured, his unshaven jaw rasping against her neck. “You’re doing well. Just take a few moments now to get used to it.”
I’ll never get used to the way I feel when you touch me. Incredibly, Alexis found herself worrying about her hygiene. She’d had no shower since yesterday, obviously, and the locally-made toiletries she’d found in that tiny cave of a drugstore had been basic at best. But the gun’s cold weight in her hands seemed less terrifying, with Victor behind her to ensure the thing didn’t go off by mistake.
“Now tell me,” he whispered in her ear, “what are you afraid of?”
She swallowed against her dry throat and reached down deep for the story no one else had ever asked for. Giving herself no leeway to consider and veer away, she launched into the story quickly, skimming over the residue of dread and old grief that filmed her memory.
“It happened when I was twelve years old. I had my first boyfriend, just a crush really, on the boy who lived next door. He was the only child of a prominent politician, smart and cute, a little older than I was. All the standard qualities of a good crush.” She attempted a laugh, but it sounded strained. “One day during summer break, while his parents were away, Chris was hanging out with a friend in his father’s study. Somehow they’d found his father’s hunting rifle, and they were…fooling with it. It went off, of course. Just an accident, but Chris’s friend shot him. I heard the shot next door—so loud—it was so loud, Victor. And I was home alone.”
She drew a shaking breath, and Victor’s arms tightened around her.
“You’re all right, Alexis.” His voice was low and gentle as he nuzzled her neck. “That was a long time ago.”
“Oh, I know. I hardly even think about it anymore. But when I saw that gun in your backpack—” She steadied herself, and went on. “When I heard the shot, I called 911, and then I called Chris. But no one answered next door, and of course I wasn’t about to walk over there. When the police arrived, they found the other boy hiding, and Chris—well, basically, they found his brains all over the study floor. He’d been shot in the head.”
“That must have been traumatic.” Victor’s rough-shaven cheek rubbed against hers, and the familiar dry perfume of tobacco filled her nose. His hands were steady around hers, holding the gun in check, pointed safely away. “Perhaps his father should have paid a bit less attention to politics and a bit more regard to firearms safety. He should have locked his toys up. But that’s not going to happen to you, Alexis, because you’re getting the training your friend never had.”
Nodding her agreement, she filled her lungs with the searing cold and tucked her faded memories away where they belonged. Steeling herself, she told him she was ready to try a few rounds.
When she finally nerved herself to squeeze off a round, the explosion of sound echoed through the trees and made her ears ring. But the wide open space seemed to absorb the noise. Her first few shots went wide of the target, but she began accustoming herself to the feel. When the chamber was empty, he showed her how to reload it. When her next shot bit into the tree’s scaly bark, she surprised herself with a cry of triumph.
Five minutes later, she was firing without Victor’s support behind her. Still leery, but knowing that if she followed his guidance and paid attention, she’d stay in control, and nothing bad would happen. Her last three shots burrowed deep in the tree, two high and one low.
When she’d emptied the chamber and placed the pistol carefully on a nearby stump, exhilaration was singing through her body. Spinning around to face him, she couldn’t suppress a grin of victory as she met his cobalt gaze. “I did it!”
“Yes, you did,” he murmured, reaching to smooth back the tumbled hair from her brow. A look of fleeting tenderness softened his Slavic features as he tugged her warm hood up around her face.
Pulled toward him by that tender look, Alexis took a step forward—and stopped herself barely in time from walking straight into his arms. Damn it, she’d been ready to hug him, to share the exuberance of her achievement and her gratitude with the guy who’d helped her do it.
But she needed to remember that Victor Kostenko wasn’t her boyfriend. He was the man directly responsible for the incriminating photos that had just turned up on her desk in Moscow. The guy who was setting her up for a bruising fall. And she’d better not forget it.
_____________________________________
Several hours later, Alexis wrapped up her phone call with the Consulate at the St. Petersburg hotel where Victor had scored them a suite for the night.
Not just any suite, she amended, glancing at her surroundings. The spacious expanse of hardwood floors gleamed with the silken sheen of Persian carpets. Royal blue walls were lined with enough Russian Impressionist paintings to make any collector drool. An oversized vase of creamy roses perfumed the air above the dark luster of a baby grand piano.
She’d watched Victor glide through the front door of the best hotel in the city and grab one of the top suites without a reservation. Even though the desk was telling everyo
ne else this was high season, and the place was sold out through Christmas.
She’d watched Victor slap down a platinum credit card from Russia’s biggest bank to cover the tab. Then snuck a look at the monitor and eyeballed a four-figure price at the current exchange rate—just for a one-night stay.
“I can’t do this!” she’d hissed on the elevator, as the deferential butler escorted them to their suite. “There are strict regulations limiting the value of gifts a U.S. government employee can accept.”
“This does not surprise me.” The maverick sub captain was utterly indifferent to regulations, of course.
Alexis closed her eyes and prayed for patience. “Victor, the limit I’m allowed to accept is twenty-five dollars.”
“What do you want to do, Alexis?” His tawny brows lifted. “Do you wish to wait on the sidewalk until midnight for Mr. Chase to arrive, with his Chechens? Recall, if you will, that it’s December in St. Petersburg.”
By which he meant that it was forty below out there, with a nasty wind knifing in from the Gulf of Finland. And Geoff still wasn’t picking up her calls.
So she’d assuaged her guilt by scheduling a full day of meetings for tomorrow to work through the complicated logistics for the President’s visit. She’d figure out when she returned to Moscow how to report this unauthorized largesse.
And she needed a serious talk with Victor about where all this money he splashed around was coming from.
When she checked her office voice mail, she found another message from her financial planner in New York, sounding a trifle tense as he asked her to return his call. As soon as she got back to Moscow, she’d dig out her latest monthly statement and ring him. She’d noticed her mutual funds hadn’t been performing so well in recent months, but she’d never paid much attention to Wayne Castle’s financial legacy. Willfully ignored it, in fact. Her father had been an investment wizard, and the account balance he’d left behind was more than she’d ever need, even after Geoff’s settlement.
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