The Black Sheep and the English Rose

by Donna Kauffman

  “So many cameras,” he said, and visibly shuddered. “I do not like spotlight.”

  “Don’t worry about that. The cameras are for us. Would you like to see your son? And your mother?”

  His face brightened, and he looked terrified all at the same time. Tears made his eyes glassy. “They know?”

  Finn nodded. “They’re at the house. They just arrived.”

  “My sainted mother…” Dmitri crossed himself, and Finn wondered if he knew just how like his mother’s that mannerism was. “She flew in that?” He nodded to the smaller helicopter.

  Finn smiled. “She’s a pretty amazing woman, your mother. She’s held your family together.”

  Felicity stepped forward and put her hand on Dmitri’s arm. “You’ll be proud of them. They are proud of you.”

  A single tear tracked down his heavily wrinkled cheek. It wasn’t so much age, as stress and extended exposure to the sun, that had weathered him so badly. They’d found him on a small island in the Caribbean, working on a banana plantation. Finn hoped that his next plane ride would be taking him back home to Greece.

  “Come,” Finn said, “let’s go inside. If you need some time—”

  “No,” Dmitri said quite adamantly. “I am nervous, yes, but there has been enough time. Too much time.” He shook his head and walked with his ambassador down the path. “Too much time,” he repeated.

  Finn welcomed the other ambassadors and thanked them for coming. “I’m not sure we’ll need you to say anything on camera, but your presence will go a long way.”

  “You’re stepping up to the plate and doing what’s right and to hell with the rest,” the U.S. ambassador for Greece said gruffly. “We need more patriots willing to do that. I’m happy to be here.”

  Felicity stepped up and spoke with the U.S. ambassador to the U.K., whom she knew personally from her work with the Foundation. Then, with Finn, they led the small contingent to the house. “What do you think is going to happen with the necklace and stone once this is over?” she whispered under her breath. “Theo still wants it, and Alexander wouldn’t talk about it.”

  “I don’t know,” Finn said. “I’m hoping that the magnitude of what is about to happen here today puts their families’ ancient histories into some kind of perspective and they come to an equitable solution.”

  “Theo has the family Bible, and all the proof about how the Capellas ended up with the Roussos’ family heirloom. So the Capellas can see it firsthand.”

  “He does. We’ll have to play it by ear on when or if we’re going to pull that out.”

  “But—”

  They reached the house just then, and Rafe met them at the side door. He merely lifted a questioning eyebrow and glanced at the group behind Finn.

  Finn lifted a shoulder as if to say, “Who knows.”

  “We’re all set to go live at five o’clock. Did I mention how much I hate the circus?”

  “You did. Several times,” Finn said dryly. More seriously, he added, “Elena, is she okay? I know this is a little close to home with what she went through—”

  “She’s fine. More than fine. Is there anything else you need?”

  “Just baby-sit the ambassadors—”

  “I’ll stay, too,” Felicity said. “A familiar accent won’t hurt. Besides, they don’t know how to act around me now that the word has spread about my clandestine activities. I can use that to my advantage.”

  Finn smiled. “Oh, I’m sure you can. Then I’ll leave you to it.” He turned to Dmitri. “Are you ready?”

  He nodded decisively.

  “Okay, then. Come with me.”

  Felicity leaned up to give Finn a quick, reassuring kiss on the cheek, and she patted Dmitri on the shoulder, then turned a most charming smile toward the ambassadors. “Gentlemen, if you’ll follow me, we have drinks and a light lunch waiting for you.”

  Rafe leaned close to Finn as he passed. “I don’t know how you managed it, but don’t screw that up. She’s the only woman I’ve met who can not only keep up with you, but probably surpass you.” He grinned. “I’m kind of liking that.”

  “Careful, funny man.”

  Rafe kept smiling, quite unrepentantly. “I’m bulletproof these days.”

  Finn laughed. “Yeah, smug bastard.”

  “Don’t worry. You two will figure it out,” he said, then followed Felicity into the small salon they’d set up away from the madness.

  He hadn’t spoken to Rafe or Mac about his worries regarding his future with Felicity, but it didn’t surprise him that they’d picked up on it. He smiled, and gestured for Dmitri to follow him. And prayed Rafe was right.

  Two minutes later he encountered Sean outside the door to one of the other quiet rooms they’d set up. “Mac just got word that Theo changed his mind. He’s getting a bit spooked now that it’s almost time. So I’m going to get him. That okay?”

  “More than okay.” He clapped Sean on the shoulder. “Thanks.”

  Sean smiled and nodded at Dmitri, then excused himself.

  Finn looked down at the shorter man, who was clearly bracing himself for what lay on the other side of the door.

  “They both love you. And you love them,” Finn told him. “You can’t go wrong with that foundation.”

  He jerked his gaze up to Finn’s, then nodded, rubbing his palms on his pants. Finn opened the door, and Dmitri walked in.

  There were several other people in the room. Kate and someone Finn took to be the translator he’d hired to help them understand what everyone else was saying, particularly during the press conference. But from the almost instantaneous sobbing and hugging going on in the center of the room, he didn’t think it was going to be immediately necessary.

  Alexander looked over at him, then back at his father, tears streaming down his face. “Thank you,” he mouthed.

  Finn nodded, and thought Theo probably didn’t have much to worry about. Alexander had gotten his family back. Finn didn’t think it would take much work to persuade him to give Theo back his.

  Mac stuck his head in the door just then. “One hour to showtime.”

  “We’ll be set. Where are Julia and Reese?”

  “Next door. The area around the tent we pitched to hold the damn thing is mobbed.”

  “And the A team—”

  “Security is in place. Don’t worry. I got the best.”

  “I’ve got plenty to worry about, but that’s not on the list.”

  Mac smiled, and smacked him on the shoulder. “Don’t worry, man. I’ve seen the way she looks at you. You’ll figure it out.”

  Then he vanished, leaving Finn to wonder if he had a freaking neon sign blinking over his head.

  He watched over the Capellas reunion for a few minutes longer, then left Kate to monitor that while he went back down to get Felicity. He wanted to go over things with her, Reese, and Julia one last time before they went in front of the cameras.

  There were men and women stationed all up and down every hall, outside every window, every door, on the roof…which might have been security overkill, but considering the bombs they were going to drop today, he was happy to have every bit of protection they could get.

  Felicity met him at the door to the salon. “It’s ridiculous, because it’s almost over, but I swear I’ve never been this nervous in my life.”

  He rubbed her arms and pulled her out of the open doorway, into a guest bathroom across the hall. A security agent was already silently moving into place in front of it, even as he closed the door between them. Finn blocked Felicity from turning on the light, pulling her instead into his arms and kissing her more passionately than either of them had had the energy or privacy to do since they’d left San Francisco what felt like eons ago.

  They were both a bit breathless when he finally lifted his head, but he was already crowding her back against the sink, and she was shifting so she could sit on it and pulling him between her legs, without either of them having said a word.

  “I mis
s you,” she whispered heatedly. “I know we haven’t been apart for more than five minutes in the past three days, but I miss you. Terribly.”

  “I know, me too.”

  “We shouldn’t be doing this,” she said, even as she was unbuttoning his shirt.

  “I don’t know if I can get through the next twenty minutes without an extended taste of you.” He pushed her back so her head rested on the mirror over the sink. “Let me…”

  “Finn, I want—” Then she stopped talking all together as he pushed up the full skirt of her dress and slid his hands up her thighs.

  “We both need,” he said, then proceeded to take care of just that, and to hell with the damn security agent. He leaned over and kissed her as his fingers trailed up the inside of her thigh and stroked her through the silk of her panties. Their tongues dueled, while his fingers stroked, and he drove her up to the edge, and beautifully over, still kissing her even as she was shuddering through her climax.

  “God, I miss you,” he said, pressing his forehead to hers. “I’ve just barely gotten you into my life, and into my world here, so I don’t know how I can feel so—”

  “I know,” she said, and pressed a kiss to his jaw, then the side of his neck. “I absolutely know.”

  He lifted his head. “We’ve had no time, to talk, or…anything, but it’s not because I don’t want—haven’t thought—I have, I just—”

  She laughed softly then. “Me, too. And we will. After…” She shuddered again, only this time not with pleasure. He gathered her close, and she slid to her feet and folded herself against him. “What if…What if it goes horribly wrong?”

  “It won’t,” he said. “It can’t. Once we put it out there for the whole world to know, and can back it up with proof, you’ll be too public to be a target. And the real targets will be too busy facing down their own interrogations to have any time to do anything else.”

  “I miss home,” she said. “I miss London. But I’m not looking forward to going back.” She tucked her head closer as he tightened his hold. “It could take a long time, a lot of questioning, and I don’t know what my latitude will be, but—”

  Finn tipped her chin and silenced her with a gentle kiss this time. “I do have the luxury of latitude.”

  “You’re still planning on coming back with me?”

  “For as long as you’ll have me.”

  “But—what about your work here?”

  “We’ll work it out. I won’t let you go through it alone, Felicity Jane.” She started to balk, but he kissed her again. “Let me put it this way, I don’t want you to go through it without me. I don’t want to sit an ocean away. I want to be with you. As much for myself as to support you.”

  “Well,” she said, the humor he loved so much finally coming back into her voice, “when you put it that way, I’d be a shrew not to allow it.”

  “Exactly,” he said and, for the first time, allowed himself to believe what Mac and Rafe had been telling him all along. Maybe it would work out. Somehow.

  “Come on,” he said. “Showtime.”

  Chapter 26

  “Vultures,” Felicity said as she passed through the great room.

  Finn immediately turned off the television, where he’d been watching the incessant coverage of the fallout still falling out even two weeks later. “I don’t know how you stand it,” he said, never more sincere. “England is beautiful, this place is amazing, but it shouldn’t be a prison.” And yet it was. Just on the other side of the gated drive was a scene on only a slightly smaller scale than the media chaos at Dalton Downs that had started this whole thing. “I know you explained to me that it was different over here, with you and the press, and…”

  She crossed the room and sat in his lap without pausing, uncaring that it creased her designer suit or mussed her perfect, lawyer-approved hair. Which was exactly why he would put up with ten times the insanity if that was what it took.

  She put her arms around his neck and smiled, wearily, but truly. “Brits adore gossip. We make what you all do to Britney and Paris look like child’s play. It will die down eventually, but, as I told you, as a Trent, and a high profile one at that, due to Foundation business, it’s always a bit like that, especially when I’m out and about. And now they learn I’m a secret agent? Or was? It’s simply too, too delicious, you know. They really can’t help themselves.”

  He framed her face. “You’re worth it.” He kissed her, then said, “But maybe we can bring Sean over. No offense to Foster, but we could use a better defensive driver getting around town.” Foster was the Trent family driver who Finn was fairly certain had personally been with the family for generations. Four or five, at least.

  Felicity smiled at that. “Shh, you’ll hurt his feelings.”

  “We could be sitting in his lap, and I doubt he’d have heard me.”

  She tried to look scolding, but couldn’t quite pull it off. Finn was more distracted by the lines of fatigue etched in her forehead and fanning out from around her eyes. “What more did your lawyer—barrister—have to say?”

  “Solicitor,” she corrected him. “The barrister is advising the solicitor, but he doesn’t—oh, never mind. He’s hopeful that we’ll have a ruling shortly, but I’ll be expected to be available for further questioning, and, eventually, for testimony if necessary. He wasn’t sure what kind of travel freedom I’d have, or when I’ll have it.”

  Finn just hugged her. He knew no one was wearier of the whole thing than she was. “No word from or about Julia and Reese?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Are they keeping them apart, still?”

  “Last I heard. Which is ridiculous, since they’ve allowed you to be here with me.”

  “I’m not a rogue agent like you are, honey,” he said, bussing the tip of her nose when she scowled at him. “But I agree, it’s not fair for them. I would—well, I don’t want to think about what I would or wouldn’t do if I was being kept from you until God knew when.”

  “I’d go mad,” she said quietly, then laughed a little at herself. “A far cry from that independent woman I was when I last left here.”

  “You haven’t lost your independence,” he said. “You’ve just gained an advocate, that’s all.”

  The way she looked at him then, as if he was her own personal warrior, made him feel capable of being just that. He would have gladly gone striding from the room to personally slay each and every dragon if he could have. It still struck him every day how deeply he felt about her, how profoundly what she was going through affected him.

  And he wouldn’t have it any other way.

  “What about Rafe and Mac?” she asked. “Things okay on the homefront?”

  Homefront. He’d sworn to himself back at Dalton Downs that he’d be here to support her, to defend her, to help her, to do anything she asked of him. But the one thing he’d vowed not to do was pressure her, or even bring up their future beyond the madness they were enduring as everything got sorted out, post-bomb-dropping.

  But there were times when it was mighty challenging. It was his nature to see things to their conclusion in the most direct, satisfying, and expeditious manner as possible. Those were the principles he applied to his business life. And he wasn’t really equipped with any other way to go about achieving his goals than the ones he used day-to-day.

  “What?” she asked, tilting her head to the side. “You have that unfocused look again.”

  He smiled, and pulled her more tightly against him. “Rafe faxed me some case files to look over.” He felt her tense a little.

  “That’s…good.”

  He laughed. “That was the most unconvincing affirmation ever.”

  She lifted her head, and though she tried to look amused, he was stunned to see her eyes grow a bit glassy. “I know, that was horribly selfish. I can’t expect you to give up your life for me, and you’ve done that already for far longer than you should have, which also puts an undue burden on your partners, and—”

 
; He cut off her stream of worry in the most effective and pleasurable way he knew how. But gently, this time. She was so strong, and so tireless, in doing what she knew she had to do, but she was also human, and worn out, both emotionally and physically. Which was where the teary eyes came from, he was sure. When he finally broke the kiss, he said, “He faxed me case files to look over so I could give him feedback and opinions on which ones to consider more seriously. Not cases I need to go home to take on personally.”

  “I’d understand if you had to,” she said, but the way she’d relaxed against him when he’d assured he wasn’t leaving said otherwise. Not that she wouldn’t be understanding, just that she didn’t want him to leave.

  That made two of them.

  “I am sorry, that this makes things harder on you.”

  “We’re fine. That’s the luxury of being your own boss and picking your own cases.” And then it occurred to him that he didn’t need to stop considering cases at all.

  She lifted her head and looked at him again.

  “You read me too well,” he said, but he was really starting to like it. She was very in tune with him, which made him look forward to taking on new work and bouncing ideas off of her like he did with Rafe and Mac.

  “The wheels are spinning so fast I’m surprised I don’t see smoke,” she said.

  “I—I just had an idea, that’s all.”

  “About?”

  “You. And me. But it can wait. Until after this has settled down and we know what is what.”

  “You know what would help? Giving me something to think about beyond this madness. It’s so all-consuming. I mean, yes, I’m still working on behind-the-scenes Foundation business, but given everything, they are talking about the possibility of hiring someone to run the day-to-day with me remaining a more private advisor.”

  Finn’s eyes widened. “Why? When did that happen?”

  “Conference call right before the solicitor’s call.”

  “I know the media glare is crazy right now, but, that’s your family’s trust; they can hardly—”

  “They’re right,” she said quietly. “And you know what’s worse? I think I’m relieved.”