She was undressing for the shower, her back to the camera. Totally unaware that anyone was keeping an eye on her.
He swallowed hard as she tossed aside her workout pants and eased off her panties. Her ass was perfection—and those legs…
He swiped at the sweat that popped out on his forehead and blamed the sun and leather jacket he was wearing, but he couldn’t pull his gaze from the PDA.
“Mixmaster. Come in, Mixmaster,” Lucia called out over the earpiece.
“What is it, Red Rover?” he snapped as Elizabeth slipped her fingers under the band of her sports bra and eased it up and over her head, displaying the long sweet line of her back, the flare of her breast as she bent to toss the bra and T-shirt on her bed.
“Bad, bad boy, Aidan. You’re supposed to be looking at the flowers.”
Cursing beneath his breath again as he realized Lucia was observing him, he shut off the video feed on the PDA and returned to camera mode so he could snap off a few photos for additional review. He would send them in via the satellite uplink in his PDA. “Copy, Red Rover. Prep yourself. In half an hour you can try and pick the locks if you’ve got the backup.”
“Walker should be here shortly,” she advised and Aidan extended his search for the foxglove to the front yard. Like the gardens in the back, this was a riot of colorful flowers mixed with green leaves and accented with foliage of burgundy, white and gold.
Nothing resembled the foxglove, and Elizabeth would be down shortly.
He strode across the front yard and was stalking around the corner of the building when he noticed a patch of plants with little spikelets of flowers that weren’t quite purple in his book. More a deep rose color, but the blooms were bell-shaped. As he bent and examined the leaves, he realized they were fuzzy. Fuzzy probably passed for hairy in the plant world and foxglove was supposed to be hairy.
Upon closer examination, he realized that the plants had at one time had another larger, central stalk. It prompted a recollection from the materials Lucia had downloaded for him—it was common to cut down the main flower spike after it was past its prime to produce a secondary flowering.
Bending, he took a plastic evidence bag from his pocket and, careful to use the bag to safeguard the integrity of the sample, snipped off leaves from a few different plants. He also took a moment to snap a picture.
“Find something?” Lucia questioned.
Aidan nodded, aware that she would see him via the garden camera. “You might say the mother lode. Let Walker know. I’m e-mailing you all the pictures now for someone to examine.”
He placed the bag back into his pocket, quickly dispatched an e-mail with the digital photos, and returned to the backyard, settling himself on the low stone wall to wait for Elizabeth.
When she emerged, she nearly took his breath away. White capri pants emphasized those amazing legs and slim lines. A white crop top with pink polka dots left most of her sculpted midriff exposed. Her thick mass of hair was tied back with a pale-pink scarf, pulling his attention to her amazing eyes and the full lips he had liked kissing so much the other night.
Damn. She was dressed to kill and as her gaze met his, he realized it was not by accident.
She didn’t know why she had chosen this particular outfit, but the flare of heat in Aidan’s eyes proved she had made a good choice. That is, if she wanted whatever was happening between them to progress to the next level. Which her daring side was thinking she might, immediately before her more repressed side argued that it was totally insane. Daring side being ahead two to nothing at this point.
Reaching into the denim drawstring bag she was using as a purse, she pulled out her keys and dangled them before him. “We need to get the car. It’s garaged a few blocks down.”
He fell into step beside her as they walked to the main street and then toward the docks. They had gone only a short distance when she stopped by the garage next to the fish shop her parents had used to own.
Aidan seemed quick to pick up on that, for he asked, “Your parents’ old store?”
With a nod, she slipped the key into the lock on the garage door. “After they died, a cousin took over running the shop in exchange for buying it out. It helped pay some of the bills.”
“But not all?” he questioned.
“Not all,” she answered truthfully. If Aidan was after something other than time with her, best he know now that money wasn’t necessarily something of which she had a lot. The restaurant turned a profit, but only enough for her to be comfortable.
When she reached for the handle to lift the door, he said, “Let me.”
She stepped aside and he grabbed hold of the garage door handle and lifted the door to reveal her father’s prized roadster.
Aidan let out a low whistle. “That’s a beauty. What is it?”
She walked into the garage and ran her hand lovingly over the hood. “A 1962 Gaston convertible. It was my Da’s.”
Sleek and sporty, the car screamed speed, she thought, and lovingly ran a hand over the smooth line of the driver’s-side fender.
Aidan walked around the car, smiling. “This is a classic. Eight-cylinder engine. Chrome fenders, exhaust and spoke-wire wheels. Even the racing stripe,” he said with the unadulterated glee of a boy on Christmas morning.
“Da’s pride and joy. Silvershire’s finest, he said. I even bought one of the Gaston new hybrids a few years back, but gave it up to keep this one.”
“I can see why,” he replied and ran his hand along the buttery-smooth leather of the passenger seat.
“Help me put the top down,” she replied after Aidan had finished his inspection of the roadster.
He did as she asked and once the top was down and secured, eased into the passenger seat. She started the car and even with its age, the engine was as smooth as ever. She made it a point to have the car regularly serviced as her father might have if he was still alive.
Wheeling the low-slung roadster out of the garage, she turned onto the road leading away from town and Aidan looked at her quizzically. “Where are we headed?”
“Everywhere and anywhere. Just trust me,” she said, smiling as the sun shone down on them and the wind blew into the cab of the car as she picked up speed.
Aidan’s gaze met hers, and for a moment it seemed as if he was wondering if he could trust her. As quickly as that emotion came it fled, and he was grinning at her, his blue eyes even more startling in color in the bright sun and clear, cloudless day. He settled back into the leather seat of the Gaston, and she turned inland, deciding to save the coast road for the afternoon trip home.
Besides, they were going to have to do their shopping if she was to have fresh things for the restaurant and something they could eat for lunch. Maybe even dinner together if the day turned out right. She wouldn’t consider that breakfast was a possibility. She had not met a man special enough to stay overnight in quite some time.
She drove along the woodland country roads for a quarter of an hour or so until they neared the prince’s retreat. As they passed the tall wrought-iron gates that marked off part of the grounds, Aidan asked, “Is that private property?”
Peering toward the gates, she said, “It belonged to the prince, God rest his soul.”
“Funny thing for you to say,” Aidan quickly replied.
“Why do you think that?” she wondered, but kept her attention to the road. Deer were quite common in these woods as no hunting was permitted on the royal estate.
“According to Kate, you believe he’s responsible for what happened to your mother and father,” Aidan said, his tone almost…condemning.
She finally shot him a glance out of the corner of her eye, trying to understand where he was coming from. Wanting him to know just where she stood on the topic of the late prince. “People like him…don’t care that their fun might hurt others. So that makes him responsible in a way.”
With a shake of his head, he stressed, “But the royals don’t get treated like you and me. If he did dru
gs, he and his friends were never going to pay for what harm they caused with that.”
He was almost baiting her, wanting her to admit she had wanted the prince dead. When her parents had first died and the investigation had apparently been shut down by the royal family’s minions, she had wanted to understand why and she wanted retribution. Had been prepared to seek it out herself. But then reason had replaced her anger and she had realized that eventually whoever was responsible would get what he deserved. If Reginald’s drug habit had started that early, his life had probably been hell anyway.
“Whether on this plane or another, Reginald was eventually going to face the consequences of his actions,” she finally answered, but her response did little to appease Aidan, she realized as she shot another quick glance at him. If anything, his face grew harder and a muscle clenched along his jaw.
When he spoke, his words were curt and filled with pain. “If it was someone I cared about, I’d want him punished. Now, and not in some afterlife.”
The emotion was so intense, it compelled her to stop the car. After she did so, she faced him and laid her hand over his clenched fist where it rested on his thigh. “You lost someone like I lost my parents?”
Aidan knew he was close to blowing it, but her calm acceptance that the prince would get his punishment flew in the face of what he suspected she had done. And not just to the prince. But as she placed her smooth palm over his hand and her gaze met his, it was hard to believe she could commit those acts.
Her touch was gentle. The empathy in her gaze nearly undid him. Nearly being the operative word. He reined in his desire to test her reaction to Mitch’s name and instead, decided to use her own ploy against her.
“My best friend.”
“I’m sorry,” she said and rubbed her hand over his in a gesture meant to soothe.
Aidan pressed. “If I knew who did it, I would kill them.”
Her hand stilled. Her eyebrows knitted together as she contemplated his words. Finally, in a tone so soft he barely heard her, she said, “Then that would end two lives instead of one, wouldn’t it? Your’s and the killer’s.”
She met his gaze then, dead on, her chin in a slightly defiant tilt. Her sherry-colored eyes had deepened to the color of a fine aged cognac. He was hard pressed to know whether she was challenging him or troubled by the prospect of what he had claimed he would do.
Given the Sparrow’s track record, he couldn’t imagine that she would be worried about his coming after her. She’d proven herself too worthy an opponent already. As for the possibility that she was challenging him, that would mean that he had maybe blown his cover, and she knew he was referring to her and Mitch.
If he had done the latter, there was possibly one way to know for sure. “His name was Mitch,” he said and waited for her reaction.
“Mitch? Was he the friend who was killed?” she asked, no hint of any recognition on her face.
He went for broke. “Someone knifed him in an alleyway in Rome.”
No hint again of anything on her face or in her tone indicated she had a clue what he was talking about. “Was it a robbery? Or a fight over something?”
“Does it matter?” he replied and finally her face reflected some emotion—pain.
“No, it doesn’t. Dead is dead. Out of your life. Never to hold you again. Or laugh with you.”
She whirled in her seat, then started up the car and pulled onto the road again. As she drove, she occasionally swiped at her eyes, but said nothing else.
Great. He had made her cry. He hated to see women cry. Call him a sucker, but the waterworks always did him in.
And somehow, he couldn’t imagine the Sparrow allowing herself the luxury of tears. Which just confused him even more. Elizabeth’s words and actions contradicted what he had expected.
Again he told himself to remember that the Sparrow was likely a sociopath and perfectly capable of such a deception. Walker would remind him of that. He suspected the earpiece he still wore had exceeded the range for transmission back to the hotel. A shame. If Walker had been listening in, he might have been able to get a better read on Elizabeth.
Elizabeth, he thought and examined her again. The pale-pink scarf securing her hair matched the polka dots in her shirt. The color brought out the hints of red in her lush hair. The wind was tossing about the few strands that had escaped the scarf. She must have sensed him watching her for she glanced his way for a moment before returning her attention to the road.
“What’s so interesting?” she asked, seemingly uncomfortable with his perusal.
“You. You’re beautiful,” he said, wanting to change the mood that had taken over since their earlier discussion. Hoping that change would lead to other things. He told himself that was what was necessary for him to break down her barriers and really determine what was going on with her.
But it wasn’t a lie that he found her…attractive wasn’t quite the right word. She was…stunning. Interesting. A woman with multiple layers he wanted to peel back. He suspected that so far he had only managed to scrape the first few layers.
She smiled and a touch of pink in a shade darker than her scarf stained her cheeks. Sparing him yet another glance, she said, “I bet you say that to all the girls.”
Grinning, he replied, “Only the pretty ones.”
Chapter 11
Elizabeth drove around a bend in the road that led out of the woods and to the first of her regular stops. Up ahead, another car was already parked at one side of the road while along the other, a fence kept an assortment of goats and cows in an emerald-colored pasture thick with summer grass.
She slowed as she pulled up behind the other car, and Aidan asked, “Is this where we’re shopping?”
“We call it ‘hedge veg,’” she explained and parked the Gaston along the side of the road.
“‘Hedge veg?’” Aidan repeated and cocked his head to the side in question. “Is that like the Silvershire version of green markets?”
She shook her head and tucked a few loose strands of hair back. “It’s not just greens and typically, we don’t stop at markets. Come with me and you’ll see.”
Not waiting for his reply, since at this point he was basically her captive audience, she slipped from the car and walked to meet him where he waited by the chromed front bumper of the Gaston. As she approached, he offered his arm and touched by the chivalrous gesture, she eased her arm through his. They strolled past the other parked auto and toward a modest covered stand by the side of the road and in front of a well-kept farmhouse. A man who had apparently just made a purchase strolled past them, bag in hand.
“Hi, Addy,” she called out once they were closer to the stand.
The older gray-haired woman behind the counter smiled broadly and walked around to give her an enthusiastic hug and Aidan an inquisitive look.
“And this would be?” Addy asked as she shook Aidan’s hand.
“Aidan. I’m Elizabeth’s new bartender.”
Once again, Addy’s look was speculative as it passed from Aidan and back to her, but she ignored it. “What do you have for me today?”
Addy grabbed her hand and nearly dragged her over to the counter. “The goat cheese is out of this world today and the husband just finished up a batch of mozzarella,” she said and motioned to the samples spread out on the table.
Elizabeth first tasted the goat cheese. Creamy, with a full-bodied flavor. She scooped up another bit on a cracker and offered it up to Aidan, who had come to stand beside her.
He opened his mouth and she popped it in. After chewing, he nodded emphatically. “That’s good.”
Next, they sampled the mozzarella. Still warm from the vats where it was prepared, the cheese had a rich creamy flavor, milder than the goat cheese and with a firmer consistency. She smiled at Addy to show her approval and said, “I’ll take a dozen each of both these cheeses if you have that many. Only, I’m not headed straight back to town. I could pick them up tomorrow….”
Addy
waved off her suggestion. “Not to worry, luv. My George has to pop into town during the morning, so he can drop them off.”
“Thanks so much. In the meantime, we’ll need something for a picnic lunch. How about the…” She glanced over at Aidan and waited for him to make the selection.
He shrugged, seemingly unsure at first, but then he pointed to the goat cheese.
“Great choice,” she confirmed, and Addy quickly wrapped up a round of the cheese in some grape leaves, dropped it into a bag, and passed it to Aidan to carry.
“You two have a nice day now,” the older woman called out as they returned to the car.
Aidan tucked the bag into the space behind the front seats that arguably passed for a back seat. It brought a memory to Elizabeth of her and Dani crammed onto that narrow leather bench as young girls while her family did the hedge veg together.
She was smiling as she eased behind the wheel and Aidan must have noticed it, for he said, “Penny for your thoughts.”
“Only a penny?” she teased, starting up the car and steering it back onto the main road.
Aidan examined her face carefully, wondering what had put that enigmatic smile there. It was a smile filled with pleasure, but also with a hint of…nostalgia. Surprisingly, he knew the thought wasn’t one about him, although how he could read her that well, he didn’t know.
Or maybe she was just acting once again. She was the Sparrow after all. Or at least, that’s what he forced himself to remember.
The next stop was barely a few miles away: a farmhouse where the yeasty aromas of fresh-baked bread wafted all the way to the roadside. As before, there was a stand and this time, a few other patrons were already lined up for the homemade wares.
Just as at the other location, the older woman behind the counter was clearly pleased to see Elizabeth, but then again he told himself, why wouldn’t she be glad to see someone who was probably a good customer? Although, as with Addy, there appeared to be something more personal there, which was confirmed when at one point, the two women stepped to the side and Elizabeth eased her arm over the older women’s shoulders.
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