INTO TEMPTATION
Jeanie London
TORONTO • NEW YORK • LONDON
AMSTERDAM • PARIS • SYDNEY • HAMBURG
STOCKHOLM • ATHENS • TOKYO • MILAN • MADRID
PRAGUE • WARSAW • BUDAPEST • AUCKLAND
To all the folks who had a hand in creating this wonderful world…my continuity buds: Lori Wilde, Carrie Alexander,
Kristin Hardy and Shannon Hollis; our project manager extraordinaire, Kathryn Lye; and my own always-brilliant editor, Wanda Ottewell.
It has been a pleasure, ladies!
Contents
The Legend Continues
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
About the Author
Coming Next Month
The Legend Continues
A warm breeze stirred branches, filling the air with the incense of eucalyptus. Yet Egmath glared into the sultry night, a mixture of defiance and despair making this magical place seem unfamiliar, though he had always found refuge here.
“How can so perfect a night herald such heartache?” he demanded of the dark that lay as sweeping velvet over the river, studded by stars and illumined by moonlight.
He would find no shelter this night. He could escape neither destiny nor duty, for on the morrow his marriage would take place in the Hall of a Thousand Pillars.
Always, Egmath had intended to speak the sacred vows with his beloved Batu, but the priests had sworn him to her sister, the heiress to the throne. And the gods would mock them all, for he and Batu would flank their future queen before the altar while he uttered vows binding him to the wrong woman, tearing the heart from his beloved’s chest, from his own.
These past days of feasting and preparation had blurred together, marked only by his spiking dread as the wedding approached. He told himself a feted warrior who had faced death in battle should be more courageous of spirit and reconciled to duty, yet obligation lay as a death pall over his future. When he could finally endure the agony no longer, he had summoned Batu, knowing he would not find the strength to endure the morrow without holding her in his arms one last time.
He stared into the moonlit darkness with eyes hungry for the sight of her. She emerged from the shadows as she always had, bereft of the adornments of the royal court, a simple gown flowing around her, tempting him with sleek curves and raven hair that gleamed silver and gold beneath the night.
In her welcoming smile he found his shelter.
“You came to me,” he said.
She approached with a grace that had made her fiendishly difficult to catch when they had played their youthful games as children, liquid strides that had enticed him since his arrival in manhood. Feasting on the sight of her, he extended his hands. She slid her own within.
“I would look upon you one last time as we have always been.” Her heart glowed in her eyes. “I would look upon you as you always will be—my love.”
Their bodies swayed close, drawn together as naturally as the pull of the tide, barely touching, yet her nearness soothed away the ache in his soul and righted the universe.
Then he brought his mouth down upon hers. For the spate of one shared breath, the promise of a future that should have been theirs lay between them—the prelude to their kiss, so agonizingly sweet, before need crashed in, and passion reigned.
Batu yielded beneath the press of his lips. He thrilled to her giving response, his own yearning that defied destiny and circumstance, made him ache to toss obligation to the four winds and follow the call of desire. This woman was his lifeblood…his friend, his strength, his fantasy.
With his mouth upon hers and his tongue tasting the demand of her kiss, Egmath would have laid down his life to avoid the morrow. But self-indulgence was not to be his. Only in his strength would Batu find her courage to face their future. He loved her too much to deny her any chance to find peace.
When finally they broke apart, their passion lingering in their ragged breaths, in the whispers of the palms on the breeze, she pressed something into his palm.
“What is this?” He gazed down upon a mother-of-pearl amulet fashioned in the shape of a star.
“I would give you my heart.” Her voice trembled through lips reddened by his kiss. “To keep with you forever.”
“I will cherish your gift always. Your heart shall be my strength and my beacon through this darkness.”
When she held her hand over his, he knew she understood all his feelings so poorly conveyed.
“I would beg such a prize of you as well, Egmath.”
“It is yours, my beloved, as is my heart.”
“Then grant me tonight, where I will be yours alone. Gift me with a memory I shall cherish forever.”
The amulet blazed in their clasped hands, a fire that captured the power of their love, the force of their shared passion, a heat that would bind them in spirit forever.
Egmath brought their hands to his mouth, breathed a promise in the kiss he pressed to her smooth skin.
She trembled.
“Tonight shall be ours,” he vowed.
Loosing the clasp at her shoulder, he swept away the gown to expose her golden loveliness. The double-edged blade of desire pierced his heart as she came into his arms, unfolding in a sweep of lush curves and warm flesh that aligned perfectly against him.
“A memory to cherish always, my beloved Batu, a reminder that neither duty nor fate nor death can separate us, for true love will endure.”
TO BE CONTINUED…
1
New York City, where the chic and commonplace clash along busy streets that make the perfect place to pursue a man.
“OH MY, MY, but the man is even more dishy in the skin,” Lindy Gardner said to no one in particular as she focused the digital-cam binoculars.
The device had been designed to look like a pair of stylish sunglasses, so she didn’t concern herself with the passersby on the street, but zoomed in on the tall blonde leaving the ritzy Piazza Hotel.
Joshua Benedict aka Stuart Temple. Approximately thirty-eight years old.
Origins: unknown.
Current residence: Nice, France.
Occupation: Fixer.
She produced the man’s stats by rote, but peering through those lenses, Lindy didn’t see a familiar image from the surveillance photos the Secret Intelligence Service, MI6, had collected during recent months.
Life sparked the lifeless images she’d studied during mission briefing into a wholly 3-D man. He stepped onto the pavement, his smile dazzling as he inclined his head to the doorman and moved past with smooth strides.
Definitely a man her old school chums would have called a cut above bog standard.
With the depression of a button, zoom lenses magnified her vantage again. Startling black eyes and brows contrasted with his pale hair and tanned skin. His hair glinted in the late-afternoon sun.
Joshua Benedict looked as if he spent much of his time sailing, fishing and windsurfing on the deep-blue waters of the French Riviera.
According to her intel, he did.
But Lindy also knew he spent the rest of his time jet-setting around the globe conducting business.
Legitimate society believed this man to be nothing more than a businessman with many areas of interest. But the world of the Secret Intelligence suspected Joshua Benedict of conducting illegal business, which was precisely why he was in New York City on this bright spring afternoon.
And why she’d followed him here.
Tracing her finger along the binoculars in what would appear to the casual observer as an adjustment to her sunglasses, Lindy depressed another button and captured the man’s image as he moved beneath the Piazza Hotel’s marquee.
Target acquired.
Joshua Benedict appeared to be a tourist, looking for all the world as if he belonged in the crush of people that ebbed and flowed along the street.
Lindy knew there was nothing casual about this man’s visit, however. An informant had relayed reliable intel that connected Joshua Benedict to a recent auction-house theft.
Not as the thief, though.
This man maneuvered easily through the layers of society, from the wealthy glitterati to the shadowy underworld of international organized crime. He rubbed elbows with power brokers, from global financiers to old-money families who made up high society on three continents.
He had established his reputation as a man who could mastermind brilliant business deals, “fix” any sort of unexpected situation and leave behind no prosecutable evidence. Most importantly, he could keep secrets.
A regular Johnny of all trades.
The thought made Lindy smile. Ironically, his job description didn’t sound so far off from hers.
Except that Joshua Benedict worked for the bad guys, and one bad guy in particular.
Henri Renouf.
The man SIS wanted to apprehend in a big way.
In much the same fashion as Joshua Benedict, Henri Renouf was known to the general public as a businessman with a cutthroat reputation—a reputation built through rumor, innuendo and suspicion. Since Renouf had been around for over four decades, he’d established himself as a private and very powerful man whom most people didn’t dare to cross.
According to Secret Intelligence, the rumor, innuendo and suspicion surrounding Renouf was well-founded. The man was known to be an obsessive antiquities collector, but Renouf didn’t let the availability of artifacts deter his acquisitions. In Britain alone, he was suspected of “acquiring” numerous priceless relics from museums and private residences through thefts spanning several decades.
Since Renouf had the resources to conduct his shady actions through intermediaries, he protected himself with distance. But with each passing year, he got bolder. While no international agency had enough evidence to prosecute, after a recent rash of heists all over the globe, her agency, in conjunction with Interpol, had deemed the time ripe to make contact with one of Renouf’s associates.
Joshua Benedict was a means to an end.
With that thought, Lindy watched him cross the street then found herself suddenly on the move.
In her chic two-piece ensemble, she could have been any resident of this big city, where people favored practical walking shoes and relegated more stylish footwear into carryalls until reaching their destinations.
Her own carryall contained shoes, plus a few items that would mark her as a visitor to the Big Apple. Mostly cover essentials. Passport. Notebook computer. Cellular phone.
Hiking the bag higher on her shoulder, Lindy marked their path along Fifth Avenue, keeping her gaze on her target, admiring the way he affected the perfect blend of casual disinterest and purposeful concentration as he passed upscale stores.
Admiring the man himself.
Benedict moved with a boldness she knew would make him a native of any city on any continent. Confidence. He wore it as easily as the lightweight blue shirt and tan slacks—clothes that had clearly never seen a rack, judging by the way they molded the athletic lines of his body. If she could see his feet, Lindy knew she’d find him wearing something butter-soft and expensive.
So far, the man fit his profile to a T.
Except that she hadn’t expected him to be quite so handsome.
When he stopped to await a signal to navigate another cross-street, Lindy slipped the digital-cam binoculars back up her nose and snapped a second image, just to see if she could capture his expression as he glanced up at a building, surveying his environs as skillfully and inconspicuously as she might.
But there was no question in Lindy’s mind that he was taking stock of his surroundings. Something about the stone cut of his jaw, perhaps. Or maybe the furrow between those dark eyebrows that suggested a deliberation she recognized.
It took one to know one—someone who was up to a lot more than he appeared to be.
Hanging back a step, Lindy moved behind an older woman wearing a wide hat, who had just enjoyed a spree at Amali’s, according to her sacks. And when the traffic signal changed, she made her way around the woman with a quick smile and a cordial, “Lovely bonnet.”
While she wasn’t sure precisely what to expect from Benedict, she’d come prepared for any number of scenarios. She knew why he’d come to town, but had no way of knowing how he would take care of his business.
She’d come up with a few likely guesses, of course, but not one of them had led her to the sweeping spires of St. Patrick’s Cathedral. Yet that was exactly where he was heading—right up the bloody front steps.
Well, well, well. What business did her handsome target have with God today?
Now there was a question she wouldn’t spend too much time mulling. Lindy wasn’t particularly religious, but she had been reared in the English countryside, where Sunday trips to the village church had been a way of life.
As a result, she had a healthy respect for passing judgment and throwing stones in places where she herself wouldn’t want others passing judgment or throwing stones. With her work as an intelligence agent over the past decade, she’d found herself in enough situations that some might label morally questionable. Unless Joshua Benedict’s business with God had something to do with Henri Renouf, Lindy wasn’t interested.
But she couldn’t help thinking a cathedral would be an ace place to hand off a stolen artifact, so she strode lightly up the steps and made her way inside.
Given that her work covered every European city in what was once known as Christendom, Lindy thought old Gothic cathedrals pretty standard fare. While she didn’t know much about this one—and honestly hadn’t thought to research more—she did know the place was the seat of New York’s archbishop.
Stepping inside the cool interior, she found the cathedral no less majestic than any other she’d ever been in—a tribute to the architects, as America was regarded as distinctly substandard in architectural grandeur.
The bustle of a busy city vanished behind the heavy doors, and the silence—a tangible serenity that seemed a unique and integral part of churches everywhere—settled over her like the mist after a London rain.
Sliding her digital-cam binoculars on top of her head, Lindy sighted her target. She attached herself to a small group of women, all hastily affixing lace chaplets onto their teased curls, and bowed her head reverently.
Through her periphery, she watched Benedict stroll down the main aisle, taking in his surroundings almost absently, as though he made a habit of visiting churches. Sun spilled through stained glass, throwing light that splintered his handsome features with color.
Had he come to this place to make a pickup?
During mission briefing, Lindy had decided her target’s usual MO consisted of using busy public places to cover his shady business dealings. She’d watched video footage of the man strolling into Queen’s Cross as boldly as he pleased to take possession of Princess Charlotte’s tiara and scepter from a man believed to have conducted the museum theft.
Unfortunately, even with the video footage, her agency didn’t have enough evidence to prosecute the thief or the man who allegedly had delivered the goods to Renouf.
Joshua Benedict was bold, to be sure, but a cathedral? Maybe her prosaic upbringing made conducting shady business in a church seem to be tempting fate too closely for comfort.
As long as it wasn’t her eternity at stake…Lindy followed her little holy ladies to a bas-relief statue of a saint.
She watched him head to
an altar flanked by two stone saints and several-dozen-odd tourists as if he owned the place, and her heart raced to think he’d take delivery of the stolen auction-house artifact in plain sight.
Shades of Queen’s Cross?
Disengaging from the holy ladies, she slid into a pew, knelt and lowered her head as if in prayer. She slid the digital-cam binoculars down her nose to watch her target move toward a station filled with tiers of votive candles.
Lindy could see no one else approach, detected nothing about the man to suggest he might be searching for anything that had been left concealed for him.
He made a donation and lit a candle.
Lindy observed him, the moments stretching almost painfully as he stared at the flame, his expression thoughtful, an almost-smile playing around his lips.
He did not meet with anyone to make a handoff.
He did not reach underneath the station and come up with any small package.
He just genuflected before the altar, made the sign of the cross then headed down the aisle the way he came, leaving Lindy staring after him with a narrowed gaze.
Joshua Benedict had come to church to light a candle.
Had she been made?
Lindy had no choice but to consider whether this seemingly purposeless side trip was for her benefit. Instinctively, she stood and moved down the aisle before he reached the doors. Wouldn’t do to lose him now. Not until she could decide whether or not he was on to her.
Timing her paces as he paused to hold the door for a couple, she veered sharply right and headed out of a side exit. She sprinted around the corner of the building, swung around a gate and onto Fifth Avenue just as he stepped onto the pavement.
And headed straight toward her.
Turning toward the curb, she raised her arm as if flagging a cab, clearing the path and covering her face from view as he swept past. So close that she caught a whiff of his aftershave—subtle, expensive, but all spice and warm male. That scent stuck with her as she spun on her heels to follow.
Into Temptation Page 1