Many, many thanks to Judith Edge, who made this book so much better.
And a shout out to Richard and Esther Hooley, who provided information on Ferraris and the Thames. The cool stuff is theirs, the mistakes are mine.
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
A sample of Charade: Her Billionaire—Paris
A sample of Masquerade: Her Billionaire—Venice
Other Books by Lisa Marie Rice
Copyright
About The Author
Calvin Byrnes Building, Mathematical Institute
Oxford
She was a looker.
Really gorgeous in a punk schoolmarm-y kind of way. Not that any of the males in the room would notice. There was very little testosterone in this room of two hundred math geeks, most of them guys. More or less all the testosterone in the room was his, and it was sitting up and taking notice.
Not good.
Bennett Cameron wasn’t used to having testosterone released during a job for anything but aggression. He was a close protection expert — a bodyguard, in civilian terms — and he was used to being alert to anything that could be a source of danger. When on the clock, his body was flooded with testosterone and cortisol, the arousal and stress hormones. Arousal as in all systems go, every sense up and running, including the sixth one.
Not arousal as in a hard-on.
He’d been a security consultant long enough to have a sixth and even seventh sense for danger. Nothing got by him.
Right now, nothing was pinging on his danger radar so all that testosterone went to one special part of his body, watching the lithe young beauty parade across the stage, mouthing mathematical formulae, following abstruse lines of thought, of which he understood one word in ten.
Still, he didn’t have to understand her math. He just had to keep her safe.
But first he had to kidnap her.
That was a royal pain in the ass. And maybe not easy, either. Bennett watched her on the stage, pacing back and forth, elaborating some incredibly long and complicated thought that had the audience gasping, then tittering, then sighing. Whatever she was saying — and he had no hope of deciphering it — was a real hit with the geeks.
But where the geeks and nerds all looked lost, with their too big sweaters that looked like their moms had dressed them in expectation of that last spurt of growth, cumulatively smelling a bit rank, completely engrossed in what she was saying, the woman herself, Dr. Eleonore Castle, known by her peers as E. M. Castle for Eleonore Marion Castle, known by her friends as Elle, seemed very alert. Very aware of her surroundings. Those cobalt-blue eyes as she looked around the room seemed very very sharp.
She looked pretty unkidappable if he wanted to keep it calm and quiet.
He was at the back of the room, hiding behind a pillar. The stage lights were in her eyes. There was no chance that she could see him, but still he stuck to the shadows, biding his time. There was no way he could abduct her in front of two hundred geeks.
Well actually he could … given the fitness level of the audience. But they would all surely have cellphones and a robust virtual life more interesting than their real lives, so the scene of Dr. Eleonore Castle being abducted in the civilized confines of the Mathematical Institute of Oxford University would explode and go viral on all social media in about five seconds.
Bennett’s company operated below the radar, which is why it was so successful. A media frenzy would be bad for this op in particular and terrible for his company in general. Not to mention it would paint a huge bullseye on the good doctor’s very pretty back, when he’d signed a million-dollar contract to protect that back. And front, for that matter.
Her talk was a long one but fascinating, to judge by the rapt expressions of the audience. Bennett himself didn’t have a clue.
“And then one could just camp out on the x axis forever, am I right?” she said, bafflingly, and even more bafflingly, the whole room erupted in chuckles.
Well, he wasn’t going to kidnap her in the auditorium, and what she was saying was nonsense to him, so he had best use the time in research. He was as good at research as he was in Close Quarters Combat and Close Protection, which was why his company had taken off.
Okay. Nothing like St. Google to give you info and … oh wow. Pages and pages and pages of stuff on Dr. Castle. If you googled his name, Bennett Cameron, you’d get a few very spare returns and a tripwire in one of his back offices would send him a message that someone had pinged him. Bennett operated way under the radar.
But the people with the money to afford him knew about him and knew how to get in touch with him.
So, the very pretty doctor had academic credentials as long as his dick. A doctorate and two masters and a number of seminars that she both attended and taught. A list of publications that was impressive for someone so young, including two books. Wait — he didn’t know how old she was. Her father hadn’t told him. And she looked really young up there on the stage. And she had a doctorate and two masters and all those courses, so how the hell —
Oh. She went to Harvard when she was fourteen.
Damn.
A lot of brain power in that pretty head.
Bennett looked at what she’d been doing the past six months. Most people were creatures of habit and if you wanted to know where they were and what they were doing, your best bet was to check where they’d been and what they’d done.
Conferences all over the place, with strange names. Behavioral Economics, Mechanism Design, Circuits and Systems. Conferences in Berkley, Singapore, St. Petersburg, Las Vegas, Guangzhu, Abu Dhabi, just in the last six months alone. The woman got around.
This was not a bad thing. He could pass for a math nerd for about ten seconds and say they’d met at a conference. She couldn’t possibly remember everyone she met when she was on the road so much.
So that was the play.
Catch her after the symposium, tell her they’d met in wherever, whenever, get her in a quiet space, explain about her father, whisk her away.
Done deal.
So Bennett waited patiently for her to finish her incomprehensible talk and tried not to let his mind wander. Someone in close protection never let their mind wander, ever. Intense vigilance while on the job was a prerequisite. Lose focus for a second and you could lose a life.
But right now, there was nothing to do and there was no imminent danger so he could relax his vigilance, just a bit.
He had a perfect view of the main entrance to the auditorium. There was a small hidden door behind the podium, too. Nobody could come in without him seeing who it was. If anything happened in the auditorium itself, if anyone stood up to shoot her, Bennett would shoot him first. He and his company worked often for the UK government and he had been granted a license to carry in the UK. He was an excellent shot. A former sniper, in fact.
So Bennett kept an eye on the beauty up on stage with a part of his head thinking in non-tactical terms.
Slender, long-limbed, agile. She paced gracefully as she unwound a long, involved line of reasoning that took up three slides of dense math on the screen. Bennett lost track immediately.
Man, she was just amazing. Particularly considering that her father, Clifford Ricks, resembled a toad. Eleonore or Elle or Ellie was the man’s only child, fruit of his first marriage. The old man had gone on to five more marriages, each divorce costing him more than ten million dollars. Luckily, he had money to spare.
She was wearing a jacket that could only be described as post-mode
rn. Cut askew, it was both weird and attractive because it hugged her slender curvy figure and it was a deep brilliant cobalt blue that exactly matched her eyes. And she was wearing tight, stovepipe black pants that exactly matched the color of her hair.
Bennett didn’t often get a chance to admire who he was protecting, not in this way. He’d protected beautiful women before, usually the wives of rich men, their minds as empty as their faces were beautiful. Though, to tell the truth, he didn’t do much close protection himself these days. He had men for that. A hundred and fifty of them, to be exact, all of them hand-picked.
It was a young man’s game and though Bennett wasn’t old, he wasn’t young any more either. Too old for this kind of work. His company was moving into more intel-dense work, finding missing people, tracking down money launderers, that kind of thing.
He’d only accepted this contract because Clifford Ricks had begged him. Saying he’d get on his knees if he still could. Ricks’s hedge fund had thrown millions of dollars’ worth of work to Bennett’s company and, well, a young woman in danger. It wasn’t in him to refuse.
And now that he’d had a glimpse of the daughter, he was more glad than ever that he’d accepted the job.
Clifford Ricks’s enemy was Anton Lipov, who headed an offshoot of the Volcic mob, known for its extreme cruelty. They placed their enemies on a meat hook and watched them die, over the course of days.
That wasn’t going to happen to Elle Castle.
Whoa. The talk was over. Elle took a little sardonic bow as the auditorium rose, clapping.
Fuck. They all looked eager to rush to the podium to grab a bite of the star. Bennett couldn’t protect her in a crowd, not without showing his hand and it was too early for that. He moved forward, running through scenarios in his head, when she suddenly … disappeared.
What the hell?
The hidden door behind the podium clicked shut. She’d escaped out the back of the stage. Well, Bennett couldn’t fault her. The smell of unwashed clothes and a few whiffs of major halitosis were detectable even at the back of the auditorium. He could only imagine how repulsive the nerds would be up close and personal. But now he was going to have to be fast to catch up with her.
He knew how to move fast without appearing to rush. He had long legs and he lengthened his stride without moving his upper body much. In a few seconds he was out the door and into the big hallway. The original building was ancient. He had no idea how ancient but it boasted spires and and flagstoned floors and stained glass windows. The math annexe was modern, though, with acres of carpeted hallways.
Bennett quartered the area without swiveling his head, without making it obvious he was looking for someone. There were three directions she could have gone and he studied each one carefully.
There! Making her way down the hallway which was the fastest route out of the building. And man, she was making tracks.
Bennett lengthened his stride even more. “Elle! Ellie! Elle Castle!” he called out behind her, relieved when she slowed and turned around.
“Hey!” Bennett put on his genial good guy face. He’d trained to kill since he was eighteen and he’d killed twelve men in battle and three in close protection. When he wanted to, he could switch to his war face and it was frightening. But he could also smile and look as harmless as someone built like him could look. He pasted a delighted smile on his face. “Good to see you! That was a really interesting talk back there.”
Bennett wasn’t a ladies’ man, but he also wasn’t bad looking and he knew how to charm the ladies when he had to. But Elle wasn’t having it and was definitely not charmed. She stared up at him and it was like being caught in the beam of twin cobalt spotlights.
“Do I know you?” she asked, voice cold.
He plastered a hand over his heart. “You wound me, you really do. We shared a glass of indifferent champagne at the reception in St Petersburg. The caviar was good, though.”
Her eyes searched his face. “No,” she said flatly, “we didn’t. I’ve never seen you before in my life.”
Oh man. God save him from smart women with steel trap memories. She also seemed pretty impervious to his charms. Bennett took her arm gently, hoping to walk her closer to the exit door while trying to convince her they’d met before. He remembered the name of one of the authors of a paper.
“Surely you haven’t forgotten Leontov too? And his dandruff?” Since the guy was a mathematician, it was a pretty good guess that he had dandruff. Unless he was completely bald. It was a 50-50 shot.
Eleonore Castle dug in her heels. To move her now he’d have to use at least a minimum amount of force. And she’d probably raise a fuss. They were surrounded by people. She looked pointedly at his hand on her elbow. “I’ll thank you to stop manhandling me and to leave me alone, otherwise I’m calling security.”
Well, she could hardly know that he’d easily deal with a Brit rent-a-cop. Or even several of them.
But they were wasting time on a very time-sensitive mission. Bennett stifled a sigh. He looked down into her beautiful angry mistrustful face and took an executive decision.
“Sorry, darling,” he murmured. “I really don’t want to do this, but I have to.”
And he injected her with a fast-acting psychotropic drug that would make her amenable but not unconscious. She gave a small cry at the slight sting of the needle then, after a moment, her eyes unfocused.
Bennett waited a few seconds for the drug to take effect. He wasn’t happy about it. He was a good guy and he was saving her life but man, he didn’t like drugging a woman. But she was too smart for her own good, so what choice did he have?
“Come on, darling,” he said and took her arm again.
She shambled forward obediently.
Elle Castle came to slowly, like rising up from the bottom of the ocean. Rocking in the water, coming slowly up into the light. It made her seasick. She swallowed heavily, opened her eyes, then closed them again.
There was something … someone. Right in front of her. A man she’d never seen before or … maybe … maybe she had.
Nothing was certain except that she felt like she was in a boat, rocking on troubled waters and that her head hurt, with a sharp pain she’d never felt before. Like a nail spiked into her head.
“What’s going on? Where am I?” she said. Only it didn’t come out like that. It came out as garbled sounds, like talking under water.
“You’re probably asking yourself where you are,” a deep voice said. The face in front of her pulsed like some psychedelic image, then sharpened into focus.
She nodded. No use trying to talk. And even if she could articulate, her mouth was incredibly dry. Like nothing she’d ever experienced. Her tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth.
It was an acutely unpleasant sensation, like every other sensation she was feeling.
“Before I tell you where you are,” that deep voice continued, “you are probably very thirsty and your head hurts.”
Exactly. She nodded again.
He held up a bottle of pills. “This is ibuprofen. Notice that the bottle is new.” He broke the seal, shook three tablets into the palm of his hand. His hand was very large and the tablets looked tiny in his palm. “Water. Brand new bottle.” He held up a small water bottle, waggled it. Broke that seal and held it up.
“Open up.” That deep voice held command. Elle wasn’t used to a commanding voice, so when he brought the pills to her mouth, she opened up. “Swallow.” Another command as he held the bottle to her mouth.
Oh, yes! Water! She was absolutely parched. He tipped the bottle at exactly the right angle so that she could drink without choking. She finished the small bottle and he put it down on a table next to his chair.
But … why would she need help drinking? And … her hands weren’t working. She looked down in befuddlement and saw that her wrists were tied to the arms of the chair with a soft cloth. She rattled her hands, shaking her arms, but it was no use. She was … tied up.
Elle b
linked. Her mind wasn’t working properly. She rarely drank, she never used drugs and her mind was what she was, so when it wasn’t working, she was lost.
The man sitting across from her was studying her carefully, seeming to follow her thought processes. She didn’t know him but she’d seen him —
All of a sudden, a surge of clarity shot through her. The clouds lifted and red-hot rage filled her head.
“You!” she said sharply.
“Me,” he answered.
“At the —” she pulled a blank.
“Conference in Oxford. N-person Non-cooperative Strategy. Very interesting talk you gave, didn’t understand a word.”
“You — you accosted me afterward!”
He shook his head, expression gentle. “No, Elle. I didn’t accost you. I don’t use violence against women. But I did drug you.”
And just like that, Elle realized the extreme danger she was in.
Icy terror flooded her veins. She was tied up, incapacitated. In a place she didn’t recognize. She looked around, trying to figure out where she was. It was a luxurious apartment or hotel suite, with no personal touches at all. Neutral color palette, top-of-the-line furniture. She craned her neck to the right and saw a high-end kitchenette and three doors that were closed. Where was she? Was she even still in England?
She opened her mouth to scream and he shook his head sharply.
“I wouldn’t advise screaming. The ibuprofen will just be starting to kick in and screaming would make that headache worse.” He shrugged a massive shoulder apologetically. “You don’t know where we are. We’re in a luxury apartment building in London, but that’s all I can say for now. I’m sorry to have to tell you that this apartment has been soundproofed. And my company owns the apartments on either side. So if you scream, you’ll only give yourself a headache and no one will come.”
Oh, God. This was terrifying. She’d been kidnapped. Drugged and kidnapped and tied up. If that wasn’t every woman’s nightmare, she didn’t know what was.
And though the man sitting across from her looked relaxed and almost smiling, he was huge. She remembered that when he stopped her in Oxford, she’d had to look up — way way up — at him. Even sitting down, she could see that he had enormous shoulders tapering down to a lean waist. He looked like an athlete. He looked like a man who knew how to use his body. And though he was dressed well — black sweater, fine black pants, shiny brand-new boots — his hands were rough. As if he used them a lot.
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