by Cindy Dees
As she fell into unconsciousness, he carried her to their room and laid her on the bed. He removed the remains of her dress and stopped cold, staring at the scraps of black silk and lace that passed for her underwear. Lust pounded through him like a rushing freight train. Stop leering at your partner. He ripped his gaze away from the sight of her reclining against the crisp white sheets and pulled the blankets over her, not that it did a damn thing to erase the picture of her half-naked from his mind.
He tried to sleep in one of the medieval wooden chairs, but they were hardly made for sitting in, let alone sleeping in. After an hour, he gave up. He crawled in beside Amanda, who was dead to the world, and crashed.
A noise woke him in the wee hours of the morning. The house was finally silent and dark. Amanda mumbled and tossed beside him, trapped in the throes of a nightmare. He touched her shoulder. She didn’t wake up, so he propped himself on an elbow and leaned over to shake her. She rolled against him, and for the second time that night, he was confronted with the acute awareness of an unclothed female form pressed intimately against him. He was intensely, pleasantly conscious this time of her soft curves molding to his tense body. “The things I don’t do for Devereaux,” he groaned under his breath.
When she finally settled back into quiet sleep, he disentangled himself and eased her back onto her side of the bed. He stared at the canopy overhead for a very long time.
Amanda gradually gained awareness of her surroundings as layers of unconsciousness peeled away one by one. She blinked against the weak light of dawn, glimpsing the canopy of an ancient bed over her head. How had she gotten back to Scotland? She turned her head and her eyes widened in shock. Taylor was asleep less than a foot from her, so close she could see individual whiskers in the dark stubble that covered his jaw. She eased away from him and his eyes opened, opalescent gray in the pale morning light.
“G’morning,” he murmured, his voice rough.
She frowned, groping for speech. “When…where…what happened?”
“We’re outside of Toronto at Gilles Fortesque’s estate. He spiked your drink last night.”
She assimilated that information and tried unsuccessfully to remember the previous evening. She basked for a few moments in the comfort of the warm bed, but one in which she was emphatically not alone. “Did you…did we…?” She stopped in embarrassment.
Taylor smiled. “No, we didn’t do anything. I hope you wouldn’t forget it if we did.”
She smiled back sleepily. But moments later, horror swamped her. “Good Lord, I don’t have any clothes on!”
“Whatever,” Taylor grumbled unconcernedly. “It’s barely 6:00 a.m. Why don’t you go back to sleep for a couple more hours? No one will be up around here until at least noon.”
Thank God he seemed so uninterested in her state of dress. “I don’t remember much about last night. Was it wild?”
He opened one eye and mumbled, “I’m no judge of a wild orgy versus a tame orgy.”
She cringed. “I didn’t do anything embarrassing, did I?”
He didn’t bother to open his eyes. “No. You were shockingly restrained. Should’ve knocked Fortesque’s block off, but you didn’t. Remind me to do that when we get up.”
Her last thought before she drifted off again was that Taylor could take a number. She’d give Fortesque what he had coming herself.
Later, she regained consciousness abruptly, fully alert, in the manner she usually woke. This time there was no groggy swim toward reality, no vague disorientation. The events of the previous evening were clear in her mind. She ought to kill Gilles Fortesque. Better yet, she should wait until he was surrounded by a big group of his guests and then make a production of forgiving him for his inability to perform sexually last night. She grinned up at the ceiling.
Ouch. Moving her facial muscles sent daggers of pain through her head. Throbbing pain threatened to split her skull in two. She flinched, silently cursing their host. She ought to sympathize with Fortesque’s shortcomings in the male-endowment department, too, and suggest in front of everyone that he consider penis-enhancement surgery.
She turned her head with the greatest of caution and saw that the bed’s other occupant had departed. Recalling her cozy dawn awakening, she frowned. The remembered sense of security and comfort was completely foreign to her. She didn’t need the protection of some man. More to the point, she dared not accept Taylor’s protection. As soon as she began to relinquish control of her world, the whole house of cards would tumble down around her. She’d always been on her own, and regardless of whether or not she liked it, with her career she needed it that way. No strings, no commitments. Clean and simple, no emotional baggage.
She didn’t need Taylor running around rescuing her like some patronizing knight in shining armor, nor did she need him draining her of knowledge like some blood-sucking vampire so she could be discarded by Devereaux when her usefulness was ended.
God, she hated men.
Seven
At 6:30 p.m. a line of limousines pulled up in front of the estate to carry Marina and the Fortesque guests downtown for a preconcert cocktail party. To Amanda, it looked for all the world like a funeral procession. She and Taylor ended up getting shoved into a limousine with Marina and her entourage. Marina must have engineered the switch because the other passengers in the limo seemed distinctly annoyed with the arrangement.
In fact, the new bodyguard was openly hostile. Hatred poured off the guy in waves that a girl could really start to take personally. He glared at her with unblinking, almost reptilian concentration. Very creepy. Younger than Grigorii, he was still gray haired and barrel chested with advancing age. Probably in his late fifties. About the age her father would have been if he were alive.
The bodyguard’s face tickled at the edges of recognition. She had the strangest feeling she’d seen him before. But for the life of her, she couldn’t place him, even with her photographic recall. Glancing his way now and then, she carefully memorized his features. This was somebody to avoid in the future. For some reason, he seriously disliked her—to the extent that he seemed prepared to take action on it.
Amanda remembered enough of the Russian she’d picked up around Marina as a child to follow the heated argument that developed between Marina and her manager during the limo ride over a piece of sheet music titled “Improvisation in F-Sharp.” Marina insisted on changing a chord progression, and the manager was adamant that she must play it exactly as written.
As Marina sulked in silent rebellion, the agent leaned forward. “You know the agreement. If you do not play these pieces exactly as they are given to you, you will be arrested for tax evasion and thrown in prison.” He added slyly, “Think of the humiliation to your father.”
Amanda gazed out the window, pretending to be bored and uncomprehending. So the Russian government was feeding Marina the “improvisations,” was it? Taylor’s hunch about encoded messages in the music was looking good. But who were the signals aimed at?
The manager’s threat worked. The mutinous expression on Marina’s face gave way to sullen acceptance. She laid the music on her knees and practiced the fingering while she hummed to herself. Only when they reached the city did she hand the music back to her manager with a petulant “It sounds like shit.”
“Just do it,” he snapped.
Amanda was relieved when they finally pulled up before the Hummingbird Centre for the Performing Arts in downtown Toronto. A small crowd of fans greeted Subova as she alighted, and she clung to Taylor’s arm as they entered a preconcert cocktail party. Amanda ducked out of the sycophantic gathering and made her way to her seat early. Taylor would have to fend for himself. She couldn’t take one more blue-haired dilettante or one more nasty look from that damned bodyguard.
The orchestra had come out on stage to warm up before Taylor was finally ushered to his seat beside her.
He bent down to kiss her cheek and murmured, “Don’t ever leave me with that shark friend of yours aga
in. I feel bloody mauled.”
She grinned. Her ruffled feathers were getting smoother by the second.
“Ah. There it is. A smile. I knew you had one lurking in there.”
She stuck out her tongue at him, then leaned over and murmured in his ear, “About eight rows ahead of us and way left is a man who looks remarkably like Fortesque’s bespectacled visitor from Saturday night. Do you recognize him?”
Taylor looked where she indicated. “That’s him, all right. What do you suppose he’s doing here? Maybe he’s the guy Marina’s sending signals to.”
She shrugged. “Maybe.” The concert began, her mind wandered, distracted by Taylor’s overwhelming presence beside her. It brought back vivid memories of the previous night. Of waking up plastered against that amazing body of his. She yanked her mind back to business, idly watching her old chum perform. Could the smuggler be Marina herself? Nah. She was too flighty to have done it for this long without being caught. Who, then?
Working theory: the guy in the spectacles wasn’t connected to Subova’s entourage but traveled the same itinerary she did. Unbeknownst to her, Marina was playing messages to this guy from someone in the Russian government, probably lining up deals where the bespectacled guy sold diamonds he got from his Russian contact. If her theory was right, the next step was to follow the guy in the glasses.
Max Ebhardt sat at his desk, sorting through a pile of computer printouts on the mysterious figure known only as Devereaux. Even his buddy in St. Petersburg had failed to turn up anything on the guy. Who was this shadow entity and what did he want with Marina Subova?
His phone rang and he picked it up. “Ebhardt here.”
Biryayev growled in his ear. “Good evening, comrade. Do you have the information I wanted?”
Max hated the use of the antiquated title “comrade. “Yes, sir. One moment.” He flipped on the signal scrambler. “Oh, before I forget. You got an e-mail from Moscow about Fortesque.”
“Read it.”
Max shuffled the papers on his desk and found the teletype message. “Moscow informs that requested information is highly sensitive—use utmost discretion, etc. etc. Here we go. ‘Purchase in progress of military equipment from Gilles Fortesque for transfer to an offshore source. Delivery to be completed at midnight tonight at seller’s warehouse in Toronto. Take whatever measures necessary to ensure security and secrecy of transaction.’ End of message.”
A grunt from his boss. Then, “What have you learned about Devereaux?”
“Not a damn thing. Are you sure this guy even exists?”
“Absolutely. And it’s time the bastard was unveiled. Keep on it. I’ll be in touch.”
Taylor was yawning through the last scheduled piano concerto on the program when Amanda whispered that they must leave the moment the piece was over. Thank God. He nodded and untangled himself in his seat in preparation. When the music ended, he hastily escorted her up the aisle. They slipped out of the auditorium into the nearly deserted lobby of the theater. The audience knew to expect encores, and with the exception of a few worried parents rushing home to pay off babysitters, nobody left during the ensuing applause.
He followed Amanda outside, where she waved at the first taxi in the queue. Bemused, he watched her give the cabdriver fifty dollars U.S. and offer him a hundred more greenbacks if he would swear to wait for them to come back. The cabbie agreed readily. Taylor followed Amanda back to the entrance of the theater, where he stepped in front of her and blocked her path. “I don’t mean to sound ignorant here, but what exactly are we doing?”
“We’re going to follow our bespectacled friend, of course.”
“Of course. And how do you expect the two of us to keep sight of him in this crowd? It would take a dozen agents to tail someone in the stampede out of here after the concert.”
“We don’t have a dozen agents at our disposal, so we’ll just have to make do. You stand at the far left exit and I’ll take the one next to it. Those are the two he’ll most likely use. Let’s just hope we get lucky. Park yourself somewhere inconspicuous to watch the door. Wave at me like you just saw an old friend if he passes you and make your way outside to our cab. I’ll do the same, so don’t forget to keep an eye on me, too. Understood?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Taylor responded crisply.
Amanda gave him an irritated look and moved off toward her post. He took up his station not far from the ladies’ rest room. He should be inconspicuous enough hanging around outside it with the other impatient men who would gather there.
They waited through three encores before the exits were finally thrown open and the crowd began to stream out. Taylor scrutinized so many faces that they all began to blur together, but there was no sign of the man in spectacles. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Amanda flitting around her exit as if she’d been separated from her date and was searching for him.
Almost three-quarters of the audience had left when Taylor glimpsed Amanda waving and smiling at him as if she’d just spotted him in the crowd. With the advantage of his height, he saw the bespectacled man leave the theater ahead of her. He stepped outside in time to see their quarry cross the street to a dark car and move around to the passenger side. Meanwhile, Amanda was standing at the curb looking around frantically. Their cab had deserted them.
The black car across the street began to pull away as she cursed in frustration. “Bloody hell. We’re going to lose him and we’ll never pick up a trace of him or his diamonds.”
“Maybe not.” Taylor picked her up and carried her quickly to the front of the long line waiting for taxis. He pushed aside a couple just stepping up to the open door of a cab and shoved Amanda inside. As the would-be passengers and members of the queue raised their voices, Taylor called out to them before he slammed shut the door of the cab, “My wife is having a miscarriage. I have to get her to a hospital right away. Thank you for your help!”
The cabbie pulled away from the curb and asked, “Which hospital do you want, mister? St. Michael’s is the closest one.”
Amanda leaned forward. “Do you see that black four-door about a block ahead of us?”
“Yeah,” the driver answered cautiously.
“Do whatever you have to not to lose it. There’s a hundred dollars in it for you.”
The cabbie slowed down and started to pull over. “Now look. You pushed your way into the line and said you had a medical emergency. I’ll take you to a hospital if you’re sick, lady, but I’m not going to play chase for you. I don’t care what you offer to pay me. Got it?”
Amanda leaned farther forward and spoke chillingly. “Buddy, if you don’t get this cab moving right now and follow that car, there’s gonna be a medical emergency. If I have to, I’ll place you under arrest, take your cab, and follow that car myself. If you happen to survive my driving, I’ll see you prosecuted for aiding and abetting a criminal. Or you can get this bucket moving right now and follow that car. But either way, we are going to follow it. Got it?”
Taylor restrained his amusement. She did a sensational bad cop. The driver took one look at her face in his mirror and stomped on the accelerator. The taxi screeched out into the street and hurtled after the retreating sedan. Amanda threw him an exasperated look and moved her eyes in the direction of the cabbie. Ah. He got to be good cop. He nodded fractionally and leaned forward. “Hey! Easy does it, fella. We don’t want the bad guys to know we’re back here. Just be calm and keep that car in sight. I promise to restrain my partner back here.”
The cabdriver glanced at Taylor in relief and slowed down. They drove in silence for several minutes and finally the guy spoke. “Looks like they’re heading for the docks. It’s a pretty rough neighborhood down here. Want me to have my dispatcher call the police and get you some backup?” He picked up the mike to his radio helpfully.
Taylor answered quickly. “No, that’s okay. You just drive. We’ll worry about the neighborhood.”
They drove several more blocks before the cabbie spoke again.
“Are you two cops?”
Taylor lied easily. “In a manner of speaking. We’re federal.”
“Government agents, eh? Who is this guy you’re chasing?”
“We have reason to believe he’s a smuggler.”
Amanda elbowed Taylor obviously and threw him a glare to be quiet.
“Wow. A smuggler! I suppose it’s drugs? Wait till the missus sees me on the news helping in a drug bust.”
Taylor nodded and smiled. “We’ll be sure to mention you when we nail this guy. You keep an eye on the news for the next couple days.”
“Okay! Hey. It looks like your guy is stopping up ahead.”
Amanda spoke. “Pull over and let us out here. Thanks for your help.”
“Sure, lady.”
They climbed out of the cab, and Amanda folded a hundred-dollar bill and handed it to the driver. “Here. Take your wife out to dinner.”
The cabbie took the bill, not bothering to unfold it. He looked Taylor in the eye. “You take care of yourself now, you hear?”
“Will do, pal. Good night.”
With a wave, the man drove off.
“Nice job of good cop-bad cop, Taylor.”
He blinked at Amanda in surprise. “Was that a compliment I just heard?”
“It was, but if you make a big deal out of it, I’ll retract it.”
He grinned and remarked in an undertone as they hurried along the sidewalk, “Your secret’s safe with me.”
“What secret?” she murmured back. “By the way, isn’t that our friend up ahead?”
A man in glasses stood on the sidewalk, watching a dark sedan disappear around the corner. He turned and walked away from them. Taylor answered, “That’s Four Eyes, all right.”
“What’s my secret, Taylor?”
“You’re capable of being nice. But I swear I won’t tell a soul.”