by Mary Buckham
If she could only focus on it. And forget Mother. And Father. And her old debt to Blade. The list was getting longer by the minute.
The multiple clicks of cameras not far away jolted her back to reality. Paparazzi.
“So much for being invisible,” Stone murmured close to her side. “Remind me to wring Ling Mai’s neck.”
“Gladly.”
Instead of letting him brush past the trio of photographers she snagged his arm and turned her body sideways against him. An intimate pose that said more than any words ever could.
“What the—” Stone growled.
“My world, darling.” She smiled brightly, hoping her face didn’t crack. “Feed the vultures scraps and they’ll go away. Remain elusive and you become a bigger target.”
He glanced at her and lowered his voice. “You do know what the word covert means, don’t you?”
She bussed him on the cheek and smiled brighter, her nails biting into his arm as she whispered, “Don’t snap at me, darling. I didn’t set up this fiasco.”
He remained quiet. The way a volcano remained quiet, calm on the surface, ready to blow at any time.
By the time the paparazzi departed and they reached their spacious room, she wondered if she was already in way over her head. The mission had barely begun.
Stone groaned aloud as two bellhops brought in her luggage. He waited until they left before saying, “Ever hear of the term traveling light?”
“Not in my world, darling.” She breezed past him. “This is a honeymoon. If I showed up with one suitcase less than this—” she waved a hand toward the leather Louis Vuittons “—our cover would be blown before we started. Trust me on this.”
To her surprise, he did. At least that was what she took his shrug to mean before he became the skilled operative, checking for listening devices, scouting out escape routes, memorizing the terrain.
She stood in the middle of the room and looked at the bed. The only bed, smaller than the California King back in her apartment.
“Got a problem?” he asked, not even looking at her.
A hard slap would have stung less.
“No problem.” She cleared a desert-dry throat. “What’s next on the agenda?”
There. She could do this. Cool. Controlled. Professional.
His smile telegraphed that he saw right through her.
“Depends on you.” He walked to the balcony with its open louvered wooden doors, though no breeze wafted through them. “If you need downtime, take it. It’s been a long day.”
Understanding from him or another test? She figured the latter.
He continued, “On the other hand, if you’re ready to operate, best place to run into your boyfriend would probably be the verandah. Several chairs are occupied.”
She figured right; it was a test.
“For the record, Blade was never my boyfriend.” Not that the opportunity hadn’t been there, but no need to discuss that with Stone. She crossed to stand beside him, gazing out across the grassy courtyard below, the Himalayas large smudges on the horizon. “And Blade would never be caught in a lounge chair in the middle of the day.”
One dark eyebrow arched as he shrugged. “You know him better than I.”
“There.” She pointed to a gazebo set in a grove of banyan trees, their trunks offering as much shade as their leaves. “If he’s around at all today, he’ll be there.”
“Because?”
“Private. Removed. With the best view of all the traffic coming in and out of the hotel. Besides, I checked with the bellboy. Blade has been spending his afternoons there, early evenings in the private lounge.”
He gave her another smile. “Well done.” He glanced away. “So he’s a strategist.”
“He’s a survivor.” A lot like you, she wanted to add, then wondered where the thought came from. “Have you checked in with Alex or Jayleen’s team?”
“Later tonight. We can update them on contact with Golumokoff.”
We? It sounded strange. Must be the heat and travel getting to her.
She glanced at her watch. “Afternoon tea will be over soon, cocktails not for another hour. That’s when we should make our move.”
He nodded. “Your call.”
So maybe they’d made progress, until he added, “On this.”
Players in a game within another game, a world she recognized, if under a different guise.
She headed toward the bathroom and a cool shower, hoping it would help get her thoughts clear and focused on where they needed to be—the mission.
Stone was waiting for her when she came through the hotel’s wide set of double doors and out into the heavy evening heat. Waiting and watching. As was she.
She looked different than the sweat-suited recruit he’d trained over the last several weeks. She’d chosen a silky chiffon polka-dot dress by Etro that had hung in her own closet, its folds whispering around her, soft and feminine, as was the large brimmed hat she wore. Her hair was swept up off the nape of her neck, a few wisps escaping. She floated more than moved and was aware that more than one male eye appreciated her as she crossed from the paved verandah to the grassy verge.
But not Stone. He barely moved or gave anything away. Except for the narrowing of his eyes. He’d be appalled to have betrayed even that much, but she’d been looking for it.
So M.T. could mean Maybe Tempted.
Good. She wasn’t alone in this dangerous physical chemistry buzzing between the two of them; no matter how smugly superior he wanted to act, rock man had a chink.
She wafted up to him in a cloud of perfume, charm and silk. The man wasn’t going to know what hit him.
“You’re late.” His gaze narrowed.
So maybe she’d have to work a little harder. Or clobber him.
But she was saved from finding out which when a very dark, huskily accented voice washed over her.
“Vaughn, is that not you?”
She watched Stone’s gaze slip past her shoulder and narrow before she turned.
“Blade? I don’t believe it.” She stepped into his open embrace as if it’d been days, not years, since she’d seen him, surprised at the sense of connection. So maybe she’d played up the “just friends” part of their relationship a little more than she should have, especially in light of how happy he looked to see her.
The years had been kind to him, giving his patrician face more interesting angles, his charming smile more depth. Only his eyes hadn’t changed. They were a deep sea gray that changed with his moods, shifted from gunmetal determined to the silver-pearl color of an ocean’s sunset. Now they were steel bright, and appraising.
“It has been far, far too long. I never see you anymore. And you have changed. Grown up into a beautiful woman, no longer a tempting child.” He held her longer and closer than necessary for old friends, but she didn’t protest. “You have been too busy for your old comrade.”
Now there was an interesting Russian word, spanning the ambiguity of their earlier relationship. More than friends, less than lovers. What could time have wrought between them, if she had not stepped away?
Self-preservation or wariness? She never could pin down her hesitation to commit one way or another then; the uncertainty was still present now.
Belatedly she recalled her role and stepped back.
“Our paths never cross.” She gave a light shrug. “I think you are the one who is too busy. Nanette, or maybe it was Monica, said you are now a bourgeois businessman, always making money, too busy to play.”
Her words were meant to focus him on his past and not hers.
The barb hit home. He released her, held her at arm’s length; his voice was still jovial, his eyes less so. “Never too busy for a beautiful woman. Before you were a girl, a ripening peach, but now—” He spread his arms wide. “But now you are so much more.”
It was flowery, opulent and overstated, but after dealing with Stone for the last three months, it sounded darn good.
She gave Bl
ade a warm smile. The man might be a suspected criminal with a ruthless reputation, but he did know how to treat a woman when he chose to. Maybe Stone could learn a few lessons.
“I have missed you.” She offered him a genuine smile. “And you have not changed at all.”
A deep cough interrupted Blade’s response and Vaughn watched the Russian acknowledge Stone for the first time.
“And this is?” he asked, his accent thickening, the two bodyguards flanking him shifting closer.
“I’m so sorry,” she soothed, turning to include Stone in the conversation. “Blade, I would like you to meet M.T.”
“M.T.?” Blade repeated.
Stone stepped forward, extending a hand. The move appeared friendly, as long as you didn’t look at the set of his face.
“Marcos. Marcos T. Stone. Vaughn’s husband.”
Chapter 10
“Your husband, he is not what I would have expected for you.” Blade brushed an invisible piece of lint from his dinner jacket. They stood together in the very small, very crowded bar of the Taj lounge; Blade was throwing a party for a few of his business associates and friends, none of whom Vaughn recognized. Which wasn’t a surprise, considering India was off the map for many in their former crowd, and the passage of years had also brought changes.
Vaughn took it as a good sign when Blade had invited them.
Marcos? Could that be his real name? Somehow it fit him—ruthless, exotic and dark. Unfortunately, it rolled through her thoughts a little too easily.
She caught a commotion near the open doorway leading from the main hotel to the lounge and glanced in that direction. Kelly stood there, looking like the quintessential tourist, rumpled, wide-eyed and in culture shock.
“Oh.” The blonde raised one hand to her mouth, brushing two obvious cameras slung across her chest. Vaughn was aware Kelly carried two others, discretely hidden and even now snapping photos. “Am I interrupting something?”
One of Blade’s security guards stepped to Kelly’s side, quickly and efficiently steering her away from the group. Another group of photographers raised cameras high, snapping a few shots of Vaughn without Stone at her side. She could imagine the headlines already. Honeymoon Over, What Went Wrong? Trouble In Paradise? Wed In Haste, Regret In…
“Vaughn, you are not listening.” Blade’s accent deepened, a sign of annoyance. He glanced at the doorway, a frown marring his expression. “You wish me to remove them?”
“No.” She shook herself, sure Kelly would be all right and hoping the photographers would not bother Blade as she smiled at him. “Forgive me. It has been a long day and we only arrived this afternoon. What were you saying?”
“I spoke of your husband. He is not, how you say, your type?”
“Oh.” Blade’s English diction was better than her own, but he slipped into the cadence of his mother country when it suited him. Like now. He was on a fishing expedition, and she wasn’t surprised. “I think Stone suits me fine.”
“He watches you all the time. He is very dark, this man.”
She followed Blade’s gaze as it rested on Stone, standing slightly apart from those nearest him, watching the crowd but not part of it.
“Dark in what way?” Vaughn took a sip of her tepid drink and wished for a breath of cooler night air from the open verandah doors.
“What does he do for a living? Does he work with your father?”
So they were going to play fifty questions. Fine. She’d been drilled on this. Stone’s deep cover was well in place.
“Don’t be silly, Blade, you know better than most the last man I’d be with would resemble dear old Dad.” Funny, that had once been the truth, and still was as far as Blade needed to know. A good place to start; now for the rest. “I don’t know much about Stone’s business beyond the fact it keeps him very busy, traveling widely, and makes him filthy rich. Imports and exports, he says.”
She flirted with Blade over the rim of her glass, knowing his attention had picked up with the ubiquitous term import and export. Every smuggler, operator and security bureau in the world used the same cover story. Their own private shorthand.
“I see.” Blade nodded to a man near the front entrance, who nodded back and disappeared. “And you married him because?”
“It seemed like a good idea at the time.” Vaughn kept her voice light and mocking, a skill learned young in her circle of world friends, many too wealthy and too bored to know how similar they all sounded.
“I read about the event.” Blade took a sip of his own drink but his gaze remained heavy on hers. “Herald Tribune, I believe, though they do not make note of many such events.”
So Ling Mai was correct—press coverage did matter. Score one for the director. Vaughn simply smiled, letting Blade continue.
“You are happy?” Blade asked, his tone touching her with the concern rimming it.
“Stone has his moments.” She glanced toward the man under discussion. “He makes a nice change from those in the old group who are happy to settle down to nappies, nannies and normalcy.”
“Ah, you still seek the excitement, the thrill, do you not?”
She shrugged, leaving him to interpret it any way he wanted. His gaze shifted and a chill slid across her exposed shoulders, one that had nothing to do with the outside temperature.
Stone had materialized at her side.
“You are enjoying my friends?” Blade spoke to him, playing the role of congenial host well.
“You have an interesting crowd of acquaintances.” Stone slid one hand across Vaughn’s lower back and she flinched. The man really should warn her. Thankfully Blade’s attention was on Stone, one predator sizing up another.
Stone continued, “Vaughn did not mention your business.”
“They are many.” Blade waved one hand. On a lesser man the gesture would have been very feminine; on the Russian it was grand and dismissive. “Many dealing with imports and exports.”
“Is that so.”
Stalemate.
Vaughn ratcheted up her smile, speaking to Stone though not looking at him. “Blade knows the most fascinating people and used to throw the best parties.”
“You flatter me, my dear.” Blade reached for her hand and raised it to his lips, holding it there a heartbeat too long.
He really was impossible, and maybe their intel about him was wrong. Always a possibility.
Stone pressed closer to her, firmly lowering her arm with his hand as the air reversed in her lungs. “Flattery is only one of my wife’s charms.”
The hostility was unmistakable. Was the man trying to get both of them killed?
Blade’s eyes slitted to flat lines as his face tightened. The conversation around them stilled, then stuttered to silence as others caught the scent of battle.
“M.T., learn your manners.” She wished her voice sounded less thin as she turned to Blade. “You’ll have to forgive him. M.T. was not raised in a cosmopolitan society.”
“Is that so?”
Stone did not answer, but she didn’t have to glance at his face to guess his expression. She’d seen it enough times over the last weeks to have it branded on her memory. Cynical. Mocking. Daring. Goad your enemy without words, a neat trick if one got away with it.
No one moved until Blade straightened and smiled, a shark’s dinner grin.
“It is only right that a man is possessive about his woman.” He turned toward Vaughn. “If you were mine, I would be so, too.”
And here she’d thought they were in the twenty-first century.
She kept her own stiff smile in place, too aware of Stone’s touch branding her arm and her back. “You are very kind.”
“Not at all, my dear.” Blade’s look deepened and that temperature drop she’d been hoping for earlier finally materialized, but it had nothing to do with a change in the weather outside. “In fact, I was just about to ask you and your husband here to be my guests over the next few days. At a very private party not far away.”
&
nbsp; “Oh, that would be—”
“We’ll let you know.” Stone tightened his grip on her arm, sloshing her drink as he wheeled her around. “Come along, darling.” He spoke to Vaughn, the endearment as mocking as his princess. “It’s late and we’ve had a long day.”
She barely had time to nod to Blade, who watched them until they disappeared into the hallway.
A very crowded hallway, as was the elevator.
It wasn’t until they reached their room that she could demand, “Do you want to tell me what the—”
Stone was there, his hand across her mouth, his gaze burning her as he leaned close, close enough for her to hear his heartbeat as he whispered in her ear. “Listening devices.”
Damn.
He kept his tone that of a frustrated spouse as he stepped back, his gaze still locked with hers. “You’re angry, Vaughn. I suggest you step out on the verandah to cool down.”
His look said, Don’t blow this any more than you already have.
Echoes of childhood chastisement rang in her memory.
Don’t be silly, Vaughn.
You should have known better, Vaughn.
Vaughn, when will you ever learn to behave properly?
She walked, knees locked to the verandah, watching him scout the room before joining her, his voice still in his role as he said, “Let’s take a walk. It might be cooler downstairs on the lawn.”
She followed him silently, bracing herself to accept any lecture he had to give, none of which could compete with the lectures she was already giving herself.
She was supposed to be a pro. To listen to his cues and play along. Less than a day into the mission and she was already running around like a blind and deaf idiot.
What if she’d said more when they’d reached the room? Hadn’t she noticed the man Blade had nodded to earlier? Of course he’d been sent as an advance scout to reconnoiter her and Stone’s room. She should have realized that.
“We should be safe here.” Stone’s voice was as dark and deep as the shadows bracketing the gazebo near the banyan tree.
Before he could say more, she shook her head, her eyes adjusting to the shadows. “I blew it back there. I’m sorry.”
