by Mary Buckham
She kept her voice calm, her emotions jangling but in a different way than last night.
“Sleep well?” she asked, turning to splash cold water against her face.
He stepped closer and his scent reached her. Encircled her with the steam and the heat and the want.
She said nothing more as she turned, stepped closer and undid the knot holding the sheet in place. His nostrils flared; his voice was raw as he laughed.
“You’re insatiable,” he murmured, his lips skimming her jaw, nibbling her ear.
“Yeah.” It came on a huff of breath.
“We’ve got work to do,” he whispered in her ear, but his remark held no force.
“Later.” It was her turn to laugh, and to waltz him back toward the shower.
He made no protest as he joined her.
At last, he was letting her lead.
Smart man.
Chapter 16
Vaughn waited until Stone left the room before she released the sigh she’d been holding. A coward’s way? Maybe. But she needed the few minutes alone to settle nerve endings still humming.
God, she’d been easy.
Thank heavens. Another smile skimmed her lips, a satisfied, cat-licking-cream smile. If Stone ever saw it she’d never hear the end of it.
“So what now?” she asked herself.
The mission had changed, become complicated, though she doubted either of them wanted to deal with that issue right now. Not before the auction. Before her meeting with Blade.
It was just sex.
Nothing more.
Liar.
Okay, so it was mind-blowing, catch-your-breath-and-hold-on sex. And she wanted more. Lots more.
Not the issue.
So what was the issue? In a few minutes, she was heading down to meet Blade. A meeting that could change everything for him, and for her, forever. If he was innocent of what Ling Mai and Stone thought he was up to, she had a chance to stop him, now, before the situation got any dicier.
And if he was guilty? If he really was involved in the deaths of two MI6 agents and was indeed planning to auction a deadly weapon to the highest bidder—and all the facts pointed to that—then she was going to have to take him down. Destroy a friend. It was what she’d come to do, no matter what the cost.
She wasn’t a quitter, no matter how tempting it’d be to walk out the main resort doors and never look back.
So that left only one alternative.
Time to be the professional she’d been training to become. Sex with Stone was a complication, but it had nothing to do with the mission.
She hoped.
She nudged aside the thought. No time or place for it. Not now.
Not ever.
Now she had a mission to complete and a man to meet.
Before she reached the door, her ear mike buzzed. An incoming communication from the team.
She headed toward the balcony before responding, hoping like Hades it wasn’t Jayleen with another one of her tarot card warnings.
“I’m here.” She kept her voice low as she hit the transmit function.
“Alex here.”
“What’s up?” It had to be important to break pattern and instigate a call.
“Uncle Charlie has sent several cousins snooping around.”
Damn and double damn. CIA agents. Her father’s people.
“How visible?”
“Mandy spotted two yesterday in Simla. Kelly caught sight of one closer to where you are.”
Not good. If her team could spot the agents, it was a safe bet Blade’s people could, too. Would their presence be enough to spook him into canceling the auction? Or would Blade assume the agents were connected with her in some way?
Really not good.
“Copy.” She sighed. There wasn’t a lot she could do on the inside, except find out what was being auctioned as soon as possible. Now her meeting with Blade took on a greater urgency. Save a friend or crucify him?
“You there, Vaughn?” Alex asked, her own voice distorted.
“Yeah, still here.”
“Ling Mai wants your meeting with Blade on record.”
Great. Complication on complication.
“And she wants to know ASAP what’s being auctioned. Preferably before the auction goes down.”
As if Vaughn and Stone didn’t want the same thing.
“One other thing,” Alex continued. “Weather front moving in, potential disruption to communication possible.”
Vaughn glanced at the far horizon, seeing for the first time the gunmetal clouds marching toward them. Monsoon season. The first blast of wet brought relief, but at a price. Usually a blast of weather—winds, sheets of water, howling nature—tearing into everything in its path.
Maybe she should have been happy to get another of Jayleen’s doom-and-gloom predictions.
“Oh, and Vaughn?” Alex’s voice brought her back to the here and now.
“More good news?” came her slightly cynical response.
Alex didn’t laugh. Instead she uttered a pithy, “Watch your back.”
The communication cut out.
Vaughn squared her shoulders, smelling the scent of rain in the thick air. She was still early for her meeting with Blade, but the clock was ticking.
Friend or foe?
One thing was sure—she’d never find out hiding in her bedroom. Ling Mai wanted answers. Vaughn wanted, if possible, to save a friend. If he still was a friend.
It was time to act.
Blade joined her at the infinity pool on the southeast terrace. The view from here was even more spectacular than from other locations around the resort. Maybe it was the combination of blue, blue water silently gliding off the edge of the pool into open space, with the vista of row upon row of mountains, with tumbling storm clouds hugging their flanks in the background. It gave a sense of space and size that made a human appear puny and unimportant.
As if she didn’t already.
“You look pensive.” Blade reached for her hand, turning it and kissing the inside of her palm.
On any other day, and from any other man, it would have been salve to her wounds. Today, it was business.
“A long night.” She kept her gaze averted.
“Trouble in paradise?”
“No.”
“I am glad to see your husband not with you this morning.”
“You asked to meet alone. Besides, we are not joined at the hip.”
“I see.” He came to stand beside her, shoulders brushing, gaze scanning the far horizons.
“Did you wish to meet to speak of my husband?” she asked when Blade made no move to speak. So what if the words came out a little acerbic. If Stone was listening, let him make his own guesses as to why; Alex or others on the other end of the watch transmitter could come to their own conclusions.
Blade smiled at her. He really did have fine eyes. She’d thought so the first time she’d seen him in Denmark all those years ago and nothing had changed.
“There may be a small adjustment to plans,” he murmured, catching her off guard.
“About the auction?”
“No. The auction will proceed as planned.”
“I don’t understand.”
“My team has concerns. About security.”
Her heart dropped, a disconcerting experience when standing on the edge of the world.
“Is there a problem?”
“Nothing that cannot be handled.”
Lord, he sounded like Stone now.
“Then the auction will continue?” She kept her tone light and casual.
“It will, though not as originally planned. An initial auction will be held here as my men search for suspected intruders. A second, final auction will be held elsewhere.”
This was news. She hoped Alex was getting it all.
She probed. “Surely the whole group will not be moving?”
“There can always be another auction. Not like this one, but enough to keep all my spec
ial guests happy. They will not cause problems.”
Was this good news, or not good news?
She was not dealing well with ambiguity this morning.
“Are you saying I’m causing you problems here, Blade?”
“You should never have gone away before. It was a mistake.”
So Stone was right about where the Russian was coming from. Chalk one up for the rock man.
“We were traveling different paths.” How was that for a noncommittal comment? Maybe Stone was rubbing off on her. Not a good thought as it conjured up the texture of his skin on hers, his scent mingling with hers, his heartbeat keeping pace beat for beat with hers.
Damn the man.
But there was one way to get the thoughts of one man out of your head when you were with another. She brushed her fingers against her watch, effectively silencing the communication. What she had to say next was not for public consumption. It was a risk, but it was her risk.
“Blade,” she said, stepping closer, facing him now, sincere concern in her voice. “I need to know something.”
“What?”
“This auction. These people.” She waved a hand to indicate the guests beyond the glass doors. “I don’t understand any of this. This is not like you. Or the you I knew.”
“We all change, Vaughn.”
“But there are rumors of weapons. Of the possibility of people being killed. Is that what you want?”
“You of all people should know how little one gets to do what they want.” His laugh did not reach his eyes. “Come, Vaughn, what are you saying?”
She braced herself. “I’m worried about you. About what you’re involved in.”
“And yet you married Marcos Stone.”
Crap. There was that.
“I married the man, not his business.” Good thing she learned tap dancing as well as ballet.
But something in Blade’s expression remained distant. Had she blown it? Or was he hearing what she needed him to hear?
She stepped closer still, resting one hand on his arm. Friend to friend. “I mean it, Blade. This isn’t about Stone. This is about you. I owe you.”
“For Copenhagen?”
“Yes.” Her voice dropped. “For Copenhagen and for being a friend.”
“Is that what I am to you?”
There was no script for this. Her training taught her not to dangle too far out on a limb, but her gut equated risk with reward. One did not grasp the brass ring without leaning far out on a whirling carousel horse.
She glanced toward the Himalayas, their peaks clear in the high air. “Yes, you’re my friend and I want to help.”
“I am not a man who needs help.”
Now he was sounding like Stone. Lord save her from stubborn men who thought they had all the answers.
“Are you sure?” She looked up at him, wanting to shake and hug him at the same time. “Sometimes we can get in over our heads and don’t know how to get out.” Boy, was that true. “I just want to let you know I’m here for you.”
“Are you?”
That didn’t sound good. Had she gone too far? Given away too much? One would have thought working with Stone over the last weeks would have taught her some measure of self-preservation. But then her mother had always said she had to push everything.
Her hand slid from Blade’s arm. Time to get the mission back on track. Or maybe her focus. Forget saving Blade, or herself. She’d tried it her way. Now it was time to meet Ling Mai’s objective.
“Speaking about the auction,” she said, stepping the teeniest bit away from Blade, “what happens with it?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, you’re talking about dealing with something very dangerous and very illegal. Aren’t you concerned about repercussions?”
Nothing like baiting the bear and from the frown marring Blade’s patrician face, she’d pushed his buttons.
“What type of repercussions?” His accent thickened with each word. Did pissing off the target come under risk-taking behavior or suicide? Was this the best way to find out what was being auctioned?
“Nothing specific.” She shrugged, though her shoulders felt like lead weights. “But from meeting some of your other guests—” she glanced back at the hotel “—these are not the kind of people one wants as enemies.”
“And you think they are my enemies?”
There was no avoiding his stare, or the intensity of it. Maybe it was a talent she had, of ticking off ruthless, emotionless, powerful men. Would Ling Mai see this as an attribute or a failure? Forget Ling Mai; how was Vaughn going to use it?
“Blade.” She stepped closer and laid one hand across his tensed arm. “It doesn’t matter what I think because I don’t have enough information.” In for a penny…“And until I do have enough information, how am I to make a decision about what you’re involved with?”
Time beat one shudder at a time as she waited for Blade’s response.
When it came, it surprised her.
“Come.” He grabbed her arm, giving her no option. “I show you.”
She skipped to keep up with him as he entered the hotel then veered left, heading toward the guest rooms.
“Blade, where—”
“Wait. You shall see.”
It looked like she had little choice as he waved to his security guards, a double set, to fall in behind them. Through the foyer and past the startled hotel staff and one or two guests, down a hallway toward his room.
His expression was intense, his stride purposeful. That fast the easy camaraderie had changed between them. Or had it been there at all? This was not Blade her friend, this was the Russian Blade. The ruthless one.
When would she learn to stop pushing?
Had he found the bugs she had planted last night? Was it all over before it even began? Why had she turned off her communications device?
If it had been left on, at least someone would know how she died.
Chapter 17
Questions whirred like rotor blades with each step she skipped beside Blade. What was happening? Where was Stone? Was this the end?
“You are very quiet.” Blade glanced her way as they reached his room and kept walking.
Good news or bad?
When in doubt, bluff. Had Stone taught her that? No, Mary Jo Lewinsky in sixth grade when they’d been caught sneaking into the dormitory at St. Margaret’s Hall. It had worked then; it might work now.
“Where exactly are we going?” she asked, her voice more breathless than she wanted it to be.
“Here.” Blade stopped before a partially closed door and pushed it open with his shoulder.
Blade didn’t halt until he’d tugged her before a teak table with a single globe sitting on its surface. “Here. This is it.”
It looked like her father’s study at home—book-lined walls, leather chairs, Persian rugs quieting one’s footsteps. It took several very erratic heartbeats for Vaughn to register that it was empty.
He released her arm only to raise his hand reverently to skim the curve of the high-relief globe. A lover’s caress, reminding her very much of the previous night.
Keep focused, Vaughn, you’re not out of trouble yet.
She waited, letting her pulse slow, her mind formulate and discard theories.
When Blade spoke again, he was no longer looking at her but staring at the globe as if it held the secrets of the universe.
“When I was a child,” he said, “my father had a globe much like this. Though nothing so grand.” He glanced up with a wistful smile. “In the evenings, he would talk to me of history. Of kingdoms conquered. Of magical places whose names are no more.”
He sounded so lost Vaughn wanted to reach out and somehow soothe him. But there was a key here. A key she might be able to use to save his life, or her own, if she understood what it was.
“He told me of czars, of kings and princes. Men who created and defined their worlds.”
Was this it, then? Was this what was
driving him to auction a lethal weapon to the highest bidder?
“He told me that such men made their own rules. They lived by them and died by them.”
His voice slid away.
She swallowed and stepped closer, watching his fingers sketch the crumbling boundaries of his own changing homeland.
“Is this why you’re having this auction?” she asked, barely holding her breath.
He did not answer her directly but shook his head and said, “You know what it is like to live in the shadow of one’s father. We always had this in common.”
“Yes.”
“Only yours is very much alive and mine is not.”
Now she was only getting confused. Was he doing this to prove something to his late father? Or to himself?
“Blade, I don’t understand.” She watched his gaze shift from the globe to her face. Walking amidst land mines came to mind as she groped for the right words. “But if it helps, I’ve learned that we can’t live for our fathers, only for ourselves. Our choices, our mistakes, our lessons are just that—ours. Not theirs.”
“Are they?”
“Yes, I think—”
A commotion behind the closed door stopped her words.
She heard a thud and an oath, and then the door slammed open, revealing Stone standing there, looking typically calm and rocklike, and a slightly doubled-over guard groaning.
The mood in the room quickly changed. Blade stepped away from the globe, nodding at a trio of guards who’d materialized behind Stone.
“That is enough.”
They grunted and disappeared, taking their limping comrade with them.
Stone never glanced Blade’s way. Instead his intense gaze zeroed in on her with the old you’ve-screwed-things-up-again look.
Vaughn shook her head, an automatic movement one could construe as a very wifely gesture when dealing with an impossible man. Her next comment cemented her role. “Darling, whatever is the problem?”
She stepped toward him, her hands fisted at her side to keep from clobbering him. She’d been that close to getting Blade to open up to her. A step she needed to stop the auction before it ever began. But the opportunity was now lost.
“You forgot?” Stone’s tone held even, until he looked at Blade. “Wives,” he added, shrugging. “They’re enough to make a man crazy.”
