Seduced by the Operative

by Merline Lovelace

  Her brows drew together. “I believe my assistant reserved a deluxe room for me.”

  “Indeed she did, madam, but the embassy said…Er…”

  The clerk looked to Luis, who stepped calmly into the breach.

  “The suite has two bedrooms, does it not?”

  “It does, sir, and two baths in addition to a large dining and sitting area.”

  “Where we may work uninterrupted, querida. We may as well turn this mixup to our advantage.”

  Irritated again, Claire considered insisting on her own room. Common sense won out. She and Luis routinely shared bodily fluids. They could certainly share a sitting and dining room.

  Still, she didn’t hesitate to voice her suspicion after the porter took them by private lift to a penthouse suite decorated with antiques and inch-thick Turkish carpets.

  “Did you instruct your people to reserve this suite in both our names?”

  “No. I did request a suite, however, and asked them to advise your assistant of the reservation. It appears our staffs weren’t expecting your so absurd announcement that we must occupy separate beds. Nor was I.”

  Claire tossed her purse on a sofa table and thrust a hand through her hair. She was jet-lagged and wrinkled and in no mood to argue.

  “I’m too tired to discuss boundaries again, Luis. We’ll go with this arrangement—as long as you understand one shaving kit does not entitle you to muscle in on any more of my missions. Or have your people work my hotel reservations.”

  He whipped his head around. The long flight had left him with a heavy five o’clock shadow. In his jeans and white shirt with the rolled-up sleeves, he looked more like he belonged on a Harley than in a penthouse suite.

  He hit back like a biker, too. Fast. Hard. A power punch to the gut. “What does it entitle me to, Claire? Two nights a week in your bed? Three?”

  “If you’re going to reduce our relationship to that equation,” she replied icily, “we might as well call it off right now.”

  He stiffened, and Claire gave herself a swift mental kick. How clumsy of her! How incredibly stupid!

  This was no time to throw down a gauntlet. Not with everything riding on her mission. The last thing either of them needed was an emotional eruption.

  “I’m sorry. That was unfair. I know you want more, Luis. So do I, but I have to take this one step at a time.”

  She waited, wondering if he’d accept the olive branch. After a small silence, he made a visible effort to rein in his anger.

  “You are taking it one very careful, very cautious step at a time.”

  “I know.”

  The rest of his anger left him on a gust of breath. Shaking his head, he curled a knuckle under her chin.

  “You embody such contradictions, my darling. You are so calm and insightful with your clients. So skilled and deadly in the field. So passionate with me, yet so wary of surrendering your heart.”

  She couldn’t argue with that. Having said heart ripped out of her chest once would make anyone wary.

  On the other hand, Luis hadn’t exactly surrendered his heart, either. He made no secret of the fact he admired her enormously on an intellectual level and lusted for her physically. Yet, neither of them had whispered the dreaded L word.

  Claire knew she was still a challenge to him. A citadel to conquer. And once he had…?

  “Here is my suggestion,” he said. “We shower, we rest, and then you let me show you Prague. It rivals Paris, I think, as one of the world’s most romantic cities.”

  “Deal. Which bedroom do you want?”

  His mouth curved in a wry smile. “You still insist on this?”

  “I do.”

  He bowed and swept an arm toward the adjoining bedrooms. “Then you choose. I care not where I sleep, if it is not beside you.”

  “You’re right,” Claire breathed several hours later. “This city is incredible.”

  They’d followed a gently sloping walk to the lower gardens of the castle that dominated Prague’s skyline. With elbows propped on a low stone parapet, she drank in the sight of the older sections of the city spread out below them.

  “It really does have a hundred spires,” she murmured in awe as her gaze swept a panoramic vista of slate roofs, turrets and tall, slender steeples.

  The River Vlata curved directly below them, and bisected the city into neat halves. On either side of its banks, Gothic and Romanesque towers rose above narrow streets crowded with medieval buildings. Luis pointed to one tower, a massive structure thrusting up into the sky some blocks from the square, at the heart of Old Town.

  “That is the Powder Gate, so called because it used to store gunpowder. It was one of the thirteen gates that guarded the king’s castle and the city center, before the royal residence was moved up here to higher ground.” His voice took on the caressing tone of a connoisseur’s true love of beauty. “And that, querida, is the Karlov Möst. The Charles Bridge.”

  She followed his outswept arm to the world-famous bridge that connected the historic centers of Prague. It was closed to vehicle traffic, allowing crowds of pedestrians to stroll across its sixteen graceful spans. Larger-than-life-size statues adorned each span and gazed down from tall marble pillars. Below the statues, street vendors sketched caricatures of tourists, musicians sang to the accompaniment of accordions and mandolins, and artisans displayed hand-crafted jewelry or clothing or religious artifacts.

  “Are you up to walking across the bridge to Old Town Square?” Luis asked.

  “Definitely!”

  A quick shower had reenergized Claire. That, and the fact that the blast of humidity that had smacked them in the face when they first arrived had now tapered to a bearable warmth. Thankfully, she’d checked the weather before packing and had included flat-heeled sandals and a sleeveless, lemon-colored tank she could dress up or down. Arm in arm, she and Luis descended the narrow streets of Upper Town and passed through the medieval gate that guarded the bridge.

  “We must come across again tomorrow, early in the morning,” he told her. “Before the vendors set up and the tourists crowd onto the bridge. Seeing the mists swirl about the statues on Karlov Möst with no one else present is to see Prague’s very essence.”

  Claire believed him, although she found the crowds invigorating and the musicians entertaining. Particularly the organ grinder decked out in a straw boater and red-striped shirt. While he pumped out tunes on his hand-cranked grinder, his trained monkey hopped at the end of a long leash to collect the coins tourists dropped in his tin cup.

  Claire added a couple of euros to the cup before she and Luis continued their meandering. They paused with other tourists to rub the plaque identifying one of the statues as St. John of Nepomuk.

  “It will bring luck,” Luis asserted solemnly as he caressed the shiny spot on the plaque. “And bring you back to Prague.”

  Claire certainly hoped so. Everything she’d seen so far enchanted her. She gave the plaque a determined rub before strolling with Luis through the turreted tower guarding the far side of the bridge.

  It gave onto a maze of cobbled streets with narrow, three-and four-story buildings crowded so close together they blocked the sun. Their varying architectural styles provided a feast for Claire’s eyes. She craned her neck in an effort to absorb details on facades that covered the spectrum from square, solid Romanesque to medieval Gothic to the incredibly intricate Renaissance, baroque and rococo periods.

  Shops occupied the ground floor of many buildings. Elaborate signs above the doors identified each shop’s specialty or trade. A fat, iron pig swung above the entrance to a restaurant with an outdoor menu that advertised stewed pigs’ knuckles, braised ham and grilled pork roast. An apothecary’s mortar and pestle designated a drug store with a window display featuring everything from aspirin to Xylocaine.

  Enthralled by the sights and sounds and tantalizing scents that filled the air, Claire almost missed the tiny bookshop wedged between a bakery and a store with a display of spar
kling Czech crystal.

  “Luis!” She dragged him to a halt and pointed to a collection of leather-bound volumes. “Look at those antique guidebooks.”

  She barely gave him time to glance at the items before reaching for the doorknob. A bell tinkled merrily as she stepped across the threshold. The scent of old leather and musty pages tickled her nostrils.

  The elderly shopkeeper glanced up at their entrance and peered at them over his rimless glasses. “Blaho odpoledne.”

  Claire took that as a greeting and smiled. “Good afternoon.”

  “Ah, you are English.”

  “American.”

  “Welcome to my store. How may I help you?”

  “I’d like to see one of the antique guidebooks in the window.”

  “Yes, yes, show me the one.”

  They moved to the window and Claire pointed to a slim volume, so old the leather had flaked off in several places. When she held the volume in her hands, Luis read the title over her shoulder.

  “An Englishman’s Walking Guide to the Ghouls and Spectral Haunts of Prague.”

  Carefully, Claire opened to a yellowed page. The hand-drawn illustration on the page stopped her breath in her throat.

  A caped and hooded skeleton stared back at her with black, empty sockets. The grim specter gripped a rosary in its boney right hand. Its left was wrapped around the long wooden handle of a scythe.

  On impulse, Claire turned to the bookstore owner. “Do you by any chance have a copy of a treatise written by Cardinal Tuma fifty years ago? One that also deals with skeletons and apparitions?”

  “I have heard of this work,” the shopkeeper replied. “But I have never seen a copy in print.”

  Disappointed, Claire purchased the slender volume. She and Luis left the bookstore a little later with the guidebook wrapped in brown paper and tucked inside her shoulder bag. If nothing else, it might give her some insight into the Slavic mentality Cardinal Tuma had written about in his treatise.

  “I’ll read it tonight,” she told Luis. “Maybe we can visit some of the spots in the guide tomorrow, before our appointment with the cardinal.”

  As the evening sun painted the ancient buildings with a golden glow, and strolling crowds filled the sidewalk cafés and restaurants, Claire had no inkling she would wake screaming in terror before the night was done.

  Chapter 6

  For weeks and months afterward, Claire would try to retrace the hours leading up to the horrifying dream.

  She felt no premonition, no sense of any pending cataclysmic event while she and Luis ambled through the summer twilight. As he’d predicted, Prague thoroughly enthralled her. History practically oozed through the walls of the buildings looming over cobbled streets. Everywhere she looked, she found another architectural gem.

  Mullioned bow windows straight out of the fourteenth or fifteenth century. Ancient wells crowned with lacy ironwork and strategically placed for generations of city dwellers to draw their water. Gorgeously painted facades. The soaring twin spires of the Church of Our Lady Before Tyn, which dominated one side of Old Town’s main square—arguably one of the most beautiful in Europe.

  But it was Prague’s unique astronomical clock that cemented her love affair with the city. She and Luis joined the crowd that gathered every hour on the hour in the square, facing the southern wall of the Old Town city hall. A festive mood filled the air as tourists snapped pictures of each other standing under the massive clock or feasted on sausages and pilsner in the surrounding outdoor cafés.

  Claire and Luis were lucky enough to snag a table directly across from the clock. She let him place an order for two pilsners, bowing to his superior knowledge of brands and labels. She sipped the pale beer and listened in amusement while he waxed eloquent on a subject he’d obviously researched firsthand.

  “Czechs have been brewing beer in Pilsen and Budweis since the eleventh century.”

  “Budweis? As in Budweiser?”

  “Exactly. The Czechs were the first to produce a light, golden brew. It became so popular they exported it extensively to other countries. At one point, a special beer train left Pilsen for Vienna every morning. The Germans soon learned their brewing secrets, and it was a German immigrant who set up the Budweiser Brewing Company in the U.S.”

  He downed a healthy swallow and rolled his lips to erase the foam on his mustache.

  “Not surprisingly, Czechs consume more beer per capita than any other population on earth. Something like three hundred pints a year. It would be interesting to see how that compares to wine consumption in France, or overall alcohol consumption in the U.S., yes?”

  Claire had a good idea how it would compare. She dealt with the effects of alcohol abuse regularly in her practice. Unfortunately, alcoholism rates among adults and binge drinking among teens were rising steadily each year in the U.S., as well as Europe.

  She didn’t want to dwell on those grim statistics right now, though. Not with the flaming ball of the sun about to drop behind Prague’s magical spires and Luis sitting across from her, looking so damned sexy in his fresh, open-neck shirt and well-worn jeans that every woman passing by the outdoor café did a double take.

  The sonorous bong of a bell instantly diverted her attention to the two circular faces of the huge astronomical clock. The top face contained the astrolabe, an intricate series of dials that tracked the movement of the sun and moon and displayed various zodiac symbols. The bottom face, added in later centuries, displayed the months in a gorgeously ornate calendar.

  Anticipation rippled through the crowd as the bell chimed the hour. Claire propped her chin in her palms, then watched with breathless fascination as carved wooden statues of the twelve apostles appeared one by one in the doors above the clock. At the same time, the four statues flanking it began to move forward.

  How incredible that such precision and beauty could have been created so many centuries ago. Especially with the wars and plagues that regularly swept across continents. Life expectancy back then could be measured in two or three decades.

  Sitting in the café, listening to the sonorous chimes, Claire suspected each strike of the hour not only told the time, it reminded mortals to repent their sins, as their time on earth was short.

  Or, as she had suggested to Stacy, was this a visible reminder to Prague’s citizens to focus on what was good in life instead of the bad? The joy instead of the sorrows? The future instead of the past…?

  Her glance shifted to the man beside her. She’d taken a major step toward letting go of her past by removing Dave’s picture from her bedroom, and another huge step by inviting Luis to share that bedroom on a more frequent basis.

  Why couldn’t she take the next step? What held her back from total commitment? Remembered pain? Guilt? The sneaking, insidious thought that, as long as she represented a challenge, she’d keep Luis on the hook?

  God, she hoped she wasn’t that shallow or manipulative! Still, she felt somewhat subdued until the astronomical clock completed its bonging and Luis turned to her.

  “Shall we have dinner here in Old Town? I know a place that serves the best fried pork dumplings I’ve eaten.”

  Nodding, Claire gathered her things. “Fried pork dumplings sound wonderful.”

  Dusk had given way to a starry summer sky by the time they finished. Claire soon realized that while Prague by day was incredible, night made the city magical.

  Floodlights gave a stunningly dramatic view of the castle and St. Vitus Cathedral high on the hill across the river. Not even the presence of scaffolding could detract from the sight of the spires silhouetted against an ink-black sky. In Old Town, more floods illuminated the facades of the buildings lining the square. Wrought-iron lamps transformed the Charles Bridge into a softly lit lovers lane where couples ambled arm in arm.

  Luis and Claire strolled back across the bridge under the watchful eye of the bishops and saints mounted on their pedestals. An electric tram transported them up the steep hill to Upper Town and let
them off a mere half block from the Savoy.

  Once in their suite, the stunning view of the castle and cathedral drew Claire to the wide terrace that ran the length of the palatial suite. She heard a clink of crystal behind her, and Luis emerged a moment later with a brandy snifter cradled in each palm.

  “Magnificent, is it not?”

  “And then some,” she agreed.

  She accepted a heavy crystal snifter and held it up as Luis did the same with his.

  “To us,” he said, with a look that somehow managed to convey amusement, wry acceptance and undisguised desire, “one very careful step at a time.”

  “To us.”

  Claire savored the brandy’s smoky bite, sipping slowly. Luis leaned his elbows next to hers on the wide stone railing and did the same. Neither mentioned their sleeping arrangements, but Claire knew the issue had to be on his mind as much as it was on hers.

  She’d made the right decision by insisting they occupy separate beds on this op. As much as she’d enjoyed the afternoon and evening with Luis, she needed to be clear and focused tomorrow. She also had to work through this nagging sense that he was pushing her too far, too fast.

  Sternly, she suppressed the traitorous thought that a bout of hot, sweaty sex might be exactly what she needed to blow the doubts out of her head. She’d made her bed. Tonight, at least, she’d lie in it.

  When Luis moved a little away and extracted the inevitable cigarillo from a silver case, she used that as a cue to make a graceful exit.

  “I think I’ll curl up and read the book we bought while you enjoy your cigar.” She moved in enough to lay a palm against his cheek. “I’ll see you in the morning.”

  He bent his head to take the kiss she offered. His mouth was warm, his mustache silky against her upper lip. Claire carried the taste of him on her lips to the bedroom she’d chosen.

  Luis’s glance trailed her as she went through the French doors. He knew he’d pushed her close to the line by muscling in on this trip to Prague. He’d invaded her space both physically and mentally. It didn’t take a PhD to recognize that Claire’s insistence on separate bedrooms was her attempt to restore the delicate balance of power.