by Diana Palmer
She wasn't going to touch that line with a ten-foot pole. She took the ring back and placed it on her finger. "You don't think that Philippe might just give up and go home if he knew we were married?" she asked, avoiding his pointed question.
He hesitated, as if he wanted to pursue the subject they'd been discussing. But he sighed and let her divert him. "No, I don't," he said. "I think it will just make him more determined to have you."
After that Pierce remained silent until they boarded the plane and took their seats. Brianne fell asleep, and then woke with a start. She looked at Pierce. He had a brooding look as he stared toward the front of the plane, where a waitress was bending to take dinners out of the plane's warning ovens. This was one of the few flights that offered meals.
"They're going to serve dinner. Do you want a tray?" he asked.
"Yes."
He opened the arm of her seat and lifted out the intricately folded table for her, smiling at her look of surprise. "Surely you flew home from Paris first class?" he teased.
"Actually, I came home tourist," she murmured. "Brauer has been tight with money for the past year. Just between us, I think he's teetering on the verge of bankruptcy."
"If he is, no wonder he's so itchy to placate Sabon," Pierce replied thoughtfully. "And if he's sunk everything he owns into this development, in hopes of doubling his investment, he's in big trouble."
"Why?"
He put his own tray into position. "Because we're working with a consortium of oil companies on a deal with the Russians to develop that well in the Caspian Sea that I told you about We're going to run a pipeline right through" He mentioned the country, and her eyes widened in surprise.
"The United States has economic sanctions against it," she exclaimed. "No wonder Brauer would be upset everyone would take sides, and he'd lose money. But aren't you a United States citizen?"
"Brianne, I could be if I wanted to, but I'm not a United States citizen right now," he said, reminding her with a shock of his European birth and nationality.
"I forgot," she said quietly. "You speak such perfect English. You don't even have an accent."
"I told you that my grandfather raised me. He was Greek, but he spoke several languages fluently. He insisted that I learn English to perfection. It was the language of the business world, he used to say, and I do spend a fair amount of time in the States."
She shifted so that the stewardess could put down the meal, and then waited until Pierce had been served before she spread her napkin in her lap and glanced at him. "I guess I don't know much about the politics of other countries."
He smiled. "You should learn. It's easier to get along with people if we have some understanding of their politics, as well as their social and religious beliefs."
"How many languages do you speak?"
He shrugged. "Only three, fluently." He glanced at her and grinned. “Do you know how an Arab defines an illiterate person?"
"No. How?"
"As someone who speaks only one language."
Surprised, she laughed. "Well, that puts me right on the top of their list."
"I'll teach you Greek," he told her. "It's beautiful."
She knew that French was one of his languages, but she noticed that he didn't offer any instruction in that tongue. Probably because of Margo, she thought sadly, because she'd been French. He probably made love in French. Her eyes went involuntarily to his big, beautifully masculine hands. She remembered their skill on her body, the exquisite sensations he'd taught her to feel, and she caught her breath.
He heard the intake of breath, and his black eyes met hers with a question in them.
She flushed, moving her gaze quickly to her plate.
She wasn't hiding anything from him. He could read her like a newspaper. He unwrapped his lunch and started to butter his dinner roll. Surprisingly, he felt his body tauten pleasurably with the memory of Brianne's sensuous movements as he caressed her by the pool. She was untried, but eager and passionate. He had a good idea how it would feel to make love to her completely, and he wanted to. But every time he thought of it, he saw Margo's beloved face, and he felt guilty and ashamed for thinking of taking another woman to his bed. It seemed like adultery.
Brianne ate her chicken casserole and smiled appreciatively at the stewardess who paused to pour her a cup of black coffee. She noticed that Pierce took his the same way, without anything added.
"Where are we going to stay in Freeport?" she asked him suddenly.
"I've booked a suite of rooms at one of the hotels." He named it. "And under assumed names. We'll be fine. Meanwhile, I've sent for Winthrop. He'll be along with one or two of his men."
"You really are taking this seriously," she said.
He nodded as he finished a swallow of coffee, "Your stepfather will be on his way to Washington today, if what we've heard is accurate." He glanced at her. "I've gotten wind
of another rumor that I like even less about what they're planning." His black eyes narrowed. "There's a lot at stake here. Sabon's country has a small, poor neighbor, which has dreams of conquest and possession of all that expensive oil that the West is so desperate to buy. The neighboring country had oil, but their reserves have been exhausted. They have no oil in their country anymore. But they have powerful allies and access to state-of-the-art weapons."
"Oh, my goodness," Brianne said. "You don't think they might invade Qawi?"
"Sure they might. Sabon knows that. I think it's why he's lured Brauer into the deal, because he has a friend in the Senate in Washington. Sabon may be using Brauer to appeal to. the United States for help. They wouldn't give it to him because he's in their bad books for supporting an American foe during the Gulf War." He finished his chicken with a grim expression. "But if Brauer can bargain for U.S. protection, with some interest in the developing oil fields for bait, Sabon would have the clout he needed to push the deal through with the oil consortium. Failing that, he might be desperate
enough to attempt a first strike against the neighbor."
"Start war?"
"Yes. Start a war." He glanced at her as he wiped his mouth with a napkin.
"This sounds frightening."
"It is frightening. The Middle East is a tinderbox. All it needs is a spark to throw the whole area into war. There was a close call when Iraq attacked Kuwait and Israel back in the early nineties. This would be even closer. Countries would line up on either side of the conflict, and it has the potential to spread all the way down to the Persian Gulf." He sighed. "That would be bad news for those of us who have investments in the Caspian Sea project. And even if the war was confined to Sabon's country and its neighbor, we stand to suffer delays and the threat of armed hostility. If Brauer can't get the States to intervene on his behalf, I think he might pay some of his hired mercenaries to attack our drilling platform and put the blame on the poor nation next to Sabon's, just to stack the odds in their favor. With the Russians involved with us, that could provoke some very unpleasant retaliation on Sabon's behalf against the poor nation. Which could attract
U.S. intervention as well. I shudder to think of the possible consequences."
"Can't you do anything?"
"I'm doing it," he said. "I've got Winthrop up to his neck in investigation. He's already stopped one plan dead in the water. I have every confidence that he can stop another, with a little help from some old friends in the intelligence community. It's to their advantage to keep the lid on this thing, you know."
"I guess so." She sipped her coffee and stared at him over the plastic rim of the cup. "It's all very exciting, despite the potential for violence," she said after a minute. She laughed. "I've never done anything dangerous," she mused.. "My whole life has been one long, dull series of routine days. Well, most of it." She grinned. "You've been an adventure,"
"So have you," he murmured, and he didn't smile. "You've disrupted my life."
"Good for me," she replied. "You needed someone to disrupt it. You were going to s
eed. You're much too young to wilt on the vine, so to speak."
His good humor came back, "I wasn't wilting."
“You were so. You were keeling over in bars waiting to be picked up by potential thieves." She pursed her lips and frowned. "Say, what if that blonde eyeing you in Paris was really a CIA agent, after industrial secrets?"
He chuckled. "I don't know any industrial secrets. I run the business, I don't do the actual drilling, and I don't understand the process except from a layman's perspective."
"Yes, but you know how to build a drilling platform. In fact, you patented one idea for platforms that work best in shallow areas, didn't you?"
He was surprised. "I didn't think you knew anything about the oil business."
"I didn't. After I took you back to your hotel in Paris, I decided that if I was going to get mixed up with a man who built oil rigs, I should know something about the oil business."
"How did you know you were going to get mixed up with me?" he pursued. "I had no plans to go to Nassau or look you up."
"Yes, I guessed that. But I knew you had a home in Nassau and I planned to look you up!" she retorted. "I lost my nerve, though. If you hadn't been at that party Kurt took us to, I don't suppose I would have seen you again except by accident."
"I don't know," he replied. He finished his coffee. "I told you that you were too young for me."
"Seventeen years."
"Eighteen."
She grimaced. "You didn't tell me you'd had a birthday."
"No, I didn't, did I."
His cold glance ended any attempt at humor on that subject She put down her fork and opened her dessert, a chocolate pie. "I don't know what sort of music you like, what kind of books you read, or what you like to do when you aren't working."
He was reluctant to share those intimate details with her. She was trying to worm her way into his life, and he didn't want her to.
But all the same, he found himself speaking when he hadn't planned to. "I like Debussy, Respighi, Puccini, and modern composers like John Williams, Jerry Goldsmith, James Homer, David Arnold and Eric Serra. I read most anything, but I'm partial to biographies and ancient Greek and Roman history." .
"I like those composers, too," she said. "And I love opera. My favorites are Puccini'sTurandot and Madame Butterfly."
He didn't want to tell her that those were his two favorites. "What do you like to read?"
"Romances," she said with a grin.
"Because you're still young enough and idealistic enough to believe in happy endings," he said with faint mockery. "I'm old and jaded enough to know they don't exist."
"You had ten wonderful years with a woman you loved who loved you back," she pointed
out.
"And she died," he said brutally. "So much for happy endings!"
"Maybe a little happiness is all we can expect in this life," she said thoughtfully. "What if you'd never met Margo at all? Would you have been happier, really?"
He didn't want to answer that. He glanced down at the remains of his chocolate pie with blank eyes.
"You wouldn't," she said for him. "You were very lucky to have had such a special relationship. You have memories that are better than the daily lives of most people."
He'd never thought of himself as lucky. Maybe he was. Margo had loved him unselfishly, generously. He looked at Brianne and thought with a start that Margo would have
liked her. She was similar to his late wife in many ways, not the least of which was in her empathy and compassion. She was a giving person. She wasn't beautiful, as Margo had been, but she was pretty in her own way.
"Haven't you ever been in love?" he asked curiously.
"Only with you," she said honestly.
His jaw tightened and he turned his eyes back to his coffee cup. It was empty. He looked around for the stewardess and motioned to the cup. She came back with the coffeepot and refilled it. Brianne shook her head with a smile and the stewardess went on down the aisle.
"You're too young to know what love is," Pierce said after a minute. "You're hot for your first affair and you want me. It's desire, nothing more."
She smiled wistfully. "Whatever you say."
He sipped his coffee and scorched his upper lip. He made a face as he put the cup back down.
"You'll meet someone," he said. "Someday, you'll find a man close to your own age, and you'll understand what I mean."
"I'm married," she replied. "I can't go looking for a husband when I've already got
one." .
"We won't be married forever," he said shortly, looking straight at her. "Once this is over, we'll get a quiet annulment."
Her heart seemed to stop in her chest. So that was what he meant to do stay married to her, but not intimate with her, until the trouble with Sabon was over. Then an annulment, which would be easy to get since the marriage hadn't been consummated. No wonder he didn't want to go to bed with her. He was already making plans to get her out of his life for good!
Brianne toyed with her paper napkin, tracing the embossed logo of the airline with the tip of her fingernail.
"I see," she said when she realized that he was waiting for her to answer him.
"You know it would never work," he continued shortly. "There's too much difference in our ages. We're from different generations. We don't even think the same way."
"And even if we did, there's Margo."
His eyes flashed angrily. "I loved her," he said, his eyes glittering. "I won't cheat on her."
"Pierce, she's gone," she said softly. "She won't ever come back. You may live for another thirty or forty years. Do you really want to live alone for all that time, by yourself, with no one for company?"
"Yes!"
He said it, but he didn't sound convincing to Brianne. It must be very difficult for him, especially when he was alone with the memories that would be as much curse as comfort to him. "She wouldn't want this," she murmured, thinking aloud. "She wouldn't want you alone and grieving forever."
"You don't know what the hell you're talking about," he replied icily. "Let it drop. I don't want to talk about it."
"Whatever you say," she returned. "I don't suppose you'd like to try having sex in the washroom while we're up here, would you?" she added wickedly, trying to lighten the tone of their disturbing conversation. "I saw it in a racy movie once, and I've always wondered..."
“Wonder by yourself! "He returned his tray to the arm of his chair, got up and went storming down the aisle to the bathroom. He went inside and locked the door, leaning his forehead against its cool surface with a rough sigh. Damn the woman! Couldn't she stop getting at him about the past? Didn't she know that it was killing him to remember Margo's face, her breath in his mouth, her hands on him in the darkness? His life was growing more unbearable by the day.
He thought about thirty more years of this agony and his heart threatened to crack inside him.
If only he didn't find Brianne so attractive. He didn't want to think about her, he didn't want to have the temptation of her nearby. If she went away, he'd be safe, with only his memories of Margo. He wouldn't have to fight his hunger for Brianne.
It wasn't just the sight of her that tantalized him, it was these little remarks she made, half-teasing invitations to ravish her in airplane rest rooms. He laughed in spite of himself. She was so uninhibited, despite her innocence. He found her a continual delight. She was the first woman since Margo who could make him feel light-hearted, who could make him laugh. He was an impatient, irritable man most of the tune these days, always spoiling for a fight, because anger could lessen the pain of grief. Brianne knocked the fire off his mercurial temper. She made him see the world with her own soft, happy eyes. It
was ironic, he thought, that a woman with such tragedy in her own life could be so optimistic and upbeat.
He stared at his face in the mirror and saw the silver peppering the black hair at his temples. There were lines around his eyes, too. He put a hand to the traces of silve
r and laughed hollowly. Couldn't Brianne look at him and see how old he really was? It surprised him that a woman of her youth and attractiveness could want him. He wondered what she saw in that broad, hard face staring back at him.
Brianne, sitting quietly in her seat, was wondering the same thing. He wasn't particularly handsome, not with hands and feet and a nose that size. Certainly he was a lot older than she was. But she'd never known a man in her whole life who could hold a candle to him. He was just dynamite, and it was killing her that she couldn't find a way to get to his heart.
The stewardess was offering more beverages. Was that champagne she was offering? Well, why not? Pierce had made it clear that he didn't want her, and she was feeling pretty sorry for herself. Maybe a little pick-me-up would be just the thing!
