by Unknown
“I know that, and I know what 9/11 did to you, Isa.” His voice softened, as it always did when they talked about her parents. Gabe understood the power of a family better than anyone she’d ever met, and he always sympathized with her loss.
“Then you should respect why I want this assignment.”
“I do, but you can get reassigned. You don’t have to take what they offer you.” He snagged a pair of boxers from the floor, stepping into them. “I can pull in a few favors at headquarters and get this changed.” He snapped the waistband, as if closing the subject. “Trust me, I’ve been yanking on CIA johnsons for eleven years. I get what I want when I want it.”
Every word made her blood bubble a little hotter. “What about what I want?”
“Look, if you want to leave Cuba, we can work together on an assign—”
“I asked for this assignment,” she fired back. “I fought for it. I want it.”
His jaw dropped, and his mighty shoulders dipped slightly, as if she’d just dumped two tons of bad news on him. “You volunteered to leave?”
She stared back at him, swallowed, and nodded.
“Why the hell would you do that?” he demanded.
Why the hell couldn’t he understand? “Because I have a chance to save someone from enduring the pain I did. If I can save one life, one single life, and prevent one human being from going through that helpless, horrible feeling of being told some lunatic with a cause killed your parents while they walked down a hallway, then I will. I have to. It’s why I joined the CIA.” She took a step closer, her voice and body vibrating. “I crossed that lobby and stood on that insignia so I could do that, not to meet a man who makes me feel weak.”
“Weak? Like weak in the knees or helpless?”
“Both,” she admitted. “I want to be more than the capable multilingual translator in the corner of the room, Gabe. It’s not enough to stop those guys. Please tell me you understand how important it is that I make a difference.”
He took a step back, as if pushed by the power of her speech. “Of course I do. I just want you to make a difference next to me.”
Her heart folded a little. “Do you love me enough to wait for me?”
“Do you love me enough not to go?”
She didn’t answer, but he didn’t wait long, just gave his hand a dismissive swipe. “Never mind. I have no right to ask you that. You go save the world, Isadora. Just be careful who you trust.”
“I know you don’t trust the Company. But I do. I have to.”
“I don’t trust anybody,” he said gruffly, turning to pick up the pants he’d stripped off in the heat of passion the night before. “Including you.”
Ouch.
Still shaking, she walked back into the bathroom and closed the door. This time she locked it, leaned against it, and fought the burn of tears. She’d been ordered to stay silent about the job. She couldn’t tell anyone, including Gabe. That kind of order wasn’t ignored in the CIA. Breaking that rule could cost her everything.
He knew that. Of all the people in the world, he knew that.
Then she heard the soft click of her front door…opening and closing.
“Oh no.” She whispered his name, her hands trembling as she flipped the lock and pulled the bathroom door open. “Don’t do this, Gabe. Don’t…”
But her apartment was empty, and his clothes were gone.
Only then did she realize that he never said he’d wait for her, and she never said she loved him.
Chapter One
Five Years Later
“Hello, I’m Lila Wickham. Lovely to meet you.”
She cleared her throat and closed her eyes, wiping her hands over the smooth silk of her trousers to try again. This time she angled her head and added a smile and toned down her English accent. “Oh, hello. My name is Lila Wickham. I’m a guest at the resort.”
No, no. Too stiff. Too cold. Too…Lila.
But that’s who you are.
She cleared her throat and extended her hand toward the full-length mirror. “Hi there. I don’t think we’ve met. Gabriel, is it?” Yes, that sounded more like what he’d expect and respond to.
She stepped back to take a hard and critical look at the image reflected back at her, imagining him looking at her. What would he see?
A thin, angular blonde with cheekbones as sharp as her personality and dark, distrusting eyes constantly on the alert. A calculating woman who missed nothing and rarely laughed.
A woman who, no matter how hard she would try to convince him, did not look, act, move, breathe, talk, or think like Isadora Winter.
She was Lila Wickham, a single mother, born and raised outside of London but now living in the US, who recently left her job in DC to make a new home in the warm clime of Florida. If someone were to dig deeper, and someone named Gabriel Rossi most certainly would, she was a former MI6 intelligence agent who’d been on loan to the US government on an assignment that had ended, and she’d recently acquired a release from all her spy duties.
All that was true…enough. And only the first layer of who she really was.
Okay, one more try before show time. She cast her eyes down, centered herself, and let yet another accent, this one Midwestern and flat, rise above all the others she’d mastered, especially the Queen’s English, which had become as natural as breathing to her.
“Hello, my angel Gabriel.” She let her deep-brown eyes glisten as she imagined seeing him instead of herself in front of her.
How would he react to that? Would he be stunned into silence? Gabe Rossi? More likely, he’d let out a blue streak of swearing and inventive insults when he found out the truth.
If he even believed her.
He had to believe her.
She took one more glance in the mirror, smoothing her already stick-straight locks and adjusting the straps of the winter-white camisole top trimmed with rhinestones and pearls.
Then, she crossed the hardwood floor, barely noticing the surroundings of her high-end resort villa. At the entry table, she picked up her small bag and key and took one more look at the tropical tones of magenta and turquoise on the invitation to tonight’s party.
When the card had been slipped under her villa door yesterday, she knew she had the “in” she’d been waiting for and that it was time to…make her presence known.
Happy Holidays to our Special Guests!
Please be our guest on Christmas Eve for “Uncle Nino’s Feast of the Seven Fishes” with a seaside twist! The festivities are on the sand, so feel free to kick off your shoes and have a Barefoot Bay Holiday!
From the staff of Casa Blanca Resort & Spa
He had to be there. He was at the resort, she knew that, in spite of the low profile he kept. And if his grandfather, the legendary “Uncle Nino” was having a traditional Italian vigilia, then Gabe would be there.
Lila started for the door, then stopped, remembering one important thing she’d forgotten. In the bathroom, she grabbed the bottle of Chanel No. 5 and spritzed.
She might not look, act, talk, or breathe like Isadora, but she sure could smell like her.
Outside, she followed the winding stone path that connected the dozen or so villas that made the Casa Blanca Resort & Spa such a desirable beachfront property. Stately palms and lush foliage lined the walkway, all spotlighted with understated uplighting. To her right, Barefoot Bay glittered in the moonlight, white sand against endless diamond-encrusted black water for a mile in either direction. And even from this far away from the main resort and the outdoor party, Lila could hear the strains of The Beach Boys singing Little Saint Nick.
Christmas Eve on the beach.
She could only imagine what Gabe Rossi would have to say about this.
Except, in a matter of moments, she wouldn’t have to imagine. She’d know.
The realization fired up her nerves again, making her feel the tension she knew so well before she walked into an assignment or sat down with a target to gain information that could
save a life—or thousands of them.
But the only life that she held in her hands was her own, and that of a four-year-old child she loved more than anything. Plus, she wasn’t a spy any longer.
“Thank God that’s over,” she murmured, embracing the relief that she felt the day she signed her release papers.
“I hope you don’t mean the party.” A woman came out from around a bend in the path hidden by hibiscus, startling Lila. “Because, child, it hasn’t even started yet.”
“Oh, Poppy,” she replied, recognizing the friendly—some would say overly friendly—housekeeper who took care of Rockrose, the villa where Lila was staying. “I was just talking to myself.”
“You are going, aren’t you?” The lilting tones of Poppy’s Jamaican accent were punctuated by the ding of a bell that hung from the tip of the Santa hat perched on her cropped black hair. “Because I have a surprise for you.”
“For me?” Lila didn’t want to be on the receiving end of surprises tonight. She was there to deliver a few.
Poppy leaned closer, big brown eyes widening. “A certain Mr. Gabriel Rossi is already at the cocktail party.”
“Gabriel…Rossi?” With practiced ease, she acted like she’d never heard the name, but Lila’s heart raced in a very untrained-spy-like way. She really should be able to control her emotions better. But, then, this was Gabe. A little heart racing was to be expected.
“Oh, you know,” the woman said, tapping Lila’s arm like she could jog her memory. “Last time you were here, what was that, a month or so ago? You asked me about him. Showed me a picture you, uh, jus’ happened to get of him while you were taking shots of the beach.” Her voice underscored the fact that she most certainly didn’t think Lila had accidentally gotten a picture of Gabe. And she’d be right. Lila had been on a reconnaissance mission then but had had no idea that she’d be back so soon.
“And guess what?” Poppy continued, her bright white smile all conspiratorial and sisterly. “I just happened to mention that a very pretty single lady had checked into the Rockrose villa when I spoke to him a few minutes ago.”
How nice to have an unwitting ally smoothing the way for a meeting that had to happen tonight. “A lovely assist.” Lila added a cool smile. “I appreciate you trying to make my holiday a little brighter.”
Poppy’s smile faded to a sympathetic smile. “Bet you miss your little boy. I heard you talking to him on the phone the other day, referring to yourself as ‘Mum.’”
An ally and, obviously, the world’s nosiest housekeeper. “I do have a boy, but this is a nice break. He can be…a headache.” Or cause them.
That earned her a judgmental eyebrow. As expected. But Poppy didn’t know that Lila was just planting, as it was known in the spy world. Planting seeds so that when they sprouted, her moves made perfect sense. “I’m off to the party now. How will I recognize this famous Mr. Rossi?”
Poppy let out a little hoot. “Look for the great-looking Italian guy tossing around four-letter words like free Christmas candy.”
Yes, that would be Gabe.
“I doubt you’ll confuse him with the other Italian, his grandfather.”
“Is that Uncle Nino, our host?” she asked, holding up the invitation.
“The very same,” Poppy assured her. “He’s the boss tonight, much as it pains me to admit it. Just sent me off to find more of these hats. Here, you want mine?”
“No, thank you.”
The other woman grinned and gestured toward the bright pink flowers on the bush next to her. “How about a hibiscus for your hair?”
A hibiscus. That would be…powerful. “That might be pushing it,” she said, knowing the woman couldn’t understand why.
Poppy lifted a thick shoulder. “I s’pose it doesn’t go with your shiny white Christmas clothes.” She lifted a brow of disapproval as she gave Lila’s raw silk pants and camisole the once-over. “Better be careful of the gooey stuff that man mistakenly calls gravy. First of all, it’s not really gravy, and second, I don’t have a thing in my laundry closet to get tomato sauce out of that fancy material.”
Lila nodded her thanks for the tip and then continued down the path toward a casually elegant spread of dinner tables under flickering white lights, all the while running through her plan and scanning the area, like any good undercover agent.
First, she’d have to get him alone. And soon, because they’d both need clear heads, and if she knew Gabe, he’d be pounding back Scotch and throwing shade about how lame a tropical Christmas was. And last, she’d have to carefully and believably reveal things that only Isadora could know.
The crowd was already well lit, and she didn’t mean the faux Christmas stars on the two trees that flanked the party, complete with seashell ornaments and mermaids on top. Three open bars were set up around the open-air dining, and drinks were flowing, along with animated conversation punctuated by bursts of laughter.
For the thousandth time since she’d learned he was here, Lila wondered what in God’s name had brought Gabe to Barefoot Bay. To this posh resort famous for destination weddings and dreamy honeymoons located on a small island off the coast of Florida.
No, it had to be because of the proximity to another island near Florida…Cuba. And there would only be one reason Gabe would be interested in the goings-on in Cuba. A reason he now believed to be dead.
He’d used his considerable spying skills to learn that Isadora had been killed in a car accident in Cuba. Then, because Gabe was wanted by the Cuban Mafia and not safe in that country he’d sent his sister and close friend to search for a child who was most likely his.
But there, they were told that child died as a baby in Cuba.
But tonight, Gabe would know the truth.
The real question was, would he believe any of it?
“Are you in line?”
Lila looked up and dug for every ounce of her training not to react at the sight of Malcolm Harris, a former agent who’d worked in Cuba with Isadora and Gabe, and the very friend who’d gone there to find Gabe’s son.
“For the bar?” he added at her silence, which probably lasted a millisecond too long. “I don’t want to cut you off.”
“That’s fine,” she said, recovering as she realized she was standing near one of the bars, not actually in line. “I’m not in a rush.”
“England?” he asked. “I hear the accent.”
“London, yes, originally. But I’ve been living in the States for years.”
“And you’re here on holiday?”
She nodded, appreciating his use of the European term for vacation. Mal was a great guy, a tough but truly endearing man. And he looked as handsome as ever and far more at peace than when he’d been working undercover as a guard at Gitmo. “Yes, I am on holiday.”
“Mal, there you are.” A dark-haired young woman approached, and it took Lila only a split second to figure out she was looking at Francesca Rossi, the younger sister Gabe protected so fiercely. Behind chic horn-rims, her eyes were the precise color of crystal blue trimmed with navy, and there was something just so…Rossi about her. Attitude, confidence, warmth, and that spicy Italian passion simmering just under the surface.
“This is my fiancée, Chessie, and I’m Mal.” Mal made the introduction as he wrapped his arm around Chessie’s shoulders.
Fiancée. She hadn’t heard they’d gotten engaged after their mission. That explained the peace in his expression.
“Lila Wickham.” She reached her hand out and shook Chessie’s, then Mal’s. “A guest at the resort. Are you here to check the place out for a potential destination wedding locale? I understand they have an expert team here.”
“They do,” Chessie said. “But we’re getting married in Boston,” she said. Bahston. Lila could easily hear the distinct, if subtle, accent of a native of that city. “We’ve been staying down here near my brother, who…oh, there he is.”
Chessie’s gaze shifted over Lila’s shoulder, and suddenly, Lila froze. Everything
in her went ice cold, then fiery hot, a thrumming at the base of her neck like a warning siren. She ached to turn and see him, to look him right in the eyes and dare him not to know the truth.
But she couldn’t. She absolutely couldn’t.
“’Scuze me,” she said quickly. “I see the resort owner, and I want to thank her for the invitation.”
Without waiting for a response, Lila slipped around them, purely incapable of enduring this moment yet. She wasn’t ready for this particular pain.
With that emotional hurricane on the horizon, she absolutely couldn’t “meet” him in front of all these people, she realized. She couldn’t have her first words to him be in an English accent, a casual introduction, a fake how-do-you-do, when everything inside her would be imploding.
She’d seen him before, of course, the last time she’d been at the resort. And even that had had a debilitating impact on her.
She neared the group of people that included Lacey Walker, the resort owner, but purposely steered around the table so she wouldn’t have to talk to them.
Instead, she found a pocket of privacy and slowly turned, bracing herself for the blow of seeing Gabe.
And still she wasn’t prepared.
Gabriel Rossi was more breathtaking than ever. His dark hair was longer than when he was a contract agent for the CIA, thick and curled around his collar. His face was still hollow-cheek handsome in the most surprising and arresting way, strong and deliciously shaped. And his eyes, deep blue, intense, sparking with dry wit, and fringed with sinfully long lashes.
But those eyes were flat tonight, like a light had gone out behind them.
And she knew why. How could she tell him that she was the woman who could erase that? Well, it wasn’t something you walked up to someone out of the blue and announced.
So, she’d wait for her opening. She surreptitiously watched him examine his sister’s left hand, making a comment that elicited a laugh. She could only imagine the Gabe-ism that would mix humor, profanity, and charm. Shot your fucking wad on the ring, huh? Then he hugged Chessie and gave Mal a brotherly embrace and—
