Chapter Twenty
Marco
I’ve never been more conflicted. The word was was born in my brain, and came out of my mouth, capturing her attention. I did the right thing. Told her to stop.
But the other half of me, the feral animalistic side that wants, doesn’t have any respect for thought or words, and is howling and clawing to be let out. It feeds off passion, gorges itself on sensation.
That side is in control now.
It’s as though I’ve never spoken. As though my words mean nothing to my errant body, which refuses to obey my will. My fingers continue to caress her breast, smoothing over the creamy white swell then brushing against the rosy tip, peaked in arousal.
She arches her back and surges into my hand.
The desire to have her, to bury my dick in her heat, is so overwhelming I almost protest when she obeys my command and stops trying to free me from the constraint of my clothing.
“Marco.” A tortured whisper, wrung out of her as if against her will. “I need...”
I don’t want to hear her tell me she needs me. That she feels as though she’ll die if she doesn’t have me. Not when the same desperate urge has me in its grip. My mouth engulfs her breast, and I flick my tongue against the underside of her nipple, then I suck her into my mouth, feel her hardened nub press into the roof of my mouth. It’s pleasure mixed with pain when her fingers tug and tangle in my hair, pressing me so close our bodies might as well be one.
I’ve never been so out of control that I couldn’t hold back, but if my mind is still telling me to keep this professional, I’m sure not hearing it. I’m in danger. Imminent danger of getting in too deep with a woman who can never be mine. Who likes the things her wealthy husband can buy her, and isn’t prepared to compromise.
I should learn from my mistakes.
I won’t fuck her. Not because she’s married; one in three marriages end in divorce, and I’m as guilty as the next man of spending quality time with a woman still tied to another man, in name, at any rate. But I’ve never inserted myself into someone’s marriage, have never stepped between a couple who are still trying to make it work.
And even though the Kristie’s motive for marrying Montgomery may be difficult to see, one fact isn’t. She’s not only married to him, she’s on her honeymoon.
Fucking like rabbits is expected on honeymoon. But substituting someone else for the groom is not.
Her groom, resting in a hospital bed. Shit.
I pull away, grasp her around her waist and move her off me. “Cover yourself.” I barely recognize the harsh tone as my own voice as I get up and walk away from her.
While I’m mentally flagellating myself for giving in to my base instincts, while I’m in the middle of a fucking case, and wishing my cock would calm down and realize there’s no way in hell it’s getting a workout inside a warm wet pussy tonight, Kristie approaches.
“What the fuck was that?”
She’s left the front of her dress open, her breasts firm enough to carry off no-bra with aplomb. I’d acted so harshly, if she were a different type of woman, she could have shrivelled up with shame at being so discarded. But Kristie’s no such creature.
She’s fucking magnificent.
“You and I can’t do this.”
Her gaze flicks down, and an eyebrow flicks up.
“Physically, I’m more than able to service you, Madam.”
No blush. No awkwardness. She smiles.
“But mentally, mentally, I can’t go there.”
The smile wavers. Just a little. Bravado deflating.
“I can’t screw you on your honeymoon.”
Direct hit. The shock flash in her eyes, the wince as my barb hits home, almost make me want to apologize for acting so crass, for debasing the gift of her body that she gave to me so freely. To act as though she was only a fuck to me, when in reality, the complex Kristie Patten is becoming much much more.
We drive back to the house in silence. She buttons her dress, and in deference to the new mood between us, I put up the convertible’s roof, so as not to suffer the intoxicating vision of tendrils of her hair brushing against her face. She flips down the visor, and checks her makeup, smoothing her hair into some semblance of order with her fingertips.
When I pull up to the front door, she climbs out, and doesn’t even look at me.
“Thanks for the ride.” She doesn’t wait for my response, just stalks into the house, alone.
There’s still work to be done. I hadn’t had time to clean the Rolls before the helicopter arrived, and dust from the country track mars the paintwork of the convertible. I look forward to an evening slapping around a wet chamois.
And it’s totally fucking inappropriate that my cock twitches at the thought of slapping a wet chamois against Kristie’s naked ass. I let out a long, heavy sigh. Crawl the car in the direction of the garage, nestled into one side of the courtyard at the back of the house.
The sun is on the way down, the light fading from the sky. Are those figures amongst the trees? One man. Two. Huddled together, talking intently.
By the time the car headlights swing their direction, they’re gone. Melting away like phantoms into the murky half-light.
Chapter Twenty-One
Kristie
Isabel meets me in the hall of Casa Nostra before I’ve barely taken a step inside. “Kristie, how is he?” She touches my arm, and the worry on her face combined with the melting of the cold she’s blasted at me since my marriage shows the depth of concern for her employer.
My instinct is to reassure, but I can’t break protocol—we’ve decided to exaggerate the state of Montgomery’s injuries, and I have to stick to the script. “He’s resting comfortably. They have him on a drip, and say that he had to stay in for observation for a few days.”
Her mouth twists. She drags in a deep breath, and lets it out in a shuddering exhale.
I can’t bear to prolong her distress. “He’s going to be okay, we think. It’s just the shock of the crash—and his age—they want to make sure.”
“Of course. Of course.” She rallies, like the trooper she is. “And you. What a day you’ve had.” Her gaze checks me head to toe, noticing the graze on my knee patched up by the paramedics in the ambulance, and the smear of mud on my calf. “You must be exhausted. I’ll run you a bath...”
I can’t imagine anything I’d like more than to melt into a hot bath right now, but I have work still to do before I can do that. “Thank you, Isabel. But I should meet the others. Let them know how he is.”
“Of course. They’re in the drawing room.” She walks ahead of me to a gleaming mahogany door. “If you need anything, I’ll be in the kitchen.” She waves in the direction of a door at the rear of the house, and smiles. The incident with the Jeep has softened her opinion of me, it seems.
“Thank you.”
She opens the door, and stands to one side to allow me enter.
There’s a fire blazing in the hearth. Felicity, Amber, and Jerry are seated before it, nursing crystal tumblers.
“Kristie!” Jerry stands as I approach. “Where’s Monty?”
“They’re keeping him in for observation.”
After a few minutes, I walk to the drinks table and fix myself a gin and tonic when it becomes clear that no one else is going to.
“Happy homecoming, Mother.” Amber lifts her glass to me without getting out of her seat.
“Jesus, Amber, there’s no need to be such a bitch.” Felicity regards her sister with disdain, and stands up. “Come warm yourself by the fire, Kristie.”
It’s not the homecoming I expected. Montgomery was to be the buffer keeping the worst of his children’s reaction at bay, but it seems good manners break through, in the case of Felicity anyway. Maybe it’s just because she is more forgiving of May to December romances; her husband Sebastian is quite a bit younger, only in his early forties. Whatever the reason, she seems incapable of kicking a dog when it’s down.
Where Amber is more th
an ready to put the boot in.
“We rang the hospital, but they wouldn’t tell us anything. Wouldn’t tell his children anything.” She shoots me a look full of poison.
“It’s a private hospital, with strict rules about patient confidentiality. I’m sure they wouldn’t tell anyone anything over the phone. No matter who they purported to be.”
“Quite right.” Jerry nods, and takes a swig of his whisky. “You know what reporters are like, they’ll pretend anything for a story.”
“Reporters?” Amber looks at him as though he’s a complete imbecile. “How the hell would reporters know my father is in hospital? The incident was hardly public.”
“You never know, honey.”
Amber scoffs, dismissing him. “Do the doctors think he’s sustained any injury? He seemed just fine when he walked to the ambulance.”
“He seemed fine, but they picked up some anomalies with his heart. Some irregularities.” I’m winging it: trying to keep it vague, but real.
“Oh, Daddy’s had that before. When he was stressed about Mommy.” It’s strange to hear a fifty-something woman talking about her Daddy and Mommy. But Felicity shows genuine concern. “Last time they strapped on a machine to monitor it. Have they done that now?”
“They did for a while, but then they took it away, and are just keeping him under observation. He has a drip in, and they’re giving him some painkillers—he got jolted around in the crash.”
“Where the hell is Charles?” Amber checks her watch. “I’m sure he wants to know what’s going on with our father.”
My work here is done, and I’ll be damned if I hang around to repeat myself to Charles. They can tell him. I drain my glass. “I’m sorry, everyone, but I really need to lie down for a while. It’s been a trying day.” I place the crystal tumbler on the silver tray atop the piano.
“Have a bath.” For the first time, Amber registers my state. “Dinner is at eight, and we dress for it.”
Bitch.
Montgomery’s thrice-divorced second daughter has just claimed prime position on my suspect list. I resolve to read the dossier Dad has compiled on her first.
“You know, I think I’ll take a drink upstairs with me.” I pour a second G&T just to see the look on her face, then walk out to claim ownership of my husband’s bedroom at Casa Nostra.
The marble staircase sweeps up two floors, but I only have to force my tired legs up the first flight to reach my destination. Montgomery’s bedroom—the master bedroom, is at the end of a long corridor. I flick on the light. Luckily, no other member of the family lives on this floor, so I don’t have to worry about coming face to face with anyone.
My cell buzzes insistently, and I pause mid-step to answer it.
“Kristie.” Stephen’s voice.
“I’m watching you on the security monitor. Someone just walked into your bedroom. Stay where you are, I’m on my way.”
My body tightens in awareness. I have no fear of being attacked or overcome by an intruder—I’ve been training in Krav Maga since I was eighteen. There isn’t a man in this house I can’t overpower if it comes to it.
“Who was it?” I whisper, just in case they’re closer than Stephen thinks they are.
“Stay where you are.”
“Who?”
“I couldn’t tell. He was dressed in black and wore a hood to keep his head covered. He entered the room, and hasn’t been seen exiting. Wait for backup. I’m on the way from the security suite, I can be with you in five minutes.”
There’s no fucking way I’m standing in the corridor for five minutes. I take a swig of the drink I took for show, but actually appreciate right now, considering the circumstances. Place it down carefully on a pretty table half way down the corridor, and roll my shoulders.
“I’ll see you inside.”
I terminate the call before Stephen can protest.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Kristie
It only registers as I quietly open the door, that I had turned on the light to the corridor before starting down it. That should have been my first clue that something was amiss. Houses like these aren’t concerned with the utility bill. I guess I’m so used to turning lights out when I leave a room I didn’t notice it. Maybe in some corner of my brain I expected the Pattens to be environmentally friendly.
I close the door silently, and stand, listening. Allow my eyes to adjust to the darkness. The room feels empty. Senses on high alert, I breathe in, but pick up no scent.
There’s no one here. I’ll bet my life on it.
I can make out faint differences in the darkness now. A chair, the bed. Long, dark drapes against the window. A credenza in the corner. Nothing alive.
I move to the left, back against the wall, and edge around the room, performing a full circuit before I’m satisfied. My hand brushes the drapes as I pass, feeling the hard glass behind the heavy fabric. When I reach the bedside table, I go for broke and flick on the light. If there’s anyone here, the only place they can be is inside or under something.
The door bursts open—Stephen stands at the threshold.
I jerk my head to the credenza, and then look pointedly at the space under the bed.
He takes one, I the other.
If someone was in this room, they’re gone.
Bathroom, Stephen mouths, a second before he pops the door open, flicking the light switch at the same moment.
When he walks out shaking his head, I’m pulling back the drapes. Checking the window catches.
The door to the narrow balcony has been opened.
“Cameras?”
“Not outside.” Stephen runs his hand through his hair. “Shit, I didn’t forsee this. The door only opens from the inside, I hadn’t anticipated someone might use this to get out of the room... I’m sorry.”
“Did he spot the camera in the corridor?”
“From his body movements, I’d say not. I couldn’t get a glimpse of his face, but he didn’t seem to be actively avoiding being photographed, he was just moving stealthily and because the light was off, there wasn’t much detail.”
“So me turning on the light in the corridor tipped him off.”
Stephen walks out the door. “Turn that light off, we’ll check.” I do as he says, and darkness envelops me again as he pulls the door shut. There must be light switches both ends of this corridor as the blackness is total.
“Turn it on,” I call.
There. In the gap beneath the heavy mahogany door bleeds the faintest sliver of light, barely discernable unless you’re looking for it.
If they weren’t lying in wait, what were they looking for?
I’d left my bag on the table with my drink, so went back to retrieve them. I open my wallet and slide out a thin piece of plastic printed with a store logo, the same dimension as a credit card, though marginally thicker.
Then I walk back into the bedroom, and proceeded to sweep it for listening devices.
“He—” Stephen stops speaking when he sees my hand raised, palm out, in warning. A red LED is flashing on the bug detector that I’m holding over my jacket, which has been delivered to the room while I accompanied Montgomery to hospital.
It’s discreet. Expensive. Smaller than a grain of rice, and carefully worked between the seams of the jacket’s silk lining.
Stephen frowns.
I consider dropping the bug in my drink. Shit—I want to take it into the bathroom and flush that sucker, but destroying it would be counterproductive. I whisper in Stephen’s ear: “Let’s talk in the security room. I want to see the footage.”
I grab my laptop off the bed. No one would have a hope of getting any information from it—level ten encryption comes standard in laptops supplied to my father’s operatives.
In the tiny room in the back of the house that is fitted with keycode access known only to the security staff, Stephen brings up the footage of the intruder’s ingress into the room. He’s right. It’s impossible to tell their identity. The width
of the shoulders and the height suggests a male, but an athletic female could also be a suspect.
I mentally measure the physical dimensions of the house’s other occupants.
Of the three I had drinks with downstairs, only Felicity has the height to match the shadowy figures, and I’d left her, Amber and Jerry in the sitting room. They can be safely ruled out.
“He would need to be fairly athletic. The only way off that balcony is by climbing down the drainpipe,” Stephen said.
“Charles and Sebastian were unaccounted for. I can’t imagine Charles clambering around the outside of the house in the dark. But Sebastian...” I eye the freeze-framed image on the screen. Could the intruder be Felicity’s husband? What motive would he have to plant a bug in my clothing?
“They could have brought someone in to plant the bug. I wouldn’t put it past any of them.” Stephen’s attention is glued to the screen. “I need to check all of today’s footage.”
“They want to know who I’m talking to, and what I’m talking about.” I hate the thought of someone listening, but I’ll have to bear it. “Maybe we can use that to draw them out.”
“I have a box that I can put it in for now that will disrupt the signal. As far as they know, you’re just being silent, it won’t register that the device is being blocked or anything. I’ll deal with it while you’re at dinner.”
“So we can take it out and feed it bullshit when we want to. Use it to draw them out.”
“Yes. Good.” Stephen casts me a concerned glance. “Is Marco bothering you? He seemed over-attentive earlier.”
“I have him under control, don’t worry.” Some time soon, I’ll need to brief Stephen on Marco’s undercover role, but right now I have more urgent concerns. “I’m supposed to meet the family for dinner in thirty minutes, and apparently I have to dress for the occasion.” The last thing I want to do is sit through a stuffy dinner. I want nothing more than to take a hot bath and read through my father’s files.
But I need to see the family all together. To see if any of them will let their masks slip enough to reveal if their true intentions are deadly.
The Gold Digger Gambit: A Honeytrap Inc. Romance Page 8
