Rather like the man himself.
Sliding free of his light touch, she passed him the steaming mug, almost too hot to handle. She even managed a chuckle.
“One cup of straight black coffee, Mr. Markov. I hope you don’t mind if I have a bit more of the strong stuff?”
“Not at all.” He shrugged. “It will help you sleep.”
“Sleep?” Midway through a bracing swallow of bourbon-laced coffee, she lowered her mug. “Your nerves must be better than mine. Besides, we’re leaving soon for the train station. I can sleep once I’m locked into my cabin.”
He took a slow sip from his mug and eyed her steadily.
“Do you really think that’s a good idea?”
Uneasy, she chafed her arms for warmth.
“I don’t see that I have a choice. We can’t drive out of Khimgorod in this storm, and I doubt any private planes are flying. Even if they were, how would I find one?”
“Your calculations are correct.” Deftly he extracted the neat silver square of the thermal blanket and laid it before her. “The roads out of Khimgorod are closed, even for the Niva with its capabilities.”
Calmly sipping his coffee, he assessed her life-and-death dilemma without emotion. “The private airfield is also closed, although the weather report suggests that situation may soon improve. I’m continuing to monitor the local station by shortwave radio. But commercial flights into this closed city are prohibited. You can’t simply book a seat on Aeroflot. ”
She didn’t touch the blanket, since she couldn’t possibly sleep. But she filed away the knowledge that he’d been watching her closely enough to see her shiver. He might be short on charm, but no one could call him unperceptive.
She was the focus of all that laser-like intensity, the object of his undivided attention. A frisson of nervous awareness jumped through her.
“I realize that,” she said tightly. “To answer your question—yes, the train makes me nervous. But it appears to be the only game in town.”
“Board that train, and you’ll be dead in your cabin with a bullet in your brain before you reach Novosibirsk.” He spoke with brutal candor, his night-black gaze drilling into her. “You’ll need to be smarter than that, Skylar, if you want to live.”
The sound of her name on his lips sent a different sort of frisson shimmering through her—the electric charge of attraction that had been arcing between them all day.
Cavolo! In the midst of this crisis, he was a distraction she so didn’t need.
“You can take it as a given that I want to live.” She gripped the counter in both hands and leaned forward, challenging him, the clamoring questions she’d kept buried clawing their way to the surface.
“What about you, Nikolai Markov from the security office? Do you want me to live? And which ministry are you really working for? Because those thugs from the local militsia said pretty clearly you don’t work with them.”
The words spilled out harsher than she’d intended, edged with all the terror and fury she felt at his betrayal. Where was her famous diplomacy?
“They said you’d turned me in,” she went on, “and assured me I shouldn’t plan on seeing you again. So before I listen to any more of your advice, I need to know exactly what kind of game you’re playing.”
Gaze hooded, Nikolai tilted his head and studied her. If she’d expected a flash of alarm or guilt, she would have been disappointed. In fact, she was starting to wonder just what it would take to get an emotional reaction out of Nikolai Markov. Danger didn’t seem to do it, or death, or a raging inferno sealing them into a firetrap.
What about the women he took to bed? Surely they must glimpse another side of him. Imagine all that contained intensity focused on bringing a woman to the pinnacle of quivering pleasure…
Time to derail that dangerous train of thought.
Confronted with his own lies, he merely sipped his coffee and watched her with a cool calculation that set her jangled nerves on edge.
“Very well,” he said at last. “Come here where it’s warm. I’ll tell you everything.”
Privately, she considered that unlikely. But the prospect of what he might say made trepidation flutter in her belly. Guarded, she wrapped cold fingers around her warm mug and edged past him.
If he intended to kill her, surely this would be the time for it. Unless, like the villain in a bad movie, he obligingly detailed his diabolical plans before he silenced her forever.
Madonna mia, she was being ridiculous! Nikolai Markov was many things, but he was never a cliché. Keeping her head high and her step fearless, she circled the central hearth and placed the stylish rock-rimmed pit of the gas fireplace between them. At least she’d have a few seconds’ warning if he came after her.
Not that it would do her much good.
Deliberately he prowled toward her, a lithe shadow in the darkness. Gaslight flames gleamed along the expensive leather of his shoes, glittered on the jet face of his Rolex, limned the elegant bones of his face and the loose tendrils of his espresso-dark hair.
Suddenly the artificial heat was burning her thighs and belly. She took a hasty step back and gulped a bracing swallow of bourbon-laced coffee.
“So, Mr. Markov? I’m all yours.”
“Somehow I doubt that.” His eyes gleamed. “As you’ve correctly deduced, I don’t represent the security office. That affiliation was a necessary fiction.”
So he really had lied to her. A queer stab of disappointment shot through her. But this was no time to indulge her unruly Italian emotions. She tamped down her sentimental response and eyed him coolly.
“Are you saying it was necessary to lie to me?”
Flames danced among the artificial rocks between them.
“Before yesterday, like the vast majority of Russian citizens, I’d never set foot in this closed city,” he said quietly. “However, I do represent the interests of the Russian Government, and my client very much prefers to keep you safe. I trust you’ll concede that my actions today demonstrate our sincerity.”
On that front, she begged to differ. But she needed facts, hard data, logic—not accusations or histrionics.
“Which government agency do you represent?” She leaned forward. “Is it the FSB or one of the other intelligence agencies?”
When she mentioned the FSB, he made a little grimace of distaste, the fingers of one hand rising in dismissal.
“I’m off the grid, a free agent—a security consultant, if you will. My personal specialty is complicated and sensitive missions that demand discretion and a certain finesse.”
His sidekick Ilya had called him the Maestro. Unease fluttered in her belly.
“Complicated and sensitive?” She moistened her dry lips with a careful sip of coffee. “I suppose that describes me. Who hired you?”
“My services for this job,” he said precisely, “have been retained by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. As you’ve noted, they’re your greatest ally in this business. The MFA wants to establish Russia’s reputation as a good global citizen, a responsible member of the international community, perfectly suited to a seat at the table with the U.S. and the European Union and the other responsible players—with the full suite of privileges that position entails.”
Skylar nodded, relieved to find at least one of her assumptions about the tangled web of Russian interests had been accurate.
“And to achieve that outcome, presumably, the MFA wants me to walk out of here alive? Having a senior American diplomat turn up on a Russian train with a bullet in her brain, as you so colorfully put it, wouldn’t suit them at all.”
Nor would it suit them if she unearthed a smoking gun that proved the Khimgorod Chemical Combine was producing treaty-prohibited nerve agent and selling it to a rogues’ gallery of pariah states like North Korea. If Nikolai was telling the truth, his mission was probably more complicated than straightforward protection, for which they could have hired any qualified muscle.
Call her crazy, but where hire
d muscle was concerned, Nikolai Markov didn’t strike her as the economy option.
His determination to turn her around and send her back to Moscow, his subtle obstructionism throughout her visit, suggested he’d received additional orders.
Keep her alive, but don’t let her find anything.
If he learned that she had found something, despite all his precautions, no doubt he had contingency orders for dealing with that as well.
The stolen document was burning a hole in her trousers. She edged back from the fireplace and resisted the impulse to feel for the precious evidence. It was safely hidden.
Unless she gave him reason to strip-search her. A flood of heat seared through her.
Watching her, Nikolai arched a brow.
“My goal remains unchanged, Skylar, despite your unfortunate run-in with the real security office—those brainless gorillas from the MVD. I intend to get you out of Khimgorod alive…if you’ll allow me,” he said sardonically. “Now that you’ve been ‘blown,’ as my colleagues in the intelligence community would say, I fear the train is no longer the solution to our dilemma.”
“Never mind the train for a minute.” After groping in the dark, Skylar was finally getting some answers, and the opportunity was too good to forego. “So the MFA wants me alive and someone else wants me dead.”
“It appears so,” he agreed calmly. “Your presence in Khimgorod must inevitably pose a threat to the Chemical Munitions Agency. Anyone there could have taken out a hit on you. Discretion and finesse are not part of their modus operandi.”
She took another bracing swallow of coffee to wash down the bitter taste of fear.
“Were they responsible for the last-minute snafus that nearly kept me from making this trip at all? My interpreter who never showed back in Moscow, the purse-snatching in Novosibirsk?”
“All incidents clearly engineered to dissuade you from this risky and unwelcome venture.” He placed his empty mug on the floor, leaving his hands empty. Ready for action?
“In fact,” he murmured, “the responsible party for that chain of events was myself.”
Her breath hissed.
“Yes, Skylar, those incidents occurred under my direction. You would have been far better off if you’d heeded those warnings.”
“Your warnings.” Pierced by a fresh stab of betrayal, she glared at him.
She’d really hoped she could trust him, that the MVD had been lying.
But she squared her shoulders and stood her ground, concealed her hurt behind a challenging stare.
“I might have guessed as much, even without your little confession. After all, you’ve been working against me since the moment I arrived—and now, as it turns out, since before I even left Moscow.”
“You’ll understand it’s nothing personal.” He sketched a graceful shrug. “I’m a professional who was hired to do a job. The job simply happened to be you.”
“It feels pretty damn personal to me,” she clipped out.
“Why would it be personal?” His voice deepened.
For a heartbeat, the cool neutrality of his chiseled features seemed to crack. His mouth hardened and his nostrils flared. Then his lids dropped and he glanced away.
Inexplicably, on the basis of nothing but instinct, Skylar knew he was lying to her. A finger of ice slipped down her nape and raised the hair on her scalp.
Mannaggia! She was being ridiculous. What personal motive could he possibly have? She’d never met him in her life until that morning.
Cupping her elbows protectively, she reached for the cool assurance of her negotiating voice.
“I appreciate the information, Mr. Markov. At least now I know where I stand.”
He uttered an elegant snort. One corner of his mouth curled in wry amusement.
“Then perhaps you can tell me where I stand. You’re an unusually determined woman, Skylar Rossi. I confess I wasn’t expecting that—your crusader’s zeal to help these impoverished scientists. Certainly nothing in your dossier suggests a penchant for recklessness. I never guessed you’d acquired such a taste for dangerous situations…and dangerous men.”
His butterscotch voice dropped another octave. The deep rumble made her tummy flutter. Since they’d arrived in this secluded hideaway, she’d done her best to focus on the very real physical jeopardy that threatened her mission—and indeed her life. She’d worked hard not to think about the other aspect of this private interlude.
She was alone in this dacha with a bottle of very good bourbon, a bearskin rug and one of the most compelling, dangerous and disturbingly attractive men she’d ever met.
Simply put, he fascinated her: his unsettling perceptiveness, his sleek sophistication, his wry and biting wit, the hum of danger held in check behind his careful precision. This was a man who never lashed out in anger. When he killed, he acted with a cold calculation of risk versus benefit and a deliberate, almost compulsive attention to detail.
She had a feeling the conundrum of Nikolai Markov was far more dangerous than any other threat she’d faced in Khimgorod. Her body was still humming with aftershock from that moment of searing contact when he’d propelled her away from the car that was gunning for her. She still felt the lean, supple heat of his body rolling with hers, pinning her to the concrete, that disconcerting flash of intimacy when he searched her eyes and smoothed back her tousled hair.
Now she stared over the fire into his lambent gaze, sherry-gold in the twilight, hair sleek as caramel framing chiseled features. She wanted to slide her fingers through his hair and find out if it was really as sinfully soft as it looked.
She wanted to feel his slim hands on her body, fueled by something more than clinical detachment or ruthless efficiency.
She wanted to discover whether the golden heat that simmered in his eyes was really there, whether he was as curious about her as she was about him.
She wanted to know, with an unsettling intensity, how she would feel if he kissed her.
Drawn by that vibrating awareness between them, she actually took a step toward him. But the gas fireplace, nearly searing her trousers, still stood between them. When she moved, the crisp paper of the stolen document brushed against her tummy.
The dual stimuli of heat and danger snapped her back to her senses.
She spun away, toward the cold safety of the window.
“You’re wrong, Mr. Markov,” she said coolly. “I don’t have a penchant for danger or dangerous men. In fact, the man I’m dating is conservative as a London banker. Given my choice of career, that’s just the way I like it.”
“You must be referring to the esteemed Mr. Devereux—your second-in-command at ICSI.”
She’d been reaching for the curtain to check their surroundings, but the name made her swing back around. A current of anger sizzled through her veins.
“So you weren’t lying about that, at least. You do have a dossier on me.”
“A rather comprehensive one, in fact. You’d be surprised to learn precisely how much I know about you, Skylar Rossi.”
Firing into motion, he strolled toward her, steps soundless on the bearskin rug. A new edge hardened his words, as though she’d struck sparks from his chilly façade at last.
“I know Alain Devereux has been pursuing you sexually since you arrived at ICSI, and that you’ve been holding him at arm’s length, except for one momentary lapse in judgment you probably regret. I know he covets your job relentlessly, but appears willing to settle for the ego enhancement of having you in his bed.”
She struggled to maintain her composure.
“How—how did you—?”
“I know you hold your lovers at a distance. I know you choose worldly, successful men who match your intellect, probably because on a subliminal level they remind you of that Mafia arms dealer who fathered you.”
Outrage spurted through her, fed by the fuel of denial.
“That goes to show you know nothing about me. I hated my father! If your precious dossier were as comprehens
ive as you claim, you’d know he arranged my mother’s accident. And her, I genuinely did love.”
“So you guessed the truth,” he said lightly, with brutal candor. His unhurried steps closed the distance between them. “It was a contract kill. Dane Rossi ordered it when she tried to take you away. She was the mark, and he was a monster. His eight-year-old daughter’s emotional trauma was just collateral damage.”
Skylar reached behind her to grip the window sill, holding her upright when she wanted to reel. The painful truth seared through her, the brutal reality she never discussed.
Sabrina Rossi’s death had been Skylar’s fault. If only she hadn’t struggled that night when her mother tried to smuggle her away. If only she hadn’t run crying to her father like a spoiled little princess, her mother might still be alive.
She’d been trying to atone for it ever since.
Her father’s crimes had shaped her, driven her entire life—from her choice of career to her self-inflicted solitude. But she wasn’t about to admit it to the man closing in on her, stalking her secrets so relentlessly.
“My father was a bastard,” she said harshly. “Anyone could deduce that much from the coverage in Newsweek. The men I choose to date are nothing like him.”
His voice dropped to a whisper that lashed like a bullwhip.
“And what about your first lover, Kirill Danilovich? You were seventeen, he was twenty-one—if I recall the details correctly from Newsweek. He was an arms dealer like your dear Papà. And you seduced him while he was a guest beneath her father’s roof.”
Only inches away, he stopped. His arms swept up to trap her as he gripped the sill on either side. She could barely breathe, barely even think as she stood cornered, his face filling her vision, the seductive aroma of cedar and suede filling her head.
Kirill.
She’d never spoken his name aloud since the day she saw his dark head explode in a shower of blood and brains at her father’s command. Kirill was the first man she’d ever loved. His death, too, was her fault.
The Russian Temptation (Book Two) (Foreign Affairs 2) Page 11
