It was Vanderloord.
“Thank you for the tickets,” Lies said, cautious as to how flirtatious to be. The age difference between them was enough that she had to be careful. She’d gotten the impression that Vanderloord liked younger women who posed a challenge. “Is the second one yours?”
“While I would very much enjoy your company,” he said wryly, “I can think of a thousand better ways to do so. Take someone your own age. I prefer concerts where there are actual performers and musical instruments.”
“Like a harp and violin?” she dared to tease, testing him.
“At the very least a piano.”
He definitely had a sense of humor. She liked that. It was easier to work with. “If I’m ever given tickets to the opera, they’re yours.” But these tickets weren’t a gift and she was curious as to what their price tag would be. He wanted to find out how easily she could be bought and she didn’t plan to sell out too cheap. “Is there anything I can help you with?”
“I’d like to book an appointment with Harry,” Vanderloord said, getting straight down to business.
She turned into Harry’s personal assistant, brisk and polite. “May I ask what it’s regarding?”
“There’s a Canadian shipping contract about to be put out to tender by DND. I’m interested in obtaining the names of potential second-tier suppliers and Harry should have some knowledge of them.”
DND was the Canadian Department of National Defence and the request was nothing out of the ordinary. Unfortunately, Harry’s schedule was legitimately booked solid. Lies made an executive decision. This meeting with Vanderloord took precedence over trade commission business, but she couldn’t make it too obvious.
“Harry can give you a half hour on Friday, but it’ll have to be during lunch.” She’d order in sandwiches.
“Whatever is convenient for him.”
She hung up, then sat at her desk without moving. She should go talk to Harry and tell him what she’d done to his schedule. He’d been avoiding her for a week now, speaking only when necessary while they waited for Vanderloord to make the next move, which he just had. Harry couldn’t ignore her any longer.
She nudged a pen on her desk with her finger. The drive home from the theater that night had been so incredibly awkward and silent. She regretted her part in it—not because she’d encouraged Harry to touch her, but because she had let things go too far. She’d been curious to see if the attraction between them was real or one-sided. Maybe she’d also needed to feed her ego. The affair with Michael had been a blow to her pride.
She couldn’t be certain what Harry was angriest about. It wasn’t that they’d been caught making out like a couple of teenagers, although he’d definitely been unhappy about that. There was a stronger possibility that he simply didn’t want to be attracted to her. He truly didn’t like games—which was one reason why he disliked Bernard Vanderloord so much. And because she was an intelligence officer his prejudices carried over to her, so that might well be it.
But if he was angry because he’d tried to teach her a lesson about the dangers of flirting and she’d refused to give in, then they both owned their behavior and between them, they’d have to figure out how to deal with the fallout. Since Vanderloord had finally reached out there was no time like the present.
Ignoring the mad thud of her heart, she approached Harry’s office door. It was open a crack. She poked her head around it, peering inside.
His office was what could best be described as austere. He had framed diplomas and certifications on the walls, nothing else. No family. No photo of the queen. No curtains or blinds at the window. Since they were on the second floor his view consisted mainly of trees and the upper levels of other buildings.
Harry was at his desk, his head bent over his work. He had a frown of intense concentration on his face that made him appear so…cold and remote. At least on the surface. There was a whole lot more to him, and it wasn’t cold, despite the shivers it gave her. The coolness was an act. Harry used excellent manners to disguise how he felt.
But when he set those manners aside…
She had a hunch he’d be amazing in bed. Part of her longed to find out. The way he’d kissed her and touched her said it wouldn’t take much.
Her team leader, however, had been specific that she was to protect her professional integrity for this particular assignment. Because Harry was connected to her investigation, she’d have to tell the CSIS director—because she was answering to him—about it if she slept with him. She could well imagine how that would look after the last confession she’d had to make. She also had a good idea how Harry would feel having CSIS know he’d slept with one of their intelligence officers. His integrity was important to him too.
So was his dignity, but she had fewer qualms about messing with that.
“Would you like to go to a rave?” she asked.
“God no,” he replied, without lifting his eyes from whatever he was writing. “Not even at gunpoint.” His hand stilled and his head came up. His eyes narrowed. “Why do you ask?”
She stepped fully into the room and closed the door, leaning against it. “Bernard gave me two tickets to a Tiësto concert.” She flashed him a brilliant smile. “I gave him a half hour of your time in exchange.”
“It’s Bernard now, is it?” Harry continued to regard her. “If your new best friend supplied the tickets, why isn’t he going to the concert with you?”
She raised her eyebrows. “You have no idea who Tiësto is, do you?”
“I do know what a rave is. OK, I see your point.” He glanced at the schedule she’d programmed into his phone for him and pretended he knew how to read it. Luddite. “Where did you manage to find a half hour for a meeting?”
“Friday at lunch. He’s coming here and I’m ordering sandwiches for two.”
Harry sighed. “Let me guess. He’s after a list of second-tier suppliers from that new shipbuilding contract. Better order sandwiches for three. You’ll want to sit in.”
“I could wire your office,” she suggested, mostly in fun. She’d do it, but he’d never agree.
A muscle ticked in his jaw. “You aren’t wiring embassy offices. Not mine and not anyone else’s.”
“Then leave the door open so I can eavesdrop. Unless you can come up with a good explanation for my presence.”
He settled back in his chair, the tips of his fingers pressed together. The sight of those long fingers reminded her of the feel of them on her skin. Heat lanced up her spine. He was good with his hands.
Very good.
“My office. My rules. I don’t need to make up an excuse,” he was saying, bringing her abruptly back to the present. “I’m asking you to join us for lunch. We’ll keep it casual.”
She bit the inside of her cheek to keep from arguing. His world was so easy for him. Hers was somewhat more complicated in that she often dealt with perceptions rather than rules. In this case his rules wouldn’t necessarily align with Vanderloord’s perceptions. Vanderloord, who was neck-deep in military theft, might well find it curious as to why Harry’s assistant was joining their business meeting. Harry was never that casual.
On the other hand, no one would ever imagine Harry in a parked car on a public street with his hand up her skirt and his mouth on her breast either, so stranger things had happened. Which brought her back to her real purpose for coming into his office.
He’d returned his attention to his work, dismissing her with an abruptness that said she’d been right and it wasn’t just her. They were both confused about this attraction between them.
“About the other night,” she began.
He set his pen down with careful deliberation. His eyes chilled. “I apologized for that.”
He had. Beautifully. Whereas she’d mumbled something incoherent and scrambled from the car, then fled as if from the scene of a crime. Not her finest moment.
“I didn’t though. I should have.” His brown eyes narrowed a little more, probably s
uspicious as to what her game was, so she plunged ahead before he could remind her that he was busy. They couldn’t work together with all this tension between them. “It’s hardly your fault I’m so attracted to you.”
That got his attention. “Excuse me?”
“I always go straight for the bad boys. You know… The men with an element of danger? An edginess to them? The women in my family are addicted to the adrenaline rush you give us.”
“Just so I understand. You’re apologizing to me because you can’t control yourself around me? Because I’m edgy and dangerous?”
“Exactly. So you can see how Plan A will have to be altered. It will be far more believable if I’m into you rather than you pretending to be into me. I’ve got truth on my side.”
“Because I’m such a…bad boy.” He stumbled as he said it, trying hard to keep a straight face. He was very close to a smile, which spurred her on.
“Come on, Harry. Admit it. You were being pretty bad at the time.” She canted her head to the side and studied him. “Although one could argue that you were also very, very good.”
The tips of his ears turned a dull red. “Why do I suddenly feel like the one who’s been violated?”
“See? There’s your problem. You’re making a big deal out of nothing. Neither one of us has been violated.” Lies pushed away from the door. She went to the chair in front of his desk and sat down, crossing her legs. She folded her hands on her knee, swinging the toe of one shoe. “We both got caught up in you proving a point. You think I don’t know when to stop, but I assure you, there’s a limit to how far I’ll go for my country.”
His expression hardened again. She’d told him about Michael. It hung between them even though Harry was far too much of a gentleman to bring it up. At least not directly.
“What, exactly, is your limit?” he asked.
He made this so easy.
She studied her nails. “It’s on a case-by-case basis. And quit being judgmental.”
He took offense to that. “I’m not judgmental.”
“You most certainly are.” It was time to be serious. “I’m not into men whose livelihoods are built on the premise that other people are expendable. There’s no gray area in that. No lack of understanding on their part. They can dress it up however they like, but at the end of the day, men like Vanderloord are criminals, not businessmen. That’s my limit.”
And that was a big part of the reason why Harry appealed to her. When it came to his beliefs about right and wrong, he had no gray areas. No matter how much she provoked him, or what lesson he was trying to teach her, or how carried away they’d both gotten, if she’d made the slightest show of resistance in the car the night of the theater, he would have stopped instantly. Harry was completely trustworthy.
She was the one who was not. She liked flirting with danger. And the danger he represented was to her career.
What did that say about her?
“Why don’t we play it by ear?” Harry suggested. “Let people speculate about our relationship? It’s not as if they aren’t already talking.”
He was right. It was obvious there was something between them. The mystery was over who’d instigated it and she didn’t have the answer to that.
“Fair enough,” she said.
She returned to her desk.
Then she picked up the phone and called Yasmin. Those VIP tickets weren’t going to waste.
* * *
Most people only cared that Bernard Vanderloord was honest in his business dealings with them. They didn’t look past the surface to see what his true agenda might be. He was the type of man Harry despised most.
Pride entered into the equation. This would be their first private, face-to-face meeting since he’d found out about the affair. He was glad Lies would also be in attendance. He could hardly—at least not as the defense trade commissioner—punch the other man in the face.
It would be almost as satisfying to see him end up in jail, his reputation in ruins.
“Why don’t you join us?” Harry asked Lies, striving to make the invitation sound spur-of-the-moment and not something they’d choreographed in advance. She’d ushered Vanderloord into his office and was making a production out of unwrapping the sandwiches and serving the coffee, taking her time, waiting for him to pick up his cue, which he’d missed. “There’s too much food here for two people.”
She displayed both eagerness and a charming uncertainty, playing her part much better than he did. Her gaze slid back and forth between him and Vanderloord. “I don’t want to intrude.”
“A beautiful woman is never an intrusion,” Vanderloord interjected.
Harry clenched his back teeth. Alcine and Dita had fallen for this nonsense. And if Lies’s story about a past lover was to be believed, she was equally susceptible to charming men.
The thought of Vanderloord touching Lies in the same manner he had, even if it was only to help establish her cover, didn’t sit well. There was very little he could do about it however. He’d have to trust that she really did know what she was doing and she’d meant it when she said criminal behavior was where she drew the line.
“Lies is interested in a career as a foreign services officer,” Harry said. “She’s proving to be a good student and a pleasure to work with.”
She pulled up a chair next to Vanderloord’s and balanced her plate of sandwiches on her lap. She’d worn a loose-fitting dress with a flirty skirt that was so short it rode indecently far up her long legs when she crossed them, a fact that hadn’t escaped either man’s attention. Her open-toed, leather platform ankle boots showed off pretty pink nail polish. She’d clipped her blond curls away from her face and the diamond studs she always wore glittered on the exposed rim of her ear. Her blue eyes widened with interest as she listened to the two men discuss Canadian industrial and regional benefits policies and the requirements for second-tier suppliers. She even asked the occasional question that betrayed her supposed ignorance for the subject matter but also a keenness to learn.
She sounded exactly like a young woman eager to advance her career.
Harry was impressed by her acting abilities. He was also disquieted by them. Fooling Vanderloord was one thing. How was Harry supposed to know what was real and what wasn’t?
The men finished the coffee and sandwiches and the meeting began to wind down.
“So you want to work as a foreign services officer. Where did you go to university?” Vanderloord asked Lies.
“McGill. I majored in political science,” she replied promptly, which Harry suspected wasn’t true. She’d been evasive about her background from the start, even with him, no doubt so she could change it to suit her purposes whenever necessary.
Like now.
“I studied political science and international law at McGill, although it would have been well before your time,” Vanderloord said.
That was why she’d said McGill. She already knew Vanderloord had attended the Canadian institution. She really was good at her job.
“I didn’t know you studied law,” Harry said to the other man.
“I’ve never practiced. I got involved in a business opportunity straight out of university and here I am.” Vanderloord shrugged. “The rest is history.”
Lies’s face was alive with eager interest. “What kind of business opportunity? How did you know it was the right career path to take? Weren’t you at all sorry to give up on your education? I mean, you must have intended to practice law when you took it.”
Her excitement and enthusiasm were exactly the right level for someone young and ambitious and in search of a mentor, and Vanderloord wasn’t any more immune to it than Harry would have been if he’d been in his shoes. His responding smile was warm and lingered on her in a way that had Harry tightening an imaginary fist.
“A degree only starts you out on a life path. You have no idea where that path will eventually lead. A friend came to me with an idea for exporting goods. He knew my family had connections in
shipbuilding in the Netherlands. We spoke to a few other friends whose families also had foreign connections. Things progressed from there.” Vanderloord stood. He addressed Harry. “I should be going. I know you’re busy and I have another meeting in twenty minutes. It will take me that long to make my way through traffic.” He reached across the desk to shake Harry’s hand. “Thank you for your time. It was very generous of you on such short notice.”
Lies jumped to her feet, the skirt of her dress swirling around her thighs. She practically glowed with adulation. “I’ll walk you out.”
She returned ten minutes later, just as Harry began to worry that she was taking too long and wonder what she and Vanderloord might be talking about.
“He invited me to a wine bar Sunday evening so I can tell him how Tiësto was,” Lies announced, looking pleased.
Harry was not. “You’re going to a rave by yourself?”
“No. I’m taking my cousin Yasmin, the one who lives in Haarlem. I would have thought you’d be more interested that I’m meeting Bernard Sunday night,” she added.
He’d thought so too. But his worry had shifted. “You’ll be safe enough in public with him. I’m more concerned about two young women going to a concert alone.”
“I asked you to go with me and you said no. You weren’t concerned then,” she pointed out. “I believe your exact words were, ‘Not even at gunpoint.’”
“Because I didn’t think you were serious about going at all, let alone by yourself.”
“I’m not going by myself. I’m taking Yasmin.”
They were talking in circles and it was getting them nowhere. He had to leave for the airport where he was meeting up with a trade mission of contractors and government officials arriving from Canada, here to check out shipbuilding operations.
Harry considered his options and chose the one he could live with. “I’ll pick you up after the concert and see that you both get home safely.”
“I’m not turning down a free ride, so thank you.”
Her quick capitulation raised his suspicions. He’d been preparing for an argument. Why hadn’t he gotten one?
His Spy at Night (Spy Games Book 3) Page 8
