The Paris Assignment

by Addison Fox

  “Campbell?”

  He paused from his perusal of the street and the flash of vulnerability that lit up his nerve endings with an entirely different sort of awareness than he’d just experienced in the cab. “This isn’t safe.”

  “Come on, it’ll be fine. I’m just midway down the block.” Yet again, she seemed to underestimate the possible danger that waited for her in a moment of careless neglect.

  “Here. At least put this on. It’s dark and will cover the bright color of your shawl.”

  He shrugged out of his tuxedo jacket and slipped it around her shoulders before pulling her close.

  “It’s a pashmina.”

  Her words came out on a breathless rush as she stared up at him. Hot, liquid need flared from the center of his chest like fire. “A what?”

  “A pashmina, not a shawl.”

  He shook his head as they began to move. “Does it matter?”

  “Probably not. Look. Just three more doors and we’re there.”

  His gaze roamed the shadows as he did his best to shield her from view. The noises of the city—the horns and honks and general activity he took for granted—faded away as the blood pounded in his ears. Step by agonizing step they moved before she nodded toward the large brownstone that rose up five stories from the street. “We’re here. Just up these steps.”

  With years of familiarity, she had the door unlocked and was through the entrance, already reaching for the blinking panel on the wall.

  Campbell pressed the heavy door behind him as she tapped in several numbers on the keypad and let out a breath he didn’t even realize he was holding. “Ten-digit code?”

  “Yep. It’s hell on the staff, but it makes sense.”

  “More than you can imagine.”

  A light beep indicated the alarm was disarmed before she rekeyed the instructions to arm it. “I’ll turn it off when you leave.”

  “I’m not leaving tonight.”

  Abby whipped back around to face him from where she set her clutch on a small hallway table. “You can’t stay here.”

  “I can and I will.” He glanced up at the two-story foyer, an ornate crystal chandelier filling the space overhead, and couldn’t hold back the grin. “I’ll sleep on the couch if you don’t have enough room.”

  “It’s not that.”

  “Then what is it?”

  She waved an arm, the long sleeve of his jacket flapping around her wrist as it engulfed her hand. “It’s not decent.”

  “What’s not decent? I’m a friend of the family.” The tension he’d carried for the past half hour relaxed in the face of her protest and the solid door at his back. “Besides, what do you think we’ll be doing for the next week in Paris?”

  “Working.”

  “Sharing a home.”

  “That’s a setup. This is real.”

  At her use of the word real, a different sort of tension returned, coiled in the pit of his stomach, desperate for release.

  “You think so?” Before she could reply, he moved toward her, his hands on her hips as he pulled her against him. His tug on her was gentle, but he clearly caught her off guard by the way she tumbled into him.

  Never one to miss an opportunity, Campbell leaned in and took.

  * * *

  Abby gripped Campbell’s large shoulders, the thin hallway table against her back as he pressed his body to hers. She wanted to protest—knew she should—but the feel of his large form against hers was too lovely to resist.

  So she settled into the kiss and gave as good as she got.

  His lips were firm against hers and she opened her mouth as his tongue slid in to tangle with hers. The kiss was so blatant—so carnal—she felt her grip on his neck tighten as she tried to pull him closer against her body. The heavy tuxedo jacket she still wore felt too heavy, the material hot and scratchy as the urge to strip to nothing but flesh consumed her along with his mouth.

  How can I feel this way?

  Thoughts—deliberate yet fleeting—drifted through her mind as the moment spun out between them.

  And with it, the very real understanding that she wanted this man.

  Desperately.

  It was that knowledge that had her pulling away, pressing against his shoulders as she slid from his embrace.

  “Abby?”

  Despite their brief acquaintance, she’d seen many facets of Campbell Steele, but nothing prepared her for the raw, naked need that rode his features into harsh, craggy lines. The vivid blue of his eyes had darkened in the heat of passion and thick cords roped his neck as he stared at her.

  Feminine power filled her at the proof she’d drawn such a response and the urge to walk right back into his arms and see where the moment took her—took both of them—was nearly her undoing.

  A flash of light lit up the hallway through the foyer windows and pulled her attention from his face. His gaze followed hers to the door as they both realized it was only a car driving down the street, but the brief interruption was enough to break the moment.

  She pointed toward the stairs. “Let me go up and make sure a guest room’s ready for you. You’re welcome to help yourself to anything in the kitchen, just there down the hall. The finger food at the benefit wouldn’t tide over a toddler. I’ll come back down and join you in a bit.”

  He opened his mouth, then closed it again, before he simply nodded. “Thanks.”

  Abby slipped his jacket off and handed it to him, then gathered up her clutch and shawl. She fought the urge to turn back and look at him, fear lighting her heels and pushing her onward up the stairs.

  If she looked at him, the need to go back into his arms might be too overpowering to resist a second time.

  * * *

  Lucas Brown reviewed the agenda for Abigail McBane’s upcoming board meeting as the early morning London rain pattered outside his study windows. A sense of satisfaction welled in his veins and he reached for the aged Scotch at his elbow, allowing himself a second glass in celebration.

  He was a man of refined tastes. Tastes he also knew how to manage, control and keep in check.

  Sloppy men got drunk and careless men let their urges get the better of them.

  He was neither.

  Like that asshole he’d hired years ago to harass Abby in the London office. The man had taken his instructions to heart, becoming obsessed with the woman he was only meant to scare and Lucas had been forced to eliminate him.

  From that moment on, he’d resolved to deal with Abby on his own. He could hire muscle, like the thug in New York, but the real work was his to handle. So he’d begun his campaign, planning and plotting, working tirelessly toward his goal.

  And the past month had been the beginning of his reward.

  The seven-minute lockdown on her system had gone according to plan, the information he’d painstakingly accumulated over the years all falling into place as he dug into the McBane systems, a ghost in the trillions upon trillions of bytes of data.

  For seven glorious minutes, he’d played God with eighteen satellites orbiting the Earth and no one could find him.

  As Lucas finished the last sip of the rich whiskey, he stared at the rain beating against the windows as the gray of early morning broke over London.

  Today he’d take the next step.

  * * *

  Abby slipped from her dress and tried to hang it on its padded hanger, not all that surprised when her hands shook. That kiss had scrambled more than a few brain cells, but it was the shaky need that still coursed through her system that had her dropping to the small stool she kept in her closet.

  The man did things to her. That was all there was to it. If she could look at it objectively—a straight case of sexual attraction—she’d be fine.

  She would be fine.

  She had to be fine.

  “Get a grip, girl.” The whispered admonishment did little except make her feel stupid for talking to herself in the middle of her closet.

  Her gaze caught on a pair of yoga p
ants and discarded T-shirt on her shelf reserved for workout clothes and she snatched at them like they were a life preserver and she were drowning. Baggy and semi-unflattering, the clothes would offer some protection from the man.

  Or so she hoped.

  Flipping off the lights in her bedroom, she walked down the hall toward her office. Campbell had joked he was a family friend. Well, she’d let him fend for himself in the kitchen as she caught up on a bit of work. She’d fought the urge to check her emails during the event but too much was going on to fully ignore the office and the lure of her sleek, silver laptop beckoned.

  Less than a minute later, Abby groaned at the long string of unread emails, proving she’d pay for her post-work absence. With practice born of long years of message management, she triaged the emails into the most urgent, either due to sender or topic and sorted the rest for when she could get to them.

  “You want half? You barely ate anything at the benefit.”

  The deep voice penetrated the work haze she’d descended into and Abby looked up and blinked. The sight of Campbell standing in her doorway, his shirttails untucked and that sexy patch of skin visible at the V open at his throat, had her stomach clenching in another burst of attraction before it switched gears and focused on the half a sandwich he held up.

  Her stomach let out a long, low growl in agreement. “I’m so hungry I’m not even embarrassed by that resounding shout of agreement.”

  “Here.” He crossed the room and set the ham and cheese down, her half wrapped in a napkin.

  “Thanks.”

  He swallowed a bite of his own half, then gestured toward her desk with his dinner. “What are you working on?”

  “The bane of every professional’s existence. Email.”

  “Can I look at a few things while you’re eating?”

  “What things?”

  “I told you I set up those databases to run while we were gone.”

  She nodded, curious to observe him now that he seemed to be back in work mode. The change was intriguing, the sexy would-be lover gone in the face of a highly focused technology expert.

  The thought was as fascinating as it was disappointing.

  Especially when she realized she missed that sexy heat that had lingered in his gaze downstairs.

  “Here.” Campbell came around to her side of the desk and was already sliding the laptop in his direction. With mind-boggling speed, he tapped into her system infrastructure and had a series of scripts running on the page before she’d swallowed another bite.

  “How’d you do that so fast?”

  “Years and years of practice.”

  “Try again. I’m more than proficient in our systems and I could never move through the commands with that degree of speed. What gives?”

  “I told you. Practice.” He reached for the last bite of his sandwich he’d settled next to the laptop and popped it into his mouth before walking to the small framed photograph she kept on a shelf behind her desk. “Is this your mother?”

  Abby focused on the lines of code racing over the face of her computer, unwilling to turn around. “Yes.”

  “She was very beautiful. You look like her.”

  “So I’ve been told.”

  “I’m sorry. It’s difficult to lose a parent.”

  She rarely spoke of her mother so the fact she’d had to confront the subject twice in one night had her closing in on herself. Abby knew it—and knew Campbell, of all people, spoke from experience—but she wasn’t able to calm down or channel a different reaction.

  “I’ve had a long time to get used to it.” The words were unnecessarily harsh and Abby knew she’d meant them to be. She also knew she was already sorry for the brusque tone and even edgier response. Before she could manage an apology, his gaze caught on the screen and his focus shifted once again.

  “What is it?”

  “You see that?” He tapped a few quick commands then scrolled back to the point he wanted to highlight. “Right here. See the gap?”

  She saw it immediately and dragged the laptop a bit closer. “How’d you find that so quickly?”

  “I’ve got a few tricks up my sleeve.”

  “No, really, Campbell. I understand this stuff. Clearly I don’t live it and breathe it like you do, but I understand it. What’d you do?”

  “I reprogrammed an old honeypot to see if I’d get any nibbles.”

  “And?”

  “He bit.”

  * * *

  Campbell pulled the computer back toward him, suddenly itchy for the multiple screens in his office. He made a mental note to add a few to his remit list for the setup in Paris, then went back to the task at hand.

  Abby leaned over the computer, her arm brushing his as she left her dinner forgotten on the other side of the desk. “I know my team has an entire honeynet in place as part of the security infrastructure, but it’s clear you’ve done something differently.”

  “The design is simple and hardly sophisticated. I replicated a few basic program functions he’d have to work around to come in undetected. I’ll put something more extensive in place tomorrow but this gives me something to go on.”

  “A fingerprint for our ghost?” She moved closer, the thin cotton of her T-shirt soft against his forearm. Her movements were unconscious, but his body reacted immediately.

  And how the hell was baggy cotton suddenly the sexiest damn thing in the universe?

  “Not yet.” The words came out on a harsh bark and he pulled himself back, the insane urge to drag her against his body and continue what they’d started in the foyer flashing through his mind like a blinking sign.

  Softening his tone, he forced the sexy images from his mind and pointed once more to the computer. “But this information should get us closer.”

  She stood up, the heat of her body vanishing as she crossed around the desk and took a seat opposite him. “Nice work, Mr. Steele.”

  “I haven’t caught him yet. Or her,” he amended quickly, still unsure of what they were up against.

  “How is it someone hasn’t snapped you up yet? I know what your skills are worth. There are companies that would pay big to have you on their side.”

  The image of working for a large corporation had always given him an itch between the shoulder blades. “There’s not enough money in the world to tie me to a corporate job.”

  Her eyebrows rose as she pointed toward the laptop. “Isn’t this, by definition, a corporate job?”

  “This is a job with a defined beginning, middle and end. Then I move on to the next thing. No strings attached.”

  No strings attached.

  It was his philosophy and it had served him well for his thirty-two years. Campbell saw no reason to shift gears now.

  “You don’t like roots?”

  “I’ve got roots in the form of two meddlesome sisters, a hands-off brother and a pair of well-meaning grandparents who are perfectly happy to see me when I’m in town and not nag at me when I’m not.”

  “And you’re happy with that?”

  “As a clam.”

  “I never understood that.”

  Whether it was her lack of accusation—most women would have been on his no-strings comment faster than a lightning strike—or the curiosity that stamped itself in her tone, he didn’t know.

  Maybe it was just a vague sense when she’d spoken about her mother that they were kindred spirits, but her comment had him talking when he’d usually default to saying nothing.

  “They’re my family and they’ve always been more than enough.” They had to be.

  “I meant the clam.”

  “What clam?”

  “The happy one. How does anyone know that? They’re not exactly high on the evolutionary chain. They certainly don’t show emotion.”

  “This is an odd conversation.”

  “Very.” She picked up the sandwich once again. “This’ll go better with a glass of wine.”

  “Doesn’t everything?”

  �
��Usually. Grab the laptop and we’ll head back down to the kitchen. We need to figure out our game plan for the next few days.”

  “I thought you’d never ask.”

  Chapter 5

  As her great-grandmother’s grandfather clock chimed four in the morning, Abby dropped her head onto the kitchen table. She’d had only one glass of the rich Cabernet—a feat of restraint she now applauded herself for—and tried to focus on the diagram Campbell held in his hands.

  “So where’s the study?”

  “There is no study on that floor. The hallway’s longer than your diagram and there’s a sitting room at the end of the hall.”

  “How far away is the study?”

  “Two floors up.”

  “And where are you holding the meetings?”

  “In the dining room on the first floor.”

  Campbell groaned as he scribbled a few notes on a legal pad she’d hunted up shortly after midnight. They’d been going over the layout to the Paris house for hours, mapping out meeting strategy and all the potential ways they could trap their ghost in the flesh.

  “Why are you so worried about the study?”

  He reached for his coffee mug as he tapped on the crudely drawn map. “It’s the most likely place you’d keep information which would mean it’s the most likely place he’ll look. But, I need to set up the security team in there. We want to set a trap for our ghost, a physical one, but we don’t need one inadvertently set for us.”

  “And you really think it’s one of the attendees for the week?”

  Abby knew it was possible—had resigned herself to that fact even before she’d contacted Kensington about the job—but it continued to rub her the wrong way. She knew these people. Knew each and every person who would be in her home in the coming days.

  How it was even imaginable any of them had made threats, violated the integrity of McBane’s systems and very possibly shot at her and Campbell tonight and she didn’t know.

  Yet even as she questioned it, when she added up each of those factors it wasn’t only possible, it was highly probable.

  “Abby. I know this is hard but you’ve got to give me a little bit more.”