EDEN (Eden series Book 2) (15 page)

The breath comes out of me in a rush. Now I understand why he asked for this particular suite. The Provocateur suite.

The message was there for me to see. Only I was too proud of my own ability to deceive and too blinded by my own feelings. I feel tears prickling at the backs of my eyes. No, I won’t give in now. I know what happens when I give in to grief. It takes over. I become a total wreck. No more introspection. I can’t stay here anymore. 

My instructions are very clear in the event that my cover is ever blown.   

I pick up the phone, make flight reservations. Then I pack my bag quickly and with little fuss. There is not much to pack, anyway. I open my purse and take out the black plastic chip. Worthless here, but worth ten thousand dollars at Eden.

I remember that sweltering night as if it happened yesterday. How exciting it had all been then. How naïve I was to give in to temptation and not think it would scar me for life. I put the chip on the pillow on his side of the bed. I don’t know why I bother after the cavalier way he lost all that money in the casino earlier, but I know I can’t keep it.
At the end of the operation you will ditch all the physical trappings of your undercover alter ego, the hair, the clothes, the people you have befriended, and return to your own normal world.

Then I go out to the lounge to sit and wait. I know I am a wreck waiting to happen, but at this moment I feel strangely detached and calm. It is simple, I tell myself. My cover is blown. I am not the first undercover cop it has happened to. It has happened many times. I will simply report back and they will assign me somewhere else. Somewhere I can go to lick my wounds. Where there won’t be a Jake Eden I will fall in love with and suffer over.

I look at the time. I call reception and order a cab. In thirty minutes the cab will arrive and take me to the airport. I will be fine. Of course I will be fine.

A small voice says, ‘Don’t run away. Stay. Fight for your man.’

But he is not my man. He is nobody’s man. He was pretending the whole time. I have been silly. I allowed myself to fall in love. It is not so despicable. Other cops have done it. Over the course of years of being undercover some have married their targets and even had children with them. I am not so despicable.

I stand. I can’t stay in this room any longer. I will wait in reception downstairs. I pick up my luggage, take one last look at the opulence around me, and walk resolutely to the door.

I open it and stop dead in my tracks. My luggage falls from my disbelieving hands.

Jake Eden is sitting sprawled out in the corridor. His back is resting against the opposite wall and beside him is an empty bottle of Scotch. He has another in his right hand, which is already half empty. He looks up, trying to hold his lids open.

‘Leaving so soon?’ he slurs.

Last part out sooner than you think… J

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Want to know what the Billionaire Banker did to his woman?

The Billionaire Banker Series

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The Billionaire Banker Series

Book One

GEORGIA LE CARRE

You aren’t wealthy until you have something money can’t buy.

                                                                                                          —
Garth Brooks

One

Blake Law Barrington

 drop a cube of sugar into the creamy face of my espresso, stir it, and glance at my platinum Greubel Forsey Tourbillion, acquired at Christie’s Important Watches auction last autumn for a cool half a million dollars.

Eight minutes past eight.

I have a party to go to tonight, but I’m giving it a miss. It’s been a long day, I am tired, I have to be in New York early tomorrow morning, and it will be one of those incomprehensibly dreary affairs. I take a sip—superb coffee—and return the tiny cup to its white rim.

Summoning a waiter for the check, I sense the activity level in the room take a sudden hike. Automatically, I lift my eyes to where all the other eyes, mostly male and devouring, have veered to. Of course. A girl. In a cheap, orange dress and lap dancer’s six-inch high plastic platforms.

You’re looking for love in all the wrong places, honey.

A waiter in a burgundy waistcoat bearing the bill has silently materialized at my side. Not taking my eyes off the girl—despite the impossible shoes she has a good walk, sexy—I order myself a whiskey. The waiter slinks away after a right-away-sir nod, and I lean back into the plush chair to watch the show.

It is one of those swanky restaurants where there are transparent black voile curtains hung between the tables and discreet fans to tease and agitate the gauzy material. Three curtains away she stands, minus the shoes, perhaps five feet five or six inches tall. She has the same body type as Lady Gaga, girlishly narrow with fine delicate limbs. Her skin is the color of thick cream. Beautiful mouth. My eyes travel from the waist-length curtain of jet-black hair to the swelling curve of her breasts and hips, and down her shapely legs.

Very nice, but…

At twenty-nine, I am already jaded. Though I watch her with the same speculation of all the other men in the room she is a toy that no longer holds any real excitement for me. I do not need to meet her to
know
her. I have had hundreds like her—hot, greedy pussies and cold, cold hearts. It is always the same. Each one hiding talons of steely ambition that hook into my flesh minutes after they rise like resurrected phoenixes from a night in my bed. Safe to say I have realized the error of my ways.

Still….

Something about her
has
aroused my attention.

She comes further into the room and even the billowing layers of curtains cannot conceal her great beauty or youth. Certainly she is far too young for her dining companion who has just barged in with all the grace of a retired rugby player. I recognize his swollen head instantly. Rupert Lothian. An over-privileged, nerve gratingly colossal ass. He is one of the bank’s high profile private customers. The bank never does business with anyone they do not check out first and his report was sickening.

Curious. What could someone so fresh-faced and beautiful be doing with one so noted for ugly games?  And they are ugly games that Lothian plays.

I watch three waiters head off towards them and the fluid, elegantly choreographed dance they perform to seat and hand them their menus. Now I have her only in profile. She has put the menu on the table and is sitting ramrod-straight with her hands tightly clasped in her lap. She crosses and uncrosses her legs nervously.

Unbidden, an image pops into my head. It is as alive and wicked as only an image can be. Those long, fine legs entangled in silky sheets. I stare helplessly as she pulls away the sheets, turns that fabulous mouth into a red O, and deliberately opens her legs to expose her sex to me. I see it clearly. A juicy, swollen fruit that my tongue wants to explore! I sit forward abruptly.

Fuck.

I thought I had passed the season of fantasizing about having sex with strangers. I reach for my whiskey and shoot it. From the corner of my eyes I see a waiter discreetly whisper something to Lothian. He rises with all the pomposity he can muster and leaves with the waiter.

I transfer my attention to the girl again. She has collapsed backwards into the chair. Her shoulders sag and her relief is obvious. She stares moodily at the tablecloth, fiddles with her purse and frowns. Then, she seems to visibly force herself away from whatever thoughts troubled her, and lets her glance wander idly around the room until her truly spectacular eyes—I have never seen anything like them before—collide with my unwavering stare. And through the gently shifting black gauze my breath is suddenly punched out of my body, and I am seized by an unthinking, irresistible call to hunt. To possess.

To
own
her.

Two

Lana Bloom

t can have been only seconds, but it seems like ages that I am held locked and hypnotized by the stranger’s insolent eyes. When I recall it later I will remember how startlingly white his shirt had been against his tanned throat, and swear that even the air between us had shimmered. Strange too how all the background sounds of cutlery, voices and laughter had faded into nothing. It was as if I had wandered into a strange and compelling universe where there was no one else but me and that devilishly handsome man.

But in this universe I am prey.

The powerful spell is broken when he raises his glass in an ironic salute. Hurriedly, I tear my gaze away, but my thin façade of poise is completely shattered. Hot blood is rushing up into my neck and cheeks; and my heart is racing like a mad thing.

What the hell just happened
?

I can still feel his gaze like a burning tingle on my skin. To hide, I bend my head and let my hair fall forward. But the desire to dare another look is so immense it shocks me. I have never experienced such an instant and physical attraction before.

With broad shoulders, a deep tan, smoldering eyes, a strong jaw, and straight-out-of-bed, vogue-cool, catwalk hair that flops onto his forehead, he looks like one of those totally hot and brooding Abercrombie and Fitch models, only more savage and fierce.