Sure as Hell (6 page)

He held her close, their bodies sinking together to the marble floor. They clung to each other, breath coming hot and fast. After a few moments, when he was sure his body could handle the strain of speech and thought, he shifted a bit. He needed to look into her eyes and see if he saw there the reflection of his own satisfaction. He did, and when she smiled like the cat who’d caught the canary, his heart gave a little leap.

He’d been caught, all right, and he didn’t mind in the least.

“We should move,” she said, after an eternity of clinging to each other. “We’re all wet.”

“A small price to pay.”

“We’ll get all pruney.”

“You’ll still be beautiful.”

“You’re a charmer,” she said, a smile in her voice.

“And you know it’s true,” he said, teasing. “You are many things, but modest is not one of them.”

That got a real laugh out of her. “Such a short time, and you already know me so well.”

“It doesn’t feel short to me,” he said, then immediately regretted it. He was crossing the line into date language. Into relationship territory. And that, he knew, was verboten.

“No,” she said. “Not to me, either.”

The lightness in his heart caused by her words was tempered by the fact that she was physically pulling away. She stood up and pushed the door to the shower stall open, then wrapped herself in a fluffy terry-cloth towel. She leaned against the wall and started to finger-comb her hair.

“Hey,” he said. “What about me?”

“You wanted a towel? Too bad for me. I like the view without.”

“Yeah?” He strutted forward, doing a convincing imitation of Mr. Nude Universe. “In that case, I’m just fine.”

She laughed. “You may be fine—in fact, I’m in complete agreement—but you’re also dripping all over the floor.”

“So? It’s not your floor.”

“Good point. Drip away.”

He started to go to her. Started to work up the nerve to cancel his flight and tell her he was staying.

He couldn’t do it, though. The thought that he’d see nothing in her eyes but irritation—or, worse, disappointment—was too much to bear.

The sharp ring of his cell phone from the bedroom drew his attention, and he hurried toward it, grabbing a towel as he went simply because he happened to know the wholesale cost of the carpet in the bedroom area. He glanced at the caller ID, saw his father’s name, and seriously considered letting it roll over to voice mail.

He couldn’t do it, though. It was the same damn thing that had gotten him to Monte Carlo in the first place. That irritating Pavlov’s dog response to His Master’s Voice.

He snapped open the cell phone, and barked an irritated, “What?”

“Ah,
bien
,” his father said. “You are still there. I had heard you might be aboard a plane.”

“You heard.” Dante resisted the urge to bang his head against something hard. “Well, actually you heard right. I’m on my way out this morning. I figure if you don’t need to be here, then neither do I.”

“
Mais non
. What you don’t understand is that I do need to be there. And I must be there by Friday.”

“What’s Friday?”

“The opening of the new wing.”

“Right.” He should have known. Anything for the hotel. Nothing for the family.

He shook off the thought. It sounded too damn whiny, and the one thing Dante was absolutely sure of, his father wasn’t worth the grief.

“I need you there with me,” his father said.

“You’ve done this stuff dozens of times. I think you can handle it.”

“I’ve never done one with an assassin on the loose.”

Okay, that caught Dante’s attention. “What in hell are you talking about?”

“Just that. Security received a tip. Someone is trying to kill me. That’s why I called you, Dante. I need your help. Please, son. I can’t live in hiding forever. I have to come back for the opening or my reputation will be destroyed. Stay. Stay and help me find this assassin.”

Lucia forced herself
not to pay attention as her Man of the Moment spoke in urgent tones on the phone. What did she care, after all? Wives and girlfriends cared when their men had tense phone calls with colleagues. But Lucia had never been a wife-or-girlfriend kind of girl. And she wasn’t going to start now.

He was leaving, and that was good. Hell, he was probably getting chewed out right that very moment, his boss wondering why his tail wasn’t on the morning’s earliest flight. Soon he’d be off to the airport, and the unfamiliar tug around her heart would disappear. That was good. That was what she wanted.

Because what she wanted most was to finish this job. Her last job.

She heard him say something about how he’d handle it, and she forced herself not to smile as she passed by—on her way to retrieve the purse she’d left amid the tumble of clothes by the door. She found her little makeup bag and headed back to the restroom, her thoughts turning to fantasies of making one last use of the bed that he looked so good pacing in front of.

No.

This was over, and that was good. If she was smart, she’d get dressed and leave while he was still on the phone. Direct. To the point. Clean.

But she couldn’t quite do it.

Instead, she concentrated on her eyeliner.

After a moment of concentration, she heard him step onto the bathroom tile. She turned, and couldn’t help but flash him a smile.

Then she turned quickly back to the mirror and covered the gesture by returning to her makeup. “Your boss?”

“My father,” he said. “And my boss. Kind of makes life more interesting, you know?”

“Actually,” she said, “I do know.” And there was another little tightening of the rope around her heart. That familiarity she’d felt with him was real. They truly did have things in common.

Get a grip, Lucia
.

“You work for your dad?”

“Mmmm-hmmm.” She kept her face still, her focus on the millimeter-thin line of green liner she was applying.

She expected him to respond with commiseration. An anecdote. Anything but what he actually said.

“Right,” he said. “Well, as it turns out, I’m staying here. More work.”

The pencil slipped, and she ended up with a green streak marring the soft skin under her left eye.

“Oh.” She tried to smile, but couldn’t quite manage it. “Oh.”

She watched him in the mirror, saw something shift in his face. After a moment, he took a step backward, then disappeared into the bedroom. She moved that way, too, then stopped, unsure of what she should do.

He was staying. And, so help her, even though she knew he’d be the distraction from, well, hell, she couldn’t deny the fact that she wanted him to.

A little surge of anger burst through her. This was part of the test. That had to be it. It made perfect sense that her father was trying to up the ante.

After all, hadn’t her father offered her the keys to his kingdom in exchange for one simple assassination? Never mind that it wasn’t nearly as simple as it had been decades, or even centuries, ago. The point was that he’d placed in her lap a test that she couldn’t help but win.

And although she might be his favorite, she knew that her father didn’t work that way. It simply wasn’t in his nature.

Which meant that this man must be part of the test. That was the only explanation. Her father knew the kind of man who could distract her, and he’d thrown him directly into her path. Of course a simple assassination would be too easy. Hadn’t the old devil said he’d tested the boys? And as much as she liked to believe that Jack, Nick, and Marcus had failed because they were incompetent playboys, Lucia knew the truth. They were all very competent in their own ways. If they’d failed, it was because they’d been faced with a true test of their worth.

Clearly, that was what was happening here.

Well, that was just fine. She could handle whatever he threw at her. She was a professional. She could work in the face of distraction.

She moved back to the mirror, inspecting her reflection as she tried to calm herself down. She used the edge of her thumb to fix the stray bit of eyeliner, but really it was all distraction. A delay before she turned back to look at him. At the man that, just hours ago, she’d wanted gone from her life.

Now, she had to admit that she wanted him to stay.

Dear Hades, could her father actually be doing her a favor?

She considered the possibility, then tossed it aside. No. That wasn’t like her father at all. For that matter, maybe her father had nothing to do with this man at all.

Maybe, instead, it was a gift. Not from her father, but simply from the universe. Karma. Fate. Whatever you wanted to call it.

So few genuinely nice things had happened to her in her life. And, honestly, she hadn’t expected them to. Why would she? Considering her heritage, warm fuzzies were hardly the norm.

But with the man in the other room . . .

She stifled a shiver. Now that she had the chance for affection, no matter how fleeting, she could hardly walk away.

More, she didn’t want to walk away.

And that, ultimately, was the deciding factor.

Test or gift or simple coincidence, it didn’t matter. All that mattered was that she wanted him.

She closed her eyes, taking deep breaths for strength, and then she turned to face the open door to the bedroom. She moved to the threshold in three long strides, then saw him there, standing by the window, nothing more than a towel around those perfect hips.

But although his stance was confident, the face reflected in the glass told a different story. And looking at that expression, she felt both power and shame. Power that she could invoke such a longing in a man. Shame that she had taken so long to make her decision.

He turned around, his expression blank except for the hint of a question in his eyes.

She smiled, hoping that if the simple gesture didn’t soothe him, that her words would. “Hi,” she said. “My name is Lucia. And you still owe me dinner.”

‡
Chapter Six

L
ucia.
He’d been saying the name all day, albeit quietly to himself. He could still feel the tremor of pure joy that shot through him when she’d smiled, said her name, and tossed their dinner plans into the mix. She’d had a point; he never had bought her dinner. But that was an oversight he intended to remedy this evening.

They’d parted ways with a kiss and a promise, and although his body had ached for more sex, his heart ached to romance her. Never before had he reacted so strongly to a woman, either physically or emotionally. Had anyone cornered him yesterday and told him that his heart would soon be twisted into knots by a lithe brunette with a devilish gleam in her violet eyes, he would have announced to anyone listening that the speaker was clearly nuts.

Now he was the one who was nuts, and he couldn’t have been happier about it. The only downside, in fact, to his newfound infatuation was that he couldn’t devote his time to Lucia 24/7.

Because although he’d never expected himself to say it, in these particular circumstances, his father really did come first.

Assassination.

Could it really be true?

He couldn’t imagine why his father would lie, and yet at the same time, he couldn’t imagine why his father would be at the dangerous end of an assassination threat. Jacques Moreau had offended quite a few people in his time, sure. But in the end, he was nothing more than a businessman. He wasn’t destroying rain forests. He wasn’t putting people out of work. Just the opposite, in fact. Moreau’s hotels and casinos provided jobs and insurance to thousands who’d worked for minimum wage before the Moreau empire had moved into their town. He donated a huge percentage of his profits to charities, putting Moreau’s name at the top of most philanthropic charts.

Not exactly the kind of man against whom most people held a grudge. Dante being, perhaps, the sole notable exception.

Even he, however, didn’t want his father dead. At most, he wanted to go back in time and teach the man how to be a parent. At worst, he wanted to be left alone to live his own life.

Neither was going to happen, and now he was here, in Monte Carlo, trying to decide if his usually sane father had dipped into paranoia.

The door to the conference room opened, and Linus stepped in. “Find anything?” Dante demanded.

The techie shook his head. “I’ve got filters searching all the back traffic over the incoming and outgoing servers, and I’ve got a team watching the actual security footage. I don’t see anything related to a threat, and I don’t see anybody on the premises who looks suspicious.”

“Nobody?”

Linus lifted a shoulder. “A few. But they checked out with Tibor. You want me to pull the tapes for you?”

Dante considered that. Tibor had been his father’s chief of security for years, and the man knew his stuff. If Tibor said the suspicious folks weren’t suspicious, then they weren’t.

Still . . .

Dante wasn’t about to let anything get by him on this one. No matter what personal issues might exist between him and his father, there was no way he was going to slack where a death threat was concerned. Even one that he still believed might well be imaginary.