Orange Blossoms & Mayhem (Fantascapes) (23 page)

“
Back!” I commanded.

“
Laine, you’re killing me!”

“
Not very tough, are you?” I taunted. “Guess the brothers were right.”

For a moment his whole body went tense as a bow string, and I thought he’d call the game when it had barely begun, strong-arming me into missionary position or simply grabbing his jacket and stalking out. Not Rhys Tarrant’s kind of woman, no way, no how.

But his hand dropped back to the bed, and he lay there, arms outstretched, almost as vulnerable as he’d been on the Inca Trail. I knew I was in trouble, not of having him run from me, but of being bound by wires of steel that could never be severed. I wanted a grand adventure with a fascinating man. Not commitment. Not this horrible, welling
caring
. The certainty this was a relationship that, in spite of wide oceans and separate continents, could last a lifetime.

Blast!
This wasn’t the moment for deep thoughts. Logic, personal demons, the future could go hang. This was Rhys, this was me. And this was meant to be.

With each button, I spread the front of his dark blue shirt farther apart, licking and nipping my way up his hard nearly hairless chest until I found a nipple and did to it what men so love to do to women. There might not have been much beyond a swelling of muscles, but the results were most satisfactory. Rhys broke out in a sweat, murmuring my name and some very nice things in French, which is definitely the language of love. I didn’t make the mistake of allowing my hands to stray south, as I would have liked. His erection was turning his full-cut slacks into something resembling a pup tent. If I touched him now, we weren’t going to make it to the best part.

I worked my lips up his throat to his mouth and settled in for a good long exploration. He felt so good, smelled so good, tasted so good. I was lost, drowning in sensation, with Rhys’s hands now closed around me, urging me on, his legs tangling with mine, warning that his stoicism was running out, his takeover imminent.

“
Merde!
” He went absolutely still. I could hear his teeth grind.

“
It’s okay,” I murmured, “I never leave home without one.” Or a whole pack. I may not use condoms much—did they have expiration dates?—but I always traveled prepared.

“
You are aware,” Rhys declared tightly, “that I’m the man and you’re the woman, and this is not how the scenario is supposed to play out.”

“
Next time it’s your turn,” I promised and hopped off the bed to rummage around in my suitcase. One, two . . . three foil packets. Why not think ahead? Be optimistic?

I paused to watch Rhys, who was shedding his clothes at warp speed. Come to think of it, except for my shoes, which I’d left lying under the table some time ago, I was still fully clothed. With condom packets clutched in my teeth, I launched into the first deliberate strip tease of my life, swaying, shimmying, getting off on getting rid of my dress, my lacy black bra. Wiggling out of my thigh-highs, whirling them in a circle, flinging them toward the uncovered window with the lights of Lyon sparkling far below.

“
Ta-da!” I flung my arms wide, displaying everything I had.
What was I doing? This wasn’t Laine Halliday
. Or maybe it was, and I’d never before met the man who could reduce my pragmatic soul to idiocy.

I took a long look at Rhys—all of him, though it was hard to tear my eyes from the flag pole between his thighs. He had a few scars and more muscle than I’d noticed until I was working my way over iron abs and admirable pecs. No paper pusher here, but a man of action. Who wasn’t getting any at the moment. He was beginning to look slightly pained.

I ripped open one of the packets and knelt on the bed to apply it. He started to help me, then flung himself back on the pillow with a sound somewhere between abject frustration and resignation. “If you don’t hurry, woman,” he gasped, “this night’s going to end with a whimper instead of a bang.”

I made a great concession. “You want the top?” I asked.

The only answer I got was another great groan as he reared up, flipped me onto my back and loomed over me with bared teeth, one hand thrusting downward, encountering the heavy moisture between my thighs. “Good girl,” he breathed, “any more foreplay and I think I’d be dead.”

I’d like to say it was just another night of great sex, but of course it wasn’t. Neither of us lasted long that first time around, exploding into orgasm with unseemly haste, but we made up for it. By the time we used the third condom, with dawn breaking over the city of Lyon, we’d learned every inch of each other’s bodies and Rhys had proved himself exactly what I feared—the lover of a lifetime. We’d moved from two sweaty, panting almost-strangers to the verge of being soulmates.

For a little while I even forgot,
Not yet, not now, I’m not ready for commitment
.

Instead of breakfast, I had to rummage through my case, looking for a fourth foil packet.

Perhaps if we hadn’t been so short on sleep and hyped on sex, we might have been more alert, might have noticed the delivery truck behind the Interpol car that was following us. But it was a lovely spring morning, and our minds were afflicted by a dangerous muzzy bliss. We knew better, we both did, but we were scarcely wandering the city alone, and, besides, what could go wrong in the scant few blocks from the Meridien to Interpol?

Rhys’s car was a snappy Peugeot coupé the color of aluminum—our own fairytale coach of silver. We drifted, well insulated from reality, taking the shortest route to Interpol. As we made a right turn onto the road that stretched along the Rhone, I found myself torn between enjoying the broad gray-blue of the river and staring, mesmerized, at Rhys’s profile.

I had it bad, I knew it. At that moment, I didn’t care.

A sound penetrated our bubble. The roar of a truck motor, coming like the proverbial bat out of hell. Defying rush hour traffic. Zooming past our watchdogs. Gaining. On our bumper. Rhys stepped on the gas, swung the wheel hard right, away from the river, but it was too late. Either the driver of the truck was an expert in running cars off the road, knowing exactly where and when to slam into our bumper, or he was just plain lucky. Rhys’s wheel corrections didn’t work because we were airborne, tires spinning uselessly. We plunged off the road, over the grassy bank, and hit the river. Nearly two tons of metal impacting a wall of cold water.

I came back to the world with Rhys shaking my shoulder and calling my name. To a car rapidly filling with water. “Laine, wake up, pay attention!” I blinked, focused. This definitely wasn’t my day to die. No way. It wasn’t going to happen. “Laine, listen to me! Unbuckle your seat belt. We can’t open the doors until the car fills with water. When the pressure is the same inside as out, the doors will open.”

Sure they would.

“
What if they’re stuck?” I demanded. My seat belt wasn’t, thank God. Although I had to fumble underwater to find it, it popped open, just as it was designed to do.

“
Women,” Rhys muttered, and leaned over to place a fast kiss on my forehead, which was about the only place I had feeling left, as the rising water felt as if it had come straight off the Alps. Which it had. “Two doors, Laine,” Rhys intoned with exaggerated patience. “One is bound to open. Just take a good breath before we go under. Don’t worry, we’ll make it.”

Lovely. Coupé doors were
big
. Theoretically, I understood the pressure thing, but I didn’t have Rhys’s confidence that the door was just going to swing open, as if it were safely parked at the local mall.
Oh, Lord, where was the handle?
Unfamiliar car, handle lost beneath the water. “Rhys, the handle?” I tried to sound calm and steady. I don’t think I managed it, because Rhys, giving me a wry grin, leaned over, grabbed my right hand, and guided it into position.

“
I’ll signal when it’s time. Don’t try too soon, Laine. It won’t work.”

Miserable man. The water was up to our chins and he’s saying,
Don’t try too soon, Laine. Go ahead and drown.

Keeping my hand on the door handle, I rose with the water, following the last pocket of air.

“
See you topside,” Rhys said. “Big breath. Now!”

The murky water swallowed us up.
Dear God, but it was cold!
My fingers were locked around the handle. My mind screamed my hands would be too numb to work, the door would never open.

Rhys gave me a nudge, his dark wavy hair standing on end like some exotic seaweed. He pointed toward my door, turned back toward his own. I squeezed the handle, gave a good hard push, and, miraculously, the door swung open. Rhys may have had confidence in the laws of physics. I didn’t.

But I was out. Pushing my toes against the seat cushion, I sprang straight up toward the promise of light not so far above my head. I broke through the surface and was almost instantly seized in a pair of strong hands. One of our Interpol shadows, apologizing in rapid French that he had missed our car on his first dive down.

Teeth chattering, I looked around for Rhys. He should have been out. Five seconds . . . eight. No Rhys.

Something was wrong.

I drew a deep breath, surface-dived, and was instantly surrounded by murk, the silt stirred up by our plunge into the river
. Oh, God, what if I, too, couldn’t find the car?
Surely I’d come almost straight up. If I just kept going down . . . but no dark car-shaped shadow loomed out of the cloud of silt. It had to be here! Had to be.

And then I saw Rhys’s white face. Still in the car, behind the glass. The Peugeot had slid farther down the underwater bank, tilting on its side, making the driver’s door impossible to open. And swinging the passenger door shut behind me, where it must have jammed. I grabbed the door handle and tugged. Nothing. Rhys reversed, braced his hands on the steering wheel, signaled me to try again. As I did, he slammed his feet against the door. It didn’t budge. We tried again, as I shot off a pretty desperate plea to God, who I hoped was feeling more New Testament than Old today because Rhys must be down to the last of the air in his lungs.

The door swung open. I seized Rhys by the arm and hauled him straight up. Held him tight while he gasped for breath in Lyon’s weak spring sunlight. Just before we were swarmed by Emergency Services, he managed to pant, “One of these days, woman . . . I’m going to save
your
neck.”

And then we were being rushed to the emergency room, stripped and wrapped in blankets. There are great advantages, I soon discovered, to having an in with Interpol. By the time we’d dried off, consumed a couple of cups of hot coffee, and had our cuts and scrapes treated, someone produced a set of our own dry clothes for each of us. It was still morning when we were transported to Interpol under a formidable police escort.

Interpol has the kind of security where earrings, underwired bras, and probably nasty thoughts set off alarms. But my earrings were on the bottom of the Rhone, my second-best bra wasn’t wired, and I was thinking nothing but good thoughts about Interpol, whose prestige was becoming more apparent with each passing hour, so we soon found ourselves in an elevator, heading up to what Rhys described as a conference room.
Conference. Strange faces. All Interpol.
I suffered a sudden attack of guilt. Not as the possible catalyst for the attacks on Rhys, but I could almost feel a scarlet letter forming on my forehead. Not that Interpol cared how we’d spent the night . . .

Oh, yes, they did. Rhys Tarrant was one of their own, and I was the femme fatale who was leading him astray. The agency that dealt with the international criminals of one hundred ninety member nations on a daily basis could not afford to be careless.

And now they were going to deal with me.

The conference room was rather bigger than I’d hoped, and, as I feared, populated with altogether too many men from Interpol. But my qualms faded while sipping strong hot coffee, far superior to the hospital brew, and sampling an assortment of exquisite pastries, all the while being the object of genuine solicitude and a superabundance of international charm.

Unfortunately, my sense of well-being didn’t last long. Here on European turf, Interpol officers were treated like gods, and it had definitely gone to their heads. Even the presence of the Secretary General, an American who combined a suave mix of Ivy League and mid-western cop, didn’t make me feel much better. As charming as he was, it was plain he was Interpol Boss first, a fellow countryman second. The simple fact was, I was in a room full of cops—from the German head of Human Trafficking to the English Rhys and the French Alain Bedard—all of them convinced I was the source of Rhys’s problems. And that the assassin or assassins were now desperate enough to take me out too.

All in all, not a great way to start the day.

“
Now that the bad guys have failed,” I said, glaring at Klaus Peiper, who was chairing the meeting, with the big boss, Secretary General Robert Nichols, mostly sitting back, taking it all in, “surely they’ll see it’s too late. Rhys and I have obviously compared notes, the damage is done. Why should they want to make Interpol any angrier than it already is?”

“
This is not a chance we wish to take, Miss Halliday,” Inspector Peiper stated firmly. “I do not put my men out to slaughter, nor innocent civilians such as yourself.”