The Cinderella Mission (17 page)

Keeping her with him a few seconds longer.

K
elly trembled with the residual waves of pleasure rippling through her.

She’d wanted him. Wanted this. But hadn’t fully understood the storm churning through Ethan. The intensity of whatever tore at him radiated in waves. She’d grappled her way over his wall and now didn’t know what to do with what she’d found. There weren’t books for her to study on this one, and her lack of experience in relationships left her with precious little to draw upon.

She kissed his neck and waited for him to talk, a better option than to risk saying the wrong thing. Ethan rolled off her and sat with his back against the wall, dragging in air.

He traced a finger along her neckline, dipping in to pull the chain around her neck, down to the stone dangling from it, the aquamarine from their mine trip. “You’re right. I should have told you about the meeting with Samantha.”

Shock kept her from talking more than indecision—and hope.

Maybe…

“It’s been a hell of a day.” He untwined the chain and stood.

Ethan straightened his clothes, then extended a hand to her. She rose to stand beside him, ready to curl up in his bed and savor whatever time they had left together, to grab some intimacy with this elusive man.

Instead, he turned the corner and climbed the last few steps to his computer wall. He reached past her to his side of the computer console. “Hatch gave me the file on my parents’ murder.”

Kelly rubbed the tensed muscles in his arm, trying to understand where he was going with this. “That’s good. What does it say?”

“I haven’t read it yet.” He held it as if testing its weight. “But I can’t stop thinking about it. And yeah, I misstepped earlier. Thinking about them…hell, yeah, I want to keep you locked up tight here.”

He held up a hand. “I know. You don’t want protection.” Ethan dropped the file on the desk beside her. “Here.”

Kelly picked it up. “You want me to look?”

“Go ahead,” he shot over his shoulder as he loped down the stairs to the kitchen.

Already she could see him pulling away, but this time he’d left a piece of himself behind. While Ethan pulled water bottles from the refrigerator, Kelly flipped through pages, icy horror chilling away the remains of passion. Was he trying to tell her something by showing her the brutality of how his parents had died?

A line item snagged her attention. “Ethan,” she called, her eyes still scanning the pages, soaking up the words with dawning horror, “where was your au pair—Iona—from? The woman who supposedly passed along your locale to the attackers?”

He returned to the loft, placing a bottle beside her. “From what little I could find out the past couple of weeks, Iona’s passport listed her as a Swiss National.”

Kelly tapped the paper. “That’s not where she was born.”

He tugged the yellowed paper sealed in a plastic sleeve. “Bastia. But that doesn’t—”

“—exist anymore.” Cold certainty hardened within her. “It was absorbed into the shifting borders of—”

“Rebelia. Damn it. Here.” He pitched the computer disk Samantha had passed along onto the computer console. “See what you can make of that. Samantha lucked into this message intercepted by Delmonico’s intelligence. She says even if you break the encryption, it came from Rebelia, which means I’m screwed as far as interpreting it anyway.”

She jammed the disk into her computer, activating the software to decode the encrypted message while Ethan waited beside her, edgy restlessness pulsing from him.

Words shifting before her, she typed out the translation and found…

“Oh my God,” she gasped, leaning back from the computer. “Read.”

Ethan canted forward, his eyes scanning, widening with dark realization. “If this is right, someone in Rebelia is targeting jewels all around the world. Specific jewels. This isn’t some random heist. They’re out for the Gastonian ambassador’s blue sapphire.”

Kelly leaned back in the chair. “Aside from the value of it, the diplomatic repercussions alone could start an all-out war between the countries.”

All roads led back to Rebelia. Eugenie’s diggings into CIA workings back then and operative Alex Morrow’s disappearance now.

Could a small country like Rebelia actually have had an intricate spy network in place for over thirty years?

Of course it could. The magnitude of what they were facing rolled over her. And apparently rolled over Ethan, as well. He grabbed for the phone. “Screw this. I’m calling Hatch and telling him to cancel the whole damned summit ball.”

She clutched his wrist. “What about Alex Morrow? And whatever else is planned with the rest of the next heist and the one after that.”

He jerked his arm away and shot out of the chair. “Fine. Then your unreasonable boyfriend is asking you to sit this one out at headquarters so I can think.”

She stood, toe-to-toe, determined to have her answers this time. “And what about the next op?”

His silence and stony face answered her too well. He really expected her to give it up for him.

“You want me to quit?”

Still he didn’t disagree. Instead, he moved closer, hips molded to hers as he stroked his hands down her back, lower. “You want to travel, I’ll take you anywhere you want to go.” His hands journeyed sensuous paths over her body with a lover’s knowledge of where to touch. “I have enough money for ten lifetimes and we’ll spend it all in one. You’ll be so busy, you won’t have time to miss ARIES, or anything else.”

“Don’t,” she pulled herself away, anger and passion making painful companions in her belly. “Don’t try to manipulate me.”

His throat worked, none of the Ethan lightheartedness in sight. “I love you, damn it. I never wanted to love anyone this way again. Hell, I never
have
loved anyone this way. That has to count for something.”

Everything within Kelly went silent and still. Ethan loved her?

And she couldn’t do a thing about it.

Blue eyes she’d dreamed of for so long stared back down at her. Part of her yearned to take anything he offered. Another, stronger part of her knew better.

“There was a time I would have given anything to hear those words from you. But Ethan, you’ve taught me I’m worthy of more.” She let herself touch him, her palm to his chest, a bittersweet pleasure. “I’ve spent years trying to be
something I’m not to make people love me, which is silly because then they don’t love the real me, anyway.”

Kelly held her eyes wide and unblinking. She wouldn’t cry. If he saw her weakening, he would push and she didn’t trust herself to hold strong.

She stroked her hand over the steady beat of his heart. “I can’t promise you I won’t die. But if you take away my right to stand up for myself, then I’m not truly living.”

His face hardened at her rejection. He stepped back, putting distance between them with his cold eyes as much as his retreating body. “That’s a great speech, Kelly. Of course you always did have a way with words. Well, I’m not so good with twisting around languages, but I can tell you this straight up. I’m not some damned fairy-tale prince, but I would have given you everything I had.”

As she watched him walk back up the stairs, she wondered if maybe her summa cum laude brain had misled her this time.

Wearing his tuxedo and counting down the minutes until Kelly descended the spiral staircase, Ethan stood in the cathedral-ceilinged entry hall of his aunt’s house.

His house.

His parents’ home.

He slid his finger along the neck of his tux shirt. Damn tie pinched.

Eugenie stood beside him, swathed in a purple ball gown and eager to unveil her creation. So many times she had stood at the foot of those same stairs while he slid down the steps on a sled. Or had that been his mother? He hated being inside with ghostly memories attempting to push through, but Kelly deserved to have her escort waiting for her.

He took comfort from the solid weight of the 9mm secured in his shoulder harness. Some comfort. Not enough.

Hell, none of it felt like enough—the army of a hundred security personnel outside the historic hotel where the sum
mit ball would be held. The thirty armed guards inside posing as guests and waiters. Not to mention the room full of heavily armored forces waiting as a contingency backup.

He and Kelly had spent the entire day increasing security. They’d met with Hatch about the potential threat from Rebelian nationals and tried to pinpoint their link to Alex Morrow’s disappearance. But the ambassador to Gastonia wouldn’t cancel his appearance. There was nothing left to do but forge ahead with additional security in place. CIA, FBI, Marines, even local law enforcement were all woven together in a joint operation, yet none of them had seen his or Kelly’s faces to link them as the masterminds.

In his ear, the low voices of Juarez, Davidson and occasionally even Samuel Hatch himself already hummed with feedback from the command post in ARIES headquarters. Just as when multiple frequencies piped through his headset when he flew his plane, Ethan sorted through the voices. Kelly’s receiver would be turned on in minutes.

Not that he needed the sound of her voice to keep her in his head.

Eugenie tapped his arm. “Ethan. She’s here.”

Ethan looked up. Kelly stood above him.

She stole his breath, and he’d been prepared for her to look beautiful. Yet even he hadn’t expected this.

He had to applaud his aunt for her choices. She’d restrained her own extravagant tastes in favor of elegant simplicity that didn’t distract from Kelly. Heavy white fabric—brocade maybe—draped her in a straight sheath. Off the shoulders, her dress accented the graceful arch of Kelly’s neck, exposing a creamy expanse of skin waiting for the jewels inside the case in his hand.

No elaborate twists or curls for her hair, Kelly’s ebony hair was swept back into a low braided bun, a stark style that only the most classic of bone structures could carry off. Only
Kelly
could carry off. He’d always been able to see the beauty beneath her baggy clothes and curtain of hair. Now the rest of the world would see, too.

Her foot peeked free from the hem as she descended the stairs, one satin ballet slipper descending to the next step. No ridiculous heels to hamper her if they needed to act later.

If.

He shut down even thoughts of the possibility.

Kelly stopped in front of him, her eyes full of doubts and desire. He could play on both of those so easily to win her. Her inexperience with relationships would give him leverage.

But he couldn’t do it.

Honor sure bit sometimes.

Resigned, but determined to give her his protection if nothing else, he draped the ruby necklace along her pale skin—jewels to entice a crook her way. Ethan reminded himself of her training, and the fact that he would be there with her. He wouldn’t take his eyes off her until they had the thieves in hand.

No great hardship, looking at Kelly all night.

He closed the clasp on the ruby necklace, allowing his hands a brief detour along her silken shoulders. No doubt her SIG-Sauer waited strapped to the inside of her silken thigh.

He dragged his mind away from thoughts of her soft, white thighs. Dangerous territory tonight.

Ethan snapped an orchid from the vase of flowers. With the familiarity of a lover—his by rights, damn it, if only for one more night—he secured the flower into her gathered hair. He pressed his lips to hers and whispered, “Be careful.”

He heard himself echo the very words she’d spoken to him before he’d left for Gastonia, the words that had alerted him to her feelings. And he realized for the first time what watching him leave for that assignment had cost her.

“Ethan, you’ve taught me well. Now it’s time to trust me.” With a single brush of her mouth against his, she stepped back and waited for him to offer his arm.

He would have offered this woman more, but Kelly had
made herself damned clear. He’d given her everything he had. But as he’d known from the start, what he had left within him couldn’t be enough. Not anymore.

He just prayed like hell his mojo that had carried him through ten years and more operations than he cared to remember would hold for one more night.

Kelly sipped her glass of club soda, the crowds and conversations swelling around her in multiple languages while she conversed with Ethan’s friends. No champagne for her. She had to stay clear and sift through the interpretations.

She absently pressed her palm to her chest, where her aquamarine rested inside her strapless bra. Her good-luck charm was far more precious than the rubies around her neck because it had come from Ethan the man—not the multimillionaire.

The scent of the orchid in her hair wafted forward, a constant reminder of Ethan and his touch on her shoulders. The touch of his eyes even now. Always on her.

Kelly forced a smile and nodded while Jake Ingram’s fiancée Tara rambled on about her latest purchases for the wedding. Easy enough to stay silent and listen.

Strains from the string quartet drifted through as unobtrusively as the security personnel. Men in tuxedoes stood by the doors, looking more like bouncers than dignitaries. Others talked covertly into their sleeves. Their lack of humor marked them more than their size or actions.

Nerves strung within her as tight as the violin bow.

Cases of jewels marched down the middle of the room. Inside rested necklaces, rings, solitary stones—some historical, others new and ostentatious. Rubies, emeralds, diamonds, sapphires perched in artistic displays, cradled or suspended, all arranged with tiny halogen lights refracting sparkles beyond comprehension.

Masses filed by. Men in tuxedos or military uniforms of various nationalities. Women in designer gowns and the traditional costumes of their homeland. Not that anyone al
lowed their awe for the jewels to show. Everyone from Mrs. Mega-Bucks Blasé to Ambassador Nonchalant cruised past the velvet ropes around the exhibits with low hums of “lovely, lovely” as if viewing an attractive floral arrangement.

And they all accepted a Nebraska farm girl’s right to be there.

Incredible.

She’d pulled it off, with Eugenie’s help—and most of all because of Ethan’s confidence in her as a woman. If he could only trust her as a partner, as well.