Dangerous to Know (2 page)

Doc had been recruited into OMEGA from the navy, where he'd been their foremost demolition expert. He'd pulled a number of combat tours, and could detonate explosives underwater, on land or in the air. Maggie sincerely hoped he wouldn't have to use his expertise on this particular mission.

His smoky gray blue eyes now looked her up and down with careful precision. Maggie hid a smile, knowing that Doc was cataloging her appearance in minute detail and filing it away for future reference. When they met again in Cannes tomorrow afternoon, he would know if she'd altered so much as…

Well, there wasn't much she could alter about the two pieces of clothing she wore.

“Nice,” he told her with an approving smile.

“How nice?”

Doc's brows rose at the husky, sensual purr. “Very nice. Did you pick that accent up from Meredith Ames?”

Maggie nodded. With her extensive training in linguistics, duplicating Meredith's distinctive southern-California accent had been a piece of cake.

“Miss Ames was
very
cooperative,” she confirmed. “In fact, she was so frightened, she spilled her guts—literally and figuratively—as soon as I got her alone. You must have scared her half to death at the airport.”

“I had her under surveillance from the time she left L.A.,” Doc said with a small frown. “She was scared before I approached her.”

“With good reason,” Adam put in dryly. “She faces espionage charges for trying to smuggle technology that's still highly classified. What's more, the last courier suspected of carrying information like this was found dead in a Cannes hotel room, of a supposedly accidental drug overdose.”

Maggie tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, taking in Adam's cool air. Although he rarely displayed any emotion, she knew that even the unshakable Adam Ridgeway had to have his breaking point. One of these days, she sincerely hoped, she'd find it.

“Supposedly?” she asked, watching his face as he tapped a gold fountain pen against his desk blotter.

“Supposedly. There's no proof her death wasn't accidental, but she was transporting a prototype of the same technology you're now carrying.” Adam's blue eyes skimmed her face, their expression unreadable. “A lot of people would go to any lengths to get their hands on that microdot. Be careful.”

“I will, Chief.”

“Have you memorized the list of potential buyers I put together?” Doc asked quietly.

Maggie smothered a grin. Doc's lists were famous around
OMEGA. In his quicksilver but methodical way, he could pull together seemingly random facts and scraps of information, analyze them, and draw parallels others had missed. He also made lists of his lists, and occasionally cross-indexed them. People like Maggie, who tended to operate more on instinct, could only watch him in awe.

“I've memorized the list of buyers,” she assured him. “And the list of possible middlemen. And the long list of ramifications to international command-and-control systems if this technology is compromised. I've got so many lists floating around in my head, it's a wonder there's any room for anything else under this fluff of—” She brushed a hand through the wispy tendrils. “This fluff of white.”

“Silver,” Adam said.

“Platinum,” David amended in his precise way, then his handsome face softened into a crooked smile. “It happens to be one of my favorite shades. It's very similar to my fiancée's, although perhaps hers has a few more gold tints.”

“Really?” Maggie titled her head in surprise.

Although David had been engaged for almost a year now, he kept his civilian life and his undercover activities so separate, so compartmentalized, that none of the close-knit OMEGA cadre had ever met him outside the environment of a mission. And no one had even glimpsed so much as a photo of his longtime fiancée.

“Really,” Doc replied.

Maggie tapped an ostrich boot impatiently. When no more details were forthcoming, she shook her head in exasperation.

“Just when are we going to meet this elusive fiancée of yours, Doc? You could introduce us without blowing your ties to OMEGA. A few of us have socially acceptable covers in our civilian lives, you know.”

The tanned skin at the corners of his eyes creased. “You wouldn't think so, to look at you now. But I was hoping I could convince you to stay an extra day or two in Cannes after this mission,” he added, reaching for his trench coat. “To act as a witness. I've already cleared it with Adam.”

“Witness?”

“At the marriage ceremony.”

“Wait a minute!” Maggie yelped. “You're getting married? In Cannes?”

“If we complete this mission within acceptable time parameters. If not, I'll have to reschedule the ceremony for after our return.” He picked up his briefcase and turned to Adam. “I'll leave this list of contacts with Elizabeth and—”

“Doc!” Maggie jumped off the edge of the conference table, remembering just in time to keep her shoulders back and the halter snug against her chest. “For Pete's sake! You can't just announce you're getting married and leave me hanging like that.”

“Like what?”

“How on earth can you plan a wedding when you're about to leave for a mission?”

He stared at her in genuine puzzlement. “The two are hardly incompatible. I've built enough flexibility into the agenda to allow for unforeseen circumstances. My fiancée understands that the ‘symposium' I'm attending may extend indefinitely. Assuming I don't pack it in on this mission,” he added with a small shrug, “she'll fly to France when I call her.”

“I should have known,” Maggie groaned. “I'll bet she has a detailed timetable sitting on the kitchen table.”

His lips curved. “On the nightstand, actually. I've laid out her agenda from the hour she leaves L.A. to the minute she arrives in Cannes.”

Maggie couldn't help wondering what kind of woman would live her life to one of Doc's precise schedules. “I'm looking forward to meeting her,” she said honestly.

“You'll like her. She doesn't have your confidence and exuberance, perhaps, and she's a little timid at times, but she's…she's…”

Maggie waited in surprised anticipation. If the articulate, precise Doc had to fumble for an adjective to describe this woman, he must have it bad. A tiny pang of envy curled through her. Carefully she avoided looking at Adam.

“She's sweet,” Doc finished.

With a final nod to Adam, he picked up his trench coat and folded it over his arm. His eyes held a gleam that only two people who have shared dangerous, desperate hours could understand.

“See you on the Riviera, Chameleon.”

“See you, Doc.”

Maggie's soft sigh floated on the air for a moment after Doc left to catch his plane. She turned to find Adam's inquiring gaze on her.

“I wish I could manage my life as well as Doc does,” she said with a small shrug. “I have enough trouble just working in the care and feeding of one small house pet, let alone a fiancé or even a significant other.”

“Perhaps if you got rid of that repulsive reptile you call a pet,” Adam suggested dryly, “you might find it easier to acquire a fiancé or a significant other.”

Maggie refused to rise to the bait. She and Adam had agreed to disagree about the relative merits of a large iguana as a companion.

“Something tells me I won't have too much trouble ‘acquiring' male companionship in this little outfit,” she responded, with a seductive toss of her shining white gold hair.

To her absolute delight, Adam's jaw squared a fraction. Maggie couldn't have pinpointed exactly when ruffling his formidable equilibrium had become such a personal challenge to her. In the three years they'd worked together, he'd never given any indication of anything other than a professional interest in her well-being. And she would've died before admitting how much the media shots of the dashing special envoy out for an evening on the town with any one of his several elegant and very eligible companions disturbed her.

Yet there was no denying the intensity of the awareness that arced between them. Or the way her heart seemed to flip-flop in her chest whenever they were alone together. Or how much it secretly delighted her when Adam raked her face with those steel blue eyes, as he did now.

“I have no doubt any number of men will try to purchase your services during this mission,” he said after a moment.

Flashing him a mischievous grin over one shoulder, Maggie headed for the door. “I just hope they can afford my price.”

For long moments after she left, Adam stood still and silent, one hand in the pocket of his tailored gray suit. Without realizing he was doing so, he fingered a gold money clip that held a fold of hundred-dollar bills.

P
aige could sense the Mediterranean before she saw it. As her tiny rental car putt-putted up steep hills, then coasted down winding inclines, the air took on a softer, balmier feel. Even the scent from thousands of acres of roses and jasmine and mimosa and wild lavender around the mountain town of Grasse, the perfume capital of France, couldn't disguise the tang of the sea only a few more miles ahead.

Double-clutching to downshift around a hairpin curve, Paige winced when the gears growled a protest. After three days of driving through the French Alps, she still hadn't quite mastered either the winding roads or the art of changing gears or an incline. Sending the gearshift an apologetic glance, she wrapped both palms around the steering wheel and aimed the little car forward.

When she crested another steep hill, she gave a sudden gasp. Tires crunched on loose shale and brakes screeched as she pulled off onto a narrow overlook. While the engine shuddered and died, Paige gazed, awestruck, at the dazzling vista before her.

Laid out below in a hazy, shifting pattern of azure and ultra
marine and indigo was the Mediterranean. Far out to sea, huge tankers plowed through the waters, while closer in, smaller ships weaved through the waves and left sparkling white wakes. They were cruise ships, Paige mused, or those fabulous yachts she'd read about, with their own helicopter ports and twenty-six staterooms. In the distance, a gray green island rose out of the blue. Corsica, she thought. Or Sardinia.

But it was the spectacular shoreline that drew her awed gaze. The famous, sun-drenched Riviera.

Almost directly below her, the city of Cannes clung to the curve of the bay. A narrow strip of sand and a wide boulevard lined with palms and flowering shrubs separated the city from the sea. Tall luxury hotels faced the Mediterranean on the inland side of the boulevard, like a row of white-fronted sentinels guarding Europe's most unselfconscious pleasure port.

Crossing her wrists on the steering wheel, Paige propped her chin on top of them. She couldn't believe she was here. She couldn't believe she'd actually torn up David's careful, typed instructions, called the airline and booked her own flight. She wasn't supposed to arrive in France for another week, at least. She certainly wasn't supposed to have rented a car in Paris and driven the long, tortuous route through the Alps to reach the sea. By herself, yet!

The first few days on the road, she'd been terrified of losing her way, of unintentionally offending someone with her execrable French, of ordering the wrong things from the menu. Even now, her stomach gave a funny little lurch every time she remembered the calf brains in a rich brown sherry sauce she'd been served her first night on the road. She hadn't realized what they were until the second or third bite.

She'd almost turned around right then. Almost scurried back to Paris and called home to leave a message for David on her recorder that she'd wait for him there. But the same desperate need that had driven her to leave L.A. early had kept her on the road. She'd needed this time by herself, away from the bustle of the city. She'd needed quiet to think. Privacy to sort through
her jumbled feelings. She'd needed to find a way to tell David she wasn't going to marry him.

Painfully, Paige swallowed to ease the lump that seemed to have taken up permanent residence in her throat since the day David had calmly suggested they combine his business trip to the south of France with their honeymoon. Blinking back a sting of tears, she shook her head. She wouldn't cry again. She wouldn't! She'd cried all she was going to.

Still, her throat was raw as she lifted her left hand and stared at the square-cut emerald on the plain white-gold band. The ring was simple. Unadorned. Filled with a quiet, soothing beauty, David had said, like Paige herself.

So quiet, she could only nod when he'd slid the ring onto her finger.

So simple, she'd believed that his deliberate restraint when he made love to her was a mark of respect.

So soothing, that even now, after almost a yearlong engagement, he still kissed her with that same combination of fond affection and control. He could ignite every one of her senses with his skilled hands and mouth, yet he always kept a small part of his inner self distant from her.

Only a woman who loved a man as desperately as Paige loved David Jensen would ache with longing at the memory of his kisses. And be so devastated by the knowledge that she wasn't woman enough to engage his whole heart.

He deserved better, Paige told herself in a now-familiar litany. He deserved a woman who would make him lose himself in her arms. One who would throw him into a tailspin once in a while. Would make him forget his careful schedules. Toss out his endless lists. One whose wedding he wouldn't work in neatly with an international symposium on digital electronics, she thought with a little spurt of resentment.

That tiny spark of indignation gave her the courage to tug the emerald over her knuckle and off her finger. She fumbled in her purse for a tissue, then wrapped it around the ring. Still, she had to blink furiously to hold back her tears as she tucked the wad of tissue into the zipper pocket of her purse.

Drawing in a deep breath, Paige reached down to shove the little car into gear. An agonized screech made her jump, then hastily tromp down on the clutch. This time the gears engaged, and the mini edged back onto the road.

As perspiration gathered between her breasts, Paige pressed the heavy knit of her sweater with one hand to blot the dampness and tried to ignore a small niggle of guilt. David had left specific instructions about what clothing to bring. He'd even given her the range of temperatures to expect, and the average number of sunny days—three hundred!—that the Riviera enjoyed each year. But the weather in L.A. had been gray and overcast and decidedly chilly when she impulsively tossed her things in a suitcase and dashed to the bank to transform her entire savings account into travelers' checks. It had been just as cool in Paris when she landed, and downright cold driving through the Alps.

Now that she'd left the snowcapped peaks behind, however, Paige was forced to admit that David had been right. As usual. The Riviera was not the place for heavy sweaters and plaid wool jumpers.

Feeling utterly depressed, she realized that the first thing she'd have to do after checking into her hotel was buy some clothes. She sighed, thinking of the neat list of shops David had left for her. Boutiques suitable for her own quiet style, he'd told her, in the deep voice that always sent shivers of delight down her spine. Shops where she could pick out her trousseau.

As she inched around the hairpin turns, Paige sighed again. She'd left the careful list of shops in L.A., knowing that she wouldn't be shopping for her trousseau. She'd just have to find something suitable on her own before the shops closed for the afternoon.

 

Two hours later she pushed open the door of yet another boutique. The store window displayed only one item, a sequined ball cap in lavender on a black marble stand, so Paige wasn't quite sure exactly what she'd find inside.

As soon as she saw the single rack that ran the length of the small shop, she almost turned around and walked back out. A
quick glance told her the beaded and jeweled garments weren't the kind of clothing she wore. What was more, she knew they would be well out of her price range.

Paige paused with her hand on the door latch. She was tired and hungry and absolutely appalled at the prices she'd encountered. Unfortunately, she was also smotheringly hot and not in the mood to search for the kind of shops David had indicated carried items more to her taste. Gritting her teeth, she closed the door and walked over to the rack. Maybe they'd have something on sale.

The shop attendant called out a musical greeting, advising Paige that she'd be right with her. A moment later, the dark-haired woman glided into the back room in search of some item for the only other customer in the boutique, a tall, leggy blonde in a short tomato-red jacket worn over a gold mesh halter.

Paige flipped through the few padded hangers on the rack, without much hope. She suspected that the prices for these sequined, Madonnna-ish corsets and lacy see-through tank tops would be in direct inverse proportion to the amount of material that went into them. The skimpier the article of clothing, she'd discovered in the past hour, the more outrageous the price.

She lifted a hanger from the rack and gazed at a narrow band of gold lamé. The stretchy loop couldn't be more than a couple inches wide. Steeling herself, she glanced at the tag.

“Good Lord!”

The sound of a soft chuckle brought her stunned gaze from the handwritten tag to the shop's other customer.

“Kind of hits you right in the solar plexus, doesn't it?”

Surprised and unaccountably pleased to hear another American accent after so many days on her own in France, Paige sent the stunning blonde a weak smile.

“Is this the price or an inventory number or something?”

The American's vivacious laughter added a gemlike sparkle to her green eyes. She strolled out from behind the rack, and Paige blinked at her short—
extremely short
—shorts, which were in the same eye-catching shade of red as her jacket.

“It's the price. The starting price. One doesn't pay that, of course.”

“One doesn't?”

“No. Don't you know that Cannes is the world's most opulent bazaar? You don't quite haggle like a street merchant, but you certainly don't pay the asking price. For anything!” She nodded toward the tag still clutched in Paige's hand. “Besides, that figure includes the TVA.”

“The TVA?”

“
Taxe à la valeur ajoutée.
A luxury tax. About forty percent on that little piece, I'd guess. You have to deduct the TVA when you calculate the cost, since you'll get reimbursed for it when you leave the country.”

“Oh.” Paige stared down at the tag dubiously. She'd never been good with numbers, and the simple mathematical exercise required to estimate the price of this strip of gold daunted her.

“It's not that difficult,” the other woman assured her with a grin. “Really. Just divide that figure in half to incorporate the TVA and a ten percent-discount, then convert to dollars, and you have the approximate cost.”

Scrunching her forehead, Paige struggled with the mental calculation. “So this…this…”

“I call it a boob tube, but I think a more polite term is bandeau.”

“So this bandeau only costs the equivalent of my monthly car payment, and not what we're planning to put down on our house in—”

Paige broke off, biting her lip against a wash of pain. The realization that she'd never live on the hillside home she and David had made an offer on just two weeks ago closed her throat.

The other woman cocked her head. She didn't say anything, but she couldn't have missed the sudden, bleak expression on Paige's face.

Shy and somewhat withdrawn, Paige rarely confided in her few friends. To her shame, she couldn't even fully express herself to David. He was so self-contained, so confident, that she'd
always felt a little intimidated by him. Yet she found herself responding to the unspoken question in the other woman's eyes. Drawing in a slow breath, she articulated the decision she'd come to so painfully over the past few days.

“I was engaged…until very recently. We were planning on buying a house together.”

“And now?”

Paige swallowed the constriction in her throat. She wouldn't cry. She wouldn't!

“Now?” She lifted her chin. “Now maybe I'll buy this bandeau instead.”

A smile curved the blonde's generous mouth. “Good for you. I can't think of any better cure for a broken engagement than a new wardrobe. And Cannes is just the place to acquire one.”

Paige eyed the woman's flamboyant red jacket and minuscule shorts. They would look just as stunning when worn with the gold lamé breastband she clutched in her hand as with that glittery mesh halter.

“Did you get that outfit here?” she asked.

“The shorts and top? Yes, earlier this morning. This is my second foray into the shops.”

“I wonder if they have another one, in a size eight. My name's Paige, by the way. Paige Lawrence.”

“I'm Meredith,” the other woman replied. “And if they don't have this in your size, they'll have something just as sinful.”

The saleswoman produced the red hot pants and jacket in a perfect size eight. Clutching the bandeau, Paige followed her to a small curtained fitting room that smelled of lavender potpourri and money.

 

For the next half hour, Maggie pushed her simmering tension to one corner of her mind and indulged in the serious pleasure of shopping.

When Paige Lawrence first walked into this shop, she'd wondered if the younger woman could possibly be the contact she'd been waiting for since she'd arrived in Cannes early this morning. A few moments of idle conversation with the younger
woman had killed that idea. If Paige had any connection with the ring of high-class hookers that Meredith Ames was a member of, Maggie would eat the pink satin bustier she'd purchased just two shops ago.

Still, she had to give the slender young woman credit. She'd gulped once or twice, but she'd soon got into the spirit of things. One by one, she'd shed her layers of worsted wool and cable knit. What had emerged was a delicate beauty, less dramatic than Maggie herself, in her carefully orchestrated role, but similar enough to make Maggie feel like a mother hen with a newly hatched chick.

When they'd finished outfitting her in the jaunty red two-piece outfit and matching three-inch-high platform shoes, Paige struggled with the effort to convert the bill from francs to dollars.

“Can I help?” Maggie asked.

“Would you? I don't do well with numbers,” she confessed.

Maggie did a quick conversation, skillfully negotiated the saleslady down to a less outrageous commission, and computed the amount of the TVA so that Paige could complete the necessary forms.