Taming the Fire (9 page)

At night, she'd connect to the single working phone line in the house—used for emergencies only—and she'd learned about the world beyond her narrow one.

Her earliest memory was of wanting independence so fiercely it made her teeth ache.

Growing up, she and Mose never seemed to fit in with the community. At times, her parents would stare at them as if they were aliens.

They'd done the same to her sister, Mary. Like their sister before them, Meg and Mose had left their community and been ostracized.

The big difference was that they were alive. Mary had gotten sick—cancer—and her parents had refused to help her. To even take her calls.

Meg spoke to her once—Mary's voice was barely a whisper. And then their mother had come by and hung up the phone.

Later, Meg caught her mother crying, and Meg's young mind couldn't rectify believing in something that forced you to act so cruelly.

“How can something that professes to be all about goodness have so much bad in it?” she'd asked her brother once, after they'd been on their own for five years.

“It's their belief system, Meg. Sometimes people need something to hold on to,” Mose had said.

“You don't hate them anymore?”

“For years, I thought I did. But then, well, everyone needs something to believe in.”

Everything she did for a long time was to defy her parents and her old faith—these days, it was all about repenting for her own wrongs.

When she and Mose finished their
rumspringa
, they'd chosen not to go back and be baptized. Which meant they were both shunned by their family and the entire community, as was the tradition. As painful as that break was, for Meg—for Mose as well—there had been no other choice.

And so, she'd been freed—free, scared and exhilarated at the same time.

The woman Mose loved did return to the community, no matter how hard he'd tried to convince her not to. Meg knew that had broken Mose's heart—that he still didn't trust any woman, beyond Meg, to keep her word.

They'd waited six hours for her to show before Mose finally started the old car he'd rebuilt from scrap and headed toward Florida.

The easygoing surfer-boy attitude covered the man of steel, the one who'd always needed to prove that he could be good enough. And he had proven it, the way he'd learned from Abe Goldman, a man he'd met as soon as they'd gotten to Miami.

Abe's pawnshop fronted a money-laundering operation in the back. At first, she and Mose only worked the front of the store, but eventually Mose was let in on the illegal business.

Abe left the store—the money operation—to Mose when he died. Had thought of Mose like a son, and in turn Mose learned from Abe everything he could about money laundering and various other activities that weren't exactly aboveboard. And so, ten years after they'd left their roots and their home behind, Mose had turned himself into ML, one of the most successful money launderers on the East Coast—and one of the hardest to get to as well. And Meg had spent her time playing with other people's money—and ultimately, their lives.

“You've got people on your tail, Coco.” Mose used her call name, the one she utilized when she was hacking. “I think you should come here—I'll send a jet for you.”

She could fly to Florida and spend her days behind Mose's gorgeous, gated-wall mansion. Right now, her biggest concern was Interpol and a man who'd been tracking her to the ends of the earth.

Possibly, a man she'd thought was long dead.

There were many, many people she'd stolen money from over the years, all of them pissed off beyond belief, not the least of whom was the ultrapowerful Itor Corp, who her brother had been forced to tell her the truth about after she'd inadvertently interrupted a deal they'd been making with the Taliban. But most of her targets were wealthy, corrupt individuals, and as far as she knew, none of them had ever had their lives threatened because of what she'd done, except for Ryan. That transaction had happened nearly five years earlier—and to this day she had no idea if he was dead or alive.

The thought that she might have been responsible for a man's death—even a man who'd betrayed her as badly as he had—haunted her daily.

You were stupid to trust him anyway
, she'd told herself fiercely, time and time again. Because a man had once promised to take care of her sister, Mary, and that man had dumped her sister at a city hospital, where she died in a room stuffed with eight people and the minimum of medical care. So for Ryan to convince Meg that he could be there for her—that he wouldn't abandon her, had taken almost a year. A year of talking every day, sometimes for hours, online.

He knew everything about her—about her religious upbringing, her fears, her past.

Ryan had given her enough erotic fodder to last her a lifetime of dreams, had made her blush and laugh with his frank descriptions of what he wanted to do to her when he finally met her. He'd loved her shy descriptions of what she wanted to do with him, and gradually, she'd gotten bolder.

So yes, he'd known it all, and then, on the day they were supposed to finally meet, face-to-face, he hadn't shown. She'd sat at a café very much like this one, and she'd waited. For six hours—just the way Mose had for his girlfriend, and then she'd gone home and she'd stolen money right out from under him—a big transaction she'd promised she wouldn't touch.

Twenty-five million dollars.

When she'd intercepted the money transfer to Ryan from the gunrunners who were making a trade, it had been thanks to a tip-off from Mose.

According to ML, Ryan had arms dealers and terrorists after his ass immediately following the transfer—and then neither of them heard anything. For all intents and purposes, Ryan had dropped off the face of the earth.

From that time on, much to her brother's dismay, Meg gave all her money to hospital charities. Lately, it was getting harder to top herself, to get the thrill she used to from stealing from the extreme rich. Yes, it still gave her pleasure to know the money went to good use, as she never owned more than she could carry with her at any given time. It was how she'd grown up, and how she traveled with such ease.

She'd also never given up on prayer, even though in the Amish tradition it stated that prayer and God had given up on her when she left the faith.

She chose not to believe that she'd been abandoned that easily. She'd heard in recent weeks that Ryan was alive—and that his eye was on
her
ass.

“I'm not planning on staying here much longer—I've got a flight out tomorrow.” Changing locations and her personal style each trip kept the heat off her. Since arriving in Germany, she wore her short cap of dark hair with no hints of color other than natural highlights. She dressed high-end—Chanel. Manolo Blahniks that killed her feet, but gave her the haughty air of a woman who wasn't to be bothered. The large, dark sunglasses she wore, rain or shine, indoor or out, rounded out the look.

She enjoyed playing dress-up, but deep down, she'd already found herself—a no-nonsense, jeans and T-shirt woman who wondered if she'd ever get away from the online world to live in the real one again.

In her parents' eyes, she was most definitely beyond redemption. In her own, she wasn't so sure.

As she typed, and listened to Mose giving her advice—all of it unsolicited—someone sat down across from her—a man, from the look of his hands on the small table. She didn't look up at his face at first, because this happened quite a bit. Men saw a woman sitting alone and instantly assumed she was lonely.

Okay, well, she
was
lonely, but not desperate. But when she finally glanced up, said desperation ran hot through her body, tightened her throat. She pressed her thighs together and wondered if the man knew he was beautiful.

She wondered why he bothered sitting here with her.

He had dark, fierce eyes—his body was strung tight, like he could hit the ground running at any second. Definitely not your garden-variety computer geek. Not by a long shot.

“Interpol is at your apartment right now,” he said, instead of the more traditional nice-to-meet-you greeting she'd been expecting. At his words, her back straightened and she closed the lid of the laptop with a crisp snap and waited for him to continue. “There's a note there, from you, in your date book, with the name of this café penciled in. So I'm guessing that in about five minutes or less, they'll be here, looking for you.”

“Meg, are you listening to me?” Mose asked.

“I'm going to have to call you back,” she told her brother calmly and then clicked the phone closed and asked the man sitting across from her, “What is it you'd like me to do?”

“Come with me, Coco. You've got some explaining to do.”

Coco
. Suddenly, she knew, without a doubt, that the man in front of her was Ryan. And that she was, in a word, screwed. To the wall. “And why would I do that, Ryan?”

He barely registered surprise, but his fists curled. “You know me, then.”

She couldn't breathe. There was a time she'd known him—better, she'd thought, than anyone. But she'd been so wrong and wore the scars inside her heart to prove it. She wouldn't let herself be wrong again. “As well as you know me. Although you're five years too late.”

He ignored that—or he seemed to anyway. “As I said, it's your choice. Me or the police.” He grabbed her drink and took a nice, long pull from the straw. Out of the corner of her eye, she caught the familiar green-and-white car that always signaled trouble.

The police. Or Ryan—who, if given the opportunity, might strangle her.

After she'd left her home, she promised herself that she'd never live in a place with so many rules and regulations again. She'd rather take her chances… rather be dead than bound.

She stood and held out her hand to him, as if they were lovers leaving after sharing a lovely meal at an outdoor café. Ryan stared between it and her, and for just a second she swore she saw something behind those eyes… something that she'd dreamed about all those years ago. And then he took her hand, his palm cool and strong against hers, and she fought the fleeting urge to ask him to kiss her, to do things to her body that he'd promised so long ago. To ask him not to kill her.

So yes, Ryan it was.

S
URPRISINGLY
, C
OCO
didn't give Ryan any trouble on the way to the airport. In fact, she didn't say a word. Which was fine, because he was still trying to figure out how to handle her. Even after she calmly buckled herself into a seat on the Itor jet, she just sat there watching him, looking all fucking brave, cute and innocent.

Innocent, my ass
.

He still didn't know why he hated her, but he did know she was into some seriously illegal activities, which meant she was about as innocent as a street whore.

He cursed, unsure where to start the interrogation. He'd hoped he'd see her face, hear her voice, and magically his memory would come back. A foolish wish, and one that hadn't come true.

As the jet taxied on the tarmac, he settled himself in the seat across from her, tempted to cuff her to keep her from trying something stupid, but decided to let her try, if that was the way she wanted to play it. He'd show her exactly why he was in charge.

But for now, he said nothing. Just watched her until she began to squirm in her designer clothes. Nice stuff, with the labels all right there for the world to see and admire and envy. He didn't give a rat's ass about an outfit so expensive the money spent on it could have fed a small country. He just wanted to know if he'd seen the body beneath the clothes.

“So,” he said, sprawling casually back in his seat, “why do you think you're here?”

She took the glasses off. “I have no idea.”

“Oh, I think you do.” At least, he hoped she did, because he was pretty clueless himself, but he didn't want to give away his memory issues until it became absolutely necessary.

“Are you going to kill me?”

He had to give her credit; she looked him straight in the eye and spoke with an even, strong voice. Too bad he needed her to be rattled. He leaned forward in his seat, braced his forearms on his spread knees. “Now, why would I do that?”

Maybe because they'd been married and he'd come home to find her in bed with another man.

“Unless I get you your twenty-five million back, you mean.”

Okay, so maybe she hadn't fucked the pool boy. But twenty-five million? What the hell had he been doing with that kind of money? Hold on… the arms dealing. Of course.

He leaned in even closer, so their knees were almost touching, and probed a little more. “Can you get it?”

“My brother can.” She squeezed the chair's armrest as the jet started its takeoff. He couldn't tell if she didn't like flying or if the whole money-brother thing was making her nervous. “No problem. I just need to call him.”

“I'll bet. And while you're at it, you can tell him who I am so he can use the money to hunt me down. I don't think so.” Not that he was worried. He had Itor at his back, and no one fucked with them. “It's not the money I'm after anyway.”

“Then what? It's a little late for a date.”

A date? For what? “You aren't my type.” More bluffing.

He could have sworn hurt flashed in her eyes, but then it was gone and she was frowning. He could practically hear the gears in her brain working overtime to figure out why he was here. He knew when she'd come to the worst conclusion, because she paled, making a light sprinkling of freckles pop out across the bridge of her nose. “You want revenge.”