Wilderness of Mirrors (17 page)

“Are you going?”

“No.”

“Too many fat-headed, Pimms-downing parents for you?”

His smile faded slowly as he remembered to be wary.
Your changing expressions remind me of a bloody Venetian Colombina.
“My sister’s not an easy woman to love.”

“I can’t imagine she’s very different from most older sisters.”

He hadn’t thought about it that way. “Perhaps.” He twirled his fork through the pasta. “Tell me, what improvements did you make around the old place?”

“Just the dining room or ballroom, if you’d rather.”

“Nothing else?” Oh, he was as subtle as a summer thunderstorm.

She shrugged. “Eventually she’d like some renovations done in the upstairs areas. The baths are outdated and there was a leak which damaged some paneling and plaster.”

So she’d been upstairs, could have easily spotted the vase and made the switch. He’d seen the enormous urns brought in for the tea. According to David, Sam had bought them in Beijing.

“Let me know if you find anything interesting in my old room.”

“Such as?”

“Let your imagination wander.”

Sam stacked her fork and knife on her plate. “I believe I’ll let sleeping dogs lie.” She was enjoying herself, without trying. Once or twice, she’d even forgotten why nights like this were forbidden.

“Smart woman.”

Then their plates were whisked away, replaced by dessert menus that winked suggestively from muted black and silver covers.

“Are you interested?” she asked.

“Yes.” His face tightened a notch. Some sort of brawl raged far beneath those features.

We can’t though, can we.

He studied her hands. Short nails. A scent of distraction drifting from them. What was that fragrance? It reminded him of sand castles. He had smelled it in Paris, he thought.
She isn’t what she seems
, he tried reminding himself.
Don’t let this last longer than it has to.
“Unfortunately, I like Chebbakia.”

Her eyes narrowed. “It’s not Ramadan.”

“Maslenitsa, then.”

“Does it look like caviar and mushrooms are on the menu?”

She knew how the blini were served.
I could grow old arguing about sweets with you.

“Melktert?”

“Order a custard tart. That’s the closest you’ll find outside of South Africa.”

“You know your puddings.”

“As do you. So pick something Italian and quick fucking around.”

“A cannolli then.” His smile rolled out from under the bed.

“I’m having rum cake.”

Their waitress reappeared, removed the menus and made industrious notes regarding two desserts, one espresso and a black coffee. A moment after her departure, a young boy – from the look of him, the waitress’s nephew – flew down the stairs after a rubber ball. Spotting the pricked ears of Tamar, he bounced over to the table.

Sam turned, her face bright. It amazed Nigel how quickly she responded to peripheral movements. The ball could only have been in her line of vision for a millisecond. He should have given her the seat that faced out. Hadn’t given it a moment’s thought when he’d come in, because spies don’t leave their backs unprotected.

Or their hearts.

She was lifting the tablecloth, nodding and grinning while Tam licked the offered palm. He wondered how often she had to justify the dog. Seeing eye dogs explained themselves. But other service dogs, particularly those with fangs like the Eiffel Tower, likely needed HRM’s stamped approval.

Then a shrill voice, the shriek of an Italian grandmother, echoed down the stairwell. Bang went ‘Otto’s’ head under their table. Nigel’s chest took the impact. He filtered a sharp breath of pain through his teeth. The weight of his worries was suddenly upon him. And the ball and boy were a memory.

A moment later, their final course was delivered.

Sam lifted the espresso to her nose. “That’s nice.”

The edge of white porcelain caressed her lower lip and she swallowed. His stomach, already clenched from nerves, became a Gordian knot.
I’ve always imagined Sam’s, haven’t I? Even when it was someone else.
It was another black boot-print on Irina’s misplaced love for him.

Frustrated, he sipped at his coffee, glad for the black bite. If he sat much longer he’d need to be taken out with the jaws-of-life.

Her eyes grew tempered. “Look, Nigel, we can get this wrapped to go. Rum cake is better if it sits. You look miserable.”

His cup went down with more noise than he’d have liked. “Am I that transparent?” It shocked him that his mind’s contents were printed across his forehead.

For a moment she was mortified. It was out of place in her repertoire. “I’m just rather well-qualified at reading what’s not said.”

He snorted. “As well as what
is
said.”

She glanced away. “Excuse me.” Their waitress perked. “May we take these with us? I’ve just remembered an appointment.”

He didn’t bother dissuading her. Anger at irrational thoughts and uncontrollable physical pain crept along his carefully held exterior. He noticed when it infected his jawline. And he hit the proverbial roof when it hammered its way into his skull.

“Are you going to be old-fashioned and insist on paying?” she was saying, “Or can you resist and head outside while I sign the check?”

He bit back a cruel retort and clumsily pushed at his chair. His knuckles hit the wall. “Fuck.”

She didn’t jump. Just withdrew her wallet and made small talk with the waitress, who’d returned with two boxes tied with raffia. The bows were red. Valentine’s Day for the socially unskilled.

He found the stairs and hiked their length.

Now. He would leave and hail a taxi, right now.

He didn’t give a damn what C would say if one of the lesser-known passports he kept blipped HQ’s panic button. He needed out.

His fingers looked unfamiliar as he pushed on the restaurant’s door. The lights of an oncoming car burst the glass beneath his hands into a thousand shards of light. Wind assailed him. Drizzle dampened his retinas and the vehicle’s brake lights were suddenly bloodspots on the lens of memory.

Close your eyes, maya krasaveetsa. This won’t hurt.

Nigel stumbled forward, blinded by the vision of Irina’s pleading eyes. He realized just how little Sam’s possible crimes mattered. He’d killed a woman he cared deeply for just to further his work at SIS. What was a stolen bit of history to that?

He needed to be done with London and finish the op for Irina. Otherwise, her death would be for naught and, as his father and Lady Emily had thought all along, so would the balance of his own life.

Revenge.

Absolution.

Then maybe, just maybe, he’d be fit for someone like Sam.

Sam navigated the crowded tables a few steps behind Tamar’s tail. The double-stacked boxes tucked beneath her arm reminded her of little coffins and she wanted nothing more than to toss them into the nearest trashcan.

Through the doors she spotted Nigel’s thick shoulders, hunched against the misty rain.
Atlas on the edge of Northumberland Avenue
, she considered dourly as she passed into the night’s cold.

But something in his stance suddenly made her blood congeal. It wasn’t his side or leg this time, though she’d been certain both had bothered him throughout the meal. No. This was utterly different.

Marc.

Now there was a dirty white truck flinging itself headlong toward Trafalgar Square.

Tam noticed it too. His ears pricked. She imagined a whine. But they weren’t close enough. Yells didn’t penetrate trances.

Please don’t.

Then the truck was gone, diesel muddying its wake.

Sam exhaled.

And Nigel turned.

His features were grim. The blue eyes haunted. A lump metastasized in her throat, but she moved toward him.

Thick clumps of drenched hair diverted water in scar-like rivulets across his face.

The shirt was plastered to him.

She could see his bandage, square and crimson-centered, beneath it.

Her palm met the side of his face and the rivulets overtook her fingers. “I’m glad I came tonight.” It was inexplicably true.

They were of the same basic stature, and his eyes locked on hers with bullet precision. She slid a hand behind the small of his back. Heat flared through the transparent garment. She waited as rain measured time in spatters. It was a cold evening. Their breath was enshrouding.

She waited longer still.

His grimace began to fade like sidewalk art under heavy tread. His stiff muscles lost tension, and the bump-like hinge of his clenched jaw finally dissolved beneath her touch.

Then she was terribly cold. A shiver betrayed her discomfort and his features sifted further. His hand came up behind her and pushed the air from her down jacket before it came to rest against the plates of her shoulder blades. It was pressure enough, and their chests met. Her jacket was undone and the buttons of their shirts flicked with frisson.

His breath hinted of coffee and mint.

His lips were set apart, water ran the crease between them, down his jaw, across the length of his collarbone. It pooled in his clavicle and slowly spilled over muscle where it vanished into the lapels of his opened shirt.

His thigh found its way to the narrow gap between her legs. This time, he took satisfaction in her presence. His heat caught crackly life along her limbs, and she melted against him.

She’d come once, when she was very young and inexperienced, while lying fully clothed along the body of her then-boyfriend. He’d never noticed, too intent on his own exploration of her mouth with his twitching tongue.

But Nigel wasn’t an eighteen-year-old with a case of acne and an inclination to finish things in front of porn.

A sigh escaped her. Her nails dug deep into his flesh.

His eyes snapped danger in blue and white code.

Oh damn, she was well and truly fucked.

W
hy don’t you run from me? Why do you care?

The down jacket, like everything about Sam, was unexpected: its cut tuxedo-like, its fabric a utilitarian black nylon. Mr. Cucinelli had thoughtfully included only the one button.

It stood no chance.

Nigel hadn’t seen a shirt like the one beneath her coat outside The Globe Theatre. Lacy, belled cuffs, a high starched collar and nearly every inch bared until the clasp on her silk bra winked up at him. An oversized silver choker wrapped in raindrops chilled his thumb. He slid his fingers beneath it, and the coolness of her skin warmed instinctively.

The potent heat between them had loosened despair’s chokehold, yet he needed to boil its greasy aftertaste to hell. He shoved a knee between her jean-covered thighs. A buckle on one of her riding boots snagged his jeans with a cocklebur’s doggedness. Her fingers responded by mining into his jaw and the aching muscles of his lower back.

But his weighted leg began to pound and his angry ribs disapproved most vehemently of her racking shivers. He shifted hard. All at once, his pains were lost, drowned like bilge rats, as he watched the maelstrom take her dark eyes.

The knowledge was heady. He’d cracked the code without trying. Her throat hummed a hoarse echo of pleasure. That mouth laid before him an uncharted territory.

Nigel wasn’t a betting man because odds favored the fickle.

And he’d been decisively against this match of Brad’s -
still was
.

Yet his mouth had other notions about yielding lips and hips wrapped in saturnine denim. “Vam holodno?”

“What?” In the dark, her eyes resembled a cheetah’s.

Russian. He’d spoken Russian. Damn.

“You’re cold?” His hands gripped her in the manner of the ancient wisteria at Barkley. “My Club?”

“Yes.” Her body stayed frozen within his. Tremors still rumored their age-old memorandum along her limbs. A fierce need to protect her assailed him.

Where had this attraction come from?
He’d never had need for it before. Women, even brittle unfortunates like Irina, didn’t have reserved parking in his soul.
Obviously. You didn’t think twice before blowing a hole in her head.

She sensed his returning misery. Her pressure on him resumed. “A fire, the one beside Churchill’s Bar, let’s go there.”

So she’d been on those battered leather sofas, padded across the green oriental carpeting and chatted beneath the soaring gilt columns.
With whom?
He stifled an urge to bash in the nameless bastard’s skull. To hell with EMDR, his mind was rerouting every bad memory down jealousy’s jagged path.

Swiveling, he kept the weight of his palm against her back.

She slid the upper third of her fingers beneath his belt-covered spine, and let her left hand sluice downward until her palm flattened against his heart. He thought they’d tangle feet, but movement was easy. Tam trotted on ahead, enjoying the wet evening like a wolf loose among lambs. The dog reminded him of Brad. A wrecking ball with the precision of surgical equipment.

Then her head was on his shoulder and a brutal rush of lust overtook him. Screw
The Bar
, he wouldn’t make The Club’s outer awning. There were dark corners and hidden curves and statues with broad, brooding backs on Whitehall Place. CCTV cams didn’t reach every angle in England. The men and women of One Twenty-One Two had wanted some privacy.

Then they were there.

He swept her off the rainy curb into The Club’s marble-laid interior. The massive spiral stairwell, like a t-rex with scoliosis, curved up and away.

“Sir. Madam.”

Nigel nodded to the concierge. “Evening, Thayer. Have you a towel?”

Samantha released herself and gripped Tam by the collar. “I don’t want him to shake.”

“Very good, Miss.” The black-woolen-clad figure shimmered below the Chippendale reception desk and reappeared with a pristine towel monogrammed in The Club’s curvy initials. “Allow me.”

But she swiped the navy cloth from him and dropped back to the ground, drying every inch of the much-embarrassed dog. Nigel swore the Alsatian’s canines popped, but she clucked away his displeasure and rounded the procedure off with a fierce kiss on the monster’s horse-like muzzle.