She kicked her shoes off, her eyes still steamy blue, her pupils wide with desire. He flung her wrap over the wine rack and backed her down the hall. Except he didn’t intend to stop at the chair or in front of the fireplace. He wanted his wife in his bed again. Where they both belonged.
Later, he would figure out why the notion of one weekend suddenly didn’t seem like near enough time with her.
He reached for the light switch only to realize...
Crap. The chandelier was already glowing overhead and he always turned the lights off when he left. Cleaning staff never came at night.
How had he let his instincts become so dulled that he’d missed the warning signs?
Someone was in his penthouse, and he should have noticed right away. His lapse could put Jayne in danger, and all because he’d let himself get carried away making out with her in an elevator. His guilt fired so hot her panties damn near burned a hole in his pocket. He moved fast, tucking her behind him as he scoped the living area and found his intruder.
Wearing his signature gray suit and red tie, Colonel Salvatore lounged in a chair in front of the fireplace, a cell phone in hand.
Conrad’s old headmaster and current Interpol handler set aside his phone and stood, his scowl deeper than usual. “Conrad, we have a problem.”
Five
Her head still fogged from her explosive reaction to Conrad in the elevator, Jayne stared in confusion at their unexpected guest sitting in the living room like family. She recognized Conrad’s old headmaster and knew they’d kept in touch over the years, but not to the extent that the man could just waltz into their home while they were out.
Conrad’s home, she reminded herself. Not hers. Not anymore.
Had her almost-ex-husband grown closer to Colonel Salvatore over the past three years? So much time had passed, even though their attraction hadn’t changed one bit, it wasn’t surprising there might be things she didn’t know about his life anymore.
Although that wouldn’t stop her from asking.
Praying she didn’t look as mussed as she felt, she walked deeper into the living room, all too aware of her bare feet and hastily tossed aside heels. Not to mention the fact that she wasn’t wearing panties. “Colonel Salvatore? There’s something wrong?”
Conrad stepped between them, his broad back between her and their “guest.” He stuffed his hands into his tuxedo pockets only to pull them back out hastily. “Jayne, I’m sorry to leave, but Colonel Salvatore and I need to talk privately. Colonel? If you’ll join me downstairs in my office...”
Except Salvatore didn’t move toward the door. “This concerns your wife and her safety.”
Safety? Unease skittered up her spine, icing away the remnants of passion from the elevator. If this problem involved her, she wasn’t going anywhere. “Whoa, hold on. I am completely confused. What does your being here for some kind of problem have to do with me?”
The colonel looked at Conrad pointedly. “You need to tell her. Everything.”
Conrad’s shoulders braced. His jaw went hard with a familiar stubborn set. The tender lover of moments prior was nowhere to be seen now. “Sir, with all due respect, you and I should speak alone first.”
“I wouldn’t advise leaving her here by herself, even for us to talk.” Salvatore’s serious tone couldn’t be missed or ignored. “The time for discretion has passed. She needs to know. Now.”
Jayne looked from man to man like watching a tennis match. Something big was going on here, something she was fast beginning to realize would fundamentally change her life. The chill of apprehension spread as her legs folded. She didn’t know what scared her more—the fact that this man thought she was in serious danger, or that she could be on the verge of finally learning something significant about her ultrasecretive husband. She sat on the edge of Conrad’s massive leather chair, her bare toes curling into the Moroccan carpet.
Muscles twitching and flexing with restraint under his tux jacket, Conrad parked himself by the fireplace. He didn’t sit, but he didn’t protest or leave, either. Whatever John Salvatore wanted of Conrad, apparently he intended to follow through. The way the colonel issued orders spoke of something more official, almost like a boss and employee relationship, which made no sense at all.
“Jayne,” Conrad started, scratching along the same bristled jaw she’d stroked only minutes earlier, “my lifestyle with the casinos gives me accessibility to high-profile people. It provides me with the ability to travel around the world, without raising any questions. Sometimes, authorities use that ability to get information.”
“Accessibility to what? Which authorities? What kind of information?” Her mind swirled, trying to grasp where he was going with this and what it had to do with some kind of threat. “What are you talking about?”
Salvatore clasped his hands behind his back and rocked on his heels. “I work for Interpol headquarters in Lyon, France, recruiting and managing agents around the world.”
“You work for Interpol,” she said slowly, realization detonating inside her as she looked at her husband, all those unexplained absences making sense for the first time. “You work for Interpol.”
All those years, he hadn’t been cheating on her. And he hadn’t been following in his criminal father’s footsteps. But she didn’t feel relieved. Even now, he was ready to make love to her with such a huge secret between them.
Anger and betrayal scoured through her as she thought of all the times he’d looked her in the face while hiding such intense secrets. For that matter, he wouldn’t have confided in her even now if his boss hadn’t demanded it. She’d had a right to know at least something about a part of Conrad’s life that affected her profoundly. But he’d rather ditch their marriage than give her the least inkling about his secret agent double life.
To think, she’d been a kiss away from tearing her clothes the rest of the way off and jumping back in bed with him, even though he hadn’t changed one bit. Even now the moist pleasure lingered between her legs, reminding her of how easily she’d opened for him all over again. Part of her hoped he would deny what she’d said, come up with some very, very believable explanation.
Except, damn him, he simply nodded before he turned back to John Salvatore. “Colonel, can we get back to Jayne’s safety?”
“We have reason to believe the subject of your most recent investigation may have stumbled on your identity, perhaps through a mole in our organization. He’s angry, and he wants revenge.”
Salvatore’s veiled explanation floated around her brain as she tried to piece together everything and figure out what it had to do with her husband. “Who exactly is after Conrad?”
They exchanged glances and before they could toss out some “need to know” phrase, she pressed on. “If I’m uninformed that puts us both in more danger. How can I be careful if I don’t even know what to be careful about?”
Salvatore cleared his throat. “Have you heard of a man named Vladik Zhutov?”
Her heart stopped for three very stunned seconds. “Of course I’ve heard about him. He was all over the news. He’s responsible for a major counterfeiting ring. He single-handedly tried to manipulate some small country’s currency to affect the outcome of an election. But he’s in jail now. Isn’t he?”
The colonel dabbed his forehead with a handkerchief. “Even in prison, he has influence and connections, and we have reason to fear he might be trying to use those against Conrad.”
She flattened her hand to the nearest chair to keep her legs from giving way underneath her. Her husband had always been so intent on separating himself from anything to do with his father’s world. Even though his parents were both dead, Conrad wouldn’t even visit their graves.
Was he on a vendetta of his own? Had he placed his life at risk to see that through?
Anger at Conrad took a backseat to fear for his safety. Her stomach knotted in horror, terror and a total denial of the possibility of a world without Conrad’s indomitable presence. “Are you saying this individual has taken out some kind of hit on Conrad?”
She looked back and forth from the two men, both so stoic, giving away little in their stony expressions. How could someone stay this cool when her whole world was crumbling around her? Then she saw the pulse throbbing in Conrad’s temple, a flash of something in his eyes that looked remarkably like...raw rage.
Salvatore sat on the chair beside her, angling toward her in his first sign of any kind of human softening. “Mrs. Hughes—Jayne—I’m afraid it’s more complicated than that. Intelligence indicates Zhutov has been in contact with assassins, ones who are very good at what they do. They understand the best way to get revenge is to go after what means the most to that person. You, my dear, are Conrad’s Achilles’ heel.”