Degrees of Wrong (37 page)

We didn’t, not yet. I pointed at him. “You—you threatened to torture me!” I felt it was an appropriate time to bring it up, since I appeared so indebted to him at the moment.

He waved in dismissal. “I was bluffing. Surely you can relate to the concept, Dr. Morgan. Now, do we have a deal?”

“I have to stay away from Nicoli right now, but eventually I can have him?”

“Yes. Is it worth it?”

“Absolutely.”

“Good. It has been a pleasure doing business with you, Dr. Morgan.” He stalked out of the room, dragging his slippered feet.

Later, when I confessed to Nicoli what I’d done, he was furious. Then he smiled, and devilishly at that. “
I
didn’t agree to this idiocy.” He grinned. “So
I
can do whatever I want. It will simply be up to you to stop me.”

I groaned against his lips.

I tossed. I turned. I tried reading. I took a hot shower. I drank some warm milk. And I still couldn’t sleep.

I stared up at the huge canopy above me, eyes wide with wakefulness. This had been my room since my arrival at the Marek home. It was lovely. And lonely.

The events of the past two weeks replayed over and over in my mind. General Marek hadn’t spoken to me since that morning of our negotiations regarding his son. It occurred to me that he might have actually encouraged Inga’s family to take their time in announcing it publicly. It would be the worst form of punishment for my crimes against him, in my opinion. And since he chose to remain so aloof, I wondered if he still might be planning to murder me in my sleep. But that’s not what kept me awake.

I had gotten my way with the council. General Marek had miraculously persuaded them that the tremendous display of generosity by the United Nations would only serve to strengthen their ties and swell their ranks. Nicoli had tried to bore me with the details, but I insisted it didn’t matter, as long as the outcome had been what I’d wanted. He’d assured me that it had. Still, my victory didn’t keep me from my slumber tonight.

Ryon had never shown up with an engagement ring. No one reported him missing, either. I concluded that either Nicoli knew where he was, or he knew where his body could be found. Right now, I didn’t care. It wasn’t keeping me awake.

I flipped to my other side and tried twirling my hair with my index finger like I used to do when I was a little girl. It only served to irritate me—it got stuck more than it twirled. I gave up. I knew what I had to do.

And the general wasn’t going to be happy.

I threw the covers off, slid into my slippers and shut the door softly behind me. I tiptoed down the hall despite the plush carpeting and stopped at a door about half a mile down from mine.

I eased it open. “Nicoli?” I whispered into the room. “Are you awake?”

“Nope,” he answered loudly.

“Shhh!” I told him. He chuckled.

When my eyes adjusted to the darkness, I could see him in the bed, stretched out on his back with his hands tucked behind his head. The moonlight revealed that he wasn’t wearing a shirt—and that he was wide awake, also.

I edged the door shut behind me. “Can I sleep in here tonight? I have to wake up in four hours, and I swear I can’t even keep my eyes shut. I have to get some sleep or I’ll be a babbling idiot tomorrow.” I choked back the fear.

“You came to
my
bed
to sleep?” He snorted. “I’m insulted.” Still, he was already holding the blankets open.

I kicked off my slippers and padded over to him.

“What are you so worried about, love? You’re twice as intelligent as anyone on the guest list for tomorrow.”

“Oh, I doubt that, Nicoli. We’re talking about the elite of the WHO here,” I scolded.

The time had come for me to present my findings to the world, or rather, the World Health Organization. So, to an audience of five hundred of the most advanced of my peers in science and medicine, I would relay in detail the steps I took in finding the cure and deliver the happy news that ninety-eight percent of the preliminary human tests had been successful. Then, I would have to field questions from my mentors.

And something told me I would have to talk too.

I snuggled closer to him, found him under the covers. I wiggled and squirmed to get comfortable. As I scooted my rear up to his side, I could hear a frustrated growl that would have been much louder had it not been muffled into the pillow he held against his face.

“For the love of God, Elyse,” he hissed. “Is it
that
difficult to hold still? Don’t you care that
I’m
not going to sleep with you in my bed?”

“We’ve slept in the same bed before.” I yawned.

“Yes, but at the time I was taking particular care not to scare you off. And besides, the admiral and Dr. Folsom were just upstairs. It was less than private circumstances, love. But now, there’s no one to hear us—”

I ignored the ignited flame as it spread—well, all over. I couldn’t overstep my bounds with Nicoli’s father, not now that I was so close to having everything I hadn’t dared to want. Close enough that I would get up and leave, resign myself to a sleepless night. It was like a starving person trading one more meal so they could have the rest of their life to feel full. “You know your father has surveillance all over this place. And I made an agreement with him.”

“You don’t think that agreement is sort of shot to hell now that you’re nestled up against me in my bed?”

“No. He knows I just need the sleep. He knows that if I don’t get sleep, he doesn’t get his presentation tomorrow. That, if he doesn’t let me stay, I might refuse to cooperate any further.” I said this more for the general’s sake than Nicoli’s, because I knew he was indeed watching me. And surely the Secretary-General of the United Nations could pick up on not-so-subtle hints.

Nicoli had some tip-offs of his own. “He’d better steer clear of me tomorrow. If he even looks in my direction, I’m going to snap his neck. Of all the hypocritical things…”

He might have said more, but I was already asleep.

“I’m going to kill the bastard who invented buttons,” he growled against my lips.

I giggled and swatted his hand away from my blouse. “That man has long been dead, Nicoli.”

I tried to pull free from his grasp, but he pressed me to him more tightly. The light streamed in from the huge arched window as he struggled to keep me on his lap in the window seat of the vast library of the Marek home. We both knew we would be interrupted soon. Unfailingly, whenever we got too intimate, whenever our contact became less than platonic, we were interrupted. It was almost eerie.

“Well, I’m going to kill the guy who brought them back into style.” He entwined his hands in my hair for further grip.

“That very well may have been your brother. He seems to be a trendsetter,” I told him, trying to wrench free from his grasp. Well, trying to
look
like I was trying to wrench free from his grasp.

“No. My brother would
never
condone such a hindrance on a woman’s attire.”

I laughed as he drew me closer.

Someone cleared their throat at the door. “Er, excuse me, Dr. Morgan,” called the silly manservant with white gloves. “Your convoy is here.”

Nicoli groaned against my throat as I tried to push him away. “It’s time to go,” I hissed. “I need to put more lipstick on, and you need to wipe some off.”

He rolled his eyes. “How does he
do
it?” He raked his hand through his hair. “Every single time…”

“Are you sure it’s him? What if it’s your
mother
?” I asked, mortified.

“Don’t be ridiculous. She’s enamored with you.”

“Yes, but—”

“But nothing. It’s him. Better run along, love. He’s everywhere!” He made the face of a crazy person, and then grinned.

“You’re not coming with me?” I squeaked.

“I’ll be there. I need to make sure everything’s in line for this evening. I need to make sure satellites haven’t been reset to orbit toward our dinner table.”

I laughed. He was taking me to dinner tonight, but where he wouldn’t say. He assured me it would be somewhere private, some place on the planet to which his father didn’t have access. As I allowed the white-gloved spectacle to lead me from the room, I doubted such a place existed. Still, I shivered with the possibility of what we could do if it did.

He led me to the front of the house, where a collection of six black sports utility vehicles lined the driveway, their tires just a smidgeon taller than me. He opened the door to the one in front of us.

I glanced around. “Where is Dr. Folsom?” She would be attending my conference today too, and I had hoped she would ride with me, if only to help soothe my nerves.

He gestured toward a vehicle in the front, which was already pulling out of the brick-paved circle. I would have to make do on my own, then. Silently, I fumed at Nicoli for leaving me in my moment of need. I lifted myself onto the leather seat, and the manservant shut the door for me.

I started when I saw Ryon Marek sitting across from me, grinning.

He made a sour face. “Your lipstick is still a little smeared.”

The vehicle lurched forward, and I found it was too late to responsibly kick him out. I endeavored to fix my lipstick again, ignoring him.

“Why didn’t you two just fess up in Manzanillo?”

I ignored him still, using my finger to smooth out the lines of my wayward application.

“You both should have fessed up, right then and there,” he persisted.

“There wasn’t anything to fess…confess. Besides, if you hadn’t been so self-absorbed, you might have noticed the tension there.”

“Am I to believe that
you,
of all people, are accusing
me
of being unobservant?” He had a good point. I frowned.

Outside, buildings and structures became a blur with our impossible speed.

“He’s too old for you, you know. I’m closer to you in age,” he said.

“He’s twenty-nine. Five years older than me.”

“I know. He’s almost thirty. He’s practically molding.”

I rolled my eyes and peered out the window. Why were we going so fast?

“We could still elope, you know. I would take you wherever you wanted to go. Where would it be? Hawaii? Japan?”

“I’m equally disinterested in both.”

“What if you were going with Nicoli? Then where would you want to go?” he asked, miffed.

“I tend not to pay attention to my surroundings when I’m with your brother. So, really, it wouldn’t matter.”

He scowled. “Sometimes the true response is not always the most appropriate one.”

“And sometimes it is.”

“Well, I’m still not sure that I missed something in Manzanillo. So, you’re saying you were in love with my brother at that point, right?”

I nodded. Good grief, but he had a thick head.

“And he was in love with you, right?”

“I’m not sure,” I told him, hesitant.

“Of what are you unsure?”

“I’m not exactly sure if he’s in love with me. I think he might be.”
He must be, right?
He wouldn’t go to all this trouble for a fling. Would he? But we hadn’t talked about what all this meant, either. We hadn’t made plans, except for the immediate future. And the presentation today would conclude those. Unless you counted dinner as plans for the future. And…he never actually told me he loved me. Still, I never told him either. And I did love him, had no doubt about my own feelings for him. But…I
was
the most unobservant person alive. Had I misinterpreted what was happening between us?

“You must be joking. My brother’s given you reason to question his feelings for you?”

I huffed. “I didn’t say that. I know he cares for me—”

“
Cares
for you? This just gets better and better.” He snorted.

I unstrapped the seat belt and plodded my way to sit next to him. I strapped in again. He eyed me curiously. “That was unexpected. Have a change in heart?”

I shook my head.

“So,” he continued on cheerfully, “my brother
cares
for you, then. You’re like a long-lost cousin to him. Ow! For the love of God. What…do they pull girls out of class and teach them how to pinch?”

I raised a brow, pinchers in ready position again.

“You—you were
waiting
for me to say something you didn’t like.”

I flashed an evil grin.

“This is the last time I do him a favor,” he grumbled.

“What? What did you say? Doing who a favor?” My thoughts flew to General Marek. And it was then that I realized he’d sent Ryon to kidnap me and force me into marriage. I glanced around the cabin and out the window. I wondered if the vehicle was moving too fast to jump and roll.

Suddenly, it stopped. Startled, I looked outside. We were already at the conference center. Photographers hoarded around the vehicle with lights flashing, the clamor around us almost deafening.

“We’re here,” he said. “Nicoli sent me with you to distract you. He said you would worry yourself into a coma if you didn’t have a distraction.”