His Spy at Night (Spy Games Book 3) (21 page)

His expression closed over. Candlelight sparked off the abrupt chill in his eyes. But if he had an opinion on the viability or even veracity of her supposed friend’s business plan, he kept it to himself.

“My connections in Russia are useless right now. The Netherlands has imposed trade sanctions against them.” He played with his half-empty glass, twirling the stem between his thumb and forefinger. “It’s my turn. Why did Harry suddenly decide he needed a personal assistant?”

If he’d hoped to catch her off guard with his question he was destined for disappointment. She shrugged. “I thought it was obvious. Because my father called in a favor.”

“Interesting.” Bernard took another sip of his wine. He watched her closely, his eyes never leaving her face. “Does your father know that you’re sleeping with Harry?”

That one did take her by surprise. She weighed the pros and cons of denying it and decided to go with the truth. Somehow he knew. And the only way he could know was if he had either Harry or her—possibly both—under surveillance. The game had become that much more challenging and she wasn’t about to give ground.

“Do you always make a play for the women Harry sleeps with?” she fired back.

Bernard laughed with genuine amusement. “He told you about Alcine?”

“The entire embassy knows the story.”

“Poor Harry.”

“Why do you dislike him so much?” she asked, curious because Bernard didn’t sound sorry for him at all.

“I don’t like or dislike him. I simply have no use for men who broker deals behind closed doors.”

The hypocrisy of that statement might have been breathtaking if crime bosses operated under the same set of rules as the rest of the world, but most believed they were above them and Bernard was no exception. She couldn’t figure out where this conversation was headed though. Did he know that Harry had gone to CSIS? Or had he learned something from Alcine to make him so wary?

“I find that hard to believe,” Lies said. “In my experience, Harry is completely honest and straightforward.”

“In many regards, yes,” Bernard conceded. “But I wonder what people would say if they knew that honest and straightforward Harry was sleeping with a junior staff member?”

Lies let that sink in for a moment, rolling it around in her head. She couldn’t believe the conclusion she reached. “Are you planning to
blackmail
him?”

He waved that accusation aside. “As far as Harry’s concerned, an office affair is hardly blackmail material. It won’t harm him or his career. I am suggesting, however, that you should convince him to stop impeding my access to the primaries for the new Department of National Defence shipping contract between Canada and the Netherlands.”

The light dawned. He was blackmailing her, not Harry. Now it made sense. And on behalf of her ambitious alter-ego, she was mildly insulted. She’d offered Bernard access to confidential embassy information and this was all he chose to extract from her?

“What century is this? Do you really think I care if anyone knows Harry and I are having sex? You’re going to have to give me something more than a promise you won’t tattle on me to my daddy in exchange.”

If anything, that demand served to increase her entertainment value to him. “What would you like? Other than my connections in Russia, of course.”

He was laughing at her. He thought her naïve and she had to be careful. She was supposed to be spoiled and ambitious, not stupid. Most women pursued him for his lifestyle and he was curious as to her price tag.

“I’ll have to get back to you,” she said.

“Surely you could find a more exciting way to advance your career than by sleeping with Harry,” he prodded. “I have it on excellent authority that he’s quite…average in bed.”

Another statement designed to unsettle her.

“You should consider the source,” Lies advised him, now burning inside with indignation on Harry’s behalf. “And the fact she was willing to compare performances. Imagine what she must say about yours now that you’re no longer sleeping together.”

“You could find out for yourself how we compare.”

He was playing with her, using a combination of shock tactics and his greater worldliness to get what he wanted, and she’d taken this game as far as she could tonight without losing more than she could afford. A glance at her watch said if she called Harry right now, she could arrange to drive home from the airport with him.

Her phone was in her purse, which she’d left on a chair in the living room.

“Thank you for dinner and your generous offer,” she said, rising from the table, “but although I’m open to negotiations, I prefer to sleep with one man at a time. I’ll call a taxi. In the meantime, if you can think of something other than sex as payment in exchange for my influence regarding access to those primary contractors, let me know.”

* * *

Getting a call from Lies saying she’d meet him at his car in front of the Schiphol Arrivals hall, and the discovery she’d had dinner at Vanderloord’s Amsterdam townhouse, hadn’t put Harry in the best of good moods.

The meetings in Paris hadn’t gone well either. He’d had to field questions as to how Canadian military goods could pass so easily through Europe. CSIS wasn’t the only international organization with an interest in his answers.

He hated espionage. He could live without this kind of excitement.

He waited on the sidewalk for Lies. When her taxi pulled up, the short mass of blond curls and vivid blue eyes as she tipped her face upward to greet him had his heart pounding with possessiveness. The memory of her bent over his sofa, her skirt bunched around her waist and her thighs parted for him as he buried himself in her, and the breathy sounds of excitement she’d made—the throaty pleas for more—assailed him, a reminder that not all the excitement she brought into his life was so bad.

She opened her door and extended a long leg and high heel to the curb. He helped her from the back seat. The taxi had been paid by Vanderloord in advance, which rubbed him the wrong way.

She had on a far more conservative dress than the one she’d worn to dinner with him, which mollified him somewhat. The hem reached her knee and the boxy lapelled front discreetly covered her to the base of her throat. But it was difficult keeping a lid on this impotent and unrelenting jealousy he experienced every time he knew she’d been alone in Vanderloord’s company. He didn’t give a damn that she viewed it as work. Vanderloord wasn’t in on that fact.

He wasn’t going to ask her any questions until they were alone. He certainly wasn’t going to say anything he might later regret. He’d take her home. Then tomorrow, after he’d had a decent night’s sleep and wasn’t so on edge, he’d ask for an explanation—not demand one. She never responded well when he tried to take charge.

Except in bed.

The drive to The Hague passed in silence between them, the darkness broken by splashes of sparkling light demarcating pockets of settlement off the A4, and the occasional illuminated clock face of a village church spire.

Seconds before their exit, she reached for his hand and squeezed his fingers, inching her thumb between their joined palms. The small gesture was enough to change his plans. Their time together was limited enough without him allowing jealousy to ruin it. She’d promised him fidelity. He either believed her or he didn’t.

He wanted to. It was how she defined fidelity and related it to her work that gave him these gut-gnawing doubts.

When they reached her street, he grabbed his briefcase and overnight bag and got out of the car with her.

“Thank God,” Lies said, eyeing the bag in his hand before smiling into his eyes. “Please tell me this time you’ll stick around until morning so the neighbors will see me with the same man twice in a row.”

He wanted to kiss her right there. Not because of the sex her smile promised him, but because she was fun. He liked how she made him laugh. He’d missed her as if weeks and not hours had passed. He dropped the bag on the curb and reached for her, gliding his hand beneath the tangle of curls at her nape to draw her head toward his. Her warm skin smelled of vanilla. He covered her mouth with his own, flicking his tongue between her parted lips, enjoying the taste and the feel of her as much as the lightness of heart he found in her presence.

And everything changed.

He could hold her in his arms forever, simply for the pleasure her proximity gave him. No other woman had ever brought this depth of desire for her to a relationship. He needed Lies’s touch the way his lungs required air. He wanted to possess her. To own her. To keep all of this sunshine locked away for himself. He had no idea where this unfamiliar possessiveness came from. She really did bring out the worst in him. She wasn’t a toy to be hoarded for his pleasure alone.

The sounds of the city slowly intruded, drawing him back to the street. A window slammed shut. A dog barked and another answered. Water lapped against the wall of the nearby canal.

“What was that all about?” she whispered when he released her, eyes wide, her soft breath stroking his cheek.

So she’d felt it too.

“Damned if I know,” Harry replied, shaking inside.

Not knowing what else to do he picked up his overnight bag, but the thought of entering her flat suddenly froze his feet to the concrete. If his car hadn’t already left—if she wasn’t looking at him with the same confusion he knew his own face reflected—he would have gone home instead.

She grabbed his tie. “Don’t even think about running, you coward. It’s a Saturday night. We don’t have to get up early in the morning. And I have big plans for you.”

Chapter Thirteen

The world slid back into place.

He had no need to run. There was no reason to feel so possessive of her. They’d agreed this was a sexual relationship, nothing more, and he should be happy about that.

But his three years with Alcine had ended in disaster and he couldn’t get past that.

Lies is nothing like Alcine.

He followed her into her building. Once the door was closed to her flat, she kicked off her heels and moved into his arms. He skimmed his hands over the firm, rounded cheeks of her buttocks. If she wore panties, he couldn’t tell by touch alone. The thought of possibly discovering she’d worn nothing beneath her dress to dinner at Bernard Vanderloord’s filled him with dread. He wasn’t confident of how he’d react, even if the omission had been planned for his benefit.

“How was dinner?” he asked, and winced as he heard the belligerence. He was about to ruin everything, and worse, couldn’t stop the train wreck unfolding.

She froze. “We had an agreement. No talk about work in the bedroom.”

“We can talk about work before we get there.”

She sighed and turned away, padding silently on bare feet into the cramped living room, her jacket dangling from her fingertips. He keenly felt the loss of her thigh rubbing against him, but he’d started this fight.

She tossed the jacket on a stool at the kitchen counter on her way by, then sat on the sofa, crossing her long legs. She didn’t bother to turn on a light. Shadows leached all color so that every object in the room took on disparate shades of gray. In the space of time it took for him to draw three breaths, she ceased being Lies, his vibrant lover, and became an intelligence officer. The transition was startling as much for its completeness as its abruptness.

“The meal was excellent,” she said, “although the location came as a surprise. I thought we were having dinner with at least two other couples here in The Hague, but he claimed his plans changed at the last minute. I wanted to find out why he’d gone to so much effort to get me alone and away from home. When he tried to blackmail me into convincing you to grant him access to the primaries on a new government contract, I called you, then a taxi, and left.”

She’d given him too much information all at once. His spinning head captured one item. “He tried to
blackmail
you? With what?”

“He knows we’ve slept together, so he has to be watching one or both of us. Logic tells me it’s you, although I’m going to assume he’ll be watching me too from now on. He made a comment I didn’t quite understand though. He believes you’re brokering deals behind closed doors. His words, not mine.” Her eyes were on him, reading his reactions, every inch the professional. “Have you held something back that CSIS should know about?”

He was now on the receiving end of the accusations and he didn’t like it. “Of course not.”

“Is there any way he could know you went to CSIS?” she persisted.

“If he’s been having me watched, then yes. I told no one I’d be in Ottawa, or why I was there, but it would have been easy enough to find out. CSIS headquarters isn’t exactly discreet.”

“Most informants don’t walk through the front gates,” Lies pointed out.

“Plenty of other people do. But if he knows I went to CSIS, then he’d also know you returned on the same flight with me. He would have no problem connecting those dots.” Heavy pressure constricted Harry’s chest. Lies had gone to dinner alone with a man who had connections to Russian organized crime and God knew who else. He couldn’t get the dead physicist, the one with the supposedly bad heart but no pre-existing health issues, out of his head.

“I’m inclined to disagree.” She patted her palm against her thigh, lost in thought. A frown marred her brow. “He doesn’t act at all as if he believes I’m an intelligence officer. If anything, I’m a big joke to him.”