Once in Paris (4 page)

“I thought I'd get on my swimsuit and lie on the beach for a while. Kurt owns the Britanny Bay Hotel, you know. I can use the facilities there, and I keep a bathing suit in the office.”

“Come home with me. I have a private beach. You can swim there.”

She remembered his attitude the night before and hesitated. “You don't really want me around.”

“No,” he agreed at once. “I don't. But you need someone. I seem to be all you've got right now.”

She flushed with angry pride. “Thanks a lot!”

“Don't knock it,” he added heavily, and his eyes were resigned and quiet as he studied her. “You're all I've got.”

The statement rocked her right down to her feet. He was the most astounding man. He came out with the most profound things at the oddest times.

“I told you,” he added, “that I don't have family. I was an only child, and after Margo miscarried, she couldn't conceive again. Except for some cousins in Greece and France and Argentina—all distant—I have no family. And no close friends.” He stuck his hands in his slacks pockets and stared out over the turquoise water of the bay as he spoke. “Brianne, do you really think anyone else would have given a damn if I got rolled that night I drank too much?” he asked ruefully. “Do you think anyone would have cared if I'd died right there?”

“I would have,” she said.

“Yes, I know. It doesn't make things any easier. You're too young.”

“You're too old,” she retorted. She smiled. “Does it matter, really?”

His black eyes surveyed her with faint amusement. “I suppose not. Come on. I've got the car.”

T
he entrance to Pierce's villa was through a high wrought-iron gate that had to be opened electronically by a device in the Mercedes he drove on the island. The paved driveway was lined by towering casuarina pines with their feathery spines, and flame trees in glorious bloom. Along the sand that flanked the driveway were blooming hibiscus plants and sea grape trees with circular leaves, which slaves were said to have used for plates in the days of pirate ships.

Two huge German shepherds lived in a kennel near the main house.

“King and Tartar,” Pierce said, indicating
the dogs as they drove past the chain-link fence that contained the animals. “They're let loose at night inside the gates. I wouldn't want to run into them myself.”

She smiled. “I guess in your income bracket, you can't afford to take chances.”

“I don't. I have a security chief who makes the White House brigade look sloppy.” He glanced at her. “I'll have to introduce you one day. He's Sioux.”

Her eyebrows rose. “Indian?”

“Indigenous aborigine,” he corrected her with a grin. “Don't ever call him an Indian. He speaks five languages fluently and has a degree in law.”

“Not your average security chief.”

“Not at all. There's still plenty I don't know about him, and he's worked for me for three years.” He pulled up in front of the house and stopped. As he helped Brianne out, a middle-aged man with a Mediterranean look came out the door, smiled and replaced Pierce behind the wheel.

“Arthur,” Pierce said, waving the man away. “He usually drives me. He'll put the car in the garage. And this is Mary,” he added, smiling at the pretty middle-aged black woman
who opened the door. “She came with the villa. Nobody, but nobody cooks conch the way she does.”

“Nobody except my mama,” Mary agreed. “How you doing, miss?”

“I'm fine, thanks,” Brianne said, and smiled.

“Any calls?” Pierce asked.

“Only one, from Mr. Winthrop, but he said it wasn't urgent.”

“Okay. We'll be at the pool.”

“Yes, sir.”

Mary closed the big wooden door behind them, and Pierce led Brianne down a cool arched stone walkway that led to a huge swimming pool with a commanding view of the ocean beyond it.

She shaded her eyes with her hand and looked toward a jutting promontory where casuarina pines waved in the breeze and two sailboats lay at anchor.

“It's so peaceful here,” she commented.

“That's why I like it.”

She turned back to him. He pulled out a cushioned chair at a white wrought-iron table with an umbrella covering it and indicated that she should sit down.

“Do you spend much time in the pool?” she asked curiously.

“Not a lot. I can swim, but I don't care too much for it. I like to sunbathe out here. It helps me think things through.” He motioned to Mary, who brought a tray with two tall, milky-looking drinks on it and a plate of small cakes.

Mary put the tray on the table and smiled as she left them by the pool.

“Mary makes good tea cakes,” he said, reaching for his drink. “Help yourself.”

She reached for one and put it on the saucer Mary had provided. She tasted it with delight.

“How delicious!” she exclaimed.

“Mary says it's the amount of flavoring she uses that gives them such a nice taste.”

She reached for her drink and sipped it, surprised to find that it didn't contain any alcohol.

He noticed her expression and chuckled. “I'm not giving alcohol to a minor, even in Nassau,” he murmured.

“I'm not exactly a minor,” she informed him.

“You're not twenty-one yet,” he replied. His dark eyes slid over her youthful figure and up to her pretty face with intense scrutiny as he sat
with one big lean hand wrapped around his glass. “You're young. Very young.”

“Blame it on a sheltered childhood,” she said. Her gaze slid over him like searching fingertips. “How old are you?” she asked abruptly.

One bushy eyebrow lifted. “Older than you.”

She wrinkled her nose. “Much older?”

He shrugged and sipped his drink. “Much older.” His dark eyes met hers levelly. “Almost twice your age.”

“You don't look it,” she said, and meant it. He had the physique of a man ten years younger, and there were only traces of silver at his temples. She smiled at him wistfully. “I guess you haven't given a lot of thought to seducing me?”

Both eyebrows went up. “I beg your pardon?”

His tone would have made a lesser woman falter, but Brianne was made of stouter stuff. “We talked about it in Paris,” she reminded him. “Of course, you were pretty drunk at the time, so I can't really expect you to remember too much of our conversation. But I did admit that I was going to wait for you.” She grinned
wickedly. “And I have, despite the temptation.”

He hated himself for asking. “What temptation?”

“There was a very handsome Portuguese nobleman in one of my classes. He was older than the rest of us, very cultured, very correct. All of us were wild about him, but there was a fiancée waiting back home.” She shook her head. “Poor Cara.”

“Who's Cara?”

“My best friend. She's from Texas. She went to Portugal this summer to stay with her sister, and guess whose brother her baby sister got involved with?”

“The nobleman's.”

“Bingo. I understand it's been open warfare since her ship docked.” She shook her head. “Cara never liked Raoul in the first place,” she recalled. “They couldn't get along.”

“But you liked him.”

She nodded and smiled at him. “Very much. He was nice to me.”

He chuckled deep in his throat, and there was a look in his eyes that didn't make much sense to her.

“Why are you laughing?” she asked.

He gave her a complicated look. “Do you think I'm nice?” he asked softly.

She looked stunned. “Nice? You? Good Lord, you're a barracuda!”

The laughter grew, deep and rich. “Well, you're honest.”

“I try to be.” She looked down into her glass with a sigh. “Philippe Sabon's after me, you know,” she said with visible discomfort. “He wanted to throw a birthday party for me on his yacht, and my stepfather was all for it. I refused, and now he's not speaking to me. But I heard the two of them talking, and it made me nervous.”

He didn't have to ask why Sabon was interested in her. He already knew. He spun the ice around in his glass before he took another sip.

“According to what I've heard, Sabon has a yen for virgins,” he said curtly. “I won't tell you what he's said to do with them. But he isn't doing it to you.”

His concern made her feel warm inside. She smiled. “Thanks. Could you loan me your security chief for a few days to make sure of it?” she added half-jokingly.

“I'll take care of it myself,” he said, and he didn't smile. His eyes narrowed on her young
face. “You can hang out over here until he leaves. I understand that he's facing the threat of a military coup by a poor neighboring country with no oil. They want his.”

“So does my stepfather,” she informed him. “He's all but bankrupted himself putting money into developing the oil fields over there, and he's attracted other investors to help him. If the military coup succeeds, he'll be standing on the street corner selling pencils out of a cup.”

“Or diving for conch,” he added mockingly.

“That isn't likely. He can't swim.”

“He's made a bad bargain there,” Pierce murmured thoughtfully. “A real deal with the devil.” His dark eyes narrowed as they slid over her. “What are you supposed to be, collateral?”

She flushed. “Over my dead body.”

He didn't reply to that. He was thinking, and his thoughts weren't pleasant. “How did you end up with Brauer for a stepfather?” he asked after a minute.

“My mother is beautiful,” she said simply. “I'm just a poor carbon copy of her. She was selling jewelry in an exclusive shop and he was buying a present for a friend. She said it was
love at first sight.” She shrugged. “I don't know. Anyway, my father had just died a few months earlier and she was lonely. But not lonely enough to become a rich man's mistress,” she added with a faint smile. “It was marriage or nothing, so he married her.” She toyed with her glass. “They have a new son and he's the whole world for Mother.”

“Is Brauer good to her?”

“No,” she said flatly. “She's afraid of him. I don't know that he's actually hit her, but she's very nervous around him. Now that she has the baby to think about, she never argues with him like she used to when they were first married.”

“Does she talk to you about him?”

She shook her head. “Kurt makes sure that I never have much time alone with her.” She met his eyes. “I didn't like him from the beginning, but she thought I was resentful because it was so soon after Dad's death.”

“Brauer is nobody's idea of a white knight,” he murmured curtly.

She studied him. “You know something about him, don't you.”

“I know that he's devious and underhanded and that he'll do absolutely anything to make money, and he does,” he said flatly. “We've
been rivals for some time now. I cost him a lot of money a few years ago, and he's never forgotten. If he has an enemies list, I'm at the very top of it.”

“Can I ask how you cost him money?” she wondered aloud.

He was reluctant to tell her, but in the end, he decided that she needed to know the truth about her stepfather. “He was trying to make a deal with a terrorist group to attack an oil platform and cause an environmental disaster.”

“Why?” she asked, aghast.

“I've never been quite sure,” he told her. “Kurt plays a close hand, and his business dealings are kept under the table. All I know is that an enemy of Kurt's was making some threats. Kurt reasoned that by making the man look criminally careless about damaging the global ecology, he could give him enough bad publicity to bring him down. And it might have succeeded.”

“You stopped it?”

“Tate Winthrop did,” he said with a faint smile. “My security chief has contacts everywhere, and we soured the deal. Brauer never knew how it was done, but I know he suspects that I was behind it.”

“Are you in competition with him?”

He chuckled as he finished his drink. “Not really. I'm in the oil business, of course, but I deal primarily in the construction of oil platforms. Kurt has an interest in an oil shipping firm. Still, he's got a few scores to settle with me, and I've heard some veiled threats that I don't like about my newest site. I can't afford an environmental disaster. I've spent too much money building this platform with adequate safeguards to prevent any wholesale leaks. So I've sent Winthrop and some of his men out to my new platform to stand guard while it goes into operation. Just in case.”

“Where is it?”

“In the Caspian Sea,” he said. “It's brimming over with oil, but most drillers won't put a lot of money into extracting it because of the dicey situation in the Middle East. It would have to be piped through hostile territory or tanked around. But we're working on a deal, and with any luck, we may strike a bargain that's mutually beneficial.”

“It sounds very complicated.”

“It is. We're very sensitive to environmental issues. I don't want to cause an oil spill. And not because it's bad publicity. I have no pa
tience with people who are willing to sacrifice the planet on the altar of profit margins.”

She smiled at him. “No wonder I like you.”

He smiled back. She was bright and she seemed to sparkle. He liked her, too. It wouldn't do to let that feeling get out of hand, of course. He had to try to think of her as a child.

“You aren't eating the tea cakes,” he pointed out. “Don't you like sweets?”

“Very much. But I'm not really hungry,” she confessed. “I've been worried about Mr. Sabon.”

“You can stop worrying. I'll deal with Sabon.”

“He's very rich,” she said worriedly. “He owns a whole island somewhere off the coast of his native country in the Middle East. It's called Jameel.”

“I own two islands,” he countered with a chuckle. “One's off the coast of South Carolina, and I own one here in the Bahamian chain.”

“Really?” She was impressed. “Are they inhabited?”

He shook his head. “Not inhabited or developed. I'm leaving them both as wildlife habi
tats.” He smiled at her delighted expression. “I'll take you to them one day and show them to you.”

Her heart skipped and she sighed with open pleasure. “I'd like that a lot.”