Once in Paris (9 page)

He shrugged. “Only three, fluently.” He glanced at her and grinned. “Do you know how an Arab defines an illiterate person?”

“No. How?”

“As someone who speaks only one language.”

Surprised, she laughed. “Well, that puts me right on the top of their list.”

“I'll teach you Greek,” he told her. “It's beautiful.”

She knew that French was one of his languages, but she noticed that he didn't offer any instruction in that tongue. Probably because of Margo, she thought sadly, because she'd been French. He probably made love in French. Her eyes went involuntarily to his big, beautifully masculine hands. She remembered their skill on her body, the exquisite sensations he'd taught her to feel, and she caught her breath.

He heard the intake of breath, and his black eyes met hers with a question in them.

She flushed, moving her gaze quickly to her plate.

She wasn't hiding anything from him. He could read her like a newspaper. He unwrapped his lunch and started to butter his dinner roll. Surprisingly, he felt his body tauten pleasurably
with the memory of Brianne's sensuous movements as he caressed her by the pool. She was untried, but eager and passionate. He had a good idea how it would feel to make love to her completely, and he wanted to. But every time he thought of it, he saw Margo's beloved face, and he felt guilty and ashamed for thinking of taking another woman to his bed. It seemed like adultery.

Brianne ate her chicken casserole and smiled appreciatively at the stewardess who paused to pour her a cup of black coffee. She noticed that Pierce took his the same way, without anything added.

“Where are we going to stay in Freeport?” she asked him suddenly.

“I've booked a suite of rooms at one of the hotels.” He named it. “And under assumed names. We'll be fine. Meanwhile, I've sent for Winthrop. He'll be along with one or two of his men.”

“You really are taking this seriously,” she said.

He nodded as he finished a swallow of coffee. “Your stepfather will be on his way to Washington today, if what we've heard is accurate.” He glanced at her. “I've gotten wind
of another rumor that I like even less about what they're planning.” His black eyes narrowed. “There's a lot at stake here. Sabon's country has a small, poor neighbor, which has dreams of conquest and possession of all that expensive oil that the West is so desperate to buy. The neighboring country had oil, but their reserves have been exhausted. They have no oil in their country anymore. But they have powerful allies and access to state-of-the-art weapons.”

“Oh, my goodness,” Brianne said. “You don't think they might invade Qawi?”

“Sure they might. Sabon knows that. I think it's why he's lured Brauer into the deal, because he has a friend in the Senate in Washington. Sabon may be using Brauer to appeal to the United States for help. They wouldn't give it to him because he's in their bad books for supporting an American foe during the Gulf War.” He finished his chicken with a grim expression. “But if Brauer can bargain for U.S. protection, with some interest in the developing oil fields for bait, Sabon would have the clout he needed to push the deal through with the oil consortium. Failing that, he might be desperate
enough to attempt a first strike against the neighbor.”

“Start a war?”

“Yes. Start a war.” He glanced at her as he wiped his mouth with a napkin.

“This sounds frightening.”

“It is frightening. The Middle East is a tinderbox. All it needs is a spark to throw the whole area into war. There was a close call when Iraq attacked Kuwait and Israel back in the early nineties. This would be even closer. Countries would line up on either side of the conflict, and it has the potential to spread all the way down to the Persian Gulf.” He sighed. “That would be bad news for those of us who have investments in the Caspian Sea project. And even if the war was confined to Sabon's country and its neighbor, we stand to suffer delays and the threat of armed hostility. If Brauer can't get the States to intervene on his behalf, I think he might pay some of his hired mercenaries to attack our drilling platform and put the blame on the poor nation next to Sabon's, just to stack the odds in their favor. With the Russians involved with us, that could provoke some very unpleasant retaliation on Sabon's behalf against the poor nation. Which could attract
U.S. intervention as well. I shudder to think of the possible consequences.”

“Can't you do anything?”

“I'm doing it,” he said. “I've got Winthrop up to his neck in investigation. He's already stopped one plan dead in the water. I have every confidence that he can stop another, with a little help from some old friends in the intelligence community. It's to their advantage to keep the lid on this thing, you know.”

“I guess so.” She sipped her coffee and stared at him over the plastic rim of the cup. “It's all very exciting, despite the potential for violence,” she said after a minute. She laughed. “I've never done anything dangerous,” she mused. “My whole life has been one long, dull series of routine days. Well, most of it.” She grinned. “You've been an adventure.”

“So have you,” he murmured, and he didn't smile. “You've disrupted my life.”

“Good for me,” she replied. “You needed someone to disrupt it. You were going to seed. You're much too young to wilt on the vine, so to speak.”

His good humor came back. “I wasn't wilting.”

“You were so. You were keeling over in bars
waiting to be picked up by potential thieves.” She pursed her lips and frowned. “Say, what if that blonde eyeing you in Paris was really a CIA agent, after industrial secrets?”

He chuckled. “I don't know any industrial secrets. I run the business, I don't do the actual drilling, and I don't understand the process except from a layman's perspective.”

“Yes, but you know how to build a drilling platform. In fact, you patented one idea for platforms that work best in shallow areas, didn't you?”

He was surprised. “I didn't think you knew anything about the oil business.”

“I didn't. After I took you back to your hotel in Paris, I decided that if I was going to get mixed up with a man who built oil rigs, I should know something about the oil business.”

“How did you know you were going to get mixed up with me?” he pursued. “I had no plans to go to Nassau or look you up.”

“Yes, I guessed that. But I knew you had a home in Nassau and I planned to look
you
up!” she retorted. “I lost my nerve, though. If you hadn't been at that party Kurt took us to, I don't suppose I would have seen you again except by accident.”

“I don't know,” he replied. He finished his coffee. “I told you that you were too young for me.”

“Seventeen years.”

“Eighteen.”

She grimaced. “You didn't tell me you'd had a birthday.”

“No, I didn't, did I.”

His cold glance ended any attempt at humor on that subject. She put down her fork and opened her dessert, a chocolate pie. “I don't know what sort of music you like, what kind of books you read, or what you like to do when you aren't working.”

He was reluctant to share those intimate details with her. She was trying to worm her way into his life, and he didn't want her to.

But all the same, he found himself speaking when he hadn't planned to. “I like Debussy, Respighi, Puccini, and modern composers like John Williams, Jerry Goldsmith, James Horner, David Arnold and Eric Serra. I read most anything, but I'm partial to biographies and ancient Greek and Roman history.”

“I like those composers, too,” she said. “And I love opera. My favorites are Puccini's—
Turandot
and
Madame Butterfly.”

He didn't want to tell her that those were his two favorites. “What do you like to read?”

“Romances,” she said with a grin.

“Because you're still young enough and idealistic enough to believe in happy endings,” he said with faint mockery. “I'm old and jaded enough to know they don't exist.”

“You had ten wonderful years with a woman you loved who loved you back,” she pointed out.

“And she died,” he said brutally. “So much for happy endings!”

“Maybe a little happiness is all we can expect in this life,” she said thoughtfully. “What if you'd never met Margo at all? Would you have been happier, really?”

He didn't want to answer that. He glanced down at the remains of his chocolate pie with blank eyes.

“You wouldn't,” she said for him. “You were very lucky to have had such a special relationship. You have memories that are better than the daily lives of most people.”

He'd never thought of himself as lucky. Maybe he was. Margo had loved him unselfishly, generously. He looked at Brianne and thought with a start that Margo would have
liked her. She was similar to his late wife in many ways, not the least of which was in her empathy and compassion. She was a giving person. She wasn't beautiful, as Margo had been, but she was pretty in her own way.

“Haven't you ever been in love?” he asked curiously.

“Only with you,” she said honestly.

His jaw tightened and he turned his eyes back to his coffee cup. It was empty. He looked around for the stewardess and motioned to the cup. She came back with the coffeepot and refilled it. Brianne shook her head with a smile and the stewardess went on down the aisle.

“You're too young to know what love is,” Pierce said after a minute. “You're hot for your first affair and you want me. It's desire, nothing more.”

She smiled wistfully. “Whatever you say.”

He sipped his coffee and scorched his upper lip. He made a face as he put the cup back down.

“You'll meet someone,” he said. “Someday, you'll find a man close to your own age, and you'll understand what I mean.”

“I'm married,” she replied. “I can't go
looking for a husband when I've already got one.”

“We won't be married forever,” he said shortly, looking straight at her. “Once this is over, we'll get a quiet annulment.”

Her heart seemed to stop in her chest. So that was what he meant to do—stay married to her, but not intimate with her, until the trouble with Sabon was over. Then an annulment, which would be easy to get since the marriage hadn't been consummated. No wonder he didn't want to go to bed with her. He was already making plans to get her out of his life for good!

B
rianne toyed with her paper napkin, tracing the embossed logo of the airline with the tip of her fingernail.

“I see,” she said when she realized that he was waiting for her to answer him.

“You know it would never work,” he continued shortly. “There's too much difference in our ages. We're from different generations. We don't even think the same way.”

“And even if we did, there's Margo.”

His eyes flashed angrily. “I loved her,” he said, his eyes glittering. “I won't cheat on her.”

“Pierce, she's gone,” she said softly. “She
won't ever come back. You may live for another thirty or forty years. Do you really want to live alone for all that time, by yourself, with no one for company?”

“Yes!”

He said it, but he didn't sound convincing to Brianne. It must be very difficult for him, especially when he was alone with the memories that would be as much curse as comfort to him.

“She wouldn't want this,” she murmured, thinking aloud. “She wouldn't want you alone and grieving forever.”

“You don't know what the hell you're talking about,” he replied icily. “Let it drop. I don't want to talk about it.”

“Whatever you say,” she returned. “I don't suppose you'd like to try having sex in the washroom while we're up here, would you?” she added wickedly, trying to lighten the tone of their disturbing conversation. “I saw it in a racy movie once, and I've always wondered…”

“Wonder by yourself!” He returned his tray to the arm of his chair, got up and went storming down the aisle to the bathroom. He went inside and locked the door, leaning his forehead against its cool surface with a rough sigh. Damn the woman! Couldn't she stop getting at him
about the past? Didn't she know that it was killing him to remember Margo's face, her breath in his mouth, her hands on him in the darkness? His life was growing more unbearable by the day.

He thought about thirty more years of this agony and his heart threatened to crack inside him.

If only he didn't find Brianne so attractive. He didn't want to think about her, he didn't want to have the temptation of her nearby. If she went away, he'd be safe, with only his memories of Margo. He wouldn't have to fight his hunger for Brianne.

It wasn't just the sight of her that tantalized him, it was these little remarks she made, half-teasing invitations to ravish her in airplane rest rooms. He laughed in spite of himself. She was so uninhibited, despite her innocence. He found her a continual delight. She was the first woman since Margo who could make him feel lighthearted, who could make him laugh. He was an impatient, irritable man most of the time these days, always spoiling for a fight, because anger could lessen the pain of grief. Brianne knocked the fire off his mercurial temper. She made him see the world with her own soft, happy eyes. It
was ironic, he thought, that a woman with such tragedy in her own life could be so optimistic and upbeat.

He stared at his face in the mirror and saw the silver peppering the black hair at his temples. There were lines around his eyes, too. He put a hand to the traces of silver and laughed hollowly. Couldn't Brianne look at him and see how old he really was? It surprised him that a woman of her youth and attractiveness could want him. He wondered what she saw in that broad, hard face staring back at him.

 

Brianne, sitting quietly in her seat, was wondering the same thing. He wasn't particularly handsome, not with hands and feet and a nose that size. Certainly he was a lot older than she was. But she'd never known a man in her whole life who could hold a candle to him. He was just dynamite, and it was killing her that she couldn't find a way to get to his heart.

The stewardess was offering more beverages. Was that champagne she was offering? Well, why not? Pierce had made it clear that he didn't want her, and she was feeling pretty sorry for herself. Maybe a little pick-me-up would be just the thing!

Two glasses of champagne later, Pierce came back to his seat.

Brianne toasted him, sloshing a little of the fizzy liquid onto her dress. “Oops,” she said. She leaned toward him. “Sorry. My hand slipped.”

He stared at her with wide eyes. “What are you drinking?”

“Champagne.”

“You can't have champagne or any other alcoholic beverage,” he said shortly. “You're a minor!”

“She gave it to me,” she said, indicating the stewardess halfway down the aisle behind them. “Go tell her she's breaking the law. I dare you,” she added smugly, and downed another swallow.

“Give me that.”

He took the glass away from her and finished the two swallows she'd left in the glass. “Idiot,” he muttered, staring at her. “You can't hold liquor. You've got no head for it at all.”

“I can learn to drink,” she told him haughtily. “I'm married.” She had a sudden thought and her eyes twinkled. “So this is why married people drink!” she exclaimed. She gave him a rakish look. “See what you've done to me?”

“I didn't do a thing,” he protested.

“You did,” she returned. “You said you won't sleep with me!”

Her voice carried and he groaned audibly. “Shut up!” he muttered. He could feel those amused looks, even if he couldn't see them.

“I won't,” she replied. “This is not a bad substitute for our wedding night,” she told him. “At least it numbs the parts of me that ache.”

“You're too damned young to have achy parts,” he remarked.

“I have an achy heart.” She smiled drowsily. “That was a song. I remember it. Want me to sing it to you?” She did, even when he started shaking his head.

He held up his hand and the stewardess came quickly to their side.

“Bring her some coffee, please,” he told the woman. “Strong coffee. Quick!”

“Oh, dear,” the stewardess said.

“She doesn't drink,” Pierce said. “Not ever. And she's a minor.”

The stewardess made a horrible face. “They'll cut off my ears and feed them to the sharks!”

“No, they won't. I'll say I forced you to give it to me,” Brianne said helpfully.

“How?” Pierce demanded.

“I'll say I threatened to jump out a window,” she replied with a smile.

Pierce looked at the tiny window and back at her. “Oh, they'll believe that in a heartbeat.”

“I'll go get that coffee,” the stewardess said quickly. “Dear, dear, I am sorry.”

“It's all right,” Brianne said. “You didn't know that I'm a minor and that I just got married to a man who doesn't even like me. How could you know that he won't even take me to—”

“Brianne!” Pierce growled.

“Paris,” she finished with a wicked glance at her furious husband.

“You should take her to Paris,” the stewardess told him. “It's beautiful there.”

“Coffee,” Pierce repeated. “And something to eat. Now.”

“Yes, sir, right now.”

The stewardess retreated, and Brianne leaned her head back against the seat and stared dreamily at Pierce. “I can't believe you have so many hang-ups,” she told him. “You're positively riddled with them.”

“I hope your head explodes,” he said venomously.

She gaped at him. “Look who's got a temper!” she exclaimed. “I only had a little drink.”

“Two little drinks, and look at you!”

“I look very nice,” she informed him.

“You look very sauced.”

“I'll sober up when we get back on the ground,” she promised. “Meanwhile, I'm going to work on ways to seduce you. I really should buy some more books,” she added thoughtfully. “Maybe a video or two.”

He cleared his throat and turned to search for the stewardess. He looked like a drowning man clutching at a life preserver.

Brianne put a soft hand on his broad, powerfully muscled thigh. He actually jumped.

“You prude,” she whispered when he grabbed her hand and pushed it away. “We're married!”

“No, we're not,” he shot back. “We went through a paper ceremony. That's all it is, and that's all it's going to be!”

Brianne pouted. “That's no way to treat a brand-new wife,” she muttered. “Here I sit dying for love of you, and you won't even let me touch you.”

He felt as if his whole body was on fire. She was too intoxicated to realize the effect she was having on him, which was just as well. She had him so hot that all he could think of was how she'd feel in bed. He had to get her sober before he lost control of himself entirely.

The stewardess came back with a cup of coffee and a snack meal, which Pierce took gratefully.

“Here,” he told Brianne, putting the cup carefully in her hands. “Now, drink it!”

“Spoilsport,” she mumbled irritably. But she drank it. He opened the cellophane-covered snack meal and watched while she nibbled at it, too. The waitress came back with a second cup, and a third. The caffeine jolted her system like a battery cable, helped by the food, which seemed to absorb some of the alcohol in her stomach. She began to feel her head clearing, and it wasn't an altogether welcome trip back to terra firma. She'd said some embarrassing things to Pierce. He looked somber and glum, and she wondered if she'd done some irreparable damage to their tenuous relationship while she was in her cups.

 

He buried himself in a newspaper he got from the stewardess, and he didn't surface until they landed in Freeport.

Brianne let him lead her down the covered walkway up to the concourse. He scanned the limo drivers for a placard with his name on it. But what he found was one with Brianne's name, badly printed. The man holding it, a scrawny little dark fellow, didn't look like a limo driver to Pierce, who'd seen plenty.

Brianne, unconscious of anything out of the ordinary, went, smiling, toward the little man. “I'm Brianne Martin,” she said, forgetting that she was married and her husband was right behind her.

“Miss Martin,” the man said in thickly accented English. He smiled and took her arm. “You will come with me?”

“Yes, wait just a minute, though,” she protested, and started to turn toward Pierce.

He'd already gathered that something was badly wrong. He moved forward quickly, with the intention of tearing his wife from the man's hard grasp, just as he felt something in the small of his back. Something round and hard.

“You are her bodyguard, yes?” came another voice, deeper, from behind him. “You
come along, too, then. We take no chance that you inform the Hutton man.”

Pierce was surprised at the comment, and he saw Brianne's head turn. He had just enough time for a covert jerk of his head. Fortunately, she was so attuned to him that she understood at once what he wanted her to do.

“What are you doing with Jack?” she asked sharply, having picked the name out of midair.

“He come along. Not take chance he talk to police,” the scrawny man told her. “You cry out, my friend shoot him dead. You understand, lady?”

“Do I ever,” she said, scared. “Okay, it's your party. Where are we going, or do I get to ask?”

“You find out. Come.”

He led her, with “Jack” and his guard in tow, out to a long black stretch limo waiting in front of the terminal. The two of them were stuffed in, and the two men came right behind, both holding automatic pistols now and sitting facing them in the interior of the long car.

The scrawny man called something to the driver, who nodded, and pulled out into the line of traffic. But he didn't drive out of the airport. He drove, instead, right around to one of the
rental hangars that stood apart from the main buildings of the terminal. The limousine pulled up beside a fancy little corporate jet, whose doors stood open and where a ladder was suspended, ready for its cargo.

Pierce and Brianne were hustled inside, again with the two armed men sitting nearby. But there were two more armed men waiting inside, a total of four. Pierce exchanged a helpless glance with her. There was nothing either of them could do beyond accepting the reality of their situation. Against four armed men, they were powerless.

“Where are we going?” Brianne asked again.

Nobody answered her. She sat back in her seat, across the aisle from Pierce, with one of their kidnappers next to her on the aisle, and closed her eyes. She might as well get a little rest while she could. She had a horrible feeling that she knew who was behind this kidnapping.

It reeked of Philippe Sabon's style.

 

Hours later, they landed on a tiny strip on a small island. Brianne had seen a small city from the air, and she remembered that Sabon had told her about the island he owned in the Persian
Gulf, near the small country where he held so much political influence.

There were two old British limousines waiting for them. Brianne was herded into one, Pierce into the other. She barely got a glimpse of his back before she was pushed inside. The cars sped away.