Читать книгу The Royal Spy's Redemption - Addison Fox - Страница 11
Оглавление“Who has an engagement party on a Wednesday night?”
Gabby supposed it was a fair question, but in an extended family of more than one hundred, you didn’t wait solely for the weekend to get together. The Sanchez family often spent time together. “My aunt is hosting dinner tomorrow night at her home. We’ll celebrate then.”
“I’ve never been engaged, but isn’t that something people do on weekends?”
The knowledge he’d remained perpetually unattached only added to those sizzling hormones that seemed to spring to life in his presence, but Gabby resolutely ignored them.
She had him on the hook.
“I have a big family. If we waited only for weekends, we’d never fit in all we have to celebrate.”
“And you want me to go to a private family event?”
“As my date.”
He stilled at that, his earlier humor settling into the craggy grooves of his face. The color had returned to his cheeks, and he no longer looked on the verge of passing out, for which she was grateful.
“Your date?”
“It’s my lack of a love life that has my mother so upset. Bringing a date for the evening will give me some breathing room for a few months.”
“Why does she care?”
“How many brothers and sisters do you have, Mr. St. Germain?”
“One. A sister. And it’s Knox.”
“Is she older or younger?”
“Older.”
“Does she get up in your business?”
Something flashed across his face. She saw it in the brief tightening of his jaw before it was shut down. Firmly. “She’s my sister. Of course she does.”
“I have five brothers. I also have forty first cousins, more than half of whom are women. And I have my mother. And my grandmother. And too many aunts to count. Trust me when I tell you interference is a way of life in my family.”
“If that’s the case, why do you need to get your mother off your back? Isn’t that the definition of her job?”
“Mine’s gotten worse since this cousin got engaged. Maria’s the third in three months. Add on that three of my five brothers are married and giving her grandchildren...”
He shrugged. “Okay. So they’re living their lives and you’re living yours. So what?”
“I’m her daughter. I should have given her no fewer than three grandchildren by now.” She leaned forward and offered up a conspiratorial whisper. “You know. Because I’m over thirty.”
“And that’s some sort of tragedy?”
“It is to Elena Sanchez.”
He studied her for a moment, and she wanted to squirm under the perusal. His gaze was raw—unyielding—and in that moment she knew why Knox St. Germain was so good at his job. He missed nothing.
“And she’s fine with you bringing just anyone?”
“You’re a man and you’re breathing. You fit the bill.”
Gabby fought to keep her gaze on his face, even as she imagined the hard chest and tapered waist that reinforced her point in every line of his fit male form.
A small light glinted beneath eyelashes to die for, and he leaned closer, his already deep voice dropping into a husky register that she suspected had removed more than one pair of panties in Knox’s past. “Will there be kissing?”
“There can be. It is what dating people do.”
“And touching?”
Oh, my.
She fought the rising wave of pure lust that thundered through her midsection at the idea of Knox running his hands over her body. The heated response did serious battle with the self-righteous anger that still lingered over his handcuffing her.
She’d brushed off unwelcome advances before; she’d do it again. He meant to get a rise out of her and nothing more. “It’s hard to kiss if you don’t touch.”
He moved a fraction closer. “What about hand-holding?”
You are aloof and unaffected. You are a rock. You see through his act. “Isn’t that touching?”
He leaned back abruptly, the sudden movement jarring her from the vision of them kissing on her aunt Corrinda’s back patio.
“I’m not sure you’re up for it.”
The vivid lights rimming the scene faded from her mind as Knox’s words registered. “Excuse me?”
“You heard me. I can’t swoop in like some conquering hero, kiss you and love on you, and then leave. What will your family think of me? And you by extension.”
“They won’t think anything.”
“I’m hard to forget.”
“You’re a pompous as—”
The words hadn’t even fully left her lips when Knox struck like a cobra, swift and immediate. His lips were on hers, warm and soft, and she had the abstract thought that the man ought to have a warning label tattooed onto his forehead.
Sexy voice, sexy abs and sexy lips are not to be toyed with.
Even as alarm bells hit every note on the scale, she refused to pull away. Her mother wasn’t the only one who lamented Gabby’s lack of a significant other. Gabby was the one who went to bed alone each night. And she was the same one who opened the front doors of this shop between five and six o’clock every morning.
She knew what she was missing.
And she was damned sure she wasn’t going to miss a shot at a few make-out moments with the British god who’d shown up at her front door.
Heat radiated through his T-shirt in delicious waves, and she pressed her free hand to a firm shoulder—the one not currently sporting her catering napkins—while her other hand lay against his, somewhere in the vicinity of their laps. The attachment that had felt intrusive and insulting only moments before suddenly felt like a bond. A tight bond with slightly wicked overtones.
Just like his tongue. Strong and sure, he’d invaded her mouth as neatly as he’d invaded her shop, and Gabby was hard-pressed to push him away. Long, sure strokes against her own tongue had her seeing stars, the intrusion welcome and increasingly urgent, and she responded in kind, unwilling to give him the upper hand.
His fingers tightened over her back as their breaths mingled in the cool air of the kitchen, the slightest reprieve before they both dived back into the moment.
Had she ever been this wanton before?
The thought whispered through her mind as Knox took her under in another soul-searing kiss. Hot, carnal and full of sensual promise, he was a man who knew what to do with his mouth. And whether it was the increasing discomfort building in her body or the realization that it would be so very easy to fall for this man’s conquest tactics, she knew she had to put a stop to things.
The hand she’d laid on his shoulder drifted up to his neck, the tips of her fingers threading through soft wisps of hair. She shivered at the strength she felt in the corded muscle, the physical confirming what she already knew: he was a powerful man.
And she’d have to be content with the knowledge she affected him, especially if the hard beat of his pulse beneath her palm was any indication.
With a final stroke of her tongue over his—one for the road, as it were—she pulled back, her gaze on his in the dim lights of the kitchen.
“You’re still a pompous ass.”
“I work at it.”
The cocky smile was nowhere in evidence, but Gabby didn’t doubt his words.
* * *
Knox held himself very still, unwilling to turn away from the dark gaze of the woman beside him.
What the bloody hell had just happened?
He’d wanted to kiss her from the first moment he’d laid eyes on her—those lips were too lush and gorgeous to ignore—but he’d never anticipated he’d lose his damn mind.
And bloody hell, the woman could kiss. Those gorgeous lips hid secrets he’d never imagined, and it was humbling to admit his head was still reeling. She was every fantasy he’d ever had, yet sweetly innocent all at the same time.
How was that possible?
Was this the real reason he’d come to her place? Because, if it was, he needed to do himself a favor right now and get the hell out. Who cared if Moray was out there waiting for him? He’d be a lot safer with his enemy than he was with Gabriella.
He’d accepted long ago commitment wasn’t in the cards for him.
Ignoring the strange shot of remorse that wormed beneath his skin, Knox focused elsewhere. His eyes drifted over the hard beat at the base of her throat before moving on to the generous swell of her breasts.
A hell of a lot safer with Moray.
“So we have a deal?”
Her words were laced with the slightest tinge of something he recognized immediately. Victory.
“We have a deal.”
“Then uncuff me. I’m not going anywhere, and you can stay as long as you need, but I’ve got work to do.”
“What work?”
“I’ve got to get going on five oversized trays of enchiladas, and I’m burning night-light.”
The swift change in topic when his heart still thundered with wild beats in his chest chafed against his sense of equilibrium, but he refused to show any sense of vulnerability or all-around pissiness. “That’s why you’re here?”
“I’ve been a bit behind with helping Violet, Cassidy and Lilah. And it wasn’t until tonight on the phone that I got roped into the enchiladas for tomorrow night. So while you were running around downtown getting shot at, I’ve been doing paperwork and food prep.”
“Are these the same enchiladas you brought the other day to Elegance and Lace?”
“My grandmother’s world-famous recipe.” She shot him a dark stare before pointing toward a row of disposable pans stacked along the counter on the far wall. “Which I need to get to.”
“Baldwin dived into them like he was a man dying of starvation.”
“Max Baldwin is a man with good taste.”
“They looked good.”
And he’d wanted a plate, surprised at himself for the hard ball of need that had lodged in his gut at the savory meal. He’d learned to go without at a young age, and it had served him well as an adult with an unpredictable schedule. He wasn’t particularly enticed by food as a rule, but something about the pan of hot, cheesy enchiladas had made him wish for a few cracks in his armor of self-control.
It was a ridiculous reaction to a plate of food, but even with a solid line of logic and reasoning, he hadn’t quite convinced himself he hadn’t missed out two days ago.
“They are good. Too bad you didn’t take any.”
“I was working. Trying to get a handle on what the seven of you have been up to.”
He’d admitted to himself it was a hell of a story. The Renaissance Stones had lain buried in the concrete floor of an old Dallas warehouse built in the late 1950s and owned by the daughter of one of London’s greatest jewelers. Joseph Brown had been commissioned to create the fake crown jewels during the war and after the bloodshed was over, when he decided to move his young family to America, he’d been asked to take both the false and real gems with him.
The story was fantastical, Knox knew, even for someone who had significant levels of clearance to some of the world’s most revered secrets. Yet here he was. In the city that was known for sheer grit, beautiful women and the death of JFK, priceless gems had been smuggled out of England and lay buried for decades in the floor of a bridal boutique.
“The seven of us weren’t up to anything. Those gems have brought nothing but heartache and danger.”
“They seemed to do quite a job on everyone’s love lives.”
He didn’t consider himself a fanciful man, but the evidence was hard to argue with. The three women who had discovered the jewels each ended up with the three men who came to their aid. If the Renaissance Stones didn’t have such an ugly history, he’d be tempted to think they carried something special.
Which went beyond fanciful, veering straight into superstitious.
But seeing as how those same rubies lay in one of the pockets of his cargo pants, warm against the same thigh that had recently pressed to Gabriella Sanchez as he kissed the ever-loving hell out of her, Knox figured he couldn’t be too careful.
Gabby stilled, the feisty spark in her eyes morphing with a strange light. “I suppose there is that.”
Unwilling to dwell on any of that nonsense a moment longer, he dug the key to the cuffs out of his pocket and went to work on their metal tether. He unhooked her first, then his own, shoving the cuffs back into his pocket. He’d ignored his shoulder up to then, but it burned like the very devil.
“Can I clean up?”
“I’ve got a full first-aid kit in the back bathroom. Help yourself. I also have a stack of T-shirts in the storage room next to the bathroom from some of the vendors who call on me. Help yourself there, as well.”
He lifted his eyes at the idea of a full kit. “You encounter much danger here, Miss Sanchez?”
“It’s an industrial kitchen, and I regularly have students in my cooking and wine classes. Accidents happen.”
That much was likely true, but he still let out a low whistle a few minutes later when he investigated the full set of medical equipment she had stored in her back bathroom. Everything he needed was in the stockpile, including gauze and the required materials to stitch himself up.
Knox inspected the flesh wound in the mirror, the red slash a straight graze across the thick roundness of his shoulder. It still hurt like hell, but it was relatively easy to manage.
The heavy scent of cooking meat had already wafted his way when he finished taping on the last piece of gauze. He’d had worse, and he counted himself lucky Moray had such rotten aim.
Grown soft sitting behind a desk, old man?
Although the thought wasn’t entirely off base, Knox quickly banished it. He’d suspected Moray was up to something, but he had sorely underestimated just how deep the man’s corruption ran. He’d do well not to assume a paunch, and a penchant for issuing orders equaled a lack of skill.
The T-shirts Gabriella had mentioned were stacked neatly on a shelf in a large closet—as ruthlessly organized as the woman’s kitchen—and he snagged one on the top. The name of a vineyard covered the upper-left corner.
He recognized the vineyard—had just had a glass of their wine with room service, as a matter of fact—and marveled again at what she had built. Although he’d been out of it when he first arrived, he hadn’t missed her impressive setup. A large class area in the front of shop, with the industrial kitchen in the back.
He’d done his homework on Dallas before coming here, and the area where Gabby and her friends had built their businesses—the Design District—had caught his attention from the first. Old warehouses, built along the banks of the Trinity River, had lain empty or underused for many years. The design community had brought the area back and turned it from decrepit to a bit dodgy about two decades before, using the large spaces as a place to sell wholesale furniture, fabrics and art. But it was the past five years or so when the area had really come back to life, even more vibrant than its roots.
Storefronts, ad agencies and several restaurants had turned the Design District into a successful business community. The addition of apartments had turned it into a home.
He’d heard from several old friends the same was happening in Manchester and that he should come see for himself, but he’d managed to avoid a trip thus far. He had no desire to go home and wanted even less to see how the near slums he’d grown up in had gentrified through outsiders’ money.
“You okay?” Her voice drifted toward him from the kitchen.
The question pulled him from the images he still carried of gray-washed factories that matched even grayer air. He didn’t care how much money had been put into an update, he had no desire to see it.
“I’m good.” He’d already taken one of the plastic medical waste bags in the first-aid kit and wrapped his bloody T-shirt, her cloth napkins and the waste from his stitch-up job into the red plastic.
As he glanced at the still-open bag, he caught the light scent of her on the air—a mix of vanilla and maybe lavender?—before his gaze roamed over the crumpled bloody shirt.
Why had he come here?
He’d exposed her, as surely as if he’d sent an email straight to Richard Moray with her name and address. That damnable voice tickled the back of his mind once more. Don’t underestimate Moray.
Not only had he done that, but he’d dragged an innocent into battle right along with him.
He wrapped the package into as small a ball as he could, then shoved it into another of his cargo pockets. He wouldn’t leave Moray’s stench anywhere near Gabriella Sanchez.
And if he weren’t such a bastard, he’d remove himself, as well.
* * *
Gabby kept her eye on the chicken sautéing in a large pan while she pounded the flank steak for the beef enchiladas. She could still remember her grandmother’s gentle voice, instructing her in the old kitchen on Castle Street on how to prepare the steak before cooking.
“Pounding the meat’s better than pounding your grandfather.”
She smiled at the old flash of memory and the giggles that had erupted at the imagined image of Tito Jorge beaten under her grandmother’s meat tenderizer. Gabby still grieved the loss of her beloved grandfather, more than a decade now, and she knew her grandmother grieved, as well. Theirs had been a love for the ages, and Gabby had believed herself destined for the same.
Yet here she was.
She’d spent her twenties lamenting her inability to find someone and had sworn to herself on her thirtieth birthday that she was done with sulking and being disappointed. But the memories of her grandparents—so in love—still managed to grab her by the throat every now and again.
On a sigh, she brought herself back to the moment. The kitchen on Castle Street had long since been renovated, the near-decrepit appliances updated with brand-new ones, and her grandmother had moved back with her youngest daughter and son-in-law in Mexico for the majority of the year. Gabby still missed her every day, but she knew her grandmother loved the quieter life in Guadalajara more than the increasingly frenetic pace in Dallas.
“That smells good.”
She turned to see Knox, clad in a gray T-shirt that was a size too small, and she struggled to keep her footing. What was it about this man? He’d invaded her business. Hell, he’d handcuffed her.
And she still couldn’t quite shake the raw interest he managed to gin up.
She also couldn’t deny the sheer exhaustion she saw in his liquid blue gaze.
“I’ve got a cot in the storage room, as well. You’re welcome to pull it down and set yourself up in my office.”
“I’m good.”
“You’re dead on your feet. I thought you were dead on your feet an hour ago.”
“I’ll recover. This isn’t the first—” He broke off, and she turned back to the meat, a small smile tugging at her lips. He might not want to admit how tired he was, but the abrupt cutoff was indicative of his exhaustion.
Now the real question was, how much could she get out of him?
Avoiding the twinge of guilt at the deliberate hunt for information, Gabby settled in to find out all she could. “Okay, big, strong man. Then go sit down and get out of my way.”
“Do you mind if I put on a pot of coffee?”
“Along the wall. I’ve got a single brew, and you can pick whatever you’d like in the top cabinet.”
Knox busied himself with the task, and she snapped off the gas, transferring the heavy pan to the counter and a waiting rack. Her grandmother had taught her many things, and the draining of the meat was key to keeping the enchiladas soft but not soggy.
“Would you like a cup?”
“No on the coffee, but I’d love one of the green teas in there.”
Knox settled across from her a few minutes later and pushed over her mug. “That really smells good.”
“It’ll smell even better wrapped up in fresh tortillas and cheese.”
“Don’t tease me.”
“Maybe if you sit there nicely and keep your handcuffs in your pocket I’ll give you some.”
He did perk up at the mention of the cuffs, a small spark of mischief alighting in his eyes. “I’ll be good.”
The promise was about the enchiladas—rationally, she knew that—but she couldn’t quite dismiss something else in the words.
I’ll be good.
Did she really want him on his best behavior?
Ignoring the flight of sexual fancy, she refocused on the man before her. He might wear it well, but she had to admit exhaustion still painted his face in craggy lines.
Once more, that slight twinge of guilt pinched the back of her neck, but she resolutely ignored it as she changed the subject. “You’re MI5, right?”
“Technically, we’re the Security Service. MI5 is no longer our formal name, but it is what we’re known as.”
“I thought the jewels were originally removed out of England under the direction of MI6.”
His heavy-lidded gaze widened before he caught himself, his normal poker face snapping into position. “How’d you come across that information?”
Gabby shrugged, playing it cool. While she sensed she should parse out what limited information she’d gleaned, she was more than willing to speed up the information exchange if it would ensure her friends stayed safe and the danger they’d all experienced was firmly put behind them.
“Lilah, Cassidy and Violet have told me what they’ve been dealing with,” Gabby offered up. “And don’t forget, the rubies belong to my friends’ landlady, Josephine Beauregard. Her father was given the gems fair and square and asked only to remove them from England.”
“Why?”
Why?
Although she knew she’d started this, his questions held something more than simple curiosity. He didn’t know.
“Because they’re cursed.” A low snort was her only response, so she pressed him, curious as to his response. “You don’t believe in curses?”
“No.” He took a sip of his coffee before something seemed to register in his mind. “Do you?”
“Of course.”
When he only continued to stare at her, his cup midway to his mouth, Gabby continued on. “I absolutely believe in things beyond our control. Forces for good. Forces for evil. They exist.”
“And you think the rubies are cursed?”
“I think the Renaissance Stones carry a force inside them, imprinted from years and years of greed and avarice. I think the Queen Mum was smart to ask them to be removed from England, and I think my friends are well rid of them.”
“Why did she ask for their removal?”
“I thought you knew all this. Isn’t that why you’re here?”
Knox only stared at her, that unyielding blue giving nothing further away. With icy fingers, a whisper of premonition skated over her spine.
“Why are you here?”
“I’m a member of the British government, assigned to deliver those gems safely back to England.”
She wanted to believe him—and not because he was the first man in an age and a half who’d managed to hold her interest longer than five minutes—but she refused to accept blatant lies. With careful movements, she settled her carving knife down on the counter and moved toward the large drawer at her hips.
“Not buying it.”
“It’s the truth.”
With lightning-quick reflexes honed from being the only sister in the midst of a horde of rough-and-tumble brothers, she had her handgun out of the drawer and pointed toward Knox in a handful of heartbeats. “I’m only going to ask once more. Why are you really here?”
