Читать книгу Once in Paris - Diana Palmer - Страница 8

The 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 patience 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 habitats.” 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.”

He searched her face with quiet, thoughtful eyes. His expression became somber. “So would I.” He put his empty glass down on the table. “Tell me about your father. What did he do?”

“He was a loan officer in a bank,” she said. “He wasn’t handsome or terribly intelligent, but he was kindhearted and he loved me.” Her eyes grew sad with the memories of him. “Mother never had time for me, even when she was at home. She worked a six-day week at the jewelers, and she always seemed to feel that Dad didn’t give her the life-style she deserved. He was a failure in her eyes, and she never stopped telling him so.” She grimaced. “One day he went to work and we got a phone call just after lunch. They said he’d started toward an office to talk to one of the vice presidents and he just folded up. He died right there of a heart attack. Nothing they did brought him back.”

“I’m sorry. It must have been rough.”

“It was. Mother didn’t really even mourn. And just three months later, there was Kurt, and suddenly I didn’t have a family I belonged in anymore.”

A long silence fell between them. Then he said, “I never had a family at all. My parents died when I was in grammar school, in a plane crash. I went to live with my father’s father in America. He had a small oil transport fleet and a smaller construction company. My first job was helping to put up buildings. I learned it from the ground up, the hard way. Grandfather never pampered me, but he loved me. He was Greek, very old-world even after becoming a naturalized American citizen.” He chuckled at the memory of the gruff old man. “I adored him, rude manners and all.”

“But your last name doesn’t sound Greek,” she said.

“It was Pevros, before he changed it to Hutton, after a wealthy family he’d read about in the States,” he replied. “He wanted to be American all the way. I still have French citizenship, but I could qualify as an American citizen, having spent half my life in New England.”

“You said your grandfather had a small construction company,” she murmured. “But yours is enormous and international.”

His broad shoulders rose and fell. “I had a sort of sixth sense about mergers that paid off big. Once I got the hang of it, there was no stopping me. I sold the oil tankers and parlayed the proceeds into an enterprise that became the core company of an empire.” His eyes narrowed as he studied her. “Margo’s father had a chain of building supply companies in Europe,” he recalled. “The merger led to a marriage and ten of the happiest years of my life.” His face seemed to harden to stone. “I thought she was immortal.”

Impulsively, she laid her hand over his big one on the table. “I still miss my dad,” she said softly. “I can only imagine how it must be for you.”

His hand stiffened. Then it relaxed and turned, enveloping hers in its warm, strong grasp. “That empathy of yours saved me,” he said, searching her eyes quietly. “If you hadn’t taken me home to my hotel that night in Paris, I really don’t know where I would have ended up.”

“I do,” she murmured dryly. “You’d have ended up with that industrial-strength blonde, being rolled for your wallet!”

He chuckled. “I probably would have. I was too drunk to care what happened to me.” His eyes softened. “I’m glad you were there.”

Her fingers curled trustingly into his. “I’m glad I was there, too.”

His eyes grew slowly darker as they stared intently into hers. His thumb began a lazy stroking motion against her palm. She felt the sensation all through her body, as if he was touching her bare skin instead of just her hand.

He saw the reaction and deliberately enlarged the area of her palm that he was stroking. He hadn’t wanted women in his life since Margo’s death, and he certainly shouldn’t be encouraging this green little innocent. But she made him feel kingly when she looked at him with those soft, drowning eyes, when she trembled from the merest touch of his hand. Any man could be forgiven for being tempted.

Her breath was choking her. She looked at him with an ache that made her sick all over. “I don’t suppose you’d like to stop that?” she asked unsteadily.

“Why?” he asked softly.

“Because I’m getting this awful ache in a place I can’t tell you about,” she whispered tightly.

His hand tightened around her soft fingers. He wasn’t thinking about right and wrong anymore. He had an ache of his own, and he needed something to numb it before it doubled him over.

“Suppose I told you that I have a similar ache?” he asked huskily, holding her gaze with steady, hot black eyes.

“In a…similar place?” she asked outrageously.

“Tell me where yours is,” he murmured wickedly.

“Just south of my navel,” she said bluntly, and her mouth felt bone dry. “And my breasts hurt,” she added huskily.

His eyes fell to them with keen, sharp interest and he saw the peaked nipples under her thin top. His intake of breath was audible.

“Nobody ever looked at me there, or touched me there,” she whispered when she saw where his eyes were riveted. “I’ve saved it all up.”

He felt as if the world were crashing down on his head. He had to stop looking at her, thinking of her, wanting her. He’d put her right out of his mind until he’d come to Nassau. Then he’d seen her again, at her stepfather’s, and all the wicked, forbidden longings had surfaced again at his first sight of her after the months of absence.

His fingers edged between hers in a sensual caress. “I’m thirty-seven,” he bit off.

“So what?” she asked breathlessly.

“So you aren’t even legal yet.”

“Excuses, excuses,” she muttered huskily. Her lips parted as the sensual caress of his fingers threatened to stop her heart. “For God’s sake, can’t you just do something? Anything!”

His eyes narrowed to slits as he looked at her. “With Mary right in the house and Arthur likely to come looking for me any second?”

She groaned aloud.

He made a rough sound under his breath and glared at her. He jerked his hand back and stood up, turning his back to her while he fought to stop himself from reaching for her, right over the table.

He jammed his hands hard into his pockets and grimaced when he saw how it outlined the raging, highly visible arousal he couldn’t help.

Margo was the only woman who’d ever been able to do this to him instantly. It seemed that the long abstinence was making him careless, and vulnerable. He had to get this wide-eyed innocent out of his life.

She was already inside the house by the time he turned around, heading right toward the front door.

He went after her, noticing when he joined her at the curb that she wouldn’t look at him.

“Sorry,” she said through her teeth. She was clutching her purse as if she expected it to make a break for freedom. “I don’t honestly know what came over me. Maybe it’s some tropical virus that makes your mouth independent of your brain.”

He chuckled in spite of himself. “Not quite. But it seems to be contagious.”

She wouldn’t look at him. “Don’t make fun of me, please.”

“I don’t know what else to do,” he said bluntly. “I’m not seducing children this week. Sorry.”

She glared up at him. “I was trying to seduce you,” she pointed out. “With no success whatsoever, I might add. I guess I’ll have to find some sort of school where they teach seduction and take lessons.”

He burst out laughing. “You shameless hussy!”

“Thanks. I’ll file that compliment along with all the others.”

“It wasn’t a compliment.”

“If you don’t do it, he will,” she said, suddenly serious. “I’ll throw myself in Nassau harbor right in front of the Prince George Wharf before I’ll let Sabon touch me!”

“What do I have to do with him?” he asked, genuinely puzzled.

“He likes virgins. Virgins!”

“Ah,” he murmured. “I begin to see the light. If you become suddenly experienced, he’ll lose interest, you think?”

“Yes, I do. And if you’d cooperate, I’d be right off the endangered species list. But, oh no, you can’t make one little sacrifice for my whole future! Excuse me for asking you to risk your body in bed with me!”

His eyebrows levered up as he stared down at her. “Careful,” he said softly. “You’re walking on broken glass.”

“I’d like to create some,” she muttered. She looked away from him and sighed loudly. “Well, I’ll go to the casino over on Paradise Island tonight. Surely there’s some man desperate enough to give me what I need….”

He jerked her around and held her bruisingly by one arm. His black eyes blazed down at her. “Don’t you dare,” he said in a voice that sent chills down her spine.

“Well, you won’t!” she protested.

“Maybe I will,” he murmured. He was disturbed, and he looked it. He felt Margo’s loss keenly, still, and even to think of sleeping with another woman seemed like adultery. But Brianne was young and sweet and loving, and it wouldn’t be any hardship to give her what she wanted. On the other hand, she was painfully young and impressionable. If it hadn’t been for the specter of Philippe Sabon lurking somewhere in the shadows, he wouldn’t even be considering this harebrained proposition in the first place.

“You just hold your horses,” he said shortly. “Don’t lead with your head.”

“Advice, advice,” she muttered. “Why don’t you just back me up against a wall and give it your best?”

He dropped her arm. “You incredible child!”

“I’m not a child, thank you.”

“You’re outrageous,” he continued.

“Totally. It comes from living among idiots.” She stared at him with quiet, soft eyes. “I’ll wear you down,” she promised. “Day by day.”

He stared at her with mixed emotions. “Whatever happened to virginal terror?”

“I don’t know. I’ll ask someone.”

“Aren’t you afraid of the first time?”

“With someone like you? Are you crazy?”

He laughed in spite of himself. His eyes twinkled with humor. “All those expectations. I’m getting older. What if I can’t live up to your expectations?”

“Oh, but you can,” she said with solemnity. “You want to. You just think I’m too young. I’m not, you know. I grew up around people older than me, and I’ve always been more mature than my own age group.”

“I’m not making you any promises,” he assured her. “I said I’d think about it.”

She shrugged. “Take your time. No rush. But if that lobo wolf comes looking for me, I’m coming after you, and I don’t care what time it is.”

“How is he supposed to know, at your age, that you’re still virginal?” he asked reasonably.

She glowered at him. “Because, unknown to me, Kurt had a private detective following me from the day I went off to school,” she muttered. “I was watched like a hawk, and two months ago Kurt demanded that I have a physical to make sure that I hadn’t caught some virus he said I’d been exposed to.” She shivered at the thought of what the doctor had done to her. “Part of the physical included a gynecological exam,” she added. “I had no idea that the doctor was going to do that, until I was in the examination room and the nurse had me on my back.” She let out a breath. “I yelled the place down, but the doctor had the information Kurt wanted.”

“No reputable doctor…” Pierce began furiously.

“He wasn’t a reputable doctor,” she returned. “He was barred from practice in the States and came down here to run some sort of clinic.”

“I see.”

“I never connected it until Sabon started turning up at the house at all hours and watching me like a hawk.” She lifted her gaze to his hard face. “I’m not scared of much,” she said, “but that man gives me the shivering willies.”

“Don’t feel bad. He has that effect on some men.”

She lifted her eyebrows. “On you?”

He chuckled. “I was a drill rigger for a couple of years.” He held out his big hands and showed her his knuckles, replete with tiny white scars.

She pursed her lips. “Tough guy, huh?”

“Yes,” he said simply. “And I’m not afraid of much, either.”

She searched his eyes. “What scares you?”

He leaned close to her, so that his eyes filled the world. “Sex-crazed virgins,” he whispered.

He looked and sounded so wicked that she burst into helpless laughter. “I asked for that one,” she murmured through her chuckles.

He laughed with her. He’d never known anyone like Brianne. She was changing him, changing his life, his world. She made the sun come out again, brought back the rainbows. He didn’t dare consider the implications of what he was feeling. He turned away and went to find Arthur to tell him to bring the car around, so that he could drive them back into Nassau.

In the weeks that followed, Brianne became Pierce’s shadow. To her stepfather’s dismay, she kept a mile away from his friend Philippe Sabon and spent so much time with Pierce that rumors began to abound. They were seen together everywhere, fishing and swimming and just sunbathing. Mostly they did the latter at Pierce’s house, but occasionally they went to the beach.

The companionship they shared was as rare as the humor that bound them together. Pierce didn’t realize how necessary Brianne was beginning to be to him, but the hours he spent alone brooding over Margo were dwindling with time. He looked forward to Brianne’s wry insight on the world around them, to her savvy sense of politics. For a young woman, she had a mature outlook. He was impressed with her. More than impressed. He didn’t mind her constant presence in his house.

But Kurt did. Things came to a head when Philippe sailed into port on his yacht to see Brianne and she wasn’t at home. Worse, his private detective had a very thorough report of where she’d been most recently.

Sabon’s rage was all the more intimidating for being quiet. He glowered at Kurt, his black eyes flashing, his lean fists clenched at his side. “You know that your stepdaughter has become special to me,” he began. “I have even told you that my plans for her might include marriage. Yet you have permitted her to practically live with Hutton. What must I do to keep her around when I wish to see her, kidnap her?”

Kurt held up a hand, his face worried. “No, you have it all wrong. You have the medical report,” he said quickly, wary of his wife’s presence somewhere nearby. He didn’t want her to hear this. “I assure you, the girl is fastidious, chaste, regardless of the time she spends with Hutton!”

Sabon didn’t speak for a moment. His eyes caught every nuance of expression in the other man’s face, from the fear that made him pale to the greed that made his eyes hot. Brauer had no idea at all of his real plans, or his true desire. He had made certain of it. The man’s cooperation was essential at this point. He had to ensure it any way that he could.

“I know how badly you need my help,” he told Kurt coolly. “I have had your financial assets examined most thoroughly. If I should back out now, before the oil is discovered and processed, and replace you with someone else, you would be left destitute, would you not?”

Kurt swallowed. He was in over his head, with no way out. The man knew too much. “Yes, I would,” he confessed heavily. He drew out a spotless white handkerchief and wiped his sweaty forehead. “I have no option but to go right through to the end. But this business about involving the United States—I don’t know. I don’t know if it will work.”

Sabon’s thin lips pursed thoughtfully. “Of course it will.” He studied Brauer. “I have told you that I think a marriage between Brianne and myself might be advantageous for both of us. A…seal on our agreement.”

“Marriage.” Kurt’s greedy eyes glittered as he turned the thought over in his mind. Sabon had millions. He was supposedly one of the wealthiest men in the world. He would certainly take care of his wife’s relations. Even if the oil deal fell through, Kurt would have all the money he needed, without having to fall back on his usual means of making money—a tricky enterprise these days, with so many customers who reneged on their promises of payment. He would never have to worry about money again! He smiled from ear to ear. “What a wonderful proposition! Yes, yes, it would be the perfect seal on our bargain!”

Sabon didn’t meet his eyes as he bent his head to light one of the small, thin Turkish cigars he liked to smoke. “I thought it might appeal to you.”

Kurt almost drooled with pleasure. His future was assured. Now he had to talk to his wife, quickly, to make her understand how important Brianne’s acquiescence was in all this. She would back him up. She was the girl’s mother, and Brianne was still a minor. She could be made to comply. And so, he thought with cold reason, could her mother.

“And you will handle the chore I require of you in America,” Sabon added.

“Of course.” Kurt waved a careless hand. “You may consider this done. It will be my pleasure, in fact. Brianne will make you a lovely wife, give you many children!”

Sabon said nothing. The thought of joining their families by marriage had turned the trick. He would have no more worries with Kurt. Briefly he thought of the young, bright Brianne in his arms and the torment almost bent him double. Brauer would sell his stepdaughter, anything he owned, in his headlong search for power. Sabon hid the contempt he felt for the unscrupulous man before him and wished, not for the first time, that he had other options, other means, to accomplish what he must for his country. Although he’d sorted Brauer out, Pierce Hutton would pose as big a threat as the too-close enemy on the borders of Qawi. He had to keep the man at a distance before Hutton learned anything from Brianne that might tempt him to interfere.

By demanding Brianne’s company, by dangling the bait of marriage with her before Brauer, he hoped to accomplish that. Sabon gave one regretful thought to Brianne, so desirable and kind, who would suffer at her stepfather’s hands because of his proposal. But he couldn’t hesitate now, when so much was at stake! He had to think of his people.

Kurt watched him curiously. “You weren’t serious about kidnapping her?”

The more Philippe thought of the idea, the more it appealed to him. His dark eyes narrowed thoughtfully. “It would be one way to ensure her…cooperation, would it not?”

Kurt scowled. Brianne was an American citizen, and Hutton was possessive of her. “It could complicate matters,” he persisted.

Philippe smiled coolly. “Indeed it could.” He said no more, but there was a new and introspective look about him that made Kurt nervous. He had so much riding on this endeavor, almost too much! He simply could not afford to let Philippe double-cross him. And the best way to accomplish that was to get in the first blow. Kurt had half the rights to the long-protected mineral wealth of Sabon’s little country. If he could overthrow the government—and what sort of defense was a sick old sheikh with a small army?—he could cut Sabon right out of the loop and deal directly with the oil consortium. He’d have all the wealth he’d ever need, and he could put his shady friends on the payroll to protect his investment. He would never have to resort to arms dealing, his true business, again. The more he thought about it, the better he liked the idea. Sabon was so trusting, really. He thought he held all the aces. He would discover that he had nothing. Nothing at all.