Cold as Ice (2 page)

"I'm sorry, sir. It must have slipped my mind." Jensen's voice was neutral, expressionless, but she turned back to glance at him anyway. Why in the world wouldn't he have told Van Dorn she was there? Just to be a pissant? Or was Van Dorn simply dumping the blame on his assistant as he knew he could?

"No harm done," Van Dorn said, moving forward, taking Genevieve's hand with the most natural of gestures and bringing her back into the cabin. He was clearly a physical man, one who liked to touch when he talked to people. It was part and parcel of his charisma.

Unfortunately Genevieve didn't like to be touched.

But a client was a client, so she simply upped the wattage of her smile and let him pull her over to the white leather banquette, forgetting about the unpleasant little man who'd brought her here. Except that in fact he wasn't that little. It didn't matter—he'd already made himself scarce.

"Now, don't you mind Peter," Harry said, sitting just a bit too close to her. "He tends to be very protective of me, and he thinks every woman is after my money."

"All I'm after is your signature on a few papers, Mr. Van Dorn. I certainly wouldn't want to take up any more of your time—"

"If I don't have time for a beautiful young woman then I'm in a pretty pitiful condition," Harry said. "Peter just wants to keep my nose to the grindstone, while I believe in having fun. He doesn't have much use for women, I'm afraid. Whereas I have far too much. And you're such a pretty thing. Tell me, what sign are you?"

He'd managed to throw her completely off guard. "Sign?"

"Astrology. I'm a man who likes my superstitions. That's why I named the boat
Seven Sins
. Seven's my lucky number and always has been. I know that that new age crap don't mean squat, but I enjoy playing around with it. So indulge me. I'm guessing you're a Libra. Libras make the best lawyers—always judging and balancing."

In fact she was a Taurus with Scorpio rising—her teenage friend Sally had had her chart done for an eighteenth birthday present, and that was one of the few details that had stuck. But she had no intention of disillusioning her wealthy client.

"How did you guess?" she said, keeping the admiration in her voice at a believable level.

Harry's laugh was warm and appealing, and Genevieve was beginning to see why people found him so charming.

People
magazine hadn't lied—he was gorgeous. Deeply tanned skin, clear blue eyes with laugh lines etched deep around them, a shock of sun-streaked blond hair that made him look like Brad Pitt in his seedy mode. He radiated warmth, charm and sexuality, from his broad, boyish grin to his flirting eyes to his rangy, well-muscled body. He was handsome, charming, and any warm-blooded woman would have been interested. Right then, Genevieve couldn't have cared less.

But she had a job to do, and she knew that one of her unspoken orders was to give this very important client anything he wanted. It wouldn't be the first time she'd considered sleeping with someone for business reasons. She knew perfectly well what that made her—a pragmatist. She'd avoided it so far, but sooner or later she was going to have to be less fastidious and more practical. If it turned out that she had to sleep with Harry Van Dorn just to get some papers signed and get out of there…well, there were plenty of more onerous duties she'd had to perform while at Roper et al. She could perform this one if she had to.

But she knew the drill. They weren't going to get to the business she'd brought until the social amenities were covered, and with Texans that could take hours.

"You mustn't mind Peter," he repeated. "He's an Aries, with a very auspicious birth chart or I wouldn't keep him around. April twentieth, as a matter of fact. He's too damn gloomy by half, but he gets the job done."

"Has he worked for you a long time?" she asked, wondering when Harry was going to take his hand off her knee. Good hands—big, tanned, perfectly manicured. There could be worse hands touching her. like the slimy Peter Jensen's.

"Oh, it seems like forever, though in fact he's only been with me for a few months. I don't know how I managed without him—he knows more about me and my life than I do. But you know how men like that are—they get a little possessive of their bosses. Look, I don't want to spend the afternoon talking about Peter—he's about as interesting as watching grass grow. Let's talk about you, pretty lady, and what brought you here."

She started to reach for her briefcase, but he covered her hand with his big one and gave an easy laugh. "To hell with business. We have plenty of time for that. I mean, what brought you to an old-fart law firm like Roper and company? Tell me about your life, your loves and hates, and most of all tell me what you want my chef to prepare for dinner."

"Oh, I can't possibly stay. I have a plane to catch to Costa Rica."

"Oh, but you can't possibly leave," Harry mimicked her. "I'm bored, and I know your associates would want you to make me happy. I won't be happy unless I have someone to flirt with over dinner. Those oil wells aren't going to dry up overnight—nothing will happen if I don't sign the deeds of transference till later. I promise, I'll sign your papers, and I'll even see that you get to Costa Rica, though why you'd want to go to that pesthole is beyond me. But in the meantime, forget about business and tell me about you."

Genevieve let go of the briefcase, and after a moment he let go of her hand. She should have been uneasy, but he was such a simple puppy dog of a man, wanting someone to play with him, throw a ball for him, that she couldn't feel edgy. He was harmless, and she could play along for a while. As long as he didn't start humping her leg.

"Whatever your chef cares to make," she said.

"And what do you drink? Appletinis, right?"

Any kind of martini made her stomach turn, though she'd downed more than her share of them in order to fit in at the requisite social functions that Roper sponsored. Cosmopolitans were the worst, and everyone assumed she loved them. Her
Sex and the City
persona must have been very effective.

But he was one of the ten richest men in the western world, and he could get anything he wanted. "Tab," she said.

She'd managed to throw him. "What's Tab?"

"A hard-to-find diet soda. And not that revolting energy drink version. Never mind, I was just kidding. Whatever you're having."

"Nonsense. Peter!" Harry barely had to raise his voice. His assistant entered the room so
silently he only increased her feeling of uneasiness. "I need you to get some kind of soda pop called Tab.
Apparently it's what Ms. Spenser drinks."

Jensen's colorless eyes slid over her. "Of course, sir. It might take an hour or so but I'm certain some will be available."

"That's fine, then. The original—not any newfangled crap. Ms. Spenser is staying for dinner, of course. Tell the chef I want him to do his very best work."

"I'm afraid, sir, that the chef has left."

It was enough to wipe the charming smile off Harry's handsome face. "Don't be ridiculous. He's been with me for years! He wouldn't take off without warning."

"I'm sorry, sir. I have no idea whether his reasons were professional or personal, I simply know he's gone."

Harry shook his head. "Unbelievable! That's the fifth long-term employee of mine who's left without notice."

"Sixth, sir, if you count my predecessor," Jensen murmured.

"I want you to look into this, Jensen," Harry said in a dark voice. But then his sunny smile took over. "In the meantime, I'm sure you can find someone to take Olaf's place and rustle up something wonderful for me and my guest."

"Certainly."

"I wouldn't want to put you to any trouble in the midst of such a domestic crisis," Genevieve interrupted. "Really, you could just sign the papers and I'll take off—"

"I wouldn't hear of it," Harry said grandly. "You traveled all this way just for me—the least I can do is feed you properly. See to it, Peter."

She watched Harry's assistant disappear with a twinge of regret. There was no getting out of this. At the very least, however, she had little doubt he'd manage to scare up both Tab and a five-star chef—he had that kind of machine-like efficiency down pat. And Van Dorn was turning up his Texas charm—in a few minutes he'd no doubt be talking about his dear old pappy—and she might as well lean back and make the best of it. At the very worst she was going to be bored to death, but there were worse ways to spend an evening.

Peter Jensen could move with frightening efficiency, even in the guise of the perfect executive assistant. It had taken him longer to get rid of Olaf than the others, and he was afraid he was going to have to use force, but in the end he'd done his job and the chef had decamped in a righteous snit.

Not that Peter would have minded using force. He did what he had to do, and he was very well trained. But he preferred subtlety, and brute force left bruises and bodies and too many questions. In the end Olaf had left, Hans was primed and ready to step in, and they were just about to make their well-planned move.

The girl, however, was a problem. He should have known Harry's law firm would send someone young and pretty to keep him happy. They didn't know enough about Harry's complicated appetites to realize anyone would do.

The papers she brought with her were another question—were they simply an excuse or a clue to something more important? Harry hadn't seemed the slightest bit interested, but then, Harry wouldn't.

He had to get the woman off the boat, fast, before they could put their plans into motion. They would get the go-ahead in the next few days, and he didn't want any stray civilians to get in the way and complicate things. The assignment was relatively simple—nothing he hadn't done before, and he was very good at what he did, but timing, as always, was everything.

Ms. Spenser was getting in the way, and the sooner he got rid of her, the better. He was a man who avoided collateral damage, and he wasn't about to change his ways at this point, no matter how important the mission. And while he knew only a part of Harry Van Dorn's maniacal Rule of Seven, he knew stopping Van Dorn was a very important mission indeed.

He knew what they called him behind his back. The Iceman. Both for his ice-cold control, and his particular expertise. He didn't care what they called him, as long as he got the job done.

Ms. Spenser would have to go, before it was too late. Before he was forced to kill her.

He remembered her dark eyes as they'd looked through him. He shouldn't have mentioned the crossword puzzle—that was something she might remember if someone started asking her questions once the job was finished. But no, he'd played his part well enough. She'd looked at him and hadn't seen him, and that ability to vanish was his stock-in-trade.

She'd be no threat to their mission. She was bright and pretty and clueless, and she was going to be back in her safe little world before anything bad could happen.

And she'd never know how close to death she came.

Madame Lambert looked out over the bare tree branches outside her nondescript office in a nondescript building near London's Kensington Gardens. She was slim, elegant and ruthlessly chic, with creamy, ageless skin and cool, ageless eyes. She stared at the trees, looking for some sign of life. It was April, after all, time for things to come alive again.

But it always took longer in the city, where pollution slowed the natural evolution of things. And for some reason the trees and gardens near the offices of the Spence-Pierce Financial Consultants, Ltd., tended to die. If Madame Lambert were a more fanciful person she'd think it was a sympathetic reaction to the actual work they did. Spence-Pierce was nothing more than one of a dozen covers for the covert work done by the Committee, a group so steeped in secrecy that Isobel Lambert was still just learning some of the intricate details, and she'd been in charge for more than a year.

It was April, and time was running out. The Rule of Seven was in play, backed by Harry Van Dorn's brilliant brain and seemingly limitless resources, and they still didn't know nearly enough about what it was. Seven disasters, orchestrated by Harry Van Dorn, to plunge the world into chaos, chaos that would somehow be turned to Van Dorn's benefit. But the whens, the wheres, the hows were still maddeningly unclear. Not to mention who—Harry couldn't be doing this without help.

Whatever it was, it was deadly.

And it was the Committee's job to keep deadly things from happening. No matter how high the body count happened to be.

She wasn't feeling good about this, and she'd learned to trust her instincts. Peter was the best they had, a brilliant operative who'd never failed a mission.

But she had the unpleasant feeling that all that was about to change.

She shook herself, returning to the spotless walnut desk that held nothing but a Clarefontaine pad and a black pen. She kept everything in her head, for safety's sake, but sometimes she just needed to write.

She scrawled something, then glanced down at it. The Rule of Seven.

What the hell was Harry Van Dorn planning to unleash on an unsuspecting world?

And would killing him be enough to stop it?

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H
arry Van Dorn's McMansion of a yacht was large enough that Genevieve could almost forget she was surrounded by water. The smell of the sea was still there, but she loved the ocean if she wasn't on a boat, and she could easily pretend she was on some nice safe cliff overlooking the surf, rather than bobbing around in the middle of it.

Harry Van Dorn was both quirky and charming, there was no denying it, and he was focusing all that charm on her. His megawatt smile, his crinkly blue eyes, his lazy voice and rapt attention to her every word should have made her melt. Except that Genevieve didn't melt easily, even beneath the warm Caribbean sun with a billionaire doing his best to seduce her.

The Tab had appeared, of course, cold with a glass of ice as well. She knew she ought to have insisted on Pellegrino or something equally upscale—the firm would never approve of something as mundane as soda pop—but she should have been on vacation, and for now she could let little things drop. She'd even kicked off her shoes as she stretched out on the white leather chaise, wiggling her silk-covered toes in the sunlight.