Once in Paris (16 page)

“You can't imagine how it's going to feel,” he whispered, his voice deep, throbbing as he moved under her. “You can't…imagine!”

It caught her unexpectedly, a hot wave of pleasure that had the impact of a body blow. She cried out helplessly as the spasms convulsed her in his arms. She felt him moving, turning, lifting. She was against the blanket now and he was above her, her thighs in his hands, his body driving into hers in the darkness. She could hear his harsh breathing, feel the rigid clenching of his muscles as his fingers became painful on her hips and suddenly crushed them. She heard his hoarse groans, felt him throb and throb and shiver as the pleasure overwhelmed him.

She whispered to him, something wicked, something unexpected and stark. She felt him convulse again as the words heightened his pleasure to near oblivion.

His head dropped to her breasts and he shivered one last time as he slid down against her
in heavy exhaustion, her hips still clenched in his hard fingers.

Several minutes passed before his grip loosened. “You'll have bruises here,” he said apologetically.

She moved experimentally, swollen with passion and its fulfillment, languid in the aftermath. “I don't mind. Pierce…is sex always like this?” she asked, dazed.

He hesitated. He lifted himself carefully away from her and sat up with audible attempts to catch his breath. He pulled down his robes and then carefully rearranged her own there in the hot darkness.

“Pierce?” she asked in a whisper, aware that something was wrong.

He smoothed the fabric over her almost impersonally. Then he lay back down beside her, with his hands under his head, and stared into the blackness of the ceiling, hating himself.

“Did I do something wrong?” she asked uneasily.

He drew in a long, harsh breath. “No. I did.”

“What?”

He shifted impatiently. “Try to sleep, Brianne. We've got a long day ahead of us tomorrow.”

She lay beside him unmoving as she registered the forced carelessness of his tone, at odds with the tension she sensed in him.

As she came slowly back to the reality of their situation she thought she understood what was wrong with him. She was standing in for Margo again, and now he realized that it wasn't Margo and he was feeling guilty. She was his wife, but he was still married to Margo. He'd just committed adultery, for the second time. He'd been unfaithful to his dead wife. If Brianne hadn't been so tired and so disillusioned, she'd have cried hysterically. Would she never learn that she had no place in Pierce's life except like this, as a substitute for the woman he'd lost?

She wondered if it might not have been better if she'd never gotten to know him at all. If she hadn't spoken to him that day in Paris, none of this would ever have happened. She'd have been single and heart whole. Perhaps she'd have ended up married to Philippe Sabon, that poor shell of a man who was so alone in the world. He had nothing to give her, but at least he still had a whole heart—something Pierce hadn't.

She heard the hay rustle next to her as Pierce changed positions.

“It wasn't sex,” he said abruptly. And all at once, he got to his feet and left the stable.

P
ierce didn't come back right away, and Brianne, exhausted from his fierce lovemaking and still puzzled by his odd behavior, fell asleep.

When she woke, she was sore in unexpected places and alone in the stable. She got to her feet, wrapped the turban around her hair and went out to look for her companions.

Pierce came to join her when she stepped outside the stable, his expression impassive, his eyes giving away nothing. Only when she looked closely could she see the telltale lines that denoted lack of sleep. He was back in his shell again, she thought, and regretting his lapse
with her. Nothing had changed; at least on his part.

“We're going overland to the next port,” he told her quietly. “It's too dangerous to try going back the way we came. Mufti's cousin says that Sabon's house has been captured and Sabon himself is on the run from his own mercenaries. They're playing havoc in the streets.”

“Oh, good grief!” she exclaimed, thinking of the treachery of her stepfather. She hoped Sabon would get away.

“It looks very much as if your theory was correct. I believe your stepfather has sold out his partner and hopes to take over the oil project here,” he replied. “We'd better get going while there's still time.”

Even in the battered old vehicle Mufti's in-laws drove, it took a long time to get to the next small port because they had to make frequent stops and detours along the way to make sure they weren't being followed. Fortunately, the farther they went from the capital city of the small country, the less turmoil they encountered. The civil uprising hadn't yet spread this far. The island where Sabon's house was located was apparently now captured territory,
according to gossip that Mufti gleaned on their way.

The next port was larger than the one they'd started at. Only one thing in the dirty little harbor was familiar, and that was the rusted old tub that they'd booked passage on the day before.

Tate Winthrop met the captain and finalized the arrangements. They went onboard in a flurry of confusion after someone set off firecrackers on the docks to simulate an armed attack. Tensions were running high, because news of the military coup had reached even here. The government, one of Tate's contacts had said, was on the verge of collapse. The old regime was on the run and the mercenaries had taken over the capital. They had the oil consortium's executives under close guard, along with the supervisors and the men on the drilling rigs. All communications with the outside world had been cut off or crippled. Kurt was literally taking over the small country and nobody knew it except the people who were involved in it.

 

The refugees were hustled down into the cargo hold and concealed there by the captain, given food and water and assurances that they
would soon be in international waters and safe from reprisals. Mufti left the three foreigners down in the hold and merged with the other sailors on deck, with the captain's help.

Brianne held her breath until the ship slipped her moorings and set out to sea. Right up until the last minute, she'd been certain that they were going to be stopped. She spared a worry for Philippe, who must be feeling very betrayed at the moment.

She hoped that she and her companions would make it out alive, to tell their story to the appropriate people before Kurt completed his military coup.

“There's another hitch,” Tate told them once they were settled on sacks of grain in the hold with their few provisions—some bread and cheese and several small bottles of water from Tate's survival pack.

“What now?” Pierce asked with resignation. He needed a shave rather badly, and was looking more and more like a mercenary himself.

“The captain can only take us as far as St. Martin,” he said. “He's been offered a king's ransom to transport some cargo for a foreign national he's to meet there. We can't match the
other offer because the man making it is his brother-in-law.”

“So we'll be stranded in St. Martin,” Brianne said heavily. “While my stepfather destroys Philippe's country and blames it on him in Washington.”

Tate smiled at her. “Hopefully we can book passage on another freighter.”

“With what?” Pierce asked irritably. “My wallet is on Sabon's jet. I haven't got a dime.”

“Neither have I,” Tate said. “But if I can get to a bank, we'll have the funds.”

“Why not just fly home?” Brianne asked.

“Because by now the mercenaries know we've escaped, and they'll be looking for us, even here,” Tate said. “We have to sneak back into the States.”

“It amazes me that Kurt was able to get away with so much,” Brianne remarked.

“Pierce told me what you'd suspected about your stepfather,” Tate said as they ate cheese and bread later. “You're remarkably astute for a nonpolitician.”

“I know Kurt,” she replied with a rueful smile. “And he called Philippe Sabon a monster. Imagine that.”

“Sabon must be feeling pretty stupid right about now,” Pierce agreed.

“How right you are, Hutton” came a deep, faintly amused voice from the hatch that led down a corridor to the rest of the ship.

Three pairs of startled eyes met those of a tall, robed Arab. The deep scars down one side of his lean, dark face stretched as he smiled at his own folly.

He joined the others without inhibition and produced a goatskin from under his long robe. He tossed it to Pierce. “Wine,” he said. “Being a Muslim, I'm not permitted spirits, but don't let my inhibitions restrain you.”

“Is the poison in the wine or on the mouth of the bag?” Pierce murmured with an icy glare.

Philippe Sabon held up a hand. “I'm not that stupid,” he asserted. “Besides,” he sighed, reaching for a bit of bread and cheese, “I expect to spend weeks trying to explain my part in all this when we regain the government here.”

“How do you plan to do that?” Pierce asked.

Sabon gave him a wry glance. “I sent my most loyal men over the border with the sheikh, the minute Kurt's mercenaries started slaugh
tering my household,” he said, and the amusement left his face. “Dozens of my people lie dead in the streets, when I gave strict orders that the bullets were to be blanks and the explosives of the Hollywood variety.” He glanced at Brianne. “Your stepfather has a malicious nature, and I have been the world's biggest fool for putting myself and my country in his hands. I actually believed him when he promised the attack would be a sham.”

“You were willing to start a war to provoke American intervention,” Brianne reminded him.

“I was willing to simulate one,” he corrected her. His shoulders rose and fell heavily. “I watched a child starve once, with food in its hands,” he said quietly, staring at the bit of cheese and bread left in his fingers. “There had been no grain for some time, and our supplies were stopped at the border. Sanctions, you understand,” he added bitterly, “because my government had publicly supported an enemy of the United States in the last conflict on this region. We were able to beg rations from a nation friendly to us, but by the time they came, some of the children were starved beyond help. They died trying to eat.” He let the cheese and bread
fall into his lap. “How tired I am of rich industrial nations who dictate policy and turn blind eyes to the poor.”

Pierce scowled at the other man, aware of equal confusion from his security chief. “What are you doing here?”

The Arab's eyebrows lifted. “Escaping execution by Brauer's cutthroats, of course.”

“You're filthy rich,” Pierce reminded him. “You could have bought a ship and sailed out of here.”

Sabon laughed. “The mercenaries have my house,” he reminded them.

“So?” Pierce persisted.

Sabon shook his head. “The gossip must have reached you at some point that I do not trust banks.”

“You're kidding me,” Pierce replied.

“Sadly, I am not.” Sabon helped himself to a small plastic bottle of water. “My pocket money bought me a passage on this vessel. If I can make it to neutral territory, I have every hope that I can organize a revolt among my own people with my men who escaped as a core of support, and with some borrowed capital.”

“Borrowed from whom?”

Sabon fixed Pierce with a wordless stare.

“You are out of your mind,” Pierce told him flatly. “You can't expect me to lend you money after all you've done…you kidnapped us, for God's sake!”

“I kidnapped Brianne and a man who was presumed to be her bodyguard,” Sabon corrected him. “It was not until the escape that I knew who had been occupying my other storeroom. Which reminds me…” He reached into his robe, extracted Pierce's eelskin wallet and tossed it to him.

Astonished, Pierce checked it and discovered nothing missing, not his credit cards or his cash, and there were several hundred dollars in the billfold.

“My pilot found it wedged in a seat on my private jet.” He frowned. “I suppose they've blown it up by now. Ah, well.” He took a sip of water. “I've persuaded the captain of this vessel to drop me off at St. Martin on the way to the States. If you'll make me a loan of fifty thousand dollars or so, I can reclaim my country, and my wealth, from Kurt's hired assassins.”

Pierce threw up his hands. “You must have been hit in the head,” he exclaimed angrily. “I'm not loaning you a dime!”

“Yes, you are.”

“Why?”

Sabon picked the bread and cheese tidbits from his robe and ate them, washing them down with water. “Because I can connect the attack on your Caspian Sea drilling platform with Kurt. These same mercenaries were responsible for your problems and the deaths of several of your workers. I can tell you who they are.”

“You helped hire them for this massacre!” Pierce asserted.

“I did not. Kurt hired them and assured me that my instructions would be followed to the letter. I was willing to give him a free hand so long as he was of use to me. He had friends among the oil consortium, you see, and they were much more likely to listen to a wealthy man with connections in the oil business than a poor Arab.”

“Poor Arab, the devil!” Tate Winthrop scoffed.

“My wealth is only counted in millions among my own people,” he returned. “You must remember that our inflation rate at present is something like eight hundred percent. Surely you don't think Kurt Brauer would waste his time on an unknown Arab with a thin wallet in
a starving nation unless he thought he could profit largely by it?”

Pierce got up and paced the floor. “I don't understand. There were rumors that you had millions, if not billions, that you were seen in all the most exclusive resorts, even in gambling palaces.”

“Excellent rumors, were they not?” Sabon took another sip of water. “I started them myself.”

“You did?”

“I needed to appear wealthy to interest Kurt in helping to develop my oil fields and keep my enemies at bay,” Sabon said with a shrug. “I should have known that I couldn't trust such a man.” He frowned. “I assume that he's in Washington right now telling the world that I've attempted a bloody military coup in my own country?”

“You knew?” Brianne asked, astonished.

He nodded. “It was the most logical step he could have taken.” He smiled. “And it will, if you'll excuse the pun, blow right up in his face.”

Pierce sat back down on a bale of grain. “Could you explain that?”

“The United States will find news of
Brauer's covert dealings very interesting,” he said. “And I can provide them with information they don't have about his forthcoming plans to set fire to certain oil fields and blame a nation very hostile to the Americans.”

“Why would he do such a thing?” Brianne asked, aghast.

“To start more wars, of course. He's an arms dealer. Didn't you know?” Sabon asked his companions. “That's how I connected with him in the first place.”

“He deals in oil,” Tate Winthrop said slowly.

“He deals in oil only so that he has access to sensitive information about the countries in which the oil is found,” Sabon told him. “By manipulating certain events, he can sell arms at a huge profit and still have the aura of respectability. He lost heavily when a war was recently averted. Now he hopes to recoup his losses by a threatened military coup and clean up by arming the neighboring nations. It was his real plan all along, but I had no knowledge of it. I thought his interest in developing the oil wealth of my country was sincere, because I knew very little about the private face of such a public fig
ure.” He shook his head. “It was only a means to an end for him.”

“Why kidnap Brianne?” Pierce asked.

Sabon looked at her with quiet, secretive eyes. “Kurt was wavering in his support for my cause. By hinting that I wished to marry Brianne, I appealed to his greed. All those millions in the family and he would never have to worry about money again, you see.” He sighed. “The only explanation I have is that he found out somehow that my claims to wealth were exaggerated. I must have left a loophole for him to find.” He leaned forward, crossing his forearms over his knees and locking his long fingers together. “It's ironic, you know. He would actually have seen a profit on the oil,” he added. “But not for some years. Perhaps he was too impatient. Gunrunning is, after all, a profitable profession with the potential for immediate capital.”