Storm of Shadows (25 page)

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Authors: Christina Dodd

Tags: #Fiction, #Romance, #Paranormal, #General

BOOK: Storm of Shadows
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Of course he did. How could he not?
Pulling out his handkerchief, he wiped at his lips.
At once the scents of fine champagne and Rosamund’s pussy filled his head, and if retrieving this manuscript were not a matter of crucial importance, he would have picked her up and carried her off into the night to have his way with her. Instead, he tucked his handkerchief back into his pocket, and swore that for the pure pleasure of knowing his touch had brought her to completion, he would never wash the fine scrap of linen again. Turning his face to hers, he asked, “Better?”
“Yes. Yes. I’m fine. Stop asking me!” She wrung her hands in distress. “I’m not that much of an idiot. I know men and women do what we did all the time. I’m okay!”
So. She was feeling a little high-strung.
He looked into her eyes, and enunciated clearly. “Did I wipe off all the lipstick?”
“Oh. Oh, I thought . . .” She didn’t seem to know whether to look at him or not, but he waited patiently, and finally she steeled herself and looked into his face. “There’s a little . . . you missed a place. . . .” Swiftly, she used her thumb to wipe his lower lip.
Swiftly, he caught her thumb between his teeth and bit.
She caught her breath. Jerked her hand back. Looked up at the open door where the butler stood waiting. Looked down toward the town car below that discharged another couple, handsome and sophisticated and French. “Don’t
do
that.”
Taking her hand, he kissed her thumb. “Or what will you do?”
“I’ll tell everyone you’re an enforcer.”
“That’s fine, but most of these people have been acquainted with me for years.” He felt that prickling at the base of his neck, the one that meant he was being watched. He scanned the cars coming behind them, looked at the open door ahead. “They wouldn’t believe you, and if they did, they’d be thrilled at the idea of knowing a real enforcer.”
“Really?”
“Really. I told you. They’re corrupt and useless. Well, most of them are, anyway.” He made a lightning-swift decision. She needed to be warned. “Some of them are merely venal—and one of them has put a price on my head.”
Chapter 25
“
W
hat?”
Rosamund pushed her glasses up on her nose and shoved her hair out of her eyes.
“I removed something from his possession that he had stolen from its owner. He took it badly, and Fujimoto Akihiro has sworn to remove me from this life.” They walked through the front door of Louis Fournier’s home, and stood waiting, a little apart.
“Fujimoto Akihiro? I met him. He’s a well-respected Japanese businessman. He made a donation to the library.”
“He buys stolen art, or if the piece he wants is not on the market, he commissions his people to steal it.” The little creep. Aaron detested Fujimoto, detested the kind of ruthless conceit that demanded he have everything he ever desired regardless of who the owner might be. He thought he was something special, but to Aaron, who actually was something special, Fujimoto was nothing but a man with no morals and far too much money.
Aaron examined the grandiose entry, the security team, the guests milling not far away . . . and Rosamund.
Together, they had managed to restore her makeup and clothing to the same condition they had been in when Philippe had tucked them in his limo. Yet at the same time, she looked different.
In some undefinable way, she looked well-loved.
In his effort to make her believe in her beauty . . . All right. No use lying to himself, at least. In his effort to get between her legs, he had made her even more . . . well. Just even more.
It was going to be a very long night.
“Is he here tonight?” she whispered.
“Fujimoto? Probably not. I’ve been underground for months. Philippe contacted Fournier’s people this afternoon and informed them that
we
would be using the invitations, and even with the best sources of information, I doubt Fujimoto could react that quickly.” Although Aaron was assuming the little asshole wanted to be in on the kill. If Fujimoto sent in his assassins, Aaron could be dead before the evening was old.
Again he surveyed the guests, but saw nothing amiss, nothing out of place, nothing obvious to worry about.
Two security people approached Rosamund and Aaron and asked their names, checked them off the list, then politely begged their pardon and thoroughly frisked them for weapons. When they were cleared, they were each handed a glass of champagne and escorted into the public part of the château.
“Aaron.” Rosamund tugged at his sleeve, looking at him as if she wanted to say something, but didn’t know how.
Probably she was remembering that time in the limo, was too shy to speak. Placing his hand protectively at the base of her spine, he asked, “What is it?”
“If I see the right manuscript, how do you want me to tell you?”
She wasn’t thinking of sex. She was thinking of Sacmis’s journal.
Damn it.
“If you find the right manuscript, probably a few quiet words should alert me,” he said.
She smoothed her skirt. “Then I’m ready. Let’s go.”
He had been thoroughly put in his place, and by a woman who didn’t even know she had done it.
Standing at the top of the stairs, looking down at the huge ballroom, Rosamund breathed, “Fascinating.”
“It is, isn’t it?”
The château had been stripped of its original seventeenth-century stylings and transformed into a stark black-and-white modernist showcase for Louis Fournier’s antiques. The pieces were displayed in glass cases set randomly around the room. A spotlight shone on each piece of art, electronic security sparkled warningly, and beside each case, a beefy security guard had been placed to stop anyone foolish enough to try to touch.
Aaron knew Fournier kept the manuscripts in his private library, and no one saw them without an invitation—which meant no one except his staff had seen them for years.
Colorfully dressed guests swirled around the cases, looking, admiring, drinking too much and eating too little.
“With this kind of security, even if you threaten the right person, how will you be able to take the manuscript?” Rosamund gripped Aaron’s arm in alarm.
He enjoyed her concern a little too much. “I have talents you don’t know about,” he said in understatement. “Don’t worry. All you have to do is circulate.”
As they descended the stairs, the guests were starting to notice them, glancing up and then doing the same double take Aaron had done in the salon.
As a distraction, Rosamund was perfect.
Unfortunately, as they reached the ballroom, every man in the place took a step closer.
She was a distraction for more than just the guests—Aaron couldn’t concentrate worth a damn.
Rosamund jabbed Aaron in the arm with her fist. “Look. Look! Have you ever seen anything like that?”
Aaron looked in the direction of her gaze, and saw him. DeMonte D’Alessandri, playboy and industrialist. Of course she would gush about him. Any woman would. The guy was handsome and wealthy, he knew it all too well, and he was headed right for Rosamund. He stopped before her, struck his best pose, and in his suave Italian accent, he said, “Aaron, introduce me to the lovely signorina.”
No. I don’t want to.
“D’Alessandri. Good to see you. This is Dr. Rosamund Hall, daughter of the antiquities expert Dr. Elijah Hall and an antiquities expert in her own right.” Those credentials should be boring enough to send DeMonte fleeing.
Instead, DeMonte lifted her hand and kissed her fingers with all the elegance of his noble Florentine background. “Tell me I have met you in time. Tell me you are unwed.”
“No. No, I’m not married.” She tugged her hand free and pointed at the first spotlighted glass case. “Do you know what that is?”
Knocked off-balance by her blatant disinterest, D’Alessandri looked over his shoulder. “No. What?”
“It’s an Andrei Rublev Russian icon, fourteenth century, one of the finest I’ve ever seen.” Rosamund stepped around DeMonte and rushed toward the case. “I wonder how Mr. Fournier acquired it.”
Aaron chuckled at the sight of D’Alessandri’s face as Rosamund walked away from him without a backward glance.
That
would put the Italian Lothario firmly in his place.
Instead D’Alessandri hurried after her like a dog in heat. Aaron followed and arrived in time to hear him say, “It is a wonderful piece. Perhaps you could tell me what you know about it.”
Rosamund launched into a description of the Russian culture, the significance of the icons in Russian religion, and the meaning of this particular piece.
In normal circumstances, D’Alessandri would have fallen over in a stupor. Instead, he stood beside her, stared at her bosom, and made interested noises.
No. No, this wasn’t possible. Rosamund couldn’t be so enticing that shallow, frivolous DeMonte was willing to be bored to death for a chance at her.
It got worse. Three other guys—two married, one single, all horny bastards who couldn’t keep their hands to themselves—joined Rosamund and D’Alessandri at the case. Damn it all to hell. Rosamund was fulfilling every boy’s dream of uptight-and-sexy-as-hell librarian.
Thank God she was oblivious.
As she hurried from case to case, expounding on the antiquities she saw beneath the spotlights, Aaron knew he should be slipping into Fournier’s library, finding the manuscript, and “borrowing” it for the evening.
But the silly, vain, I’m-living-on-Daddy’s-money, worthless and wealthy society boys were listening to Rosamund. As if they were interested. When Aaron knew for a fact they were fighting to remain awake. If he left Rosamund alone, one of them would suggest that he knew where more antiquities were located. He’d lure her into some dark bedroom and try to . . . try to do what Aaron had tried to do on the drive over.
And she hadn’t finished with her orgasm! She was primed, ready for sex as provided by the right man.
Aaron was that man, damn it.
She used her clutch purse to gesture at her captive audience, then impatiently placed it on top of the case and kept talking.
It wasn’t her travel pack. It wasn’t hooked around her waist. She was going to forget about it. She was going to—
Just as he’d predicted, she wandered to the next case, leaving the purse behind.
He started forward, ready to leap to the rescue.
D’Alessandri beat him to it. He picked up the purse, pushed his way to Rosamund’s side, and offered it to her.
She took it, absently thanked him, and tucked it under her arm.
D’Alessandri laughed and spoke, then lifted his hand toward the lock of her hair that draped over her eye—and without knowing how he did it, Aaron had crossed the room and had D’Alessandri’s wrist in his hand. He locked eyes with the Italian and said, “Don’t . . . touch . . . her.”
He must have looked as if he meant business, because the Italian nodded. Just nodded. And when Aaron dropped his arm, he backed away, viewing Aaron the way a man would view a rabid grizzly bear.
Rosamund, being Rosamund, barely noticed that he’d made a royal fool of himself over her.
Taking the purse from her, he extracted the chain that served as a handle, threaded it up her arm, and rested it on her shoulder.
She frowned and pushed her hair out of her eyes again. “I’m not supposed to wear it that way because . . .” She squinted, trying to remember why.
“It’ll ruin the line of your jacket,” Aaron supplemented. “Better to ruin the line than to forget the purse.”
“Right. Thank you.” She lavished a smile on him, clutched his sleeve and asked, “Have you seen the Mycenaean knives in this case over here?”
“Very impressive. Go ahead and look.” Aaron let her and the little crowd around her wander away. He started to pull his handkerchief from his pocket and wipe his face, then remembered the scent that perfumed it and feared that if he smelled that fragrance, he’d start rampaging through the ballroom, using the Mycenaean knives to cut the throat of any man who dared look at Rosamund.

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