The Paris Assignment (5 page)

“Yes.”

His fingers returned to the sensitive skin of her wrist and he rubbed gently against the small space with the pad of his thumb. Desire wrapped around her with sly tendrils, soft fingers of need that beckoned her toward him. The urge to simply lean forward and kiss him—to find out if the strength she sensed in him would follow through to his ability to draw a response from her—had her nearly acting on the impulse.

In the split second between desire and action, the bar exploded in confusion. The heavy, unmistakable sound of a gunshot echoed through her ear as the window opposite them exploded into a million pieces.

Chapter 4

S
houts erupted through the bar as Campbell threw himself over Abby’s body. The soft velvet of the settee rubbed his cheek as he waited on that tender precipice between immediate action and a rational hesitance to see if there’d be another shot.

“Let me up.” She struggled underneath him, pushing at his shoulders as she used the silk of her dress to slide off the settee.

“Abby. Wait a minute.”

“Come on.” Her voice was distracted as she fumbled with her small clutch, dragging a dark clump of something squishy from its depths.

“What’s that?”

“More comfortable shoes.” She bit out the words as she switched out the sky-high heels on her feet for something that looked like ballet slippers. “Come on.”

With moves a sprinter would admire, she leaped through the broken window and was already weaving herself across traffic as she raced toward the park.

“Abby!” His voice echoed in his ears, still sensitized to the heavy gunshot, but she never turned as she raced past one of the horse-drawn carriages that rimmed Central Park.

The driver had his buggy whip extended, pointing toward a darkened path into the park as Campbell flew past him. “He went that way. And so did she!” the guy added for good measure.

Even if his hearing wasn’t functioning optimally, Campbell couldn’t have missed the body language if he’d tried.

Although she had the advantage of surprise and a good fifteen seconds on him, he gained on her with little effort, his six-foot-two-inch frame—most of which was legs—eating up the ground.

Without stopping, Campbell bypassed her and used his lead to follow a distant figure who darted in and out of the shadows up ahead.

The late hour ensured they didn’t meet too many people, but the gunman had time on his side. Every few yards, Campbell could have sworn he heard the pounding of feet, but the sounds were rapidly absorbed by the abundance of trees surrounding the path.

New Yorkers loved their park for its capacity to drown out the sounds of the city but it was that same ability that finally had Campbell ending the foot race.

“Is he gone?” Abby’s breathless voice assaulted him from behind as she drew up to his side.

“Yeah.” Frustration and anger built in his chest before it burst forth at a handy target. “What the hell were you thinking?”

“What?”

Adrenaline added its powerful punch to the mix and he hauled her up against his side, the urge to protect overpowering the barely veiled urge to shake some sense into her. “Running off like that. After some bastard who’d just fired a damn gun on you.”

“I told you. I’m not a victim.”

“You’re damn well going to be if you go chasing off after armed men.”

The absolute lack of apology in her upturned face had a renewed wave of irritation flooding his veins before it was replaced with the fleeting thought that the woman was a formidable opponent.

And altogether too sexy for her own good.

Awareness sparked in the dark depths of her eyes as she stepped back, the sudden shift between them heady and immediate.

His gaze dropped to the rest of her body. The silly slippers—and who carried slippers in their purse?—still covered her feet, capping off a pair of spectacular legs.

“Where’d you get that sort of jump? And how does a CEO get legs like those? I suppose I didn’t miss the mark earlier when I called you a runner?”

“Three miles a day since I was fifteen. Five on Saturday and Sunday.” Pride steeped her tone, but something else hovered underneath it. Was it a light sheen of regret? No, he quickly amended as he hit on the answer. That tone held the distinct notes of sadness.

“Well, it clearly does a body good. I knew your legs were spectacular, but watching them eat up the ground was an altogether invigorating experience.”

“Thanks. I think.”

“Oh, no, thank you.” He reached for her hand to pull her back along the same path they’d raced over in pursuit of their quarry. “So why does all that running make you sad?”

The slim shoulders underneath his arm stiffened but she continued moving forward without the slightest hitch in her step. “Running gives you endorphins. You can’t be sad with endorphins.”

“Could have fooled me.” He glanced down at her profile where she stared straight ahead, the park lamps lighting the outline of her face.

Police lights were visible in the distance—no doubt already parked in front of the bar securing statements from witnesses—and Campbell wanted to avoid them altogether. “Were you all that fond of those stilts you wore tonight?”

“My shoes? Of course I’m fond of them. They were part of this year’s fall collection from my favorite designer and tonight was the first time I wore them.”

He let out a long-suffering sigh. “Deliver me from women and their shoes.”

“You asked.”

“I need you to give them up to the cause.”

“What cause? Those are really fabulous shoes.”

“Fleeing the scene of the crime. Let’s avoid the bar and exit out of the park onto Fifth in front of the Plaza.”

Her gaze alighted on the flashing lights and he heard the ready agreement in her town. “Those shoes are a small price to pay for avoiding suspicion and wasting several hours neither of us has. Besides, we’ll let them be a reward for some poor woman who doesn’t get to escape our fate and has to sit and answer questions for the next three hours.”

“That’s my good little CEO. Altruistic yet crafty. It’s an admirable combination.”

Her smile was bright under the streetlamps as she stared up at him. “You ain’t seen nothing yet.”

* * *

Whatever impression she’d had of Campbell Steele at three o’clock that afternoon had been turned on its ear more times than she could count in the ensuing eight hours. From the earnest and somewhat playful computer geek to society rogue and seducer to predator after its prey, Campbell had shown an endless array of facets.

Abby suspected it was what made him so good at his job. She also suspected it was part of a bigger personality trait.

The effortless ability to fit into any situation all the while leaving nothing of himself behind.

Although she’d never met him before today, she knew the rest of Kensington’s family. Liam was the oldest, Kensington and Rowan the two younger girls and Campbell took the spot above them. An older brother and younger brother, all at the same time.

It was an interesting position, she mused, to have both familial leadership while never being the true top dog. If her observations through the years were correct, the Steele siblings were each other’s fiercest champions and most wicked adversaries.

And they all had a bond that went well beyond mere family ties when they’d all borne the horrible price of losing their parents at a young age. Whatever the Steele siblings might have been, the death of their parents had the strange consequence of pulling them close while driving an inconsolable wedge of resentment that split them into four equal parts.

They each had a mysterious ability to stand out all while morphing into whatever image the viewer wanted to make of them and Abby suspected it was a skill they’d first honed with each other.

She’d certainly seen Kenzi do it time and again at school. The shy debutante their freshman year at Radcliffe. The daring bad girl who knew how to secure cigarettes and liquor every weekend. The sexual temptress who drove the boys crazy with interest.

All were her yet, Abby had always thought, none were her.

And it seemed as if her brother had the same trait in spades.

“Why do you think I’m sad?”

“I read people, Abby. And I know how to look beneath the surface. It’s what I do.”

A heavy laugh leaped to her lips, unbidden. “It’s widely believed I have no depths at all. Many an article have suggested it’s the loss of my mother at a very early age, the loss of my father early in my tenure at the company and ‘my sharp mind coupled with a tireless drive to succeed’ that have made me a cool, aloof, somewhat soulless leader who doesn’t suffer fools.”

“Why suffer fools?”

She wrapped her shawl around her shoulders, surprised the thin cashmere had made the rough-and-tumble journey. She’d had the material fisted in her hands with the clutch and it was amusing to realize she still held both. “Exactly.”

“But I don’t think it’s those fools who make you sad when you run.”

He settled his hand on her back, the heat of his fingers warming her in the evening breeze of early fall. Although the thin shawl had cut the breeze, Campbell’s hand brought the true warmth.

“It’s my mother. She’s why I’m sad when I run.”

He moved his hand in simple, even strokes along her spine, the light touch conveying any number of thoughts without words.

Support.

Understanding.

Comfort.

“She died when I was little. I barely even remember her, truth be told. But several years after her death my father was remarried for a few years.”

“Stepmonster?”

“Pretty much. Add on, she was my stepmonster for those delightful years between thirteen and seventeen and you have a recipe for disaster.”

“Only four years?”

“She and my father couldn’t stand each other much past that.”

He nodded but avoided the usual platitudes she’d grown used to hearing about the perils of a “trophy wife.” “So what happened?”

“I’d put on weight going through puberty and was a bit chunky by fifteen. At that time I’d also developed quite the vocabulary and was openly defiant to said stepmonster and what I believed was her love of my father’s bank account.”

Abby mulled over the right words, suddenly feeling as clumsy as she did that terrible, awkward summer.

“I also had an unrequited love that took up every ounce of my time, energy and a mountain of tears sobbing that his feelings weren’t the same.”

“Love and loss in the American high school. I had a few of those myself.”

“You? Campbell Steele of the legendary Steele family? Grandchild of one of Britain’s most famous parliamentarians and a regular attendee of garden parties at Buckingham Palace?”

He snorted at that. “Like I’d have told anyone I attended garden parties. Besides, I was a beanpole for all four years of high school. Why else would I like computers so much?”

“Ah, yes. It’s almost Dickensian in its simplicity. Our greatest sorrow leads to our deepest joy.”

“Something like that. Of course, this beanpole became rather popular junior year when he hacked into the school’s computers and changed a grade for a poor beleaguered cheerleader.”

“You did not.”

“I most certainly did. It was my first glorious foray into hacking and, to be fair, her D in chemistry wasn’t deserved. But this story isn’t about me. Back to that unrequited love.”

“Gina and I had been fighting pretty much every day at that point. And I was invited to a party where said unrequited love was sure to be in attendance. She bought me an outfit for the event. Something that was intentionally unflattering and I didn’t realize it until I got there.”

“You didn’t put it on ahead of time?”

Even now, more than a decade and a half later, Abby remembered that moment. The sheer panic of being caught off guard. And the absolute pain of being found lacking. “It was a slumber party for the girls and we were getting our nails and hair done during the day. So she packed my bag and I wore jeans and a T-shirt for the prep.”

“And it was only when you got to the party that you realized the outfit didn’t fit.”

“Exactly. We fought about it later and she point-blank admitted to doing it. Said I needed to learn a lesson.”

“Hardly.” The word dripped with anger, matching the stiff set of his body. “You were a child and that wasn’t a lesson anyone needs to learn.”

“On her best days, Gina was never going to make stepmother of the year, but that one was particularly bad, even for her. So the next morning, I walked to the park and started running. I’ve never looked back.”

Abby knew she’d lucked out. Gina’s intentions had been cruel, but she could have ended up with an eating disorder. Instead, she’d simply learned to channel her pain and anger into something more productive, allowing her body to grow stronger as the distance between her and her father grew larger.

“So why are you still sad?”

“I started running with the intention of losing weight and that part came rather quickly.”

“But?”

“The lost pounds were only a side benefit. No matter how many miles I run, I always come back to the same set of problems.”

“They don’t go away, no matter how far we run. They just hang around until we deal with them.”

The comprehension in his gaze caught her up short and again, she saw a real understanding in those blue depths. While she knew she wasn’t the only one who’d dealt with grief in her life—and diligently fought the urge in her quiet moments of solitude to give in to feelings of gloom or self-pity—Abby also knew few people were without both parents in their early thirties.

Yet here they both were, in the same position.

It was a strange bond, but it was one all the same.

And no matter how she fought the moments of self-pity, she also knew she lived with the very real circumstance that she didn’t have a parent to fall back on. A listening ear who was absolutely and completely on her side.

The press was fond of calling her a soulless leader, but she knew better.

When she walked into a boardroom, she was alone. When she traveled, she was alone. And when she went home at night, she was alone.

So why couldn’t she shake the feeling, staring into Campbell Steele’s eyes, that she wasn’t quite so alone anymore?

* * *

The gunman moved through a darkened path in Central Park, the smell of fall in the air on the late-September evening as the distant whir of police sirens pulsed in the distance. The job had been an easy one—he was meant to cause confusion, but no real harm.

The chase was as unexpected as it was exhilarating.

As jobs went, he’d taken this for the pay, but knew full well the purposeful lack of action was a disappointing detail he’d have to accept.

The fact the hellcat gave chase was almost too delicious for words. Add on the unexpected new boyfriend and nothing about this job had gone quite like he’d planned.