LITMIR.BIZ

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of the hour. Never for any other reason. She had her apartment. He had his. That was the way he liked it, always, no matter how long an affair lasted. Too much togetherness, no matter how good the sex, invariably led to familiarity and familiarity led to boredom.

      That last time, he’d left her bed on a Friday night, flown to the West Coast on business. And when he’d returned to New York a week later, she was gone. So was the ten million, embezzled from the investment firm he’d built into a worldwide power.

      Embezzled from an account inaccessible to anyone but him.

      Salim took a long drink of the brandy, turned and walked slowly to the wall of glass. The snow had eased; the hawk was still perched on the parapet, motionless except for the slight ruffling of its brown, gray and amber feathers.

      Ten million dollars, none of it found or recovered. The woman who’d stolen it had not been found, either. But she would be. Oh, yes, she would be, and very soon.

      It was all he’d been able to think about today, after the call from the private detective he’d hired after the police and the FBI had proven useless. It was all he could think about now, as he waited for the man to arrive.

      Five months. Twenty weeks. One hundred and forty-something days…and now, finally, he would get what he hungered for, an old concept his ancestors would surely have approved.

      Vengeance.

      Another swallow of brandy. It left a trail of smooth flame as it went down his throat but the truth was, nothing could warm him. Not anymore. Not until he finished what had begun last summer, when he’d taken Grace Hudson as his mistress.

      Nothing unusual in that.

      He was male, he was in his sexual prime, he was—why be foolishly modest?—he was a man who’d never had to go searching for women. They’d discovered him at sixteen, back home in Senahdar; if he’d been without a woman at any time since, it had been by choice, not necessity.

      It was his selection of Grace as his mistress that had been unusual.

      The women he took as lovers were invariably beautiful. He especially liked petite brunettes. They were also invariably charming. Why shouldn’t a woman go out of her way to please a man? He was modern; he had been educated in the States but tradition was tradition and a woman who knew that it was important to cater to a man’s wishes was a woman capable of holding a man’s interest.

      Grace had been none of those things.

      She was tall. Five-eight, five-nine—still only up to his shoulder, even in the stiletto heels she favored, but there was no way one would describe her as “petite.”

      Her hair was not dark—it was tawny. The first time he’d seen her, his fingers had ached to take the pins from it and let it down and when, finally, he had, she had reminded him of a magnificent lioness.

      As for going out of her way to please a man…She didn’t go out of her way to please anyone. She was polite, well-spoken, but she was as direct as any man Salim had ever known. She had opinions on everything and never hesitated to state them.

      She was a beautiful, enigmatic challenge. Not once had she sent out the signals women did when they were interested in a man.

      Now, of course, he knew the reason. She’d been plotting from the start, cleverly baiting the trap. He hadn’t seen it. He’d only seen that she was different.

      Salim’s jaw tightened.

      Damned right, she was different.

      She’d worked for him.

      He never mixed business with pleasure. You didn’t work and play in the same place. If you did, it was a surefire prescription for trouble. He’d always known that.

      An unexpected event had brought her into his life. His chief financial officer—a staid, almost dour bachelor with a comb-over, thick glasses and no sense of humor—had stumbled into a midlife crisis that involved a bottle blonde and a Porsche. One day, the man was at his desk. The next, he was living with Blondie in a Miami condo.

      Everyone had laughed.

      “Lost his marbles over a babe,” Salim had heard someone say. He’d chuckled right along with everyone else but the situation was serious. They needed a replacement, and quickly. Salim did what was logical, promoted the assistant CFO, Thomas Shipley, to the top job.

      That left another hole in the organizational chart. Now his new CFO needed an assistant.

      “Dominoes,” the new CFO said with an apologetic shrug, but Salim knew it was the truth. He told him to hire someone. Such a simple thing. Such a damned simple thing…

      Hell. The brandy snifter was empty again. Salim went to the bar and refilled it. Where was the detective? Their appointment was for four-thirty. He looked at his watch. It was barely four. His impatience was getting to him.

      Calm down, he told himself. He had waited this long; he could wait just a little longer.

      Outside, the long darkness of the winter night was setting in; it was time to switch on the lights, but darkness better suited his mood.

      Every detail of what had happened after he’d told his new CFO to hire an assistant remained vivid, including the moment two weeks later when Shipley stepped into his office.

      “Good news,” he’d said. “I’ve found three candidates. Any of them would be an excellent choice.”

      Salim was in the midst of a deal that involved a billion dollar takeover. He had no time for anything else.

      “Why tell me?” he’d said brusquely. “Select one.”

      Shipley had demurred. “I’m new,” he’d said, “and this assistant will be new, too. I’d rather not take complete responsibility, sir. I think you should make the final decision.”

      Salim had grumbled, but he knew Shipley was right. Alhandra Investments was, to use American parlance, his baby. He had founded it; he ran it. He granted his people full authority but he always made it clear he was to be kept in the loop and the loop he was dangling now would require working closely with his new assistant CFO.

      He met with the three candidates the next day. They all had excellent CVs but the résumé of one was outstanding.

      There was only one drawback.

      She was a woman.

      A woman, as assistant CFO? He was not biased against women—of course, he wasn’t—but, really, how capable could a woman be when it came to the intricacies of corporate finance?

      Extremely capable, as it turned out.

      Grace Hudson had degrees from Cornell and Stanford. She had worked for two of the best firms on Wall Street. She was articulate, knowledgeable, and if she was also the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen, what did that matter?

      Her manner was polite but reserved. So was his. There was that thing about never mixing business with pleasure and, besides, she wasn’t his type.

      The fact that the huskiness of her voice haunted his dreams that night, that he found himself wondering what she’d look like with that mass of tawny curls loose about her heart-shaped face, that during the interview he’d had one incredible instant wondering what she had on beneath her black Armani suit…

      Not important, any of it. He told himself that, and he hired her.

      Three months later, he bedded her.

      It had been a Friday evening. They’d been working late, he offered her a ride home. She lived in Soho; he mentioned he’d been invited to a gallery showing in her neighborhood on Sunday. Would she like to go with him? He had not meant to make the suggestion but once he did, he told himself it was too late to rescind it. When she hesitated, he made a joke about how awful these things usually were and how she could save him from dying of boredom if she said “yes.”

      She laughed, said well, okay, why not? They exchanged

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