LITMIR.BIZ

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fight? You tell me you want to bring the Russian bear to its knees, yet you were born in America.”

      Zukah spoke urgently, the soft sibilant accent of his home-land making it hard to follow. “The Cold War is over and those two old enemies are already swapping pillow talk. I would be a fool to take you at face value.”

      Mac’s tempered flared; though he kept his voice low, it sounded harsh, in keeping with the role he’d taken on. “When you were selling guns, did you always ask who your customer was going to shoot with them?”

      Mac had learned to be particular about his cover story, to fit into the skin of the character. Lip curling, he asked, “In your small conflicted world, did you ever hear of Grozny?”

      Zukah gave him a blank stare, but Mac noticed one of his men nod as if remembering the siege.

      Mac’s nose flared as he looked down on the Algerian. Zukah had a lot of native cunning but obviously wasn’t interested in events that didn’t affect him personally.

      “Not that it’s any of your damn business, but my mother’s family were there. Not one of them survived the siege.” A single step brought Mac chest-to-chest with Zukah. “So, you might say I have a large stake in acquiring that weapon.”

      It was a one-sided pissing match with only Mac speaking, but he continued, “And before you sell to someone else, it would be in your best interest to discover the punishments we mete out to those who cross us Chechens.”

      The uncomprehending expression reminded Mac that a threat was redundant if the one being menaced lived in blissful ignorance, but the same guy shifted his feet as if in discomfort.

      Mac reckoned it would pay to remember which one could be more easily unsettled, anything that gave him an edge.

      Not to be outdone, the Algerian blustered, “And we have to be sure of your—” All at once Zukah broke off and as one their heads turned in the direction of the swift footsteps outside.

      Mac spat out a curse and cast a murderous glance toward the door, wondering what else could go wrong. “If this is another trick, Zukah, it doesn’t sit at all well with me, so be warned.”

      It was silent as Roxie crossed the landing, as if someone had turned the sound down on a TV. Roxie put her ear close to the door and heard nothing. Not a sound.

      It could be the wrong apartment.

      She knocked lightly. Nothing.

      About to reach for the handle, she hesitated, thinking it could be very awkward if she was wrong. Then told herself, don’t be a coward. All you have to say is you’re looking for Madame Billaud, the seamstress who’s doing some specialized work for Charles Fortier, the couturier.

      Everyone had heard of Charles.

      Yes, if she made a mistake, she would simply ask them to redirect her. She tried the handle.

      The door to the apartment opened easily. She took a deep breath and called loudly, “Bon soir. C’est Roxie….”

      The rest of her announcement stuttered to a halt in the face of a deadly looking gun. She blinked in the bright lights for a few seconds, and still none of the men facing her spoke a word.

      It was she who broke the ominous silence by blurting out, “Bloody hell!” in English, the second of the languages she’d grown up speaking.

      The gun never wavered an inch.

      Not even when the thin, hollow-cheeked man grabbed the shoulder she was desperately trying to ease back through the open door. He pulled her into the room.

      Her eyes winced at the sudden transition from dark to light. But all the same, it looked as if she’d stumbled into the middle of a home invasion.

      Four strange men and one solitary woman. Latent instincts stirred in her brain, telling her that the danger she felt could come from more than just a gun.

      Chapter 2

      At first, Roxie’s shocked eyes merely grazed the others in the room. Now her gaze lit on the largest man, who held it with the fierce, glittering-gold intensity of his own.

      She drew a shuddering breath to still the mind-numbing fear crawling under her skin.

      The Kincaid family never showed weakness, and Grandmère had bred strong women. Yet she doubted if they’d ever met anyone like the huge, broad-shouldered man dominating the others.

      Not with physical force, but by the leashed power of his expression and the glittering light in his eyes.

      Consumed by a frantic need for survival, she latched onto the notion that this was the man to deal with. The one who could mend the faux pas she’d made by barging in without permission.

      Might this be the time to mention her muddle with the directions?

      As though in a dream, she watched the big man’s lips purse, a wry expression softening the sharp angles of ruggedly blocked features. Handsome features.

      She felt hypnotized, compelled to react, though her intense response to the fiery shimmer in his eyes lost its impact when she felt the thin guy holding the gun tighten his grip on her.

      It was as if she was caught in limbo, between sheer unadulterated terror and bewilderment. Pick one.

      Her intuition told her it was entirely reasonable to expect the big guy to take her fear in the palm of one large hand and crush it into extinction.

      But what did he want, expect, from her in return?

      Yet, he was the antithesis of everything she’d built her career around. Miles away from the tailoring that made her designs work and had caught Charles’s eye at her grandmother’s funeral.

      Madame Fortier accompanied Charles to Père-Lachaise, the old Paris cemetery where Grandmère had been buried. It was then Roxie discovered that Grandmère and Charles’s mother went way back, even before they fought together in the French Resistance.

      That meeting had changed Roxie’s life.

      And though she had left the London School of Design for Charles’s workroom to a chorus of it’s-not-what-you-know-it’s-who, Grandmère had brought her up to be practical, not stupid.

      A survival trait she’d always managed to adhere to until now. She stared at the guy with slicked-back hair, designer stubble and a black leather jacket that shouted “Biker!”

      She must be mad. Her normal reaction would be to run a mile, not beg for this huge stranger’s help.

      “Roxie.” When he spoke, none of the softness she had noticed before lingered in the rasp of his voice, but he knew her name!

      It took a second to remember he’d heard her call out.

      “Didn’t I tell you I would be out tonight and not to bother me?” Once he’d spoken her name, each dry consonant that followed cut her hopes into rags with the sharpness of a knife.

      Through the mists of apprehension clouding her mind, she perceived he expected something in return for the verbal lifeline he had thrown her…but what?

      She metaphorically reached out with trembling hands, certain beyond all reason that her future depended on her response. “I saw the light from the courtyard…and, I thought…that, well I would surprise you.”

      He strode lazily toward her, as she desperately tried not to cower while watching him pocket a gun that hadn’t registered with her before.

      And though her every instinct screamed it was a bad move, her hand flew to her lips as her stomach somersaulted nearer to her mouth.

      Behind him, the narrowest hand on the utilitarian clock counted out what might be the last seconds of her life.

      His long legs covered the distance in half the steps it would have taken her. But she wasn’t fooled by the perception of indolence; this big man was more dangerous

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