the bar and weights slowly to his chest, Sam pumped it upward again. The repetitive motion should have soothed, but only proved to be a strenuous metronome to his thoughts. His greatest strength as an agent lay in the fact that he didn’t grow confused by the shadowy areas his job strayed into. Honor was more than a code to him; it was a way of life. It allowed him to see black and whites where other agents saw murky shades of gray. Involving Juliette Morrow in this assignment wasn’t going to change that.
It wouldn’t be allowed to.
Chapter 2
Juliette entered her home with all the stealth of the thief Sam Tremaine had accused her of being. It wasn’t until she’d closed her bedroom door behind her that she let her temper flare. She snatched the hairbrush from her dressing table and hurled it toward her bed.
Damnez-l’à l’enfer! Damn damn damn him to hell!
Her comb went the way of the brush, followed by a carved teak pin box and an antique pill bottle. Breathing heavily, she fisted her hands at her sides. If Tremaine had been standing in front of her, she’d have taken great satisfaction in landing a sucker punch right on his sexily dented chin.
She whirled toward the dressing table to search for another missile and stopped short when she saw the figure standing in her bedroom doorway.
“Well, darling, it’s been a while since I’ve seen you throw a tantrum like that.” Pauline Fontaine strolled casually into the room, wearing an elegant dressing gown. Even at eighty, her posture was straight, her movements graceful. Age, Pauline was fond of saying, couldn’t negate breeding. “Don’t tell me Lockhart beat you to that Monet you had your eye on?”
“No, of course not. Lockhart lacks the imagination and the cunning. I’m sorry, Grandmama.” Guilt pushed temper aside as Juliette went to her grandmother. “I didn’t mean to wake you.”
“You didn’t, child. I wasn’t asleep, and thought I’d check to see if you’d returned yet. And you have, obviously.” A smile tugged at the older woman’s lips. “Mind telling me what, or who, has gotten you in such a snit?”
“I’m not in a snit, I’m seriously pissed off.” Juliette gave her grandmother a hug and ignored her sound of dismay at her choice of words. “I met a man tonight, and…” She stopped, and moved away from the older woman while she decided how much to tell her. Her grandmother’s advanced years had weakened her heart, if not her iron will. There was no use burdening her with details that she would only fret over.
“A man?” By her delighted tone, it was plain that Pauline had been successfully distracted. “Tell me about him. He must be unique, indeed, to have drawn this level of emotion from my cool, collected granddaughter.”
“Unique?” Juliette gave a short laugh, and turned to pace. “You could say that. There’s certainly nothing ordinary about Sam Tremaine.” He’d caught her attention the moment he’d made his entrance. Other women this evening had sent not-so-subtle admiring gazes his way, drawn no doubt by his bright shock of short blond hair, that angular poet’s face, his wicked green eyes. But it hadn’t been his looks that had elicited her immediate instinctive reaction. It had been the danger he’d radiated.
It would have been hard to miss. He projected an aura of power, partially glossed beneath a suave handsome presence, but there, nonetheless. The elegant black tux should have contained the shimmer of menace that surrounded him, but had only showcased it. She’d spent the evening hoping that the threat she sensed from him was purely masculine. Discovering otherwise was as much a slap at her femininity as it was to her safety.
“So. Tell me more about this not-ordinary-at-all man.”
Startled, Juliette looked back over her shoulder. She’d almost forgotten her grandmother’s presence in the room. “He’s an American. A lawyer, he says.” Aware of the agitation in her movements, she slowed, walked to the bed to retrieve the things she’d thrown.
“You say that as though you don’t believe it.”
“I believe he’s more.” Crossing to the dressing table, she replaced the items neatly on its surface. She looked in the mirror to see her grandmother had followed her, and their gazes met. “He might pose a small problem for us.”
“What kind of problem?”
“He seems to think he has discovered le petit voleur’s identity.”
Pauline said nothing for a moment. Then she sighed. “Ah.”
“He has nothing but supposition to go on, of course.” She was banking a great deal on that. But she didn’t need to tell her grandmother how serious it would be if even a breath of his suspicion made its way to the local police.
“Does he represent law enforcement? Insurance?”
Juliette reached up and began taking the pins from her hair. She always thought best when her hands were occupied. “I’m not sure.” She wasn’t in the mood to mention that her attempt to answer that question for herself had met with failure. The memory still stung. “I don’t think so. He offered me a job.”
“You don’t think Jacques might have sent him to you?”
She shook her head, and the hair she’d released tumbled past her shoulders. “Jacques would have informed me beforehand. And Tremaine didn’t reach that conclusion about my identity based on anything Jacques would have told him.” Dropping the last of the pins on the dresser, she pushed her hands into her hair, shook it out. “At any rate, I think it would be best to remain inactive for a while. At least until I can gather some more information on Tremaine and what he’s trying to accomplish.”
“That’s not acceptable. We can’t afford to deviate from our time line.” Pauline’s voice was implacable, as it always was when this subject was discussed. “One doesn’t duck in the face of obstacles, one finds a way around them.”
Her vehemence drew a half smile from her granddaughter. “You’re not fighting the Resistance anymore, Grandmama. A slight delay in any step of our plan isn’t a matter of life or death.”
Her teasing failed to soften the woman’s attitude. Steely-eyed she retorted, “No, but it is a matter of honor. I know I don’t have to remind you of that.”
The words raked at old wounds, renewed their throb. No, she didn’t need her grandmother’s words to remember. The specters that haunted her dreams were reminder enough. Taking a deep breath, she dodged the emotions that threatened to surface and reached for logic. Part of the woman’s adamance came from a fear she’d never live to see fruition of the goal they’d worked toward for so long. But analyzing the risks of each job was Juliette’s job. It wouldn’t do to become careless now.
“I can’t stick too closely to our schedule. I don’t know how much information he has on my activities.” Just hearing the words out loud was infuriating. She’d come much too far to allow a mere man to interfere with her plans. And there was more than a little ego at stake, as well. If Sam Tremaine thought he could rattle her so easily, he hadn’t discovered as much about her as he’d claimed.
A tiny smile crossed her lips as a strategy began to form in her mind. She’d spent the past decade learning how to create illusions. The game plan this time called for nothing more sophisticated than the old bait-and-switch. And when le petit voleur struck elsewhere while Juliette was still in Paris, Tremaine
