the doors only that kind of money opens?”
Her lashes lowered before rising to strike him with a flash of azure. “I sort of...crashed my way into that.”
His simmering blood tumbled in a boil. “So you’re still using your old tried-and-true methods.”
“Why change what works?” Suddenly her expression became distant, as if reversing into the past to the crash she’d manufactured to enter his life. “It was a different sort of crash.” Her eyes refocused on him, resumed being supremely placid. “Even if just as effective. But though I put your money to the best use possible, alas, the Midas touch that turns millions into ever-increasing billions remains firmly yours.”
Teeth gritting, he bunched hands stinging with the need to grab her again at his sides. “You seem very much at ease with divulging your machinations and secrets now.”
A graceful shoulder rose in an easy shrug. “You already found me out. And I’m still waiting to hear how you did.”
“It was your eyes.”
Those eyes filled with mock reprimand. “They were what I worked on most, so I’m pretty sure they’re unrecognizable.”
“I recognized the color.”
“You can’t possibly have recognized me from just that.”
“It’s a unique color, and changes hue in as unique a way. I used to be fascinated by its fluctuations, thought they corresponded to shifts in your emotions. Then I found out you have none, and those were just a response to variations in lighting.”
A still moment, then a tinge of sarcasm entered those eyes that were totally different, yet, to him, somehow exactly the same. “Are you telling me I owe being exposed to a fixation you had with my eye color and some trick of light I wasn’t even aware of? And you’re sticking with that story?”
“I felt you.”
His hiss wiped the provocation off her face. She’d cornered him into admitting her relentless hold over him, and that even without evidence, he’d always know her.
Now that the admission was out, he might as well go all the way. “I felt you before I turned to see you on Hiro’s arm. Not even millions of dollars’ worth of permanent disguise was able to wipe off the inimitable imprint you left on my senses.” He cocked his head, his gaze spearing hers. “How about that story? You find it more plausible? More satisfactory?”
Her gaze had emptied, and now her voice followed suit. “I had no idea I’d left such an indelible mark. It’s why I thought it okay to come here tonight. I thought there was no danger you’d sense the least familiarity, let alone recognize me outright. I met many people who knew me well in my previous...incarnations, and none even felt any vague resemblance.”
“I’m not ‘people.’”
Her nod conceded that. “I know in your previous incarnation you were said to have senses so acute, it made you a ninja in a class of your own. I couldn’t tell if those reports were exaggerations. Now I know they weren’t.”
“You had reason to believe they were outright lies, with the way said senses were disabled around you. I had no inkling of your deceit for five straight months of ultimate intimacy.”
Her fixed glance remained unchanged as her head tilted to one side, sending the curtain of her loose silk curls swishing over her polished shoulder. “Speaking of that, I always wondered what finally gave me away that time.”
He was damned if he’d give her the satisfaction, and the security, of knowing it had been total chance that had finally alerted him, and not his allegedly infallible abilities.
“You want to find out so you’ll never repeat the lapse, hone your deception powers to perfection? Sorry, you’ll have to keep on wondering. And worrying.”
“Oh, I never worry. Even in the rare times I slip up, I always manage to compensate. As I did when I preempted you.”
How she’d realized he’d found her out back then had remained a major question mark. Needing an answer to it had even outstripped his need to find his lineage in the past years.
Wrestling with the urge to pounce on her and force her to tell him now, he tried to match her nonchalance. “And now? How will you preempt me this time?”
A sigh accompanied a regretful shake of that elegant head. “It really would have been better for everyone if you didn’t recognize me.”
“Everyone meaning you.”
“Everyone meaning everyone. Starting by you.”
A vicious huff crackled from his depths. “You’re implying knowing your real identity poses danger to me, too?”
“It poses danger to you...only.” Before he processed that outrageous statement, she added, “And you don’t know my real identity.”
Giving in, he obliterated the distance he’d put between them. He needed a physical reinforcement of his dominance, feeling he was on the losing side of this confrontation.
He regretted it the moment he drew his next breath. Though she’d been so thorough in her disguise to the point of changing the soap and perfume she’d used before, her own scent deluged him, even through the masking of new adornments. Hot, vital, intoxicating. The exact bouquet that had been the only one to activate his libido.
Glaring down at her, as if it would shift the balance of power in his favor, he said, “I know this one is fabricated. As was the one before it. Which should be enough. So explain to me how this knowledge, when it’s clearly a secret you’ve kept from everyone here, wouldn’t impact you.”
“It would cause me intense inconvenience. But it’s you who stands to suffer major damage if you expose me.” Before he scoffed at that preposterous declaration, she asked, “But really, why would you want to expose me at all?”
“To stop you from setting Hiro up.”
After a moment, when it looked as if she didn’t get his meaning, incredulity coated her face. “What makes you think I’m doing any such thing? Because you consider I set you up?”
“And you don’t? What do you call what you did to me?” He waved, stopping any argument in its tracks. Haggling over facts turned them into points of view that could be contested and rewritten. And he was damned if he’d let her do that. “Whatever you’re doing, it’s criminal.”
“Because I’m withholding my real identity? Pot calling the kettle black much?” Her full lips twisted. “And if you’re citing my past actions in your unsubstantiated accusations, I did nothing criminal with you. I actually...helped you.”
It was his turn to cough in disbelief. “Sure, by systematically deceiving me for five months, then leaving a fifty-million-dollar gaping hole in my liquid assets. I bet that’s every man’s idea of ‘help.’”
“It isn’t a crime to con a con man. I was sent to expose an assassin who was posing as a squeaky-clean businessman. The only crimes were in your past, not mine.”
He
