new sensation and quite unpleasant. She rose, steadying herself against the shock with the chair arm. No one called her that, not anymore, and even those who had were a precious few. She’d long suspected even death couldn’t defeat him and that someday he would find her, although she rationally knew that to be impossible. Yet, here he was: her one temptation. Ronan St. Simon, spymaster extraordinaire, standing in her parlor looking as virile and as lethal as ever, topaz eyes agleam, dark hair sleek.
There was a small gun in the drawer of the sideboard under the window, just a few steps from her if she could reach it. It would be enough to scare, to wound. First she had to protect Mary. It was a lesson one learned early if one wanted a fair fight: rid the environs of innocents, don’t give the opposition anything to hold against you. “Mary, you may leave us, it’s all right.”
“Is it all right?” St. Simon asked with a sardonic smile that showed off even, white teeth. His gaze followed her. She was well aware he was laughing at her as much with his eyes as with his mouth. He knew he had her at a disadvantage, the element of complete and utter surprise working quite nicely in his favor. “You look as if you’ve seen a ghost.”
“Maybe I have. You are supposed to be dead.” Very dead. The last time she’d seen Ronan St. Simon, he’d been gloriously alive, waltzing an ambassador’s daughter across a ballroom in Vienna just moments before the debacle that claimed the lives of the others, victims of a traitor’s deal. The events of that night had sent her scurrying into the anonymity of her last transformation, and him ostensibly to the grave. Elementary logic suggested otherwise. Dead people weren’t darkly handsome men sporting thin white scars along their jawlines or burning holes through a woman’s clothes with intense golden-brown eyes that rivaled a tiger’s.
Everything about this man spoke of life and vitality, from the sleek dark hair worn long and pulled back by a leather thong to the broad shoulders dressed in blue superfine to the strong thighs encased in buff breeches that disappeared into high-polished Hoby’s. Alive, well and wealthy. Such a look did not come cheaply or without suspicion.
Lucia reached the sideboard. She turned and faced him, her hands frantically working the drawer at her back. He’d clearly come out of the disaster five years ago relatively unscathed. It occurred to her there might be a reason for that, a bad reason. Had he been the one? Did that explain his survival? Was he here now to finish the job? Most of all, how had he found her? Granted, it had taken five years. But still... The drawer gave and she knew a moment’s relief as her hand closed over cool steel.
The relief was short-lived. The sharp metal of a blade flashed in his hand, retrieved from some secret sheath in his sleeve. He’d been ready for her. “It seems rumor has played us both false. I am supposed to be dead, and you are supposed to be better than that.” The hand holding the knife made a little gesture toward the drawer. “Stop trying to retrieve the gun you obviously have in there. You’d never get a shot off in time.”
Ronan St. Simon took a casual seat in the other chair, a straight-backed affair without arms. He crossed a booted leg over his knee in a pose of supreme confidence—supreme confidence she wouldn’t shoot. Well, she’d be the judge of that. She might shoot yet. “Besides, La Mariposa, I assure you, you don’t want me dead.”
Lucia pulled the gun anyway in a fast, fluid gesture that saw it emerge in the palm of her hand. Her heart hammered in her chest. “I would settle for just wounded.” He’d always been able to make her pulse race. Did he know how he affected her still? His very appeal always made him dangerous to her. What could he possibly want now that so much time had passed?
St. Simon slid the knife back up his sleeve in a gesture of truce, a gesture she did not care to mimic. Unarmed in this man’s presence was as good as dead. Perhaps that was how he’d managed it with the others years ago.
He shrugged, unconcerned about the gun aimed at him. “Does that mean the lover option is off the table?”
She waved the weapon, wishing it was more intimidating. “Yes, definitely off the table. Say what you’ve come to say and get out.”
He leaned back in the chair with a chuckle, his tiger eyes giving her a slow, intimate perusal. “Off the table for now,” he corrected. “Although once you’ve heard what I’ve come to say, you are welcome to change your mind.”
Chapter 2
It was an old trick, using information to stop a bullet. Ronan sat back in his chair, relishing the victory. La Mariposa was his for the moment. He was safe from her little gun as long as he knew something she valued. “As you can see, I am very much alive and well, as are you. I am here to see we both remain that way.” His last sentence was a tantalizing carrot, the temptation of secret information to be imparted with the call to self-preservation. Another old trick and just as hard to resist.
She watched him warily through narrowed, sharp green eyes, not daring to sit down and join him or lower her weapon. He had caught her at unawares once. She would not give him the chance to do so again.
“I mean you no harm. I do wish you’d put down the gun.” All bravado aside, he wasn’t sure she wouldn’t shoot. He rather hoped she didn’t.
“So you can take me as easily as you took the others?” she challenged.
He was not stunned by her hypothesis regarding the reason for his sudden appearance. “I once thought the same of you.” He answered honestly. In spite of his efforts to protect her, there had been moments in the dark when he’d wondered if such protection was folly. Death had exonerated the others. Survival had condemned the two of them, although his survival had had the good taste to be in question for several months afterward. He’d been left for dead, but she couldn’t have known.
She shrugged. “Much has been thought of me. Not all of it true.”
Ronan smiled. “Most of it is, though.” Like the rumors of her beauty, the raven hair that felt like ebon silk sifting through a man’s fingers, the clear green eyes resembling so perfectly twin glacier ponds, the porcelain skin so fair as to give her an air of misleading fragility.
“Yes, most of it is,” she conceded, gun unwavering. She was indeed the rare beauty of a butterfly brought to life, and far more dangerous, as she demonstrated now: a vision of loveliness with a gun pointed at his chest. Even acutely aware of his exposure, Ronan’s groin had tightened, aroused by the decadence and danger of the situation. He understood well the wanting of her and the futility of it too.
He would not be the first to be so inspired by her. Europe’s most powerful men had coveted the exotic dichotomy she offered of pleasure amid peril. None of them—ambassadors, politicians, generals or princes—had held her. She’d flown away from each of them in turn. If she were his, he would never let her go. After five years of waiting and hunting, it was time to finish his mission and claim her, if she would have him.
She was right to be wary of him. To her, he was nothing more than the spymaster. In Vienna he’d not dared act on his feelings, for fear of putting her at risk. Even now, he did not come free of danger, indeed, he might have brought danger right to her doorstep at a time when she was used to living in the safety of obscurity. She would not thank him for it. But he could protect her, could offer her a new security.
But first she had to trust him. She was stalking him now, moving in a half circle about his chair, showing off her excellent silhouette in a summer organdy afternoon gown of pale blue. A band of white ribbon showcased high breasts; the tight fit of the bodice highlighted the flat of her stomach where it tapered snugly into the flare of her skirts. Some small part of him, the part still thinking like a spymaster
