Rapture's Edge

whispered.

“I know you’re partial to Picasso, but this Cezanne spoke to me,” she murmured. One finger of her gloved hand reverently traced the frayed edge of the old canvas. “Intense, isn’t it?”

“This was sold to a private collector in Qatar last year,” he said, still stunned. “How did you get it?”

Her head turned a fraction, and he saw the glint of mischief in her eyes as she gazed up at him. He smiled, feeling his insides soften under the warmth of her look.

“The Cat has her ways, eh, princess?”

“She does indeed, Mr. MacGregor.” Moving away to take a seat on the other side of the desk, Eliana settled herself in the chair, folded her hands in her lap, and said, “Can you sell it?”

“Can I sell it?” He raised his brows in mock indignation. “Is the pope Polish?”

She blinked, bemused. “No. But I’ll take that as a yes.”

Gregor sat in his comfortable chair and beamed at her. “You bet your biscuits I can sell it, princess! Same terms?”

She smiled. “Ten percent. Agreed.” Her smile faltered, and for a moment that old sorrow welled to the surface again. “However…I’d like to take the ten in trade this time.”

Gregor was intrigued. “Trade for what?”

She tucked her hand into the pocket of her coat and from it pulled a piece of paper, carefully folded. She leaned across the desk and handed it to him without a word.

Curious, he unfolded the note. When he read its contents, he was even more shocked than moments before. “Eliana. What the hell are you going to do with this many guns?”

Utterly composed, that terrible sadness still lurking behind her little smile, she quietly said, “What people always do with guns, Gregor.”

They gazed at each other. Outside in the cold, winter Paris night, it began softly to rain.

“And the rest of it?” He peered at the list. “Rocket-propelled grenades? Smoke bombs?” He looked up at her again, incredulous. “Land mines?”

She exhaled a long, slow breath and looked away. She removed her gloves, finger by finger, and ran a hand through her thick, twilight-hued hair. He noticed for perhaps the millionth time that she never wore makeup, but he’d never seen anyone who needed it less. Like a firefly, the woman actually glowed.

“Wars can’t be fought with sticks and stones.”

Gregor jerked forward in his chair, really alarmed now. “Wars? Who you going to war with, princess?”

She remained silent, gazing at him now with rebuke. There were questions they didn’t ask each other, information that was never exchanged, and they both knew he’d just violated that inviolable rule. But dammit, this was different! If she was in trouble—the kind of trouble that required this much heavy artillery—he wanted to help. He needed to.

“Let me help you. Whatever this is about, I can help.”

Her answer was swift, cool, and unequivocal. “No.”

Outside, the rain picked up. It began to beat against the windows in staccato bursts, smearing the city beyond into plots of wavering black and yellow.

“I don’t like it,” Gregor declared and tossed the note onto his desk.

Eliana didn’t even blink. “You’re a businessman. This is business. You might not like it, but you’ll do it.” Her head tilted to the side in a birdlike motion he’d seen a million times before when she was puzzling something out, and he knew that something now was him. When she spoke again her voice had softened to the consistency of warmed butter, and he knew she had his number: flattery and female helplessness were a potent combination for him, even if both were patently insincere. “Won’t you, old friend? For me?”

“Stop trying to dazzle me, Eliana, this is serious!” Truly aggravated now, he leapt from the chair and began to pace behind it.

“Why are you lecturing me, Gregor?” she said, harder now. “If I were a man, would you even hesitate?”

He swung around and stared at her. His gaze swept the lovely landscape of her body, her bare crossed legs, the perfect oval of her face. “You’re not a man. Obviously.”

By the way her face flushed and she stiffened, Gregor knew he’d offended her. At last, we’re getting somewhere, he thought. Maybe that wall would come down after all.

“So my lack of a penis is the only problem here?” The bitterness in her voice was unmistakable, and surprising. Eliana stood and drew on her gloves, all the while shaking her head and making little noises of disgust. “My entire life I’ve had to deal with that crap from my family. I will not tolerate it from my business associates.”

She looked at him and drew herself up to her full height, which, for a woman, was substantial. At six foot three, he didn’t tower over her nearly as much as he did everyone else.

“Thank you for all your help in the past, Gregor. I wish you the best. Good-bye.”

She briskly began to roll up the oil painting still laid flat on his desk.

He leaned over and grabbed her hands. She lifted her gaze to his, all cold fury and steel, and he met her steely look with one of his own.

“Nay, girl, I’ll not have you walkin’ out on me in such a snit.”

Whenever he was really emotional, his speech always reverted to the cadence of his childhood, rolling r’s and dropped g’s and the slow, musical lilt of a native Scotsman. Because he lived in France where everyone looked down on him because of his country accent, even the housemaids, he’d improved with years of practice but couldn’t be bothered to concentrate on the properness of his speech at times like these.

“If it’s guns you’re needin’ it’s guns you’ll have, but I’m tellin’ you I don’t like it, and if you get into trouble I need you to promise me you’ll let me know so I can help.”

She recoiled against his grip with a sinewy strength that surprised him for one that looked so delicate, but he pulled back and refused to let her go until she relented. “Promise me, princess,” he insisted, his voice very low in his throat.

Finally, after long moments of staring at him in livid, unblinking silence, she quietly said, “I like you, Gregor. I always have. But if you don’t take your hands off me in the next five seconds, you’re going to see a very ugly side of me. A side I can’t guarantee you’ll survive seeing.”

Then she murmured something in Latin, which he understood, because the Catholic mass his mother dragged him to every Sunday when he was a child had always been in Latin.

“Nec mala te amicum. Placered non faciunt me.”

Translated: “I don’t want to hurt you, old friend. Please don’t make me.”

She lowered her head a fraction of an inch, and he imagined her eyes silvered against the light, like a cat’s. A tingle of fear—something Gregor had not felt in many, many years—raised the hair on the back of his neck. Before he could form a reply, there came a loud knock on his closed office door. He and Eliana broke apart as the door swung open to reveal his girlfriend, Celine, clasping her teacup Yorkie to her ample chest.

As it always did when it caught sight of Eliana, the dog began first to growl, then to tremble violently in Celine’s arms. She shushed it and sashayed toward them, weaving across the rug in a slinky red Dior dress she looked sewn into and a pair of Louboutin sandals he knew had cost him an arm and a leg. The monthly bill for her black American Express card was more than the GDP of some small countries.

“Daddy, I want to go out!” she implored him in pouty French. She gave Eliana a quick, sour once-over, which Eliana wholeheartedly returned, and then turned her attention back to him and tossed her long, platinum blonde extensions over one shoulder with a practiced flick of her wrist. “How much longer are you going to be?”

“We’re actually done here,” said Eliana flatly, her face drained of emotion. She turned and moved to the door, abandoning the painting on his desk.

“Eliana,” Gregor entreated.

He wanted so badly to say, “Don’t go,” or “Please stay,” or some version thereof, but under the shrewd, watchful eye of Celine, he didn’t dare. He might have been the gangster in the room, but between these two goddamn women he was as helpless as a newborn kitten. Each of them had one of his testicles gripped firmly in a delicate, ruthless hand.