Until You

Miranda's head lifted. She smiled straight at him, and then she put her hands on Jean-Phillipe's shoulders, rose on tip-toe and pressed her mouth and her body agai

nst his.

Conor's vision clouded. He felt his hands curl into fists, felt the muscles in his arms and shoulders knot until they were rock-hard. Two minutes, that was all it would take, two minutes to close the distance between them, beat the too-handsome son of a bitch holding Miranda into a bloody pulp and then he'd throw her down on her back, part her legs and do what needed doing...

"Fuck!" he snarled, and he slammed his fist against the door and got the hell out of there while he still could.

Chapter 5

All right, he had blown it.

So what?

Conor stubbed out his cigarette—the first he'd smoked in, what, five years?—and caught the waiter's eye.

A second bottle of ale appeared at his elbow, along with a little basket of crackers.

Conor nodded his thanks, declined the glass, just as he had the first time, and wrapped his hand around the bottle. The ale wasn't India Pale, it wasn't even American. But it was icy-cold and just bitter enough to suit his mood and when he lifted the bottle to his lips and took a long, slow drink, the stuff slid down his throat as cool as silk.

What an ass he'd made of himself. He couldn't stop thinking about it, not even after a brisk walk along the Seine with the wind blowing raw and cold in his face.

Miranda had made a fool of him.

Conor scowled and tilted the bottle to his mouth again.

Correction. He had let her make a fool of him, and that was even worse.

He'd gone in there knowing what she was, a woman who specialized in getting men to do what she wanted, and he'd still ended up letting her get to him.

Expect the unexpected, his instructors at Special Forces had said.

He always did. It was how he'd survived dark cul-de-sacs, icy mountain peaks, hot deserts and even, one memorable night, what had come at him in his own apartment.

Conor lit another cigarette. He took a long drag, coughed, looked at the slim white tube with distaste and then mashed it to death in the ashtray.

A fashion show wasn't his kind of mountain or desert but he should have been prepared for something down-and-dirty. He knew what Miranda Beckman was. He should have gone in there with a smile on his face and his hands over his cojones.

He glowered at the bottle of ale as he raised it to his lips again.

The bitch! Peeling off her clothes as if he hadn't existed, letting him glimpse that lithe, tanned body and think about what it would be like to lay claim to it. What pleasure it must have given her when his mask had slipped and she'd seen the hunger in his eyes.

Even now, hours later, the words she'd flung at him still burned in his brain.

You can look, like all the rest, but you're never going to touch.

And then the final insult, the show she'd put on with the Frenchman with the pretty face, climbing all over the guy, making sure he got a good, long look at what it was like for the men she did allow to touch.

But she'd miscalculated. She couldn't operate him the way she did others. Besides, his turn was coming.

A smile twisted across Conor's mouth.

Miranda Beckman had sent that note to her mother. It was just the sort of smug, aren't-I-clever thing a babe like that would do.

I'm bored, so I'll just rattle Mommy's cage for fun.

It was a stunt with all the markings of an amateur. Somebody who was serious, a blackmailer who wanted money, would have followed through with a demand. Even a looney-tunes looking for kicks would have come up with a P.S. by now.

No question about it, the note was Miranda's, sent to shake her mother's composure, to put Hoyt into a sweat and generally remind them both that life was never simple with a loving daughter like her dancing around behind scenes.