I'd Rather Be In Paris (5 page)

Lawson's face told her he thought differently. “My part of this mission is crucial to your success. Without me, you won't find Dmitri. We work as a team, we succeed. Either one of us goes off like a loose cannon, we fail.” He paused as if to give his next words weight. “I expect your full cooperation."

While she silently seethed, she knew he was right. If she wanted to stop Dmitri, she had to find him first. If she wanted to return to the field full time, she had to make this partnership work. Flynn was counting on her. She wouldn't let him down.

Clenching her teeth to control her emotions, she glared at Lawson. “Awfully sure of yourself, aren't you, Vaughn?"

He didn't so much as blink. “I'm one hundred percent sure of myself."

The look in his eyes said he was less sure about her. Way less sure. He considered her reckless, and it galled her, but she had to let it go. For now.

Still she wondered ... if he thought she was reckless and unfit to be his partner, why was he sitting across from her? “Why did you agree to this assignment?"

It was his turn to feign innocence. “I'm just a soldier following orders."

"Baloney. You're one of the government's special army. You don't partner up with rookie field operatives who have bad reputations."

He was quiet a second too long. “Your boss has absolute confidence in you."

There it was again, the part he left unsaid. “But you don't, because of the farmhouse incident."

The shift in his countenance was subtle—everything he did was subtle—yet she would guess her behavior in Paris wasn't the only thing causing him to doubt her abilities. The air around him, already charged with electricity, crackled. “Everyone working for the Agency has a rookie incident in their background. Most, however, are not pampered rich girls from the Upper East Side trying too hard to prove themselves in the real world."

Zara sucked in a breath. White-hot anger popped in her veins like fireworks. “Pampered rich girl?” She didn't bother to keep her voice lowered. “That's how you see me?"

Something flickered in his eyes. Amusement? Challenge? It rang in his voice too. “Flynn says you'll prove me wrong on this assignment."

"You're damn right I will.” It was her turn to point a finger. “I take my job just as seriously as you do."

The intensity in his gaze, in his face, evaporated for a second. As if it was all in good fun, he smiled at her, for real this time. “Good."

Feeling like she'd been had, Zara glanced around the dimly lit bar, trying to regroup. The bartender once again watched Lawson with unabashed admiration. Zara made snake eyes at her.
Back off.

Lawson sat silent, waiting. But for what? For Zara to laugh it off? Slap him on the back? Yell at him?

Flynn had trained her better. She could control her emotions just as effectively as Lawson. The cards were all out on the table, and at least now she knew how he worked, how he viewed everything.

Pampered rich girl
... she'd show him. Forcing herself to close the door on that observation, she searched for a different subject. Glancing down at her bracelet, she remembered a question she'd meant to ask him. “I lost my gold chain that morning at the farmhouse. You didn't find it lying around, did you?"

Back to business, he shook his head and glanced at his watch. “Our plane will start boarding in twenty minutes. You need to change into something less"—he paused and scanned what he could see of her dress again—"memorable. Please tell me you have one of those conservative office suits with you."

Leaning forward like she was about to share a secret, she crooked her finger at him. Like a magnet drawn to steel, he responded, bringing his face a few inches from hers. His dark green eyes searched hers and her pulse kicked hard.

"For the record,” she said, ignoring her pulse and making her voice sticky sweet, “in the real world no one tells me how to dress."

She was surprised to see him nod. “I'll remember that."

Reestablishing control was good. “Also for the record? The red dress was a test.” She gestured for him to hand her the black and white bag.

Watching her rise, he handed her the bag and then grabbed his own. “A test?"

"You don't really think I
want
to attract the attention of a psychotically deranged man, do you?"

"You did it before."

Right
. “Yeah, that's a pampered rich girl for you."

There was another one of his cryptic pauses. He shifted the carryon bags. “So did I pass?"

"Yes,” she admitted. “That test you passed."

"
That
test? There's more to come?"

She smiled knowingly and left him standing there to wonder.

He followed her out of the bar and to the entrance of the women's restroom, laying a hand on her arm to stop her before she entered. When he spoke, he lowered his mouth to her ear. “From here on out, you need to be hyperaware of your surroundings. Make sure you know where every exit is and don't let yourself get backed into a corner. Pay attention to the people around you, and even when your pants are literally down, don't leave yourself open to an ambush. Got it?"

Zara almost laughed. Hadn't she survived the Farm, survived Dmitri and sailed through Flynn's special training? She leaned away from him. “Is this your James Bond mode?"

"I'm serious."

"So am I.” She removed her arm from his grip. “Save the paranoia for Paris.” Using her rear end, she pushed open the restroom door. “I know what I'm doing."

She didn't miss the slight narrowing of his eyes in disbelief.

[Back to Table of Contents]

Once Zara disappeared into the restroom, Lawson pulled out his digitally encrypted cell phone and dialed up his favorite technical support dweeb. “You owe me twenty, Yankee,” he drawled when Del Hoffman answered.

"She agreed?” The twenty-five-year-old snorted. “I can't believe Tango's partnered with you, Rebel."

"Flynn's orders, like it or not."

"Zara has Flynn wrapped around her pinky. You will be too, before you know it."

"Got a twenty says different."

"You're on."

"Meantime, hack into the personnel database and send me her Agency bio."

"That's classified. I'll get fired."

Lawson knew Del liked a challenge. “Only if Flynn catches you."

Del snickered. “What are you looking for?"

"Not sure. She's one of Flynn's army. I want to know everything there is to know about her."

"Everything you need to know about Zara you learned at the farmhouse."

That's what I'm afraid of
. “Is her backstop identity ready?"

"Affirmative. Zara Morgan, aka Sara Lerner, is your stereotypical Paris Hilton clone, only way classier thanks to yours truly. I made her way smarter too. Harvard MBA, a few Trump-wannabe ex-lovers, and a weakness for—” His voice broke off. “Oh, yeah, Ding Dongs and Dom Pérignon."

In Lawson's mind, an image of Zara wearing nothing but her red shoes as she licked filling out of a Ding Dong caused the heat hibernating in his lower gut to flare to life. What he could do to her with a little champagne and chocolate...

He rolled his shoulders and shook off the image. This was business. He couldn't afford to get distracted. “Just be sure it's close enough to her real life so she doesn't forget something and screw up her cover accidentally."

"Jeez, Law, you sound like Flynn. Her cover will hold up to intense scrutiny and isn't that far off the mark. Even her first name is almost identical so she won't slip up. Besides, you forget who your new partner is. Tango's in a class by herself when it comes to this stuff."

A good reason to learn all he could about her. “I owe you, Hoffman."

"Yeah, no kidding. If Flynn finds out I hacked into personnel—"

"You're too good to let that happen.” Lawson hoped that was true. He didn't want Del to lose his job. On the other hand, he never worked with an unknown. For all he knew about Zara, he didn't know enough, and that was a surefire way to die young. “If you get in trouble with Flynn over stuff you're doing for me, I'll take the heat for it."

Zara shook out the coffee-colored microfiber pants she had rolled up into the equivalent of a Tootsie Roll and examined them in the restroom stall. There were two articles of clothing she never traveled without—this pair of pants and her Prada Sport perforated-leather bomber jacket. The pants never wrinkled and the jacket, while no one believed it, folded down into a compact pancake and always looked great with anything she wore.

Slipping the pants and a white shirt on, she pushed away the nervousness that had been winding its way through her bloodstream since Annette had told her about Dmitri's release. She realized it wasn't just about proving herself to Flynn. The real reason she couldn't blow this assignment was Dmitri and Vos Loo. They were bona fide threats to the world at large. For the mother and child in the bar, as well as all the other innocent people who could be harmed, Zara had to stop them.

Slipping off her red heels, she traded them for a pair of low-heeled brown pumps. Giving her shirt a final smoothing, she shrugged on the bomber jacket, rolled up the red Prada dress—
forgive me, Miuccia
—and rearranged the items in her Kate Spade signature bag.

After leaving the stall, she stopped at the sink and examined her reflection in the mirror. She didn't look attention-getting anymore. A few more simple changes and she'd be a completely different person than the one who entered the restroom. She went to work on her face, brushing her hair out with her fingers and securing it behind her ears on both sides. After wiping off the red lipstick, she applied a flesh-tone gloss. Rummaging through her bag, she found her reading glasses and added them to her face. All in all, her appearance was much more understated and much less memorable. She'd certainly pass Lawson's critical eye now.

Even though he'd admonished her about the red dress, he'd had a hard time keeping his eyes off it, and that, Zara knew, gave her an advantage with her partner. He was going to be a challenge with his
I'm in charge
attitude, but he was a male. She knew how to use her feminine assets to gain the upper hand if necessary, and like any woman, knowing her physical attractiveness could make him do a double-take secretly pleased her.

The boarding call for her and Lawson's flight came over the speaker. Zara pulled her cell phone out of her bag and dialed quickly. Two minutes later, her call to Paris was complete, her plan in place. She would work with Lawson, stop Dmitri and prove to Flynn she was the best counterespionage spy he had, all in one operation. She was Zara Morgan, after all.

Smiling, she nodded at her image in the mirror.
Let's dance.

[Back to Table of Contents]

They were in the air less than an hour when Zara fell asleep beside him, an abbreviated dossier of Dmitri on her PDA. Lawson turned off the device and stuck it in his pocket. The faint smell of jasmine drifted up from her soft, warm body, catapulting him back to the summer nights of his childhood and the perfect white flowers blooming under a full southern moon outside his bedroom window.

His memory was a funny thing these days. His childhood friend Tucker was smiling and laughing beside the creek instead of sitting in his bedroom in a daze after the water snake's poison had caused permanent brain damage. Lawson's younger brother David was making tents in the woods with their father's old tarps instead of leaving their ramshackle house in a suit and tie for a job in the big city.

Drawing another deep breath of the jasmine into his nostrils, he deliberately closed the door on Georgia and the past and instead watched Zara's eyes move under her eyelids.

She was a wild child inside the pretty, tidy-looking package. A soft target under the polished shell exterior. And even after all he'd done for her, she still didn't like him.

That was too damn bad. Now that he'd made up his mind, he had a job to do and no one was going to stop him. He'd known women like her before and he knew how to handle them. Knew what fed their egos and busted their superior attitudes into a thousand jagged pieces. He knew how to look through the suit and the heels and the perfectly coiffed hair, find the crack in the shell and capitalize on it if necessary. Zara's crack had been easy to locate and he'd already sprung it wide open.
Pampered rich girl
.

Ignoring his physical attraction to her wasn't easy, but she
was
Zara Morgan. Born with a silver spoon in her mouth and accustomed to a lifestyle he could only imagine. What he knew about her world could be held in the heel of one of her red shoes. Even if they hadn't been working an operation together, she was so far out of his league he shouldn't even be looking at her, much less thinking about her in and out of that damned red dress.

Lawson could scale an installation and bypass any type of security known to man to get inside it. He could play MacGyver and build a radio from gum wrappers and duct tape. He could map out an escape route for a downed Army crew behind enemy lines or go in and rescue the men himself. But he didn't know a salad fork from a dinner fork or what type of wine you drank with fish. Hell, he didn't even drink wine. He drank beer,
Budweiser thank you very much
, and he drank it straight from the bottle.

He wasn't rich, cultured or Harvard educated. He was Lawson Vaughn, a soldier just like his daddy and his daddy before him.

Ignoring the in-flight movie, he hauled out his laptop and stretched one leg into the aisle of first class. Flynn wasn't expecting a progress report for a few more hours, but Lawson had nothing better to do than watch Zara sleep. God, he hated paperwork but it was imperative he keep Flynn happy and out of his hair. He'd swamp the head of the spy group with reports if that's what it took.

Plucking at the tiny keyboard, he tried to find the right keys to make coherent words. His deft fingers could crack a safe, communicate in code, sew stitches in skin to close a wound and find the exact spot that drove a willing woman right over the edge, but type a memo? Jesus, he'd rather be shot at sunrise.

He paused in his pecking and grimaced in frustration, scanning the keyboard for the key he needed. He had to use phrasing Flynn would like. Bullshit words and sentences that made it sound like there was a plan and the plan was being followed and these outcomes were expected. Yada, yada, yada. The more details the better.

He did have a plan, of course, and it wouldn't take a genius to implement it. Outcomes were more difficult to pin down because of the nature of the job, but they weren't impossible to hypothesize since he had quite a bit of experience in tracking people. This was the first time, however, his partner was not only inexperienced in his line of fieldwork but also a woman. There was nothing wrong with a female partner if she had the right training and experience and could detach her emotions from the job at hand. Flynn insisted Zara had the training, but she didn't have the experience, and Lawson had witnessed how a few simple words, or lack of, could trigger her emotions.

So why did I take this job? Why am I determined to play with fire?

Even though Flynn had strongly requested Lawson accompany his intelligence operative on this mission, Lawson could have said no. The halls of Langley were filled with men like him. The FBI, the CIA, the NSA—all of them had people as qualified as he was for a mission of this caliber.

He glanced at his new partner sleeping beside him, her dark eyelashes lying against her smooth skin, her lip gloss faded. The truth, he knew, wasn't anything grand or noble or listed in his current job description. It wasn't even based on his natural male attraction to Zara.

The truth, he forced himself to admit, was the one thing Conrad Flynn warned him not to fall prey to. The little boy from Georgia was all grown up now, but he still wanted to play Superman. Still wanted to save the innocent, rescue those in danger and make the bad guys eat dirt.

Turning back to his laptop, Lawson rubbed his eyes and typed three sentences, full of bullshit details, yes siree. Flynn would love it. He typed another sentence and glanced again at his partner.

As soon as he had her in Paris, he'd tuck her away in some quaint little dive and give her this part of the job to do. He'd load her down with paperwork and a bunch of other useless, but safe, jobs. As long as she was safe, Flynn would stay happy. As long as she was busy, she wouldn't get in his way.

He had a terrorist to hunt down and he didn't need Zara Morgan's
help
to do it.

[Back to Table of Contents]