Rogue Alpha (Alpha 7) (2 page)

She shrugged, the slight movement jiggling the swell of her breasts. “Jeremy told me the name of the company you worked for before— Before.” She swallowed. “As for this evening, I saw you leave the Grayson Security offices earlier and followed you here.”

The office Seth hated, because whenever he was there, it was always to do paperwork. And he hated paperwork. Locating missing people, rescuing them? Yes. The paperwork involved in keeping Grayson Security’s records up to date? No.

It wasn’t what he had signed up for either, but when the owner of the company, Dair Grayson, as good as retired over a year ago, and then Lijah Smith decided to do the same three months ago, Seth had been next in line to take charge.

His eyes narrowed now at the thought of this woman following him. “Why?”

“I wanted to speak to you—”

“No, I meant if you were outside Grayson Security offices anyway, why the hell didn’t you come inside and talk to me there?”

Because after Bogotá and the things that had been happening to her recently, Diana no longer knew who she could or couldn’t trust.

She had loved and trusted Jeremy, and look how well that had turned out.

She had accompanied him to Bogotá only weeks after marrying him, but her marriage had already been over before she was kidnapped and held for ransom.

She had thought all that pain and disillusionment was behind her and she could get on with her life at last, and then a week ago, her Paris apartment had been broken into. The French police had been no help whatsoever in finding who was responsible. In fact, they had made it clear they didn’t believe there was anything for them to investigate. That she had imagined the whole thing.

For a few days, Diana had wondered if they weren’t right. Until she realized she was being followed.

Which was when she’d had the idea of asking Grayson Security for help, and Seth Armstrong in particular. The man who had already rescued her once.

Now that she was here and actually with Seth Armstrong again, she was less sure about the wisdom of that decision.

Admittedly, this evening he bore little resemblance to the man in the Colombian jungle, was dressed in a bespoke business suit, with a white silk shirt and neatly knotted gray tie. But beneath that veneer of urbanity and sophistication, Diana could sense that other man wanting to break out. The one in the camouflage paint and fatigues and carrying a gun.

No matter what Seth Armstrong wore, he was still scary as hell.

In so many ways.

Visually.

Physically.

Sexually.

It stunned her that she had responded to this man’s kiss only a few minutes ago. She’d had reason to doubt the wisdom of her marriage within days of the wedding, but not enough so that she could decide not to accompany Jeremy to Colombia. That had been a big mistake on her part, because once they were in Bogotá, Jeremy had shown his true colors in all their painful glory. If Jeremy hadn’t been shot and killed a week after she was rescued from her kidnappers, then she would have left Colombia and divorced him.

She hadn’t so much as looked at another man since, let alone accepted any of the invitations she had received since arriving in Paris a month ago to begin her new job.

Just looking at Seth Armstrong was enough to evoke thoughts of black silk sheets, naked and sweaty bodies, and pleasure. So much pleasure. As for the way her body had responded when he kissed her so intimately…

Every part of her had seemed to come alive for the first time in months, at the first touch of his lips against hers. By the time she ended the kiss so abruptly, her breasts were tingling, her nipples engorged, her core aching, between her thighs hot and damp from her arousal.

This man exuded sexuality. So tall and muscular. Ruggedly handsome. And dangerous. Oh yes, most of all, Seth Armstrong was dangerous.

At the same time that simply being with him made her feel safe for the first time in days.

Even if he so obviously hadn’t recognized her as the woman he had rescued in Bogotá.

“Perhaps my question should have been why the hell you asked me to kiss you?” he demanded. “And please try not to insult my intelligence by claiming you were overwhelmed by my manly charms.” He eyed her coldly.

Diana
was
overwhelmed at seeing and being with him again. Not by his
manly charms
, as he put it, but by the sheer force and presence of this lethally dangerous man. She didn’t care how perfectly tailored Seth Armstrong’s suit was, or that his shirt was silk. They couldn’t and didn’t disguise the leashed power of the man beneath.

Diana gave a pained wince at the anger she now detected in his voice. “I asked you to kiss me because someone’s following me, and—and I didn’t want them to realize who and what you are.”

“Who and what I am?” he echoed as he finally released her hands.

Diana clenched those hands together. “An employee at Grayson Security.”

“Why not?”

“I— Well—” It all seemed rather silly now. Surely knowing she had gone to a security company would deter whoever was following her from actually approaching her rather than the opposite?

Maybe.

She really didn’t know who or what she could trust anymore. Why her apartment had been broken into. Or why she was being followed. And until she did, she intended to question everything and everyone.

Except Seth Armstrong, the only man she had every reason to trust.

And maybe she had also wanted him to kiss her? Had needed the physical closeness of being held in the arms of a man who hadn’t hurt her. She had seen the desire in his dark onyx eyes when she sat down beside him, and it had been so long since anyone, other than her parents, had held or kissed her, that she had
wanted
.

To feel desired.

To feel desire in return.

“You said you’re being followed?”

His question jerked Diana back from those thoughts, her chin tilting in defense as she heard the skepticism in his voice. “Yes.”

Seth gave an inward groan. This woman was—well, she was fucking gorgeous. She also had the body of a siren. As for those eyes—a man could lose his soul gazing into those turquoise depths. She was also, he would take a guess, vulnerable as hell—maybe even delusional?—from the trauma of being kidnapped, and then her husband being shot and killed in the street only days later.

Seth might not have seen Diana Moore since the day he returned her to her husband at the British embassy in Bogotá, but the shooting of the British junior diplomat, Jeremy Moore, had made headlines across the world.

As far as Seth was aware, the person responsible had never been found. Which wasn’t surprising considering where the shooting had taken place. But the unresolved murder of Diana Moore’s husband, coming so quickly on the heels of her own kidnapping, couldn’t have been easy for her.

Seth had met Jeremy Moore briefly in Bogotá. Tall, blond-haired, athletic, with the natural bland manner of a diplomat. He and Seth were total opposites, but he remembered thinking the other man would go far in his chosen profession. Except he hadn’t, because only days later, he lay dead on the streets of Bogotá.

“What happened to your husband?”

She flinched. “I—I’m not sure. I— We were preparing to go back to England once I was fully recovered from the kidnapping, but Jeremy—Jeremy was shot and killed before we were able to leave.”

Seth studied her closely. Beautiful and elegant, she appeared nothing like that bedraggled woman in Bogotá. Until you gazed into her eyes. There was a wealth of pain in those shadowed turquoise depths. A result of her husband’s violent death, or something else?

He’d done what he was hired to do eight months ago. He and his associate Quinn had located and then studied the compound where Diana Moore was being held. Worked out a plan of how he would go in alone and then out again while Quinn waited with the vehicle which would transport them all back to Bogotá.

In. Rescue. Out. Return kidnap victim to her husband. Fly home.

Anything that happened from that point onwards was none of Seth’s business. It wasn’t his job to hang around to pick up the pieces afterwards. To be a shoulder to cry on. He never allowed himself to become emotionally involved. Ever.

As Diana said, there hadn’t been the time or opportunity for the two of them to talk the day he rescued her. She had been traumatized, and he had been too busy trying to keep both of them alive. Once he and Quinn delivered her back to the embassy, she was hustled away and Seth had never seen her again.

This woman, beautiful, self-assured for the most part, was nothing like the woman he remembered rescuing in Colombia. “Has anything else happened recently? Besides this feeling you have of being followed?”

She moistened her lips with the tip of her tongue. “Someone broke into my apartment a week ago.”

“Did you report it to the police?”

“Yes.”

“And?”

She gave an uncomfortable shrug. “Nothing was taken, so they weren’t interested.”

“Was your apartment trashed?”

“No.”

Seth drew in a controlling breath. “So if nothing was taken and your apartment wasn’t trashed, how can you be so sure someone broke in?” Patience wasn’t exactly one of his virtues, but he really was doing his best to hear this woman out. She looked brittle enough to break down and cry right here in a public bar if he didn’t. He didn’t deal well with crying woman either.

Come to think of it, he didn’t deal well with women at all, except in bed—

“You sound like the police. I just
know
, okay?” She glared her frustration with his skepticism. “I also know what you’re thinking right now, Mr. Armstrong, and you’re wrong. I’m not delusional. I’m not having some sort of emotional breakdown, a delayed reaction to what happened in Colombia. Someone
did
break into my apartment a week ago, and I don’t only feel as if someone is watching and following me. They are!”

“Did you report that to the police too?”

She grimaced. “Yes, and received the same uninterested response.”

Paranoia brought on by too much emotional stress would be Seth’s guess. No doubt that was the opinion of the police too when she reported a break-in where nothing was stolen or trashed, and then a couple of days later went back to them claiming she was being followed.

Which, equally, could be exactly what the person doing these things might hope would be the line the police took?

Damn it, now he was allowing himself to be seduced into her paranoia.

“Is someone following you this evening?” He glanced about the crowded bar, some of the people regulars, like Seth, others merely popping in for a drink with friends on their way home from work. No one looked as if they were taking particular notice of the two of them sitting together in this corner booth at the back of the room.

Too busy flirting with the wrong people, would be Seth’s guess. He had no doubt several of them would imbibe a little too much Christmas cheer and end up in bed with the wrong person too before the night was through, and wake up in the morning to regret it.

Bah, humbug, Seth recognized self-derisively. He wasn’t into Christmas. Too many bad memories from when he was a kid, probably. Whatever the reason, the garish decorations in the bar and the overdecorated Christmas tree in the corner of the room did absolutely nothing for him.

“I don’t know.” Diana Moore looked pained. “I thought they were. It
felt
as if they were. I don’t
know
,” she added emotionally, tears gathering on the darkness of her lashes.

“Hey, it’s going to be okay.” He reached out awkwardly and squeezed her hands where they were still clenched together on her thighs.

“No, it isn’t.” She gave a shake of her head. “I want—I need for you to come back to Paris with me and—”

“Paris?” he echoed doubtfully.

She nodded. “I live and work there now.”
 

Paris?

This woman wanted him to go to Paris with her?

Chapter 2

“Drink it.” Seth held the glass of whisky up in front of Diana Moore’s face until she reluctantly took the glass from him. “I said drink it, Diana,” he repeated firmly as she made no effort to do so but simply cradled the glass in both her hands.

The bar had been too noisy for them to continue their conversation, and she had flatly refused to go back to the Grayson Security offices with him, leaving Seth no choice but to drive them both back to his house.

Not that he made a habit of taking clients home with him. In fact, this was a first. But he hadn’t felt he could abandon Diana, and he hadn’t known what else to do with her when she was obviously under such emotional stress.

Real or imagined? That was the question.

A question Seth wanted an answer to before he decided what move he was going to make next.

“Better.” He nodded his approval as she finally took a tentative sip of the whisky, followed by a grimace of distaste. It was his best twenty-year-old single malt too. “Now, let’s start from the beginning.” He made himself comfortable in the chair opposite hers as they sat either side of the fireplace he had put a match to when they entered his study. “What happened to you after I left Colombia?”