The Perfect Temptation (54 page)

Lord, she hoped it was at least a year before
Kedar sent

for them. Two would be even better. A
lifetime, heavenly.

Chapter 17

The peacocks had settled back into silence by
the time he

reached the lower level. Knowing that they'd
still be screaming

bloody murder if Barrett were on the back
side of the

house, Aiden slipped out the front door and
carefully locked

it behind him. He found Barrett in the
shadows on the far

side of the street, dressed in black and smoking
a cheroot. It

was the quick, hard red pulsing glow that
gave him away. As

Aiden walked up to join him, his friend
declared, "Those

peacocks are a public nuisance," and
flicked ash onto the

pavers at their feet.

"Obnoxious, aren't they?" he
agreed. "I was going to

shoot them yesterday morning but was attacked
by a rampaging

herd of kittens along the way."

Barrett snorted. "You're certainly
chipper for two-thirty

in the morning."

Two-thirty? Damn, that was a gaffe.
"Sorry," he offered

sheepishly. "I fell asleep."

"Apparently rather soundly," the
other countered, the tiniest

hint of amusement rippling under the censure.
"Since I

all but threw a rock through your
window-without effect you

didn't leave me with any choice but to set
the damn

birds to screeching."

"Well," he countered, looking for a
bright, but very neu
tral,

spot, "at least they didn't go on
forever like they sometimes

do."

The end of the cheroot glowed bright
red.
After expelling

a long stream of smoke, Barrett said, "I
didn't know that

you'd taken to sleeping with a candle lit.
Monsters in the

dark?"

"No." There were times when he
hated the way Barrett

could add things up and come to accurate
conclusions. Secrets

were damn near impossible to keep around
him.

''Then the book must not be a particularly
good one. Not

if you're nodding away while reading it.
What's the title? So

I can avoid it."

He couldn't think of a single one; his mind
wasn't so

much a blank as it was awash
in
the memory of holding Alex

and drifting off to sleep with her curled
against his side, too

sated to even
think
of blowing out the light. He deliberately

but tenderly closed the images away for
another time and

met his friend's gaze with a brow cocked in
warning.

"Welcome back, John Aiden," Barrett
said, laughing quietly.

"It's good to see the old you again.
You've been missed"

The
old
him
would have grinned and suggested
that when

he
tired
of his lover, he'd pass her along to his friend. The
old

him
had been a
pleasant but largely indifferent rogue. ''We're

not going to
talk
about it, Barrett. It's not for sharing."
Alex

isn't for sharing. You're not going
to touch her. Ever.

''Understood.'' He took a hard pull on the
cheroot, then

dropped it to the walkway and ground it out
under the toe of

his boot. "So where are we going
tonight? Or this morning

as the case may be."

Good. He'd drawn the line and Barrett had
agreed to respect

it. "Hunting," he replied, his
brain practically clicking

as it settled into the course he'd set that
afternoon. "I'm betting

the shadow warrior is hunkered down in a nest
he's built

somewhere close by. A place out of the cold
where he can

see the house and keep watch."

"It
makes sense. And
I suppose you have some vague

idea where that might be?"

"If
I were in his
shoes, I'd take up residence in a dark corner

of someone's carriage house. Someone who's at
their

country estate for the winter and isn't
likely to notice the uninvited

guest. I figure we'll start along the alley
behind the

Blue Elephant and work out from there. He
can't be too far."

Barrett nodded and, scanning the houses along
the street,

muttered, "I hope to hell you're the
only one who has peacocks."

They slipped into yet another darkened yard,
moving in the

shadows and Aiden thinking that if ever Her
Majesty's Royal

Army or Marines needed to invade a carriage
house, he and

Barrett were the men to teach the finer
points. After a good

dozen or so, they'd refined
it
to a silent, flawless art. They

would scan the ground around the entire
structure for signs

of recent human footprints, pause beside the
door and listen,

look for the telltale flicker of lamplight,
and slowly, quietly

open the latches. And when, that was done,
Barrett would

hold up three fingers, then tick them down
one by one. As

the third dropped, Aiden would open the door
and Barrett

would dart in, low and with the muzzle of his
revolver

sweeping in a wide arc from center to left
ahead of him.

Having lost the rock-paper-scissors contest,
Aiden would

follow on his heels. high and sweeping from
right to center.

And they would find nothing except cobwebs
and half frozen

muddy patches where the snow had melted and

poured down through the shingles. Honing the
precision had

been entertaining the first half-dozen times
they'd gone

through the exercise. The
thrill
of possible danger had lingered

a little while longer. But not much. It
existed for a few

seconds each time they came up on a
structure, but the absence

of footprints had a considerable dampening
effect

on it.

Still, they were doggedly, albeit not
hopefully, persistent

and consistent. Holding their guns at the
ready, walking

wordlessly together, they circled the stone
stable, their heads

bowed as they carefully sorted through the
shadows in front

of their feet.

"Got him," Barrett whispered,
abruptly halting, pointing

off to his immediate left. "He cut an
arc from here to the rear

door."

His blood pumping hard and fast, Aiden flexed
the

warmth into the chilled fingertips of his
left hand and visually

followed the line of footprints around the
perimeter.

Nodding his acceptance of Barrett's
conclusion, he turned

and looked along the sight line that could be
had from the

side windows of the building. Across the
street, a half block

down, he could see not only the entire
western and back

walls of the Blue Elephant, he could also see
the kitchen, the

western side of their carriage house and the
yard in its entirety.

The light still flickered through the iron
grills of his

bedroom windows. The peacocks were sound
asleep, huddled

together in the comer of their pen.

"It's the perfect vantage," he
whispered, turning to Barrett.

"Back door or the front?"

He answered by setting silently off for the
rear side of the

building, following the trail that had been
laid down for

them. Aiden went along, scanning the windows
on the lower

level. No light, no movement. He glanced up,
noting the

height of the roof and pitch. There was
enough that a loft

was likely. Would their quarry be on the main
level or up

above?
In
his mind's eye, he pictured the views of the Blue

Elephant from the northern and southern ends
of the struc
ture.

He'd be on the lower. Probably at or very
near the midpoint.

The latch lifted smoothly and without a
sound. Barrett's

hand went up and, in rapid succession, his
fingers went

down. Aiden pulled the door back just enough
to let Barrett

scramble through and then vaulted inside
behind him.

And froze just as Barrett had.

Straight ahead of them. in the darkness,
stood the man he'd

seen at Alex's window, at the carriage line
outside Christie's,

and climbing into the cab on Fleet Street
Only those times he

hadn't been obviously armed. Now he held a
gun
in each hand

with a muzzle steadily aimed at each of them.

So much for the element of surprise, Aiden
thought

darkly. And for Alex's early assurances that
a native assailant

wouldn't use a firearm. The only course left
now was

bluff and luck.

Never taking his eyes off the man, he eased
sideways to

make himself a smaller target and fixed the
man's chest

squarely in his sights. "I hope,"
he drawled, ''you speak English

because I have a helluva lot of questions
you'd better

be
able to answer.
Let's start with who you are and why

you're here."

"My name is Vadeen," he replied,
his words carefully

pronounced, his accent strong. "I am the
bodyguard of

Prince Sarad, the younger brother of the
raja, Kedar. I was

sent to protect Kedar's children from harm. I
have seen you

with the prince and princess and know we
share the same

task."

The puzzle pieces--:-every single one of
them-tumbled

into place perfectly, swiftly, and with stunning
ease and clarity.

If
the man's intent
was to knock the pins from under him,

he'd succeeded. In spades. Jesus. Sweet
Jesus. His heart was

pounding and frantically urging him to turn
around and walk

away,
to
pretend that the stable had been just as empty as all

the others. But his feet wouldn't move and
the ragged, sad

voice of reason said he couldn't walk,
couldn't run, far