Val followed her with his eyes until she vanished. He disliked taking his eyes off her, but Rachel was still visible from here, and he was sure that she would not run without the child.
He turned back to the people at the table. “Organ pirates?” he asked the table at large.
“You mean she hasn’t told you how she got Rachel?” asked the sultry redheaded beauty who sat next to Davy McCloud, wide-eyed. “It’s an incredible story.”
He shook his head. The women tripped over themselves to tell him the tale of the rescue of the orphans. Steele’s rush into the jaws of death dressed only in silver spandex. How she had pretended to be a stripper who had lost her way to a bachelor party to create a diversion while the rest of the team sneaked into the compound. How she had neutralized four guards by herself before they could sound the alarm, making it possible for Nick and the rest to charge in and stop the villains just as they were about to cut Sveti’s heart out.
He knew the story, but listening to these women tell it gave him a whole new level of information. These people admired Steele. They liked her too. Even trusted her—in a careful way.
“Impressive,” he murmured.
“Yeah, that she is,” said a blond man who Val’s surveillance had pegged as Sean McCloud. “Tam’s special. Not to be messed with.”
Val acknowledged the blunt warning with a nod. “I would not dream of it,” he said blandly. “Particularly not when she is surrounded by such a fierce band of loyal friends.”
There was a tense silence. The people at the table exchanged significant glances. Val smiled at them and sipped his wine.
“Mr. Janos is interested in marketing Deadly Beauty in Europe,” Erin explained, effectively breaking it.
That touched off a far less emotionally charged conversation that Val could handle smoothly with a tenth of his brain while the rest of it occupied itself with frantic planning.
As soon as the conversation shifted away from him, he excused himself and left the ballroom. He had to find a place to stage the scene that would take place this evening. The minicam was taped discreetly under his arm. It had to happen now, or else Imre would be…
No. He could not think of Imre at all. He had to be suave, relaxed. Not desperate. That woman would smell desperation from miles away.
He had to hide it under a layer of impenetrable charm. And still, the word pulsed in his head, like a strobe light. Now, now, now.
A long corridor of dimly lit administrative offices was a likely possibility. He strode down the hall, trying all the doors. One of them was open, a utilitarian staff kitchen. Sink, coffeemaker, microwave, cupboard, and small refrigerator for storing staff lunches.
This was it. His only option, he decided, lacking in atmosphere though it was. There was no time to look for someplace better.
A dismantled drip coffeemaker on top of the refrigerator gave him an idea. He stuck the vidcam into the glass pot, and added handfuls of miscellaneous objects from the drawers to hide it: sugar packets and Sweet’n Low, tea bags. He directed the lens so its field of vision was unobscured. He’d programmed it to be light-activated.
God help him. Imre’s only hope, at the mercy of a tense, nervous, frightened woman’s whim. What bizarre conditions under which to seduce the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. A blues tune began to play, pulsing from afar. The dancing had begun. That might help.
He ran into her outside the bathrooms on his way back. She looked pale. “Are you well?” he asked.
“Great. Perfectly wonderful, thanks to you.”
“Let’s dance.” He slid his arm around her waist as they went into the ballroom and swung her around into his arms.
She went rigid. “Let go of me, you tricky son of a bitch,” she said, through a smiling grimace. “Or I’ll open your jugular with my hairpin.”
“Do not be that way,” he wheedled. “We were doing so well. You do not want to upset all your friends, do you? Look at them, so happy for you, thinking that you are finally enjoying yourself. About time, no?”
She harrumphed, stiff as a wooden plank, shoving against his chest to put more space between them. “Little do they know.”
He jerked her closer as she stumbled. “Relax, for God’s sake.”
“Like it’s so easy,” she muttered. “As if I ever knew how. I don’t like being watched, gawked at or speculated about.”
Val glanced around. Several of the dancing couples were casting furtive, sidelong glances at them. “Your friends told me the tale of the grand rescue from the organ pirates,” he said. “They evidently think that you are a superwoman.”
“Hmmph.” She rolled her eyes. “They like to dramatize.”
“Strange how they trust you,” he said. “Especially the women.”
She looked offended. “Why would that strike you as strange?”
“Because of their men,” he said. “Women tend to be suspicious of other women who are as beautiful as you. It is a brutal fact of nature. You are an inherent threat to them.”
She grunted. “Bullshit. Besides, they’re all beautiful women themselves. Not one of them has any reason to worry.”
“No?” He yanked her into a possessive clinch. “You mean to say you have never taken any of the men in this room as your lover?”
She went motionless, mouth open. “Who, me? If any of those guys cheated on their wives, I would personally remove their testicles.”
He was taken aback. “That is vehement,” he commented.
“Those men are well taken care of,” she went on heatedly. “They have nothing to complain about. And if they did, they wouldn’t dream of messing with me. I’ve put the fear of God into every last one of them.”
He willed her to relax against the heat of his body. “Such high standards to hold them to,” he teased. “After all, they are only men.”
“They can damn well live up to those standards. They have quality women who trust them more than any man deserves to be trusted. If they ever, for one second, demonstrate any lack of appreciation for their good fortune, I will be there standing by. Garden shears in hand.”
He cleared his throat, trying not to smile. “They all seem…er, more or less intact. I take it that so far they have behaved well?”
She nodded. “Pussywhipped to the last man,” she said, with cool satisfaction. “And now kids are coming right and left. I doubt they have the energy to misbehave at this point. Not that it stops most men. Ass-sniffing, leg-humping dogs on the furniture that they are.”
He let that caustic attack upon his sex pass without comment, and spun her into a deep, sensual dip. “That reveals so much,” he said.
She almost tripped over his foot as he tugged her back up again. “Reveals what? What are you talking about?”
He grinned. “You are secretly a romantic.”
That startled a burst of laughter out of her. “Me? Hah!”
“You.” He put his mouth to her ear. “Your need for your friends to stay faithful to each other as living proof that true love is possible,” he whispered. “Because you keep hoping that it is, no? Even though you are sure in the depths of your heart that it is not, you continue to hope that you might be wrong. It is another one of those bleeding contradictions. You are full of them, Tamara Steele.”
“I…do not…” She squinted at him. “That’s such crap. Let’s not start the armchair psychology game again. And don’t even try