Not important, any of it. He told himself that, and he hired her.
Three months later, he bedded her.
It had been a Friday evening. They’d been working late, he offered her a ride home. She lived in Soho; he mentioned he’d been invited to a gallery showing in her neighborhood on Sunday. Would she like to go with him? He had not meant to make the suggestion but once he did, he told himself it was too late to rescind it. When she hesitated, he made a joke about how awful these things usually were and how she could save him from dying of boredom if she said “yes.”
She laughed, said well, okay, why not? They exchanged a polite good-night.
They were polite on Sunday, too, right up until the second he took her home. Then their eyes met and he knew he’d been kidding himself, that though he’d never touched her save for shaking her hand the day he’d hired her, he’d been dreaming of her, hungering for her for weeks.
Without warning, he’d caught her by the shoulders and gathered her into his arms.
“No,” she said, and then his mouth captured hers.
Her mouth was hot and sweet, her kisses as wild as his. It was as if he had never kissed a woman until that moment. The taste of her had been like a drug; the way her pupils widened until her eyes were pools of deepest black had made him want to drown in their depths.
“Salim,” she’d whispered as he framed her face with his hands, “Salim, we shouldn’t…”
His hands had slipped under her jacket, his fingertips grazing her nipples, and she’d made a little sound he’d never forget and a minute later he’d had her against the wall, her demure skirt pushed up to her hips, her lace panties torn aside and he was inside her, deep inside her, swallowing her cries with his mouth, moving, moving, claiming her as he had longed to do from the first and to hell with the fact that they were still in the hall outside her apartment and anyone could have come along to see them, to hell with right or wrong, to hell with propriety.
To hell with everything except the passion that had consumed them both.
She’d come in his arms and when they’d finally been able to breathe again, she’d stabbed her key into the lock and he’d carried her to her bedroom and made love to her again and again and again.
He’d made love to her for the next three months. Wherever he could. In his bed. In hers. In the back of his limo with the privacy partition drawn. In a little New England inn and once in his office—in his office, that was how she’d bewitched him because she had bewitched him, drawn him down and down into a sea of desire that blinded him to everything.
Three months into their affair, she’d disappeared.
So had the ten million dollars and whatever illusions he’d been fool enough to harbor.
The crystal glass shattered in Salim’s hand. Amber liquid splattered over the hardwood floor; shards of glass rained down. A trickle of blood welled in his palm and he yanked a pristine white linen handkerchief from the breast pocket of his suit, wrapped it around his hand and staunched the crimson flow.
“Damn it,” he snarled, his voice sharp in the silence of the penthouse.
At first, he’d turned his fury on Shipley. Hadn’t the man vetted her CV properly? But Shipley had and Salim finally knew where his rage should be directed.
At himself.
He’d fallen for the oldest trick in the world. For a woman’s wiles. Fallen for the lies, the scheming duplicity of a beautiful woman who knew how to use sex to blind a man to the truth…and why in hell was he going through the details again?
He knew them all too well, had gone over them more times than seemed possible, told them to the police, the FBI, the private investigator, endured the humiliation of seeing their sly looks when he had to say, yes, he had been involved with her, yes, they’d had an affair, yes, she’d had access to his home study, his desk, his papers, his computer…
No one could find her or the money.
Then, this morning, the P.I. had phoned.
“Your highness,” he’d said, “we have located Miss Hudson.”
Salim had taken a deep breath and arranged to meet the man. Here. At home. No one at the office talked about what had happened—none of his employees were fools—but he’d be damned if he’d discuss any of this at work.
Sudden movement caught his attention. The hawk sprang into the air; one beat of its powerful wings and it was above Fifth Avenue. Another, and it was silhouetted against the darkening sky over the park.
If the bird was going to make a successful takedown, it would have to do it now.
The intercom gave a polite buzz. Salim looked at his watch. The detective was early. That was fine. The sooner he had the information he needed, the better.
“Yes?” he said, lifting the intercom’s handset.
“A Mr. John Taggart to see you, sir.”
“Send him up.”
Salim stepped into the marble entryway, folded his arms and waited. Moments later, the doors of the private elevator slid open and Taggart stepped out. He held a slim black leather portfolio under his arm.
“Your highness.”
“Mr. Taggart.”
The men shook hands; Salim motioned Taggart to precede him into the living room where Taggart looked at the spilled drink, the shards of glass, then at Salim’s handkerchief-wrapped hand.
“An accident,” Salim said. “Nothing to be concerned about. Do you want to take off your coat?”
Taggart answered by unzipping the portfolio, taking out a sheaf of papers and giving them to Salim. On top of the papers was a photograph.
Salim felt the floor give a quick tilt beneath his feet.
“Grace Hudson,” Taggart said.
Salim nodded. As if he needed to be told. Of course it was Grace. She was standing on a street that might have been located in any city, wearing a suit and high heels and she looked guileless and innocent and, damn her to hell, she was neither.
“She’s living in San Francisco under the name Grace Hunter.”
Salim looked up. “She’s in California?”
“Yes, sir. Lives there. Works for a private bank. She’s their chief auditor.”
A step down from the assistant CFO of Alhandra Investments but then, Grace would have been unable to produce a letter of reference. Salim frowned. Not that she needed any. Ten million dollars, and his former mistress was working as an auditor?
“Hunter was her mother’s maiden name, and the job gives her a low profile. It’s a common enough pattern among smart thieves. Give it a year or two, she’ll head to Brazil or the Caribbean and start spending the money.”
Salim nodded. Grace was smart, all right. But not smart enough.
“How come the authorities couldn’t locate her?”
The P.I. shrugged. “They have a lot of urgent stuff on their plates.”
Salim looked at the photo again. Somehow, he’d expected her to look different. She didn’t. She was still tall, still slender, with eyes that were neither brown nor green but something in between. All that spectacular hair was, as always, pulled to the crown of her head and carefully knotted.
He could remember the feel of that hair. Silky. Soft. How it curled lightly around his fingers. How it tumbled down her back when he undid the pins, the way it kissed her shoulders and the sweet, rosy nipples of her uptilted breasts.
“Does she have a lover?”
His