Midnight Action by Elle Kennedy

Author:Elle Kennedy [Kennedy, Elle]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Romance, Suspense
ISBN: 9780451465702
Google: uGhVAwAAQBAJ
Amazon: 0451465709
Publisher: Signet
Published: 2014-11-03T08:00:00+00:00

Chapter 21

The next morning, Cate joined her grandfather for breakfast in the dining room he insisted on using even when they didn’t have guests. The gleaming walnut table seated eighteen, but most of the time it accommodated only three—Cate, her grandfather, and Nikolaus, who hadn’t come downstairs yet. She’d always thought it was weird that her grandfather’s employee lived with them, but Nik had been around for as long as she could remember.

Truth was, he was probably the closest thing she had to a father. When she was little, she’d asked him all the time if he was her daddy, and he’d always sounded so incredibly regretful each time he told her he wasn’t.

As she’d gotten older, she’d begun to suspect that although Nik wasn’t her dad, he wished he was. Which made a lot of sense in conjunction with her other longtime suspicion—that Nik was in love with her mother.

But she’d never had the courage to ask him about that, mostly because it made her super-uncomfortable.

“Good morning, sweetheart.” Her grandfather greeted her in German, as he always did.

Although he’d insisted that Cate be fluent in several languages, Maurice had made it clear that he preferred they speak German at home. He claimed to like the way it rolled off his tongue, which Cate found odd, because in her opinion, German was brusque, even aggressive at times. She thought French and English flowed way more smoothly, with Italian coming in as a close third.

Once she’d settled in her chair, their maid, Audrey, immediately appeared to pour her a glass of orange juice. Cate took a quick sip, then swiped a hot, buttery croissant from the plate on the table.

In the chair opposite hers, her grandfather raised his coffee cup to his lips and took a delicate sip. She was always startled by how youthful he looked. He was in his sixties, but he appeared decades younger, and he was healthy as a horse, which was pretty darn impressive.

“Grandpa...” she started awkwardly. “I wanted to ask you something.”

“What is it, Catarina?”

She nibbled on her croissant, then set it down on her plate. “Gabriel and I were talking the other day when he came by to see his mother, and somehow we got into a conversation about the Eiffel Tower. He was so horrified when he found out I’ve never been.”

Maurice chuckled. “I don’t know why anyone would want to visit that tourist trap.”

Cate stifled a groan. Okay. Not the response she’d been hoping for.

“Well...um...” She felt her cheeks heat up. “I wouldn’t mind seeing it. I mean, I have seen it, in pictures, and a few times when we drove by it, but I’d really like to see the view from the top.”

Her grandfather put down his cup, his dark eyes studying her intently.

“Gabriel offered to take me this morning,” she said with a hopeful look. “Would it be all right if I went?”

Now he looked displeased.

“Please?” she pleaded. “I think it would be really fun, and we wouldn’t be going for too long, just an hour or two.

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