Once in Paris by Diana Palmer

Author:Diana Palmer
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: HQN
Published: 1998-07-01T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Nine

Tate Winthrop had just gotten off the phone with one of the men in his personal network of “interested observers” of the world situation. His wide, chiseled mouth pulled into a thoughtful expression as he stared out the window of his luxurious Washington, D.C. apartment at the city’s night skyline. It glittered like diamonds and sapphires and rubies. It was beautiful, he mused, but a far cry from the natural colors of a South Dakota sunset near the Pine Ridge Sioux Reservation where he’d grown up.

He studied the face of a young, dark-eyed blond woman in the simple wood frame on his desk. He hid the photo of Cecily whenever she came over for supper, which she did occasionally when the Smithsonian could spare her. He couldn’t let her know the depth of his feelings for her. She was a forensic anthropologist, and she often worked with the FBI to examine skeletal remains. It was a grisly profession for a sensitive young woman, but it had been her dream to escape her stepfather’s clutches and get an education. Tate had made that possible for her. She had no idea how much she owed him, and he wanted to keep it that way. He felt responsible for her, but he’d never permitted even the slightest intimacy between them. He was Sioux and she was white. He wanted no mixing of blood, no child of two separate races growing up without a true identity. Except for that, he might easily have given in to his feelings for her, he mused as he studied the delicate features of her face in the photograph. Cecily Peterson wasn’t beautiful. She was pretty and slender, and she had courage and spirit and a keen, cutting wit. If he had a weakness at all, Cecily was it. And just lately, she’d bothered him more than ever before.

Pierce Hutton’s phone call had come at an opportune time. It would get him away from Cecily while he refortified his defenses against her. He had to do that periodically. Sometimes it was agony not to just reach for her and have done with it. A man of lesser scruples and willpower would have, years ago.

He smoothed long, dark fingers over the desk and pondered how to proceed. Pierce had wanted him to bring two men and meet him in Freeport. Now a contact in Freeport reported that Pierce’s plane had landed, but Pierce had never shown up at the hotel where he was registered under an alias. Neither had the young woman who was supposed to be accompanying him.

That meant that Pierce had been snatched. And Tate had a fairly good idea who’d snatched him. Philippe Sabon and Kurt Brauer were up to something, and Pierce had landed himself right in the way.

He got to his feet, tall and lean and powerful in the light from the window, stretching his six-foot frame to unknot the muscles in his long back. He smoothed a hand over his long, thick black braid.

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