The Perfect Target

“You really want to know what I dream about, bella?”

Heat washed through her, as though he’d touched her with those big capable hands and not just a look. The image formed before she could stop it, of what a man like him would dream about. She could see him too well, his big nude body thrashing about among tangled sheets—

“I’ll settle for a name,” she said.

“Smart lady.” He glanced toward the end of the alley, where two children ran after a scrawny black dog. Only when they turned the corner did he return his attention to her. “My friends call me Sandro.”

“And your enemies?” she couldn’t help asking.

He didn’t hesitate. “They’d like to call me dead.”

The brutally frank words made her wince. She couldn’t imagine this vital, capable man dead. Didn’t want to.

“Sandro what?” she asked instead.

“Just Sandro.”

Miranda didn’t know whether to laugh or slug him. “Watched a few spy movies growing up, did we?”

But his smile was gone now, replaced by that same grim expression she was already growing to despise. “Just Sandro, okay? It’s safer for us all.”

Safer from what, she wanted to ask, but knew she’d only be wasting her breath. Her father’s men never shot straight. They were always engaged in their little intrigues. If this man’s orders were to conceal his last name, not even cruel and unusual torture would pry the information free.

For now, it was better to indulge him.

Later, she would outsmart him.

Sandro picked up the pace, practically dragging her around a corner and down an even narrower alley.

“What did you say when that woman came out?” she asked. Before he put his mouth to hers and knocked the foundation from beneath her feet.

He kept walking, his long legs gobbling up the cracked cobblestone. “It doesn’t matter.”

She refused to break into a run to keep up with him. “It does to me.”

“Sweet nothings don’t translate well.”

“Sweet nothings?” She didn’t understand the little jolt of disappointment. “Sure sounded like something to me.”

He stopped abruptly, landing her in a lingering puddle from the storm the night before. Muddy water splashed up over her sandals and against her calves.

“If you must know,” he said, lifting a hand to her face and easing back the tangled blond hair, “I told her we’d had a lovers’ quarrel and I was trying to earn your forgiveness.”

The words, his touch, seared through her, the image they created as dangerous as the lingering feel of his mouth on hers. A quarrel. Lovers. A man and a woman, intimately involved. Big battered hands skimming along smooth—

Surprise flashed through her. Not only was this man a stranger, but he was one of her father’s chosen few. Men like him thrived in a world of intrigue and betrayal, a world where nothing was as it seemed and the truth often hid secrets more dangerous than lies.

A world she wanted desperately to leave behind.

“Does that usually work?” she wanted to know.

He quirked a dark brow. “What? Kissing a woman senseless?”

The smile broke before she could stop it. “No, lying through your teeth.”

He streaked a finger down the side of her face. “If I’m lucky.”

“And if you’re not?”

He took her hand and started down the street, his strides long and purposeful, determined. “There’s always Plan B.”

Plan B lay in ruins, much like the abandoned villa hiding behind an overgrown wall of olive trees and cork oaks, oleander and hibiscus.

Sandro bit back a virulent stream of frustration. He was a careful man. He did his job efficiently, and he did it well. He left no room for error.

But this time, with the stakes so dangerously high, error had found him anyway.

Plan B featured Miranda Carrington safe and sound with a bodyguard, not dragged through the dirty alleys of Cascais. He’d arranged the scenario carefully. He’d approached Miranda just as the general had ordered, making it appear he was luring her away. But he’d also arranged for his kidnapping attempt to be thwarted. He’d even planned to go down in the process.

But the agents he’d had breakfast with only an hour before had not arrived.

Straddling a thin dark line was a hell of a way to live. He’d been forced to stall, to keep Miranda in the open, in front of witnesses who would see the ambassador’s daughter forcibly wrested from him. Whether with Hawk Monroe or Plan A’s fatigue-clad security agent Pedro Vasquez, she should have been nearing Lisbon by now, hustled onto a plane out of the country. But an unknown assailant had mowed down both plans and both men, leaving Sandro with an angry woman and one hell of a problem.

Possession of Miranda Carrington didn’t figure into any of his plans, not C, not D, not even Z. Possession of Miranda Carrington went against every strategy, every rule, in the International Security Alliance operations manual. And unless Sandro played his cards right, the ominously silent ambassador’s daughter could not only ruin years worth of work, but get them both killed in the process. Again.

This time for good.

Staying alive demanded he find a way to unload his unwanted charge before anyone realized he had her. Her disappearance would be viewed as kidnapping, and the fallout would create an international fiasco. The United States government couldn’t sanction his actions, nor could the ISA claim him, not when doing so would forfeit years of undercover operations.

The low burn in his shoulder intensified, forcing Sandro to bite back a muttered curse. He had to maneuver out of this jam all by himself, just like he’d fallen into it. He’d long since learned the risk of putting his life into the hands of others. No way would he jeopardize the fate of an innocent woman.

The term collateral damage turned his stomach.

Frowning, he glanced at the woman walking beside him. He held her hand securely in his, but instinct warned touching Miranda Carrington required more than flesh to flesh contact. She held her chin high, shoulders back, those fascinating gypsy eyes focused on some point in the distance, as though being shot at and pursued through back alleys was an everyday occurrence.

“Almost there,” he said, unnerved by her silence. She hadn’t uttered a word in over thirty minutes, but he could tell she was thinking as rapidly as they were walking. He could only imagine the questions racing through her, the uncertainty.

He would get her inside, get her safe, then tell her what he could.

Which wasn’t much.

“Almost where?” she asked, but didn’t look at him.

He, on the other hand, couldn’t stop watching her, all that thick blond hair cascading around her face and over a shoulder bared by her loose-fitting crimson blouse, that lush mouth set in a mutinous line and those defiantly high cheekbones. He knew where he wanted to take her, all right.

He knew where he wanted her to take him.

He also knew he was flat out of his mind.