Mission To Seduce

Steadily, her eyes holding his, she said, ‘It means that I’m not a girl. I’m an experienced woman, and if I want to get friendly with someone, then I’ll go ahead and do it, whether—my boss likes it or not.’ She had almost said ‘whether you like it or not’, but stopped herself in time. She wanted to keep this as impersonal as possible.

But Drake had guessed and his face hardened. ‘I’m beginning to think Bob is right about you,’ he said shortly.

‘What do you mean?’

‘“The lady doth protest too much”,’ he quoted. Opening the car door, he said, ‘Come on, let’s go and eat.’

The restaurant was already quite full. It was almost impossible to tell the nationality of the customers from their dress because all looked smart; it was only as you walked by and listened to the language in which they spoke that you could tell. And everyone seemed to be talking as they ate and drank. On a small raised platform behind an equally small dance floor there was a gypsy band which was doing its best to drown out the noise of the voices.

Allie looked back over her shoulder as she turned a laughing face to Drake. ‘Is it always like this?’

He seemed to draw in his breath and gazed at her for a moment before he blinked and bent nearer to hear. She repeated her question and he nodded. ‘Wherever there are Russians you have noise.’

They sat down at a table for two at the rear of the room where an open window gave a welcome coolness. A waiter handed them menus but Drake didn’t look at his for a few minutes. His eyes were still on Allie but there was a frowning, abstracted look in them, as if he was thinking of something quite different.

‘A rouble for them,’ Allie said, her eyebrows rising.

He blinked, looked disconcerted for a moment, then said hastily, ‘What would you like to drink?’

They settled for vodka on the rocks and drank it while Drake explained the menu to her. ‘Everyone has zakuski,’ he told her. ‘That’s the same as hors d’oeuvres. And the Russians can make them last for a couple of hours. That’s mostly why westerners complain about the slow service here; they eat the zakuski and expect the main course to be served straight away, but you have to prolong the experience.’

‘Make a meal of it, you mean,’ Allie said, tongue in cheek.

Drake groaned, laughed. ‘I asked for that one, didn’t I?’

‘You didn’t take up my offer,’ Allie told him.

‘Offer?’

‘A rouble for your thoughts,’ she reminded him. ‘You were miles away just now.’

He gave a short laugh, said, ‘Was I?’ in a terse, ‘leave it’ kind of voice.

But Allie wasn’t to be put down. ‘So where were you?’ she demanded.

Picking up his glass, Drake looked down at it as he gave a small shrug. ‘It was nothing. For a second you reminded me of someone, that’s all.’

‘Oh? Who?’

‘No one you’d know,’ he said dismissively. ‘Now, have you decided what you would like to eat?’

‘Well, as I’m in Russia, I’ll guess I’ll go for something really authentic and have the beef stroganoff.’

That made him grin. ‘Very adventurous!’ he mocked.

Allie smiled back at him, wondering who it was she’d reminded him of. What woman could it have been, and what must she have meant to him to drag his mind away from the present and bring such a frown of memory to his face? ‘I take it you didn’t bring your family with you to Moscow,’ she said lightly.

‘My family?’ He gave her an assessing look at the question, probably wondering if it meant she was interested in him. ‘I have no family. I’m not married,’ he said, his tone a little abrupt.

She nodded. ‘That figures. Companies tend to send single people on foreign assignments. It’s cheaper.’

‘Yes, I suppose so.’

He looked slightly amused for a moment but turned to give the waiter his attention. He ordered in fluent Russian that produced the hors d’oeuvres and a bottle of Russian champagne. The gypsy band was playing away with great vigour and soon people got up to dance. Allie watched the different interpretations of the music with amusement; some tried to waltz, others to do a Highland fling, while other dancers just jigged around. The dancers were more entertaining than the band, but everyone seemed to be having a good time.

Watching her, Drake said, ‘Want to try?’

‘To that?’ She gave him a horrified look. ‘No way; I haven’t had nearly enough to drink to let my hair down to that extent.’

‘A slower one, then.’ He beckoned a waiter over and gave him some money which was taken over to the band leader, a man with dark hair and a luxuriant moustache who obviously thought he was the bee’s knees in his flamboyant costume.

The money had the desired effect and the band began to play a slow, haunting melody that could only have been a love song in any language. Drake stood and offered his hand. Hiding her reluctance, Allie let him help her to her feet and went into his arms to dance. As they moved around the room she thought how strange it was that you could be with a virtual stranger and never want or expect to be close to him, but with just the excuse of some music he could hold you as close as this, your bodies touching almost intimately, your faces, your mouths just a few inches apart. He could put his arm low on your waist, bend his head to take in the scent of your perfume, could look into your eyes and give a slow smile of awareness. An awareness that you were man and woman, that the business connection was just a superficial nonsense, a masquerade when set against the deeper, primitive sexual consciousness.

She found the thought disturbing, just as she found Drake’s nearness getting to her. He moved well and held her firmly; she could feel the muscle in his arm beneath her hand, and could only guess at his strength. He was too tall for her, of course, but her high heels had lifted her close enough for Allie to get the tang of his aftershave, to be able to study the strong line of his jaw and the firmness of his lips. There was nothing full or heavy about his features and there never would be; he was all lean planes and angles, western handsomeness personified.

She began to wonder if he was very experienced with women. He didn’t give off an obvious aura of knowledge, hadn’t looked her over stripping her as he did so, as some men did, wondering what she would be like in bed and how much effort might have to be put into getting her there. But there was a certain class of man who was so self-confident, so assured in his own masculinity, that he didn’t have to flaunt his experience. And that type of man was far more attractive to a woman than the more obvious kind.

Was Drake that kind of man? Allie wondered. A rather boisterous pair of dancers pushed towards them and Drake pulled her close and swung her out of the way. She followed him effortlessly, their steps perfectly matched, then laughed up at him. ‘That was close.’

‘Mmm.’ He looked down at her musingly for a moment and she wondered if he could guess what she was thinking about him.

Mischievously, she said, ‘You’re miles away again. Where are you this time?’

She wasn’t sure what to expect, but it certainly wasn’t for him to say, completely out of the blue, ‘I know you have an ulterior motive in coming to Russia.’

She came to a precipitate stop, too disconcerted to be able to prevent her face filling with horrified dismay as she stared at him in appalled consternation. How could he know? How could he possibly have found out?

CHAPTER TWO

SOMEBODY bumped into her and Allie hastily moved out of the way, lowering her face, trying to hide her consternation. But her mind was screaming in mingled fright and anger. Who had told him? How could he possibly know? The two, oh, so vital questions burned into her brain. With a supreme effort she somehow lifted her head to look at Drake, forcing an amused smile to her mouth. Her voice sounding odd even to her own ears, she managed to say lightly, ‘What on earth gives you that idea?’

She hadn’t fooled him for a minute. Drake was gazing down at her with a frown of incredulous surprise in his grey eyes, and she could almost hear his brain computing her reaction, trying to work out why such a simple remark had disconcerted her so much. ‘It was something Bob said.’

It was such a deliberately ambiguous reply that she felt a spurt of anger but managed to fight it down, aware that he was watching her, studying her face. But she couldn’t understand how Bob could possibly know; she’d told no one, it was a secret she’d shared with only one person in the world—and she had been dead for years now. Fighting for normality, for lightness, Allie said, ‘Really? I can’t think what it was. What did he say, exactly?’

The direct question had pushed him into a corner and Allie knew that he would have to give her a direct answer, but the wretched man side-stepped again by saying, ‘He mentioned that you had an—outside interest in Russia.’

At any other time she might have enjoyed this verbal fencing, but this issue was much too important, made her too anxious to want to prolong it. And it was such dangerous ground. She gave a small shrug, pretending indifference. ‘I can’t think what he means.’

It left the opening up to Drake; he could come right out with it or he could go on playing cat and mouse with her. Allie kept her expression casual, as if nothing was the matter, even looking round the room and humming to the music.

She didn’t know whether she’d managed to deceive him or not, but she felt his eyes still fixed on her when he said, ‘Bob told me that you’ve already written a couple of books for children and would probably use this visit to get background for another.’

So that was it! Allie felt a huge wave of intense relief run through her, her legs felt as if they wanted to sag and her shoulders sank as the tightness left them. But she did her best to hide it by giving an embarrassed laugh. ‘Oh, that!’

‘What else could he have meant?’ The question showed that Drake hadn’t been taken in for a minute. He was holding her quite close and must have felt the sudden loss of tension.

Ignoring the question, she glanced up at him from under her lashes, still pretending to be embarrassed. ‘I’d hoped Bob had forgotten all about my writing. He teased me about it unmercifully when he first found out. Called me the future Enid Blyton of the twenty-first century. Thought it was a great joke. You know what he’s like.’