Cold as Ice - Anne Stuart [38]
“What about you?” Her voice was caustic. “I thought you could do anything.”
“Not my area of expertise,” he said. “I take lives, not save them.”
There was nothing she could say to that flat statement. “So we just sit here and wait for you to demonstrate your area of expertise?” she asked.
“The security system keeps the others out as well. Count your blessings.”
“Oh, I’m absolutely showered with them.”
There was a faint light of amusement in his eyes. “I do like you better when you fight back,” he said.
“My purpose in life is not to make you like me,” she said. “Unless it means you’ll let me leave. And take Harry with me.”
“I’m afraid I can’t let you do that.”
“I don’t believe that. I expect you can do anything you want.”
“I’m charmed by your high opinion of me,” he said. “But the fact remains that I have a job to do and I’m going to see that it’s done. It’s a matter of professional pride.”
“Then why are we talking?” she snapped.
“The house is booby-trapped—you try to leave, and you’ll get one hell of a shock. And I warned you about the waters around here. But the French doors off the living room are safe, and there are two swimming pools within the walls—one freshwater, one saltwater. Exercise might help you relax.”
“I don’t have a bathing suit.”
“Harry had a succession of women here over the years. If you look I’m sure you’ll find something that fits. Or do without one entirely.”
“Oh, yes, there’s nothing I’d like better than prancing around naked,” she said, just managing to keep the growl out of her voice.
“Don’t you think you’re safe around me?”
“Oh, of course I do. You were only planning to kill me, not rape me.” She pushed her hair back from her face. She was close enough that she could see his expression without her contact lenses. But as usual he gave nothing away. “Unless, of course, I could seduce you into letting me go.”
For a careful man he could make a dangerous mistake. He laughed at the notion.
“You don’t think I could do it?” she demanded, incensed.
“Seduce me? You could certainly do that…and we have two days to kill, if you’ll pardon the expression. Would it make any difference? No. And the question is, would you really be able to go through with it?”
She let her eyes sweep over him in a leisurely, insulting manner that failed to elicit any sort of reaction. “Why not?” she said. “You know perfectly well that you’re passably good-looking. When you’re not acting like the gray ghost.”
“Passably good-looking?” Now she’d really amused him. “I think you’d hold out for something better than that.”
He was flat-out gorgeous, with his long black hair curling at the back of his neck, his icy blue eyes, his long, lean body. “Beggars can’t be choosers,” she said blithely.
“Don’t waste your time on me, Ms. Spenser. I’m an expert in all kinds of weapons, including sex. I have no emotions—I can fuck as efficiently as I can kill, and neither mean a thing to me.”
“I’d never thought of sex as a weapon.”
“You’re either lying or you’re hopelessly naive. And you don’t strike me as a hopeless romantic.”
Score one for her, Genevieve thought. He didn’t know her that well at all. In fact, she was desperately, impractically romantic.
She leaned back in her chair, stretching her long bare legs out in front of her. “So let’s sum this up,” she said in her best lawyerly voice. In truth, she’d spent very little time in court, and it had never been up to her to provide the summation, but she could wing it with the best of them. “I can’t leave the house because the doors and windows are electrified, but I can use the pool… What’s to keep me from taking off once I’m outside?”
“The pool area is surrounded by an electrified fence that would kill you.”
She swallowed. “All right. I manage to get past that, and then I have to deal with your sadistic cronies. I get past them and the waters are full of sharks. Which, by the way, I don’t believe.”
“I’d hate to see you end up as fish food,” he said mildly. “My mother took me to see Jaws when I was a kid, and it didn’t look like a pleasant