Cold as Ice - Anne Stuart [9]
In the end it wasn’t important. She’d been efficiently roped and tied by the charming Texan—she’d let Harry Van Dorn wine and dine her and tomorrow she’d be on her way, able to leave her work and her life behind her. She wasn’t going to sleep with him—she’d decided that a while ago, though she wasn’t sure when. She wasn’t in the mood for anything but escape and quiet.
She would survive the utter hell of falling asleep surrounded by water by taking a couple of tranquilizers to drown out the anxiety. And by this time tomorrow it would all be a distant memory.
Jensen wasn’t happy. Things weren’t going as he’d planned, but then, things seldom did. He hadn’t counted on Genevieve Spenser, or Harry Van Dorn’s taking to her like a puppy with a new squeaky toy. He could turn her to his benefit, as a welcome distraction, but he still didn’t have to like it. Complications were a necessary evil, but he was a man who got rid of complications. He should have arranged to get rid of Miss Spenser before she ever arrived in the islands.
He seldom wasted his time in hindsight. He would have expected a pretty bimbo, a minor inconvenience, one he could dispose of quickly. And she was very pretty, in that sleek, well-cared-for way that tended to set his teeth on edge when he allowed himself the luxury of feeling. But there was more to her than that, though she was trying to hide it. She was smarter than she wanted people to know, and angrier.
That anger was undeniably fascinating. Distracting. The women he knew hid their anger very well, channeling it into more devious endeavors. Genevieve Spenser didn’t seem to have found her outlet, and he could see it simmering beneath her calm brown eyes. Blond hair and brown eyes—an interesting combination. Though her hair was probably some mousy color in its natural state.
And he was thinking far too much about her when he had a job to do. Hans was safely ensconced in the galley, a job he was well trained for, both when it came to food and knives, and Renaud was busy in the bowels of the ship, making sure everything was set to go when they got the word. The other five had been chosen by Isobel Lambert herself, and they were almost as efficient and professional as he was. They’d blended into their new jobs with effortless ease. Harry Van Dorn had no idea he was surrounded by members of the Committee.
Then again, if he was as artless as he seemed to be, he’d have no idea what the Committee was. Few people did, but he didn’t quite believe in Harry’s cluelessness. The kind of power and money he controlled bought a lot of privileged information.
For some reason he was getting impatient.
Harry Van Dorn should have been a simple matter. A megalomaniac billionaire with a taste for the occult and a complicated plan to disrupt the flow of commerce and the financial stability of the world, all to his own benefit.
The problem was, Harry compartmentalized. He had people working on each branch of his plan, each branch of the Rule of Seven was self-contained, and it made discovering the details about each incipient disaster that much more difficult. One never led to another, and his army of minions seemed to have no idea that there were other armies working in concert on parallel disasters. Peter had only been on-site for four months—a relatively short time compared with his last tenure as personal assistant to Marcello Ricetti, a Sicilian arms dealer with a taste for sadism and young boys. Peter had managed to keep him away from the children during the year he’d spent with him, at a price. He’d have had to pay the same price anyway, and he hadn’t thought twice about it. Even though in the end it had cost him his wife.
At least he hadn’t been required to perform more personal services for Harry Van Dorn. Peter’s wellhoned