Rogue Alpha (Alpha 7) Read online

  When she had questioned who was paying for it, Seth had dryly told her she could consider the flight to Paris as being “on the house.” A reminder of the payment he had extracted for his services so far.

  Diana still cringed with embarrassment every time she thought of the two of them together earlier today. Of the way she had allowed Seth to touch her so intimately. Of her total loss of control, not once but twice.

  And she had balked at having thought she might sound needy yesterday!

  Allowing Seth Armstrong to make love to her so intimately, didn’t only sound needy, it was needy.

  Having him talk to her so crudely afterward had been humiliating.

  As well as dousing any desire on her part ever to want to repeat the experience.

  Had that been his intention all along? His way of telling her he might find her sexually attractive, but that was all it was or ever could be?

  As if she could ever have imagined it as being anything else.

  Seth was obviously a solitary man. He lived and worked alone. He didn’t have a single Christmas card on display in his home. He had told her himself there was no special woman in his life. Diana hadn’t seen any family photographs in his study last night either, not of his parents or any siblings. A lack of personal photographs that she found unusual.

  His parents would surely still be alive, at least?

  Seth was proving to be a man with more secrets than answers.

  And a man Diana responded to with unprecedented sexual abandon.

  She clenched her thighs together at the memory of having his fingers stroking her clitoris and along the wetness of her folds. Of having those fingers thrusting pleasurably inside her as they sought and then found the knot of nerves inside her that would send her over the edge into climax.

  Damn it, I have to stop thinking about it.

  Reliving it.

  Becoming sexually aroused, merely from looking at the lean strength of Seth’s hand, as it rested on top of his thigh while he sat beside her in the back of the private limousine driving them into Paris itself.

  A privacy glass was raised between them and the driver, who had been waiting for them beside the limousine when the plane landed. The other man had dealt with their bags while Seth ensured their transition from plane to car was achieved with the minimum of fuss from the authorities.

  This was the reason she had gone to this man, Diana reminded herself sternly. The only reason. Because when Seth Armstrong took charge, things happened. People jumped to do his bidding. Quietly. Efficiently. Or he wanted to know the reason why not.

  It had been the same at her hotel in London earlier. Diana had wanted to finish tidying the room after disposing of the clothes she would never wear again, Seth had refused to let her. Instead, they had gone down in the lift together, and then Seth had disappeared into the hotel manager’s office with him.

  Diana had no idea what Seth said to the manager, but the other man had been pale and sweating by the time the two of them came out of the office again five minutes later, the older man apologizing to Diana profusely and assuring her there would no bill to pay after the “inconvenience” she had suffered. She could only assume he meant having someone break into her hotel room.

  Once they returned to Seth’s house, he had offered her the use of his DVD collection before disappearing into his study for a couple of hours. Whatever he had been doing in there—besides organizing the company jet to fly them both to Paris, and possibly passing on any work he was involved in to someone else at Grayson Security—it hadn’t pleased him. His expression had been grimly uncommunicative when he rejoined Diana in time for them to prepare a cold lunch together before leaving for the airport. He had remained that way during the flight here too.

  She broke that silence once again. “Where to now?”

  “I’m guessing you want to go to your apartment.” He didn’t even glance at her as he answered her tersely.

  “I do, but… You intend staying at my apartment with me?” Diana tensed merely thinking about it.

  He did look at her now. At least he turned his head in her direction. The dark sunglasses he wore prevented her from seeing if Seth was actually looking at her. Completely unnecessary sunglasses considering it hadn’t been a sunny day to start with and was already starting to get dark.

  Except, as the eyes were reputed to be the windows to the soul, the sunglasses prevented Diana from being able to discern any of Seth’s thoughts.

  “Do you have a problem with that?” he prompted dryly.

  “I…We…It only has one bedroom.” Diana’s cheeks burned hotly.

  “So?”

  “So it’s my bedroom.”

  He gave a mocking inclination of his head. “I’d assumed so as it’s your apartment.”

  “There’s only one bed.”

  “I’d assumed that too.”

  “Where are you going to sleep?”

  Dark brows rose above the sunglasses. “Where would you like me to sleep?”

  At a hotel.

  Or in another room in her apartment.

  At least in a separate bed.

  “Oh, for fuck’s sake…” Seth muttered his obvious impatience with this conversation. “I didn’t mean what I said earlier. I’m not about to ask for sexual favors in exchange for helping you,” he explained as she eyed him questioningly.

  Her chin rose. “You would be wasting your time if you did.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yes.” The look she gave him dared him to contradict her. To even mention her lack of control earlier.

  “Fine.” He nodded tersely. “But how the hell do you expect me to protect you if I don’t stay at your apartment with you?”

  Good point, Diana acknowledged with a wince. She had been so intent on having Seth believe her, in enlisting his help, she hadn’t thought this far ahead. But, of course, it was stupid to expect—or want—him to stay at a hotel. The whole point of his being here was so that he could protect her while he helped her unravel exactly why these things were happening to her at all.

  “I’ll sleep on the sofa if that will help assuage your puritan little heart,” Seth bit out harshly.

  “It’s a chaise,” she corrected. “I rented the apartment already furnished, and there’s no way you would ever fit comfortably on a chaise.” His shoulders were wider than the delicate piece of furniture, for one thing, and his legs would hang over the end by at least a foot too. “I’ll sleep on it.”

  The whole conversation on the subject proved to be a complete waste of their time when they arrived at Diana’s apartment and found it was as wrecked as her hotel room had been earlier.

  Actually, it was worse, Seth acknowledged with a pained grimace, because this was where Diana had made her Parisian home, and everything in it—apart from the furniture—belonged to her. It meant something to her if she had carried it all the way here with her from England.

  Not a single drawer or cupboard had been left untouched, or a single item of clothing left in the wardrobe or dresser, all of the crockery smashed on the floor of the small kitchen area. Someone had taken a knife to the mattress on the bed and the soft furnishings—including the chaise—as well as the paintings on the walls.

  It seemed to Seth that the crockery and paintings were destruction for destruction’s sake.

  As was the trampling of the decorated Christmas tree and the wrapped presents beneath it.

  Someone was getting seriously pissed off at not being able to find whatever it was they were looking for.

  Seth’s mouth thinned at how ashen Diana’s face had become as she stood in the middle of the mess that was her sitting room and adjoining kitchen. “The man following you obviously has an accomplice here in Paris.”

  “Yes.” That look of defeat was back on Diana’s face.

  “Look, we don’t have to stay here. We can go to—”

  “No!” Her eyes glittered as she glared at him. “I’m not going to allow these people to hound me ou
t of my own home.” Her shoulders straightened with determination. “I’ll tidy up, throw out what’s beyond repair, and order a new mattress for the bed.” Tears filled her eyes as she picked up one of the slashed paintings. “This was always one of my favorites.”

  The small painting depicted a wild coastline, high cliffs with the sea crashing in on the shore below. Possibly a North Wales coastline? “One of your father’s?” Seth guessed.

  Diana sighed. “Yes. Unfortunately I didn’t inherit enough talent from either of my parents to be able to paint or write well.”

  Seth shrugged. “Your drawings of the man following you were pretty accurate.”

  “But lacking in any original talent.”

  She made the statement as if reading it from somewhere. Which Seth would guess she possibly had; no doubt the teachers at her school had expected the daughter of Stephen and Stella Baxter to show some of their flair with art or words and been sadly disappointed when that hadn’t turned out to be the case. A fact that would probably have been noted in her school reports.

  Seth’s mother had been too busy drinking and his father gambling to care what he did or whether he excelled at anything, let alone read their son’s school reports. The teachers at his schools had been too busy trying to maintain some sort of discipline in the overcrowded classrooms to give a damn either.

  Which was perhaps as well, because the talents Seth had discovered he had weren’t ones that could be utilized in a schoolroom. He had the army to thank, and the friends he had made there, for the fact he hadn’t used those talents on the wrong side of the law rather than inside it. Most of the time, he acknowledged self-derisively. He wasn’t averse to bending the law if he had to in order to get his job for Grayson Security done.

  None of which was of any help to either Diana or himself right now.

  “How do you know my drawings are accurate?” Diana suddenly prompted with hard suspicion.

  Seth answered her honestly. “The man from those sketches was in the lobby of your hotel this morning.”

  She stared at him wordlessly for several seconds before dropping abruptly onto one of the slashed chairs as if her legs would no longer support her. “And you don’t think perhaps you ought to have mentioned that before now?”

  He grimaced. “I thought about it…”

  “But using your superior judgment, you decided against it,” she guessed knowingly.

  Seth bit back his annoyance with her snarky comment, knowing it wouldn’t help this situation for him to lose his temper. “I decided it served no purpose to do so, yes. Oh, for fuck’s sake,” he snapped irritably at her accusing stare. “I didn’t know it was him until we got to your room and I looked at those sketches. He would have seen the two of us together, so I’m pretty sure by the time I’d got back downstairs, he would have scuttled back under whatever rock he had crawled out from.”

  Diana had a feeling he would too. She just felt so…so helpless. And still completely in the dark as to what these men could possibly be looking for, both here and in her hotel room in England.

  The only thing she had of value was the painting she still held tightly against her chest. Had of value. Because the painting was destroyed beyond repair, and so worth nothing in monetary value. As a personal gift to her from her father, it was still priceless.

  And she still had absolutely no idea why these things were happening to her.

  Except to know her life currently felt as if it was on a downward spiral, and there was nothing she could do to stop it.

  Chapter 5

  “Better.” Diana looked about the tidied sitting room with satisfaction. It was far from perfect but did at least resemble the charming room that had attracted her into renting the apartment in the first place. That, and the fact it was situated just off the main thoroughfare of the Champs-Élysées.

  There was nothing she could do about the ruined pieces of furniture, except to tell the landlord she would replace them. Everything else had now been either picked up, swept up, or mopped up from the floor, and the room returned to some sort of order. The bedroom and bathroom were the same.

  Her underwear had all gone in the bin. She had found some items of clothing—sweaters, and a pair of jeans thrown into a corner of her bedroom—that were wearable, once they had been laundered. But the rest of her clothes were too badly damaged and had also been consigned to the bin.

  Now there was only dinner to think about and the sleeping arrangements to sort out.

  Only…

  Seth had set to and helped her tidy and clean up, the two of them working together in silence. Now the work was all done, Diana felt incredibly awkward as to what happened next.

  “Grayson Security has a safe house in Paris.”

  She glanced blankly at Seth. “What?”

  He sighed. “Our work here is done, but we have nowhere to sleep and nothing to eat or drink. Grayson Security owns several properties in cities around the world that we use as safe houses. Paris is one of those cities.”

  She gave an inelegant snort. “Something else you didn’t feel the need to share?”

  His jaw tightened. “I doubt you would have been willing to contemplate the safe house option earlier.”

  No, she probably wouldn’t. The idea of a safe house seemed very tempting now, though. So far, only her property had been destroyed, but how long before those attacks became more personal in nature? Before she was the one being slashed, possibly killed?

  She grimaced. “I’m happy to contemplate it now.”

  Seth nodded. “Did you notice anything missing here?”

  “Not that I could see, no.”

  Seth’s itch, the feeling, was telling him more strongly than ever that all this was somehow connected to Jeremy Moore. That even though the other man was dead, something Moore had done—or not done—had put his wife in danger.

  He clenched his hands into fists at his sides to stop himself from reaching out and taking Diana in his arms. She looked so lost and vulnerable right now.

  How much more vulnerable was she going to look and feel if his growing suspicion was correct and Jeremy Moore hadn’t only been an abusive husband but was behind everything that had happened to Diana the past eight months?

  “Nice,” Diana murmured appreciatively as the two of them entered what could only be called a small château.

  A small enclosed château in the center of Paris, protected by high walls, security cameras, and eight-foot-high gates at the entrance that could only be opened with the secure code Seth had punched into the system.

  Their method of getting here had been interesting too. First they had taken a cab via the Champs-Élysées and the Arc de Triomphe, with the beautiful Eiffel Tower visible in the distance, finally leaving the cab outside the Louvre.

  They had paid their fee and entered the famous gallery, not to look at the artwork but so that they could get lost among the people milling about the crowded salons. Seth had then doubled back to the entrance so they could slip away before getting into another cab that took them to the Gare du Nord railway station.

  Once they were in the station, he had purchased two train tickets for London. Tickets they hadn’t used, but instead left the railway station by a side entrance. They had walked for several streets before Seth had hailed another cab, which had dropped the two of them three streets away from the château. They had walked the rest of the way.

  All very secret agentish.

  The château itself was like an old manor house but with turrets at each corner of the building. The outside looked neglected, peeling paintwork, an overgrown garden. The inside was more like a museum than a home, the furnishings antique, the paintings on the walls and the statues in the four corners of the cavernous entrance hall all looking as if they might be originals.

  “My father would love this as much as I do.” Her footsteps on the tiled floor of the entrance hall echoed up into the high vaulted ceiling as she stepped farther inside.

  There was a scowl on
Seth’s face as he glanced at their surroundings. “It’s a bloody mausoleum!”

  Diana grinned. “Which is exactly the reason I love it.”

  Seth indulged himself by appreciating her smile for several seconds. Teasing. Even mischievous. Something he knew she’d had little reason to feel in recent months. “Dair must have been out of his mind to buy this place.” He gave a shake of his head.

  “Dair…?”

  “The owner of Grayson Security. Although I’m not sure he will be for much longer,” he added with a grimace. “I have a feeling he might sell. He’s all but retired anyway, and the other operatives are dropping like flies too.”

  Diana froze. “They died?”

  “Married. Which is as good as being dead,” he added disgustedly.

  “I would argue that comment with you, but my own marriage was so awful, I really can’t recommend it.” She sighed. “My parents’ marriage has always been very happy, though.” She brightened a little.

  “Lucky them.” Seth threw open the doors to a large sitting room, again filled with antique furnishings.

  “Your own parents’ marriage isn’t happy?” Diana prompted curiously. She couldn’t help herself, Seth had offered up so little information about himself so far.

  “Wasn’t,” he corrected tersely. “They both died in a car accident seventeen years ago. My father was drunk at the wheel. I survived the crash, and luckily, no other vehicle was involved. The lamppost took a beating, though.”

  A thought occurred to her. “Is that how your face was cut—Sorry.” She winced as Seth’s eyes turned as hard as jet.

  His fingers moved as if by habit to touch the six-inch scar down his left cheek and throat. “The car was a mess, all twisted metal. Some of it sliced through my face.”

  “I shouldn’t have asked.” She shuddered as she could almost feel the metal slicing through his flesh. “I’m sorry.”

  He mouth twisted humorlessly. “It’s the only legacy they left me.”

  She winced at the bitterness she sensed behind the comment. “Do you have any siblings?”