Take Me for a Ride Read online

  As girls residing in the Arbatskaya district, Tatyana and her sister, Svetlana, had pressed their noses against the glass of their bedroom window until the taillights of the chauffeured Daimler were out of sight and their governess shooed them off to bed.

  Tatyana recalled the two of them huddled in the warm, cavernous kitchen drinking chai, or black tea, made with water from the samovar. They’d sipped it slowly as they observed the family cook making borsht, rye bread, blinis, and fish stew.

  Tatyana smiled up at the sky and wiped a tear away with the finger of her glove. “What do you see, Ted? Be my eyes and show me the modern Red Square, mmm?”

  He cleared his throat. “All right. There’s a light sprinkling of snow on the dark brick courtyard. It’s not as large an area as I expected, but the buildings are fantastic, like something out of a fairy tale. The historical museum looks like a twin-spired gingerbread castle, made in perfect symmetry by a painstaking pastry chef. It glows reddish brown in the weak sunlight, but all of its towers and cupolas seem dusted with confectioner’s sugar.”

  She was enchanted with the vision he conjured, as well as his gorgeous baritone. “Go on. St. Basil’s? Is it the same?”

  “St. Basil’s Cathedral was created by an entirely different, and probably mad, pastry chef. Instead of gingerbread, it looks as if it were sculpted out of very fine white cake, with swirls of brightly painted candy atop the five towers.”

  “The onion domes,” she murmured. “It’s the same . . .”

  “They don’t look like onions. More like upside-down hot-air balloons, slightly squished. Or dollops of meringue, painted like Easter eggs.”

  She laughed and clapped her hands. “Lovely description, Ted. What else?”

  “The Kremlin Wall runs forever, and inside is a whole complex of buildings—the Kremlin palaces, the state armory, various cathedrals with more onion domes—but gold ones this time. In front of the wall, there’s Len in’s mausoleum with the poor man inside, embalmed for viewing. It’s a rather plain, modern structure with evergreens standing like sentries around it. There’s the monolithic GUM department store, with its great glass roof . . .”

  Tatyana listened as he re-created the iconic sights for her, his voice adding a rich poetry to the visual feast. At last his voice tapered off, and they simply stood together, arm in arm. She could feel the tentative sunshine of spring bathing her face, and her hair lifting in the gentle breeze. She sensed that Ted was looking at her and not at the architecture.

  “What is it? Do I have lipstick on my teeth?” She carefully applied a soft shade each morning with her finger and a magnifying mirror. Natalie had chosen the color for her.

  “No. You look . . . radiant,” he said. “Happy.” After a moment he added, “Beautiful.”

  Her breath caught. No one had called her beautiful in decades. “Ted—”

  His hand tightened on her arm. “Tatyana, did you mention our trip here to anyone?”

  “No. Not even to Natalie, who’s probably worried sick. Why?”

  “Because we’re being watched.”

  “Watched?” she repeated. “How do you know?”

  “My uniform may be dusty after years of retirement, but basic surveillance techniques don’t change—even if they’ve got fancier equipment these days. There are three different men, and they’ve been on us since we left the hotel. One’s in an old Volvo. Two are on foot.”

  Just like that, Tatyana’s pleasure at being back in Moscow dissipated. “Ted, what do we do?”

  He covered her hand with his. “Well, for starters, we lose them. Then we change hotels.”

  Natalie and Eric checked into the Savoy upon arrival in Moscow. He definitely traveled first-class.

  “Do you mind if we share a room?” he asked her.

  Natalie looked around the lobby, focusing on the luxe seating, the gorgeous chandeliers, the fresh flower arrangements. She gulped, not even wanting to know what it cost to stay a night here.

  He raised his eyebrows and gave her a quizzical look. Belatedly she realized that he was still awaiting an answer from her.

  “Of—of course not,” she stammered. “But Eric, I can’t af—”

  “I can get you your own room if you’d like,” he said. “I just thought we could have more . . . fun . . . if we stayed together.”

  He winked at her, and heat bloomed in her cheeks, spread down her neck and then lower.

  “Yes,” she managed. “I’d like to stay together.”

  “Great. With all that hesitation, I was beginning to think that I was a terrible lover or something.” His eyes danced as her mortification deepened.

  The hotel employee behind the registration desk kept his face carefully neutral, for which Natalie was intensely grateful. But she decided on a little revenge.

  “Oh, no,” she said coolly. “You were fine. Quite competent.”

  Eric’s eyes lit with challenge and he poked his tongue into his cheek as he slapped down his American Express card. “Competent,” he repeated. “Well, I’m so glad.” His expression promised retribution when they got upstairs.

  Uh-oh. But she just smiled sweetly at him as they waited for their registration to be processed.

  During the hours on the plane, she had worked almost nonstop on a small art quilt, which spilled over her lap in a colorful waterfall. Airport security had confiscated her good fabric scissors, but she managed to painstakingly cut out shapes with a tiny nail scissors.

  Eric asked about the subject matter of the quilt, but she just smiled and shrugged enigmatically. The atmosphere between them felt strained and odd, caught between the sexual intimacy of the day before and the unspoken question: What next?

  What was next physically, of course, was Moscow and finding her grandmother. What was next emotionally was on ice.

  She noticed small things about Eric. He was invested in seeming casual, with not a care in the world, yet he was tightly wound and unable to relax on the plane. He fidgeted and squirmed; got up to pace the aisle; messed around with his BlackBerry. He’d watch five minutes of a movie before flipping to another selection, then watch five minutes of that before going on to yet another. Then he was back to pacing the aisle.

  Natalie observed him while she sewed and wondered about his odd behavior the night before. She’d woken when he’d come into the room . . . and he’d come in with his packed duffel bag. Then he’d artfully unpacked it, tossing a shirt here and a belt there, a paperback book on the desk. He’d surreptitiously looked over at her while doing it.

  The only explanation was that McDougal had planned to disappear on her but then changed his mind. Why?

  But the most interesting thing about his actions—the most important thing—was that he’d come back, and that spoke for his character.

  Eric was an enigma; that was for sure. But she didn’t ask him about his odd behavior, since they remained in that no-man’s land between being acquaintances and being strangers.

  She had loved sex with him, especially loved the freedom that he’d encouraged her to take with her own body. Nels would have been horrified and offended if she’d touched herself—he’d have taken it as a reproach, as a sign that he wasn’t an adequate lover. He wasn’t, but she’d never informed him of the fact.

  Done with their paperwork, the clerk handed them back their visas and Eric’s credit card along with two room keys. He asked politely if they needed help with their bags, but they declined. Eric, ever the gentleman, took hers. No matter what he claimed, he was a sweet guy.

  Their room was beautiful and elegant—done in chocolate browns, taupes, and pale blues—but she’d barely taken a glance around before Eric advanced upon her. “Competent?” he growled.

  She backed away. “You deserved that. You were trying to embarrass me.”

  He stalked her into the corner, where she ran out of room to retreat. Her heart began to pound at the look in his eyes, which was pure sex, pure challenge, and raw with something peculiarly male and perverse. />
  She put her hands up—she wasn’t sure why—and he took her wrists prisoner, pressing them to the wall above her head. He invaded her personal space, took possession of her mouth, and kissed her senseless. Then he let her wrists go and slipped his hands up her sweater to touch her bare breasts. A raw surge of power—or was it weakness?—washed through her, leaving her breathless.

  He withdrew his hands from her body but pressed his palms against each of the adjoining walls, so that she couldn’t escape the corner even if she’d wanted to. “Take off your clothes, Natalie,” he said huskily. “Strip for me.”

  Heat streaked through her. Feeling self-conscious, she kicked off her shoes, toed off her socks, and slowly peeled her jeans down her legs until she wore nothing but the too-large cashmere sweater. She took hold of the hem and pulled it up, but he stopped her, sweeping his warm fingers down her belly, around her waist, down to her bottom.

  He lifted her, and she wrapped her legs around his waist, feeling the fabric of his jeans against her most vulnerable spot. Then, with the rasp of a zipper, the fabric was gone and he entered her in one long, smooth, hard stroke that made her thighs tremble.

  If she admitted the truth, she’d been ready for him ever since he’d asked her if she minded sharing a room.

  He withdrew and then impaled her again, pressing her back against the wall, moving a hand under the sweater to ruck it up and expose her breasts to his mouth. He circled a nipple with his tongue and then suckled it.

  But all she could focus on was him stroking inside her, pressing her against the wall, holding her hostage to rising, cresting waves of pleasure.

  “You like that, sweetheart?” he asked in a thick voice.

  She nodded, then gasped as he pushed into her again.

  “Say it. Say my name.”

  “I like it, Eric . . .”

  “You want me?”

  “Yes,” she moaned. “Eric, I want you. Please.”

  He drove harder, faster. “Tell me what you like, honey.”

  “I like your . . .”

  “You like my cock in you?”

  She did. She nodded, and his eyes darkened.

  “Tell me.”

  But the words wouldn’t form on her tongue. “I’m not used to talking dirty. Or talking at all, during sex.”

  He laughed. “We’re not talking dirty, babe. You want me to talk dirty? C’mere, nice girl.” He bent his head and whispered words into her ear, filthy words about what he wanted to do to her that made her feel hot, shamed, over the edge—and so alive.

  Such a contradiction that she loved the bad boy in him—the wild, no-promises fucking, because that was what this was—but she was equally drawn by the need she saw deep in his eyes. It was that need she sensed that got to her, that took her up ever higher.

  Eric McDougal was an emotional fraud. He was lonely for connection, ripe for tenderness, longing for trust. But he was such a man that he couldn’t admit any of that. Eric wanted entry to her in more ways than one . . . but something held him back. What was it?

  Physical sensation eventually pushed rational thought aside. She let her head drop back and her legs go wide and sensation take over. Eric’s hands held her bottom as if she weighed nothing, and his strength appealed to something primal in her.

  He channeled his hidden need into stroking her intimately, and she found it harder and harder to catch a breath. He continued to whisper husky, sexy, sinful words into her ears, chuckling as she blushed fire.

  The hot, dirty-sweet shame lapped at her, crested, built to a raging crescendo, and then rushed over her. She disintegrated with an unintelligible cry and felt Eric join her moments later. Then they slid down the wall into a boneless, sated heap.

  “Welcome to Moscow, sweetheart,” he said.

  Twenty

  McDougal drank in the sight of Natalie’s naked body as she slipped from the bed and headed for the shower. She was fine boned but not thin, with curves in all the right places. Her breasts were beautifully proportioned, and her ass—God, that ass. So fine he wanted to draw it, which was a big laugh because he couldn’t scratch out a stick dog to save his life.

  But physical attraction wasn’t even the half of it.

  He didn’t know what it was about Natalie that got to him, but she did. That “click” had been there again . . . that damned click. It was driving him crazy that he couldn’t put his finger on it, identify it, classify it.

  Natalie just seemed to understand him on a very basic level. She observed and tolerated and rolled with him. She was the only person he knew who called him by his first name. Everyone else called him by the more impersonal “McDougal,” and usually he liked it that way. But the way her lips moved when she said Eric—God, that was sexy.

  Then there was the way her breath had hitched and her eyes had gone smoky as he took her against the wall . . . her sense of humor about wearing the terrible clothes he’d picked for her . . . her storybook view of the world . . . her insistence on his decency. He still winced at that.

  So wrong that she thought of him as a nice guy.

  McDougal sighed and rolled toward the phone, unable to shake his guilt. He ordered an elaborate appetizer tray from room service while Natalie showered.

  Then he called Miguel again to see whether he’d come up with anything on Giselle. He was having a hard time tracking down exactly who she was, and she definitely wasn’t in the U.S. legally.

  This time Miguel the Magician had answers. “Giselle Oblomov. Russian born with a French mother who died when she was young. Giselle ran wild at an early age, got into partying and drugs. Became essentially a mob moll for a particularly nasty branch of the Russian Mafiya. The head of it, one Pyotr Suzdal, got to the top by murdering his predecessor—not an unusual story. There appears to be only one other branch with more power than his, and it’s headed up by a Vasily Somov.

  “But back to Giselle Oblomov. Her father’s affiliated with Suzdal’s outfit, too. They’re into a lot of stuff: prostitution, nightclubs, gambling, racing. Within the past couple of years, they’ve developed a ring of art and antiquities smugglers. They rip off jewelers, galleries, and museums with poor security, and also individuals.

  “They get the hot items out of the country within hours, if they can. Then they sell them elsewhere, deposit the proceeds into legal businesses, and launder the money. Giselle Oblomov was operating in New York for them and had gotten real cozy with a restorations specialist—”

  “Luc Ricard,” Eric said. “The insurance company’s client.”

  “Exactly. He not only had rich clientele who could become future marks, but he could alter items so that they wouldn’t pop immediately on the international Art Loss Register. He also did a lot of international shipping of items to and from overseas clients, and Giselle apparently used that to her advantage in getting things in and out of the U.S. illegally.”

  “Clever girl,” Eric mused.

  “Yes. But get this: Ricard was found murdered just yesterday, and she’s wanted for questioning in connection with his death. The cops can’t find her, though. They’re also looking for an employee of Ricard’s who’s disappeared, a Natalie Rosen.”

  “Interesting.” McDougal chose not to mention his traveling companion.

  “Anyway, if I were you, I’d stay away from this Giselle chica. The men in her life seem to turn up dead a lot of the time, and her buddies in the Mafiya aren’t nice guys.”

  “Thanks, Miguel. I don’t know how you find this stuff—”

  A rich Cuban chuckle came from the other end of the line. “Nobody does. And believe me, we’re gonna keep it that way.”

  “Okay, one last thing—”

  “It’s always one last thing with you recovery agents,” Miguel mock-groused. “Coño, you can’t find your own assholes without me.”

  Eric ignored the barb. “I forgot, when I asked you before about the old lady and her traveling companion—can you find out where they’re staying? They’d have to have filed
proof of a prebooked reservation along with their tourist visas.”

  “Sí. What are the names again?”

  “Ciccoli, Tatyana, and Blakely, Theodore.”

  “I’ll call you back in five minutes.”

  “Gracias, Miguel.”

  “De nada.”

  Natalie came out of the bathroom in a towel as he hung up, and the sight of her wet and naked reignited his lust. As she bent over her bag to find something to wear, he sidled up behind her and reached a hand under the terry cloth to grab a handful of beautiful booty.

  Startled, she jumped a foot into the air and shrieked.

  Eric grinned his best naughty-little-boy grin. “Sorry; couldn’t resist.”

  “Pervert,” she said with feeling.

  They stood there looking at each other with that same awkward gap between them, the space between acquaintanceship and something deeper. Then McDougal tried to bridge it again with sex. He tugged at the towel.

  “No,” she said, but smiled to soften the word. “I just got clean. Besides, you don’t get any more sex until you tell me more about yourself.”

  “Uh,” Eric said, and shifted from foot to foot. “Well. What d’you want to know?”

  “More about you, your life, your interests.”

  Oh, gee, what’s to tell? I’m a professionally sincere liar who keeps ten different fake business cards in my wallet at any given time. I’m a thief with a permit: I spend my life hunting down stolen objects for money and occasionally get shot at or beaten up for my trouble. My interests are pretty shallow; they consist of money, motorcycles, big yachts, and women. Any further questions can be directed to my attorney.

  But he couldn’t say any of that. Eric cleared his throat and rubbed a hand over the back of his neck. “Well, uh. Grew up with three brothers and four sisters in upstate New York. My dad’s an engineer; my mom stayed home with us. I worked my way through NYU repossessing cars and driving a snowplow.”

  Natalie nodded encouragingly. “What did you major in?”

  “Business. But I couldn’t get one of the courses I wanted sophomore year, and the only thing open was an art history class. Boy, was I pissed. Then I got in there and it was kind of cool. I ended up with a secret minor in it.”