“Next best thing to a night of restorative sleep, right?” he asked the empty room, then realized he was talking to himself.
Squaring his shoulders and blowing out a deep breath, he opened his bedroom door, determined to put everything but the mission from his mind. Peeking into the dark hallway, he wasn’t surprised to find the manor house quiet. Sonya had turned in hours ago, along with Phelps, Grafton’s loyal butler. Like a vampire, Grafton liked to spend his nights holed up in his library doing God only knew what. And the No-Necks who weren’t on duty patrolling the grounds were bunked in a guesthouse at the back of the property.
Angel crept down the long hallway toward the stairs and studiously avoided looking at Sonya’s door. Partly because he’d be tempted to knock and ask her to invite him in. But mostly because he was battling the urge to bust down the door, spirit her away into the night, and fuck Grafton, the mission, and everything else.
His footsteps on the treads were silent as he slipped downstairs, his way lit by the low-burning fire in the front room. After flicking a brief glance at the library’s huge mahogany doors, he turned toward the kitchen.
The hallway leading to the back of the house was dark, but Angel made his way by feel and managed to keep from bumping into the long line of priceless Ming vases sitting atop cherrywood pedestals. When he reached the kitchen doorway, he paused.
He wasn’t alone.
The life he’d lived, always looking over his shoulder, careful of every word, every gesture, had honed his senses. His eyesight was better than twenty-twenty and the BKI crew accused him of having the hearing of a bat. But the strongest of all was his sense of smell.
The sweet bouquet of freesia mixed with apricot blossoms tickled his nose.
No lights were on in the kitchen, but Sonya was in there.
His heart, which was always, always metronome steady, went haywire within his rib cage. He debated turning around and going back to his room, but the soft sound of a sniffle had him moving forward before he’d made the conscious decision to do so. Slinking into the kitchen unseen, he positioned himself inside the deep shadows beside the large walk-in pantry.
Scanning the cavernous kitchen with its industrial-size appliances, racks of pots and pans, and large center island topped by a soapstone countertop, his eyes finally alighted on Sonya. She stood in front of the farmhouse-style sink in a pair of silky sleep pants and a lavender T-shirt that looked soft to the touch. Almost as soft as her creamy skin. A glass of water was clutched in her hand, but her face was tilted toward the window above the sink.
Gentle moonlight bathed her cheeks in a silvery glow. But it wasn’t her lovely profile or her pouty mouth—which he knew from experience loved kisses—that snagged his attention and had his hands curling into fists. It was the tears slipping from her eyes and the hard shudder that shook her narrow shoulders.
Sonya Butler was crying.
At that moment, it didn’t matter who she’d become or who she worked for or why she’d done any of it. The sight of her tears was a sledgehammer blow to his heart, shattering the organ into a hundred sharp pieces.
Chapter 4
I don’t know what’s wrong with me, Sonya thought as she wiped away tears with the back of her hand, tasting their salty zing on her tongue. Okay, she admitted reluctantly, so maybe I do.
It was Angel. Angel and his popping jaw that was so much like Mark that for a moment she’d actually thought…
But no. Mark was dead.
Looking out at the starry night, she watched a dark cloud drift past the moon and was taken back ten years to the evening of their seventh date—although they’d never actually called them dates. Dates would have implied fraternization and unprofessionalism, and they’d been determined to play it cool.
Or at least he had. She’d mostly been determined to impress the hell out of him.
Instead of dates, they’d had dinners. Dinners that, yeah, involved a lot of talk about whatever new piece of Intel she’d gleaned from her sources inside the Paris police department or from her contacts inside the French intelligence agencies. But those dinners had also involved a lot of talk about themselves. About their favorite bands, favorite foods, favorite places to vacation, favorite pastimes.
She’d told him her favorite thing to do besides reading classic literature was watching old movies. Since she’d moved around a lot as a kid, she hadn’t had a lot of friends growing up. Her parents had been her best buddies, her father in particular. And he had been a fan of the classics, both in print and in film. Instead of falling in love and going on adventures of her own, she’d read or watched fictional people do it from the safety of her living room with her folks munching popcorn beside her.
“Which movie is your favorite?” Mark asked. The candle in the center of the table flickered soft light over his features. He wasn’t handsome so much as attractive. His nose was a little too big and listed slightly to the left. But he had beautiful, high cheekbones and the world’s most tempting mouth. A big, wide mouth that didn’t smile easily, but when it did… Holy be-zanna! She would swear her panties lit on fire.
“Casablanca,” she told him.
“Aren’t you a little young for that one?” And there it was. That elusive smile. If she looked down, would she see the edges of her underwear curling away like burned paper?
“Young for what? Watching a man make the noblest of sacrifices? Casablanca is the preeminent love story,” she insisted.
“Of all time?”
“Yes, of all time.”
“What about Titanic?”
