Trembling. That’s what her knees were doing.
Not that she’d expected to find a masked villain sitting at a table with an atomic bomb on a silver platter like in some low-budget B-rate movie. But on the drive from the airport to the city center, her imagination had run away with her. Just a little bit.
Or a lot.
It hadn’t helped that Grafton had used the drive to explain her role in this little adventure. He might have insisted on being part of the exchange, but she was to be his mouthpiece. While he hid beneath his fake hair and hoodie and behind his huge sunglasses, she was going to be in charge of making the swap. Of. Nuclear. Material.
Of course, if there was one bright spot in this looming disaster of a day, it was that the café was simply that: a café. Not some spooky, deserted crossroads, like she’d imagined. Not some crumbling abandoned warehouse.
Okay, you can do this, she coached herself as a waiter with a bright smile and a stark, white apron beckoned them to come in with a wave of his ham hock of a hand.
The ambiance of the place was nicer than she would have expected, considering that the building’s exterior was covered in colorful graffiti—hence its name, Graffiti Café. The tables were draped with white linen. The chairs were covered in cheery red velvet. And the crystal light fixtures overhead caught the sun shining in through the three floor-to-ceiling windows at the front of the empty establishment and cast rainbow prisms against the pale-pink walls.
The smell of freshly brewed coffee and warm bread filled the air as she took another deep, calming breath and allowed the waiter to direct her toward a table at the back of the room. The man appeared to be as wide as he was tall—both dimensions falling somewhere around five and a half feet. When he pulled out her chair, she noticed he had close-set, rheumy brown eyes and a habit of tugging on his beard as if he needed to assure himself it was still stuck to his face.
“Multumesc,” she said as he scooted her chair closer to the table. It was one of the only Romanian words she knew.
“You are welcome.” His thickly accented English made the phrase sound more like you arrr velcome.
She lifted a brow, wondering how he knew they were English speakers. Had he heard her growl at Lou? Then she got distracted when Grafton didn’t follow her to the table. Instead, he claimed a seat at the table directly behind her.
Talk about conspicuous, she thought with irritation. What was worse was that Grafton’s three security guards took up positions against the back wall.
“Way to make it obvious,” she muttered.
“What’s that, Sonya my dear?” Grafton asked, settling himself into his chair and causing the legs to scrape across the tile floor.
The smart thing would be for her to keep her mouth shut and pretend she hadn’t heard his question. But she couldn’t help herself. You could take the woman away from her job at Interpol, but you couldn’t take the Interpol agent out of the woman.
At least not entirely.
“You’re drawing attention to us,” she whispered from the side of her mouth. “And even if you aren’t, they are.” She flicked a hand toward his security detail.
“Don’t worry your pretty little head about it. I’ve the situation well in hand.”
Grafton’s words were polite enough—well, except for that infuriatingly misogynistic pretty little head part. But his tone was full of razor blades, warning her she’d once again stepped over the line.
After six months of carefully pandering and groveling, she’d spent the last couple of weeks pushing her luck with him. Why the hell was she doing that?
Oh, right. Because of Angel.
She hated seeing flickers of pity and disappointment in his eyes when she allowed Grafton to ride roughshod over her. For reasons she dared not explore, she wanted to show him she wasn’t the meek, cowardly woman he thought she was.
Shifting her gaze in Angel’s direction, she found his remarkably dark eyes watching her with the same interest he’d shown last night in the kitchen.
For a moment, she allowed herself to compare him to Mark. Mark had talked about their animal attraction. He had admitted to feeling pulled to her in ways he couldn’t explain. But where Mark had been the consummate professional and an all-around gentleman—and had tried for weeks to deny the attraction that burned between them—Angel hadn’t hesitated for even one second.
And she? Well, she’d been right there with him. Trying to inhale him. Trying to eat him alive. Willing to lose herself in him if only he would keep on kissing her forever.
Once again she was hit with a wave of confusion and guilt and…and…confusion.
Why did Angel make her feel this way? What was it about him? And what the hell was wrong with her?
She was sitting in a café in Chisinau, Moldova, waiting for some shady dude with enriched uranium to arrive, and she was thinking about her love life? She immediately filed her thoughts in a not-now-are-you-crazy folder.
I mean, for heaven’s sake!
“Can I get you something to drink?” the waiter asked Grafton, still tugging away at his beard. His thick accent turned the word something into sumding.
