Read Online Stranded with a Spy by Merline Lovelace - Free Book Online Page A

of the Loire Valley.
    Thankfully, she didn’t ask.
    “I’d better pass on both. As tired as I am, alcohol might land me face down in the vol-au-vent. Which,” she added, sniffing at the tantalizing aroma emanating from the covered dishes on the table, “smells incredible.”
    Cutter could take a hint when it whapped him in the face. Grinning, he set his drink aside. “Shall we eat, then? I told Gilbért we’d serve ourselves.”
    “Yes, please!”
    When he went around to pull out her chair, he had to admit she smelled every bit as good as their dinner. Her skin carried a faint, flowery scent that reminded him of alpine meadows in spring.
    “Want me to do the honors?” she asked when he’d taken the seat opposite.
    “Be my guest.”
    While she wielded silver tongs and ladles, Cutter stretched his legs out under the table and revised his strategy. He’d planned to loosen her up with wine, charm her over a drawn-out dinner, and get her talking. The utter fatigue underlying her movements told him he’d better speed things up or she might fall asleep here at the table.
    She helped by taking the lead. First she filled two plates with pastry shells topped by cream sauce swimming with chunks of mussels and fish, then added spears of tender white asparagus. Passing one plate to Cutter, she picked at the other.
    “I’m curious,” she commented. “How did you get into the wine business?”
    “By accident.”
    That was true enough.
    “I pulled a couple of hitches in the Army. During one of them, I was stationed at a small site in Germany. I got to know the locals pretty well.”
    That was true, as well. His gut tightening at the thought of one particular local, Cutter ruthlessly slammed the door on the memory of the traitorous bitch who’d almost incinerated him before he’d taken her down.
    Would this one try something equally desperate?
    “One of the people I got to know was a wine wholesaler,” he told Mallory, improvising from that point on. “We kept in touch after I left Germany. When I was looking for something to do after I left the Army, I contacted him and we went into partnership.”
    She speared a tender mussel with her fork but didn’t bring it to her lips. “What did you do in the Army?”
    He knew what she was edging around and decided to bring it out in the open.
    “I trained as an explosive ordnance specialist before I transferred to the Rangers. Thought I knew all there was to know about cluster bombs, combined effects munitions and IEDs. Individual Explosive Devices,” he translated at her blank look. “Turns out I didn’t know as much as I thought. One of ’em blew away half my face.”
    He didn’t add that the IED was part of a cache of stolen weapons he’d been tracking…or that his NATO partner on that op was a cool Scandinavian beauty who’d been playing a dangerous double game that had ended when their collaboration literally blew up in Cutter’s face.
    Months of reconstructive surgery and skin grafts had followed. The docs had wanted to do more, but Cutter had finally called a halt. He’d left the Army soon afterward, lured to OMEGA by Mike Callahan. His first mission had been to track down the woman who’d betrayed him and her country. Now, all these years later, he was working the same kind of op with another blonde.
    Almost the same, he amended. His gut told him Mallory Dawes was at best an unwitting accomplice, at worst a mule transporting something she didn’t know the value of. He’d watched her every move, listened to every nuance in her voice when her car sank. She’d panicked, sure, but the only real concern she’d expressed was for her passport and traveler’s checks. There’d been none over her suitcase or what it contained.
    Until Cutter knew how the disk had found its way into her suitcase, however, he wasn’t ready to let her off the hook…or out of his sight. Smoothly, he redirected the thread of their conversation.
    “I have to admit, I’m enjoying