Read Online Tempted by a Dangerous Man by Cleo Peitsche - Free Book Online

do for a living?” There. An easy, neutral question.
    “Thought she was a journalist, but she was a spy.”
    “That… I didn’t… Really?”
    He laughed, a brief snort. “It’s not so uncommon for diplomats’ kids who grow up like we did, living all over the world and speaking multiple languages. These days it’s more multinational corporations spying on each other, all in the name of national security, of course.”
    “Corporate spy?” I frowned. “Doing what?”
    “A corporate spy is something else entirely, a legitimate business that operates in daylight. You could open up a browser and submit an application to do that. She wasn’t that kind of spy. And to answer your question, we never talked about it. I didn’t want to put her in the position of having to lie to me outright.” His tone had turned darker.
    It seemed he really didn’t like being lied to. He was all about trust and respect. Funny virtues, considering what he did for a living. “Trying to imagine what that’s like, you know? Pillow talk at the end of a long day.”
    “She never lived in New York. We had decided that when I turned thirty, we’d find a way to be in the same place. But of course that never happened.”
    He was thirty now. That must have been a particularly difficult birthday, knowing he was supposed to be building his life.  
    “She was kidnapped in Nigeria.”  
    Corbin’s words snapped me to the present. “Kidnapped?”
    “For ransom.” His voice had gotten rough. He pulled the pan off the stove again, set it on an unused burner, and turned to face me. He had pushed up the sleeves of the skintight black shirt, and when he crossed his arms over his chest, his muscular forearms bulged. “We—her parents and I—sent it, of course, even though we were advised not to.”
    I felt I might pass out. I couldn’t imagine. “That’s terrifying.”
    “Yes.” A single word to encompass unbearable grief. “It wasn’t about money. That was a pretext.” He stared at me, but said nothing. It was completely disconcerting. Couldn’t tell if he was looking at me or if he was lost in the past.
    “Guess you wish you’d talked her out of it,” I said nervously when his blank stare started to make my skin crawl.  
    He blinked slowly. “No. I don’t.” He turned back to the stove and resumed frying the onions. “It was her life to live as she chose. Do I wish I had been in Nigeria with her? Yes. Would I have given my life to keep her safe? Of course. But tell her what to do?” He shook his head. “What keeps me up at night isn’t that she’s gone. I’ve made my wretched peace with it. It’s how things were handled. What happened might have been unavoidable, but that’s far from a foregone conclusion. The governments didn’t want to get involved. France dragged their feet through red tape until it was too late. Algeria said she was French, and it wasn’t their problem.”
    I could tell that I was losing him, and I sensed it would be some time before he would want to talk about this again. But he hadn’t even answered the question that most confused me. “But you weren’t a spy while you were a chef, were you?”
    “Revenge,” he said. “Audrey was headstrong, and she was her own person, but she was also mine. My best friend, my wife. My life. In some ways, it was a very immature sort of relationship, two workaholics as married to our careers as to each other. But we were strong. That she died, I can accept it. I’ve had to. But I still want her back. To bury her next to her father and grandparents.”
    “You didn’t get the body?” I blurted. “How do you know she’s—”
    “No. Oh, I hoped that for the first year. Prayed that she’d met someone else, that she was alive and happy. But I always knew better. She was very close to her father, who had been in poor health for years and in fact died the year after she did. She would never have abandoned him. Never.”  
    He pulled a large jar out of a