Read Online White Heat by Cherry Adair - Free Book Online

sugar to both, and brought them to the table. She went back for the cookies.
    “We don’t need a plate’ he muttered as she reached into the upper cupboard for one. “What does your boyfriend do?” Max felt an insane spurt of jealousy, which he quickly interpreted as heartburn. The woman had a life that had nothing to do with him. He felt mildly guilty about using her last year to get a low key intro to Arkady Strugatsky, a high-level Russian terrorist who considered himself a patron of the arts.
    T-FLAC had tried various ways to separate the Russian from his bodyguards. The man had been as inviolable as Fort Knox. The party, a high-society, high-profile black-tie event with a silent auction, had been held at a private castle on the outskirts of Rome. Because many of the items up for bid had been valued in the millions, security had been straitjacket tight. Even Strugatsky’s phalanx of guards had been instructed to wait for him outside. No arms were permitted through the metal detectors.
    Getting in undetected would have been impossible. Getting out wasn’t that big a problem. Not for someone whose name was on the printed guest list. Photographed, fingerprinted, and vouched for by the highly respectable Miss Emily Greene. Talk about provenance.
    He and his team had gotten what they wanted, Strugatsky without his bodyguards. It had been a relatively simple matter to escort him out of the party and into the limo waiting at the back door. Max hadn’t needed to return to the party, or to Emily. Nor had he needed to spend the next couple of days with her.
    He considered the extra time he’d spent with her a bonus. He’d liked her, she’d liked him—two consenting adults.
    Thanks to her, Strugatsky was some Bubba’s bitch in Leavenworth.
    The end had justified the means. No harm, no foul.
    Nobody needed to know how hard it had been to walk away from her when the job had been done. And if he hadn’t been called suddenly to another op, he might have stayed a few more days if she’d been willing. And she would have been.
    Still. It had all worked out in the end.
    “Franco is an investment banker.” Emily remained standing, cradling her cup between her hands as she inhaled the fragrant steam. Light refracted off the studs in her ears, and Max noticed one was missing, and another had green paint on it. “It’s weird being here when there isn’t anyone around. Your father always had a house full of people.”
    “I’m sure he did.”
    She narrowed her eyes. “You don’t have to say it as though this was the . . . Kasbah, and he had a smorgasbord of drugs, and hot and cold naked women running around. He didn’t have wild sex parties. He was a sophisticated, well—educated man. His social circle was filled with people who were smart and interesting. People admired him. Loved him. He had a lot—” her breath caught. “A lot of friends.”
    He was an asshole, a womanizer, and a sorry excuse for a human being. And f you believe he didn’t have a parade of women in and out of this mausoleum, you were sadly duped. He was just smart enough to keep his two lives separate, one behind closed doors. Just because he and Daniel didn’t have any contact, didn’t mean Max hadn’t kept a weather eye on him. Not out of any personal interest. But Max hadn’t wanted the son of a bitch to suddenly show up on his mother’s doorstep one day.
    She’d died two years ago, and then he just didn’t give a damn what the man did or to whom. But the reports still came in. He hadn’t bothered reading any of them in years. Their tenuous tie was gone.
    He’d known just enough to “convince” the bastard to invite him to the party last year. He hadn’t told him why he wanted to go, and Daniel had never asked. He’d thrown Emily to his son without knowing who or what Max was, or why he wanted to be accompanied to the event by someone everyone there knew and liked.
    “I didn’t say anything,” Max said mildly, drinking the tepid