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Not even for a woman like Niema Jamieson.
CHAPTER
FIFTEEN
The telephone beside her bed rang at six A.M., jerking N
iema out of a sound sleep. She rolled over and groped for the receiver. “Hello.” She sounded as groggy as she felt.
She heard a stifled chuckle. “You certainly sound alert.”
John. The sound of his voice did funny things to the pit of her stomach. She settled herself deeper into the pillow. “We social butterflies need our sleep.”
“Has the fluttering attracted any attention?”
“It certainly has.” She yawned. “Within minutes.”
“Told you. We’re amoebas.”
“I hope this line is secure,” she said in sudden alarm.
“If it isn’t, then the Company isn’t doing its job. All lines into the embassy are secure, and I’m on a secure phone. Tell me everything about last night”
How did he know she’d met Ronsard last night? she wondered in annoyance. “Are you keeping tabs on me? How? Where are you?”
“Of course I’m keeping tabs on you,” he said calmly. “You didn’t think I’d bring you into this and just leave you on your own, did you? I’m nearby, for the moment.”
And that was all he intended to tell her, she realized. Still, it was enough. Until she heard his voice, she hadn’t realized how much she had missed him, missed the constant challenge of his presence. If he was nearby, that meant she had to be on her toes, because he could pop up at any second. She didn’t want to step out of the shower, stark naked, and come face to face with him. On the other hand . . .
Whoa. She backed away from that thought without finishing it. Instead she began a recital of the previous night’s events. “He followed me onto the patio and introduced himself and asked for a dance later. When we danced, he asked me out to dinner. I refused. We’re having lunch today at one, at Le Café Marly. Do you know where that is?”
“It’s in the Richelieu wing of the Louvre. It’s where you go to see and be seen.”
“And here I thought having lunch with him would be more discreet than dinner.”
“Not at Café Marry. Why are you trying to be discreet?”
“If I’m this fine upstanding citizen and an old family friend of the ambassador’s wife, it would seem more reasonable to at least worry about seeing an arms dealer.”
“Ronsard is seen by every influential person in Paris,” John said dryly.
“Yes, but I’m different.” She said that with an airiness that had him chuckling.
“When will you give in and have dinner with him? With enough time, I can arrange to have some of our people placed around you, the table wired, things like that.”
“I don’t think I will. I’ll have lunch with him, but other than that I don’t want to encourage him too much.”
“Just make certain you encourage him enough to be invited to his estate.”
“I’ll be friends with him, but that’s all.”
A pause stretched over the line. “If you’re trying to tell me you won’t sleep with him, I never intended for you to,” he finally said, his tone flattening out.
“That’s good to hear, because sex was never an option. Even though I did go on those damn birth control pills the way you ordered.”
Silence again. “The pills weren’t in case you wanted to have an affair; they’re in case something goes wrong.”
She understood, then. If anything went awry and she was captured, she could be raped. “Got it,” she said softly. The issue of birth control pills hadn’t arisen on the job in Iran, because she had been taking the pills anyway. She and Dallas had wanted to wait a year or so, maybe longer, before starting a family.
