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Yeah, sometimes fathers couldn’t be there when circumstances intervened. Military service, for instance. Soldiers couldn’t pick and choose their battles, couldn’t know when they’d be called up and sent overseas. But he couldn’t deliberately father children he knew in advance would grow up without him for the most part. No way.
Which meant either convincing Angelina to give up her job, give up her life for him—follow him to his next posting, and the next, and the next—or surrendering to the idea of never having children with her.
Neither choice was acceptable. Neither choice was one he wanted to live with. And what was even worse, he had no way of knowing Angelina’s opinion of either option because he was too afraid to ask.
* * *
Angelina and Alec left the palace separately. She knew he didn’t like it, could tell by his mulish expression that someday soon he would rebel against her determination to keep their affair secret from everyone who knew her. The more she thought about it, the more she realized she didn’t like that word. Affair. Didn’t like the connotation. She and Alec weren’t having an affair. They were...
What are we? she asked herself as she drove back to her apartment, where Alec would rendezvous with her after stopping off at his place for a change of clothes. Lovers, she settled on finally. We are lovers. That sounded a little better. “Affair” sounded cheap. Tawdry. “Lovers” sounded more acceptable. More permanent. Not as permanent as “husband and wife,” but...
That’s when it hit her. She didn’t want to be Alec’s lover. She wanted to be his wife. She wanted that commitment from him, and wanted to commit to him in return. She wanted permanence. That little band of gold signifying their pledge to each other to be true and faithful. She wanted forever and a day, like the legend upon which her country was built.
Alec had exploded into her life with the force of a bomb, changing everything. Including her. And now, the thing she’d long told herself she didn’t want, the thing she’d long reconciled herself to being unable to have...now she wanted it. Fervently.
Which meant only one thing. She was in love with Alec. Alec, who’d never said he loved her.
* * *
The first thing Alec did when he walked into his apartment was perform a quick electronic sweep. He’d never found any listening devices, but he always checked anyway—better safe than sorry. Then he glanced at his watch and mentally calculated the time difference between Zakhar and Denver, Colorado, where his sister worked. Satisfied he wouldn’t be calling too early or too late, he punched a series of numbers into his telephone and waited a little impatiently for the call to go through.
“Keira Walker,” came the crisp voice in his ear.
“Hey,” he replied. “It’s Alec.”
“Hey yourself. So how come you only call me when it’s work related? What kind of way is that to treat your only sister?”
“How’d you know?”
“Are you kidding?” She laughed her musical laugh. “Trace called Baker Street a half hour ago,” she said, using Nick D’Arcy’s nickname within the agency, a tip of the hat to Sherlock Holmes because D’Arcy was so omniscient. “Then Baker Street called me less than a minute after he hung up with Trace.”
“So he gave you the green light to help in this investigation?”
“And then some. His words were, ‘Whatever your brother asks for. And even if he doesn’t ask for it, if you think he needs it, give it to him. I’m not passing up the chance to take Vishenko down—not after all these years.’”
“Wow.” Alec laughed softly. “Remind me to thank him.”
“So, what do you need? Besides whatever there is to find on Aleksandrov Vishenko, which I’m already working on. Oh, and by the way, did you know the FBI has a wiretap warrant on Vishenko? A warrant that was recently extended?”
“How the hell do you know that?”
“If you had a need to know, Alec, I’d tell you. But you don’t. The agency has its own ways of finding things out. Just trust me when I tell you the warrant exists. Whatever they get from that wiretap, we’ll know.” That silenced him for a moment, until Keira repeated, “So what else do you need?”
“I’ve got seven names. I need everything you can find out about them. Work history, credit reports, financial data, bank accounts, especially any foreign bank accounts they might not want anyone to know about. You name it, I want it. And I want it yesterday.”
“No problem. Give me the list.”
He read the names and occupations from his notebook. “All except the first one used to be employed at the US embassy here in Drago. I have no idea where they’re posted, but if they were dirty here, it’s possible they’re doing something similar wherever they are now.”
