Page 115 of The Blonde Who Came in from the Cold
Present Day
Scotland
Alex
Alex felt the rise and fall of King’s chest, but her own lungs had stopped working before he’d even finished the story.
“No.” She pushed up and looked down at him. “No. You’re wrong.”
“That was the first—and last—time I ever said those words out loud, Alex. It was the only time. Merritt knew.” Fingers combed through her hair and made her scalp tingle.
“Okay.” She settled back against him, too bone-tired and weary to worry anymore. “Off the top of my head, I can think of five bad ideas. What about you?”
“That depends.” He blew out a tired breath. “Do you know where you can get a switchblade? Or a garter belt?”
Chapter Sixty-Five
Two Days Later
Paris, France
King
King had made a mistake. A bad one. He never should have suggested Paris, and he never should have let Alex pick out the dress. And when she turned and pulled her hair over her shoulder and said, “A little help?” he never should have pressed his lips to the back of her neck before he reached for the zipper.
He should have thrown her over his shoulder like a caveman and started implementing Plan B because he could read her mind and he didn’t at all like what she was thinking—
“So it turns out...”
“Don’t say it.”
“That spiesdogo on missions that require tuxedos and ball gowns!”
He knew it. He just knew it. She was never going to let him live it down, and King grimaced, knowing it was already too late. “This is a highly unusual situation.”
“So, in other words,Iwasright—”
“That remains to be—”
“Andyouwerewrong.”
“I don’t think we can really go with”—he made quote marks around the word with his fingers—“wrong. It’s more like the exception that proves the rule.”
But an hour later, as he watched her walk down the sidewalk, long leg peeking out from the very long slit in the very expensivedress, King had to think that maybe James Bond had been onto something after all.
King felt powerful and suave and a little like his whole life had been building to that moment—and that woman. But when she stopped on the sidewalk, he could see the tension in her eyes. Her hand was a little too tight in the crook of his elbow.
“You sure about this?” He pressed her up against a lamppost and away from the flow of people who filled the sidewalk. The streetlights were getting brighter, and the sky was getting darker, and it felt like the easiest thing in the world to tell her, “We can still run. Disappear. Hide?”
He wasn’t ready for the look on her face when she turned to him—the feeling in his soul when she squeezed his tuxedo lapels tight and whispered, “I’m through loving you in secret.”
Then they both turned and looked at the opera house. A minute later, they disappeared like smoke on the wind.
Chapter Sixty-Six
Alex
The Garnier Opera House might have been one of the most ornate buildings in the world, but the most impressive thing about the private box wasn’t its view of the stage and the world-class ballerinas. No, it was the white-haired woman who sat near the back and didn’t even bother to turn when King and Alex slipped inside.
