Full Exposure

MILLS & BOON

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CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

EPILOGUE

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

From the bottom of my heart to my dear friends, Serena Tatti and Josie Caporetto: You have my undying gratitude for many patient translations, oodles of advice and constant cheerful encouragement. Grazie mille for being my navigators on this bumpy journey that was transformed into a completely different destination than we planned or anticipated.

Vi voglio bene, belle!

I could never have survived it without you.

PROLOGUE

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

February 14, Eight Months Ago

THE FAT LADY HAD SUNG, the curtain had dropped and Ariana Bennett had been unceremoniously fired. Sleet needles lashed her face as she trudged through snowdrifts. Frigid weather was the perfect encore. She flipped up the collar of her brown cashmere coat and turned on her iPod—two indulgences not yet paid for on her credit card—and not likely to be soon.

Administrative furlough due to budget cuts. Her department head hadn’t summoned the nerve to make eye contact while delivering that fable. And the weasel had waited until the end of the day to oust her.

Ariana stomped her feet to warm them as she reached her bus stop. The coward didn’t have the backbone to admit she’d been “furloughed” because the academic community was shying away from guilt by association. Her father’s museum had shared fundraisers with the university and he had guest-lectured on campus. The Bennetts’ battered credibility might affect public trust and alumni donations.

Thank you Pennsylvania University for rewarding my seven years of loyalty. She blinked back tears. She’d done enough crying the past months. Anger hurt far less than sorrow.

She peered through the stinging haze. Cars crawled bumper to bumper, but no sign of her bus. One advantage to being unemployed. She wouldn’t have to choose between traffic or mass transit. And she’d never again feel duty-bound to wear a purple sweatshirt emblazoned with the initials P.U.

Huddled under an overhang, Ariana clapped her gloved hands together and listened to the dramatic power of Verdi’s Aida soaring through her earbuds. Was any place more wicked miserable than Philly in February? Maybe the Arctic Circle. At least in Philly she wouldn’t be mauled by polar bears. She grimaced. If she counted the FBI, the press and her ex-bosses, she did have wolves snapping at her heels.

She turned her back to the wind, and a poster in an employment agency’s window snagged her attention. A cruise ship glided through sun-washed islands dotting the cobalt Mediterranean. “Get paid to travel in style. Greece, Italy, the Caribbean. Liberty Line has positions available for qualified personnel.”

Ariana stared longingly at the inviting picture. She imagined standing on deck, looking over the railing at white beaches bathed in sunshine. Sailing to Greece and Italy—countries whose cultures and artifacts she’d loved and studied her entire life.

Shuddering, she spun and faced the street. Right. A cruise line was the perfect employer for a librarian. Especially a librarian who couldn’t swim. She’d have a better chance at hitting bestseller lists with the fantasy stories she’d scribbled in her teenage journals…now in FBI custody. Another humiliating personal intrusion. She gritted her teeth. She hoped the Feds were bored to screaming by her secret girlhood dreams.

Her bus chugged into view, a sluggish dragon billowing steam, and Ariana clambered aboard. The packed interior smelled of soggy wool and overheated bodies. Eau de wet terrier. A baby’s scream wailed from the rear seats, and she grabbed a pole and then cranked up her iPod. At least she could stand. Although slightly breathless after her sprint through the gale, she’d outgrown the asthma that had crippled her until late adolescence. Enforced inactivity had cultivated her adoration for reading and writing. Bored with kiddy drivel, she’d devoured Greek and Roman myths, an interest shared with her father, who had loved his job as a museum curator.

Until the FBI’s relentless persecution killed him.

Her fingers clenched the pole, and she forced herself to concentrate on her music. Aida was a tragedy, but it was beautiful and romantic. She glanced at traffic snarled in the blizzard. Unlike real life, which was either humdrum or messy.

Humdrum would be welcome about now.

By the time she arrived home, she had resolved to put the setback behind her. There were other jobs. She still had a special dinner to anticipate. Still had a future with a nice guy. Compared to the past few months, getting fired wasn’t the apocalypse.

Her mom pounced the millisecond Ariana swept breathlessly inside. “You’re late. Is everything all right?”

She shut down her iPod. “The storm snarled traffic.” If you looked up overprotective mother on Google, Sadie Bennett’s picture popped up. Ariana had temporarily moved back in with her parents last fall after the FBI arrested her father. When he’d died three months ago, her mother had begged her to stay. From the moment Ariana drew her first uncertain breath, Sadie’s focus was centered on her only child’s welfare. Ariana didn’t have the heart to leave her mom alone in the big old house. Yet.

She brushed a kiss on Sadie’s cheek. “Geoff has reservations at Le Bec-Fin tonight. Will you be okay alone?” It would be the first Valentine’s Day without her father. Although Derek’s quiet, dreamy nature combined with frequent career travel had made her parents’ marriage seem more like a business partnership than a great romance.

“Of course.” Sadie’s blue eyes twinkled, a paler reflection of Ariana’s deep sapphire hue. “Le Bec-Fin, hmm? He’s been jittery lately.” She clapped her hands. “Finally, after seventeen months…the moment every woman waits for.”

This was supposed to be the highlight of her life? A strange thought. “I suspect so.” Geoffrey Turner was a professor of literature at the same university that had fired her this afternoon. Several months before her father’s sudden death, Geoff had subtly questioned her receptivity to marriage and children. The university was about to offer him job security in the form of tenure.

Annual day of romance, check. Reservations at Philly’s most prestigious restaurant, check. Exquisite food, superb wine and a tasteful ring served with the crème brûlée, check.

Ariana bit her lip. Their relationship wasn’t exactly hot. But they enjoyed each other’s company, shared common interests and didn’t make one another crazy. She may not be delirious with rapture, but unlike passion, contentment wasn’t disturbing. Or messy. She knew where she stood with Geoff. Many lasting marriages—including her parents’—had been founded on such secure principles.

She gathered her long, damp chestnut hair away from her face. “I’m a walking disaster. You know how the professor dotes on punctuality. I’m going to grab a coffee, run upstairs—”

The doorbell pealed. Geoff had probably sent a dozen predictable…ah…classic white roses. Ariana flung open the door. It wasn’t flowers.

It was the police.

After six months of harassment, she recognized the FBI’s second-in-command. Ariana scowled. “Unless you have another warrant, forget it. You people have already turned our house and our lives inside out.” She blocked the doorway, shielding her mother. “I doubt you’ll find America’s most wanted by rifling through my closet again.”

The solemn Agent indicated a U-Haul being unloaded by two movers. “After your father’s demise, the government’s case against him was officially terminated. The paperwork is complete, and we’re returning personal effects held as evidence.”

“Giving back our own possessions. Thank you.” She stepped aside so the men could enter. FBI search teams had shown up one day in the middle of Sunday brunch and torn apart their home. Cops had poked and pried and violated every inch. They’d taken the antiques, her father’s computer and research books and every scrap of paper, including her journals. The travesty had continued at his museum office. “Everything better be in perfect condition.”

“Nothing has been damaged.” Agent Thomas nodded stiffly. “Our experts didn’t have time to dig too deeply before the case was abruptly concluded.”

Hurt by his clinical description of the events that had destroyed her family, she pressed trembling lips together. “Is abruptly concluded the police-approved definition of ruining an innocent man’s reputation and persecuting him into an early grave?”

The Fed’s eyes glinted as cold and gray as the winter twilight. “Mr. Bennett was charged after brokering stolen antiquities to an undercover officer. The arrest was legitimate, as was the search.”

Talk about professional detachment. Maybe the FBI confiscated agents’ hearts when they entered the Bureau. For the second time in an hour, she let anger burn away pain. “Dad never so much as ran a stop sign. He didn’t know the antique jewelry was stolen. It was entrapment. If your ‘undercover officer’ had listened to him, my father would be alive today.”

“Everybody we detain is innocent, Miss Bennett.” His level tone didn’t negate the sarcasm. “Until proven guilty in a court of law.”

“He didn’t get that chance. He was convicted by the press and the museum’s board of directors.” Her father had been forced into a leave of absence. All because of the FBI and their gestapo tactics. Nobody would ever convince Ariana that the strain over the loss of his job combined with the impending trial hadn’t precipitated her father’s massive coronary. “In the public’s eyes, he died a guilty man.”

“Ariana.” Her mother’s quiet appeal made her turn around. “Don’t let this spoil your evening.” Sadie handed her a labeled box. “Why don’t you take your journals upstairs and get ready for tonight?”

Ariana squelched her temper. Her mother hated confrontation. According to Sadie, a lady never raised her voice, never lost her poise. A woman with class practiced avoidance. That method had worked for Ariana…until injustice had struck down her father. But Sadie had already been through the wringer, and Ariana wasn’t about to twist the handle. She accepted the box and marched upstairs.

She dropped the carton on the blue organza bedspread, which matched the bed canopy and frilly curtains. Her room remained unchanged since she’d left for college years ago. Dad wasn’t the only parent who liked museums.

She opened the box and began to slot journals in her bookcase according to year. She preferred order, in her surroundings and emotions.

Memories assailed her with each volume. Her first date. First kiss. First broken heart. A newspaper article fluttered out of the book dated Summer 1981, and her mouth softened. Even as a girl, she’d been a romantic. Charles and Diana—the Royal Wedding. She had set the alarm for dawn to watch the proceedings. A real-life fairy tale.

The grandfather clock downstairs chimed seven, and Ariana jumped. She had sixty minutes to prepare for “the moment every woman waits for.” She dropped the journal and sprinted to the shower.

THREE HOURS LATER, she shakily let herself back inside the house. Sadie didn’t ambush her, and Ariana tiptoed into the living room and found her mother asleep on the sofa.

A small boon in the day from Hades. She wouldn’t have to break the news until morning. The sadness she’d held at bay flooded her eyes.

Instead of a diamond with the dessert trolley, Ariana had received a quiet brush-off. A “better for both of us if we go our separate ways” swan song. Her courtly, dependable literary professor had politely retreated from their relationship.

She swiped her wet cheeks as she trudged upstairs. Of course, she hadn’t made a scene. Tantrums weren’t her style. She was her mother’s daughter. The goddess of get along. The countess of compromise.

And the Fates had compromised her out of a father, a job and a fiancé.

At least Geoff had possessed the decency to stop waltzing around the truth when she demanded a real explanation. He’d finally admitted Derek’s tattered reputation and Ariana’s “furlough” might threaten his tenure.

She tripped over the journal on the floor and snatched it up. A real-life fairy tale. In real life, the princess had been hounded to death…like Ariana’s father. So much for romance. So much for loyalty and undying love.

So much for happily ever after.

Ariana hurled the book aside and it thudded to the floor, the binding torn. Newspaper clippings littered the carpet, and something shiny glinted at the tattered edge of the journal. With trembling hands, she extracted a computer CD. The thin disk had been sealed between the embossed leather cover and cardboard backing.

Tears dried on her face as she booted up her laptop and inserted the CD. Over forty scanned pages of ancient Greek script and cryptic personal notations in her father’s spiky handwriting shimmered on the screen. She had enough rudimentary knowledge to discern that the information concerned antiques and Derek’s international brokerage.

Her breath caught. Why had her father secreted the CD in her journal? Had he suspected he was being set up? Thought he was in danger? Had he put the CD where he knew she would find it…in case something happened to him?

Her mother would have said, “We can’t change the past, let it go.”

She used to agree. Now an old Chinese proverb sprang to mind. If you cannot succeed, then die gloriously.

Compromise hadn’t worked out so well for Ariana, or her loved ones. Perhaps it was time to try a new tack. Her father’s reputation would not perish in ruin and be buried along with him.

Heart pounding, she directed her Web browser to libertycruiseline.com. The police had stolen her family, her reputation and her future.

All she had left was a crusade.

She grimly hooked up her iPod to the computer and began to reconfigure and download files. Fed up with being tossed around by the whims of the Fates, she was taking her life back.

After all, how much worse could things get?

CHAPTER ONE

Alexandra’s Dream

Mid-October

FATHER PATRICK CONNELLY aka Michael O’Connor dropped the benevolence he forced himself to wear in public and crossed the confines of his cabin in three impatient strides. Scowling, he unbuttoned his black shirt. The stiff white collar was penance for buying him credibility. He impatiently yanked off the torture device and tossed it aside. Penance. Now his alias was affecting his way of thinking. Neither guilt nor redemption were in his repertoire.

He poured two fingers of smoky Irish whiskey from his contraband stash. The Spencer Tracy affable priest persona was a pain in the ass. He’d thought it an inspired identity, but the saintly act had begun to chafe. His most grating role…but also the most challenging.

He sipped, savored the slow burn sliding down his throat. Definitely the most profitable.

As Father Pat Connelly, a priest knowledgeable about Greek and Roman culture, he’d been hired by the cruise line to educate interested passengers. As Mike O’Connor, a veteran professional smuggler, the reproduction antiquities he’d displayed in the library to illustrate “Father Connelly’s” lectures had given him the perfect place to plant genuine ancient artifacts. Hidden in plain sight among the fakes. Once the ship returned to America, fencing the stolen artifacts secreted aboard by him and his partner was their mysterious boss’s problem.

He glanced at the bureau drawer where he stored smaller pieces he’d acquired at various ports of call. He periodically rotated them to the library to freshen his lectures. Some were also real rather than reproductions, but nobody else knew that. His own…private investments. If the boss’s grand scheme worked, a bonus. If it didn’t…his insurance policy.

He swallowed another gulp of whiskey. Damn good thing he’d invested wisely, because it was looking as though he might have to cut and run.

A sharp rap on his door startled him. He opened it to see First Officer Giorgio Tzekas, and swore. “What now?”

Giorgio anxiously slipped inside. The playboy’s classic bone structure showed he’d once possessed looks to go with his oozing charm, but too much boozing and sordid nights now etched his face. “Did you see him? Lanky, salt-and-pepper hair, fiftysomething Italian?”

“Bernardo Milo. Yeah, he attended my lecture last night.”

“And?” Giorgio’s anxiety sharpened. “Did you get the vibe?”

The cop vibe. After fifteen years conning other people, Mike knew when he was being conned. With Milo, he wasn’t sure. He didn’t know if it was because several things had gone wrong during this operation…or because the scam really had been blown to hell. Mike wasn’t big on taking risks this late in the game. He planned to retire in the sunny Caribbean, not rot behind bars in some dank federal pen.

He sipped whiskey, buying time. He trusted his instincts, but he sure as hell didn’t trust the cocky bastard in front of him. Every screwup required a sacrificial lamb, and he couldn’t think of better roasted mutton than Giorgio Tzekas. The young Greek was an intellectually challenged egomaniac who squandered Daddy’s money on easy women and hard-core gambling. Old man Tzekas’s friendship with Elias Stamos, the cruise line’s owner, was the only reason sonny-boy had a legitimate job. God only knew why their mutual boss in the smuggling ring kept him on. In fact, on one of the first legs of the cruise, the moron had panicked and moved artifacts to potted plants, of all places, where they’d been discovered and spurred speculation and an investigation.

If Mike had his way, Giorgio wasn’t going to be his enforced partner much longer. Which meant keeping him obedient and unsuspecting. He shrugged. “Milo seemed real interested in the lecture. He took a buttload of notes, and chatted up the other attendees. He had more artistic know-how than any cop I’ve ever run into.”

“Since he boarded, I’ve had this weird feeling.” Giorgio scratched his chin. “I’ve never caught him staring, but he just seems like he’s around a lot, ya know?”

Milo had sought out Mike to discuss antiquities. The tall, craggy Italian had said he was a contractor who’d restored historical buildings. Art was his hobby and his passion—frescoes mostly. He’d recently lost his son, who’d worked with him, in a car accident and had booked the cruise to recover. The man was intelligent, interesting and seemed lonely rather than threatening. Their conversations had been relaxed and friendly on the surface…but Mike’s intuition was twitching. “There’s only so much real estate on a ship. We run into the same passengers frequently. Maybe he likes your technique for picking up sluts.” He smirked. “Or maybe he just likes you.”

The distraction worked. The Greek huffed. “I don’t bat for that team, and you know it, you bastard.”

“I figured you’d do just about anything for money.” In fact, Mike knew Giorgio had his own hoard of “private investments.” Tzekas had brokered several successful buys for himself and bungled one. Just more rope to hang his idiot self with. Mike inclined his head at the door. “I’m beat. Bye now.”

Giorgio hesitated. “Maybe we should tell the boss.”

That’s all he needed. For Megaera to climb all over his case again. Or worse, get suspicious and decide to micromanage the operation. “Report that you’re imagining some guy is looking at you? That would go over like a hooker at mass. I’ll keep an eye on him.”

Giorgio shuffled his feet again. “Ariana Bennett’s mother is still aboard. Claims she’s not leaving until her daughter is found. You’re the one the boss usually contacts. Have you heard any news?”

“No.” Mike rolled his suddenly taut shoulders. Toward the beginning of the cruise, one of his genuine artifacts—an Olympian vase—had been accidentally broken in the library. He’d meticulously pieced it back together and discovered a shard missing. The sharp-eyed librarian had been suspicious of him since day one, and she’d been the only person nearby, the only one who could have taken it. She’d been poking her nose into things that didn’t concern her and asking questions, and Mike and Giorgio had reported her to the boss.

Then Ariana Bennett had disappeared.

“She’s been missing over a month.” Giorgio shifted. “Do you think she’s dead?”

“Not my concern.” Mike gulped the last of his whiskey. Truth was, he’d been growing antsy. Not about the nosy librarian’s welfare…but about his own. If she’d been killed because of his tip-off, it made him an accessory to murder. But he didn’t want Giorgio overthinking it. The moron was likely to bolt and leave him holding the bag. “You really had it bad for her, didn’t you? Quit whining over the one who got away. There are plenty of babes on this ship to keep you busy.”

Giorgio didn’t snap at the bait this time. “It will be your concern if Ariana is dead and her disappearance is linked to us.” The Greek’s forehead furrowed. “Murder carries a stiffer penalty than smuggling.”

Mike barely resisted the urge to roll his eyes. Don’t strain your brain cells, genius. “It’s too late for an attack of conscience, Tzekas. The boss is a pro. Megaera’s plans have worked brilliantly so far, even through the snafus.” He clapped a falsely friendly hand on the younger man’s shoulder. “Keep the faith.”

Mike ushered Giorgio out and refilled his glass. From here on, his eyes and ears were wide-open. If he picked up a hint of trouble, he was a ghost. He would disappear and leave Megaera and her flunky to pay the price.

IMPRISONED IN the swaying belly of a seafaring monster, Ariana Bennett reluctantly floated to consciousness. Had she passed out? Been knocked out? She strained to see, but no light pierced the icy veil of smothering darkness.

No, she had died and gone to hell. Hades was cold and damp and black, and stank of fish and diesel fuel.

She tried to move. Her wrists, bound behind her back, throbbed in tandem with the pulsating heartbeat of twin engines. Her head pounded. Every breath dragged in her parched throat, and her body felt as battered as a discarded piñata.

Like many foolish souls before her, she had challenged the Fates—and lost. She moaned. She would have rather remained in the grip of somnolence. Oblivion was safer.

“Signorina Bennett?” The resonant baritone flavored with a rich Italian accent echoed from the abyss. “You are awake?”

She jerked. She wasn’t dead.

But she hadn’t escaped the devil.