“I’m here to rescue you.”

His hands were tightly closed around her wrists, where they would remain until he was confident that she wasn’t going to take a swing at him.

For a moment, still sprawled on top of him, Pru wavered. Was she being rescued? And then suspicion crept in between the lines. “Where are the others?”

“There are no others,” Joshua told her.

Her eyes widened. “You’re it?”

“Yup. Lucky me. Not that I wouldn’t find this position interesting at any other time.” He opened his hands, releasing her wrists. “But I think we’d better get out of here before one of those Neanderthals comes to investigate.”

Pru scrambled to her feet, managing to have more than just marginal contact with all parts of him. “Just who the hell are you?” she demanded hotly, her cheeks burning.

A smile twisted his lips. “At the moment, I’m your saviour.”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

This bestselling and award-winning author has written over one hundred and fifty books for Mills & Boon, some under the name Marie Nicole. Her romances are beloved by fans worldwide. Check out her website at www.MarieFerrarella.com.

Dear Reader,

I don’t know about you, but my favourite stories revolve around the irresistible force meeting the immovable object: two equally stubborn, independent people who discover that there is no weakness to letting another person into their worlds. In this case, the prime minister’s daughter, known in the tabloids as “Pru the Shrew,” has met her match in Joshua, the hunky special agent who has been sent to rescue her from her kidnappers. I knew there were going to be fireworks before I ever started writing about them.

This book marks the beginning of a miniseries involving the organisation that was first introduced in the CAPTURING THE CROWN series. The Lazlo Group is a highly secretive, extremely efficient organisation of handpicked operatives who always get the job done, no matter what it might be. I had a ball writing this, and I hope you have as much fun reading it.

As always, I thank you for reading and I wish you love,

Marie Ferrarella

My Spy

MARIE FERRARELLA

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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To Jenny and John Cho. If you love each other, all the rest will work itself out. Have a wonderful life!

Chapter 1

The silence in his bedroom was eerie, enveloping him like a black embrace. He sat there for a moment, listening to the sound of his own heartbeat. The sound of his own breathing.

It wasn’t often that he woke up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat. Sweat was for people who had things to lose. Home, family, possessions they treasured, a reputation they couldn’t rebuild. But Corbett Lazlo had long since left all of that behind.

There were no ties.

In general, he spent most of his time in the offices of the organization he had created fourteen years ago and presided over like a benevolent god. For the most part, although there were flesh-and-blood people who shared his last name, his organization was his family, his child.

But even that, although he took pride in it, was expendable.

Long ago he’d learned that nothing was permanent, that no one thing could actually be thought of as his lifeline to the world. He did not allow himself to indulge in the emotions that both plagued and regaled other men. Emotions, he firmly believed, more often than not could spell a man’s downfall.

The way his had almost destroyed him.

It was a dream of Cassandra that had him bolting upright in his solitary bed, perspiring when the temperature in his current Paris apartment was kept a constant sixty-seven degrees. Not really a dream, more like a fragment of a memory, delivered to him across the rough sea of time. Cassandra, beckoning to him, devouring him. Honey-haired, green-eyed Cassandra, as young, as beautiful, as seductive as the first moment he laid eyes on her.

And just as evil.

There’d been a glint in her eyes, a murderous glint just as her embrace tightened, a fraction of a second before her mouth came down on his, that warned him of what was to come.

Of death if he didn’t flee.

Corbett sat up in his bed for a moment, his black silk sheets cool against his hot skin. He dragged a hand through his silver hair, slowly drawing air back into his lungs.

The memory…a warning?

A premonition?

He had not remained alive in this precarious, constant high-stakes, cat-and-mouse existence by ignoring his gut instinct. Just because he’d been asleep was no reason to doubt that something was reaching out to him, trying to warn him.

But about what?

Cassandra DuMont was long in his past. The daughter of a cold-blooded, heartless man, Maximilian DuMont, who had been the head of an organization that went to the highest bidder, no task too loathsome, no moral line left uncrossed. The agents at MI-6 had referred to it as Snake, but that was an inside joke. The organization had no name. It was evil, undefined.

There’d been a brother, too. Apollo. Groomed to take over his father’s place when the time came. Dead by his hand, Corbett thought. Cassandra hadn’t known that when she’d made love with him. If she had, she would have tried to slit his throat. And he would have been forced to slit hers.

Instead of sparing her the way he had.

He’d been soft then. And naive. Believing in justice, truth and all the hype he’d been sold when he was first inducted into Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service—S.I.S., formerly MI-6. He and his comrades were protectors of the realm. He’d be lieved that they would stand by him and he by them.

Until the allegations came.

And then, suddenly, he was alone. Watching his entire world, his carefully crafted career, crash and burn. They’d called him a double agent and said they had the evidence to prove it.

The stillness continued.

Corbett took a long breath, as if the air in his lungs would place that period of time even further from him than the actual years did.

Before he could mount a defense, he was swiftly brought up on charges of treason and convicted on the basis of fabricated evidence. His father, a former Hungarian refugee who’d risen to some prominence in Parliament, turned from him, calling him a disgrace even though the old man had never wanted him to be part of S.I.S. in the first place. The words that cut deepest were the ones he’d heard from his mother, saying she was ashamed of him.

And then, out of the blue, Edward, his womanizing older brother, came to his rescue, providing money that allowed Adam Sinclair, Corbett’s best friend and right-hand man, to bribe enough guards to bring about Corbett’s escape from prison. There was no love lost between the brothers, but Edward said he knew Corbett to be a loyal man and loyal men did not sell out their country.

The words, more than the money, forever placed him in Edward’s debt. And, somewhat ironically, Edward had become the financial handler for the Lazlo Group.

With Adam, Corbett had fled the country, coming to France. When he’d created the Lazlo Group, Adam was the first agent he recruited to join. Together, they oversaw the labor pains of its concrete formation. But if asked, Adam always gave him the credit for the group’s inception. It was the Lazlo Group, not the Lazlo–Sinclair Group.

Originally, the agency had been created as a means to prove Corbett’s innocence. His intention was to discover who had planted all the damning evidence against him. But even now, more than a decade later, he still had no answers.

He had, however, managed—thanks to the advances in forensic science and the introduction of DNA as a tool—to prove that he had never betrayed his country.

Apologies were issued. The S.I.S., saying all was forgiven, wanted him back. But he hadn’t wanted it back. Because all was not forgiven, as far as he was concerned.

These days, he had little time to pursue a trail that was close to seventeen years cold. The Lazlo Group had grown from two to more than fifty. It was now an international team of highly trained agents with a myriad of talents and skills, not the least of which was discretion. Corbett’s nephew, Edward’s son Joshua, had surprised Corbett by becoming one of his best agents.

The Group was also perhaps the best-kept secret in the free world among the upper rungs of governments. Usually called in as a last resort, or when a situation was of such a delicate, discreet nature that no one else could be trusted to handle it, the ever-growing organization had more work than it knew what to do with. Consequently, there was no time to investigate a personal wrong done to him so many years ago.

But he would eventually solve the puzzle, Corbett promised himself. He didn’t believe in loose ends.

Corbett had no idea how long he’d been in his office at the high-tech yet largely inconspicuous Lazlo Group headquarters before he heard the low, melodic sound that indicated he’d received another missive on his computer.

He swung his swivel chair around to face the state-of-the-art machine that Lucia, his wizard of all things computer, had insisted he get, and looked at the flat panel screen.

There was a single sentence on it.

The day of repentance draws near, Lazlo.

The moment he read it, his phone rang. Only a handful of his operatives and a select few heads of state had the direct number to his office. In the case of the latter, the signal was bounced and rerouted to several terminals throughout the world before it finally reached him. Just another device to protect his whereabouts and his people. Trust No One was more than just a once-popular cult saying. It was a credo that kept him alive and strong.

Picking up the receiver, he said, “Lazlo,” in a calm, resonant voice. The same voice that had soothed distraught world leaders when they were confronted with the kidnapping of a loved one. The same voice that promised secrecy and a swift resolution above all else.

There was no hint of the disquiet that currently resided beneath his reserve.

“It’s Henderson.”

After Sinclair, Wallace Henderson was the group’s oldest operative. Even more than Sinclair, Henderson prided himself on remaining unruffled. But Corbett’s trained ear detected a strain in the other man’s voice.

He wasn’t wrong. After a beat, Henderson said, “Lazlo, someone killed Jane Kiley.”

The already military straight posture stiffened even more. Corbett’s hand tightened on the receiver. His words of praise were few and he showed no signs of making emotional connections, but that didn’t change the fact that he was very protective of his people.

“When?” he demanded. “How?”

Henderson recited the bare bones. “An hour ago. Lisbon. Car bomb.”

Henderson’s voice cracked. It wasn’t the result of one agent’s indignation over another’s murder. Corbett knew about his people, knew without being directly informed by the parties involved that Henderson and Kiley had been lovers ever since they’d been partnered on a case a little more than a year ago. They probably thought they were being discreet enough to avoid detection. But few things escaped Corbett’s notice.

“Do we know who?” he asked, already making notes to himself. When it came to keeping track of events, he reverted to paper and pencil. The old way. But this time around, he also didn’t want to use the computer any more than he had to until Lucia took a look at it. There had to be a way to trace the sender of the message.

“No.” Henderson ground out the word, frustration echoing in his voice. “She’d just wrapped up the case you sent her on. The munitions were safely returned to their original owner, as per instruction. She’d had the money wired to the Swiss account and verified the transaction.” One tiny, shaky breath escaped before Henderson regained control. “She was coming home.”

“Find the son of a bitch who did this,” Corbett ordered. There was no emotion in his voice, only volume, but his people understood that was his way of coping. “And bring her back,” he added more quietly.

“But—”

He heard the bewilderment in Henderson’s voice. They both knew what the end result of a car bombing looked like. A charred body at best, a disintegrated one at worst.

“Whatever you can find, Henderson,” Corbett told him, his voice less gruff despite the fact that he was having a difficult time coping with this news. They’d lost only one man on the job since the group came into being. Nathaniel O’Hara had been a demolitions expert trying to disarm a bomb strapped to a man’s chest. Neither the man nor O’Hara made it out of that afternoon alive. But the bomber had been brought down a week later. Corbett had been in on the kill. “I’m sending Taggert to go over the scene.”

He ended the call before Henderson could say anything more. The next moment, he called Taggert with instructions to take the first flight to Lisbon.

After that, he sent for Lucia. He wanted to know where the message on his screen had come from.

The perspiration forming along his hairline did not go unnoticed. There had to be a tie-in between what had happened to Kiley, the message on his screen and his nightmare. He didn’t believe in coincidences, not even when they involved dreams.

Most of the time, Prudence Hill, daughter of the prime minister of England, liked to shake things up. By definition, she was not a creature of habit. However, some things in her life just naturally seemed to fall into a pattern. Barring a monsoon or a pronounced case of the flu, she always jogged first thing in the morning. And her route was always the same.

Unencumbered by bodyguards, which she vehemently refused to live with, she ran clockwise along the oblong perimeter of St. James Park until it eventually fed back to the street she started out on, at which point she’d jog back to her apartment. It was as close to a country setting as she could get in the West End.

Pru preferred running as early as possible, when there were fewer cars out. She was more than a little aware of the irony of attempting to maintain a healthy cardiovascular regimen while breathing in the exhaust fumes being belched out by the many vehicles that sped or crawled along the London streets. But it couldn’t be helped. Since breathing in exhaust was a permanent part of the equation in London whether or not she jogged, she chose to jog.

Perspiration slid down her spine, working its way through her sports bra and turning her baggy T-shirt into an uncomfortable collection of cotton threads that adhered to her body. The air was heavy. The famous runner’s high had found her less than midway through her jog, but it was battling mightily with fatigue because the weather was so oppressive.

Jogging in place, waiting for the light to turn green so she could cross, Pru slipped into her own world. The sense of euphoria she was trying to maintain blended well with the music she was listening to. Consequently, she took no notice of the white van that abruptly stopped less than a foot away from her, didn’t hear the passenger side doors opening and didn’t see the two men dressed in black jerseys, black slacks and ski masks who swiftly leaped out of the vehicle.

Eyes intent on the traffic signal, Pru was completely unaware of the men until the two grabbed her, one from the side, the other from behind, and attempted to drag her into the van.

Startled, Pru reacted instantly. Twisting, she bit the hand that was covering her mouth.

The assailant who was behind her and whose fleshy palm now had an almost perfect impression of her teeth howled in pain. He jerked his hand back, uncovering her mouth.

“She bit me!” he cried, furious. “The damn bitch bit me!”

“Suck it up,” the man to his right snapped.

Pru’s semi-freedom lasted less than half a heart-beat as the other man’s grasp on her tightened. Though she twisted and bucked, it was useless. Within thirty seconds of the initial encounter, she’d been packed away in the rear of the van like baggage. Even before the doors were shut, the vehicle was whisking away in the opposite direction of her apartment.

The only minor triumph she’d attained, other than leaving her mark on the tallest of the three kidnappers, was that she’d managed to drop her MP3 player where they’d grabbed her. It was the only clue she could leave. The player, a gift from her stepmother, had her initials on it.

Now all that had to happen was for the device to remain unnoticed until someone her father sent came along to retrace her steps.

She tried not to think of the odds.

“What do you want?” she demanded, seething.

She was being manhandled and for two cents, given half an opportunity, she would have cut the hearts out of all three of their chests. Her hands were already bound behind her and one of the three men was crouching in front of her, wrapping duct tape around her ankles. She felt like a damned Christmas turkey about to be shoved into the oven.

“For you to shut up!” the assailant she’d bitten snapped.

Before she could retort, the man who’d been binding her feet rose to his knees and pressed a length of gray, sticky duct tape across her mouth. “That should do it,” the man told his companion proudly as he began to rise to his feet.

Before he could, Pru threw her weight forward as she jerked her head down, hitting her forehead against his with all the force she could muster. It was enough to catch him off guard and send him staggering backward. He fell on his butt as he cried out in pain, then began to curse. A hail of expletives rained down on her.

And then a sudden, searing pain exploded not from the initial point of contact on her forehead, but from the back of her skull.

The world went black before she could struggle to hold the smothering blanket at bay.

The last thought Pru had was that she was dead.

Chapter 2

When he wasn’t working, Joshua Lazlo found himself at loose ends. While his professional life was precision personified, his private life was the exact opposite.

He had no doubt that if his uncle Corbett had not plucked him out of the social whirl he had resided in from the tender age of sixteen, making a tentative offer to him to join his “group,” his life would have been a complete and utter shamble. More than likely, he would be well on his way to becoming this generation’s version of his father. Which probably would have been more than his poor mother, Abigail, could stand.

Ambitious, his father, Edward Lazlo, had made a small name for himself in Parliament over the years. He’d made a bigger name for himself among the ladies. A scandalous womanizer, he never allowed the fact that he was married to interfere with his actual life’s ambition: to bed as many women as humanly possible before he died.

Not that there was anything wrong with that, Joshua thought, a half smile playing on his lips as he made his way into the bathroom. Though not exactly an admirable avocation, it did have its merits.

There were, after all, a great many beautiful women in the world.

But the fact that these affairs, after all this time, still bothered his poor mother, despite her rather sad little charade that she was unaware of her husband’s philandering, bothered him in turn. There was no love lost between his father and him.

A man shouldn’t marry if he had no intention of remaining faithful.

Which was why, Joshua reasoned, not for the first time as he stepped into the sleek, black onyx tiled shower stall, he was never going to get married. The world was filled with an endless supply of delightful women with long limbs, soft curves and willing bodies.

And he’d never met one he wanted to spend more than a weekend with.

Joshua turned on the water, moving the lever toward the hot side. It was his day off, but there was no reason to spend it with the scent of Miranda still clinging to his body.

Not unless Miranda was close at hand, he added silently.

When he was on assignment, he could work round the clock. Adrenaline pounding, he needed little to no sleep to keep him going. But on his days off, he changed completely, sleeping in, allowing the sun to rise without him.

He supposed it could be called recharging his batteries. Or viewed as being the sloth he could so easily revert to had his uncle not seen something in him and turned him into a crusader.

Not that they were associated with any specific higher power or world government. The agents who comprised the Lazlo Group were essentially free-lancers. It gave his uncle the privilege of being able to turn down whatever work he didn’t choose to do.

When all was said and done, the causes they took up, the people they aided, could all be found on the side of freedom and democracy.

With the possible exception of the time eighteen months ago when he’d had to save the wife and son of the Chinese ambassador from a radical fringe group of would-be terrorists. It had been touch and go for a harrowing thirty-six hours before he brought them both to safety. Since then an expensive bottle of vintage wine had arrived at his door the first of every month like clockwork.

He liked to think that he had accomplished a bit of détente in rescuing the ambassador’s family. Not to mention sending up the price of vintage wine.

“Maybe you’re not as worthless as the old man says you are,” he murmured under his breath, sticking his head under the steady stream of water and removing the shampoo from his hair.

The old man, of course, was his father, who had never had a good word to say to him from the time when such things had actually mattered. Now, all his father’s disdain meant to Joshua was that he was doing something right with his life. He knew that his father found it particularly galling that he was working with his uncle and that he quietly admired the man. There was no denying that Edward Lazlo was a jealous man, jealous of any attention not sent directly his way.

The pulsating noise slowly wove its way through the sound of the shower’s running water.

Joshua stopped, listening. Shutting off the water, he angled his head to hear better.

Ringing.

It was his cell phone.

The next second, Joshua swiftly left the confines of his shower, marking his path with splotches of water that dripped off his body as he retrieved his phone from the nightstand where he’d left it. Day off or not, he knew better than to ignore the phone when it rang.

He’d had the presence of mind, just before falling into bed last night, to plug the phone in. It was still tethered to his charger.

Joshua didn’t bother disconnecting the device as he picked it up. Flipping the phone open, he pressed it to his ear.

“Lazlo.”

“Where are you?”

The sound of his uncle’s voice took him aback for a second. Ordinarily, the man had one of his people do his calling.

Joshua disconnected the phone from its charger and walked back into the bathroom.

“My place.” Taking a towel from the rack, he began drying himself with one hand. He had a feeling he wasn’t going to be climbing back into the shower. “It’s my day off,” he added needlessly. His uncle was on top of everything that happened or didn’t happen at the agency, but it didn’t hurt to add that little fact in.

“Not anymore.”

The finality of the tone was familiar. Something was up. His uncle didn’t pull strings just to watch people jump.

“I’m listening.”

“If you weren’t, you wouldn’t be working for me,” Corbett replied crisply. “The British prime minister’s daughter is missing. She was apparently kidnapped sometime this morning.”

“Why?”

The question was a spontaneous response to the information. He could think of a lot of other people who would have been easier to kidnap than Prudence Hill. The kidnappers obviously hadn’t realized what they were in for when they took the young woman. The tabloids, who loved to hound people of prominence, to build up and then tear down the same person within the space of a few paragraphs, had dubbed Prime Minister Jeremy Hill’s older daughter “Pru the Shrew.”

According to so-called “friends”—most likely disgruntled hangers-on that she’d had no patience with—Prudence Hill had a waspish disposition and never minced words. Word, among people who supposedly would know about such things, had it that the diplomatic corps would not be calling the prime minister’s daughter any time soon with an invitation to join their ranks.

“You’ll be briefed when you arrive.” Joshua knew that his uncle didn’t believe in saying any more than absolutely necessary over the telephone, even if the lines were secured and tested on a daily basis. “The rest you will find out and cover in the report that you will give to me after you bring the young woman back.”

Complete faith, that was what he liked about his uncle. The man did not waste words, did not heap accolades of any kind for a job well done. Nonetheless, you knew what he thought, knew where you stood with him. In Corbett Lazlo’s case, a simple nod spoke volumes and was all but euphoric for the recipient.

“Yes, sir,” Joshua responded. He finished drying himself and draped the towel haphazardly over the rack then padded back to his bedroom. Time was ticking away.

“There’s a jet waiting for you at the airport. Be there in forty minutes. Murphy is compiling a dossier on the woman for you. It’ll be waiting for you when you get to the airfield.” There was an infinitesimal pause. “I don’t have to tell you to be discreet.”

“No,” Joshua agreed amicably, opening his closet, “you don’t.”

He knew the rules. He was to get in and out without leaving a mark, retrieve the girl and bring her home—alive—as swiftly as possible. To aid him he had complete access to all the latest electronic gadgets and available technology, not to mention the considerable standard resources of the Lazlo Group, both human and otherwise, the caliber of which would have made James Bond salivate had the character actually existed.

In exchange for the faith placed in him and the arsenal at his disposal, he could never protest that an assignment found him at an inconvenient moment, nor that he might need more than the allotted amount of time to arrive at the appointed place. Corbett expected loyalty, compliance and agents who were as close to perfection as humanly possible. For this he paid extremely well. But there were rewards beyond money to garner.

He was just now beginning to find that out, Joshua thought, taking out a casual pair of cream-colored slacks and a navy jacket. A light blue shirt followed, along with whisper small briefs and dark, thin socks. All his clothes were aerodynamically light. You never knew when you had to flee and maximum speed was always good if your vehicle was “accidentally” destroyed.

The satisfaction of a job well done was nothing compared to the slight glimmer of approval occasionally seen in Corbett Lazlo’s eyes. And because he’d found himself such a student of his uncle, Joshua had become acutely attuned to the various nuances in the older man’s voice.

There was something more there now, something that Corbett Lazlo was not saying. Had he been the perfect agent, he would have refrained from asking. But Joshua had not yet completely morphed into a junior version of his uncle and so allowed himself to press the issue a little.

“Is something wrong, Uncle?”

He heard annoyance when his uncle answered. “Other than the fact that the older daughter of one of the most influential men in the entire free world has been kidnapped?”

His uncle made it sound as if that was more than enough reason for him to be troubled and distracted, but Joshua knew better. Very little ruffled Corbett Lazlo and they were in the business of thwarting international kidnappers among other things. There was something more, he’d bet his life on it.

“Other than the fact that the older daughter of one of the most influential men in the entire free world has been kidnapped,” Joshua parroted back, then waited to be filled in.

The pause on the other end of the line made him uneasy. It stretched out until it was as thin as a piano wire.

The feeling did not leave once his uncle began speaking again.

“Jane Kiley’s dead.”

He knew Jane. A small, thin woman with lightning-fast hands, a sharp mind and a smile that rivaled a sunrise. She knew her way around horses and tanks, an odd combination that came in handy. He felt an instant sense of loss. He also sensed that there was more.

“I’m guessing not from natural causes.” It was said for form’s sake. They wouldn’t be talking about it if the causes had been natural.

“There was a car bomb.”

Joshua could feel his gut tightening in sympathetic response. “Part of the case?”

“The case was closed,” Corbett said flatly.

Joshua could hear his uncle weighing his words in the silence that followed. Corbett was known to be closemouthed about almost everything. Information—any information—was released on a need-to-know basis. Even about something like this. Joshua didn’t have to be told that Corbett already had the right people working on this.

“Be careful, Joshua.”

The warning took him aback. That was a first, Joshua thought. His uncle never troubled himself with the risk factors. An assignment was gone over, assessed, then left up to the chosen agent to successfully execute. No mention was ever made of being careful.

Until now.

This was serious, Joshua thought to himself. Really serious.

“Not to worry,” Joshua told him buoyantly. “Today is not a good day to die,” he said, paraphrasing an ancient Cheyenne saying. “I’m on my way.”

“Of course you are.”

The connection terminated after Corbett’s last uttered syllable. Joshua was on his own.

He hurried into his clothes, into his holster and weapon and out the front door as if the devil was after him.

Because he very well might be.

Forty minutes later found Joshua Lazlo sprinting across the private airfield to one of his uncle’s private jets. The moment the pilot saw him approaching, he began to go through the necessary checklist, the end of which would allow him to take to the air. They had only a short transatlantic hop ahead of them, since the first destination would be London. He was to meet with the prime minister and the man’s chief advisor and oldest friend, George Montgomery, to personally obtain all the information that was available.

Clarence Murphy stood just within the plane’s entrance, waiting as Joshua took the steps up to the plane two at a time. The carryall that he kept perpetually packed and ready to go in his closet was slung over his shoulder.

Taking the carryall from him, Murphy stepped back, waited until he was on board and then closed and latched the door.

“No need to get a stitch from running,” Murphy told him. He gestured toward a seat, then took the one opposite it, buckling up. “It’s not like we can leave without you, seeing as you’re the reason for this quick hop.”

The dossier that Corbett had promised was on the seat, waiting for him. Joshua picked it up before sitting down. Buckled into his seat, he crossed his leg over his thigh and rested the folder on it.

“No,” Joshua contradicted as he opened up the dossier and scanned the pages within the black folder. There was a wealth of information waiting for him, all neatly cataloged and arranged by year. “The prime minister’s daughter is.”

Chapter 3

The first thing he noticed was how vivid her hair was, even through a telescope at this distance.

Joshua wiped away another large, fat raindrop that seemed to fall on him in slow motion, and refocused on his target. Prudence Hill was a redhead and the tabloids really must have had it in for her, he thought, trying to ignore the pregnant promise of a downpour. He gazed intently into the back window of the run-down farmhouse from his vantage point some one hundred yards away.

The pictures he’d seen on the covers of the same rags that had given her infamy of a sort made her look austere, frightening, with definite wicked-witch-of-the-west attributes. The headlines screamed as much, as did the nickname the magazines had all summarily bestowed on her: Pru the Shrew.

But if the woman he was looking at actually was the British prime minister’s headstrong, outspoken daughter, then somewhere along the line, someone had made a big mistake. Not only that, but someone definitely needed to spring for better cameras for their photographers, because the only resemblance the gagged, bound young woman in the cluttered back bedroom of the isolated, dilapidated building had to the woman in the tabloid photographs that had been taken was that they both had red hair.

Beyond that, the difference between the two was like that between a butterfly and a moth. They both had wings and they both flew, but one was beautiful and graceful while the other plain and shunned. The woman he’d sometimes seen portrayed on the tabloid covers beneath unflattering adjectives had dull, lifeless hair, dowdy clothing and a body that wouldn’t give a person the slightest pause or merit even a first glance, much less a second. That wasn’t true of the woman in the white jogging shorts and baggy but clingy T-shirt. And from what he could see, she had unconditionally killer legs.

Her profile was to him and, despite the duct tape, he could see that her face, though flushed, was more than passingly attractive. He couldn’t see her eyes, which to him had always been one of the most important weapons in a woman’s arsenal, but he suspected that there was fire in them.

Which would make her beautiful, not school-marmish. The tabloids loved her for her sensational comments and hated her for her attitude toward them, which was pure contempt. As to the discrepancy in appearance, he had a feeling that whoever was in charge of reviewing the final copy probably did what had been covertly done in the past: taken her head and pasted it onto someone else’s body, making sure they used the most unflattering photo of Prudence they could find.

If he’d been armed with nothing more than their photos, he’d never have found her.

But it had taken more than just flashing around her photograph, obtained from the prime minister’s assistant, to locate the missing young woman. It had taken the combined backing of a crack team in Paris, Lucia with her almost magical capabilities with the computer, and luck.

He never underestimated the power of luck. Because luck had Mr. Merriweather Wilson walking up to the guard at 10 Downing Street ten minutes after he, Joshua, had been ushered into the prime minister’s presence. Wilson, he was told, began innocently enough by saying that he had something he believed belonged to the prime minister’s older daughter.

The moment the words were out of his mouth, Wilson had instantly been taken into a basement room within the historical residence and thoroughly, repeatedly, questioned.

The prime minister’s people had thought, at first, that Wilson was part of the kidnapping plot, sent to up the ante that had initially been set. But the poor, clueless man protested over and over again that his son Derek had found the MP3 player that morning near the park. Intending to keep his newfound prize, Derek could have easily done so if Wilson had not been running late that morning, not having yet departed for his very important position at the West End Bank.

Wilson had actually been on his way out when he’d taken note of the MP3 player clipped like a newly captured trophy to his sixteen-year-old’s belt. He stopped to question his son, who’d recently entered a rather shady period of his life. Thinking the player to be stolen, he’d been left unmoved by his son’s impassioned protestations of innocence. But Derek remained steadfast, firmly maintaining that he had found the MP3 player, not stolen it from someone.

Employing as much drama as he could, Wilson told his former interrogators that his jaw had practically dropped to the floor when he read the inscription on the back of the player. He’d lost no time in bringing it to Number 10 because he was a patriot—and because, he added more quietly, he was hoping that there might be some small reward for the player’s recovery.

Joshua had left that part up to the other men in the room, the prime minister’s personal bodyguards and his best friend, Montgomery, a kindly faced man who towered over the others. Joshua remained focused. He’d asked Wilson exactly where the player had been located. Wilson had to defer to his son. The latter was summoned. Derek was quick to pick up that something had to be amiss and made an attempt to barter.

But there was to be no exchange of information, on that the prime minister was absolutely clear. No one, except a very select few, was to even know that his daughter was missing.

On that Joshua and the prime minister had been in agreement.

Taken to the exact spot where Derek Wilson had first been united with the MP3 player, Joshua had the prime minister’s people fan out and locate every security camera in the area. After the London subway bombings of two years past, local small businesses, not to mention the government, had installed security cameras in as many available nooks and crannies as possible.

They got luckier. A grainy film of the abduction was recovered.

From that came a poor photograph of the van used and a much magnified partial license plate. Turning everything over to Lucia via the capabilities of his highly advanced cell phone, Joshua was rewarded in short order with the name of the van’s owner.

The prime minister sent two of his people to the owner’s house. He wasn’t there. But a hit on one of his credit cards at a distant gas station, also thanks to Lucia, showed them the path that the van had taken. Away from London and into the countryside, the land of the sisters Brontë, haystacks and needles. In other words, it appeared that they were headed north, in the general vicinity of Haworth.

It was an easy place to get lost. Or to hold a hostage.

Eager, distraught, the prime minister wanted to send some of his people along when he’d discovered that Joshua had come alone. But he’d respectfully declined the offer, saying he worked best on his own and unimpeded. If the cavalry was sent in, Prudence would be dead before they made it to the front door.

Reluctantly, the prime minister agreed to his terms.

Joshua continued tracking and following slim leads until, a day and a half after Prudence Hill had been snatched outside of the southern end of St. James Park, he had wound up here, in an isolated section of the countryside relatively untouched in the last 170 years, staring through a telescope at a filthy window into an even filthier room.

Staring directly at the object of his search.

She looked none the worse for her ordeal, Joshua judged, relieved that the young woman was still alive. Now all he had to do was to keep her that way, get her out of there in one piece and bring her back to her father.

A tall order from where he stood. But not an impossible one.

Joshua rose to his feet, reducing the telescope in his hands to a fraction of its original size. The fat drops of rain began to increase and fall in earnest. The sky had been an odd shade of amber and mauve all day and there’d been talk of an electrical storm on the horizon. He’d hoped that the weather would hold steady until he got Prudence out of there.

In true black ops tradition, Joshua began turning the situation around in his mind, searching for a way to make it work for him rather than against him.

Ten minutes later, his clothes sticking to his body and his hair plastered to his head, Joshua walked up to the kidnappers’ front door and knocked urgently. All he knew was that the farmhouse, which belonged to one Owen Sutton now that his grandfather had passed on, contained anywhere from two to four people, not counting their hostage. No one knew what Owen’s source of income was, since the farm was not a working one.

Joshua had a hunch he knew.

Hidden inside his left boot was an extra clip of bullets for the gun tucked into the back of his waistband.

He knocked again when there was no response.

It was several tense seconds before the door was finally opened. An average, unfriendly looking man of medium height and build, dressed completely in black, stood squarely in the doorway. There was a streak of what looked like pale pink face powder across the cuff of his left sleeve. From carrying Prudence, Joshua surmised, unless the man had some peculiar habits.

Eyes like cold, black marbles passed over him. “Yeah?”

Joshua looked properly humbled, a hapless man without a clue as to how to remedy the situation he found himself in.

“I’m sorry to bother you, mate, but my car broke down about a mile away—” he pointed vaguely toward the road “—and I was wondering if you’d mind my using your telephone.”

The man in the doorway looked as if he would have rather shoved his face into the nearest deep puddle than to allow him access into the farmhouse. “What for?” he spat out.

Joshua shrugged helplessly. “To call a mechanic, a towing service, someone for help…” His voice trailed off.

The man eyed him for a long time. Joshua felt as if he were being X-rayed. Obviously coming to no conclusion, the man lifted his chin pugnaciously. “How come you ain’t got a cell phone?”

“Had one,” Joshua admitted forlornly, “but it fell into the loo when I took a leak in the restroom of a bar at the last town. It doesn’t work anymore.”

To Joshua’s surprise, the man laughed. But it was a nasty, unsympathetic sound. “Ain’t your day, mate, is it?” he jeered.

“That it ain’t,” Joshua agreed nervously. He projected just the right amount of uncertainty as he shifted from foot to foot and nodded toward the interior of the house. “So, can I use that phone?”

“Sorry,” the man replied, his voice indicating that he was anything but. “Never got around to hooking up a service.” And then he paused, as if debating. Joshua guessed that he was weighing whether it was less trouble to shoot him or get him to leave on his own. And then the man surprised him by looking over his shoulder into the house. “Hey, Ken,” the man shouted. “C’mere.”

A moment later, “Ken,” a lanky man whose clothes were meant for someone a size or two larger in build, shuffled to the front door. It was obvious by his manner that he didn’t like being summoned. It was also obvious that he didn’t have the courage not to come when called.

He looked sullenly at the intruder, then at the man who had called him. “Yeah?”

“Why don’t you play the Good Samaritan and see if you can help this bloke with his car.” The man sounded almost genial. But his voice was flat and unreadable as he added, “Says it’s dead. Go check it out.”

The man probably asks his mother for an ID, Joshua thought.

Ken’s sullen expression deepened. “Why the hell should I?”

“Because I said so,” the man bit off. Then he looked at the man on his right. “Ken here can fix anything, can’t you, Ken?”

Ken’s answer was given under his breath and addressed to his shoes as he shuffled onto the front porch. He turned up the collar of his dark shirt against the rain, as if that would make a difference. “Where is it?” he wanted to know.

Joshua pointed north. “About a mile or so down the road.”

Ken cursed roundly, then told the man in the doorway, “I’m taking the van.”

In response, the first man pulled a set of keys out of his pants pocket.

“Take my car instead,” he instructed in a firm monotone that allowed for no argument.

Ken grudgingly accepted the keys and trudged off to the tan car parked over to the extreme right side of the front yard.

Joshua nodded his thanks at the man in the doorway and quickly followed behind Ken. In a move that would have made a magician proud, he’d already shifted his weapon to the side to avoid having it detected as he walked away.

Fifteen minutes later, Joshua was back at the house. This time, however, he didn’t knock on the front door. He approached the farmhouse from the rear. He’d left the sullen Ken bound, gagged and unconscious in the front seat of the now disabled tan vehicle. Cars didn’t go very far without their distributor caps.

One down and he wasn’t certain how many more to go, but at least there was one less gun to face. He had Ken’s tucked beside his own. The metal chafed his skin.

Above him, a lightning bolt flashed. Thunder exploded loudly not more than thirty seconds later.

Close, he thought.

The world had gone crazy. There was no other explanation for the kind of weather they were having this summer.

The storm had descended and it was interfering royally with his cell phone’s reception. He glanced at the cell’s screen. There was no signal coming in at all. Joshua frowned. His cell phone was temporarily useless and that left him dependent solely on his own ingenuity.

He’d been in worse situations.

His boots sinking into dirt now rendered to mud, Joshua gingerly tried the window. Locked, it didn’t budge. Quickly stripping off his shirt, he wrapped it around his arm, then swung it, breaking the glass with his elbow just as another crack of thunder resounded.

Despite the cover of thunder, the woman in the chair abruptly turned her head in his direction.

Joshua lost no time reaching in and unlocking the window. Raising the sash, he slipped into the dust mote laden room.

Her eyes were green, he noted. And huge as they watched and absorbed his every move.

Huge, but not frightened.

Good. The last thing he wanted was a hysterical woman he couldn’t reason with on his hands. Even if she was gorgeous.

Oh, God, now what? Pru thought, her breath backing up into her lungs. They’re coming out of the woodwork, or at least through the windows.

Her adrenaline kicked into overtime at this latest threat. She’d been working on her ropes now for God only knew how long, ever since that cretin in the baggy clothes had come in with a tray of what looked like recycled table scraps. He’d had the audacity to offer to feed her with the promise of a “special dessert if you behave yourself.”

The laugh that followed had made her skin crawl.

As he came toward her, she’d managed to twist and bump into him, knocking the tray out of his hands. It, the plate of food and the dirty glass of water had crashed to the floor. The latter had shattered.

Just as she’d hoped.

Cursing her, her kidnapper had picked up the pieces. All but the one shard she’d covered with her sneaker and drew beneath her chair, leaving her foot over it.

It had taken time and patience, patience when she wanted nothing more than to flee, but she’d counted off thirty minutes. Thirty minutes before she executed the second part of her plan. Rocking back and forth, she’d finally succeeded in tipping over her chair. When she crashed to the floor, she’d felt the impact reverberating in her teeth, not to mention through her shoulders.

The crash had brought her kidnappers running, then cursing, then finally laughing at her. She assumed that they thought she was attempting to break the chair and then escape. They’d called her stupid and told her not to try anything like that again, then left. She hardly heard them, aware only of the shard of glass she’d secured and now held locked in her closed fist.

The moment the door was closed, she went to work.

It was slow, tedious and painful. Pru worked the shard like a tiny, jagged glass saw, drawing it back and forth across the thick hemp that held her prisoner, feeling a sticky trickle of blood at her wrist. She’d just managed to cut through the ropes when this miscreant had come through the window.

A new face. Another one of the kidnappers?

She wasn’t sure how many there were and only knew two by actual sight. His coming through the window made no sense, unless he didn’t want the others to know what he was doing.

Every muscle in her body tensed.

She pretended to still be bound as the stranger came toward her. The element of surprise was all she had.

He put his finger to his lips, as if the dolt thought she could scream beneath the duct tape. If she could have screamed, she would have done so a long time ago. Loud and long.

He crouched down beside her. He was going to rape her, she thought, banking down the surge of panic and turning it into fury. He damn well might try, but he was going to lose a few vital organs in the process.

“This is going to hurt,” he warned her, taking the edge of the duct tape covering her mouth in his fingers. He yanked it quickly and a line of fiery pain zigzagged along her lips.

The next second, she propelled herself forward, lunging at him. He wound up on the floor, flat on his back, with her on top of him, pinning him down.

“This’ll hurt more,” she declared fiercely, her face inches from his.

Her heart pounding wildly, Prudence began to scramble to her feet, intent on grabbing the weapon she’d seen go flying from his waistband. But he caught her wrists with his hands and held her to him. The length of his rock-hard body directly beneath hers registered on the outer perimeter of her consciousness. As did the heat from his bare chest.

Stockholm syndrome, Stockholm syndrome, she warned herself. He was a lowlife, nothing else.

A lowlife with a temper.

“Are you out of your mind?” he hissed angrily.

She squirmed and wriggled against him, trying to get free, alarmed at the sensations that were swiftly and dramatically telegraphing themselves through her body. Alarmed, too, at the rather sensual curve of his mouth as he looked up at her.

Prudence gathered her indignation to her like an invisible, invincible cloak. She was not about to succumb to this. They were not going to keep her docile and inline with this cheap ploy. She didn’t care how hard his chest, or other parts of him for that matter, were.

“If you think that I’m just going to lie here and let you attack me, you less than worthless sack of horse manure, then—”

“Attack you?” he echoed incredulously, his hands still very tightly wrapped around her wrists where they would remain until he was confident that she wasn’t going to take a swing at him. “I’m here to rescue you.”

For a moment, still sprawled out on top of him, Pru wavered. Rescue her? She was being rescued? Her father had actually managed to find where she was being held? The man deserved more credit than she’d been giving him lately.

And then suspicion crept in between the lines.

“Where are the others?” she wanted to know.

“There are no others,” he told her.

Her eyes widened. “You’re it?”

“Yup. Lucky me,” the man commented dryly. “Now, not that I wouldn’t find this position interesting at any other time—” he opened his hands, releasing her wrists “—but I think that we’d better get the hell out of here before one of those Neanderthals comes to investigate the noise.”

Pru scrambled to her feet, managing to have more than just marginal contact with all parts of him. “Just who the hell are you?” she demanded hotly, her cheeks burning.

A smile twisted the man’s lips as he motioned her over to the same window he’d just used to get in. “At the moment,” he told her, “your savior.”

Chapter 4

If Pru was going to respond to the information this bare-chested, unmasked avenger had just flippantly tossed at her, the opportunity was snatched from her.

She heard a noise behind her but before she could turn around to see what was happening, the man with the washboard abs was grabbing her by the wrist again and yanking her so that she was suddenly behind him. The snub-nosed weapon was in his hand so quickly, she didn’t even see where it had come from. All she knew was that it was there, being aimed at the man who had just walked into the bedroom.

The next moment, the man had fallen to his knees, a single hole very neatly placed in the center of his forehead.

Shock and wonder vibrated all through her. “You killed him,” she cried.

“That’s the idea.” And then the stranger was pushing her toward the open window. “Let’s go!” he ordered in a voice that would have made a marine drill sergeant proud.

Ever since she could remember, Pru had always hated being ordered around. Hated being rendered to the state of an inanimate object, thought unable to think for herself.

But there was no arguing with the wisdom behind the soggy Adonis’s command.

Later she’d take him to task for his irreverent manhandling of her. Right now, all she wanted to do was put an infinite amount of distance between herself and the men she knew in her heart were going to kill her whenever they decided that she’d ceased to be useful to them.

Pru was drenched half a second after she’d exited through the window.

The ground was soft and muddy, the sky completely covered with black, ominous clouds that were relentlessly draining themselves over the land. She was about to ask which way to run, assuming that this man had an escape plan mapped out, when he grabbed her wrist for a third time and, in a dead run, began to drag her in his wake. Prudence had no doubt that if she fell, this man would just drag her behind him in the mud like some broken, dysfunctional pull toy.

She glared at the back of his soaked, dark head. If he was her rescuer, or her savior as he claimed, he certainly had never been to knight-in-shiningarmor school.

Behind them, the rest of her kidnappers must have rushed into the back room, drawn by the sound of the single gunshot. Making an immediate assessment, they’d run to the window and began firing.

Bullets were flying at them like lethal mosquitoes on steroids.

“You should have used a silencer!” Prudence shouted at the back of her rescuer’s head, raising her voice to be heard above the gunfire, the thunder and whatever else nature in its perverse capriciousness had decided to throw at them.

“I’ll have to remember that for next time,” he shouted back.

They reached what must be his vehicle and Pru’s “savior” threw open the passenger door and shoved her in, then slid across the hood to get to the driver’s side. He seemed to stumble and clutched his leg, but then jumped in the car.

“What are you, a Dukes of Hazard wannabe?” she asked incredulously. “Never mind,” Pru retorted when her remark earned her a puzzled scowl, adding urgently, “Get this thing started.”

“That’s what I’m doing,” he told her as he turned the key in the ignition. After one false cough, the car came to life.

“Hurry, get us out of here,” Pru cried, craning her neck to look back toward the farmhouse.

One of the men was tumbling out the window, head first. The other was already out and racing across the field toward the van. Prudence sucked in her breath as she saw the man whom she took to be the ringleader get into the van. He’d been the one who was driving yesterday morning when they’d dragged her off the path.

Her stomach twisted into a knot even though she refused to give in to panic. “Oh, God, they’re coming after us.”

“What did you expect?” her rescuer asked. Tires squealed as he hit the road.

Only then did she remember to buckle up. She pushed the metal tongue into its slot. “A S.W.A.T. team, not a half-naked man.”

“Sorry,” he told her. “The realm is fresh out of S.W.A.T. teams at the moment.” Stepping on the gas, he slanted a quick glance in her direction. “What part do you object to? That I’m half-naked or half-dressed?”

Oh, God, heaven spare her. Another man with an ego. “I object to the fact that my father sent a Neanderthal to rescue me.”

His mouth curved in a smile that remained exclusively on his lips and nowhere else. “Sorry, James Bond was busy dallying with a woman who knew that you catch more flies with honey than you do with vinegar.”

Restrained by the seat belt, she still twisted around in her seat, looking out the back window and holding her breath as she tried to focus through the sheets of falling rain.

“Is that the way you think of yourself? As being a honey-deprived fly?” But before he could make any sort of a cryptic retort in response, Prudence realized something. The van wasn’t moving. Wide-eyed, she looked from the rear window to the driver on her right. “They’re not coming after us. Why aren’t they coming after us?”

Instead of answering, the dripping driver with the hard body leaned over into her space. She was about to push him back when, one hand still on the wheel, he flipped open the glove compartment. Two round, plastic-looking things tumbled out onto her wet lap. She had no idea what they were.

“I think these might have something to do with it.” He caught the confused expression on her face as he straightened again. “They’re distributor caps.”

Pru came to the only conclusion she could. “So the van’s disabled?”

“Unless one of them’s got a spare distributor cap in their pocket.”

Spinning the steering wheel around, the man executed a 270-degree turn and sped off in a new direction. Plumes of water flew up on either side of the vehicle while sheets of rain continued to come down. The road, when they finally reached it, was slippery, threatening to wrench control of the car away at the first unguarded moment.

He put the windshield wipers on high and they urgently began to duel with the rain. “You picked a hell of a day to be kidnapped.”

That she was rescued had not yet actually sunk in. The sensation was further impeded by the fact that she wasn’t completely sold that they were out of danger, no matter what the bare-chested man said about the distribution hats, or distributor caps, or whatever those things he’d taken off with were.

Prudence shoved both items back into the glove compartment, fighting with the door to get it closed. She was too full of adrenaline, too full of fury, to relax. And his smart mouth wasn’t helping the situation any.

“Next time I’ll have the kidnappers check the weather report before they abduct me,” she snapped, shifting in the wet seat.

He spared her a quick look, then shook his head. She caught the latter and it only served to further fuel her anger. “You really do have a sunny personality, don’t you?”

The mean-spirited nickname she’d been awarded immediately crossed her mind. Her eyes narrowed as she looked at his damn-near-perfect profile. Probably had women falling all over him. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“That sometimes the tabloids get it right.”

She stiffened, pressing her lips together as she pushed a fallen wet strand out of her eyes. God, but she was tired of having to defend herself, of having her every move scrutinized and found lacking by someone. And when the truth didn’t live up to expectations, there were always lies to use.

Her voice was monotone and weary as she said, “I had you pegged as someone who reads trash.”

“And just when did you make this character assessment, Prudence? When I crashed into the room to rescue you or when I used my body as a human shield as they were shooting at you?”

For a second, there was nothing but the sound of the rain, beating against the windshield and the noise of the tires as they struggled against the ever-softening ground. Prudence flushed. He was right. She was being incredibly waspish. Living up to, she realized, all the nasty stories that were written about her. Stories that were taken out of context because the public demanded its daily dose of gossip, whether or not it was true.

She took a deep breath, then said, almost in a whisper, “Sorry.”

“What was that?” He took one hand off the steering wheel and cupped it to the ear closest to her. “I didn’t quite hear you. Sounded like you said you were sorry.”

She didn’t know whether to laugh at him or hit him. She wanted to do both. Instead, she settled for warning him. “Don’t push it.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” he quipped.

Joshua glanced in the rearview mirror. In the distance, on the road, he could just barely make out the beams of two headlights foreshadowing an advancing vehicle.

Had there been a third car somewhere? A car he hadn’t seen?

There’d been no time to go scouting into the barn or the garage. Now he wished he had.

Stepping all the way down on the accelerator, he drove as if it were a foregone conclusion that they were being followed by her abductors.

“Damn.”

Prudence jerked like a piece of toast popping out of its toaster. Twisting around in her seat, she looked behind at the road.

“Is that them?” she wanted to know. “Are they following us?”

Ordinarily, he’d say something to comfort the kidnap victim. But Pru didn’t strike him as someone who would appreciate being lied to or hearing half truths. So he shrugged and gave it to her straight. “I don’t know. Maybe.”

“I thought you said you disabled the cars.” Her tone was nothing short of accusing.

Maybe he should have lied to her. “The ones I could see.”

She looked panicked. “Were there more?”

At this point he had no way of knowing with any certainty. “There could have been.”

“Could have been?” she repeated incredulously. “Isn’t it your job to know?”

He’d had just about enough of her carping. It was hard enough maneuvering in this weather on these roads without having to deal with her as well.

“Look, this wasn’t exactly D-day at Normandy. I didn’t have days to plan out your rescue. Approximately thirty-six hours ago, I was sleeping in my own bed, blissfully unaware of you as anything other than an occasional headline to my right as I deposited my groceries onto the conveyor belt at my local supermarket.”

His repeated references to the tabloids seemed to make her bristle. “And now here we are, cozier than two peas in a pod.”

“Or at least wetter than the aforementioned peas.” He dragged his hand through his hair, sending a small spray of water flying in her direction.

She put up a hand. “Hey,” she protested.

He raised a shoulder in a careless shrug, then let it drop. “Sorry, didn’t think you’d notice a little more water.”

“Can’t you make this thing go faster?” she asked impatiently.

“Not without a pilot’s license. Besides, if I go any faster,” he said from between gritted teeth, “I could lose control of the car.”

She had one better for him. “If you don’t go any faster, you might lose control over us.”

“I wasn’t aware that anyone actually had control over you.” The retort came without thought. And from the look on her face when he glanced toward her, it had struck a nerve. “Sorry, didn’t mean to insult you.”

“Why stop now?”

“Look, I’m the guy who just risked his neck to rescue you.” He felt the vehicle begin to fishtail and he gripped the wheel, driving into the curve. A minute later, he straightened the wheel. “Shouldn’t you be nicer to me than this?”

He had a feeling she hated being wrong. Was she woman enough to admit it?

“You’re right. I should. Kidnappings make me nervous.”

“Yeah, me, too.” Since she’d mellowed for a moment, so could he. “This your first?” He was making conversation. There was very little about Prudence Hill that he didn’t know. It had all been succinctly captured for him between the pages of the dossier he’d been given. He’d managed to read all of it before they’d landed, having trained himself in speed reading just before joining the Lazlo Group.

She began to answer in the negative. He knew that there had been one previous incident, when she was a little girl and not yet the prime minister’s daughter. The plot had been quickly foiled.

He expected her to explain, but Pru turned her face toward the window on her side. “Yes.”

Since she didn’t bring it up, neither did he. “Well, it’s not mine. As far as kidnappings go, this is coming along quite nicely for our side.”

“‘Our’ side? Last time I looked, I was the one who’d been kidnapped, not you.”

“For the time being,” he informed her, ignoring her tone, “we’re a team. Only difference between us being that, should those be your former kidnappers behind us and they manage to catch up, you’ll be taken prisoner again. I’ll be killed,” he added with no emotion.

She actually looked at him with concern. “I hadn’t thought of that.”

He nodded, keeping his eyes on the darkened road. “Didn’t think so.”

A wall rose up between them like a tower of cotton swabs suddenly filled with water. “Are you saying that I’m insensitive?”

Oh no, he wasn’t about to get sucked into this verbal waltz. “I’m saying that most kidnap victims don’t think beyond their own immediate situation.”

“I am not a victim.”

He hadn’t said it to take a dig at her. It was just the way things were. “Didn’t look to me as if you had the upper hand back there.”

Pru drew back her shoulders. “For your information, I had just cut through my ropes.”

He laughed shortly, then found himself narrowly avoiding battling a tree for the same physical space. Turning at the last minute, he let out a sigh of relief. That had been close. “With what, your X-ray vision?”

“With a piece of glass that I got by making one of those oafs drop a tray when he came into the room to feed me,” she informed him tersely.

He looked at her for a split second before returning his attention to the road. The headlights, he noted, were still behind them. No closer, no farther.

“Go on,” he encouraged. “I’m curious how it got from the floor to your hand.”

“I tilted the chair until it fell and then picked the shard up.”

He nodded, taking it all in. “And what was the guy with the tray doing all this time?”

“He’d already left.” She sounded close to being on the verge of eruption. “What kind of an idiot do you take me for?”

He had an answer for that. “One who refuses a bodyguard when her father has the key deciding vote on a hotly contested bill that’s currently on the floor in Parliament.”

She blew out a breath. “So you’ve been briefed.”

His mouth curved. “In a manner of speaking.”

“Just who the hell are you? And don’t give me that tripe about being my savior. Saviors wear more clothes,” she informed him tersely before he could say anything.

His smile deepened. “My name’s Joshua Lazlo.”

“Lazlo,” she repeated. “That’s—”

“Hungarian,” he supplied.

“You’re Hungarian?” She looked at him, marginal confusion echoing in her gaze.

“I’m a British citizen, born and bred,” he told her. “Of British parents,” he added lest there was any question of his allegiance.

“Why don’t I find that comforting?”

“You’re going to have to figure that out for yourself.”

She sighed again and lowered her eyes. Suddenly they widened. “You’re bleeding.”

He glanced down to where she was looking. And shrugged. That would explain the sharp pain in his thigh and why it continued to feel as if it were on fire, he thought.

“Looks that way.”

“Were you shot?” she asked incredulously.

He kept his voice devoid of emotion, as if they were talking about scones. “That would be my guess.”

She lost her patience. “My God, what are you, the British Clint Eastwood? Do you have a handkerchief?” she demanded. “What am I saying, you don’t even have a shirt.”

She looked around the interior of the vehicle, opening the glove compartment and rummaging through it. Then, muttering under her breath, she raised the hem of her T-shirt and bit into it where the seams came together, tugging on either side as she did so.

He watched her out of the corner of his eye, amused. “There’s a simpler way, you know.” She stopped and looked at him. “Just raise it over your head and toss it off. You don’t have to rip it off with your teeth.”

Pru glared at him, saying nothing. The next second, the material began to tear. To his astonishment, she forced it along horizontally, swiftly reducing her T-shirt to a belly shirt.

“There,” she declared in triumph. She held the strip between her hands. “All right, raise your leg,” she ordered.

He kept his attention on the road, realizing she meant to use her shirt as a bandage. “Your bedside manner leaves something to be desired.”

“Obviously everything is a big joke to you. Well, you aren’t about to bleed to death on my account. Do as you’re told.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he replied meekly, raising his thigh as far as he could off the seat while still keeping his foot on the pedal.

Pru snorted at the polite term. “That’ll get you a kick where you really don’t want one,” she warned him as she secured the bandage around his thigh.

She pulled too tight and he jerked before he could stop himself. The car went out of control, its wheels all but flying off the road.

The front of the vehicle took a nosedive down the embankment and kept on going despite Joshua’s best efforts to stop it.

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