Atlantis Betrayed

Chapter 8

Fiona held up her hands to stop both Declan’s flow of words and Hopkins’s silent but potent urgings to get on with it and dish, already. Not that Hopkins would ever say or even think “dish.” Exhaustion swamped her, the aftershock of adrenaline and, to be honest if only with herself, sexual attraction, pumping through her body. The dull thud of an impending headache pounded at the edges of her skull and she wanted nothing more than to curl up in bed with a cup of that chocolate she’d run out on earlier.

Instead, she was going to face an interrogation. She scanned the room as if looking for answers in its familiar warm blue and cream furnishings, and then nearly fell into an overstuffed chair as a hideous thought occurred.

“Declan? Did you, um, see anything during those fifteen minutes?” Like your big sis kissing a total stranger, perhaps?

He rolled his lovely chocolate-brown eyes, identical to their father’s. So unfair that he’d won the long, lush eyelash lottery of the two of them. She tried never to go without mascara to compensate for her mother’s English rose genes: blue eyes, pale blond hair and lashes. And how tired was she, to be thinking of eyelashes at a time like this?

“Fee, I’ve told you a thousand times, when I’m looping the cameras on a high-tech system like that, I can’t see you, either. I see what I’ve got them seeing, unless we start fitting you out with a buttonhole camera. I only caught a glimpse of the room where they stopped the loop.” He flashed a guilty glance at Hopkins. “You’d stepped out, and I didn’t want to worry you. But, Fee, you have to understand, it’s the—”

“Stop. Okay. I get it. Please, for the love of Saint George, no more technical discussions of wavelengths or pixels or whatever. My brain can’t take it.” Her gaze automatically went to the priceless oil-on-wood painting of Saint George slaying the dragon, in its place of honor across from her desk. Every time she glanced up from her work, the visual reminder that she, too, could slay dragons, reinforced her mission. Or vampires, as the case may be. The curators in the Louvre might even still believe they had the original, although last she’d checked, the website had listed Raphael’s Saint George and the Dragon as “not on display.”

Not exactly true. It was on display, of course, just not in the museum. It’s not like a self-respecting ninja master thief could hang a reproduction in her home. The painting represented her entire life’s work, after all.

She leaned her head back on the chair and closed her eyes, sighing. So good to be home. So awful to have to share her news.

The scent of rich chocolate wafted under her nose and her eyes snapped open. Hopkins stood next to the chair, still stern and frowning, but holding a cup of freshly poured aromatic heaven out to her.

“Drink it, and then tell us everything, if you please,” he said.

So she did, leaving out the flirting part and the kissing part. But what she did disclose was bad enough, judging by the expression on her butler’s face and the apparent inability of her baby brother to make actual words, since sputtering noises kept coming from his general direction.

“You let a common criminal get close enough to you that he could have harmed you? He could have ripped off your mask? He could have murdered you and left you lying in a pool of your own blood in the middle of the Jewel House?” Hopkins bit off each word as precisely as a cutter following the shape of an octahedral raw diamond crystal.

Bloody damn precisely, in other words.

Fiona sighed, but before she could respond, the air in the room changed and flames chased ice through her in a blaze of sensation that brought her up and out of her chair so fast she knocked the cup of chocolate to the floor. She whipped around to face the door, and it was him.

Her mystery man.

In her office, leaning against the door frame, arms crossed on that amazing chest and a cocky grin on that gorgeous face.

“Hey, I take exception to that remark,” he said. “I’m not at all common.”

Christophe couldn’t believe it. She was freaking gorgeous. Even in faded jeans and an ordinary top, her hair simple and mostly pulled back from her face, she was as beautiful as the priceless art that adorned every wall in the room.

More beautiful. Paintings couldn’t blush, after all, and the faint staining of pink on those porcelain cheeks made him think of strawberry jam, Atlantean blushberry tarts, and other luscious, delectable treats.

“Common or not, you are a trespasser, sir,” said the well-dressed elderly man with the very large gun. He was dressed like a butler or an undertaker, and yet he held that gun with the relaxed ease of a man who knew exactly what he was doing. Majordomo via MI6, perhaps? Where James Bond types went when they retired?

“Oh, no, I was invited,” Christophe replied. “Ask the ninja.”

She moved suddenly, shaking her silky white-blond hair out of her face in what he was sure was a deliberate distraction, since she now stood exactly in his line of sight to the younger man in the room. Shielding him from the intruder.

Good instincts. He spared a moment to wonder why it made him want to growl. She was protecting another man from him, and he didn’t like it, for some reason that didn’t come from his brain but from a more primal part of himself.

Christophe didn’t like that either, nor the possible implications of his not liking it.

“I am sure I have no idea what you’re talking about, sir, but let’s just call the authorities and sort this all out, shall we?” Her Scottish accent was still there but blurred, as if she were attempting to hide it from him. She crossed to the desk and picked up her phone.

He smiled again, showing his teeth. “Yes, why don’t we? That should be a fun conversation. Especially the part where I tell them you’re the Scarlet Ninja.”

The boy—he could see now that it was a boy, not a man, which calmed him down for some reason—behind her gasped.

“Fee! He knows? Is this him? The man from the Jewel House?”

She sighed and her shoulders slumped, which did very interesting things to the generous curve of her breasts, and Christophe’s body hardened in sudden, aggressive readiness. Ninjas apparently aroused him, something he’d not known before. He laughed out loud.

The sound of the gun’s hammer cocking back tempered his amusement. The dangerous-looking man still held the gun trained on him.

“Did something strike you as funny, sir? Your impending demise, perhaps?” The dry tone only underscored the promise of death in the man’s eyes. This one was a warrior, too, underneath that fancy suit.

“Are you going to shoot me? It would be the second time tonight, which isn’t my record, but it would serve to piss me off,” Christophe said, letting all emotion drain out of his face until he knew that what they saw was nothing more than a cold, deadly killer. “I’d prefer a more friendly solution.”

He turned to the ninja, who still held the phone in one hand, forgotten. “We’re after the same thing. Why not partner up?”

She dropped the phone and then fumbled it onto the cradle, those huge eyes of hers widening even further. “Are you mad?”

“Nope.” He paused to give the question more serious consideration, given that he’d just followed a ninja home. “Not usually,” he amended.

She narrowed those gorgeous blue eyes at him. “I work alone.”

“Right. I can see that. You, James Bond over there, and the kid. What’s one more partner?”

“I don’t even know who you are,” she said.

“If you’re quite done, may I kill him now?” the old guy asked, still polite, but steel underlay those proper British manners.

The ninja made a sound of frustration that made Christophe wonder what other sounds she might make. Like, for example, when he licked her neck. Or explored those lovely breasts with his hands and mouth. His cock twitched in his pants, and he forcibly yanked his mind away from visions of a very naked ninja.

“Look, I can’t keep calling you the ninja,” Christophe pointed out. “My name is Christophe. And you are?”

“Christophe? Just one name? Like Madonna?” the kid said, grinning. He didn’t seem to have an ounce of self-preservation in his body. Christophe found himself grinning right back at him.

“No, I can’t sing a note. And you are?”

The kid took a step forward, hand extended as if to shake, years of breeding and manners clearly coming to the fore. “Declan Campbell, nice to meet—Oh.” Declan stopped dead and shot a red-faced glance at the ninja. “Crap. Sorry, Fee. Oh. Sorry again!”

The ninja—Fee?—sighed and shook her head. “Don’t worry about it, Declan. If he’s in our house, it would be easy enough for him to figure out who we are.”

She tilted her head and considered Christophe for a moment, then shrugged. “Fiona Campbell. My brother Declan. And the overprotective one is Hopkins.”

Christophe grinned at Hopkins. “Just the one name? Like Madonna?”

Hopkins never moved a single muscle, just stood there in a shooter’s stance with that damn gun still trained on the space between Christophe’s eyes. “This is a mistake, Lady Fiona,” he bit off. “You have put years and years’ worth of work in jeopardy in a single evening. Congratulations.”

“Lady Fiona?” Christophe watched, fascinated, as a rosy flush swept up her neck and face. “You’re aristocracy and a cat burglar?”

“I assure you, I never, ever steal cats,” she said, a glimmer of humor underneath the frost in her voice.

“No, just dragons.” He flicked a glance at Raphael’s depiction of Saint George, then back at her. “That’s the original, isn’t it?”

“I don’t know what you—”

“You’re not just good,” he said, ignoring Hopkins and his gun and crossing over to the painting to study it more closely. “You’re scary good.”

He glanced over his shoulder at her, almost able to taste the delicious possibilities. “Oh, yes. We’re definitely partners.”

“No,” she said flatly. “Not a chance.”

“Are you going to kill me, then? Or have James Bond over there do it? Because I know who you are, and you know I know who you are. So as I see it, we have several different options. One, I’m your partner. Two, you shoot me to keep me from telling the police and the tabloids that you’re the Scarlet Ninja.”

“And?” Her voice could have flash-frozen half of Atlantis.

“And what?”

“You said several options. You named two. What are the others?”

“Oh. I guess I was wrong. Just those two.” He couldn’t seem to stop grinning for some reason. The situation cheered him up. Hugely.

“I’ll be happy to shoot him, Lady Fiona. In fact, I’m quite anxious to do so,” Hopkins said.

“She already shot me,” Christophe offered helpfully.

The ninja glared at him. “That was a tranq gun. And nobody is shooting anyone. That’s . . . that’s my grandfather’s solution, Hopkins. You know I won’t go down that road. Not now, not ever.” The ice in her voice was gone, replaced with a white-hot rage that Christophe instinctively knew would sear anything it touched.

So why did he wonder what it would feel like to burn in those flames?

“I guess we have a partner, then,” Declan said, grinning.

“I’d much rather shoot him, but if you insist.” Hopkins put the gun down but kept it within reach. “So, then, partner. Who are you and what exactly do you want?”