“Made Eagle. Yes, ma’am. Racked up the highest number of points in my troop. So—getting back to you, how did you end up being a librarian in Parker’s Ridge?”

Make a long story short, Charity thought. “Well, I love books and tend to have a reasonably organized mind, so library science seemed like a good choice for undergraduate studies.”

Before taking off for Paris, her lifelong dream. And she’d almost managed it, too, with a grant to study French literature in Paris and a one-way economy-class ticket. She’d put her few belongings in storage and had one foot out the door when Uncle Franklin had called to say that Aunt Vera suddenly couldn’t remember the names of the days of the week.

There had been no question of what she had to do. The next day she was back in Parker’s Ridge, plane ticket refunded, applying for old Mrs. Lambert’s job.

“And why are you here?” He was listening so intently, you’d think she was telling some thrilling tale. “Why settle in Parker’s Ridge? It’s pretty, but it’s small.”

Charity repressed a sigh. Yes, it was small. And remote. Definitely not Paris.

She was here because this is where her duty lay. But that was too depressing to say, certainly in those terms. Charity had learned that the word duty should be used very sparingly in the modern-day world. She sidestepped. “My family’s been in Parker’s Ridge for over two hundred years.” No matter that she’d longed to escape the ties, the ties had brought her back.

He filled their glasses and lifted his. “Well, if it can keep the Prewitt family happy for two hundred years, Parker’s Ridge must have a lot of hidden virtues. I propose a toast, then, to Parker’s Ridge.”

She lifted her own glass and he touched his to hers. The clear ring of pure crystal sounded and he smiled at her over the glasses filled with bright, ruby red wine.

His smile went through her like lightning, an electric current that jolted her, inside and out. Suddenly, everything took on a heightened tone. The fire in the room burned brighter, the luscious smells from the surrounding tables were more potent, the silverware gleamed more brilliantly. She was aware of everything around her and especially of the big man sitting across the table from her, watching her closely.

There was no mistaking the masculine interest. She’d seen it enough in men, though not very often lately, to tell the truth. It seemed that lately she’d been living in a totally sex-free zone. But right now, in Emilio’s restaurant, sex was in the air and…she was up for it.

Charity’s heart skipped a beat at the thought. Wow. She was up for sex with this man. Right now. She’d never done anything like this in her life. Never even wanted to.

It took her a while before she felt ready to go to bed with a man. Weeks, sometimes.

But with a clarity that astounded her, she knew that she was going to sleep with this man. Soon. Maybe even tonight. Oh yeah. Instead of going to bed with a hot water bottle and the latest Michael Connelly, she might be going to bed with this sexy, totally hot man she’d met just this morning.

Her thigh muscles clenched at the thought. It was scary and exhilarating at the same time.

Her head instantly went into caution mode, listing all the reasons she shouldn’t do this. She didn’t know him. He could have a disease—though, frankly, the way he looked, not even her anxious subconscious took that one seriously. He radiated health and strength. Or…he could be a serial killer. They could find her dead body in a lake of blood and no clues. They’d interview Emilio and he’d say he looked fine to me. We had no idea he was a monster.

Or—or he could be into something really kinky, something she’d hate, like handcuffs or spanking. Ew.

Luckily, her body wasn’t paying her anxious, neurotic mind any attention at all. It didn’t really have to because any possible danger was all in her head. Her body wasn’t picking up on any vibes of serial killerness or kinkiness. All it perceived was a gorgeous, healthy male with a healthy interest in her, which she was feeling right back.

Oh yeah.

She held her glass up and saw that her hand was trembling. The liquid rippled against the sides of the glinting crystal glass. He was watching. He saw. Those deep blue eyes were perceptive. He was looking at her as if he could walk around inside her mind. So he could see her hand trembling and would notice the flush she could feel rising from her breasts. She had to work to bring her breathing pattern back down to normal.

This was a little scary. Charity was a reader, and like most readers, she lived mainly inside her own head. She was most comfortable on the sidelines of life, observing. Consequently, she was used to studying people without being studied back. It was disconcerting to think that he was reading her desire. That he could read her.

Put it back on a light, impersonal footing.

“Well then, I propose a toast of my own.” Again, their glasses clinked, with a clear ring of crystal. “To…to Nick Ames.”

And may he stay awhile in Parker’s Ridge.

Three

Surveillance van

A mile from Vassily Worontzoff’s mansion

November 18

John Di Stefano held up a bottle of Coke and wished with all his heart that it was a beer. But this was a job, and alcohol and work didn’t mix, to his regret. A beer sounded great right now, to wash the taste of frustration out of his mouth.

To an impossible job. He held the Coke bottle up long enough to make the silent toast, then chugged its contents down.

He’d been holed up with Nick Ireland, aka Iceman, and Alexei Nestrenko in a surveillance van for the past week now and the inside of the van looked it and smelled it. Stale pizza lay in boxes piled on top of takeout cartons and ramen noodle containers, and the stench of unwashed male permeated the closed space. It was goddamned cold, too, since turning on the engine for heat too often would leave a telltale plume of exhaust.

The surveillance van was painted a mottled green that blended well with the pine trees surrounding them. They were a mile from Vassily Worontzoff’s mansion, high up in the hills, with a direct line of sight that allowed the laser-microwave beam to pick up vibrations off the French windows of Worontzoff’s study and digitally transform them into sound.

There were taps on the phones, but Worontzoff used the landline sparingly. Iceman had wanted ten dishes in an array around the mansion. He’d pounded desks, which usually worked—a Delta operator was like a lion in the geeky Tech section of the Unit—but this time the brass stood firm. One listening device. One. Larry down in Tech said it was the best way to keep surveillance from a distance.

Anything Worontzoff said in his study could be heard. They heard all conversations Worontzoff had in his study and landline conversations. Nothing specific had been said yet, but according to Alexei, something was brewing.

There had been chatter, a lot of chatter in the past months. The NSA had intercepted a message between two tangos in Islamabad about “the Russian in Vermont.” A mole in a Mafiya network in Bulgaria operated by Worontzoff’s organization had said that something big was in the pipeline. But it was all bits and pieces with no smoking gun.

Alexei was their smartest analyst and could speak Russian, Georgian, Bulgarian, Polish, and Ukrainian. He’d been sitting with heavy earphones on for over a week, listening to Worontzoff and his staff basically pick the lint out of their bellybuttons. And listening to music.

There were probably three thousand people of Russian extraction in Vermont, but only one Russian. The big man himself. Vassily Worontzoff wasn’t the grand old man of literature everyone thought he was, but rather the head of the Russian Mafiya in America, come to straighten out the assorted and disorganized scumbags in Brighton Beach, making mere millions off gas tax fraud and girls when there were billions to be made off counterfeit medicines and organ transplants and arms, the bigger the better.