Trusting a Stranger. Kerry Connor

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      LUKE HAD YEARS OF EXPERIENCE at schooling his expression to reveal absolutely nothing, but the woman’s ridiculous statement nearly managed to crack his composure. It was sheer strength of will that kept him from flinching at her words.

      Marriage. Even the idea sent a jolt of pain through him, the heat of it searing his insides until it felt like he was being burned alive.

      Instantly, Melanie’s face rose in his mind, the same image that always did. The way she’d looked at her happiest, her head thrown back in laughter, her smile wide, her eyes fixed unerringly, so lovingly, on him and him alone.

      The way she’d looked just before she died.

      Another sharp pain, harder than the first, shafted through him. He swallowed slowly and blinked the image away, entirely too aware of the two people sitting across from him, watching him intently.

      There was only one woman he’d ever wanted to marry, and in the years since her death he’d never once considered taking that step with another. Hell, he’d never been tempted to do so much as let a woman leave a toothbrush in his home. If he had been tempted to take another walk down the aisle, it certainly wouldn’t have been with some woman he’d met less than five minutes earlier.

      She was pretty in a pale, delicate way. Chin-length black hair. Finely carved features, perhaps sharper than they should have been thanks to what he suspected was an unnatural thinness. Looking closely, he finally noticed the weariness in her eyes. She was young, most likely in her late twenties. Her voice carried a trace of an accent he would have pegged as Eastern European even had he not known where she was from, though her English was impeccable.

      “You’re proposing a marriage for green-card purposes?” he said coolly.

      “It is the best way to keep Karina in the country,” Viktor said.

      “Surely there are less drastic measures available.”

      “If there were, we would pursue them. As you said, we have no real evidence that Solokov is responsible for the deaths of Dmitri and my father. And even if we were to pursue other avenues, if we failed and then resorted to marriage it would look suspicious. Better to do it now.”

      “So you’re going straight to the nuclear option?”

      “As I said, it is the best way.”

      “I took an oath to uphold the law. What you’re suggesting is illegal.”

      “So is murder,” Viktor shot back. “And the crime is much greater. That is what will happen if Solokov captures her. Once he realizes she knows nothing, he will not hesitate to dispose of her. But that realization will only come after he’s done everything he can to learn what he believes she knows.”

      Even without the raw emotion in the man’s voice, there was no missing the implication.

      A slight motion at the edge of his vision drew Luke’s eye to the woman. She must have shuddered at Viktor’s words. Even now she clasped her hands in her lap, her grip so tight her knuckles were white, her head bowed slightly. He could still see her eyes, staring straight in front of her, looking slightly glassy.

      He would have liked to believe she’d feigned the reaction. He knew how to read people’s expressions well enough to know she had not. The woman was afraid.

      Fortunately he’d long since hardened himself against such displays of emotion, whether hers or Viktor’s. He turned his attention back to his supposed friend.

      Viktor СКАЧАТЬ