Darkness before the Dawn by Anne Stuart Read Free Book Online

for adventure. She needed the security to balance her disrupted childhood, and most of the time that part of her was ascendant. But hermother’s gypsy blood made her break out every now and then, longing for something more exciting, and that impractical longing had made her drop out just before her law boards and give in to Mike Jackson’s importunities and work for the Company.
    Who would have thought they would both end up in a peaceful, nonprofit organization like Third World Causes, Ltd.? she thought with a lazy grimace. She’d gotten out of the CIA sooner than Mike. It had taken less than a year to become thoroughly disenchanted with the way the Company worked. She could thank Randall Carter for that, she supposed. He did have his uses.
    She had still been in training six long years ago when she had met him, was still doing the myriad paper work and secretarial work that somehow was supposed to be suited to female trainees but not male ones. She’d been sent up to Jackson’s office, her arms full of secret files involving Yugoslavian terrorists, and even though she knew that the deep, rich voice that was telling her to enter wasn’t Jackson’s, she had still been unprepared for her first sight of Randall Elverston Carter. She’d almost dropped the files on the carpet.
    It had an eerie similarity to today, she thought, burrowing down into her chair. He’d been alone in the office, staring out the window, and he’d turned when she’d entered. His dark eyes had narrowed as they swept over her suddenly gawky figure. He’d had the uncanny ability to make her feel too tall, too gangly, too clumsy. And yet later he hadn’t made her feel that way at all.
    “There you are, Maggie.” Mike had come up behind her. “This is Randall Carter. He’s a friend of the Agency’s; he helps out every now and then in an unofficial capacity. Randall, this is Maggie Bennett.”
    Randall had nodded, his elegant head inclining regally. All the while those dangerous eyes had watched her.
    Jackson had continued on. “We’re sending you out on your first mission, Maggie. It’s simple enough—you’re to provide cover for an operative traveling through Eastern Europe.You’ll pose as his wife. The whole thing shouldn’t take more than a week—ten days at the most. Just a chance to get your feet wet.”
    Maggie had turned to look at Randall, aquamarine eyes into stormy gray, and there was an unspoken question on her face.
    He shook his head. “Not me, I’m afraid,” he’d said in that rich, deep voice that was unexpectedly delicious. “Mike’s agent is a man named Jim Mullen. He’s going to be acting as a sales rep for one of my companies. It should prove a good enough cover.”
    “One of your companies?” Maggie couldn’t help but echo.
    “Randall’s our quintessential capitalist pig, Maggie,” Mike had announced genially, dropping into his desk chair. “Born with a pedigree and a silver spoon in his mouth, and no matter what he does, he just keeps making money, don’t you?”
    Randall inclined his head once more. “It gets boring.”
    “I imagine it does,” Maggie said faintly. His eyes still hadn’t left her. Even after she turned and tried to concentrate on Jackson, she could feel them, feel their pull—a pull she recognized, even with her limited experience, as purely sexual.
    “So poor Randall gets his kicks helping out,” Jackson had said, and his gaze flew back and forth between the two of them, not missing a thing, neither Maggie’s averted face and stiff back nor the intense, unreadable expression on Randall Carter’s aristocratic face. Jackson knew how to read faces, and he didn’t like what he saw. He didn’t like complications. “But you two won’t be working together,” he added abruptly. Randall finally looked away from Maggie and turned a quizzical expression toward the older man at the sudden change in plans. “Maggie, I can brief you just as efficiently as Randall can, and we