Once in Paris by Diana Palmer Read Free Book Online

half-jokingly.
    â€œI’ll take care of it myself,” he said, and he didn’t smile. His eyes narrowed on her youngface. “You can hang out over here until he leaves. I understand that he’s facing the threat of a military coup by a poor neighboring country with no oil. They want his.”
    â€œSo does my stepfather,” she informed him. “He’s all but bankrupted himself putting money into developing the oil fields over there, and he’s attracted other investors to help him. If the military coup succeeds, he’ll be standing on the street corner selling pencils out of a cup.”
    â€œOr diving for conch,” he added mockingly.
    â€œThat isn’t likely. He can’t swim.”
    â€œHe’s made a bad bargain there,” Pierce murmured thoughtfully. “A real deal with the devil.” His dark eyes narrowed as they slid over her. “What are you supposed to be, collateral?”
    She flushed. “Over my dead body.”
    He didn’t reply to that. He was thinking, and his thoughts weren’t pleasant. “How did you end up with Brauer for a stepfather?” he asked after a minute.
    â€œMy mother is beautiful,” she said simply. “I’m just a poor carbon copy of her. She was selling jewelry in an exclusive shop and he was buying a present for a friend. She said it waslove at first sight.” She shrugged. “I don’t know. Anyway, my father had just died a few months earlier and she was lonely. But not lonely enough to become a rich man’s mistress,” she added with a faint smile. “It was marriage or nothing, so he married her.” She toyed with her glass. “They have a new son and he’s the whole world for Mother.”
    â€œIs Brauer good to her?”
    â€œNo,” she said flatly. “She’s afraid of him. I don’t know that he’s actually hit her, but she’s very nervous around him. Now that she has the baby to think about, she never argues with him like she used to when they were first married.”
    â€œDoes she talk to you about him?”
    She shook her head. “Kurt makes sure that I never have much time alone with her.” She met his eyes. “I didn’t like him from the beginning, but she thought I was resentful because it was so soon after Dad’s death.”
    â€œBrauer is nobody’s idea of a white knight,” he murmured curtly.
    She studied him. “You know something about him, don’t you.”
    â€œI know that he’s devious and underhanded and that he’ll do absolutely anything to make money, and he does,” he said flatly. “We’vebeen rivals for some time now. I cost him a lot of money a few years ago, and he’s never forgotten. If he has an enemies list, I’m at the very top of it.”
    â€œCan I ask how you cost him money?” she wondered aloud.
    He was reluctant to tell her, but in the end, he decided that she needed to know the truth about her stepfather. “He was trying to make a deal with a terrorist group to attack an oil platform and cause an environmental disaster.”
    â€œWhy?” she asked, aghast.
    â€œI’ve never been quite sure,” he told her. “Kurt plays a close hand, and his business dealings are kept under the table. All I know is that an enemy of Kurt’s was making some threats. Kurt reasoned that by making the man look criminally careless about damaging the global ecology, he could give him enough bad publicity to bring him down. And it might have succeeded.”
    â€œYou stopped it?”
    â€œTate Winthrop did,” he said with a faint smile. “My security chief has contacts everywhere, and we soured the deal. Brauer never knew how it was done, but I know he suspects that I was behind it.”
    â€œAre you in competition with him?”
    He chuckled as he finished his drink. “Not really. I’m in the oil business, of