Rogue Alpha (Alpha 7) by Carole Mortimer Read Free Book Online Page A

the Champs-Élysées. The same man, dark and swarthy, was in the background of this drawing as was in the later one of a water taxi. “Is this him?”
    Diana looked up with a frown before walking over to look at the sketch he indicated. “Yes,” she sighed, “that’s the man I’ve thought was following me.”
    The same man Seth had seen sitting in an armchair in the busy lobby of the hotel when they entered a few minutes ago.
    It was second nature to Seth to always check out his surroundings, to note the people, as well as possible exits. There had been nothing about the man downstairs that stood out as being unusual as he sat reading a newspaper, but Seth had committed his face to memory anyway, as he had everyone else in the busy lobby of this London hotel.
    The likeness to that man in Diana’s sketch pad was very good.
    The several likenesses, Seth discovered as he looked at the rest of the drawings and saw the same man in half a dozen of the Parisian sketches. As proof the man had followed Diana to London, as she’d claimed he had.
    “Why the hell didn’t you bring this with you last night and show it to me then?” Seth demanded.
    She shrugged. “Those sketches could just be a coincidence. Prove nothing.”
    Not now they couldn’t. But last night, when he had thought she was paranoid? Maybe. Definitely not now he had seen the man downstairs in the lobby. Although he doubted the man would still be there now that he knew Diana hadn’t come back to the hotel alone.
    What might have happened to her if she had?
    Would the man have followed her up to the room, impatient over not finding whatever it was he was looking for, and possibly beaten the answer out of her? Whatever that answer might be.
    He studied Diana through narrowed lids as she moved about the room collecting her belongings. What the hell did she know—have—that someone was willing to go to these lengths to retrieve it? Diana claimed she didn’t know or have anything someone might want.
    Which brought Seth straight back to Jeremy Moore.
    What could the bastard possibly have been into during those few months he’d worked in Colombia? The obvious answer was drugs. Buying or selling? Or maybe carrying ? Moore’s position as a British diplomat, his visits back to England in the course of his job, would no doubt have helped in that enterprise.
    Except there was no way the other man could have carried enough drugs to warrant someone looking through Diana’s meager luggage for it.
    Although this mess was certainly a distraction from what had happened between the two of them earlier. Which, as far as Seth was concerned, was another mess. One of his own creation.
    The more time he spent in Diana’s company, the more attracted he became, but he shouldn’t have allowed it to get as out of hand as he had this morning.
    Because the memory of it, and the conversation afterward, was there between them now, below the surface of every word they spoke, every glance they gave each other.
    An acute awareness.
    A desire.
    An acute desire.
    “I would have thought to show you the sketches eventually,” Diana continued distractedly. “Yesterday I was more interested in convincing you to help me, than showing you sketches of a man who may or may not be following me.”
    Oh, Seth had no doubt now that Diana was being followed.
    It was his job to find out why.

    “That was…comfortable.” It was one word Diana could think of to describe the private jet she and Seth had used to fly to a private airfield near Paris. Decadent, luxurious, and indulgent were three others.
    When Seth told her he had made arrangements for the two of them to fly to Paris that afternoon, she assumed he had booked himself a seat on the same flight as her own. It hadn’t even occurred to her it would be on the private jet owned by Grayson Security.
    When she had questioned who was paying for it, Seth had dryly told her she could consider the flight to Paris as being “on the house.” A