Rogue Alpha (Alpha 7) Read Free Page B

Security offices with him, leaving Seth no choice but to drive them both back to his house.
    Not that he made a habit of taking clients home with him. In fact, this was a first. But he hadn’t felt he could abandon Diana, and he hadn’t known what else to do with her when she was obviously under such emotional stress.
    Real or imagined? That was the question.
    A question Seth wanted an answer to before he decided what move he was going to make next.
    “Better.” He nodded his approval as she finally took a tentative sip of the whisky, followed by a grimace of distaste. It was his best twenty-year-old single malt too. “Now, let’s start from the beginning.” He made himself comfortable in the chair opposite hers as they sat either side of the fireplace he had put a match to when they entered his study. “What happened to you after I left Colombia?”
    Diana looked down at her hands tightly gripping the whisky glass rather than at Seth Armstrong. Because he made her feel…uncomfortable. Not in a bad way, but a total awareness of everything about him, and it seemed to be intensifying the longer she spent in his company.
    A feeling not helped by the fact that, once they reached his house, he’d taken off his jacket and tie, unfastened the top button of his shirt, and turned back the sleeves to beneath his elbows, revealing strong and muscular forearms.
    Maybe in an effort to put her at her ease?
    If so, it had the opposite effect.
    He looked like a dark-eyed and lazy feline as he relaxed back in his chair. Not the fat-tabby type of feline, but one that was sleek and powerful, ready to pounce at a second’s notice.
    Which he probably was.
    She shrugged out of her own jacket in the increasing warmth of the room. “I spent a couple of days in hospital, then a week or so more at the embassy, recuperating. After that I—I flew back to England with—with Jeremy’s body. We had the funeral in Wales where my parents live, because Jeremy doesn’t—didn’t, have any family of his own. I stayed on with my parents for several months, then two months ago, I applied for and then was offered a job at a museum in Paris. I’ve been there for the past month.”
    “Explain to me again why you thought your apartment in Paris had been broken into?”
    She looked pained. “I… Things had been moved. A hairbrush on my dressing table not quite in the place I left it. The papers on my desk not in the same order. One of the books on my bedside table was lying on the floor. I have a tree. For Christmas. The presents under it weren’t in the order I put them in, and a couple of them looked as if they had been opened.” She made a dismissive movement of her shoulders. “Silly little things that on their own could have meant nothing, but when put together… I assure you, I’m not imagining any of this, Mr. Armstrong.” Diana looked across at him, silently willing him to believe her.
    “Seth,” he answered distractedly.
    Having once looked across at him, Diana now found it impossible to look away again. “How did you get that scar?” Her cheeks flushed hotly as she realized she had blurted out the question that had been intriguing her since the moment she saw this man again.
    It was such a lethal-looking scar. A clean cut, probably caused by the slice of a knife or some other sharp instrument.
    “Sorry.” She grimaced as the silence stretched uncomfortably between them. “That was unforgivably rude of me. I only— Never mind.” He obviously wasn’t about to answer such a personal question.
    And why should he?
    He didn’t know her, probably didn’t want to know her either, after she came on to him in the bar and had since regaled him with what he obviously considered to be the imaginings of a hysterical woman.
    But she wasn’t about to admit defeat that easily. After all, he was still listening to her, and he had brought her back to his home with him too.
    A house totally devoid of any Christmas decorations, she had