The Russian's Tenacious Lover Read Free

would land her in a heap of trouble, and would cause even more trouble for the self-proclaimed Prime Thief of Britain.
    But she wasn’t to know that. And neither was he.

CHAPTER 3

    Thomas checked his Rolex on a sigh. He was starving. And in a terrible mood. Not only had this unknown assailant destroyed his evening and one of his biggest paydays in months, she’d also poured so much pepper spray into his eyes he was certain his cornea had sustained permanent damage. Just to be on the safe side, he’d already made an appointment with an eye doctor. Better to be safe than sorry. In his line of work, he needed his peepers in fine fettle.
    Now, with only half an hour before his flight to Moscow was called, he wanted to get a bite to eat, and even that was apparently too much to ask. For the umpteenth time, he signaled the waiter, the man seemingly having decided to ignore him. The Goose & Gander, the Heathrow Airport bistro he habitually favored with his patronage usually treated him well, but not today.
    He sighed, feeling self-pity rise in waves as he contemplated a fate that had landed him squarely in the soup.
    Not only had the woman relieved him of a cool seven million, she’d also exposed a chink in his armor. The more he thought about what had happened, the more convinced he became that she must have discovered his secret through some sort of surveillance operation. And if she was on to him, who knew how many more were hip to his modus operandi. The prospect of a Scotland Yard sting operation had him shuffle nervously in his seat.
    Any moment now, the boys and girls in blue could turn up and arrest him. It was imperative, therefore, that he offloaded the second score of this past week and lay low for a little while, until the hubbub surrounding his latest gambit had died down.
    Pity, he now felt, that he’d left that note in the safe.
    Vanity, he decided, had induced him to leave his calling card and reveal himself as The Shadow, the gentleman burglar who’d raided half a dozen safes in the English capital this year alone. It was time he removed himself from the scene. The idea of spending time in jail held little appeal to him.
    He searched around for a sign of trouble, and when his eyes met not a single copper, he relaxed, but only marginally so. Holding up his hand once again, he twiddled his fingers at a passing waiter, only to be blithely ignored, other patrons receiving the man’s coveted attention. What was going on? Had he suddenly become invisible?
    Once more, he checked his watch. Twenty minutes left. If the food on the plane wasn’t so appalling, he wouldn’t have minded so much. Usually, he flew first class, but after the run-in with the blonde last night, he’d changed his evening flight to an earlier one.
    He sat back and resorted to staring before him with unseeing eyes.
    “Is this seat taken?” a woman’s voice asked softly.
    When he looked up, a gruff reply on the tip of his tongue, he was surprised to see a young woman hovering over him. His eyebrows jumped, and instinctively he held out a hand and drew back a chair.
    “Please. By all means,” he intoned.
    “Thank you,” she accepted with a pleasant lilt.
    For the life of him, he couldn’t remember where he’d seen her before, but she looked so familiar he knew he must have made her acquaintance at some point in the not too distant past. She was very young, a teenager only, and exceedingly pretty, with an oval face, crowned with a shock of blond curls, dangling to slender shoulders. What fascinated him most were her large gray eyes, gazing at him with an expression of anticipation.
    He didn’t know what he’d said or done, but this girl seemed to have a definite interest in engaging him in conversation, as her next words attested. “Service in this place is awful, don’t you think?”
    “Usually it isn’t,” he said, “but today they must be understaffed, for I haven’t been able to interest them in my custom as of yet.”
    She