Daddy In Charge Read online

  And I definitely didn’t want to. Every new bump and every turn of a corner brought our bodies brushing together.

  I could smell the particular aroma of him; the scents of old leather mingled with the stronger notes of aftershave and, beneath it all, the husky hint of natural healthy manliness. The simmering pool of inner warmth between my thighs suddenly flickered into small fires and I had an almost insane impulse to reach out and touch him.

  I felt my cheeks flush and reached quickly into my purse for the distraction of my phone. Mitch seemed not to have noticed the wild giddy effect this small intimacy was having on me. He was muttering softly to the Ambassador, their words intelligible.

  When we had arrived at the Embassy compound the day before, I’d been summoned to a special ‘information class’ that was held in a downstairs cafeteria of the main building. The lecture had been conducted by an attaché to the Embassy. She was a woman in her late sixties with a head of lacquered gray curls and wearing horn-rimmed glasses that were suspended around her neck by a thin cord. She looked like an old-style schoolmistress.

  There was a dozen or more of us assembled; men and women. We had all arrived as support staff for the leaders of the delegation.

  “Do not, under any circumstances, allow yourself to be caught alone in conversation with anyone from the Russian delegation,” the woman had issued the stern warning. “Assume everyone you meet beyond the gates of this compound is working for the Russian intelligence apparatus. Always be polite, and always be sure to conduct your conversations with anyone from the Russian delegation in groups.

  “And never,” the woman waggled her finger like a threat, “never ever discuss anything you have seen or heard whilst in a motor vehicle. You should assume that all modes of transport in Moscow are bugged.”

  The dark streets of Moscow slid past the window. I turned on my phone and guiltily went back to the email. A pall of gloom draped itself around my shoulders.

  The notification was dated four days ago. I skimmed it for the thousandth time without really reading. Doom-laden words and phrases leaped out at me until my eyes began to fill with tears.

  ‘The bank regrets…’

  ‘Foreclosure and forced sale of assets…’

  ‘Unserviced overdraft beyond normal trading limits…’

  ‘Demand immediate payment…’

  I shut off the phone and had to choke down a sob that crawled into the back of my throat.

  When I glanced up and blinked my eyes, Mitch was staring at me, his brow furrowed in concern. There was a flash of silent enquiry in the way he gazed at me. I forced my trembling lips into a tight smile.

  “I’m just cold,” I whispered the lie.

  For a girl who had been born and raised in Galveston, I had come a long way. But in reality, I was still a child of Texas, and the great state will always be my home – no matter where in the world I live.

  I moved to Washington to chase my dream of studying political science, and the price for my aspiration had been the need to leave behind my grandmother and the business she had dedicated her entire adult life to building. Both my parents had passed away when I was just a young child; all I have to remember them is an old photograph and the stories my grandmother told after I went to live with her. And so my formative years were spent at my grandmother’s bookstore, sitting in the tiny office at the back of the building, surrounded by the smell of new books and the thousands of imaginative adventures they contained.

  The bookstore had been my safe place against all my childhood sadness. But the past few years had been lean, as new digital technologies changed the way people bought books, and new trends altered the kinds of stories they wanted to read. My grandmother had begun directing her business towards schools and educational texts, and in the spring, there was an order coming from the Canadian government that would ensure that my nana’s little book store stayed open for many years to come… if she could keep her head above water through the difficult winter.

  Nana had lost my mother to cancer, and she had lost me to the lure of a Washington career. All she had left was the little bookshop with the family name proudly painted above the front door.

  And now the banks were threatening to take it away from her.

  I felt the kind of helpless despair that only the desperate and the hopeless know.

  The limousine swept through the high steel embassy gates. A marine at the guard post threw up a hand in a silent salute. The car pulled up in front of the embassy’s main building and another man in a uniform came from inside the building.

  I stepped out into the cold, and the uniformed man went around to the far side of the vehicle to hold the door for the Ambassador. We gathered on the steps. I felt the brush of Mitch’s hand in the small of my back.

  “You go on up to bed,” he said kindly. “The Ambassador and I want to meet with some of the other delegation team when they return from the Palace.”

  “But…” I began to protest. My sense of duty kicked in. If Mitch was going to work late, then I should be loyally at his side.

  He shook his head and the protest died on my lips. “It’s informal… and confidential,” he admitted. “Connie, there would be nothing you could do to help apart from fetch coffee – and the embassy has plenty of people to do that. Now, go to bed, get warm and get some sleep.”

  I searched his eyes; his gaze was level, unwavering. “You have to call Washington tomorrow morning. The President’s staff are expecting the call at seven a.m. Moscow time,” I reminded him.

  He nodded. He forgot nothing. He had an incredible insightful mind.

  “I’ll meet you back here in the lobby at six-thirty.”

  Chapter 2

  Mitch

  “Who the hell is Sergey Volostok?” I asked the high-level embassy staff who were gathered around the conference table.

  It was after midnight and everyone in the room was haggard and drawn; it had been a long day of delicate negotiations followed by the reception at the Kremlin Palace. Everyone seated at the polished mahogany table was still wearing their dinner suits, bleary-eyed and rumpled.

  The Ambassador looked sideways to a dour-faced man with pasty skin and sunken cheeks. He had the bearing of a mortician.

  “Chuck?”

  The sullen man shook his head. “He can’t be part of the official Russian negotiating team. The register of names was sent to the White House weeks ago and there was no Sergey Volostok listed.”

  The Ambassador looked puzzled. His head turned back to me.

  “A big man, you say? Broad shoulders, ill-fitting suit?”

  I nodded.

  One of the men slumped low in his seat at the far end of the table reached out for a phone. “I’ll call our contact at the newspapers. They had a photographer covering the event. I’ll get him to send digital files of all his photos.”

  There was a quiet nod of agreement. The Ambassador spoke above the murmur as the man made his call.

  “In the meantime, let’s go through the embassy files, gentlemen. I want everything we have on everyone attached to the Russian negotiating team as well as all their diplomatic staff.”

  It was important. The Russian had initiated contact and seemed intensely concerned about my attitude to the trade deal being negotiated. I needed to know who he really was before I met with him the following evening.

  It took another tiresome hour fruitlessly sifting through embassy files before the digital images finally arrived from the newspaper. There were over three hundred images, and the mysterious Sergey Volostok appeared in just one of them.

  In the photo, he was standing side on, partially obscured by milling delegates. He had one hand in his pocket and in the other was a glass of wine. He seemed to be standing alone in the photo – but the angle of the camera made that just a subjective guess.

  “That’s him,” I stabbed at the digital print with my finger, “That’s the guy.”

  The image was enlarged and projected onto a screen. Eve
ryone in the room leaned close, frowning.

  Nobody knew him.

  “Could he be so low-level that we don’t have a file on him?” one of the men at the table offered.

  “No. Not possible,” the head of the security team attached to the embassy discarded the suggestion out of hand.

  “Then maybe he’s like you, Mr. Stuyversant,” the Ambassador speculated. “Maybe our man Volostok is an emissary working directly for the Russian government, outside the control of their negotiating team…”

  I thought about that, and smiled wryly at the irony. Volostok had told me that the Russians were worried because they knew nothing about me or how I was influencing the American side of the negotiations. Now I realized that we knew nothing about him…

  “If this man does have a direct line to the Russian President, he’s very powerful. Very important… Maybe too important to meet outside of the normal diplomatic channels?” the Ambassador worried.

  I had briefed everyone in the room about the details of the contact with Volostok at the reception. Now the conversation turned to ways of handling our response.

  “He’s too important not to meet,” I countered.

  “Then don’t go alone,” the sour-faced man named Chuck said. “It could be some kind of set-up. They might be looking for ways to compromise you. Take a couple of our security people with you.”

  I considered that possibility, but my gut instinct told me that the Russian was not a threat… and I always trusted my instincts. The days of the Cold War were long past. I was sure this man was a patriot to his country. He wanted the trade deal to go ahead; I had seen his face, sensed his true motives. Russia was suffering from another season of poor agricultural results. They needed help from the West.

  “I don’t intend on meeting Sergey alone,” I said to the room. “But I’m sure as hell not going to be shadowed by a security attachment. I’ll take my personal assistant with me.”

  Connie

  I woke with a start, the bedsheets tangled and twisted tight around my body, and when I sat up I was wide-awake and quivering.

  I’d been dreaming.

  I reached for my phone on the bedside table and glanced at the time. It was two o’clock in the morning. I groaned, flung back the sheets and stood up. My legs were trembling.

  I tottered in just my panties to the adjoining bathroom. Outside the bedroom window, snow was falling in white wind-driven swirls.

  But I was sweating. My heart was thumping in my chest and my skin felt like it was on fire. There was a glass on the edge of the tiny bathroom’s vanity. I filled it with water and drank like I was dying of thirst.

  I didn’t turn on the lights. There was a dull white glow of distant floodlights through the window – enough for me to see the silhouette of myself in the mirror. I leaned over the edge of the sink and regarded my reflection with a mix of perverse arousal and confusion.

  I’d been dreaming of Mitch.

  I was a twenty-year old virgin. I know that’s not normal in this era of teen promiscuity and I’d certainly had plenty of opportunities through my school years to ‘go all the way’… but the truth is that I’d never found the right boy that could stir within me the giddy cocktail of physical lust and emotional love to want to do that. I’d dated my share of hot guys, but never felt an emotional connection. And I’d had teenage crushes… but never with the kind of boys that turned me on sexually. It took me a long time to understand why… and the truth is that I just never connected to boys that were the same age as me, because… well, because they were boys!

  The only things guys my age seemed interested in were sports, their cars and sex.

  I wanted so much more! I yearned for a deeper connection – the special magic that transcends just physical and emotional attraction and becomes spiritual; something I realized only a man could give me. I needed someone who knew who he was, knew what he wanted from life, and someone who had the maturity to realize that relationships were built on the need to give as well as take.

  And as for sex…?

  Well, I thought about it all the time. I fantasized about it.

  But I’d never dreamed about it before. Not like this.

  God, never like this!

  I refilled the glass with more water and went back into the bedroom. I gazed down at the bed. One of the pillows was crumpled on the floor and the sheets had become twisted like a thick braid of rope. The heavy cover lay at the foot of the mattress, crushed and rumpled. It looked like I’d just arisen from endless hours of torrid passion.

  And I had, in a very weird way…

  I dropped onto the edge of the bed and sipped at the water, glancing around the darkened room and watching the shadows that were formed by the distant lights. I was wide awake, and I knew for certain that I wouldn’t be able to sleep again until I cleared my mind of the images that had been so disturbing – and so perversely arousing.

  In my dream, I was back in my Washington cubicle, working at my desk when Mitch summoned me from his office. When I walked in, he was sitting back in his big leather chair behind the massive stinkwood desk. His jacket was hung over the arm of his chair, his tie hanging loose about his collar. He had the sleeves of his white shirt rolled up, exposing the brown muscles of his forearms. He was scanning a report. I stood obedient and silent before the desk for long seconds, watching his face and trying to gauge his mood by his expression. I knew what report he was reading; I had sent it to him just thirty minutes earlier.

  Finally, Mitch sat forward in the chair and slammed the report down. The file made a ‘crack’ like the slap of a hand. I flinched. His handsome face was stern, his lips a pale thin compressed line of disapproval. The edge of his features was made hard by the aggressive thrust of his jaw. His shoulders were back, the shape of his broad chest outlined beneath the shirt.

  “Not good enough,” he growled. His eyes turned cold and glinted like steel. “You disappoint me.”

  He came from behind the desk and stood close beside me. There was a wild ferocity in his gaze, something animalistic and incredibly erotic. He ran his eyes over my body. I was wearing a knee-length navy skirt and a pink silk blouse. He focused his attention on the lace pattern of my bra that showed through the gossamer fabric.

  I felt myself catch on fire. Suddenly my skin flushed hot.

  Finally, his gaze lifted from the swell of my breasts and he stared into my eyes; a direct test of strength that I could not hold. All my senses were reeling. I lowered my eyes and he nodded, confident and satisfied. I had never known these mingled sensations of reckless desire and elation. Mitch’s expression was cold and dispassionate, but in his gaze I could sense his hungry lust. I knew we were fated together by something beyond my understanding. It sent excited tingles along my spine and down through the aching empty space between my legs.

  At last Mitch reached for me, sliding the palm of his hand over the curve of my hip and then down to caress my ass. I closed my eyes. I could feel my whole body quivering with desire. I swallowed hard and licked my lips. Mitch turned the slide of his hand into a lingering caress. My cheeks and throat flushed hot.

  “Bend over.” It was a command.

  I folded forward at the waist and pressed my cheek against the soothing cool of the desk. Instinctively – unbidden – I shuffled my feet apart. Mitch’s hands seized the hem of my skirt and lifted it high up my thighs until I heard his involuntary gasp of surprise and delight. In the dream, I wasn’t wearing any panties.

  I felt utterly exposed and powerless. I could sense his eyes upon the soft and secret parts of me – and that knowledge made me weak with senseless yearning.

  His hand along the moist lips of my pussy sent convulsions sparking through my body. His touch was determined, insistent. I felt him peel me open like the dewy petals of a flower, and my hands bunched into fists of anticipation.

  The air in the office filled with the aroma of sex. In the silence, there was just the gasps of my ragged panting and then the unmistakable
sound of Mitch lowering his zipper. I felt the press of one strong hand in the middle of my back, holding me obediently… and then he thrust forward with his hips as the length of him filled and stretched me.

  In my dream, my whole body writhed in a voluptuous shudder and the air was driven from my lungs in a throaty gasp. “Oh, dear God!” I whimpered aloud. I felt consumed by him, overwhelmed by him, crushed and made weak by the sheer dominating force of his lust. I rocked with each drive of his hips, feeling the sway of my breasts and the tremors of each movement rumble like aftershocks down the length of my straining legs and calves.

  I felt myself drifting far, far away on some wave of rising ecstasy. I was moaning, pushing back against him now, greedy for every inch of him inside me. Mitch had his hands on my waist, digging his fingers deep into my flesh, clamping my body in place.

  Using me.

  I blacked out at the instant of my orgasm. Bright pinwheels of sparkling light exploded behind my eyes and my groan of desire became a fractured cry of release that left me weak as a kitten. I went limp on the desk, my pussy clutching, gripping, as if to hold him within me forever.

  He drew himself away and then pulled me down onto my knees. His cock was hard and glistening wet with the rush of my juices. He fisted a hand into my hair and steered my mouth over him.

  I felt the hard length of him swell again as I swirled my tongue and clamped my lips tight around the heat of his cock. Mitch had his head thrown back, his eyes screwed tightly shut, his face lifted to the ceiling. I saw the breadth of his chest swell with a lungful of air that he held and held while my mouth became frantic.

  At the last moment, he pulled back. My mouth hung open. My lips were puffed and glistening, my hair tousled. There was a savage red mist in Mitch’s eyes; a blaze of raw passion. I drew the pink tip of my tongue along the underside of his cock and he grunted like a man who had been heart-punched.

  His growled as he came, spilling white-hot across my tongue and down my chin. I swallowed it all as the tension drained from his straining physique and he drew a deep gasp of fresh breath.