Marie Ferrarella - My Spy

“I’m here to rescue you.”

His hands were tightly closed around her wrists, where they would remain until he was confident that she wasn’t going to take a swing at him.

For a moment, still sprawled on top of him, Pru wavered. Was she being rescued? And then suspicion crept in between the lines. “Where are the others?”

“There are no others,” Joshua told her.

Her eyes widened. “You’re it?”

“Yup. Lucky me. Not that I wouldn’t find this position interesting at any other time.” He opened his hands, releasing her wrists. “But I think we’d better get out of here before one of those Neanderthals comes to investigate.”

Pru scrambled to her feet, managing to have more than just marginal contact with all parts of him. “Just who the hell are you?” she demanded hotly, her cheeks burning.

A smile twisted his lips. “At the moment, I’m your saviour.”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

This bestselling and award-winning author has written over one hundred and fifty books for Mills & Boon, some under the name Marie Nicole. Her romances are beloved by fans worldwide. Check out her website at www.MarieFerrarella.com.

Dear Reader,

I don’t know about you, but my favourite stories revolve around the irresistible force meeting the immovable object: two equally stubborn, independent people who discover that there is no weakness to letting another person into their worlds. In this case, the prime minister’s daughter, known in the tabloids as “Pru the Shrew,” has met her match in Joshua, the hunky special agent who has been sent to rescue her from her kidnappers. I knew there were going to be fireworks before I ever started writing about them.

This book marks the beginning of a miniseries involving the organisation that was first introduced in the CAPTURING THE CROWN series. The Lazlo Group is a highly secretive, extremely efficient organisation of handpicked operatives who always get the job done, no matter what it might be. I had a ball writing this, and I hope you have as much fun reading it.

As always, I thank you for reading and I wish you love,

Marie Ferrarella

MARIE FERRARELLA

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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To Jenny and John Cho. If you love each other, all the rest will work itself out. Have a wonderful life!

Chapter 1

The silence in his bedroom was eerie, enveloping him like a black embrace. He sat there for a moment, listening to the sound of his own heartbeat. The sound of his own breathing.

It wasn’t often that he woke up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat. Sweat was for people who had things to lose. Home, family, possessions they treasured, a reputation they couldn’t rebuild. But Corbett Lazlo had long since left all of that behind.

There were no ties.

In general, he spent most of his time in the offices of the organization he had created fourteen years ago and presided over like a benevolent god. For the most part, although there were flesh-and-blood people who shared his last name, his organization was his family, his child.

But even that, although he took pride in it, was expendable.

Long ago he’d learned that nothing was permanent, that no one thing could actually be thought of as his lifeline to the world. He did not allow himself to indulge in the emotions that both plagued and regaled other men. Emotions, he firmly believed, more often than not could spell a man’s downfall.

The way his had almost destroyed him.

It was a dream of Cassandra that had him bolting upright in his solitary bed, perspiring when the temperature in his current Paris apartment was kept a constant sixty-seven degrees. Not really a dream, more like a fragment of a memory, delivered to him across the rough sea of time. Cassandra, beckoning to him, devouring him. Honey-haired, green-eyed Cassandra, as young, as beautiful, as seductive as the first moment he laid eyes on her.

And just as evil.

There’d been a glint in her eyes, a murderous glint just as her embrace tightened, a fraction of a second before her mouth came down on his, that warned him of what was to come.

Of death if he didn’t flee.

Corbett sat up in his bed for a moment, his black silk sheets cool against his hot skin. He dragged a hand through his silver hair, slowly drawing air back into his lungs.

The memory…a warning?

A premonition?

He had not remained alive in this precarious, constant high-stakes, cat-and-mouse existence by ignoring his gut instinct. Just because he’d been asleep was no reason to doubt that something was reaching out to him, trying to warn him.

But about what?

Cassandra DuMont was long in his past. The daughter of a cold-blooded, heartless man, Maximilian DuMont, who had been the head of an organization that went to the highest bidder, no task too loathsome, no moral line left uncrossed. The agents at MI-6 had referred to it as Snake, but that was an inside joke. The organization had no name. It was evil, undefined.

There’d been a brother, too. Apollo. Groomed to take over his father’s place when the time came. Dead by his hand, Corbett thought. Cassandra hadn’t known that when she’d made love with him. If she had, she would have tried to slit his throat. And he would have been forced to slit hers.

Instead of sparing her the way he had.

He’d been soft then. And naive. Believing in justice, truth and all the hype he’d been sold when he was first inducted into Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service—S.I.S., formerly MI-6. He and his comrades were protectors of the realm. He’d be lieved that they would stand by him and he by them.

Until the allegations came.

And then, suddenly, he was alone. Watching his entire world, his carefully crafted career, crash and burn. They’d called him a double agent and said they had the evidence to prove it.

The stillness continued.

Corbett took a long breath, as if the air in his lungs would place that period of time even further from him than the actual years did.

Before he could mount a defense, he was swiftly brought up on charges of treason and convicted on the basis of fabricated evidence. His father, a former Hungarian refugee who’d risen to some prominence in Parliament, turned from him, calling him a disgrace even though the old man had never wanted him to be part of S.I.S. in the first place. The words that cut deepest were the ones he’d heard from his mother, saying she was ashamed of him.

And then, out of the blue, Edward, his womanizing older brother, came to his rescue, providing money that allowed Adam Sinclair, Corbett’s best friend and right-hand man, to bribe enough guards to bring about Corbett’s escape from prison. There was no love lost between the brothers, but Edward said he knew Corbett to be a loyal man and loyal men did not sell out their country.

The words, more than the money, forever placed him in Edward’s debt. And, somewhat ironically, Edward had become the financial handler for the Lazlo Group.

With Adam, Corbett had fled the country, coming to France. When he’d created the Lazlo Group, Adam was the first agent he recruited to join. Together, they oversaw the labor pains of its concrete formation. But if asked, Adam always gave him the credit for the group’s inception. It was the Lazlo Group, not the Lazlo–Sinclair Group.