Another Player

“The Duke Agency. This is Janna. How may I direct your call?”

Janna. Oh geez. He didn’t have time for this, he thought, rolling his eyes. “Janna. It’s Dex. I need to talk to Rachel immediately.”

“Dex? Who?”

God. Kill me. “Dex Isaac. I work as a Duke.”

“Oh! Hi, Dex!” Janna replied with her usual brainless perk and he could hear her shuffling around the few things she was allowed to keep on her desk. “Rachel’s with a client right now. I’ll have to take a message.”

He all but groaned, his eyes fixed across the gate at a seated couple chatting and smiling at one another. “No message, Janna. This is an emergency. I’m about to board a plane and I need to talk to Rachel about our Maddox client.”

“Caitlyn Maddox? She leaves today.”

Oh sure, the client she’s only met a couple times she knows. Dex heaved a patient sigh. His mother had always told him: ‘you can be pretty, or you can be smart’. The sentiment fit Janna to a tee. The girl was pretty, and that’s exactly where her utility stopped. “I know that. I’m her Duke, Janna. Listen, I need to talk to Rachel. Now,” he added insistently.

“Hold please.” Abruptly, his ear filled with the agency’s hold music. Another sigh escaped him, this one edged in irritation.

While he waited, he studied the Maddox woman. She was cute, doe-eyed, with a shy smile and svelte, but curvy build. And one of the most sensual mouths he’d ever seen, framed up nicely by the shoulder-length cut of her dark hair.

She was also big-time brainy. The book she’d been reading was a veritable War and Peace, full of long strings of complex equations he’d seen as he wandered by casually, scoping her out.

Some sort of research doctor was all he could remember from her profile—he generally performed better if he got the details directly after introductions with his client. Still, she was the kind of smart woman that turned him on personally, with an introverted, skittish side like a feral cat that always brought out the best in him professionally.

And Italy. This one was supposed to have been a slam dunk. How much easier was romancing a lonely woman when everything about the very locale oozed romance?

He eyed the muscly stranger beside her completely monopolizing her attention, and wondered what the hell was going on. The agency’s files were encrypted and supposed to be confidential. The only way he could think of that someone else might know both who Caitlyn Maddox was and that she’d hired a Duke Agency companion to keep her company on this trip was if she’d told them.

Self-conscious as she obviously was, that hardly seemed likely.

Which meant the only other way was if they’d followed her.

That thought bothered him.

“Dex?” Rachel’s voice dripped with annoyance. “Somebody better have died.”

“No, but it might be a possibility,” he replied, watching as the stranger rose, then offered a hand up to the Maddox woman which she compliantly took. Taking the phone off his ear, he snapped a quick photo and sent it to Rachel’s email and cell. “Something has gone wrong. There’s another player here calling himself a Duke. He got to Caitlyn Maddox before I did.”

“Another player? What? There’s no other Duke. That’s what I sent you for. What are you talking about?”

“I’m at the airport, getting ready to board the flight to Italy for the Maddox trip, and I don’t have much time, Rachel. Listen carefully. Caitlyn Maddox is here. She’s on the flight in seat 19C, like she’s supposed to be, but someone bumped me out of 19A. And a stranger calling himself a Duke has inserted himself into her graces,” Dex explained again, hoping that this time Rachel would catch on.

“Why would someone else masquerade to our client? It’s not like he’s going to get paid.”

“I don’t know, but he’s pretty good. He smoothed himself into the seat next to her at the gate and waited her out like I would have, and it only took him a few seconds to have her eating out of his hand when he finally did catch her attention. She just walked off with her fingers tucked into his elbow. Now he’s buying her coffee at the shop across from the boarding gate.”

For a long second, there was no response at the other end of the line.

“Rachel?”

“She doesn’t know?”

“He introduced himself as a Duke. How the hell is she supposed to know the wrong guy’s there? She doesn’t know who I am. ‘Organic introductions’, remember? This is your company, Rachel. I do what I’m told.”

“Crap.” She paced frantically to the opposite side of the room, staring out over the city towards the airport without seeing anything. “You said your seat got bumped. Are you still on the flight?”

“Yeah, but not beside her like I’m supposed to be.”

“It doesn’t matter. Whoever that guy is, she’s not safe.” He could hear her mind whirling. “Where are you in the terminal?”

“Standing by myself at the windows directly behind the gate desk.”

“What are you wearing?”

“Teal polo shirt and blue jeans. I’ve got a hard-sided carry-on that’s bright red—there’s no one else here with one. She can’t miss me.”

“I’ll send her your photo and try to call her. God willing, she can get herself out of there and get over to you safely. If she doesn’t, you have to get on that plane. You have to follow them. There’ll be another opportunity. Try to talk to her. Straighten it out. If nothing else, encourage her to call me.”

Dex heaved a sigh, blowing it out through pursed lips. What should have been an easy, enjoyable job had just turned into annoyingly real work. “Okay.”