I don’t like distractions.” He stepped so close, his face was mere inches from hers, and she didn’t dare move. Couldn’t move. He glanced at her mouth, and just when she thought, knew he was going to kiss her, he pulled away, looked her in the eye. “I barely know you. I don’t want to, Sydney. I can’t be worried about you. You were supposed to be a rule follower…”
He took a step back, then down, and she tried to make light of the situation. “I’ve changed.”
“I can’t afford distractions.”
“You mentioned that.” She stepped away from him, brushed her hands over her clothes, surprised to feel her pulse racing. She wanted him. He didn’t want the distraction. She was tempted to quip something about not worrying, because she damned well would be staying out of his bed from this point on. After all, they’d be separated by an entire ocean, never mind that her ego wasn’t that fragile, no matter what stupid things she might utter about her nonexistent sex life.
Without another word, he indicated she should precede him up the stairs, and just like that the matter was dropped. As it should be, she figured. She had a life of her own, and it did not involve Zachary Griffin.
Professor Francesca Santarella tried to get past the horrific details of how she’d come under such tight security. As if Alessandra’s murder hadn’t been bad enough, and never mind the attempt on their lives, Dumas had told her that the anthropologist whom Alessandra had chosen for her dig was also dead, apparently from a hit-and-run back in the States.
All twists of fate? Francesca didn’t believe it for an instant, and in her mind the weak link in all this was Father Dumas. No one had shot at her until he’d showed up on her doorstep. He had also been involved with Alessandra, and apparently the dead anthropologist, Dr. Natasha Gilbert.
Perhaps it was some chance alignment of the stars that Dumas wasn’t currently standing over her shoulder at the moment while she read the centuries-old documents before her. Somehow she doubted that Dumas would have let her near them if he’d known that the very subject of her research had been imprisoned under orders of the pope for his involvement with Freemasonry, then held until he gave up the names of every member in his lodge. The church was and always had been anti-Masonic, but she knew for a fact the arrest over Freemasonry had been but a pretext. The church wanted what her subject had hidden, the third key. But perhaps Dumas was not up on church history from the 1700s. He had looked at the time period she’d requested and gave his approval to the priest assigned to assist in finding the documents. The silver lining, if one could call it that, was that she was sitting here in the Vatican, reading transcripts from the secret archives, and was given more freedom than most in that she had no time constraints.
The only thing that hindered her was that Father Dumas had insisted on being her guide while she was here. She gathered that his activities with Mr. Griffin were known to none but a select few, and that set her to contemplate just what it was they did. Some sort of governmental agency, which made her wonder how it was that Alessandra had become involved. And why? Somehow it had never occurred to her that Alessandra might have had her own agenda.
Then again, no one had checked with Francesca to determine what her agenda might be, and that was something she had no desire to reveal. She was quite certain that if Dumas even suspected what it was, she would never have been allowed in here.
She glanced around, saw Father Dumas sitting in a chair not too far away, and decided that he was probably more guard than guide. He smiled when he noticed her look up, and she smiled back, then forced her gaze back to the transcripts in front of her. Her mind kept wandering to the message Alessandra had sent, what she’d tried to convey. The proof, she figured, was probably buried in these transcripts, and she scanned the text, hoping she was right. And if she was right, her next step needed some careful contemplation. Slipping out of the Vatican was one thing. Escaping the notice of Dumas, not quite the mild-mannered priest he portrayed, was quite another.
“Sir?”
Giustino’s voice cut into Griffin’s thoughts about the latest