Sea Haven 02 - Spirit Bound

times you admitted you’d been trained in the art of seduction, you weren’t kidding, were you? And I was so easy. All you had to do was study my personality and I was easy pickings. You’re damned good at your job, Stefan.”
    “You’re making it sound far worse than it was. I had no intention of babysitting you—or seducing you. I’m telling you, Judith, I’m in love with you. The rest of it wasn’t supposed to happen. La Roux had his men waiting. They killed the agents and he’s in the wind now.”
    “How handy that you’re right here, in the exact place that he’s bound to come.”
    “Judith,” Stefan began.
    She shook her head and gathered up her paintings. “I don’t want to hear any more. I’m going to work. You can leave.”
    “You know I’m not going to leave. We’ll work this out.”
    She looked him up and down, a long, slow perusal of distaste. “There isn’t enough time in the world to work this out.” Abruptly she turned her back on him and went downstairs.

20
     
    JUDITH refused to cry in front of Stefan. She just wouldn’t let him destroy her hard won poise. How could she have let him into her life—into her heart—so fast? She was so stupid. Tears blurred her vision as she hurried down the stairs carrying the paintings with her. It was growing dark and she flicked on the lights to better illuminate the canvases to see how much actual damage there was to the artwork while she stretched them. Unlike the happy chaos of her kaleidoscope studio, this room was where she earned money as a conservator of old paintings and she kept it immaculate.
    Closing the door firmly she contemplated whether to bother locking it. A man like Stefan Prakenskii could get through a security system, he certainly would have no problem getting through a locked door. She stood there, in the middle of the room, wanting to throw a childish tantrum, to hurl the canvases around the room and scream out her anguish.
    Instead, she stayed in perfect control, tears running down her face, as she placed each of the paintings on the table. She breathed in and out, pushing pain away. For a moment she covered her face with her hands. She was so shaken, all the way to the very foundation of her existence. Her hard-won faith in herself, built inch by inch, piece by piece over the last five years, was gone—shattered. She pushed back an anguished cry.
    She wouldn’t go back to darkness. Stefan might have been a fraud, but he had shown her the way out of the dark. She could do this—survive without him. There were millions of women who fell in love with the wrong men and they lived happy, productive lives. She just had to make up her mind that she would be one of them. Her track record was perhaps going to go down as one of the worst in history, but she wasn’t going to let a Russian agent destroy her.
    The temptation to call her sisters and cry on their shoulders was huge, but she resisted. She didn’t want to face Rikki right now, and Rikki would be hurt if she wasn’t included in the circle of support. But damn it all, Levi had betrayed her. He had to have known what his brother was really up to. They’d counted on her compassion, her loyalty, so ingrained in her that she would never consider betraying either of them to anyone. They’d played her so perfectly—and did that mean Levi was playing Rikki?
    She brushed a hand over her face. She could barely breathe in her beloved studio. She turned on the music system to flood the silence with soft music, needing distraction. She just had to work and she had plenty of it, enough to keep her up half the night. And if that wasn’t enough, she could always invent more—after all, she was a pro at finding things to do in the middle of the night.
    She glanced out the double French doors into the night. There were no stars tonight, only a heavy, fog, turning her gardens to vague wet shadows. She wandered across the room, drawn by the misty gray veil. It was one of the things she loved most about living on the coast. When she saw the fog creep in over the surrounding forest, the atmosphere always reminded her of a gothic novel.
    “Get to work,” she admonished aloud and shut off the alarm so she could open her French doors.
    Technically, she didn’t need the fresh air—she wasn’t painting—but her lungs felt tight and the lump in her throat refused to dissolve. She wouldn’t acknowledge that she wanted to scream and throw things, to weep until there were no