The It Girls
Dear Reader,
When my editor suggested I give Alexa a prosthetic leg, I wondered how I could turn her into an action/adventure heroine worthy of a Bombshell book. How could a woman with that handicap possibly work undercover and kick butt? I scoured the Internet for information and still wondered how I could make this assignment work. Then I was fortunate to meet a woman who showed me that the only thing that could get in Alexa’s way was her own thoughts. Throwing Alexa out of her Ralph Lauren world and into Levi’s and leading her through an adventure that gave her a much-needed attitude adjustment turned out to be a lot of fun! I hope you enjoy reading Alexa’s story as much as I enjoyed writing it.
Sincerely,
Sylvie Kurtz
Ms. Longshot
Sylvie Kurtz
Special thanks and acknowledgment are given to Sylvie Kurtz for her contribution to the The It Girls series.
ISBN: 9781408946206
Ms. Longshot
© Harlequin Books S.A. 2005
First Published in Great Britain in 2005
Harlequin (UK) Limited
Eton House, 18-24 Paradise Road, Richmond, Surrey TW9 1SR
All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. The text of this publication or any part thereof may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, including without limitation xerography, photocopying, recording, storage in an information retrieval system, or otherwise, without the written permission of the publisher.
This ebook is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated, without the prior consent of the publisher, in any form or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
All characters in this work have no existence outside the imagination of the author and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all incidents are pure invention.
This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Enterprises II B.V./S.á.r.l.
® and TM are trademarks owned and used by the trademark owner and/or its licensee. Trademarks marked with ® are registered with the United Kingdom Patent Office and/or the Office for Harmonisation in the Internal Market and in other countries.
www.millsandboon.co.uk
MILLS & BOON
Before you start reading, why not sign up?
Thank you for downloading this Mills & Boon book. If you want to hear about exclusive discounts, special offers and competitions, sign up to our email newsletter today!
SIGN ME UP!
Or simply visit
signup.millsandboon.co.uk
Mills & Boon emails are completely free to receive and you can unsubscribe at any time via the link in any email we send you.
Books by Sylvie Kurtz
Silhouette Bombshell
Personal Enemy #29
†Ms. Longshot #70
†The It Girls
Silhouette Special Edition
A Little Christmas Magic #1438
Harlequin Intrigue
One Texas Night #527
Blackmailed Bride #575
Alyssa Again #600
*Remembering Red Thunder #653
*Red Thunder Reckoning #657
Under Lock and Key #712
**Heart of a Hunter #767
**Mask of a Hunter #773
A Rose at Midnight #822
**Eye of a Hunter #866
*Flesh and Blood
**The Seekers
SYLVIE KURTZ
Flying an eight-hour solo cross-country in a Piper Arrow with only the airplane’s crackling radio and a large bag of M&M’s for company, Sylvie Kurtz realized a pilot’s life wasn’t for her. The stories zooming in and out of her mind proved more entertaining than the flight itself. Not a quitter, she finished her pilot’s course and earned her commercial license and instrument rating.
Since then, she has traded in her wings for a keyboard, where she lets her imagination soar to create fictional adventures that explore the power of love and the thrill of suspense. When not writing, she enjoys the outdoors with her husband and two children, quilt-making, photography and reading whatever catches her interest.
You can write to Sylvie at P.O. Box 702, Milford, NH 03055. And visit her Web site at www.sylviekurtz.com.
For Cassie—a Bombshell in training
A special thank-you:
To Amy Schiff for sharing her story with me.
Definitely a Bombshell heroine!
Samantha at Hair Force for helping
me with my dyeing dilemma
Ann Voss Peterson for sharing
horse trailer stories
Contents
About the Author
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
COMING NEXT MONTH
Prologue
New York City. December. Ten years ago.
The second-floor bathroom of the Constance Gramercy School for Girls was crowded as usual. I elbowed my way to the mirror and puckered up to see if the zit I’d felt growing on my chin in social science had popped up. Wouldn’t you know it, the timing sucked. I had a horse show in the morning.
Nathalie Huston, my best friend since we’d bitten each other the first day of kindergarten, came pounding through the door, big boobs leading the way and her long, black ponytail flying behind her. She’d had that magnificent chest since she was eleven. At fifteen, I was still waiting for mine to show up. My mother said British roses took longer to bloom, which only made me wish I’d inherited more of my father’s American genes.
Back of the hand pressed to her forehead, Nat paused and sighed dramatically. Of course the contrast of Wedgwood-blue eyes and raven hair had made her dramatic from birth. I couldn’t help smiling.
“What’s wrong this time, Nat?” I turned back to the mirror and swiped boring clear lipgloss—the only kind the builds-the-character rules allowed—across my lips.
“Oh, Alexa, I can’t take it anymore.” Nat plopped her book bag against the white sink and checked to see if what little makeup was allowed needed retouching. “I simply can’t sit through Mr. Ziegler’s algebra class today.” She sniffed in perfect imitation of Mr. Ziegler’s postnasal drip problem and pushed nonexistent glasses up her nose—just as Mr. Ziegler would do. “Forty minutes of that is enough to drive anyone nuts. Like what am I ever going to use algebra for anyway?”
I didn’t mind math. I was kind of good at it, actually. Daddy kept telling me I had a head for business and, as uncool as that was, I liked hearing him say it.
“Let’s cut last period,” Nat whispered. She stretched open the top of her Gucci bag and showed off the fresh pack of smokes.
“It’s raining,” I said with a sigh. No need to look outside for a weather update. Not with the frizz I had going. Even in a French braid, even inside, even with half a bottle of Aveda frizz tamer, the humidity made my mahogany curls look like one of the rusted Brillo pads in the science lab.
“I’ve got an umbrella.” Nat grinned and tugged on the minicompact, red-plaid Burberry umbrella tucked in her bag.
I made a quick calculation. With two weeks left to the semester before the Christmas break, I could afford another warning on my record before someone notified my parents they had a delinquent daughter. Besides, Daddy had promised to pick me up right after school today so we could get to the Ridgefield Winter Dressage Show early. If I was already standing outside, he wouldn’t have to wait for me.
I slung my Coach bag over my shoulder. “I’m in. Let’s go.”
Traffic honked up and down Ninety-third Street. Breathing in that exhaust had to fry our lungs more than any cigarette could. Nat popped open the umbrella and passed it to me. I angled it to shield us from most of the rain. Cold wind pried apart the blue cashmere Marc Jacobs coat I’d pulled from my bag, but I didn’t care. I hated stuffy English almost as much as Nat hated algebra. Shivering outside was a small price to pay to miss the dreaded class.
I untucked my boring white Calvin Klein button-down shirt, rolled the waist of my gray uniform skirt and leaned back against the cold stone wall. What was the point of having great legs if you couldn’t show them off? And what idiot had come up with gray as the uniform color in the first place? No one I knew looked good in gray.
Nat passed a coffin stick. “I can’t wait for break.”
I lit it with the gold lighter I’d pilfered from my mother’s purse and puffed out a geyser of smoke. “Me either.”
“Sucks that I’ll be stuck going skiing with my dad in Aspen again, though.” Nat made a face. “He’s bringing his new girlfriend.” A gold-digging bimbo only seven years older than Nat.
“Maybe you’ll get lucky and she’ll run into a tree,” I sympathized.
“She’s more into the après than the ski, if you know what I mean.” Nat took a long drag on her cigarette. “What are you going to wear to the Black-and-White Ball?”
“Ralph sent over a black number that’s so hot,” I said, practically purring. My long legs had caught Ralph Lauren’s attention when I was thirteen, and he’d tried to get me to pose for one of his ads ever since. Naturally my mother had nixed the idea. Modeling is apparently beneath the station of Lady Cheltingham’s daughter. I secretly believed that my stiff-upper-lip mother just didn’t want me to have any kind of fun. Still, for every major event, a dress appeared at our Park Avenue penthouse, and even my mother wasn’t too proud to accept the gift of couture.
“It’s cut down to here.” I twisted my body around without moving my feet and dragged a hand down to the small of my back.
At that moment, someone leaned on a horn and didn’t let go. Tires screeched and a yellow taxi hopped the curb, trying to avoid a collision with a town car zigzagging like crazy through traffic.
He’s not going to stop, I realized as the taxi charged toward us.
The world slowed around me as I untwisted my feet. My heart pounded a ragged beat against my eardrums. A gust of wind wrenched the umbrella from my hand. Nat’s screams echoed as if she were in a tunnel. Too late, I lifted a leg to bolt out of the way. The thud of metal against stone and bone registered as something foreign and far away—like it was all happening to someone else—pinning me to the wall like a butterfly.
The taxi recoiled. I fell and I could tell you every second of the trip to the pavement. Inanely what floated through my mind was Newton’s First Law I’d learned in Mrs. Collin’s science class: “For every action there’s an equal and opposite reaction.” And the weirdest thing of all was the way my head bounced sideways against the wet concrete like a tennis ball, splashing dirty puddle water into my eyes. When my vision cleared, what filled my sight was the perfectly whole cigarette, end glowing red, between my fingers.
Well, crap, I thought as pain screamed through my body and pierced my brain. Daddy was right. Cigarettes were going to kill me.
Chapter 1
New York City Late April. Present.
I was probably the only undercover agent in history who’d get fired for removing her prosthesis in an airport and pissing off a French gendarme. But the hyper frog barking at me in French at the security checkpoint at Charles de Gaulle had far exceeded my limit of patience when he refused to understand that my leg was setting off the alarm, not a hidden weapon.
Ever since the accident, I’d been sensitive about my leg. So when my cell phone rang shortly after my flight touched down in New York and I was summoned to tea at the Gotham Rose Club, I was sure the ax was about to fall and I was going to get booted out of their secret agency.
The car service dropped me off in front of the gray cut-stone townhouse that housed the Gotham Rose Club on Sixty-eighth Street between Park and Madison on the Upper East Side. I stood outside the black wrought-iron security grate over the carved wood front door with its rose design and pretended to admire the architecture. Mostly I was composing myself.
Renee Dalton-Sinclair ran the Gotham Rose Club, an elite, members-only club intended to attract young, wealthy New York women like me to fund-raise and volunteer their time for charity. I was doing both for the Horses of Hope Foundation long before Renee asked me to join. But Renee also had another use for the club—taking down high-society criminals. And that’s why I was here today, and why I couldn’t decide if the nerves jumping around like fleas on a barn dog were from anger or anxiety.
I tugged at the hem of the silver-leaf sleeveless V-neck top and smoothed the ivory Vera Wang cotton-tulle skirt with my sweaty palms, then pressed the doorbell. Olivia Hayworth’s voice sang across the intercom. “Welcome, Alexa. Come on in.”
A security buzzer released the latch and I walked into a white Italian marble foyer that reminded me of a gilded cage. The place smelled of old money and older traditions. And despite my background, I never felt like I quite fit in.
Olivia, Renee’s assistant, greeted me with an extended hand and a bright smile that eased some of my anxiety. Okay, so maybe I’d just get a warning.
“Hello, Alexa, how was your trip to Paris?”
“Nonstop crazy.”
Olivia chuckled. “With Nathalie Huston, what else did you expect?”
I winced. Maybe this was about the incident with the gendarme.
My silver Delman ballet flats echoed against the marble as Olivia led me back to the Irish tearoom, one of the many that served as meeting rooms. Renee sat alone at the table. That couldn’t be good. My stomach took a sharp dive south.
Renee’s hair was pulled into a French twist. The hint of gray snaking through her auburn locks here and there merely added to the air of dignity that surrounded her. The winter white of her Chanel suit complemented her creamy complexion. As always, her smile was warm and welcoming and her striking royal blue eyes assessing.
The reason I’d joined Renee’s secret agency was to prove to myself that I could do anything I wanted—even catch bad guys. Not to mention the promise of excitement—which, I should mention, had failed to materialize. Unless you counted poring through piles of business reports as exciting—which I did not. For some reason, Renee insisted on treating me as if I were Swarovski crystal.
Frankly, I don’t know why Renee asked me to join the Gotham Rose Club when she barely made use of my skills. My guess was that it was some sort of employer requirement—round out the roll call with a token cripple and get patted on the head for following all the equal-employment opportunity rules. She knew how I felt, and that didn’t make me one of her favorite agents.
I often thought that the illusive Governess was the one who’d insisted Renee hire me, and Renee had done so only reluctantly. Of course, who the Governess was and what she had at stake in this cloak-and-dagger agency was as mysterious as why Renee had agreed to play front woman for the agency. I had to admit curiosity was one of the things that kept me coming back.
Renee pushed away a file and rose. A small smile lifted the corners of her lips. “Come in, Alexa. Sit. Tea?”
A file was a good sign, right? Unless it contained a list of my transgressions.
I greeted Renee with a stiff air kiss. A vintage linen tablecloth covered the round Charles X table set with Hewitt Gold bone china and Pelham Gold flatware. Scones from my favorite bakery on Madison crammed a three-tiered silver Tiffany tray. Steam curled from the blue-and-white Lynn Feld porcelain teapot. White tea roses in a Lalique vase spiced the air. Renee had impeccable taste and it served as a perfect veil for the true work she did here. Still, I couldn’t help wanting to throw a Tupperware tub on the table at one of the functions just to hear the proper ladies gasp.
“I’d love a cup of tea.” I took the chair across from Renee’s. Fragrant bergamot scented the air as Renee poured hot Earl Grey tea with slow precision into pale-blue, gold-trimmed cups.
“Where is everyone else?” I asked. Tea with Renee usually meant dealing with Tatiana Guttmann, Becca Whitmore and one or two more of the agents. I didn’t have anything against them personally, but they got all the good assignments.
“It’s just the two of us today.” Renee slanted me another one of her cryptic smiles as she served me a cup.
“Oh.” I forced my fingers to relax against the china. Was she going to fire me before I ever got any of that promised excitement? I tried to delay the inevitable. “How is Emma doing?”
Emma Bromwell, another agent who’d gone through the same training class I had, suffered a severe arm fracture and a concussion during an explosion at a post-Oscar fund-raising party for the Miller Children’s Home in California a couple months ago.
Renee glanced away. A certain sadness seemed to weigh on her soul. I figured the sadness existed because her husband, Preston, whom she dearly loved, was serving prison time for fraud. Five years ago the case made headlines in all the papers. But asking about Emma seemed to carve deeper grooves into that sadness, aging her. Was she taking Emma’s accident personally? Was this sense of personal responsibility why Renee never gave me a real assignment?
“Emma’s doing as well as can be expected,” Renee said. “She’ll have to have physical therapy for a bit longer, but she’ll regain full use of her arm.”
“That’s good.” When I noticed my hand unconsciously rubbing at the edge of my socket, I snapped it back to the warmth of the teacup. “She was worried she wouldn’t be able to play the piano anymore. And that brought her such joy.” I knew how I’d felt when I’d thought I’d never ride again.
“How are the preparations for the Horses of Hope Foundation wine-and-cheese party going?” Renee asked.
“Fine.” I placed my cup back on its saucer. “Tickets are selling well and sponsors are lining up to host a table, including the esteemed mayor of our city, Mr. Siegel.”
“Can your assistant handle the rest of the preparations?”
Ah, so that was it. An assignment, not an indictment on my lack of propriety at Charles de Gaulle. My shoulders sagged with relief. “Yes, of course she can.”
“Good.” Renee added a slice of lemon to her tea. “The Governess has asked me to send you on an assignment. I’ll take over your hostessing duties at the show.”
Send? As in field? I sat up a little straighter, and anticipation shot through my veins. Thank you, Governess! At least someone had faith in me.
None of the agents had ever met the mysterious Governess, not even Renee. The only thing we could agree on was that, whoever she was, she was well connected. And when the equally mysterious Duke entered the conversation, you’d think we were a book club discussing an old Victoria Holt novel.
The Duke was said to be some sort of Godfather-like figure who ran in elite circles and had fingers in all sorts of dirty dealings. If you believed the rumors, he had a hand in everything from corruption to gambling. I had a suspicion he was one of the reasons the Gotham Rose Club was started. But if Renee knew who he was, she wasn’t spilling the secret.
It was all supposed to be hush-hush, but I’d heard that Renee had struck a deal with the Governess to create and run the Gotham Rose Agency in exchange for her husband, Preston’s, early release from prison. Someone had to go to jail for the Sinclair family’s illegal business dealings and poor Preston was the scapegoat.
“Have you been keeping up with the news of the show circuit?” Renee asked, reaching for a scone.
“No, not really.” What was the point of salting a wound? I got my fix of horses through my foundation and my weekly trips to my estate in Darien, Connecticut, where I kept two horses. “Why?”
“A string of accidents have happened this winter on the Palm Beach show-jumping circuit. Canterbury Crown died of a heart attack while going over a jump and his rider was hurt from the fall. Drug testing showed cocaine in the horse’s blood.”
“Cocaine?” Who would do such a thing? Of course, some people would do anything to win—even hurt a defenseless animal. “What happened?”
“The police investigated but came to no conclusion.”
I leaned forward, my heart fluttering against my ribs. “You want me to look into it,” I said hopefully.
“A few weeks later, a barn fire killed four horses, including the current National Horse Show champion, Total Eclipse.”
Just thinking about the terror those poor animals had to endure raised my blood pressure and sparked my anger. But I bit my tongue. This was definitely my kind of assignment, but Renee was obviously not asking for my opinion.
“The latest victim is Monica Lightbourne, daughter of the media heiress,” Renee continued. “Someone injected her horse, Blue Ribbon Belle, with a drug that caused a neurological reaction so violent the horse had to be put down.”
“That’s awful. How do you want me to help?”
“The Metropolitan Spring Classic Charity Horse Show begins in a week.”
“You want me to investigate at the show since I’ll be there for my foundation’s charity event.” Yes! This I could do. No stretch at all.
“Not exactly.” Renee sipped her tea, humor glinting in her eyes. “As you know, the mayor’s daughter participates in show jumping. Elliot Siegel is afraid his daughter, who’s a front runner to win the Grand Prix, will be the Horse Ripper’s next victim and that he’ll strike some time before or during the show.”
“You want me to protect Leah Siegel.” A small thrill spurred my pulse into a gallop. Finally a chance to do more than shuffle paper. Protecting the mayor’s daughter was an elite assignment.
“We want you to go undercover at the stable where she trains.” Renee tilted her head. “As a groom.”
“Excuse me?” I had to have heard wrong. Renee wanted me to go undercover as a groom? Just what had she put in her tea?
“You heard me.”
Needing to gather my wits, I picked up my teacup, but it never made it to my lips. I plunked the cup back on its saucer. “You want me to shovel manure? How’s that going to help protect Leah?”
Renee studied me, then lifted both eyebrows and a shoulder in a gesture of dismissal. “I told the Governess this wasn’t a good idea. With your leg, you can’t possibly be expected to perform such hard physical labor.”
“Wait a minute. This has nothing to do with my leg.” I slid to the edge of the chair caught between wanting to tell Renee what she could do with her condescending attitude and fighting for my first real assignment. I hadn’t realized how badly I needed her approval until now. “You don’t want me here. You never have.”
“That’s not true. The trouble with you, Alexa, is that you have no concept of the limits of your skills and that makes you dangerous. You think you can do everything. Everyone needs help. And I don’t want to see you, or any of my girls, hurt.”