Free Stone Cold Heart by Lisa Hughey

doll."
    His teeth were almost blindingly white in his dark face as he shoved her into the room. Jess nearly stumbled, but true to his word, she'd been thrust into the room in a back corner. The other guests were gathered around the buffet table set up at the other end of the large drawing room and no one noticed her less than elegant entrance.
    The entire room reeked with the scent of lilies. Jess wondered where in the hell LeRoy had gotten lilies as a decoration?
    And then she stopped, caught by an intense, severe stare.

Seven
    He was going to kill her.
    Assuming she made it out of the extremely dangerous situation she'd just willingly put herself into, her life would be forfeit because Colin was going to strangle her.
    And then once he got back to the states for the debrief, Jack was going to kill him.
    One big happy death circle.
    What. The. Fuck?
    She had gone completely against plan. This wasn't even plan D, this was plan WTF.
    She had on the dress that she'd worn the night that they'd hooked up and even with slightly dirty feet and very little make up on, she was flat out gorgeous.
    Colin couldn't take his eyes off her. Neither could half the men in this room. And what the hell did it say about him that he was beyond turned on?
    "Ah, I can tell that you see something you like, mon ami," LeRoy teased Colin. If he hadn't been freaked before, he was now in the stratosphere of completely jacked up. Colin didn't want LeRoy anywhere near Jess.
    Colin stretched his fingers to forcibly keep his hands from clenching into fists. He couldn't afford to display any kind of weakness. "She is...attractive." Never show how much you want something.
    This entire plan was a cluster. Keisha had been stopped, Jess had put away her rifle, which he really hadn't wanted to use her anyway. She'd been right. An outright assassination of LeRoy would throw the country into civil unrest. While a natural death would create some difficulties it was nothing compared to what would happen if LeRoy died violently.
    LeRoy let out a deep belly laugh, his face wreathed in wrinkles of a smile, his shoulders shook with mirth. He looked like a big fat black Santa and his bowl full of jelly. "I think more than just attractive. My madam has outdone herself." LeRoy slapped him on the shoulder so hard, Colin nearly bent in half. "Avail yourself."
    Yeah, cause that would be good for you....wouldn't it you big fat fuck?
    Colin was pretty sure there were cameras in the rooms that the guests and their paid 'companions' were encouraged to use.
    But he'd made such a big deal of staring at her that now Colin had to pick Jess up for the night. Of course, better him than someone else.
    Colin prowled toward Jess, staying to the outside edge of the room so he could continue to observe the occupants. He noted how she moved around the room, mingling with the other guests and managing to keep a fairly even distance between them. Finally Colin had had enough. LeRoy was going to remember that Colin had the hots for a girl he didn't recognize. And hopefully LeRoy would be dead before he could thank the madam for a woman she didn't send.
    If Jess wasn't fucking careful she was going to find herself trapped for the night with one of these immoral 'philanthropists' who were willing to use a country's prostitutes even as they proclaimed their philanthropic goal was to aid the poor, disaster-ravaged citizens. It certainly wasn't his job to police them, but he really hoped that Antoine D'Aramitz truly was a man of the cloth and not a secret pervert.
    Finally, Colin lost patience with her delay tactics. He stalked straight through the crowd. Jess, who was still keeping the periphery in her vision, didn't realized he'd changed his trajectory. By the time she figured out he was no longer on the edges, it was too late.
    Colin stood in front of her and the man she was currently chatting with.
    "Bonjour," she said with a sultry smile. Only Colin noticed the nerves beneath her welcoming