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right.
    But could she really trust Liam? The question tortured her, especially under the circumstances. Her father and his cohorts had almost closed in on them in Venice—whether for “her own good” or for justice or for the huge bounty Liam had on his head. Probably for all three. The bottom line, though, was that her dad wanted her fiancé behind bars and away from her.
    Avy had gone up against her own father for Liam. She still couldn’t quite bend her mind around that—or the fact that she’d won—temporarily anyway. She took no joy in the victory.
    What she wanted at the moment was to get well and truly drunk, to let alcohol close in and pickle her brain, soak her conscience and logic—shut them down. But getting drunk would solve absolutely nothing. She’d merely wake with a pounding headache and a chaser of depression.
    So she sipped bottled water instead and wondered when Liam would send her further information on where, exactly, in Moscow to meet him. She paged through a pocket Russian dictionary she’d picked up in London, since she didn’t speak a word of the language.
    The Cyrillic alphabet immediately made her cross-eyed, so she focused instead on the phonetic pronunciation of the strange letters and words.
    What a beautiful day! Ka- koy pri- kras nih dyen’!
Are you here on holiday? Vih zdyes’v ot pusk-ye?
I’m here on business. Ya zdyyes’ pa biz ni-su.
    Riiiiiiight. Avy could barely wrap her tongue around the foreign words. But supposedly there was a huge American population in Moscow—she could only hope to run into some of them.
    Eventually the constant bass whine of the bird’s big engines lulled her into an uneasy sleep. She had the sensation of her eyes rolling back in their sockets and then tumbling over and over as they dropped down the well of unconsciousness. When she stopped falling, she was skating on a frozen lake in the middle of a frosty winter landscape. She wore a heavy parka buttoned to her throat, a long red woolly scarf, and a knit cap with a silly pom-pom dangling from its apex.
    She glided along on her skates, feeling the wind in her face and hearing the laughter and shouts of clusters of people around her. She zipped in and out and around them, performing turns and dips that would make an Olympic skater proud.
    As she came off a dramatic triple axel, a dark figure in a topcoat and a tall fur hat gripped her hand and pulled her to him. Liam’s face laughed down at her and pulled her reluctant lips into a smile of their own. He swept her off her feet and skated across the lake with her, then set her down, grasped her hands, and spun with her so that her body flew outward like a child’s. And like a child, she laughed in delight.
    Then he let go, and she went hurtling backward until her belly hit the ice. She skidded, her hands still outstretched toward him.
    In the next sequence of her dream, they were still on the ice, but Liam had dropped to one knee and extended a velvet ring box toward her, while she shook her head and skated away. But he had some kind of homing device or some strange power over her, because despite her intent to leave, she was pulled back by a magnetic force.
    He quizzically lifted one eyebrow and plucked the ring from its velvet bed. He doffed his tall fur hat and sent it spinning over the ice. Then he got to his feet and skated toward her. He took her left hand and slid the ring over the knuckle of the fourth finger.
    No sooner had he done so than the ice came ablaze with red and blue lights. Men in SWAT team jackets with sniper rifles swarmed the lake. She held up her hands, palms forward, and stared in anguish at the sparkling rock on her hand.
    Liam had disappeared altogether, and she was arrested for receiving stolen property. She tried to explain that she was innocent, but they wouldn’t listen to her. They cuffed her and stuffed her into the back of a squad car . . .
    Avy awakened with a start as the captain’s voice announced their