The Last Exile Read Online Free

Max on it free of charge after discovering that his mate had been royally ripped off by a cowboy security firm that didn’t know the first thing about protection and was only interested in taking a sizeable wedge of the client’s money each month on a bogus maintenance contract.
    “Paul,” Felka said, “I didn’t expect you.” Felka had trouble with x’s and s’s, so it sounded like ‘eshshpect’, one of the many quirky things Tallis found deeply sexy about her. She had flame-red hair, pale features and the greenest eyes imaginable. Slight in build, she was wearing a bikini displaying perfectly rounded breasts and an enviably flat stomach. He suddenly felt old.
    She tipped up on her toes and planted two impossibly chaste kisses, one on either side of his cheek. Tallis inhaled her perfume of musk and roses. “Max said you had an interview.”
    “Change of plan.” He shrugged.
    She studied his face for a moment, her expression suddenly serious. “You are sad,” she said. “I can tell.”
    That obvious, he thought. He hoped she wasn’t too much of a mind reader—she’d be appalled by what else he was thinking. “Not for long.” He broke into a grin.
    “Come,” she said, grabbing his hand. “We swim.”
    “No splashing,” he teased.
    The pool was thirteen and a half metres by six and a half, and over two metres deep at the far end. The floor, painted turquoise, gave the impression of clear Caribbean. Tallis let her push him in but not before he’d scooped her up off her feet, making her squeal, and threatened to dump her unceremoniously into the water.
    “Promise we talk in Polish,” he said laughing, dangling her squiggling body over the edge.
    “I promise. I promise,” she shrieked.
    “Rude words, too.”
    “Yes, yes.” Yesh, yesh.
    Afterwards they sprawled out and watched the warm early July sunshine pour through the smoke-tinted windows. Several statues graced the outer perimeter of the pool. They looked like snooty guests, Tallis thought, sipping the coffee Felka had made.
    As far as he understood, Felka was leaving to go home for a holiday the following morning, home being Krakow—a city on the river Vistula. According to Felka, and if he’d grasped it right, Krakow had been the capital during the fifteenth century, existing now as an industrial centre producing tobacco and railway equipment. Who needs work? he thought. This way I get history, geography and a foreign language all in the space of an afternoon.
    “Can you tell me how to get from Euston station to Heathrow?” She was speaking in Polish again.
    Tallis took a stab at it, pretty sure he had the right vocabulary but, worried he might send Felka off in the wrong direction, lapsed back into English. “Don’t want you ending up in Scotland.” He grinned. “I’ll draw you a map.”
    “Good idea,” she said, jumping to her feet. That was the thing he loved about her. She was so full of zing. As she scurried off, he took a long look at her luscious, retreating form. There was something unbeatable about a semi-clothed woman with wet hair.
    Felka returned with a notepad and pen and dropped them playfully on his chest. He picked them up and lightly swiped her bottom, making her break into peals of laughter. Sketching the route, he advised her to take a cabrather than tube because she had a very poor sense of geography. She’d once managed to get lost with the kids in the city centre. Penny had spent nearly an hour walking up and down trying to locate her, and that had been with the aid of mobile phones.
    Felka frowned. “Much expensive.”
    “Too expensive,” he corrected her.
    She stuck the tip of her tongue out, half playful, half come-on. Tallis ignored the gesture. “Believe me, it would be safest.”
    “No, no, I take the tube. I like the tube,” she insisted.
    “But—”
    “I’ll be fine.”
    “All right,” Tallis sighed, advising her to take the Victoria line Euston to Green Park and change onto the