Everlasting

by Iris Johansen

  There was a faintly regretful look in his eyes. "Pity." He slowly shifted off her. One hand moved to pet her affectionately. "I know I'm being a selfish bastard, but I can't seem to get enough of you." He unfastened her skirt, then removed both it and the petticoats. "You tell me when you're ready." He smiled crookedly. "I assure you I'm at your disposal at any time." He lay down on the sheepskin pallet and pulled her into his arms, rolling her over so they were facing each other. Then he sighed con­tentedly. "Though this is nice too."

  "Yes." She nestled closer. "I think nice is a defi­nite understatement." Her eyes were drooping drowsily and she smothered a yawn against his shoulder.

  She was conscious of his hand running lazily down her arm to her wrist. "Take a nap, love. We have all night."

  She nodded. She would sleep presently, but right now she wanted to lie here and enjoy this wonderful closeness. Then his fingers were threading once more through hers in the intimate embrace that now seemed peculiarly their own. She smiled contentedly as her heavy lids closed. The last memory of which she was conscious was the sight of their hands joined in companionship.

  * * *

  It was early afternoon when she heard the whir of the helicopter. At first the sound was so faint it might have been the hum of a bee and she didn't bother to open her eyes. She was drowsy and content sitting here against the trunk of the beech tree, with the sun on her face and Zack's head in her lap, and it was impossible to believe anything could disturb the bucolic enchantment of the moment.

  Then the chugging whir became louder and her eyes flew open. "Zack!" There was an edge of panic in her voice. "Zack, I hear something."

  "Um-m," he murmured, not opening his eyes. "So do I."

  "It's a helicopter." She pushed his head from her lap and jumped to her feet in a flurry of petticoats. "I'm sure it's a helicopter." She ran to the edge of the hill, her gaze searching the sky. "Zack, for God's sake, just don't lie there. They've found us!"

  "I'm lying here because you nearly knocked me out when my head fell off your lap," he said dryly as he sat up.

  "Oh, dear, I'm sorry." She glanced over her shoulder with a stricken expression. "But they're here, Zack."

  A cinnamon-colored helicopter had appeared on the horizon. It was moving purposefully in their direction.

  Zack rose to his feet and strolled over to stand beside her. "So I see. But the question is. Who are they?" He suddenly grinned down at her. "Don't worry. It's not Stefan's storm troopers. I've been expecting this particular helicopter. I radioed Perry Bentley last night after you went to sleep and told him to fly in from Switzerland today.

  "Perry Bentley?"

  "My assistant. You probably saw him that night outside the theater in Tucson." He turned and started down the hill. "Put your boots on and let's go down and meet him as he lands."

  She stared after him. "How did you know I was outside the theater that night?" But he was half­way down the hill and could no longer hear her. She hurriedly thrust her bare feet into the boots and tucked the tail of her blouse into her skirt. Then she was hurrying after him.

  She caught up as he reached the open field. Zack's own helicopter was stashed on the perime­ter, beneath the cover of overhanging trees. She watched as the aircraft landed in the exact center of the field. "How did you know I was outside—"

  His hand closed on her arm as he stepped for­ward eagerly. "Come on. I want you to see your present." He was pulling her toward the helicopter, his expression endearingly boyish.

  "My present?" she echoed bewilderedly. .

  The door of the helicopter was opening and the plump man who had run interference for Zack at the theater the first night she'd seen him jumped to the ground. He was dressed in casual jeans and a yellow T-shirt, and was carrying a small card­board box.

  "Perry Bentley. Kira Rubinoff." Zack introduced them absently as he took the box and handed it to Kira. "Your present." ^

  "How do you do," Kira murmured as she opened the box. A camera. A state-of-the-art Nikon—with every conceivable lens and attachment. Her eyes lifted to Zack's. "You had him fly from Switzerland to bring me a camera?"

  "You wanted it," he said simply. "You said it was important to you and Marna." His brow suddenly furrowed in a frown. "Don't you like it?"

  She felt tears sting her eyes. What an extrava­gant and touching gesture! She felt a surge of feel­ing so intense it took her breath away. "I love it," she finally whispered huskily. Her index finger caressed the camera. "It's the most wonderful pres­ent I've ever received. Thank you, Zack."

  "It's far more advanced than the first one he bought you," Bentley said cheerfully. "They've made some amazing strides in technology in the last five years. There are some instructions in the box that will show you how to use the new—" He broke off with a frown as he caught her stunned expression. "Is something wrong?"

  "That's what I'm wondering," she said slowly. "But, yes, I'm beginning to think there may be something very wrong." She turned to Zack. "You bought me the camera Marna gave me for my eight­eenth birthday?"

  Zack stiffened warily. "I was going to tell you about that. Somehow I just didn't get around to it." His voice lowered. "I found myself otherwise dis-tracted. "

  Her heart jerked, and for a moment the shock and bewilderment ebbed as she remembered the "distraction." Then she pulled her attention back to the subject at hand. She had an uneasy feeling this was even more important than it appeared on the surface.

  She swiftly lifted her head to meet Bentley's eyes. "Zack was aware that I was outside the theater in Tucson, even though I was careful to keep in the background. Now how do you suppose he knew. Mr. Bentley?"

  Bentley cast an uncomfortable glance at Zack. Then, when his employer slowly nodded permis­sion, he said, "The security man who was tailing you called me on the car phone." "Tailing me? What security man?" "The one who has been assigned to protect you for the last seven years," Bentley said. He was defi­nitely uneasy now and his words came out, choppily. "Jansen is one of Mr. Damon's best secu­rity men."

  Kira felt as if she were lost in a maze of mirrors where nothing appeared as it really was. "Seven years?"

  "Actually, it was more like ten," Zack said qui­etly. "I became very dissatisfied with Stefan's slip­shod security and decided to protect you myself." He motioned with a jerk of his thumb. "The encampment is through that grove of poplars, Perry. Please go wait for us there."

  "Right," Bentley said in evident relief before he scurried toward the stand of trees.

  "I think you owe me an explanation," Kira said carefully.

  He nodded. "Yes, I think I do too. I first heard about you the summer I was nineteen. Marna had come to the camp to nurse her mother and I was always off in the hills with Paulo so I didn't see much of her at first. Then I began to catch her star­ing at me." He smiled crookedly. "Rather like a housewife considering the merits of a piece of meat for a stew. One day she took me aside and told me about the mondava. She also told me about a child called Kira, who was the other half of me. She said that one day, after the child had become a woman, she would send her to me." He paused. "I didn't believe a word of it. I was accustomed to a certain amount of mysticism, but mysticism is difficult to accept when applied to one's own self. The whole thing sounded like a soap opera or one of those old bodice-ripper novels. A royal princess couldn't be the other half of a half-breed like Zack Damon. Not in real life. So I went back to Arizona and began to dismiss it from my mind." He slowly shook his head. "I didn't take Mama's determination into account. The first letter came a month later."

  "Letter?"

  "She wrote me every month or so. I was moving around a great deal then and I don't know how she managed to keep track of me, but somehow she did." His eyes met hers. "They were always about you. What you'd said and what you'd done. Occa­sionally she'd send me a snapshot or a hair ribbon or a page of your homework on which you'd gotten a particularly good grade. I gradually got to know you. I looked forward to those lette
rs as if you were my child. Then, as you grew older, that feeling began to change. You were still mine, but not enough mine. I began to think about the mondava and to believe in it." His voice dropped to a whis­per. "I was growing very impatient by the time Marna sent you to me in Tucson. I don't think I could have waited much longer before I came to you. Perhaps Mama knew that."

  "She probably did." Kira ran her fingers distract­edly through her hair. "And she certainly wouldn't have wanted her precious mondava to be spoiled. There's more, isn't there? Mama's rescue was a lit­tle too smooth to have been effected on the spur of the moment. You already knew she was being held prisoner when I came to you."

  Zack nodded. "The bribe had been arranged over a month ago. I had a special operative, Steve Dubliss, waiting in Switzerland. We were planning to go in after her in the next few days."

  She shook her head in bewilderment. "You and Mama seem to have planned everything, down to the last detail." She whirled away from him. "I've just thought of something. I don't believe you've told me the whole story. I have to talk to Marna."

  He fell into step with her as she hurried toward the encampment. "It's not as if we were trying to hurt you," he said gently. "Why are you so upset, Kira?"

  "I can't talk about it now," she said jerkily. "I have to talk to Marna. I have to know everything." He opened his mouth to speak and then closed it again. He was silent the rest of the way.

  Marna was standing on the edge of the little crowd surrounding Perry Bentley, but she broke away as she caught sight of Kira and Zack. She came toward them with a wide smile on her face. "A camera, Kira. How you will love—" She broke off as she caught sight of Kira's tense expression. "What is wrong?"

  "She knows everything, Marna," Zack said with a rueful shrug. "Not quite everything," Kira snapped. "But I'm beginning to suspect quite a lot." She drew a deep breath. "Marna, when we crossed the border back into Tamrovia from Sedikhan and arrived at the Gypsy camp, how did Stefan's soldiers know we'd show up there?"

  Marna gazed at her impassively for a long moment. "I told Paulo to send an anonymous message to Stefan telling him when we'd arrive."

  Zack let his breath out in a low whistle. "I didn't know that. Do you suppose Machiavelli had any Gypsy blood?"

  Marna shrugged. "If he had been Gypsy, he would have had the sense not to become involved in all those intrigues and enjoyed his life instead. Intrigue should be used only infrequently to accomplish one's ends."

  "You deceived me," Kira said in disbelief. "I was so frightened and worried about you, and it was you who deliberately arranged for your own cap­ture. Why, Marna, why?"

  "It was time for the mondava," Marna said sim­ply. "I had to find a way to send you to Zack and set it into motion."

  "She only did it for your happiness, Kira," Zack said quietly.

  "I know that." Kira's voice was charged with ten­sion. "She'd walk through fire to make sure I was happy."

  Marna nodded. "It was for the best."

  "You're both being so marvelously soothing and unconcerned about it all." Kira's sapphire eyes were suddenly blazing in her pale face. "Don't you realize what you've done? You've manipulated me! All my life I've been just a chess piece for Stefan and my parents to move around the chessboard. I accepted that." Her smile was bittersweet. "Per­haps not tamely, but I could accept it because they didn't really care about me. But you love me, Marna, and yet you've manipulated me too." She turned to Zack. "And didn't it ever occur to you to come to me in all those years and not wait for Marna to pull the strings? You know, I don't think it did. I was just an empty-headed doll to you. Well, I'm not a chess piece or a puppet or a doll. I'm none of those things, and I'm not a child, either."

  Zack took an impulsive step toward her. "Kira—"

  "No." She backed away from him. "Don't touch me. I can't think when you touch me. And it's time I stopped reacting and started thinking."

  "You are hurting." There was a flicker of sadness in Mama's face. "I never meant for you to experi­ence pain."

  "Perhaps it's time I did experience pain," Kira said huskily. "Whenever I was with you, Marna, I felt I had stepped out of the glass bubble. But I hadn't, not really. A strong, overprotective love can be just as effective in keeping someone from the real world as protocol and a ring of guards." She thrust the box with the camera in it at Marna. "Will you keep this for me? I have some thinking to do and I want to go back up on the hill to do it."

  "I'd like to come with you," Zack said.

  She shook her head. "I want to be alone." She smiled shakily. "You distract me too. I'll try not to be long." She started away and then turned back to them. "It's not that I don't know how good you've both been to me. It's just that I feel as I did the other night when Paulo ruffled my hair and called me a child. I can't let that. . ."She made a helpless little movement with one hand and turned away again. "I'll be back soon."

  It was dusk when Kira came down from the hill. She had watched the piercing blue of the sky turn to the blazing scarlet of sunset and then fade to the gentle violet of twilight. She had felt the warmth of the Indian summer afternoon cool to autumn evening chill, and still she had sat under the beech tree lost in thought.

  Zack and Marna were alone at the saldana when she walked into camp. The evening campfire had been lit and the pungent smell of coffee drifted to her.

  Marna glanced up from her cup. "You haven't had anything to eat since lunch. I've made a stew."

  "I'm not hungry. Ill take some coffee, though," Kira said as she strolled over to the fire and plopped down on the sheepskin pallet beside Zack. She crossed her legs tailor-fashion and took the tin cup Mama handed her. Marna returned to her stool on the other side of the fire and picked up her own cup again.

  Kira felt their concern as she took a sip of the strong, hot coffee and looked up with a half-comical grimace. "I feel like Moses coming down from the mountain with the ten commandments. I didn't mean to be that pretentious when I stalked off. I haven't made any philosophical discoveries that will shake the world." She paused. "Except perhaps my own."

  "And ours," Zack said quietly. "Everything you do and say and think are very important to us. Did it help, Kira?"

  "Yes, it did help." She cradled her cup in her hands as she gazed into the fire. "For one thing, I decided I had no right to be upset with either one of you. If you manipulated me, It was because I let myself be manipulated. I've made a habit of acting impulsively. I relied on you, Marna, to do my think­ing. " She met Mama's gaze across the campfire. "No mature adult would let herself be sent to a stranger with instructions 'to do whatever was necessary.' I was so accustomed to relying on you and believing you were always right that I merely followed your instructions without questioning them." She held up her hand as Marna would have interrupted. "I don't say that I wouldn't have done it if I'd stopped to consider. There's a good chance I would have acted in exactly the way I did. But I would have known it was my choice, the choice of an Independent individual." She paused as if searching for words. "You see, I've always played at being independent with my little defiances, but I've never been willing to take that extra step into true independence." She laughed shakily. "I was fright­ened, I guess. As long as I was an irresponsible child I didn't have to commit myself totally to any­thing or anyone. Well, I've decided I can't live that way anymore. I have to assume the responsibilities that go along with love."

  She set her cup down and spread her hands on her knees, her fingers flexing nervously. She drew a deep breath. "I love you, Marna, and I'm going to keep on loving you until the day I die. You're going to be a part of me for the rest of my life. I don't give a damn what you think the mondava is going to do to our relationship. I know myself and I know my love for you isn't going to change . . . except to grow stronger maybe." She turned to Zack. "And I love you too. I've never told you before. We've all been so concerned with this mondava business that we've ignored the basics."

  Zack smiled faintly. "I'd say you couldn't get much more b
asic than the mondava."

  She met his eyes directly. "Yes, you could. There's always a plain old-fashioned declaration of undying devotion. Which you haven't made, by the way. I think there are several people around here besides me who have a few problems." She made an impa­tient gesture with one hand. "We'll address that later. Right now, I just want you to know I love you. And no matter how you feel about me at the moment, someday I'm going to know that you love me too. You once said I had the idea my value lay only in my title, and maybe you were right. But I've been thinking about it, and I'm a hell of a lot more than a title. I have intelligence and stamina and determination."

  "And a very loving heart," Zack said softly. "Thank God."

  Her eyes met his with glowing serenity. "Oh, yes, I have that too. Any man who gets me will have a prize. I'm going to make sure you appreciate me, Zack." She was having trouble tearing her gaze away. His dark eyes reflected so many wonderful things—pride, understanding, tenderness. She finally managed it and looked back into the flames. "However, that's all going to have to wait. I'm going

  to have to straighten out this mess with Stefan before I'm free to pursue you."

  Zack stiffened warily. "I don't like the sound of that."

  "I didn't think you would." She made a face. "You're going to like even less the way I intend doing it. I'm going to fly back to the palace tonight and make Stefan give me his word that Marna will be allowed either to live with or visit her tribe with­out any interference on his part."

  "No!" Marna said harshly, coming erect on her stool.

  "Yes," Kira said firmly. "I'm not going to let you suffer for helping me. Stefan was wrong. I just can't cave in on something this important."

  "You tried to convince him before." Zack's face reflected none of the resistance she had expected. His expression was merely speculative. "What makes you think you can do it now, when you couldn't do it then?"

  "I pleaded. I appealed. I reasoned. Now I'm going to try something else. I'm going to set forth my terms and cram them down his throat. If I'm forced to, I'll blackmail him. I'll tell him I'll give interviews to the press revealing conditions in Tamrovia. Ill even involve Sedikhan if there's absolutely no other way. If you decide to do something, it's worth going all the way." Her lips curved in a tiny smile. "Or so someone told me quite recently."