by Kay Hooper
“Oh. That old thing,” Kelsey murmured, and followed the others to their vantage point on the hill.
Any old-fashioned dragon slayer would have found the end of the battle something less than rousing, but none of those involved were disappointed. They were all aware that this battle hadn’t ended with a whimper but with something quiet and gallant.
Teddy joined Zach in the clearing where not a single weapon had been fired, and both looked at the villain who lay sprawled on his side, snoring softly. Against his will, Zach had to smile.
Looking up at him gravely, Teddy said, “Sometimes the dragon lives. Life’s like that.”
And after a moment Zach said, “I guess it is, at that.”
The semi did indeed hold the shipment of arms, and with the sleeping men bound along with the two others just in case, a brief meeting was held alongside the vehicles.
Lifting a brow at the others, Kelsey said, “My boss kind of figured all of you would be in on the finish. In that event, he said I was to tell you that you’d all be called on to testify if the marshals found you here.”
Dryly, Zach said, “He’s just avoiding me.”
“Of course he is. But it’s true, nonetheless.”
Nodding, Zach said, “Teddy and I’ll take the Porsche, then.”
Josh looked at Kelsey. “You can claim the van as being your transportation up here. It’s registered in a phony name, anyway—just your style.”
“Yeah,” Kelsey said blandly, “we federal types do dumb things like that.”
Josh ignored that. “The rest of us can hitch a ride out with Rafferty.”
They all looked up as—right on cue—the thumping roar of an army helicopter neared. Zach took Teddy’s hand, said, “See you back in New York,” to the others, and headed off toward Raven’s car.
In her husband’s ear, Raven said, “Do you think—?”
Josh was watching them leave and said, “I don’t know. I’ve a feeling that fight isn’t over yet.”
“She’s tough,” Raven reminded him. “I don’t think she’ll give up easily.”
“I hope not,” Josh said. “I hope not.”
They drove straight through to Denver, Zach handling the fiery little Porsche with precision. Teddy’s bags had been transferred, and she still didn’t know if Zach meant to put her on a plane alone to Boston.
It was late when they arrived in Denver, and the first thing he did was to take her to a doctor. Teddy protested in vain, finally submitting when he calmly promised to have her various wounds checked out if he had to take her to a hospital emergency room. The doctor seemed to know him, asked no questions at all about Teddy’s arm or about the state of her wrists. He merely cleaned and bandaged her wounds, gave her a shot to guard against infection, and told Zach to drop in again sometime.
Then they went to a hotel, and Teddy still didn’t know what he intended to do. She was afraid to ask.
“A real shower,” she said with forced lightness after exploring the roomy suite. Zach was standing by the window, very still; she didn’t know if he was with her or not. “Hey, I thought doctors were supposed to report gunshot wounds.”
Zach stirred and turned to look at her. “He’s a friend. He knew that if it was something he’d need to report, I would have told him.”
For a moment Teddy couldn’t move. There was something in Zach’s eyes that almost broke her heart. “You’re going to send me away,” she whispered.
“Your sister needs you, remember?” He shrugged out of his jacket and tossed it over a chair, then removed the shoulder holster and placed his gun beside the jacket. His voice was even and calm. “There’ll be a car waiting for you in Boston. A replacement for the one I … drowned.”
“Live with me.” Her voice was still, stark. “Let me live with you. Anywhere, it doesn’t matter.”
“Don’t, Teddy.”
“Don’t what?” Her eyes felt hot, and there was an awful tightness in her chest. “Don’t fight for my happiness? I have to, Zach. I love you.”
“You’ll get over it,” he said, very low.
“Will you?”
He crossed the room to her and pulled her into his arms, holding her tightly against him for a long moment. “Don’t talk about later,” he said finally, roughly. “I don’t want to hear about later.” When he lifted his head, he was calm, but his eyes were dark and strained.
Teddy drew a deep breath, ignoring the aching tightness around her heart. Pushing him now, she knew, would do nothing except ruin what might well be their last hours together—and she wasn’t willing to do that. But she wasn’t beaten. Not yet.
“All right.” She conjured a smile for him. “Why don’t you take a shower while I call room service. We can relax for a while. Can’t we?”
They could. For Teddy, it seemed odd to be with Zach with no shadow of danger hanging over them. And when she thought about it, she felt a faint shock at the realization that she had known him less than a week. A lifetime of knowledge and emotions in less than a week.
And yet she didn’t feel hurried, confused, or disoriented by the rush of events and feelings. She felt—had felt throughout the past days—that she was standing on a solid base of certainty. She knew what she felt.
A week, a month, a year—it didn’t matter. She loved Zach.
Zach knew only too well what was behind the tight feeling in his chest. It had happened before, when he had seen her wound, her blood. When he had heard her scream and known she was in Ryan’s cruel hands. His fear for her, the fear of losing her, had gripped his heart like a huge hand, squeezing in agony.
And now he knew he was going to lose her. He would put her on a plane in the morning, bound for Boston and her family and her normal life, in which he wouldn’t fit.
She was talkative, stubborn, innately tough, humorous. She had the soft eyes of a doe that would pull things from inside him, things he didn’t even know were there; and then those soft eyes turned amber with a cat’s enigmatic mystery and lighted fires of need inside him. But hers was a normal life, unshadowed by danger, where the only guns were dart pistols to subdue simple four-legged animals.
His life, his very nature, was shaped by danger. He carried a gun more often than not, and his career was protecting an international corporation, its employees and, particularly, its charismatic leader from the various dangers that were an almost daily occurrence. He talked little, was secretive, stubborn, occasionally explosive.
They were both stubborn—not the best trait to have in common. But within a very few days something had happened between them. Zach told himself that he knew what it was. Not love but something fleeting, born in difficult and unusual circumstances. Something that would never, could never, last.
Teddy couldn’t love him.
Bleakly, he knew it would be worse this time. He was going to lose something he had never lost before, something vitally important to him. And it would be his own action that would send her out of his life. It had to be that way. A clean break while she still looked at him with no fear in her eyes.
Because if he waited, hoped, and then saw that fear, it would tear him apart.
With an effort of will that had never before been so difficult, Zach pushed it all away. He didn’t want to think about later. Not now. Only when he had to.
Teddy studied the room-service menu while listening to water running in the bathroom. Zach was shaving first, she realized, and she heard the shower begin as she called room service. She ordered a meal for them but requested that it be sent up in an hour and a half. Then she shed clothing erratically on her way to join Zach in the shower.
The small room was fogged with steam, the glass shower stall a misted barrier between them. Teddy just stood and gazed at him for a moment, intrigued by the hazy outline of his big body as he moved in the stall. And she felt a sudden onrush of her inner storm, sweeping toward her, over her. It was no longer a pain, as it had once been, but the strength and power of it was dizzying.
N
eed. A hot, gripping need for his touch, his closeness. A driving urge to touch him herself, so forceful that her hands reached out, fumbling, for the shower door without her conscious volition. And when the hot moisture of the stall closed around her, it was as if she had stepped bodily into the center of that surging tropical storm.
Zach turned, his eyes sweeping over her. “You’ll get the bandages wet,” he murmured.
“You’re a smart man—I’m sure you’ll think of something.” Her voice was husky.
He stepped closer, easing her body against his, and his mouth covered hers in a deep, possessive kiss. “What I’m thinking of right now,” he said against her lips, “isn’t bandages.”
But he did think of them, of course. One bandage covered her left arm from elbow to shoulder, and both wrists were bound. Which meant that it was almost impossible to keep them all dry. Almost impossible.
Being a man of many talents, Zach managed the impossible. He used his own large body to keep the majority of the spray off her, yet even managed to wash her hair. He was in an unusual mood, she thought fleetingly, teasing, laughing softly. His eyes clear but dark and curiously still. He handled her body with familiarity, and yet she had the feeling that he was … memorizing her. It made her throat ache.
Astonishingly, when they emerged from the shower stall, her bandages were still dry.
But the king-size bed got quite damp, because neither of them wanted to waste time with towels.
Room service came and went; darkness fell outside. Room service came and went again. They dressed in the absolute minimum to answer the door but otherwise remained naked and in bed. And they made love. Just as the days before had intensified their time together, so did these hours intensify their loving.
With every instinct she could claim, Teddy knew that Zach cared for her, but she knew also that he intended to send her away, out of his life. He wouldn’t even wait, give them a chance, and she knew why.
A single lamp by the bed provided the only light, and it was late when Teddy stirred at his side and lifted her head. She was on her stomach beside him, the covers drawn up to his waist and over her hips. She looked at him for a long time, knowing that he was awake, even though his eyes were closed. It had been a long day, with a sleepless night before that for him, yet neither of them could sleep.
And Teddy was racking her brain, trying desperately to come up with something that would convince him how sure her feelings were. “Zach? If—if you did believe I loved you, would there be a place in your life for me?”
He opened his eyes, and one hand began toying with her vivid hair. “Let it go, honey,” he murmured.
“I could never be afraid of you.”
“Teddy—”
With everything inside her tight, her voice emerged tense and strained. “Has it occurred to you that I’ve thrown away every shred of pride I’ve got? I’ve never done that, Zach. But I don’t care. Just give us a month, can you do that? And if after that you want me to go—”
“No,” he said softly, closing his eyes again. “I can’t do that, Teddy.”
“For my sake or yours?”
“Both. For both of us.”
She traced the scar over his ribs with trembling fingers. Quietly, despairingly, she said, “You’re afraid of something that’s never going to happen. I’ll stop breathing before I stop loving you.”
Zach had never wanted anything in his life more than he wanted to believe her. But he was locked inside himself, alone in the way he’d always been alone, and the only thing to keep him company there was the cold dread he felt at losing her.
He pulled her closer to his side, keeping his eyes closed because he didn’t know what she might see in them. And he felt her lips feathering along the scar on his cheek.
“You said I belonged to you,” she whispered.
“For a while,” he said. “Just for a while.”
Teddy scooted down and rested her cheek on his chest, staring with burning eyes and seeing only an emptiness inside her. He was going to send her away. And she was going to go. Only the passage of time would convince him, if even that would. She didn’t know if she’d be able to stand it. But she wasn’t ready to give up entirely, not yet. Not while the faintest hope remained.
Teddy awoke in the pre-dawn hours, conscious of twinges low down in her stomach. She wasn’t aware of the significance of that at first, merely uncomfortable and restless. When she did realize, she crept silently from the bed, leaving Zach sleeping deeply.
In the darkness she gathered what she needed from her luggage and went into the bathroom, closing the door behind her softly and turning on the light.
And she hadn’t realized until then just how much she had hoped. She had nothing to lessen the growing pain of cramps but wouldn’t have taken aspirin even if she’d had it.
It should hurt, she thought. It should hurt to know she wasn’t carrying Zach’s child.
The sun was well up when Zach awoke, and he was instantly aware that he was alone in the bed. He half sat up even as his eyes opened, then relaxed as he saw her. She was in a chair by the window, fully dressed, sitting with both legs over the arm of the chair, gazing at nothing.
She was pale and still and seemed to be in a world of her own. And even as he watched, a tear emerged from the corner of one eye and trailed down her cheek, silvery in the sunlight.
“Teddy?”
She looked at him, turning her head slowly. “You haven’t changed your mind?” Her voice almost wasn’t there.
“No.”
Teddy nodded a little, unsurprised. “Well, you won’t have to worry about repercussions, Zach. I am definitely not pregnant.”
Zach didn’t put a name to what he felt in that moment. But he dimly wondered how it was possible to feel so empty, so much like a hollowed-out shell.
NINE
BOTH OF TEDDY’S parents were at her sister’s house in Boston when she arrived there. They were an affectionate family and a talkative one, except for her father, so there was much exclaiming for a while. In particular, much speculation took place over the brand-new, gleaming blue Impala Teddy had arrived driving. But she wasn’t ready to tell them that story, and after a while her shrewd family stopped pressing.
Jenny, who looked enough like Teddy to be her twin, seemed somewhat relieved at stepping temporarily from the focus of family concern; after two miscarriages and five hazardous months of holding on to the life she carried, she confided to Teddy that she was a bit tired of being wrapped in cotton wool—especially since this time she knew her baby would be safely born.
Teddy didn’t doubt that knowledge, particularly when Jenny told her of having “seen” her daughter toddling around on strong legs.
As for herself, Teddy assumed a calm, if not cheerful, expression; assured her red-haired mother that she was fine; hugged her tall, laconic, silver-haired father; and brought her bags into her sister’s warm, cheerful house. Her brother-in-law had been forced to take a business trip, which was why his in-laws were watching over his wife, and so Teddy was spared his sharp eye; even after four years of marriage Robert wasn’t yet accustomed to the Tylers’ laid-back affection for one another and tended to be somewhat persistent in his own anxious concern.
For three days her family was careful not to pressure her. Then, on the fourth day, her father went in search of her. She was in the back garden, absently watching the yard across the way where children built a snowman, more of the white stuff falling all around them.
“Teddy?”
She roused herself and turned to look up at her father. “Hi, Daddy. You didn’t have to come out. You could have yelled.”
“I never yell.”
Teddy smiled a little. “No. You never do. I guess some people are just born that way.”
Justin Tyler leaned against a bare lower branch of the tree they were under and joined her in contemplating the falling snow. In an incurious tone he asked, “You’ve met someone recently who wasn’t born that way?”<
br />
She understood that her father was willing to listen, if she was prepared now to talk. And since his wise counsel had eased many a path through her life, she decided that she did indeed want to talk. And the nicest thing about her father was that he was amazingly adept at reading between the lines.
“Oh, not really. He doesn’t yell. He can be very cold when he’s angry, but it takes a lot to anger him. And when he’s pushed too far—I mean, really too far—then he just goes deadly quiet. Like a ticking bomb.”
“Did he explode?” her father asked idly.
“No. I stopped him,” she explained simply.
Justin Tyler glanced at his daughter. “I see. And if you hadn’t stopped him?”
“I think he would have killed a man. A very bad man.” She looked up at her father’s expressionless face, suddenly anxious that he understand. “The man tried to use me as a tool, to force Zach to do as he wanted, and he hurt me.” Absently, she rubbed her left arm, an action her father’s quick glance took note of. “Zach didn’t like that.”
Blessedly unconcerned regarding the circumstances of all this, Justin merely nodded. “Understandable.”
She smiled a little at the laconic comment. “You’ve met him, Daddy. Zach Steele. He works for—”
“Josh Long. Yes, I remember. Quite an impressive man.”
“He’s a good man, Daddy.”
“Of course he is, darling, or you wouldn’t be in love with him.”
Teddy felt quick, hot tears start to her eyes. “He sent me away. But I know he cares about me. I know it. He just won’t believe that I love him. Daddy—I saw—I saw him with me. At least, I think I did. And I saw all the jungles he’s fought in, and the dangers.”
Her father put an arm around her shoulders and hugged her. “Then give it a little time,” he advised. And because he had, after all, married one of those determined, red-haired, myopic, left-handed ladies and raised two more, he added softly, “If you stopped him from killing a man, I expect you’ll be able to stop him from walking out of your life. One way or another.”