Honest Illusions

by Nora Roberts

  of timing.

  When she felt she could stand again, she rejoined a worried Mouse in the tiny, sunwashed terminal. “It’s okay,” she told him. “Just one of the benefits of expectant motherhood.”

  “You going to have to do that for nine whole months?”

  “Thanks, Mouse,” she said weakly. “I needed that.”

  They spent nearly an hour trying to get information on Luke’s plane from the flight tower. Yes, he had been scheduled to land at that airport. No, he had never arrived. He had never come into radio contact or requested permission to divert. He had simply veered off somewhere over the Gulf.

  Or, as the cheerful flight dispatcher suggested, into the Gulf.

  “He didn’t crash, damn it.” Roxanne stormed back to the plane. “No way did he crash.”

  “He’s a good pilot.” Mouse hustled behind her, patting her shoulder, her head. “And I checked out the plane myself before he left.”

  “He didn’t crash,” she repeated. Unrolling one of Mouse’s charts, she began to study the lay of the land on the Mexican side of the Gulf. “Where would he go, Mouse? If he’d decided to avoid Cancún.”

  “I’d make a better guess if I knew why.”

  “We don’t know why.” She rubbed the cold bottle of Coke Mouse had bought her against her sweaty brow. “We can speculate—maybe he wanted to cover a trail. We can’t call Sam and ask him if his wife’s sapphires are missing. There’s been no announcement on the news of a burglary, but they often keep the wraps on for a while. If he ran into trouble in Tennessee, he might have decided, for his own idiotic reasons, to head west, let John Carroll Brakeman disappear.”

  “But why didn’t he check in?”

  “I don’t know.” She wanted to scream it, but kept her tone level. “These islands here. Some of them have to have airstrips. Official ones, and not-so-official ones. For smuggling.”

  “Yeah, sure.”

  “Okay.” She handed the chart to Mouse. “Let’s check it out.”

  They spent three days searching the Yucatan Peninsula. They spread Luke’s description up and down the coast, slipping money into eager hands and following false leads.

  Roxanne’s bouts of nausea left Mouse wringing his hands and wishing for Lily. If he tried to fuss or pamper, Roxanne snapped like a terrier. Conversely, her flashes of temper reassured him. He was well aware that given the chance, she would tramp off into the jungle alone, armed with no more than a canteen and a driving need. Until they located Luke, Mouse considered Roxanne his responsibility. When she looked too pale or too flushed, he forced her to stop and rest, bearing her tantrums like an oak bears the tapping of a woodpecker—with silence and grave dignity.

  The routine became so set, both of them began to feel they would spend the rest of their lives at it.

  Then they found the plane.

  It cost Roxanne a thousand American dollars for a ten-minute conversation with a one-eyed Mexican entrepreneur who ran his business out of a sod hut in the Mayan jungle near Mérida.

  He pared his nails with a pocketknife while a wary-eyed woman with dusty feet fried tortillas.

  “He says he wants to sell, do I want to buy.” Juarez tipped tequila into a tin cup, then generously offered Roxanne the bottle.

  “No, thanks. When did you buy the plane?”

  “Two days ago. I give him good price.” He’d all but stolen it, and the satisfaction of that made Juarez expansive to the pretty señorita. “He needs money, I give him money.”

  “Where did he go?”

  “I don’t ask questions.”

  She wanted to swear, but noting the skittishness of the woman by the stove, opted for tact. Her smile was laced with admiration. “But you’d know if he was still in the area. A man like you, with your contacts, you’d know.”

  “Si.” He appreciated the fact she showed respect. “He’s gone. He camps one night in the jungle, then poof.” Juarez snapped his fingers. “Gone. He moves softly, and fast. If he knows such a beautiful lady wants him, maybe he moves slower.”

  Roxanne pushed away from the table. Luke knew she wanted him, she thought wearily. And still, he was running. “Would you mind if I looked at the plane?”

  “Look.” Juarez gestured, and something in her eyes stopped him from demanding a separate payment for the privilege. “But you won’t find him.”

  She found nothing of him, not even ashes from one of his cigars. There was no sign that Luke had ever sat in the cockpit or held the wheel or studied the stars through the glass.

  “We can try north,” Mouse said as Roxanne sat in the pilot’s seat and stared out at nothing. “Or inland.” He was groping, uneasy with the blank, dazed look on her face. “Could be he went farther inland.”

  “No.” She only shook her head. Despite the heat hammering down on the roof of the plane, she was too cold for tears. “He left his message right here.”

  Confused, Mouse glanced around the cockpit. “But, Roxy, there’s nothing here.”

  “I know.” She closed her eyes, let the grief tear through her so hope could drain free. When she opened them again, they were clear, and they were hard. “There’s nothing here, Mouse. He doesn’t want to be found. Let’s go home.”

  PART THREE

  This rough magic I here abjure.

  —WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

  25

  Now he was back. His five-year vanishing act was over, and like the veteran performer he was, Luke had posed his return engagement with a sense of drama and panache. His audience of one was captivated.

  For a moment.

  The man pressed against her cleverly assaulting her mouth, her mind, wasn’t an illusion. He was flesh and blood. It was all so achingly familiar, the good solid weight of him, the taste of his skin, the trip-hammer of her own pulse as those strong, clever fingers crept up to cup her cheek.

  He was real.

  He was home.

  He was the lowest form of life that had ever slunk through the mud.

  Her hands tightened in his hair, then yanked with enough strength to make him yelp.

  “Jesus, Roxanne—”

  But that was all the misdirection she needed. She twisted, shoving her elbow hard into his ribs, popping her knee up between his legs. He managed to block the crippling knee, but she used that same stiffened elbow to catch him hard on the chin.

  He saw stars. The next thing he knew, he was on his back with Roxanne straddling him and snarling as her carefully manicured nails shot toward his face.

  He gripped her wrists, clamping down before those curled fingers could peel back his skin. They remained in that position, one that brought each uncomfortably sensual memories, breathing hard and eyeing each other with mutual dislike.

  “Let me go, Callahan.”

  “I want to keep my face in the same condition it was when I walked in.”

  She tried to twist free, but the five years he’d spent doing God knew what hadn’t weakened him. He was still strong as a bull. Biting would have been satisfying, but undignified. She settled on disdain.

  “Keep your face. It doesn’t interest me.”

  Though he loosened his hold, he remained braced until she stood, with as much grace and arrogance as a goddess rising out of a pool.

  He got up quickly, with that eerie speed and economy of movement she remembered too well, and stood on the balls of his feet. Saying nothing, she turned her back on him and poured a glass of champagne. Even as the bubbles exploded on her tongue, they tasted flat and dry. But it gave her a moment, a much needed moment, to lock the last latch on her heart.

  “Still here?” she asked as she turned back.

  “We have a lot to talk about.”

  “Do we?” She sipped again. “Odd, I can’t think of a thing.”

  “Then I’ll do the talking.” He stepped over pooling water and crushed roses to top off his own glass of wine. “You can try something new, like listening.” His hand whipped out to snag her wrist before she could toss her w
ine into his face. “Want to fight some more, Rox?” His voice was low and dangerous and, Lord help her, sent a thrill racing up her spine. “You’ll lose. Figure the odds.”

  They would be against. Temper might urge her to fly biting and scratching into his face, but she’d only end up on her butt again. Still, she had other weapons. And she’d use them all to pay him back for the years he’d left her alone.

  “I won’t waste good wine on you.” When his fingers relaxed, she brought the glass back to her lips. “And my time’s even more valuable. I have an engagement, Luke. You’ll have to excuse me.”

  “Your calendar’s free until the press conference tomorrow.” He lifted his glass in toast. “I already checked with Mouse. Why don’t we have a late supper? We can hash things out.”

  Fury simmered just below flash point. Carefully, Roxanne turned to her dressing table and sat. “No, thanks just the same.” Setting her glass aside, she began to cream off her stage makeup. “I’d just as soon dine with a rabid bat.”

  “Then we’ll talk here.”

  “Luke, time passes.” She tossed used tissues aside. He could see that beneath the glamour she’d painted on for the stage, she was only more beautiful. None of the pictures he’d managed to find and hoard over the years came close to what she was in the flesh. None of the longings he’d suffered could equal what speared through him now.

  “When it does,” she continued, patting moisturizer over her skin, “events either become larger than they were or smaller. You could say that whatever we had has become so small, it’s next to invisible. So let’s not hash, all right?”

  “I know I hurt you.” Whatever else he had been prepared to say froze in his throat as her eyes flashed to his in the glass. They were green smoke, and in them the emotions which swirled were painful to watch.

  “You have no idea what you did to me.” The words were hardly more than a whisper and left him battered. “No idea,” she repeated. “I loved you with all my heart, with everything I was or could be, and you shattered it. Shattered me. No, don’t.” She sucked in her breath, going stiff and still as his hand reached for her hair. “Don’t touch me again.”

  He let his hand hang a bare inch away before dropping it to his side. “You have every right to hate me. I’m only asking you to let me explain.”

  “Then you ask too much. Do you really think anything you could say would make up for it?” She turned on her seat and rose. She’d always been strong, he remembered. But she was stronger now, and distant as the moon. “That whatever explanation you could conjure up would put things right so I’d welcome you back with open arms and a turned-down bed?”

  She stopped herself, realizing she was preciously close to shouting and losing whatever small handhold she had on dignity. “I do have a right to hate you,” she said with more calm. “I could tell you that you broke my heart, and I put it back together with a lot of sweat and effort. And that would be true. I can also offer you a more pertinent truth. I simply have no heart where you’re concerned. You’re smoke and mirrors, Luke, and who knows better how deceiving they are than I?”

  He waited until he could be sure his voice would be as even as hers. “You want me to believe you feel nothing?”

  “It only matters to me what I believe.”

  He turned away, amazed that he’d wanted to be close to her for so long and now desperately needed distance. She was right. Time passes. No matter how much magic was left in him, he couldn’t wink away the years.

  Still, he wasn’t going to let the past continue to dictate his future. And he wanted that cool, succulent taste of revenge. For all of those things, he needed her.

  “If you’re telling me the truth about your feelings, then doing business with me shouldn’t be a problem.”

  “I handle my own business.”

  “And very well, too.” Changing tactics, he took out a cigar and sat. “As I said earlier, I have a proposition for you. A business offer I think you’ll be very interested in.”

  She shrugged and removed the silver stars at her ears. “I doubt it.”

  “The philosophers’ stone” was all he said. The earrings clattered on the dressing table.

  “Don’t push the wrong button, Callahan.”

  “I know who has it. I know where it is, and I have some ideas on how to get it.” He smiled. “Those buttons suit you?”

  “How do you know?”

  Perhaps it was the flare of his lighter as he lit the cigar, but Roxanne thought she saw something hot and vicious flash into his eyes. “Let’s just say I’ve made it my business to know. Are you interested?”

  She shrugged, picked up her brush and began to pull it slowly through her hair. “I might be. Where do you think it is?”

  He couldn’t speak. Not when the memories and all the longings that ran through them were flooding him. Roxanne brushing her hair, all rose and gold, laughing over her shoulder. So slender, so lovely.

  Their eyes met in the mirror again. The shock of the mutual memory snapped like lightning in the air. Her hand trembled once as she set the brush aside.

  “I asked where you thought it was.”

  “I said I know.” He took a long, quiet breath. “It’s in a vault in a library of a house in Maryland. It’s owned by an old friend of ours.” Luke drew in smoke, expelled it in a thin blue cloud. “Sam Wyatt.”

  Roxanne’s eyes narrowed. Luke knew that look, and knew he had her. “You’re telling me Sam has the philosophers’ stone. The stone Max spent years looking for.”

  “That’s right. It seems to be genuine. Sam certainly believes it to be.”

  “Why would he want it?”

  “Because Max did,” Luke said simply. “And because he’s convinced it represents power. I doubt he sees anything mystical about it.” He shrugged and crossed his legs at the ankles. “It’s more a symbol of conquest. Max wanted it, Sam has it. Has had it for the last six months.”

  It seemed wise to sit again, to get her bearings. She hadn’t really believed in the stone. There had been times when she had hated even the legend of it for drawing her father further and further away from his narrowing pinpoint on reality. Yet if it existed . . .

  “How do you know about it, about Sam?”

  He could have told her. There were so many things he could have told her reaching back over that five-year gulf. But to tell some was to tell all. He, too, had pride.

  “It’s my business how. I’m asking you if you’re interested in acquiring the stone.”

  “If I were interested, there’s nothing stopping me from acquiring it on my own.”

  “I’d stop you.” He didn’t move from his relaxed slouch on the chair, but she sensed the challenge, and the barrier. “I’ve put a lot of time and effort into tracing that stone, Roxanne. I won’t let you slip it out from under me. But . . .” He turned the cigar to study the tip. “I’m offering you a kind of partnership.”

  “Why? Why should you offer, why should I accept?”

  “For Max.” He looked back at her. “Whatever is between us, or not between us, I love him, too.”

  That hurt. As she absorbed the pain, she gripped her hands together on her lap. “You’ve certainly shown your devotion over the last five years, haven’t you?”

  “I offered to explain.” He shrugged, reached out for his champagne. “Now you’ll have to wait. You can work with me and have the stone, or I’ll get it alone.”

  She hesitated. Her mind was already mulling over the possibilities. It wouldn’t be difficult to locate Sam’s home in Maryland—not since he was the front-runner in the upcoming senatorial elections. The security would be a little more difficult for precisely the same reason, but not impossible.

  “I’ll need to think about it.”