by Nora Roberts
With her clothes half on, half off, her mind light, and her hunger satisfied, Whitney rolled on top of him and grinned. “I haven’t had a date like this since I was sixteen.”
“Oh yeah?” He ran a hand up her thigh to her hip. Her eyes were dark, glazed with a combination of weariness, wine, and passion. Doug promised himself he’d see them like that again, when they were in some cozy hotel on the other side of the world. “So a guy could get you into the back seat with a little wine and caviar?”
“Actually it was crackers and beer.” She sucked beluga from her finger. “And I ended up punching him in the stomach.”
“You’re a fun date, Whitney.”
She tipped the last drops from the bottle into her mouth. Around them, the forest was full of insects rubbing their wings and singing. “I am, and have always been, selective.”
“Selective, huh?” He shifted so that she lay across him as he supported himself against the door of the jeep. “What the hell’re you doing here with me then?”
She’d asked herself the same question and the simplicity of the answer left her uneasy. She wanted to be. For a moment she was silent, nestling her head against his shoulder. It felt right there, and though it was foolish, safe. “I suppose I fell for your charm.”
“They all do.”
Whitney tilted her head, smiled, then sunk her teeth, not so gently, into his bottom lip.
“Hey!” While she laughed, he pinned her arms to her side. “So, she wants to play rough.”
“You don’t scare me, Lord.”
“No?” Enjoying himself, he gripped both her wrists in one hand and circled her neck with the other. Her eyes never flickered. “Maybe I’ve been too easy on you so far.”
“Go ahead,” she challenged. “Do your worst.”
She looked up at him with that cool half smile, her whiskey eyes dark and sleepy. Doug did what he’d avoided all his life, what he’d avoided more cleverly, more carefully than small-town sheriffs and big-city cops. He fell in love.
“Jesus, you’re beautiful.”
There was something in the tone of his voice. Before she could analyze it, or the look that had come into his eyes, his mouth was on hers. They both fell into passion.
It was as the first time. He hadn’t expected it to be. The feelings, the needs that swam through him were just as intense, just as overwhelming. He was just as helpless.
Under his hands, her skin flowed like water. Under his mouth, her lips were strong, more potent than sweet. The light-headed weariness passed into a light-headed power. With her, he could do and have anything.
The night was hot, the air moist and heavy with the scent of dozens of heat-soaked flowers. Night-feeding insects rubbed their wings and whined. He wanted candlelight for her, and a soft, cool feather bed with silk-covered pillows. He wanted to give, something new for a man who, while generous, always took first.
Her body was so delicate. It captivated him in a way all the others—the flamboyant, the obvious, the professional—never had. Her curves were subtle, her bones long and elegant. Her skin was soft in a way that spoke of daily pampering. He told himself there’d be a time when he’d have the luxury of exploring every inch of her, slowly, thoroughly, until he knew her like no other man ever had, like no other man ever would.
There was something different about him. He was no less passionate, but she knew there was something …
Her senses were tangled, layered one on top of the other so that she was caught in a delicious mass of sensation. She could feel, but what she felt came from him. The stroke of a fingertip, the brush of lips. She could taste, but it was his flavor which filled her, warm, male, exciting. She heard him murmur to her, and her own whispered answer floated on the air. His scent reached her, muskier, more intoxicating than the hothouse that surrounded them. Until now, she hadn’t understood what it meant to be steeped in someone. Until now, she hadn’t wanted to.
She opened. He filled. He gave. She absorbed.
From the beginning, they’d raced together. This was no different. Heart pounding against heart, bodies close, they crossed the line all lovers seek.
They slept lightly, only an hour, but it was a luxury they took greedily, curled together on the seat of the jeep. The moon was lower now. Doug watched its position through the trees before he nudged her.
“We’ve got to move.” Remo might still be scrambling for transportation; then again, he might already be on the road behind them. Either way, he wouldn’t be cheerful.
Whitney sighed and stretched. “How much farther?”
“I don’t know—another hundred, maybe hundred and twenty miles.”
“Okay.” Yawning, she began to dress. “I’ll drive.”
He snorted as he pulled on his jeans. “The hell you will. I’ve driven with you before, remember?”
“I certainly do.” After a brief inspection, Whitney decided the wrinkles in her clothes were permanent. She wondered if there was any chance of finding a dry cleaner. “Just as I remember I saved your life then, too.”
“Saved it?” Doug turned to see her rooting out her brush. “You nearly got us both killed.”
Whitney flicked the brush through her hair. “I beg your pardon. Through my superior skill and maneuvering, I not only saved your ass, but detained Remo and his band of merry men.”
Doug turned on the ignition. “I guess it’s all a matter of perspective. Anyway, I’ll drive. You’ve had too much to drink.”
Whitney cast him a long, withering look. “The MacAllisters never lose their wits.” She grabbed the door handle as they bumped through the brush and onto the road.
“All that ice cream,” Doug decided as he set a steady speed. “It coats the stomach so the booze neutralizes.”
“Very droll.” She released the door handle, propped her feet on the dash, and watched the night whiz by. “It occurs to me that you’re quite aware of my family history and background. What about yours?”
“Which story do you want?” he asked lightly. “I keep a variety, depending on the occasion.”
“Everything from the destitute orphan to the misplaced aristocrat, I’m sure.” Whitney studied his profile. Who was he? she wondered. And why did she care? She didn’t have the first answer, but the time had passed when she could pretend she didn’t have the second. “What about the real one, just for variety?”
He could have lied. It would have been a simple matter for him to have given her the story of a homeless little boy sleeping in alleys and running from a vicious stepfather. And he could have made her believe it. Settling back, Doug did what he did rarely. He told the unvarnished truth.
“I grew up in Brooklyn, a nice, quiet neighborhood. Blue-collar, plain, and settled. My mother kept house and my father fixed drains. Both my sisters were cheerleaders. We had a dog named Checkers.”
“It sounds very normal.”
“Yeah, it was.” And sometimes, rarely, he could bring it back in focus and enjoy it. “My father belonged to the Moose and my mom made the best blueberry pie you ever tasted. They both still do.”
“And what about young Douglas Lord?”
“Because I was, ah, clever with my hands, my father thought I’d make a good plumber. It just didn’t seem like my idea of a good time.”
“The hourly rate of a union plumber’s quite impressive.”
“Yeah, well I’ve never been into working by the hour.”
“So instead you decided to—how do you term it—freelance?”
“A vocation’s a vocation. I had this uncle, the family always kept kind of quiet about him.”
“A black sheep?” she asked, interested.
“I guess you wouldn’t have called him lily white. Seems he’d done some time. Anyway, to keep it short, he came to live with us for a while and worked for my dad.” He shot Whitney a quick, appealing grin. “He was good with his hands, too.”
“I see. So you came by your talent, dare I say, honestly.”
“Jack wa
s good. He was real good except he had a weakness for the bottle. When he gave in to it he got sloppy. Get sloppy, you get caught. One of the first things he taught me was never to drink on the job.”
“I don’t imagine you’re referring to unstopping pipes.”
“No. Jack was a second-rate plumber, but he was a first-class thief. I was fourteen when he taught me to pick a lock. Never been real sure why he took to me. One thing was I liked to read and he liked to hear stories. He wasn’t much on sitting down with a book, but he’d sit there for hours if you’d tell him the story of The Man in the Iron Mask or Don Quixote.”
She’d been aware from the beginning of a sharp intellect and a varied kind of taste. “So young Douglas liked to read.”
“Yeah.” He moved his shoulders and negotiated a curve. “First thing I stole was a book. We weren’t poor, really, but we couldn’t afford to stock the kind of library I wanted.” Needed, he corrected. He needed the books, the escape from the everyday the same way he’d needed food. No one had understood.
“Anyway, Jack liked hearing stories. I remember what I read.”
“Authors hope readers do.”
“No, I mean I remember almost line for line. It’s just the way it is. Got me through school.”
She thought about the ease with which he’d spouted off facts and figures from the guidebook. “You mean you have a photographic memory?”
“I don’t see it in pictures, I just don’t forget, that’s all.” He grinned, thinking. “It got me a scholarship to Princeton.”
Whitney sat up straight. “You went to Princeton?”
His grin widened at her reaction. Until then, he’d never considered the truth more interesting than fiction. “No. I decided rather than college I wanted on-the-job training.”
“You’re telling me you turned down a Princeton scholarship?”
“Yeah. Pre-law seemed pretty cut and dried.”
“Pre-law,” she murmured and had to laugh. “So, you might’ve been a lawyer. Ivy League at that.”
“I’d’ve hated it just as much as I’d’ve hated unstopping johns. There was Uncle Jack. He always said he didn’t have any kids and wanted to pass on his trade.”
“Ah, a traditionalist.”
“Yeah, well, in his way, he was. I caught on quick. I had a hell of a lot more fun tripping a lock than I did conjugating verbs, but Jack had this thing about education. He wouldn’t take me on a real job until I had my high-school diploma. And a little math and science come in handy when you’re dealing with security systems.”
With his talent, she imagined Doug could’ve been one of the top engineers in the business. She let it pass. “Very sensible.”
“We went on the road. Did pretty well for ourselves for about five years. Small, clean jobs. Hotels mostly. One memorable night we picked up ten thousand at the Waldorf.” He smiled, reminiscently. “We went to Vegas and dropped most of it, but it was a hell of a time.”
“Easy come, easy go?”
“If you can’t have fun with it, there’s no use taking it.”
She had to smile at that. Her father was fond of saying if you couldn’t have fun with it, there was no use making it. She supposed he’d appreciate Doug’s slight variation on the theme.
“Jack had this idea about hitting this jewelry store. Would’ve set us up for years. We only had a few details to work out.”
“What happened?”
“Jack fell off the wagon. He tried to pull the job on his own, what you might call an ego thing. I was getting better, and he was slipping a bit. I guess it was hard to take. Anyway, he got sloppy. It wouldn’t have been so bad if he hadn’t broken the rules and taken a gun with him.” Doug swung his arm back on the seat and shook his head. “That little flourish cost him ten good years.”
“So Uncle Jack went up the river. And you?”
“Up the river,” he murmured, amused. “I hit the streets. I was twenty-three and a hell of a lot greener than I thought I was. But I learned fast enough.”
He’d given up a Princeton scholarship to climb in second-story windows. The education might have bought him some of the luxury he seemed to crave. And yet … And yet, Whitney couldn’t see him choosing the well-trod road.
“What about your parents?”
“They tell the neighbors I work for General Motors. My mother keeps hoping I’ll get married and settle down. Maybe become a locksmith. By the way,” he added as one thought led to another, “who’s Tad Carlyse IV?”
“Tad?” Whitney noticed that the sky in the east was beginning to lighten. She might’ve closed her eyes and slept if her eyelids hadn’t felt filled with grit. “We were sort of engaged for a time.”
He immediately and completely detested Tad Carlyse IV. “Sort of engaged?”
“Well, let’s say Tad and my father considered us engaged. I considered it a matter for debate. They were both rather annoyed when I opted out.”
“Tad.” Doug visualized a blond with a weak jaw in a blue blazer, white deck shoes, and no socks. “What does he do?”
“Do?” Whitney fluttered her lashes. “Why I suppose you’d say Tad delegates. He’s the heir to Carlyse and Fitz, they manufacture everything from aspirin to rocket fuel.”
“Yeah, I’ve heard of them.” More megamillions, he thought and hit the next three ruts rather violently. The kind of people who stepped on an ordinary man without ever noticing the bump. “So why aren’t you Mrs. Tad Carlyse IV?”
“Probably for the same reason you didn’t become a plumber. It didn’t seem like a great deal of fun.” She crossed her feet at the ankles. “You might want to back up, Douglas. I believe you missed that last pothole.”
It was full morning when they stood on the rise of a mountain overlooking Diégo-Suarez. From that distance, the water in the bay was achingly blue. But the pirates who’d once roamed there wouldn’t have recognized it. The ships that dotted the water were gray and sturdy. There were no sleek sails billowing, no wooden hulls rolling.
The bay that had once been a pirate’s dream and an immigrant’s hope was now a major French naval base. The town that had once been the pride of buccaneers was a tidy modern city of some fifty thousand Malagasy, French, Indian, Oriental, British, and American. Where there had once been thatched huts stood steel and concrete buildings.
“Well, here we are.” Whitney linked her arm with his. “Why don’t we go down, book into a hotel, and have a hot bath?”
“We’re here,” he murmured. He thought he could feel the papers growing warm in his pocket. “First we find it.”
“Doug.” Whitney turned so that she faced him, her hands on his shoulders. “I understand this is important to you. I want to find it, too. But look at us.” She glanced down at herself. “We’re filthy. We’re exhausted. Even if it didn’t matter to us, people are bound to notice.”
“We aren’t going to socialize.” He looked over her head to the town below. To the end of the rainbow. “We’ll start with the churches.”
He went back to the jeep. Resigned, Whitney followed.
Fifty miles behind, jolting along the northern road in a ’68 Renault with a bad exhaust, were Remo and Barns. Because he needed to think, Remo let Barns drive. The little molelike man gripped the wheel with both hands and grinned straight ahead. He liked to drive, almost as much as he liked to run over whatever furry little thing might dash out on the road.
“When we catch ’em, I get the woman, right?”
Remo shot Barns a look of mild disgust. He considered himself a fastidious man. He considered Barns a slug. “You better remember Dimitri wants her. If you mess her up, you might just piss him off.”
“I won’t mess her up.” His eyes gleamed a moment as he remembered the photo. She was so pretty. He liked pretty things. Soft, pretty things. Then he thought of Dimitri.
Unlike the others, he didn’t fear Dimitri. He adored him. The adoration was simple, basic, in much the same way a small ugly dog might adore his master, even af
ter a few good kickings. What few brains Barns had been blessed with had been rattled well over the years. If Dimitri wanted the woman, he’d bring the woman to him. He gave Remo an amiable smile because in his own fashion Barns liked Remo.
“Dimitri wants Lord’s ears,” he said with a giggle. “Want me to cut ’em off for you, Remo?”
“Just drive.”
Dimitri wanted Lord’s ears, but Remo was well aware he might settle for a substitute. If he’d had any hope that he would’ve gotten away with it, he’d have headed the car in the opposite direction. Dimitri would find him because Dimitri believed an employee remained an employee until death. Premature or otherwise. Remo could only pray he still had his own ears after he reported to Dimitri at his temporary headquarters in Diégo-Suarez.
Five churches in two hours, she thought, and they’d found nothing. Their luck had to come in soon, or run out. “What now?” she demanded as they pulled up in front of yet another church. This one was smaller than the others they’d been to. And the roof needed repair.
“We pay our respects.”
The town was built on a promontory, jutting out over the water. Though it was still morning, the air was hot and sticky. Overhead, palm fronds barely moved in the slight breeze. With a little imagination, Doug could picture the town as it had once been, rowdy, simple, protected by mountains on one side and the man-made wall on the other. As he strode away from the jeep, Whitney caught up with him.
“Care to guess how many churches, how many cemeteries there are around here? Better yet, how many there were that’ve been built over?”
“You don’t build over cemeteries. Makes people nervous.” He liked the layout here. The front door was hanging crooked on its hinges, making him think no one used the church with any regularity. Around the side, a bit overgrown and canopied by palms, were groups of headstones. He had to crouch down to read the inscriptions.
“Doug, don’t you feel a bit ghoulish.” Skin chilled, Whitney rubbed her arms and looked over her shoulder.
“No.” The answer was simple as he peered closely at headstone after headstone. “Dead’s dead, Whitney.”