REILLY'S RETURN

by Amelia Autin

  Reilly shook his head, wondering what had revived those ancient memories. He wasn't a man normally given to deep introspection, but the last eighteen months had wrought profound changes in his life, in him. Falling in love did that to a man. It gave him ideas. Made him think about settling down, making a home. Maybe having a couple of rug rats of his own to dandle on his knee or toss gleefully in the air the way he dimly remembered his dad doing with him.

  He'd give anything to have that chance now. Now, when it was too late.

  "Breakfast is ready." The clipped sentence broke in on his thoughts, and although the edge to Mandy's voice told him she was still upset, Reilly welcomed the interruption. His thoughts made bad company this morning.

  He glanced at the table, where Mandy had set two places. Obviously she wasn't upset enough to deny him something as basic as food. He caught her eye. "Thanks," he said, and meant it.

  She shrugged, a noncommittal gesture, and turned her back to him again as she fetched the coffeepot. He allowed himself one more lingering look at the woman he'd once hoped to make the mother of his children. Then he shut down his emotions, as he'd first learned to do thirty-five years ago.

  He picked up the shoulder holster he'd slipped off last night and had slung over the headboard within easy reach. By long-standing habit, he checked the .45 before sliding it back into the holster, then made for the bathroom. "Give me a minute," he said, "and I'll be right with you."

  * * *

  Breakfast was canned corned-beef hash and powdered scrambled eggs—neither of which did much for the taste buds. But at least the coffee was hot, strong, and delicious. Reilly had two quick cups, needing the reviving kick of caffeine.

  Mandy was giving him the silent treatment, speaking only when spoken to, asking no questions, and answering his questions with terse sentences that killed any chance at conversation. Finally he gave up.

  He scratched his unshaven cheek absently, fingering the stubble, and made a mental note to shave later. He hadn't had time before breakfast. He needed a shower, too, but that would have to wait until after he checked the perimeter traps. He'd checked them when he returned last night, tired as he was. They'd been undisturbed then, and he was pretty sure they still were, but he didn't like leaving things to chance.

  He rose and poured himself a third cup of coffee. "Do you want any more?" he asked, holding out the pot.

  "No thank you."

  He sipped his coffee standing at the stove, while he made a decision. When he sat back down, he took a breath, leaned his elbows against the table and said, "I talked to Walker last night."

  Mandy had been pushing her food around her plate uneaten. Now she glanced up in surprise. "Cody? I thought you said you didn't trust him."

  "That's not exactly what I said. What I said was that I needed to think about it first." He gave her a steady look. "I decided you were right."

  "Oh." She thought about it for a minute. "How much did you tell him?"

  "Everything."

  "Everything?" Her chin came up, and he didn't like the glint in her eyes. "I see. You told Cody, but you won't tell me." Her chair scraped backwards as she stood up, strong emotions controlling her movements. She cleared the table with haste, almost throwing the plates and utensils into the sink.

  She stood there a moment, then swung around. "It's my life." She thumped her chest in frustration. "My life. I have a right to know what's going on, damn it! You have no right to keep me in the dark. This isn't the eighteen-hundreds. We don't equate women with chil—" Her voice faltered, a stricken expression on her face, but she rallied. "We don't equate women with children anymore."

  Silence followed her outburst. Reilly studied her in the early-morning light coming through the window over the sink, really studied her for the first time since the night of the fire. As haunted as she'd appeared that night, she was even worse now. There was a pinched look about her, lines of strain pulling her lovely face into a sad reflection of the woman he'd fallen in love with, and he realized she was at the end of her rope. She couldn't take much more.

  "Sit down," he ordered abruptly, pulling a chair out for her. She didn't comply right away—it was plain she didn't much care for his ordering her around, especially in the middle of an argument—but he just waited patiently until she seated herself. Then he asked, "Have you ever heard of a man named David Pennington?"

  Her brows knitted as she thought for a moment. Then she shook her head. "No, I don't think so. Should I have?"

  "No reason for you to, I guess, although his name was in the news a while back." He hesitated. "David Pennington is … was the leader of an anarchist paramilitary organization, the New World Militia. They, the group, that is, believed that any government—federal, state, or local—is inherently bad, and should be overthrown. They were fanatically dedicated to bringing that about in this country."

  The questioning expression in her eyes encouraged him to continue. "Pennington is an ex-marine who served in Vietnam back in the early seventies. He was drummed out of the service—dishonorable discharge—for insubordination. At the time there was a host of other possible charges pending against him, including drug dealing, gunrunning and black-market profiteering, but none that the military could make stick."

  Mandy looked confused, but he pressed on. "After his release from Leavenworth, Pennington disappeared. He surfaced a few years later with a sizeable fortune—no one's sure from where—and began recruiting his own private army."

  She gasped, and Reilly paused for a moment. "Yeah," he said finally. "His own army. He started off with ex-soldiers nursing grudges against authority, like himself, and a few ex-cops who disliked what they saw as the government's 'soft' attitude toward the criminal element. By the time he was done, though, he'd recruited men from just about every walk of life."

  "But … what does that have to do with you?"

  He silenced her with a waving motion of his hand. "I'm getting to that." He mulled things over for a moment, stripping the story to its barest essentials. "The Feds had been watching Pennington for years, of course. FBI. ATF. DEA. But they couldn't pin anything on him. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms knew he was stockpiling weapons, but all they could trace were legal purchases. They suspected he was behind several major thefts of military weapons, including antitank and antiaircraft missiles, but again, they had no proof. The few informers the Feds found who were willing to talk all turned up dead."

  "I can't believe it!" She was stunned. "This is the United States. Not some terrorist-occupied country."

  "Believe it." Reilly's eyes narrowed. "Pennington's New World Militia isn't the only one out there, but they were the biggest, the strongest, and the best paid. And of course, Pennington was one smart son of a bitch. The Drug Enforcement Administration had long suspected him of belonging to one of the most powerful drug cartels in this country, mainly to support his expensive 'hobby.' They just couldn't prove it."

  Mandy shook her head in disbelief. "But someone must have known. I mean—"

  He chuckled, but it wasn't a humorous sound. "Yeah, someone knew, all right. A lot of someones, actually. But Pennington was good at spreading his wealth around, if you know what I mean. Money can buy a lot of 'friends' in high places, especially in uncertain times."

  He paused for a moment, gauging her reaction, then continued. "In any case, nothing could be proved against him. The FBI and DEA both tried to infiltrate Pennington's organization, but with no success. The Militia was a tight-knit bunch, a 'brotherhood,' as it were, especially in the upper ranks. Membership was by invitation only." He smiled coldly. "And once you joined, membership was for life. No one ever left the brotherhood alive. Those who tried, died. That's when the Feds approached me."

  She caught her breath and covered her mouth with one hand, then shook her head. "No!" she said, dropping her hand to the table. He watched her fingers clench, her knuckles turning white. "I don't believe it."

  Reilly knew she wasn't talking about the brother
hood's membership criteria, but still he asked, "What don't you believe?"

  "I don't believe you were a member of the New World Militia." Her lips trembled, and she clutched her hands together as if they'd tremble, too, if she let them. "You couldn't be."

  He studied her in silence, then said, "Oh, but I was, Mandy. I was. I was Pennington's right-hand man."

  * * *

  For all of five seconds Mandy believed him. Ice water seemed to trickle through her veins, leaving her dazed and speechless. Then sanity returned, accompanied by a surge of burning anger. Her chair grated along the wooden floor as she jumped to her feet. "I don't know what kind of game you're playing," she said hotly. "But you're not playing it with me!"

  She almost made it to the door before he caught her. "Mandy, wait!"

  But she was too angry to listen. When he swung her around to face him, her palm cracked across his cheek with such force that it left her hand numb. "Damn you!" she cried, struggling for freedom. "Damn you!"

  He pressed her against the wall, using his body to hold her, but she'd had enough. "Let me go!" Desperation lent her strength, and she twisted out of his arms and ran out the door.

  She didn't know why she was running, or where. She just knew she couldn't stay there any longer listening to Reilly make up stories that mocked the love she'd once felt for him, that mocked the ordinary life she'd once hoped to share with him.

  She was barefoot, but he was too, and she knew her way through these woods. He didn't. If she could just make it past the clearing, she thought, she could lose him in the trees. She heard his thudding footsteps behind her and realized he was closing on her fast. She evaded his grasp and feinted left, then broke right, skimming over the rough terrain.

  He tackled her at the clearing's edge. It knocked the breath out of her for a second, but she wasn't giving up that easily. He scissored her legs with his, and she fought back, scratching and squirming, breath rasping in her throat, until he finally manacled her wrists and pinned her arms above her head.

  His body was crushing hers and he was breathing hard, his muscled chest pressing against her breasts with every breath he took. "You little fool!" he ground out. "What the hell did you think you were doing?" He raised his head in the direction she'd been heading. "I told you I have traps out here. You almost got yourself killed!"

  "I don't care!" She arched her back to try and throw him off that way, but all she accomplished was bringing her body into even closer contact with his. She squirmed beneath him. "Let me go!"

  He gazed down at her, his face a tormented mask. As she watched, his expression changed from anger to something else. "Mandy," he groaned. "Oh, God. Mandy."

  He kissed her, and she tasted despair and desperate need. She didn't want to respond, had never liked being handled roughly, but his kisses seared her, starting a conflagration that she only now realized had been simmering below the surface ever since the night of the fire. He devoured her mouth, his tongue pushing past her lips to find hers, and forcing a sob of mingled pleasure and pain from her.

  His strong hands released her wrists and crept down the bare skin of her arms, stroking from wrist to elbow with unexpected gentleness. His tactile exploration left her whimpering, and he redoubled his caresses, as if her complete surrender was his goal.

  Desire exploded between them, fueled by twelve months of loneliness. She moaned aloud under the onslaught and arched up, only this time it was because she couldn't bear to wait a second longer. Reilly was muttering her name repeatedly, raining kisses wherever he could reach, then returning time and again to savagely possess her mouth as if he could never get enough. He was out of control, but she no longer cared. Her legs came up around his hips, and he quickly took advantage, grinding his pelvis against hers with a familiar rhythm she strained to match.

  She was trembling, but so was he, as if in the throes of a fever. His strong body was iron-hard all along the length of her softness, and bent on a single goal. It was her goal, too. It had been so long since she'd felt like this—on fire, yet never wanting it to end.

  He had too many clothes on. She wanted his taut skin beneath her hands, wanted to fill her senses with the sight, the smell, the taste of him. Memories of their naked bodies entwined together flooded her with sensual heat.

  "Let go of my arms," she panted, pleading, and when he did, she brought them to his waist. Her hands burrowed beneath the waistband of his jeans, and she sighed her pleasure into his ravaging mouth. She was the aggressor now. Her nails dug into his skin, tugging at his hips to bring him closer still. He responded by pulling her legs up higher, until her knees clasped his waist, and another surge of heat rolled through her.

  At some point he'd removed the barrier of her flannel shirt by the simple expedient of ripping it open, and now his hands pushed her flimsy bra out of the way so his mouth could have access to her aching breasts. She sobbed for breath when his lips closed on one turgid nipple, sucking it into the cavern of his warm mouth and laving it with his tongue. Then he rubbed his bristled cheek against her breast, rasping it unbearably, forcing a cry of pleasure from her. His lips left a trail of fire as they moved to her other breast, subjecting it to the same teasing torment, and Mandy sobbed again.

  His thrusts increased in intensity. Even through both their jeans she could feel him at the juncture of her thighs, huge and throbbing, and growing impossibly harder. It was too much, yet not enough. Never enough.

  He whispered something in a passion-deep voice, but she was too distracted to understand, too far gone to care. Needing something to hold on to, her hands climbed his back, only to stop cold when they made contact with his shoulder holster.

  The leather holster and the gun it contained doused her passion better than a bucket of cold water. Everything that had led up to this moment came back to her, and she froze. She couldn't help it. The man lying between her legs carried a gun, and she had no doubt he'd used it at some point in his life. Whether or not his story was true, the gun was real, and the fact that he wore it everywhere scared the hell out of her. The man she'd fallen in love with hadn't worn one. This was the same man, yes, but he was different, too, and the difference was as tangible as the gun he carried.

  Reilly didn't notice her withdrawal at first, but eventually her stillness reached him. "Mandy?" The husky sound twisted inside her, tearing at her heart, but she wouldn't, couldn't let herself respond.

  "Let me go." She didn't think he'd heard the flat little whisper, but he must have, because after one final thrust his hips stilled. Then, with a blistering curse, he rolled off her, and away. His body was hunched as if in terrible pain, and Mandy covered her face with her hands and turned away so she couldn't see him.

  It seemed like forever before her breathing slowed, and even longer before her throbbing body forgave her for denying it the release it craved. She tugged her bra back into place, the sensation reminding her just how far they'd gone. Then the guilt hit her.

  What had she been thinking of? Yes, Reilly had started it by kissing her, but she knew in her heart that it would never have gone beyond that if she hadn't responded, if she hadn't allowed herself to be pulled down into the passionate maelstrom they'd created. She'd let him think—no, encouraged him to think she wanted it as much as he did. Any man might be forgiven for refusing to stop on the brink of release, but Reilly hadn't. He'd been as far gone as a man could be, but he'd somehow found the strength to stop at a word from her.

  What if she hadn't touched the shoulder harness and remembered the gun? She'd been a breath away from unzipping his jeans and hers, desperate for the fulfillment only he could give her. And if she hadn't stopped him, he'd be inside her now, driving for release with no protection, nothing to prevent a pregnancy neither of them was prepared for.

  Oh, God. I must have been mad. How could I have forgotten, even for a minute?

  How long she lay there, one arm thrown across her eyes, she didn't know. She knew she was going to have to get up sometime, and unless a mira
cle occurred she was going to have to face Reilly eventually. She just wanted to postpone it as long as possible.

  A faint rustling in the grass nearby alerted her to his movement. She removed her arm and opened her eyes to find him crouching beside her, but the accusation she expected to see on his face was absent.

  He reached for her and she flinched, but all he did was gently draw the edges of her flannel shirt together and tuck them closed. His gaze met hers, contrition darkening his tawny brown eyes.

  "I'm sorry, Mandy."

  She shook her head, wanting to tell him that it wasn't his fault, it was hers, but the words stuck in her throat.

  "I had no business touching you," he continued. "I knew that, but I…" He fumbled for words, a wounded warrior shouldering the blame for both of them. "It's been a long time for me, Mandy. That's not an excuse, but it's the only explanation I have."

  She finally found her voice. "Don't apologize, please. I … led you on and I…"

  "Don't make excuses for me."

  "Not excuses." She squeezed her eyes shut, then opened them again. "It's been a long time since I felt that way, too," she said honestly. "I'd almost forgotten…"

  His jaw hardened as a harsh expression covered his face. He stood up abruptly. "I wish I could forget. God in heaven, Mandy, I wish the hell I could forget."

  * * *

  Chapter 7

  « ^ »

  As Mandy watched, Reilly ran a hand over his face and breathed deeply. It seemed to help him regain control. He stood there for a moment, his legs slightly parted, still visibly aroused. She couldn't tear her eyes away.

  Then he leaned over her, his hand extended, and when she took it, he pulled her to her feet. Her shirt fluttered open, and Reilly averted his gaze. Embarrassed more by his gallant gesture than anything else, Mandy captured the ends of her shirt and tied them in a knot. The soft flannel rubbed against her skin, reminding her of his earlier caresses. Inside her bra, her breasts still ached from his mouth's assault. She could hardly bear it, or the knowledge that deep down, part of her still wanted him.