Invincible

by Joan Johnston

  “I recognize you, Gram,” Flick said. “Who are these other people?”

  “Your aunt and uncles,” Bella said. “And your other grandfather.”

  “I have another grandfather?” Flick said in wonder. “Where is he? Can I meet him?”

  “He doesn’t live in London,” Bella said. “I’ll let him know you’d like to meet him.”

  “How is that going to work out, exactly?” Kristin said, aware, as was the rest of the world, that Bull and Bella Benedict were separated, and not amicably.

  Bella waved away her concerns. “Honestly, that’s unlikely to happen on this visit.”

  Bella sat down in a wooden rocker in the corner of Max’s bedroom, and called Flick over to stand beside her as she identified each of the boys in the photo. “Your uncle Oliver is standing beside the bicycle. Your uncle Riley is holding the book about dinosaurs. Your uncle Payne is sitting cross-legged with the boat. The little girl on my lap is your aunt Lydia.”

  “She’s just as pretty as you are, Gram,” Flick said.

  Kristin saw the duchess was flustered by the compliment.

  “Why, thank you, Flick,” she said.

  Flick surveyed her grandmother through narrowed eyes and said, “You have a lot more wrinkles now than you did then. But I still think you’re beautiful.”

  Kristin saw tears well in Bella Benedict’s eyes and watched her blink them away. Kristin saw something she couldn’t have imagined happening, considering what she knew about the Mean Witch’s behavior toward Max.

  The duchess reached out and caressed Flick’s head.

  “That’s the nicest thing anybody’s said to me…in a while,” the duchess said. “Thank you, Felicity.”

  To Kristin’s further surprise, Flick brushed the duchess’s skirt aside and edged her tiny fanny into the small space between her grandmother and the edge of the rocker.

  “Tell me about my dad,” she said.

  Kristin would have given anything to stay and listen. She wanted to hear what sort of stories—fantasies— Bella concocted to describe the time she’d supposedly spent with Max growing up. During the years Kristin had known him, the Mean Witch had been a big black nothing in his life.

  “I have to leave, Flick,” Kristin said.

  Instead of crossing the room to give her mother a good-bye hug and kiss, Flick nestled closer to her grandmother and said, “Will you bring Dad when you come back, Mom?”

  Kristin did what mothers everywhere did when they didn’t want to start an argument with their child by saying no. She smiled cheerfully, waved good-bye to her daughter, and said, “We’ll see.”

  11

  “Hello, Princess.”

  Kristin turned on the grass tennis court at Wimbledon and found Max standing before her. He was dressed in white shorts and a white sleeveless shirt, which revealed the powerful biceps she’d only suspected when he’d been wearing a suit. He’d obviously already been hitting balls for a while. His sweat-soaked shirt clung to his body, revealing impressive muscular abs.

  Her throat ached at the sudden memory of the last time she’d seen him here at the All England Lawn Tennis Club when they were teenagers. She recalled the utter disbelief—and devastation—she’d felt at seeing Max kissing another woman the morning after he’d made love to her for the first time. How could she still feel so much pain?

  She swallowed over the awful lump in her throat and said, “Hello, Max.” It came out sounding wistful. She hardened her voice and said, “As I told you on the phone, I’m only here because my boss suggested it after I got suspended.”

  She’d called Rudy to tell him she was accepting the assignment from the CIA, so he’d know how to contact her when word came back from SIRT on how they planned to treat the second shooting incident. She was praying there would be no further disciplinary action required.

  Before she’d left Miami, she’d also hired a lawyer to defend her in the civil suit. He’d told her nothing would be happening on the case until the SIRT recommendation came down. He’d also promised to find out whether the boy’s family would be willing to settle out of court and if so, how much they wanted.

  “I wish I could say I’m sorry you felt coerced into coming to London,” Max said. “But I’m not. I need your help, K.”

  Could any words be more designed to appeal to everything feminine and nurturing inside her? For years she’d been so sure she was over Max, that she’d gotten him out of her head and her heart. But he’d been in her thoughts constantly since she’d seen him in Miami.

  Especially after her meeting with the duchess. The mere idea of Max proposing to her was preposterous. Even the suggestion that the two of them might “kiss and make up” made her uncomfortable in her own skin.

  Why hadn’t she simply told the Mean Witch to take a flying leap off a steep cliff?

  Desperation. Yes, she was desperate for money. But there was a more compelling reason she’d agreed to spend more time with Max. One that had kept her awake for too many nights over the past ten years. Regret.

  What if she’d answered his phone calls ten years ago? What if there were some simple explanation for why he’d been kissing Elena? What might Max have done if he’d known she was carrying his child? Would he have asked her to love him and live with him forever? And the most wrenching question of all: Had he ever really loved her?

  None of that mattered now, because she had turned him away. As she would turn Max away if he decided he wanted to pick up where they’d left off.

  But she’d better watch her step. If she wasn’t careful, the charming rogue would slip past her defenses. She didn’t want to get hurt again.

  She could feel Max’s eyes on her, assessing her. Had he ever asked himself the same questions she’d been asking? Did he also wonder what would have happened if…?

  When she turned and met his intent gaze, she felt off kilter. It was unsettling to realize how attractive Max still was to her. How very blue his eyes were. Benedict blue. She remembered, during their one night of love, kissing his square chin, his sharp nose, his chiseled cheekbones. He’d made her blood heat and her body ache with need.

  Funny how those feelings of love—and those first stirrings of teenage desire—were still so vivid after all these years. No wonder she was still alone, when she’d measured her response to every man she’d met since Max against the powerful passions evoked by her robust teenage hormones. What mortal man could compete with a perfect fantasy?

  Except, Max wasn’t a fairy-tale character. If only he had been she might have banished him. No, he’d been real, all right. Her feelings of love for Max had grown and ripened over the three years she’d known him, growing especially strong during the year after she’d dropped her robe and stood naked before him. She’d been more than ready, when the moment came, to go from being friends to lovers.

  Strange, how the reality of physical intimacy with Max was so far from what she’d expected. The lovemaking had been awkward. Since she was a virgin and nervous—and Max was uninformed about the true state of things—the act itself had been physically painful. Still, she’d hugged the knowledge of their ultimate closeness to herself as she fell asleep alone in bed that night.

  She’d wondered for years afterward if Max had felt the euphoric connection to her that she’d felt toward him. In retrospect, it seemed unlikely. Those three years she’d been secretly in love with him, he’d been dating—and bedding—a bevy of other women. Max had never revealed what it was that had finally caused him to take them from friends to lovers. Kristin would never have had the self-confidence, in light of Max’s vast experience, to suggest sex herself. Strangely, she’d never asked him why he was physically attracted to her, when he had all those other, more experienced and fuller-bosomed women to choose from. She’d wondered if their night of love had fallen short of his expectations, too. Maybe she just hadn’t pleased him in bed.

  Since they’d parted ways after their single night of sex without speaking to each other again, sh
e’d been left emotionally battered and bruised—and wondering—all these years.

  The worst part of not knowing what had brought him to urge her to have sex was that, no matter how hard she’d tried, she couldn’t forget him. Any chance she’d had to move on to a healthy and loving relationship with another man was stifled by leftover feelings for her first love.

  Which was why she planned to use their time together now to kill those feelings once and for all. Unfortunately, she found herself fighting the temptation to be Max’s friend again. That, she knew, was a slippery slope. Going from friend to lover could be a very short trip.

  Kristin tightened her grip on her tennis racquet and focused on adjusting the strings with her other hand. She couldn’t afford to fall in love with Max again. There was too much at stake. She planned to earn the Blackthorne Rubies, find the presidential assassin—if one existed—and go home.

  At some point, she might be forced to introduce Max to his daughter. But not if she could help it. She felt sorry her daughter had grown up without a father, but Flick was better off without a man like Max in her life. That is, a man who put pleasure first and everything else far after.

  Well, she could use that to her advantage.

  The object was to play this match with Max without losing her heart. She had to make sure she didn’t let her grown-up hormones rule her head. Which meant she had to guard against falling prey to his good looks. His very good looks. He appeared magnificently fit in tennis whites, his shoulders broad, his hips narrow, his belly flat. Her eyes followed the line of black down from his navel into the low-slung shorts.

  Kristin realized what she was doing and jerked her gaze back up to meet his. She flushed when she realized Max was making a perusal of her every bit as thorough as the one she’d just done of him. She had on a fitted white tennis dress with a short, flirty skirt that showed off her trim waist and long legs. Her breasts were nothing to shout about, never had been.

  Max seemed happy enough with the size of them when he held them in his palms, an insidious voice reminded her.

  “You look good,” he said at last. “Fit.”

  “You, too,” she replied. Well, it was the truth.

  “I’ve missed you, Princess.”

  She hadn’t expected that. She didn’t say she’d missed him, too. But Max had been a tough act to follow. She’d been engaged once but had called it off before the wedding. Frustrated in love, she’d focused on her daughter and her job. She’d put youthful things—tennis and Max Benedict—behind her.

  “How do you want to do this?” she asked, swinging her racquet in a small circle over her shoulder to warm up her arm.

  “We’ll hit a few to warm up.”

  “The last time I played was with one of Harry’s students,” Kristin said.

  “How is Harry?” Max asked.

  Harry had been a good friend to Max—until she’d turned up pregnant. She hesitated, then admitted, “Dad had a stroke a few days after you came to Miami. His right side is paralyzed.”

  “That’s too bad.”

  She had to admit Max looked truly concerned.

  “What’s his prognosis?” he asked.

  “He’s going to need a lot of physical and speech therapy. The doctors don’t know yet how much use of his right arm and leg he’ll recover.”

  Max was bouncing a tennis ball into the air from the face of his racquet, never missing even though his gaze was focused on her face. “Why didn’t you let me know?”

  “What could you have done? Besides, I didn’t think you cared.”

  “I care,” Max said sharply. “Harry was a good friend. I owe him a lot. He’s the one responsible for—”

  “We don’t have the court for long,” she interrupted, because she was starting to believe him. “Maybe we should practice first and reminisce later.”

  He seemed to be debating the point, then said, “All right. Let’s just hit a few. Then we’ll see how much work we need to do to get back into fighting shape.”

  During the past decade the racquets had gotten lighter and polyester strings such as Luxilon allowed players to take huge swings and generate enough spin to keep the ball on the court. Hardly anyone on the women’s tour now used the one-handed backhand that had been Kristin’s forte. Powerful two-handed backhands were the norm.

  Kristin’s FBI job had required her to be in good physical shape, and she’d played lots of weekend tennis, but instead of simply hitting crosscourt, Max ran her from one side of the baseline to the other. She was winded far sooner than she’d expected to be. She missed a bullet he hit down the line and trotted to the net to talk with him. “I guess I’m in worse shape than I thought.”

  “I was going to say the same thing about myself,” he said as he huffed out a breath of air. “This game is harder than it looks.”

  “If you say so,” a female voice said from behind Kristin.

  Kristin turned and realized there was someone else besides Max she’d hoped never to see again. Elena Tarakova. She made herself smile and said, “Hello, Elena. I wasn’t expecting to see you here today. The tournament isn’t for a few more weeks.”

  “If we’re going to play doubles, I thought the four of us ought to practice together,” Max said. “After all, this isn’t a competition, it’s an exhibition.”

  Which made sense, if it had been any other two players they were matched against. But this was Elena, who’d beaten Kristin the last time she’d played at Wimbledon. And Steffan, who’d lost to Max the last time he’d played at Wimbledon.

  As Kristin watched, Elena crossed to Max and gave him a continental greeting by kissing him on each cheek. Except Elena leaned in close, so her breasts brushed Max’s chest. Kristin bristled at the other woman’s impudence. She hadn’t factored in Elena when she’d considered having to spend time with Max. Could the other woman possibly still be interested in him?

  Kristin stood stiffly as Elena leaned across the net, her long black hair pulled back from her Slavic face in a pony tail that slid over her shoulder, and kissed Kristin on each cheek.

  “How are you, darling?” Elena asked, her dark eyes searching Kristin’s face for signs of age or dissipation or lord knew what.

  Kristin kept her features neutral but said, “If you’re asking if I’m in good enough shape to kick your butt on the tennis court, the answer is I’m fine.”

  Elena laughed. “You always were a feisty one.” She turned her attention back to Max, flipped her ponytail down her back, and asked, “Where’s Steffan?”

  “Right here,” Steffan Pavlovic said as he strode onto the practice court. He was tall and lean, his smile unbelievably brilliant against his tanned face. Sun-bleached chestnut hair crawled down his neck beneath a white ball cap that he’d tugged on backwards.

  The two men grabbed hands, pulled each other close and bumped shoulders. “Good to see you, old friend,” Max said. “How’s Irina?”

  “Mom is great. She wants to get together for supper sometime soon.”

  Steffan’s mother, Irina, had been Max’s coach, and a surrogate mother to him, for five years. The two boys had spent hours on and off the court together in their teens.

  Steffan laughed and said, “I haven’t missed you on the court. But I miss hunting with you.”

  “Hunting?” Kristin said.

  “Girls,” Steffan said with a sexy wink at her. “The man never missed his quarry.”

  Kristin flushed. Including me.

  “When Max found out Elena and I were both in town early to meet with sponsors and do some publicity, he suggested we ought to practice together. I thought it sounded like a great idea. After all, it doesn’t matter which team wins.”

  There it was again, the suggestion that who won didn’t matter, that they just had to play the game. Kristin didn’t agree. She had no intention of losing to Elena Tarakova at Wimbledon again, even in an exhibition match.

  The problem was, Elena was the #1 ranked player on the women’s tour. She’d been trad
ing the top spot with Serena Williams for several years. Both of them were being challenged by Kim Clijsters, who’d successfully returned to tennis after a brief hiatus to get married and have a daughter.

  Kristin hadn’t played tennis professionally for a decade. In singles against Elena, she probably wouldn’t have had a chance. But she was playing on a team with Max, who’d beaten Steffan at Wimbledon all those years ago. Of course, Steffan was still ranked in the top ten on the men’s tour, while Max had left the game years ago.

  “Let’s play a little and see how it goes,” Max suggested.

  As he crossed around the net and joined Kristin she leaned close and said, “I want to beat them, Max.”

  “Me, too,” he said with a grin. “Let’s see how you serve.”

  It was clear from Elena’s return of her opening serve that Kristin was no longer in the same league with her opponent. By the end of the “best two out of three sets” match, a set being six games, Kristin was gasping for air. What was worse, she and Max lost 6–2, 6–2.

  “That’s enough practice for today,” Max announced. “See you guys tomorrow morning.”

  “Not so fast,” Steffan said. “What about tonight? I thought we’d get together and hit some nightspots.”

  “That sounds good to me,” Elena said, jogging to the net.

  It irked Kristin to realize the other woman wasn’t even breathing hard. “I can’t,” she said.

  “Why not?” Max asked.

  Because I have to take the train to Blackthorne Abbey to be with my daughter. “I have other plans.”

  “We’ll miss you,” Elena said.

  Kristin could see the other woman was quite happy to have Max and Steffan to herself. Maybe Elena planned to make another play for Max. Kristin realized she didn’t want Elena to win anything over the next couple of weeks. Not even Max.

  Dire situations required difficult choices. If she wanted to run interference between Max and Elena, she was going to have to settle for a phone call to her daughter. “I guess I can rearrange my plans,” she said.