by Anne Stuart
Chapter Ten
She’d forgotten. It shouldn’t have surprised him—it was a lifetime ago, and she was probably happier pretending it had never happened.
He knew the feeling. For the past few years he’d put it out of his mind as well, keeping his distance from her so he wouldn’t be tempted again. Win had known, of course. It had probably given him great amusement. He’d mentioned it only once, just enough to twist the knife.
He could hear her moving around in the trailer. The place was sturdy enough—the crummy-looking walls were reinforced with sheets of a bulletproof alloy that had cost a small fortune. It was also completely safe. The cellular telephone was hooked up through an elaborate relay that made him impossible to track. No one would find them—he could take his time figuring out what to do with her. And whether he was going to have to face his past.
He could start small. He could let himself remember what he’d worked so hard to forget. That night, years ago, that he spent with Annie Sutherland. The last time he’d been fool enough to let down his guard.
He’d never known for sure whether Win had set him up. Win was so firmly possessive of his only child—and his protégés, for that matter—that James couldn’t believe he would have thrown them together, risking an alliance that might have shut him out.
But Win was also controlling enough that it seemed unlikely it simply could have happened by accident. As it was, James would never know. He’d always avoided discussing Annie with her father, and now it was too late. Win was dead.
She had been twenty-one. An oddly, achingly innocent twenty-one, when his life had been rank with the smell of death and decay. Her innocence had nothing to do with whether she’d had lovers or not. It was deep in her bones, born there, and Win had done his best to foster it. Perhaps he’d wanted to protect his only child. But he’d also enjoyed the irony of innocence born out of corruption.
She was home from college that Thanksgiving weekend, and Win had wanted all his young protégés to come to dinner. Mary Margaret had been invited, not much older than Annie and already a seasoned killer. Martin and Clancy, Billy Arnett and his young wife, and a couple of others whose names he couldn’t even remember. They were dead now, most of them.
Annie had insisted on cooking. James had accepted that information with mixed feelings—Annie Sutherland had grown up with a cook and a housekeeper, and if she even knew how to scramble an egg it was news to him.
He arrived mid-morning with papers for Win, only to find the house deserted, Annie in the kitchen, tears pouring down her face.
His first instinct had been panic. Someone had finally gotten to Win, and James hadn’t been around to protect him.
And then he’d seen the turkey.
“It’s frozen!” she’d wailed.
“They usually are.”
“But, James, I’ve had it sitting in the fridge for days. I think I’ve got frostbite from trying to pull that disgusting stuff out of it, and even boiling water won’t loosen it. And the oven’s too small to hold everything, and I tried to call Win’s caterer, but he’s not answering, and I don’t know what to do!” She had tears in her eyes, real tears, and he stared down at her, momentarily bemused.
He’d known Annie Sutherland since she was seven years old and he was nineteen. He’d come to this country, to Win, a raw bundle of rage and nerves, and it was only the presence of a child that somehow managed to work its way past his fury and touch some long-lost core of humanity.
He’d always felt grateful to her for that. But looking down at her then, in tears over her stupid turkey, he realized she was no longer a child. And gratitude had nothing to do with what he was feeling.
It hit him, fast and hard, so unexpected that he had no defenses. He wanted to pull her into his arms, dry her tears, and then kiss that pale, trembling mouth. He wanted to shove the damned frozen turkey on the floor, set her down on the table, and lift up her long skirts. He wanted to put his mouth on her, and see what she did.
He didn’t touch her. “You got another apron?” he said with his perfect Texas drawl, glancing around him.
Her eyes widened, the tears vanishing. “James, do you know how to cook?”
“No Texas mother would let her son out into the world without knowing how to fend for himself,” he replied, stripping off the charcoal gray suit that was part of his bureaucratic camouflage. In fact, his mother had taught him to cook, all right, but she’d never left Northern Ireland before a sniper’s bullet ended her life at thirty-seven.
“Oh, thank God,” she breathed. “You’re a lifesaver.”
That was the one thing he wasn’t. He was a lifetaker, a professional, a fact he accepted without bitterness or rancor. Until he looked into her ingenuous eyes.
He rolled up his sleeves, stripped off his tie, and headed for the turkey. It was a massive creature, still half frozen, and the boiling water she’d poured into the cavity had solidified. “Is the oven on?”
“I turned it off,” she admitted.
“Take the top rack out. Then turn it to four hundred.” He dumped the frozen bird in the black-speckled roasting pan.
“You can’t cook it like that,” she protested. “It’s not stuffed.”
“It will be. We’ll start it out, and in a half hour things should be warm enough to finish prepping it.”
“And we won’t all die of salmonella poisoning?” she asked suspiciously.
“There are worse ways to go,” he murmured, shoving the turkey in the fancy steel oven. “What else are we having?”
“I don’t suppose you know how to make pies?” she asked in a plaintive voice.
He just looked at her. She had flour on her nose—he’d missed that before. Her blond hair was screwed up in some sort of knot on the top of her head, but it was falling down. She was wearing a frilly apron with a turkey on it, and she looked so damned normal, surrounded by kitchen chaos, that he wanted … he wanted …
He wasn’t sure what he wanted. It was all tied up with sex and violence, and he was going to indulge in neither. “What’s the problem with the pies?” he asked wearily.
It was an odd day, almost surreal. A light snow was falling outside the multipaned windows, but inside the spacious kitchen of Win Sutherland’s Georgetown house everything was cozy and warm. The air was rich with the smell of roasting turkey and baking pies, and what James couldn’t remember from his mother they improvised with cookbooks and with laughter. They created a feast—slightly scorched, but a feast nonetheless. A normal, happy celebration of an American holiday. And for those few hours James was content to do something very dangerous. To pretend.
There was no cramped flat in Belfast with too many children and never enough money. There were no snipers, no bombings, no jobs so filthy that they slowly, deliberately ate at his soul, draining it, crushing it, so that he was left without it. An empty shell of a man.
She had a crush on him. She’d developed it a little more than a year ago, and he’d done his best to avoid her ever since. Win had informed him of it with great amusement, but James hadn’t been amused. Annie was too young, too unsullied despite her family connections. He wasn’t going to contaminate her even enough to dream.
But now he was here, Win was nowhere to be seen, and surrounded by the homey normalcy of it all, James found his defenses were vanishing. When she smiled up at him, that damnable light in her blue eyes, he wanted to see himself with that same light.
Instead, it was all he could do not to take her by the arms, slam her up against the wall, and say “Look, Annie, I’m not what you think I am.”
But he couldn’t. The truth would hurt her, far more than it would him. The truth would endanger her. And shatter her trust in her father.
No, he wasn’t going to say a word. He was going to suffer through her gently flirtatious behavior; he was even going to flirt, ever so carefully, back. Because he knew it would hurt him even more, and he wanted to hurt himself.
“It’s perfect,” she breathed
, looking at the table. It was set with heavy sterling and Waterford crystal, Limoges and damask. And he thought of his ancestors, starving, while rich landowners drank fine French wines from the crystal his countrymen made with their sweat and blood, and the anger came back to him, so that he was seventeen again, and crazy with idealism and what he thought was the truth.
He said nothing, glancing out at the snowy afternoon. The stuff was coming down harder now, plastering against the windows, and he realized it had been awhile since he’d seen any sign of traffic on the normally busy streets. They were alone in the house, he and Annie Sutherland. Shut away from reality, from the constant mortal dangers of his everyday life. They were alone, and he wanted her.
The darkness was as subtle as a clap of thunder, hammering down around them. “The power must have gone off,” Annie said in a small, slightly nervous voice. Moving closer to him in the shadowy dining room.
He found he had automatically steeled himself for an attack. He took a deep breath, relaxing, and found he was breathing in the scent of her perfume as well as the rich smells of holiday cooking.
“I’ve got a battery-operated stereo in my bedroom. Maybe we can see what’s going on in the world outside,” she said.
“Maybe we don’t want to know.”
He didn’t have to see her face to know her expression. Faintly quizzical, but accepting. “Ignorance is seldom bliss,” she said with just a trace of wryness.
“I wouldn’t be too sure of that.” He moved away from her, needing to, leaning over and lighting the silver candelabra with his lighter, filling the room with a warm glow.
She looked ethereal in the candlelight. Dangerously so. And she hadn’t the faintest idea what she was doing to him, how she was fighting her way past decades of defenses, like acid eating through steel.
She must have felt something. She didn’t move, but she looked up at him, and there was a smoky yearning in her eyes. One he was determined to ignore. He turned his back to her deliberately, walking over to stare out the window into the snowy street.
“I’ll go get the radio,” she said, and if he hadn’t been so attuned to her he wouldn’t have heard the quiet resignation in her voice.
It wasn’t until he heard a crash that he realized she hadn’t taken a candle with her. He didn’t allow himself time to think, to consider. He was halfway up the stairs, his gun drawn, when he found her huddled in the darkness.
He hadn’t brought any form of light either, and it was inky black. He knelt down beside her, tucking the unseen gun behind his back. “What happened?” He didn’t touch her. He had the perfect excuse, but he didn’t dare. He knew he wouldn’t stop.
“Just clumsy,” she said. “I thought I knew this old house well enough to find my way in the dark, but I guess I was wrong.” She came to her feet, and he started to back away from her, listening, trying to sense if she was hurt.
But she reached out for him, touching him in the dark. Her hand on his arm, and she smelled like flowers and innocence. She smelled like every dream of adolescent sex he’d never been able to indulge in. And he wanted to.
“You mind coming with me?” she asked. “This place makes me a little nervous in the dark.”
He wanted to pull away. He knew it wasn’t a come-on. Or if it was, she didn’t know what she was asking for. “You think there are bogey men in here?” he said lightly.
“I doubt it. Father’s got enough security equipment to guard Fort Knox.”
“It wouldn’t work with the power out.”
“You trying to make me feel better, James? If you are, it’s failing. Come on.” She released him, but he could still feel the grasp of her hand on his arm. The imprint of each long, elegant finger. And she’d barely touched him.
He went with her. Past the second floor, where Win slept in baronial splendor. Up the narrow stairs to the third floor, to a room he’d never seen.
He’d forgotten she slept up there. Away from Win’s soundproofed rooms and interesting habits. She even had her own back stairs down to the kitchen, he remembered vaguely. But he’d deliberately kept away from the third floor since she reached puberty.
There was only a fitful light coming from the snow-crusted window at the end of the third-floor hallway. He was closer to her than he wanted to be, and he cursed himself for not bringing a candle, a flashlight, anything to break the cocoon of erotic gloom that hovered around them.
He stopped right inside her door, leaning against it as he listened to her move around in the darkness. The scents that were uniquely Annie were stronger than ever. He could smell her perfume, the shampoo and water from the shower, even the toothpaste she used. He could smell the detergent on the sheets of her bed, could smell the leather from her shoes. He wondered where the bed was.
His eyes grew accustomed to the dark quite quickly. He’d always had extraordinary night vision—a boon in his line of work. He could see her silhouetted against the window, the shape of her, the rich, warm curves of her. And he could see the bed just behind her.
A big, high bed. Rumpled, unmade, the sheets tangled around what looked like a duvet.
He closed his eyes with a despairing sigh. It was the rumpled sheets that finished his resolve. If only the bed had been neatly made, with tight blankets you could bounce a quarter on, he could have resisted. But the gleaming white tangle of sheets needed to be wrapped around her naked body. And his. And he took the gun from his waistband, set it silently on the dresser by the door, and started toward her.
She must have felt him coming. She turned when he reached her, looking up at him, and there was no fear in her face. He touched her, cupping her cheek with his big hand, and she felt warm, fragile against him. He knew how fragile human flesh and bone could be.
She turned her face and pressed her mouth against his palm. “You taste of cinnamon,” she whispered. And he wanted her to taste him.
She tilted her face up, brushing her mouth against his, a tentative gesture, as if she wasn’t sure of her welcome. He slid his arm around her waist, pulling her soft, willowy body against him with careful deliberation, settling her against him, letting her feel how hard he was, and he set his open mouth against hers.
There was no hurry, no anger in the kiss. He simply held her against him as he slowly used his lips, his tongue, his teeth, to leave no part of her mouth untouched, unkissed. She was panting when he lifted his head, short, strangled little gasps, and she trembled in his arms. He told himself it wasn’t fear, but he had felt fear too many times not to recognize it.
“Don’t stop,” she whispered, a mere breath of a sound, a plea.
He reached between them and touched her breast. She shivered—again that fear—but she moved against him anyway, and he accepted the truth. Her instincts told her he was death and danger even as she refused to admit it.
It would make sex powerful. To take her fear and use it in arousing her. It would make it too powerful for him to walk away from untouched. If he had any sense he’d step back, away from her.
But she was too close, too hot, too ready for him. She tasted too sweet. He began to unfasten the tiny buttons of the soft sweater she wore, when the lights glared into the room as the power came back on.
He jerked away from her as sanity came rushing back. It was a girl’s room that surrounded him. The bed was a four-poster, complete with lacy canopy. She had a collection of dolls, for Christ’s sake, and everything was pink.
“Thank God for the electric company,” he said in a deliberately light voice.
She didn’t move. Her eyes were wide, shadowed, and her mouth was damp and swollen. Her sweater was unbuttoned, and in the warm room he could see her nipples.
“Why?” she said very simply.
He’d already moved back, away from her, toward the door. He didn’t want her to see the gun. As far as she knew, he’d have no reason to carry a weapon, certainly no reason to keep it with him right now. And he wasn’t in any mood to explain. About anything.
“
Why what?” he said warily. “Why did I kiss you?”
She shook her head. “I know why you kissed me. You wanted to. I’m not an idiot, James. You’ve wanted to kiss me for almost as long as I’ve wanted you to.”
Something inside him snapped. His temper, his control. He leaned back against the dresser, retrieved the gun without her noticing. “Wrong, Annie. I don’t want to kiss you. I want to fuck you. But I suspect your father would have something to say about that, and frankly, my friendship with him is more important than getting between your legs. As long and luscious as they are.” He was using his Texas drawl to mocking perfection, and it eased some of his self-loathing. This was James McKinley. Good ole boy. It wasn’t the man who’d just kissed Annie Sutherland in her bedroom.
“I see,” she said in a subdued voice.
“Besides, I would have hated like hell to wake up and found I’d slept in a pink bedroom.”
“I could paint it.” The words, soft and plaintive, haunted the room, haunted him.
He shook his head gently. “No, Annie.”
She looked at him, and there was such pain and longing in her eyes that it almost broke him. Except that nothing broke him. Nothing touched him. Not an innocent child ready to throw herself at his feet, not his own voracious need for her. He was invulnerable.
And then she smiled. It wavered slightly, but it was close enough, even if he could still see that her mouth was damp from his. “Well, in that case, maybe we’d better get downstairs and see what’s happening with the dinner. It’s just as well. I hate to paint.”
He let her go ahead of him. He didn’t want her to glimpse the gun. By the time they reached the bottom flight of stairs, the lights had dimmed once more, and he could hear the icy pellets pounding against the house.
“I hope Win’s all right,” she said in a subdued voice. “He was supposed to fly in from Los Angeles this morning, and he’s already hours late.”
Winston was flying in from Beirut, but Annie didn’t need to know that. “I’m sure he’ll call as soon as he can get to a phone.”