Why not? What harm could it do to listen to him? She had gleaned only bits and pieces of the story from the agents who questioned her. “Let’s go in the kitchen. If you want coffee, you’ll have to make it.” She hitched up her bandaged arm and winced at the movement.
He nodded, his gray eyes lambent with sympathy. “That looks damned tender. You relax. I think I know my way around this kitchen by now. But it’s been a long day. I’d prefer a beer, if you have any.” He deposited the purring kitten on the floor.
Spook frolicked away to pounce on a feather toy in the corner. With a contented sigh, Alley collapsed on her bed.
Claire cradled her throbbing right arm with her left. “Help yourself. I think I have one or two.” The beers were ones he’d left. She couldn’t bring herself to discard them, but she didn’t tell him that. She lowered herself gingerly onto a wooden chair at the small table.
Once he’d twisted off the bottle cap, he said casually, “Join me? Should I open a bottle of wine?” He tugged out the chair to her right and sat.
She shook her head. “I’m still on painkillers and antibiotics. I’ll pass.” Besides, if she had any alcohol, she might slide onto the floor like an airless balloon.
“I’ve listened over and over to the tape of your conversation with Santerre in the cabin. He was shrewd and obsessed from the beginning. He plotted everything, including his boyhood friendship with Jonathan Farnsworth.”
“He must have been what psychologists call a socio-path,” she suggested.
“Totally amoral and self-absorbed, but clever and charming.”
“When it suited him.”
“There was one more thing on the tape that might offset his crimes a fraction. The reason the gang went after you. He didn’t want to involve his father in the smuggling operation.”
She put on a shaky smile. That Michael searched for some redeeming feature in Paul in order to ease her pain made her eyes sting with tears. “I told Russ about that. I thought it might help him cope with the new burden of his son being a murderer.”
“You talked to him? When?”
“He came to see me in the hospital. Actually apologized for the way he’d treated me.”
“Any overtures from Farnsworth?”
“Sort of. He allowed Robert to telephone me. Eventually Newcomb will relent.” She adjusted her position. Every movement seemed to aggravate her shoulder. “Please tell me what happened after the ambulance took me away.”
“We managed to capture two of the Colombians. Raoul’s henchmen, but not him. The shots that started the avalanche came from them. They rented snowmobiles and beat our DEA team up the access road so they could ambush Santerre.”
“Ambush Paul? They weren’t after me anymore?”
“Apparently the drug lord, El Halcón, found out Santerre was skimming profits and decided he was a liability. If he’d dragged you much farther, they’d have killed both of you.”
An involuntary shudder rippled through Claire. “What will happen now?”
“They’ll be tried, but they’ll get off easy. Those two gorillas are singing like South American quetzals. Among other things, they gave us the name of the connection that took over after Santerre so conveniently ‘died.”’
He set his beer bottle on the table and grasped her hand, folded his big one around it. “I wanted to come see you at the hospital, but the DEA sent Cruz and me after the other smuggler.”
“Did you get him?” His warmth seeped into her cold hand and threaded spirals of heat down her spine. She forced herself to listen to his words, not just revel in the sound of his deep voice.
“No. The guy split. Cruz is still on the case, but I’m out. My resignation came through.”
“Congratulations.” Before she lost courage, before she weakened and professed her love, she had to do something she’d neglected. “Michael, I know you couldn’t tell me you were a government agent. You were caught between two loyalties. I was hurt at first, but I do understand.”
When he opened his mouth to reply, she stopped him with a shake of her head. “Let me finish, please. I need to say this. You were so full of doubt that you could protect me, but you actually saved my life more than once.”
“You were so brave, foolishly brave to escape from him the way you did. Having the chance to pull you out of the way of that mountain of snow saved me as much as you. Made me feel worthy again.” Lifting her hand to his lips, he gently kissed the palm. “I’ll understand if you hate me for shooting Paul. He was your husband in spite of everything.”
That he’d even think that had her shaking her head emphatically. “No. Paul was never my husband. Not really. He killed Jonathan, remember. And the avalanche would have buried him, anyway. I could never hate you, Michael. I owe you for saving me. In more ways than one.” She’d better stop there before she said too much.
Releasing her, he slid his chair closer to hers. He draped his left arm on her chair back, a move that effectively caged her. His gray eyes, as soft as a summer cloud, caressed her face. “Claire, I don’t want your thanks. I want you.”
Dragging her eyes from his heated gaze, she licked her suddenly dry lips. It would be the hardest thing she ever had to do, but she must turn him away. Nearly everyone she’d ever been close to had died, and she wouldn’t take a chance with him.
Paul’s culpability solved nothing. He was dead, too.
The curse of your beauty is to be alone.
She forced a nonchalant tone and a cool expression. “Michael, it’s over. We had a nice fling, but it’s time to move on.”
He flinched, his jaw clenching from the verbal blow. As if searching for dissemblance, his gunmetal gaze drilled into her. “A fling. What the hell? You’re saying that what we had together meant nothing to you?”
Managing to scoot her chair back, Claire pushed to her feet and stepped away. If she remained close to him, he’d perceive her true emotions because she’d fall apart. Fatigue and anguish weighed her down, threatened to smother her like the avalanche they’d escaped.
“Of course it meant something, just not what you want it to.” Every word, every lie sliced away a chunk of her heart. Edging to the oven, she straightened the salt and pepper on its back shelf. Then she reached a shaky hand toward the spice rack. Her smile, though wistful, was genuine. “You were wonderful. Mon Dieu, you helped me through a very difficult time. And you showed me that sex didn’t have to be passive and boring but could be transcendent and glorious.”
“But?”
She chanced a glimpse at his fierce brow and tight mouth. Obviously fighting for control, he gripped his knees. She’d hurt him more than she’d expected.
Shaken, she turned to her spice rack. What else could she say? There was something else she ought to tell him, but not now. Not yet. “It’s…over. I think you should go.”
Puzzled and hurt, Michael stared at Claire’s hunched shoulders.
She loved him. He knew she did. The way she moaned his name when they made love. The little touches and caresses at other times. The desperation not to put him in jeopardy when Santerre drew his pistol. Her concern about his estrangement from his family. Her fear for him that sent her searching for him before the boat exploded. So many little things together meant love.
He studied her stiff posture, her trembling shoulders. Rebuffing him was tormenting her. That business of realigning the little bottles was a dead giveaway.
He knew of no reason she might reject him now. She was a widow after all. Free. No threats from anonymous callers or dead husbands or drug gangs. No charges hanging over her head. Except…the curse. On the first day they met, he recalled her confessing something about that damn curse.
In two strides, he stood close behind her. Close enough to inhale her scent and see the rainbow in her mahogany hair—brown, russet, gold, black—as sensual as that rare wood itself.
As beautiful as the rare woman she was.
“Claire, I love you, more than I ever thought it possible to
love anyone. And I think you love me. You can’t get rid of me this easy.” Tenderly, he placed one hand on her uninjured shoulder and turned her to face him. “Tell me about the curse.”
Her eyes grew as wide and round as a frightened doe’s and as dark as bittersweet chocolate. “It won’t make any difference.”
“Tell me.” He gathered her loosely in his arms, taking care with her injury. She was so brave, so strong, but no one should have to bear such a burden alone.
Tears streaming down her pale cheeks, she explained, with reluctance at first. Then the words poured from her, as if their very utterance might lift the heavy weight. She talked about her parents’ deaths and the aunts’ heaping guilt on her for the loss.
“These aunts, um, in their day, were they knockouts like you and Martine? Were they attractive?”
Bewilderment pleated her brow. “Tante Odette and tante Rolande? No. My uncles referred to them as les boudins. It means puddings or short, fat sausages. The uncles maintained that was the reason they were vieilles filles, old girls.”
“You mean old maids.” He swirled his tongue around his teeth to conceal his smile at her confusion. He wanted that sweet idiosyncrasy to charm him the rest of their lives together.
“Yes. But what does that have to do with anything?”
“Babe, don’t you think it’s possible they’re a bit jealous of your looks?”
“Jealous? No, impossible. They love me. They raised me. I was only a child when my parents died, but I think the curse idea was something they got from the priest.”
“They might believe in the curse as a fact, and as a child, you were easy to convince,” he suggested. “But look at it as the intelligent adult you are. Why would God single you out? There are millions of attractive people in the world who don’t face punishments for features nature—God, if you prefer—gave them.”
Tears glistened in her chocolate eyes. “I’ve always believed it to be real. To be true.”
“As Santerre said, babe, he plotted his ambitious future long before he met you. You were only one means to an end. His obsession extended way beyond possessing a lady for a wife, a goddess. You don’t have to atone, to be perfect with a perfect house or good deeds.”
Her chin shot up. “That’s not why I—”
He silenced her with his lips and tongue. His caress tender and coaxing, he drank in her delicate taste, the softness and heat he’d longed for. At first she stiffened, and then with a sigh, she leaned into the kiss to return his passion with the same sharp-edged need. Blood thundering in his head, he hardened to a painful ache. Beyond lust, he poured his love and his soul into her with his tender kisses.
“Claire,” he murmured, “I need you. I love you. I want to go to bed every night and wake up every day with you next to me.”
With her free hand, she touched his cheek, his lips. “You don’t believe in the curse, do you?”
He placed a whisper of a kiss on her forehead. “I believe what you taught me. We’re not responsible for what other people do. It’s the same truth that freed me.”
“But the priest’s pronouncement, all the years my aunts told me that the curse of my beauty was to be alone. And all those deaths—”
“Coincidence. Santerre’s greed was the cause. Not a curse. Not your beauty. Not this face I love.”
Fear shadowed her gaze, but behind the fear Michael saw a glimmer of hope. The glimmer disappeared behind a veil of tears. “Oh, Michael. Je t’adore, I do love you, so much. Don’t you see? That’s why I’m so afraid.”
He guided her back to a chair and positioned her on his lap, her left arm around his neck. “There is no curse, Claire. But there is love. That’s the real, tangible truth.”
“I want to believe you. I do.” She hugged his neck tightly and kissed him.
“Marry me and leave Weymouth. We’ll make a new life together. You have to trust me. I’ll keep us both safe.”
Her tortured gaze showed the war raging in her head and in her heart. She loved him, he knew it, but she had to let go of a lifelong, mistaken belief. With his own steady gaze, he willed her the strength to choose freedom. And him.
His heart seemed to stop, and he held his breath until he saw her expression soften. Her shoulders straightened with the lifting of her burden. And her brilliant smile started his heart with such force it nearly leapt from his chest.
“Yes, Michael. I do trust you. I love you. I never thought I’d ever say that. Wherever you want to go, it doesn’t matter as long as I’m with you.”
“How about New Hampshire, the White Mountains? I drove here today from buying the camp where I went as a kid on those wilderness survival hikes.”
“I see I won’t have to worry about what to do with Paul’s ill-gotten gains. It sounds wonderful.” Her gaze clouded with concern. “Michael, what about your family?”
“I was in Boston yesterday. Mom would love to give us a wedding. They want some more grandkids.” At her enigmatic expression, he paused and recalled an earlier conversation about her difficulty in getting pregnant with Jonathan. No, it would be all right. With love, they would cope.
“About children, Michael—”
He brushed a mahogany curl from her shoulder as if sweeping away the problem. “If you can’t get pregnant, if we can’t have children, we can help someone else’s kids learn to rely on themselves.”
A secretive gleam brightened her gaze, and a slow smile curved her sensuous mouth. “Um, Michael, that problem I had with not getting pregnant, it doesn’t seem to be a problem anymore. I think we should get married right away.”
ISBN: 978-1-4592-0504-8
DANGEROUS ATTRACTION
Copyright © 2001 by Susan Hofstetter Vaughan
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