A faint sense of disorientation accompanied her intense concentration. She squeezed her eyes shut and licked her dry lips. Don’t let this happen now. Not now. Let me finish this at least.
Pulling in a shaky breath, she drew the battered instruction sheet out of her pocket and scanned it again, then quickly assembled the rocket, securing its engine and slipping it onto the launch rod. Alligator clips connected the wire igniter to seventeen feet of insulated cord and the rectangular, plastic launch controller. She’d had to scrounge up four AA batteries for the controller. She hoped to be rescued before Caleb tried to use his miniflashlight or TV remote control.
She carried the controller out of the small clearing into the trees. Inserted the safety key and watched the signal light go on. Said a quick prayer and pushed the launch button.
The rocket shot over the stone wall with a hissing whoosh and a trail of white smoke. In awe she watched it soar over the treetops, before it separated and the parachute deployed, about a quarter mile away.
Yes! She’d done it! Fervently she prayed it hadn’t become snagged on a high treetop. Or landed in one of the myriad lakes dotting the Adirondacks. Or...
No. She couldn’t think that way. This had to work.
The smell of sulfur overpowered the dry, earthy scents of autumn growth and decay. Quickly she shoved the launch apparatus under some shrubbery, covered it with leaves and trudged back through the woods.
The disorientation persisted, the telltale “aura” she’d come to recognize and dread. She had no doubt the stress of the last hour was a contributing factor. Not to mention her unmedicated state.
As the house came into view she automatically glanced toward the detached two-car garage. Through the open door she saw Caleb’s dark green Land Rover and his mother’s ancient, little-used, black Lincoln Continental.
But no Caleb.
Elizabeth stopped dead in her tracks. Her pulse kicked into high gear and she felt the first tentative jabs of that hot poker over her left eye. Slowly her gaze swept back to the house, where she thought she saw a hint of movement in the attic window.
The hot poker danced to a throbbing beat and she snapped her eyes shut. Then pried them open to look at the attic window again. She saw the wavering reflection of gently drifting clouds, stained salmon by the westering sun...the shadow of a naked tree limb twitching in the stiff breeze. She swallowed hard and mentally scolded herself. This is not a good time to panic, Elizabeth.
Approaching the back door, she noticed a small bowl on the ground, begrimed with a few flecks of dry tuna.
God, it even hurt to smile.
CALEB CHARGED into her bedroom without knocking, and was surprised to find the room nearly dark. She’d drawn the drapes, but he was able to make out her form curled up on the bed.
“No rest for the wicked!” he bellowed, flicking on the light.
She moaned and curled up tighter, pressing her arms over her eyes. He crossed the room and tossed the handcuffs onto the night table with a loud clatter. She flinched at the noise.
“Knock it off, Lizzie. I know you’re awake. You just came in the house.” He gave her a bone-jangling shake.
Something about the frantic way she shrieked, “Don’t!” made him stop. “The light,” she groaned. “Turn it off....”
The light? He didn’t want to know what kind of stunt she was cooking up now.
For three days he’d watched her pretend to play by his rules. Not that he’d trusted her for an instant. Still, how could he have known that her move, when she made it, would be so spectacularly resourceful? He felt like an idiot for letting it happen. He’d underestimated her.
Well, she’d given him a good lesson in humility, but now it was time to dispense a lesson of his own. He wrenched her arms from her face and pushed her onto her back, pinning her to the bed. Her eyes were clamped shut, and the left one was tearing.
She nearly had him buying it, too, before he remembered he was dealing with a professional actress. And he knew damn well those sleazy phone-sex commercials constituted only the hungry dregs of her career. Lizzie had done some respectable work in commercials and legitimate theater. Nothing electrifying, but she’d managed to keep a roof over her head for four years in New York. He couldn’t deny a grudging respect.
And now Sarah Bernhardt was turning those vaunted talents his way. He shook her again, roughly, and she cried out.
“Caleb...please,” she whispered, as if even speaking was painful. Her eyes never opened. “It’s a migraine. A bad one. The light...”
“What convenient timing, sweetheart,” he scoffed, but he released her. Could a migraine come on that fast?
Slowly she rolled upright and sat pressing her fingers over her left eye. “Gotta get ice,” she murmured. She stood up and took a wobbly step, her head down, her eyes squinted nearly shut.
Caleb reached out to steady her, feeling a bit of that welcome ire slip away. Welcome because it was protective. As long as he kept his hatred fresh, she couldn’t get under his skin, the way she nearly had these past few days. He knew her track record, after all. This was the wrong damn woman to let under your skin.
With one hand on her shoulder, he lifted her chin and peered closely at her. Her face was drawn, sheened with sweat If she was acting, she should get an Academy Award. He looked at the handcuffs and back at her. Just how ruthless was he?
She moved away from him and started toward the door.
“Get back in bed,” he growled. “I’ll get the ice.”
When he returned, the room was dark once more. It was dusk, and little light made it through the drapes.
Her voice was small and tentative. “Caleb...?”
“I’m here, Lizzie.”
She lay curled up with her back to him. When he sat on the edge of the bed, she slowly unfolded herself, like a flower, onto her back. Their hips touched. Even in the murky semidark he saw her eyes were closed. She lifted her hand and rested it on his upper arm.
It was a gesture of helplessness. Of trust. An unwelcome pressure swelled in his chest, a sensation he told himself had nothing to do with tender feelings for this woman.
Gently he placed the plastic ice bag on her forehead, and she shifted it to the left side.
“Is that where it hurts?” he asked. “On the left?”
“Yeah,” she whispered. “It’s like a...hot poker. It’s always on that side.”
In the dark he touched her face and felt the moisture sliding out of her left eye. Only that eye. He sighed in self-disgust. “Damn...”
That she was suffering couldn’t be denied. That he was partly responsible, through his thoughtless indifference to her need for medication, brought an ugly little rush of shame. Despite his taunting words that first day, he’d never meant to be the instrument of her suffering.
What would David say?
Caleb stroked her cheek. Her expression was still...so still, as if it hurt even to move the muscles of her face. He smoothed his fingers over her forehead to ease the tension he felt there. She whimpered, “No,” and tightened her fingers on his arm.
He dropped his hand, feeling useless. “I’ll get you some aspirin.”
“It won’t help—” Suddenly she curled into herself, clutching her stomach. “Oh no...” The words ended on a low, desolate moan. “I’m gonna be sick!” She was already rising, holding her head.
“I’ve got you.” He rose with her, supporting her out the door and down the hall to the bathroom. He felt the perspiration soaking through her flannel shirt, a shirt as threadbare as the rest of her things.
Not for the first time, he wondered if she’d been after David’s money. Then again, if she’d gotten anything out of him, wouldn’t she have something to show for it? Jewelry, a fur coat...? Decent clothes at the very least. Maybe there was a bank account he knew nothing about.
But then, new members of the Avalon Collective were required to turn over all their assets to the commune—every last penny. If his brother had giv
en Lizzie anything, it was Lugh’s now. David himself had obediently wiped out his generous bank accounts, stocks and bonds, and real-estate holdings. Caleb could only assume she’d done the same.
The bathroom they entered was as luxuriously rustic as the rest of the house, well appointed and spacious. His hand automatically went to the light switch, but he stopped himself. Diffuse twilight washed in through the large skylight overhead, glinting off porcelain. She dropped to her knees in front of the bowl, holding her head, breathing hard. He joined her on the floor and gathered her hair back.
“No!” she wailed. “Go away!”
“Sweetheart, I’ve seen folks puke before. I won’t faint”
“Please...” When he didn’t move, she swatted blindly at him, and he seized her wrists.
“You’re pitiful, you know that?” he said. “Save your energy, Lizzie.” He pulled her hair back once more, twisted it and tucked it under her collar.
“I hate you,” she whimpered.
“Yes, I know you do,” he said soothingly. I’m less than thrilled with myself just now. He held her while her stomach emptied violently.
She sagged against him. Carefully he pulled her up, wiped her face with a cold washcloth and helped her rinse her mouth and stagger back to bed.
“Who’s your doctor?” he asked, replacing the ice pack.
The arms covering her face shifted and he saw one eye blink. Or try to. “My doctor?” she croaked.
“Too little too late, I know, but...” Caleb pulled open the night-table drawer and extracted a pen and scratch pad. “What’s his name and number?”
“Moira O’Neal,” she said, and gave him the Brooklyn phone number.
“All right, you sit tight. I’ll go call her.”
He retrieved a phone from the locked storage room off the kitchen. Ten minutes after he left a message with her service, Dr. O’Neal called him back. Lizzie was on vacation upstate, he explained, and had forgotten her medication. She was having a real thumper of a migraine. The doctor instructed him to have the pharmacy call for the prescriptions, and gave him a few helpful bits of advice.
Silently he entered Lizzie’s room and approached the bed. In the light spilling in from the hallway, he saw her lying very still, with one arm thrown over her eyes. His guts twisting, he lifted the handcuffs from the night table. She turned her head at the scraping sound, and he held the cuffs behind his back. Don’t think about it, he told himself. Just do it.
She murmured, “Caleb...”
He bent over her and brushed his fingertips across her damp forehead and cheek. “I’m going out now,” he said quietly. “The drugstore’s about twenty minutes away. I’ll be back as soon as I can.” He paused. “You’ll be okay.”
Just do it. Gently he lifted her wrist and brought it to the headboard. Her eyes squinted at the handcuffs and snapped to his face. In the heartbeat of time before she averted her gaze, he read undiluted anguish, the pain of betrayal.
She hadn’t seen the cuffs since that first morning when he’d given her a choice between cooperating and fighting him. Well, she’d made her choice, hadn’t she? She didn’t know he was on to her, and he wasn’t about to lay that on her now, when she was in agony. But the fact remained that she couldn’t be trusted. He couldn’t leave the estate without restraining her.
Unbelievably, his fingers shook as he snapped the cuff around her wrist. He closed his eyes and fought the lead weight that threatened to crush his chest. His fingers lingered on her slender wrist, over the rapid flutter of her pulse.
He opened his eyes and woodenly snapped the other cuff around the headboard’s wrought-iron filigree, without looking at her. “It won’t be for long, Lizzie.” When she said nothing, he added, “It has to be this way.”
A wrenching sob burst from her as if she’d been struggling to contain it. As she wept, the fingers of her free hand slipped under the ice bag to press on her forehead. He knew her tears were making the pain worse.
He fought the impulse to gather her in his arms. His hand hovered over her anguished face for a moment before tentatively lowering to smooth her hair back.
“Lizzie...” His voice was a hoarse whisper. “Lizzie, don’t...”
Through convulsive sobs she got out, “Caleb, please...please don’t do this. I’ll stay right here...I promise....”
He squeezed his eyes shut. He couldn’t bear to hear this proud woman plead, despised himself for flaying her dignity this way.
She asked, “What if...what if I get sick again?”
That thought had occurred to him, but it wasn’t why he dragged the keys out of his pocket.
Worse than what he was doing to Lizzie was what he was doing to himself. What he was turning himself into. During all his years in the Special Forces, through his grueling training and more-than-grueling missions, he’d never relinquished his humanity. Or his honor.
Lizzie might not have the same high standards of humanity, or honor, but right now she was in no condition to do any harm. Restraining her would serve a punitive function only. There would be time enough for that later.
Caleb unlocked the cuffs and set them aside. He held her small, soft hand between his big, rough ones and rubbed the wrist as if he could erase the last few moments. A weary sigh escaped him, dredged from the depths of his soul. He wondered which of them was going to be more changed by this bizarre interlude in their lives. It was a question that wouldn’t have occurred to him three days ago.
Her chin still quivered slightly. “Thank you,” she whispered.
His fingers tightened around hers. He shook his head as his gaze burned into hers, but he couldn’t bring forth the words to tell her that her gratitude was misplaced. The nature of their relationship hadn’t changed. It couldn’t. He had a promise to fulfill, to a dead brother he’d failed more than once. Caleb wouldn’t allow himself to fail again.
He gave her hand a little squeeze. “Try to rest,” he said quietly. “I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
Before going to the drugstore, Caleb drove around to where he’d seen the model rocket land. It took him only a few minutes to locate it, payload bay intact, at the edge of the woods near a road. It was a miracle no one had stumbled on it yet; he had no doubt it would have been found in the morning. Pure dumb luck had saved his butt not once, but twice today. Earlier, he’d left the garage to get some tools from the shed, and just happened to see the damn thing arc over the distant treetops. A quick perusal of the attic had told him all he needed to know.
Part of him was filled with grudging admiration. He supposed he could be accused of carelessness, but who would have thought she’d do so much with so little? He’d come within a hairbreadth of being arrested for kidnapping.
And convicted. He knew that legal precedent was on Lizzie’s side, no matter what slimeball practices Lugh might have employed.
Caleb could have laughed at the irony. Here he was, one of a handful of the most superbly trained warriors in the world, a top expert in explosives—his specialty in the Delta Force—and what weapon does his little commune cutie use against him? A toy rocket!
And it had almost worked.
The part of him that wasn’t awestruck at Lizzie’s audacious move was sobered by the desperation that led to it. What did she imagine he was going to do to her? Did she think he planned to keep her prisoner forever? Or exact some horrendous revenge for what she’d done to David?
The way Caleb had terrorized her that first night, he wouldn’t blame her if she did. It gave him no pleasure to do that to her. God knew he wasn’t in the habit of victimizing defenseless women. He’d approached this as just another mission, one he was determined to see through to the end.
That part, at least, hadn’t changed. He still had a job to do, for David, even if he found it increasingly difficult to stay focused. He’d be lying to himself if he didn’t admit his brother’s version of events had always seemed a little...off, especially Lizzie’s horrendous treatment of him. If David hadn’t be
en so devastated—if he hadn’t killed himself over her!—Caleb might have suspected he’d embellished the facts.
In the few days he’d known Lizzie, those initial doubts about David’s story had returned with a vengeance. Could this be the woman his brother had spoken of so scathingly? The woman who’d belittled him, savaged his pride?
Somehow Caleb had a hard time imagining it.
He sat in the Land Rover reading and rereading her message—her appeal for help—before shoving it into the pocket of his black leather jacket
No. It gave him no pleasure to do that to her.
Lizzie had tried on several occasions to reiterate her story about joining the commune undercover to investigate David’s suicide. But even if Caleb were inclined to believe her, the evidence couldn’t be denied: she’d given them all her money and let them tattoo her! Those acts bespoke genuine commitment.
Dutiful deprogrammer that he was, he’d attempted to discuss the dangers of Avalon with her, but soon realized the futility of that approach when she pretended to agree with everything he said. Eventually he’d realized she’d have to come around on her own.
He only hoped it wouldn’t take too long. Things weren’t going exactly the way he’d envisioned. He found he no longer had the stomach for the rough stuff.
And the rough stuff was precisely what he’d promised her if she pulled this kind of stunt.
Mulling over that quandary, he turned the key in the ignition and drove as fast as he dared to the drugstore. By the time he arrived back home, night had descended and a full moon had risen.
When he crept into Lizzie’s dark bedroom, she was once more curled up with her back to him. She flinched at the touch of his fingertips on her shoulder. Her voice was frighteningly weak and shaky.
“It’s worse...so bad, Caleb.” She moaned pitifully, sounding close to tears. “I can’t stand it.”
Her misery tore at his guts. Oh, Lizzie...I never meant for this to happen. He shook out one of the painkillers—a mixture of ergotamine and caffeine. Dr. O’Neal had warned him it would take a while to kick in, and not to expect total relief, since the attack was advanced. He’d also gotten her to prescribe the other medications in Lizzie’s pharmaceutical arsenal, to keep this from happening again.
A Hard-Hearted Hero (Harlequin Temptation) Page 4