Ten days from today. Just ten days until the event that would be both climax and close of a lifetime of work.
Raine didn’t know what she would do after the Olympics. She only knew that it would be something different. She was ready to step off the glittering, grueling carousel of international competition. In the past three years, the idea of raising and training event horses had come to her more and more frequently. Devlin’s Waterloo was a stallion to build a future on. Earning a medal in the Olympics would go a long way toward making her silent dreams come true.
Wind combed through the grass around her, whispering of rain that didn’t come for months on end. She closed her eyes, trying to absorb the essence of the strange, beautiful land. Never in her life had she ridden over such dry ground. It worried her that she wouldn’t have the same instinctive understanding of the terrain that she had on the East Coast or in Britain or France.
But there was no help for it. Until the day before the endurance event, she would have to be satisfied with learning what she could at a distance.
Her lips curved in an ironic smile. Somehow it was fitting that the most important contest of her life should find her on the outside looking in. She had spent her years like that, watching the world at a distance. Most of the time she preferred it that way. Sometimes, though, when she heard lovers laugh softly, saw them touch each other as though they were more precious than gold, a man bending down to his woman, smiling . . .
Abruptly Raine picked up the binoculars again. She had no illusions about her chance of finding a mate. As many men had told her with varying degrees of anger, she was too damned particular about her sex partners. The few times she finally had succumbed to loneliness had left her feeling worse about herself as a woman than before.
Get over it, she told herself coolly. The only kind of riding you’re good at is on a horse.
For long minutes she scanned the land below the crest of the hill. She hardly saw the rich honey sheen of sunlight on grass or the blue-black dance of shadows beneath the wind. She concentrated on a grove of eucalyptus, deciding that the smooth-trunked trees were rather like horses, huge yet graceful, powerful yet elegant.
She wondered if the drifts of dried leaves and peeling bark she saw at the base of the trees would be slippery or if the ground itself would be damp. She couldn’t tell from where she was and she couldn’t get any closer without crossing the Olympic boundary markers.
Damn.
Raine looked through the glasses at the dense shadows and the gray-green leaves shimmering in the late-afternoon light. So near and yet so far . . .
Story of my life.
She lowered the glasses and turned away.
Deep in the eucalyptus grove, concealed by shadows and by the absolute stillness of his body, Cord Elliot waited for the woman’s attention to pass over the grove.
Over him.
Even when she turned and disappeared beyond the crest of the hill, he didn’t move. He crouched in the fragrant shadows and waited for a long sixty count.
When no one reappeared at the top of the hill, he stood in a smooth, controlled movement. Even standing, he was still concealed by trees. He listened with the concentration of a man whose life depended on the acuteness of his senses. He heard nothing but the slow sound of grass, breeze, and leaves.
After a moment Cord flowed out of the grove, moving with the silent ease of a shadow. His sand-colored bush jacket and jeans blended completely with the tawny grass. Even his binoculars were dun colored. He walked up the sloping hill, choosing a shallow ravine that would bring him out just behind the place his target had stood.
Using every bit of natural cover, he climbed swiftly until he was just below the crest of the hill. Then he dropped flat and eased up to the top. He made certain that his head never rose higher than ripe grass swaying in the wind. His black hair would be easily spotted against the golden hillside.
His pale blue glance raked the downhill side, searching for the woman who was entirely too curious about the site of the Olympic endurance event. A quick glance revealed no one moving over the land. A second slower glance didn’t do any better.
All right, honey. Where did that nice smooth walk take you? he thought grimly. Over by those boulders?
No, not enough time. The next grove, then?
His eyes narrowed as he saw her on her knees in the grass. Why are you kneeling there? What are you doing?
Cord checked the location of the sun. No help there. If he lifted the binoculars, sunlight would flash off the lenses, giving his location away. For now he would have to be content with his own excellent vision.
Holes. She was digging holes.
Why? What choice piece of hell are you planting? And why there?
The tactician in Cord knew that the most effective place to put a bomb would be on the event course itself, where the horses would come thundering by, exhausted and yet still game, running their hearts out because they were born to do it and because their riders were there every step of the way, as tired and tough as their horses.
Is that what you’re after? He watched the kneeling woman through narrowed, glittering eyes. Do you ache to kill something that’s stronger and better than you’ll ever be? Or will you be happy just turning the spectators into a hell’s kitchen of dead and dying?
There was no answer to Cord’s questions except the one given by his own experience.
It wasn’t a comforting answer.
Motionless, he lay just below the crest of the hill, watching. Waiting. It was all he could do for the moment. As soon as the woman turned her back on him, he would come down off the hill and ask her some questions.
And she would answer every one of them.
* * *
Slowly Raine stood up. She let the last fragrant eucalyptus leaves crumble between her fingers and drift away in the fitful wind. Absently she brushed off her khaki slacks and faded chambray blouse. The pungent scent of eucalyptus still clung to her like an invisible shadow, mingling with the summer scent of grass and heat.
The good news, she decided, as she looked at the dusty earth, was that it wouldn’t get muddy under the trees, no matter how many horses galloped through. The land was dry all the way to its stony, enduring soul. With new respect and appreciation, she stared up into the towering crown of a nearby eucalyptus.
“It’s a long time between drinks for you, isn’t it?” she asked whimsically. “You could give lessons to a camel. Makes me thirsty just thinking about it.” Without looking away from the tree, she reached into her rucksack for her water bottle.
At the same instant something big slammed into her back, knocking her off her feet. Dazed, totally unprepared, she let her riding reflexes take over and fell loosely, rolling with the impact rather than fighting it. Even so, the breath was knocked out of her.
By the time she could breathe again, she was flat on her face in the leaves and dust, pinned to the ground by a heavy weight. Her binoculars, camera, and rucksack had been stripped away.
She tried to get up, only to be knocked flat again.
“Don’t move.” The male voice was cold, flat.
Instinctively she obeyed.
Then Raine felt hands moving over her body with a familiarity that no man had dared in years. Even as she stiffened, she realized that for all its intimacy, the man’s touch was impersonal. He might have been feeling her, but he wasn’t groping her.
Her world spun crazily when the man flipped her over and laid her flat again. She felt the hard muscular weight of his leg pinning her own legs to the ground, the iron power of his forearm against her throat. As long as she was utterly still, she could breathe.
If she moved at all she would choke.
Lying on her back, fighting panic, she stared up into the unyielding planes of her attacker’s face. Swiftly his free hand moved over her shoulders, under her arms, over her breasts and her stomach, between her thighs. She made a guttural, involuntary sound, fear and anger and protest squeezed into one ho
arse syllable.
A winter-blue glance raked over her face while the man’s hand continued down her body to her right ankle and yanked off her shoe. He repeated the process on her left leg. Then he tossed both shoes beyond her reach. They landed on top of the knapsack, binoculars, and camera, which he had also thrown aside.
“Name.”
It took her a moment to connect the man’s curt command with the information he wanted from her. “Raine.”
“Last name.”
“Smith.” She swallowed, trying to ease the dryness of her mouth.
“What are you doing here.”
She closed her eyes and fought to control the chemical storm in her blood. She was used to dealing with adrenaline. The first thing any competitor learned was how to control the body’s response to stress.
The second thing competitors learned was how to think under intense pressure. She began thinking very quickly, and just as quickly decided if the man was going to hurt her, he would be doing so, not asking her questions.
Fury replaced fear. Her eyes opened clear and very hard. “Who the hell are you?”
The man’s powerful forearm moved slightly, cutting off her air. The pressure ended almost as soon as it began. Pale eyes watched her to see if she had taken the hint.
She had. The next time she spoke, it was to answer his question.
“I’m looking at the country,” she said through clenched teeth.
“Why.”
No inflection, just the same flat demand that had characterized the man’s every word.
“I’m an Olympic rider.”
Something flickered in the man’s eyes. “Prove it.”
His voice was still flat, yet even as he spoke, his body changed subtly, becoming somehow less . . . predatory.
“I left Dev at Santa Anita,” Raine said curtly. Her voice was thinned by anger and the aftermath of fear.
“Dev?” For the first time, inflection and curiosity humanized the man’s voice.
“Devlin’s Waterloo. My horse.”
“Describe it.”
“Seventeen and a half hands high, stallion, blood-bay with no white, three-quarters thorough-bred and the rest either Irish or—”
“Good enough, Raine Smith,” the man broke in, giving an odd emphasis to her last name.
His body changed as he looked down at her, becoming less hard and more forgiving, less impersonal and more male. He moved his arm, releasing her neck from restraint.
But he didn’t remove the weight of his leg across hers. Nor did his wariness vanish. It was as much a part of him as the darkness at the center of his ice-blue eyes.
“As for who the hell I am,” he said, smiling slightly, “you can call me Cord Elliot.”
He could have added that she barely resembled her Olympic ID photo. The photographer should have been shot. Or hanged. The photo had completely missed the intelligence and vulnerability in her extraordinary hazel eyes, the seductive curve of her lips, the feminine strength in the line of her jaw.
Close up, there was no doubt that this was Chandler-Smith’s daughter. Well . . . not much doubt. In Cord’s world, nothing was one hundred percent sure but death.
“If you don’t want to call me Cord, I’m open to suggestion,” he added, amused.
Raine stared up at him, fascinated by the countless warm glints of blue in his eyes. When she breathed in, she smelled the sun, the grass, and the heat of another life close to her. A very masculine kind of life.
Suddenly she was aware of Cord as a man, all man, and all of that man was stretched out alongside her. His body was hard and warm, quick and dangerous, and his hair was as thick and black as her stallion’s mane.
The feeling of intense intimacy was as stunning as being knocked off her feet.
“You might not like my suggestions,” she said, forcing herself to speak, to push away the sultry, drugging heat stealing through her body. “You hear a lot of names around the stables. Especially during competition.”
“Olympic rider, hmmm?” Cord asked in a low voice, looking at the lithe body lying so quietly half beneath his. He was almost positive he knew who and what she was, but the difference between almost and positive had killed a lot of people.
“Yes,” she said coolly. “My specialty is the three-day event.”
“That explains why you fell all relaxed and controlled, yet you didn’t know how to counter the simplest unarmed combat. You’re a product of very civilized training, not Cuban or Lebanese commando camps.”
“Commando camps?” she asked in a rising voice. The drugging intimacy vanished as though it had never existed. Suddenly she was afraid she was in the hands of a madman after all.
“Don’t sound so shocked. They exist.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Terrorism.”
Cord answered almost absently. His attention had been caught by the soft swell of Raine’s breasts when she breathed in sharply. Distantly he registered and approved—the resilient warmth of her legs pinned beneath his thigh.
“Terrorism? That’s ridiculous! Do I look like a terrorist?” she demanded angrily.
“No fangs, huh?” He smiled with grim humor. “Honey, the last terrorist I had my hands on was dressed in a yellow silk ball gown and stank of hate and cordite.” When he saw Raine’s confusion, he added helpfully, “Cordite is explosive powder.”
“She?” Raine repeated, her voice rising again. “The terrorist was a woman?”
“Men don’t have a corner on violence.”
“But—”
Cord continued talking as though she hadn’t interrupted. “You don’t smell like a terrorist.”
His glance moved over her more intimately than his hands had when he frisked her for weapons. He brought his head closer to her neck and inhaled slowly. The scent of her went through him like sunrise, warm with promise.
“You smell of sunlight and dried grass and the shadows beneath eucalyptus trees,” he said in a low voice. She smelled of other things too, sultry woman heat and the sweet musk of sexuality, but he doubted she would like hearing it right now.
Raine saw the small, sensual flare of his nostrils as he breathed in her scent. She found herself holding her breath like an amateur rider approaching a big fence. She felt defenseless, angry, utterly disturbed.
So she challenged Cord recklessly, willing to risk his anger in order to escape his consuming sensuality. “Even if some terrorists are women, what harm could I possibly be doing out here alone?”
“Setting bombs.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
“What were you scattering around?”
The question was offhanded, as though he didn’t really care about the answer. But his eyes were ice clear, ruthless as winter. The difference between almost sure and absolutely certain was never far from his mind. Death was damned final.
Raine sensed the intensity beneath Cord’s casual pose. He was like Dev gathered for a blind jump, waiting for a signal from his rider.
“Little stones,” she said quickly. “I was throwing little stones. It’s a habit. I go for walks and pick up small stones and toss them as I think.” Then she added hotly, “There was no reason to tackle me! I don’t have room in my rucksack for bombs.”
Even though Chandler-Smith’s determination to protect his family from his work was legendary, Cord couldn’t believe that Blue’s daughter was so naive.
“Det cord and explosive caps don’t take up much space,” he said impatiently. “Neither does C4 or even phosphorus, for that matter. Your knapsack could even hold a stick or five of good old-fashioned dynamite. All the things that go boom in the night.” His voice shifted, becoming clipped and hard. “Why were you digging?”
“To see what the going is like.”
Cord’s only response was a silence that had the effect of making her want to explain herself. That listening kind of silence was a very potent interrogation technique. He had used it often enough to value it. If Raine was
as innocent as she seemed, she would hurry to explain what she meant.
“I wanted to know whether the ground is hard or soft,” she said, “dry or wet, how stable the soil is, what to expect on a downhill run when Dev’s hooves cut in deep. That sort of thing.”
“You weren’t going to set little explosives?”
“Why would anyone—”
“So that when the horses come down the hill they have a preview of hell,” he cut in coldly.
Shocked, she could only stare. “Injure the horses? No one would be that sick!”
He looked at her for a long moment. If the horror and innocence in her eyes were faked, he was a dead man. If they weren’t faked, Blue should have his butt kicked through every room in the Pentagon for sheltering his youngest child from too much of the dark side of reality.
When Cord finally spoke, his voice was both cynical and very tired. “If you believe that, little girl, you shouldn’t be let out alone after dark. Remember the Munich Olympics? If you’re too young to recall that bloodbath, how about the IRA bombing the Queen’s Palace Guard? Great bleeding chunks of men and horses all over the place.”
“Stop it!” she whispered in a strangled voice, horrified by his words.
“I’m trying to.”
“By tackling strange women?”
“Whatever it takes,” he said flatly.
Raine looked at his cold, measuring eyes and realized just how lucky she was that Cord’s self-control matched his lethal skills. At least, she hoped it did. When all was said and done, she was still pinned like a butterfly to the hard earth.
And the man doing the pinning wasn’t in any hurry to let her go.
Chapter 2
Cord gave Raine a long, searching look. His gut said she was telling the truth. Past experience wasn’t nearly as trusting. There was still that three percent of error. Not very much, really.
Just enough to kill him.
He shifted his body, easing the weight of his leg over hers, but not quite freeing her. If she tensed for a sudden movement, he would feel it instantly.
Remember Summer Page 2