by Amelia Autin
She snuggled her cheek against his chest, and slid her hand down until it was nestled against his bare hip. “Please.”
He smiled in the darkness. One step at a time, he reminded himself with a patience that didn’t come naturally to him—he had to fight for it. One baby step at a time.
* * *
Aleksandrov Vishenko’s Learjet landed in the same private airport in Arlington, Virginia, where it had landed four days before. Again he was early, which was par for the course with Vishenko. Meticulous planning had always ensured success...even when it came to murder.
The sun was setting, and he pulled down the window shade to block the dying sun’s rays, waiting with as much patience as he could muster—hard-won patience given the past four days with no word from Nick D’Arcy—and reviewing his plan in his mind, looking for weaknesses.
Item one: pay D’Arcy the bribe and learn Caterina Mateja’s whereabouts. Item two: dispatch his chief brigadier to dispose of her. The job wouldn’t normally be handled by a man that high in the Bratva ranks, but Vishenko was taking no chances. Caterina had to die now, and he couldn’t take the risk she would slip through his fingers again. Item three: recover the bribe. Ten million dollars was a lot of money. He might as well get the money back if he could. Item four: kill Nick D’Arcy in a way that would not only give him the revenge he craved for what D’Arcy had put him through, but would expose the chinks in the agency’s armor. How good could they be if they couldn’t even keep the head of their agency safe?
The agency had been riding high these past few years. Unknown to the general public, but fast becoming the darling of US law enforcement. D’Arcy’s assassination would send shock waves through the entire law enforcement community, not just the agency. And Caterina’s death would have the added bonus of sending a chilling message to anyone who was considering betraying him. It wasn’t the first time he’d sent such a message—and it wouldn’t be the last.
* * *
Four days after Cate had made love to him, Liam was still reiterating in his mind what he’d told himself then—one baby step at a time.
They’d made progress. He touched Cate constantly now. Natural touches—holding her hand as they hiked the trails around the cabin, touching her arm to draw attention to a doe and her fawn beside the river’s edge, taking the dishes from her as she washed and he dried. Kissing her on impulse—light kisses, not passionate ones, but kisses all the same. And she touched him, too. Maybe not quite as often, but just as naturally. She’d never again kissed him first, though. But she had responded when he’d kissed her. Shyly to start out with, but eventually the shyness had given way to something more. It was the something more that gave him hope.
They’d shared the same bed too, every night. They hadn’t made love, but Cate had slept in his arms. And at no point had she panicked. At no point had she been afraid of him. He wanted more, but he fought down his desire. Cate wasn’t ready for more—not yet. When she was, he would know.
And she looked at him with love shining from her pale blue eyes, turning them into stars. She never said the words, but he could live without them. They were just words. That didn’t mean he didn’t say the words to her—he did. Every chance he had. Knowing in some deep recess of his brain Cate desperately needed to hear the words she couldn’t say. Someday, when he’d convinced her she was loved—that she was worthy of being loved—she’d trust him enough to say the words to him. He knew it.
Cate was constantly on his mind, but she wasn’t the only thing on his mind. His conscience was troubling him, too.
He’d never killed a man with vengeance in his heart. Although he hadn’t felt exactly the same way since, it bothered him—a lot—that he’d had those thoughts about Aleksandrov Vishenko the other night. He wanted to believe he was a better man than that. But he kept hearing Cody’s voice in his head as he confessed what he’d done when Keira was shot. And he heard himself telling Cate, “...we’re only human...when someone we love is hurt, we want to hurt back...”
All he could do was pray he’d never be put to the test. Pray he’d never come face-to-face with the man who’d hurt Cate so grievously. Because he didn’t know what he’d do.
* * *
Cate sat on the cabin’s front porch steps, watching as Liam and Callahan walked the clearing’s perimeter. She could have gone with them—neither man would have objected—but she wouldn’t have known what she was looking for the way the two men did, and she would probably have slowed them down.
Nick D’Arcy was right, she thought now. Ryan Callahan’s the best at this sort of thing. Liam had shown her the traps Callahan had rigged, admiration evident in his voice and on his face as he explained what each item was for. But Liam’s the best, too. No one could be more protective. No one could keep me safe the way he can.
She sighed softly. More than a week was gone. Liam had less than two weeks of his vacation left, and though he’d repeatedly assured her he wasn’t leaving, they couldn’t stay here forever, even if he didn’t have a job to go back to. She’d already heard from D’Arcy via Callahan that the new trial date had been set. In a little less than three weeks she would be in a courtroom in Washington, DC. Face-to-face with Aleksandrov Vishenko and the other conspirators. And the new prosecutors wanted to meet with her ahead of time, so they could prep her testimony. Which meant heading back to DC two weeks from now.
She was terrified of testifying. Not because of Vishenko, but because Liam would know—as the whole world would know—the kind of woman she really was. Angelina had warned her—Alec, too—that the defense attorneys would do everything they could to discredit her. That they would rip her character to shreds if they could. So of course they’d try to make something out of the fact she hadn’t literally been a prisoner the entire two years she’d been with Vishenko. They’d do their best to convince the jury she’d been Vishenko’s willing mistress. That he’d dumped her. And that she was trying to get revenge on him by lying in court.
She rested her head against her knees. You have to tell Liam, her conscience told her sternly. You can’t let him find out when everyone else does.
Two more weeks, she begged her conscience. Just two more weeks. Is that too much to ask? Two weeks to be happy for once. Two weeks with the man I—
Even in her thoughts she couldn’t use the word. But it was there. And it hurt. Because even though she’d sworn she wouldn’t risk one more thing, she had. She’d risked the only thing she had left to lose. And when she told Liam the truth, when he walked away, he’d take her heart with him. Leaving her with nothing.
* * *
Nick D’Arcy leaned back in his leather seat in the cabin of Vishenko’s Learjet and shook his head. “No. I don’t think so. It’s not foolproof.”
Vishenko cursed in Russian, then said in English, “It is not your call to make.”
D’Arcy smiled coldly. “It is when I haven’t told you where she is.”
Vishenko clenched his jaw. “You will tell me. I will pay you the ten million you want, and you will tell me where she is. My men will take it from there.”
“Not a chance. You want Caterina Mateja dead—and I don’t blame you. If you don’t kill her, if she lives to testify, you’re going down. For life. But she’s guarded. There’s no way your men will get past her protectors—I know these men, and I’m telling you, no way. The only way for this to work is for me to arrange it. For the ten million you offered, I’ll take you to her, and I’ll get her alone. After that, it’s up to you.”
Vishenko considered this for a moment, weighing the pros and cons. Then he realized this was the perfect solution to his plan to kill both Caterina and Nick D’Arcy. And do it so quickly the chances of recovering his money were improved.
He hid his glee and returned the other man’s cold smile. “Fine. I will pay you when you take me to her.”
A deep bell
y laugh rumbled out of D’Arcy. “You must think I’m as stupid as the police and FBI agents you’ve bribed over the years,” he said. “No, no, my friend.” Sarcasm dripped from his words. “You will pay me up front, or the deal is off.”
Vishenko shook his head. “Pay you ten million dollars for nothing but your word that you will disclose Caterina’s location? I think not.”
“Of the two of us,” D’Arcy said softly, “whose word can be believed?” He waited a moment, but when Vishenko didn’t respond, he stood up. “Ah well,” he said as he turned to go. “I guess you will just have to take your chances with the jury.”
“Half,” Vishenko said quickly, as he realized D’Arcy meant it—he would walk and take his information with him. “I will pay you half up front—a good faith payment. The other half I will pay when she is dead.”
D’Arcy smiled again. “Good faith?” He laughed softly. “That’s funny, coming from you.” Then his smile faded, leaving nothing but cold, hard determination. “Deal,” he said. “I won’t offer you my hand to shake on it. Neither of us can be trusted that far.”
“Deal,” Vishenko said. “When will you take me to Caterina?”
“When I have the money safely in my possession, and not a moment before.” He held up a cautionary hand. “But don’t wait too long. I have arrangements to make if I’m going to get Ms. Mateja’s protectors out of the way. It won’t be easy doing it in such a way that her death isn’t traced back to me. And I don’t want to wait until just before the trial. Too many other factors could come into play, like the US Marshals Service and the FBI. So long as the agency has sole custody, I can make it happen. So let’s get this done sooner rather than later.”
Chapter 15
After lunch Cate asked Liam, “Dessert? There’s still one piece of that apple pie left.”
He patted his flat stomach and shook his head. “Better not,” he said with a rueful smile. “I’m not getting much exercise here at the cabin—not like usual—so I have to be careful how much I eat.”
“We’ve hiked every day,” she protested.
“Yeah, but I usually jog five miles or so before breakfast in addition to my other activities. I can’t jog up here. You eat it if you want.”
She gazed at the covered pan with longing. “It’s really good. Sheriff Callahan’s wife is a great baker.” Liam had told her who’d baked the bread, pie and cookies Callahan had supplied them with.
“I wish I—” She didn’t finish her sentence. Cooking and baking were things she hadn’t had the chance to do since she’d left Zakhar. Her mother had already been teaching her for several years when she died, so Cate knew much more than the basics. In fact, her father—traditional Zakharian father that he was—had praised Cate’s skills in the kitchen, although she hadn’t really thought that important at the time. She’d wanted to escape the traditional “home and hearth” role most Zakharians assigned to women and be someone. Accomplish something that would set her apart from everyone else.
She didn’t feel quite the same way now. Not that she wanted to be a traditional Zakharian housewife, but she would have cherished the opportunity to cook and bake. Renting a furnished room in a boardinghouse though, rarely came with kitchen privileges. Heating things up over a hot plate was about the extent of her cooking nowadays.
“If you like pie, you’ll like my mother’s,” Liam said. “I can’t remember a time when she didn’t bake every chance she got. There wasn’t a holiday or a special occasion—Christmas, Thanksgiving, birthdays, stuff like that—where my mom didn’t bake a special treat for the family or the entire neighborhood. Everyone says her pecan pie is to die for—and it is. You’d think she was Southern-born and raised, instead of a native Coloradan.”
Cate couldn’t keep the wistfulness out of her voice. “She sounds nice. The way you talk about her... I can tell she’s special to you.”
“Tell you what. After the trial is over, I’ll take you home to meet her. You’ll love her, and I know she’ll love you. She can teach you to bake, too, if you want. She can teach just about anyone any—” He broke off and started chuckling. “Well, not Keira. My sister refused to learn how to cook, so my mom gave up on her. But if you want to learn...”
She wasn’t going to tell Liam that with a little practice there probably wasn’t a lot his mother could teach her, because her own mother had already taught her well. But she yearned to meet Liam’s mother. Not for what she could learn, but for what it meant. Meeting a man’s mother in Zakhar was almost a sure sign a proposal was imminent. But even here in the US meeting a man’s mother was a serious step—Cate knew that much about her adopted country. And for the first time she realized Liam was serious. He really meant it when he said he loved her.
If only she could believe he would still love her...if he knew the truth.
* * *
Five million dollars in cash—nothing larger than a hundred—was too much for a briefcase. The money had been delivered via licensed couriers to Vishenko in varying increments from different banks where his money was stashed, so as not to arouse too much suspicion. It now lay neatly stacked in a wheeled suitcase lying near the edge of the massive bed in the master bedroom of his Long Island estate. The same room where he’d first taken his pleasure of Caterina Mateja’s body all those years ago—the same bed.
Caterina thought she’d escaped. She thought she could bring him down. She would know soon just how wrong she was—no one got the better of Aleksandrov Vishenko. And no one testified against him. No one.
Five million. The first—and only—installment. Two hours from now he would be in Virginia again, and the money would exchange hands in the privacy of his plane, which was swept daily for audio and video devices that might have been planted by law enforcement. Which meant complete privacy was assured. No surveillance would record the exchange. And tomorrow...tomorrow his Learjet would take Nick D’Arcy and him to wherever Caterina was. He would teach her a lesson she would never forget. She would beg him one more time—then he would kill her. She would not live long enough to appreciate the lesson, but that could not be helped.
And when she died the sword of Damocles would finally be removed, once and for all, from above Vishenko’s head.
* * *
Liam and Cate sat on the back porch, watching the sunset. His arm was around her waist, and she was resting her head against his shoulder. “It never gets old,” she said as the last dying rays of the sun vanished behind the mountain, the amber sky fading into purple. One by one the stars began to appear, silver dots against the cloudless blue.
“Yeah,” Liam said. “It never gets old.” But he wasn’t looking at the sky, he was looking down at Cate, and his expression was unmistakable.
When she realized where his attention was focused, she turned her face to hide it against his neck, unable to meet the question in his eyes. “Please don’t,” she whispered.
“Don’t what?”
“Don’t look at me that way.”
He lifted her chin with one firm but gentle finger, forcing her to face him. “You might as well ask me to stop breathing.” He brushed his lips against her forehead. “I love you, Cate. And until you tell me you don’t love me...until you tell me you’ll never love me... I can’t look at you and not want you. Fifty years from now I’ll still look at you and want you.”
“You can’t know that.”
“Yes, I can.” His lips touched hers lightly, then he drew back. “What do you think love is, Cate? It’s not just desire. It’s not just here and now. It’s a choice. A commitment. It’s telling yourself ‘I want to share everything with this person, now and in the future. Every joy. Every sorrow.’”
He breathed deeply. “But it’s more than that. It’s sharing the little things, too. Like a sunset. Like a waterfall. Laughing together over nothing—things that wouldn’t be funny to anyo
ne else, but are funny to the two of you. Love is going to sleep at night and waking up in the morning next to a woman who is all women to you. It’s wanting to shield her from pain—knowing in your heart of hearts you can’t—but wanting it all the same. It’s giving her children you’ll both love and cherish the way you love and cherish each other. It’s watching the years take their toll, but still seeing in your mind’s eye the beautiful woman she is inside, the woman you first fell in love with. It’s wanting to be with her when you draw your last breath...or when she draws hers.”
Tears filled her eyes, and she blinked rapidly to hold them back, but two tears escaped and trickled down her cheeks. Liam brushed them away with a gentle hand. “It’s knowing she’ll cry when you’re not there...and that you’ll cry when she’s gone. But that’s okay, Cate, because that’s what love is. Needing someone to the exclusion of all others. I haven’t just fallen in love with you. I choose to love you. That’s how I know.”
“Oh, Liam...” She was crying in earnest now, her cheeks wet with tears she couldn’t suppress. And Liam was kissing her—eyes, cheeks, lips. Soft kisses. Gentle kisses. But when she kissed him back his kisses changed.
“Cate. Oh God, Cate,” he breathed in between kisses that stole her breath and made her body ache in secret places. His hands were everywhere. Strong, sure, touching her everyplace that needed his touch.
Soon it wasn’t enough. She wanted his hands on her bare skin, wanted to feel his warm body next to hers with nothing between them. She wanted to feel him moving inside her, joining their bodies together so they’d never be apart again. “Please...” she whispered against his lips. “Please love me...oh please...”
* * *
They undressed each other in the darkness. Cate wanted to see Liam, but she didn’t want him to see her scars again, just in case, so she stopped him from turning on the bedside lamp when he placed something he’d retrieved from his overnight case on the nightstand. But the moonlight was enough for her to see his body—smooth, tanned skin over hard, rippling muscles. And that part of him she was going to take into her body was ready for her. Her breath came a little faster when she touched him and he swelled against her fingers, but she knew in her soul he would never hurt her. She just had to convince her body’s reflexes.