The Lady and the Lion

by Kay Hooper

  The agent gave him a somewhat ironic look, but said, “If you say so. Anyway, I decided to wait and see what developed. Things were shaping up nicely for a territorial war in Florida, which the DEA and Miami vice considered promising; they hadn’t been able to get close to Martine until you started stirring the pot. Everyone on both sides was quietly gearing up for an explosion of one kind or another. And then you—or Duncan, I should say—just up and vanished.”

  Under Erin’s fascinated gaze, the federal agent’s rather thin smile became almost beatific, and his emotionless voice deepened with pure pleasure.

  “To call Wellman’s condition one of panic,” he said, “would be to understate the matter. The man quite literally went to pieces.”

  Surprised, Keith said, “Just because I disappeared?”

  “Your timing couldn’t have been more perfect. You see, Wellman had decided that he was going to be smarter this time. He wanted somebody to owe him for a change.”

  “He went to Martine?” Keith guessed.

  “Bingo. He was feeding Martine all of Arturo’s battle plans, as well as information about your cartel. The way he saw it, and the way you had explained it to him, the cartel would remove Arturo before the war got nasty and then cut a deal with Martine—who would be ever so grateful to his dear friend Wellman for all his help.”

  “It might have worked,” Keith said thoughtfully. “If there’d been a cartel.”

  “Right, but there wasn’t. So you vanished, along with every scrap of proof that you’d even existed. And Wellman is left with several very unsettling realizations. He introduced you to Arturo, who had planned to declare war on the strength of your supposed backing. He betrayed Arturo thinking he’d never get caught out, which now put him squarely between Arturo and Martine. And he didn’t have an army to protect him.”

  “Ouch,” Keith murmured.

  “Uh-huh. And after that, it was easy. He wanted protection so badly he was willing to spill everything. He was terrified that Arturo was going to come after him, and since Martine could be forgiven for thinking he’d been lied to about the cartel as well, he wasn’t likely to offer protection. I flashed my badge at the opportune moment, and Wellman started talking. He had a lot to say, too. Since Arturo had felt very sure of him, Wellman knew quite a bit about his operations, and enough details about specific crimes—such as the hit on your family—to put them both away for a long, long time.”

  Erin, who had been listening silently all this time, looked at Keith and said quietly, “Justice.”

  He nodded slowly, gazing at her, then turned his attention to Masters and said, “I had planned to push them a lot harder. I was out for blood.”

  “I know,” the agent responded. “Worried me for a while. I’m glad you stopped short of that, though. If you hadn’t, it would have been a real mess. This way, they both pay for quite a few past crimes, and you don’t have to think of yourself as a vigilante. You pushed them just enough to put them into our hands, and nobody got hurt by it. You were lucky.”

  “Yes,” Keith said, looking at Erin again. “Very lucky.”

  Masters was a highly trained and keenly observant agent who’d been taught to sense undercurrents, and the one moving between these two was so intense it almost embarrassed him. All his instincts told him it was time to fold his own tent and depart, so he said his good-byes with a minimum of words and left to catch the plane that would take him back to the States.

  He couldn’t help but think, though, as he left the Bahamas behind, that Keith Donovan had indeed been astonishingly lucky. At a critical point in his life, when an obsession with revenge might well have destroyed him, he had found the only thing capable of pulling him from the blackness of rage and bitterness.

  Fate, Masters thought idly, must have had a hand in it.

  —

  On a balmy afternoon a few days later, Erin stretched contentedly, as lazy as a cat in the sunshine, her two-piece swimsuit covering only what the law demanded. From her prone position on the deck of the drifting sailboat, she looked drowsily up at the gently swaying mast, allowing its motion and the peaceful ocean to lull her.

  “Hey.”

  She made a faint sound that might have been taken for a response, though it was utterly languid.

  “Wake up and talk to me,” Keith requested in an aggrieved tone. “Honestly, if I’d known you were part cat and always went to sleep in the sunshine, I never would have rented this boat.”

  She smiled, closing her eyes. “Can’t help it.”

  A shadow loomed over her suddenly. She opened one mildly distressed eye, then the other, gazing up at him reproachfully. “It felt so good,” she explained.

  Raised on an elbow beside her, he reached to lay one large hand on her sun-warmed stomach. “So does this.”

  “Ummm. That’s true. All right, I’m awake. What did you want to talk about so badly?”

  He smiled down at her, his lean face totally relaxed and peaceful, violet eyes luminous. “I just wanted to hear your voice. Ever since you conked out on me after lunch, I’ve been lying here listening to seagulls. I’ve come to the conclusion that your voice is better than the seagulls’.”

  “Gee, thanks.”

  He leaned over to kiss her, his lips moving slowly and sensuously on hers, then straightened before she could reach up and grab him. “Oh, no,” he said severely with a mock frown.

  “Why not?” she murmured, allowing the fingers of one hand to wander across his broad chest. “We’re alone out here.”

  “That’s what I thought yesterday,” he reminded her. “And if that patrol boat skipper hadn’t forgotten his responsibilities, his oath, his country, and his name after one glance at you, we’d probably have been arrested.”

  Her eyes widened innocently. “I thought he was very nice about it. Especially after you called him a barnacle.”

  Keith had the grace to look a bit sheepish, but said firmly, “The man was practically drooling.”

  “Oh, he was not. Just polite and friendly.”

  “And wonderfully stalwart in his spiffy white uniform,” Keith said darkly. “Damn him.”

  Serenely, Erin said, “I’ve never cared for men in uniform.”

  Keith eyed her. “No?”

  “No. Had my fill of them at all those embassies.”

  After considering that for a moment in reflective silence, Keith said, “In that case, I’ll stop trying to decide the most satisfying method of separating the hotel’s doorman from his most prized body parts.”

  Erin maintained her tranquil expression. “That would probably be best.”

  “But it hardly narrows the field,” Keith complained, his gloomy voice belied by the amusement in his eyes. “Everywhere I turn, there’s some man tripping over his own feet or running into a wall trying to get another look at you.”

  “Look who’s talking,” she scoffed. “I happen to know for a fact that our room service waiter has been raffling off deliveries so that the other ladies on the staff can get a look at you in a towel—and I hear the price of the tickets is skyrocketing.”

  “Nonsense.”

  Erin giggled at his rather startled expression. He really had no idea that the force of his personality combined with the blatant sexuality he exuded drew female eyes wherever he went. As for his possessiveness of her, it was never smothering and didn’t disturb her in the slightest, but it was also not—quite—the light matter he made it out to be.

  He had explained shortly after their whirlwind marriage with his usual honesty, saying that he’d come so close to losing her he wasn’t quite able to get over the fear of it. He doubted he ever would, but promised to try and stop regarding every man between adolescence and death as a threat. In the meantime, Erin concentrated on loving him so much he couldn’t possibly feel threatened, and he avoided saying rude things to strangers—the patrol boat skipper had caught him at a vulnerable moment—and teased her about her quite unintentional effect on men.

  Erin thoug
ht they were both enjoying it.

  He eyed her now after her remark about their room service waiter, but apparently decided to let the matter drop. His hand was moving slowly on her sun-warmed stomach, and the building intensity in his gaze made her feel more than the heat of a tropical afternoon.

  She slid her arms around his neck, her fingers threading into his thick hair, and smiled. “I don’t think we’ll be disturbed today,” she murmured. “There isn’t a boat anywhere near us.”

  He might have been able to teasingly resist her a few minutes ago, but Keith had known from the beginning that his hunger for Erin went too deep to be something he could fight. And he didn’t want to fight it, not for a long time now. The bond between them had deepened even more these last days, growing stronger and more certain, and their physical response to each other had intensified as well.

  Keith lowered his head and kissed her hungrily, his hands moving with sure knowledge to unfasten the flimsy ties of her brief swimsuit and smooth the material away and then get rid of his own trunks. Her hands were on him as well, soft and strong, exploring the body she knew well now and found more compelling each time she touched it.

  The thick pallet of blankets beneath them cushioned them from the sailboat’s deck, and the lazy rocking motion of the vessel added an erotic rhythm that was slow and sweet and heated. The sun bore down on them, almost shatteringly bright, and a soft breeze caressed their naked bodies.

  Erin thought that it was somehow new each time, the sensations different with every touch. Her body seemed more sensitized, all her senses opening with a completeness she had never even imagined possible, and her love for him filled her heart and mind as if it had always been a part of her.

  He was still virtually a silent lover, still unable to say very much in the consuming power of his need for her. The words he did utter were rough and low, love words and sex words that were disjointed, almost wild. He lost control as swiftly and completely as she did, his turbulent nature given over totally to the fierce passion between them. His hands shook as they stroked her body, gentle but somehow primitive, as if all his deepest instincts knew without question that she belonged to him.

  And that he belonged to her. He gave himself to her every time they made love, with utter abandon pouring all that he was into the loving. His emotions, so honest and naked, were like a storm, and it was a storm Erin treasured.

  It swept over them both, the force in him matched by her, and when it finally passed they were left, drained and content, to bask in a sunlit peace.

  She stirred first, just a faint movement that was lazy and blissfully sated. Keith raised himself a bit to make her more comfortable, but remained propped on his forearms as he kissed her smiling lips tenderly. The breeze was cool now on their damp bodies, and a shadow from the lowered sail crept over them as the sun began sinking in the west.

  “We should be heading back,” he murmured, kissing her again because he had to. He wondered fleetingly if he would ever be able to look at her and not have to touch, to kiss, to lose himself in the magic of her luminous eyes, and thought he knew what the answer was. Never. If fate granted him a dozen lifetimes in which to love her, he might possibly grow accustomed to these incredible feelings, but he knew he would never get over the astonished wonder of knowing she loved him.

  “I suppose so.” Her voice was soft and dreamy, her green eyes misty with love and contentment as she looked up at him.

  He stroked her flushed cheek gently. “Are you sure you don’t mind going to New York so soon? I can put them off a few more days.”

  “I don’t mind at all,” she said serenely. “Your company’s struggled along without you for too long as it is. Besides, it was your idea to have a honeymoon in the Bahamas. I told you I’d be perfectly happy to go straight back to New York, but you wouldn’t listen.”

  “I listened.” He kissed her again. “I just felt so guilty. Carrying you off to a judge because I couldn’t wait to marry you, barely giving you time to call your father. You didn’t have a proper wedding, sweetheart, and I wanted you at least to have a honeymoon.”

  “My wedding was quite proper, thank you,” she told him, smiling. “I don’t feel at all deprived. In fact, I’ve been gloriously happy, in case you haven’t noticed. I don’t need a lot of pomp and ceremony, darling, only you.”

  “I love you,” he said softly, intensely. “I love you so much.”

  “I love you, too. Isn’t it wonderful?”

  Keith hugged her, agreeing wordlessly that it was, then reluctantly eased away from her. “If we don’t raise the sail and head back right now,” he said, “I’m going to get distracted again and we’ll never make it.”

  “You’re so reasonable,” she said admiringly, her eyes gleaming at him as she found her swimsuit and began putting it on.

  Several minutes later, the sails raised and their little boat skimming swiftly over the sparkling water toward Nassau, Keith asked a question that had been troubling him only a little. “Do you think your father’s forgiven me yet?”

  “Is that bothering you?” she returned politely.

  “Not on my account. I married you, not him. I just don’t want you to be upset, sweetheart.”

  She smiled and touched his cheek. “I don’t think he’ll ever be able to upset me again. We never would have been close, Keith, even if you hadn’t come along. And he didn’t disown me, you know. In fact, he invited us very civilly to come and spend a few weeks at Westford.”

  “True. Do you want to?”

  “Not particularly. I’d like for you to see the place someday, but there’s no hurry.”

  “Um. Well, in that case, we won’t worry about it for a while. I’ll probably have to go back to Europe in a couple of months, so we’ll visit then.”

  She grinned a little. “While Dad’s in Turkey?”

  Keith reached out an arm and drew her close to his side, smiling wryly. “Okay, so I feel a bit wary about meeting a British ambassador whose daughter I eloped with.”

  “He won’t be hostile,” Erin said, no longer troubled by the distance between her and her father.

  “Maybe not, but I probably will.” Keith met her smiling gaze, then shrugged and pushed the matter from his mind. Erin was happy with him, he knew, and that was really all that counted. He meant to make certain that their life together was so complete and filled with love that she wouldn’t feel the lack of closeness with her father.

  “All I need is you,” she said softly, reading his mind or his expression, her eyes glowing as she cuddled close to him.

  Keith held her, feeling the brisk wind in his face, the sunlight warm and bright, his heart so full that it seemed it might burst with happiness. And he thought, fleetingly, of the strange old man Erin had told him about, the one who had known even though he couldn’t have, because it wasn’t possible…

  But maybe after all, it was quite possible. Maybe destiny supplied a special emissary when a guiding hand was needed, and called him Fortune.

  Erin believed that.

  Keith thought he did, as well.

  Epilogue

  “Well, you won again,” she said.

  “Destiny won, my sweet,” he responded, closing a file as he sat at his desk and laying it aside.

  Her delicate hand touched his shoulder, and she leaned down to kiss him. “Coming to bed?”

  “In a moment,” he said, and watched her slender, elegant figure move gracefully from the study.

  He sat in a pool of lamplight, his gaze turned inward, a big, powerful, very old man with a spirit so ageless and filled with delight that it seemed an aura around him. And he thought idly that he hadn’t known, back when it all began, how full and rich his life would be. He had been blind, too, then, as stubbornly resistant to the dictates of fate as a fierce young man could be. He hadn’t known, hadn’t recognized the truth of every soul’s search for its match, its mate.

  Until his own tempestuous search began.

  “I am the captain
of my fate,” he murmured softly in the peaceful, book-lined room. “I am the master of my soul.”

  The sound of a low, vastly amused chuckle became a deep and delighted laugh, and upstairs in their bedroom, where she waited for him, Julia heard. And smiled.

  BY KAY HOOPER

  The Bishop Trilogies

  Stealing Shadows

  Hiding in the Shadows

  Out of the Shadows

  Touching Evil

  Whisper of Evil

  Sense of Evil

  Hunting Fear

  Chill of Fear

  Sleeping with Fear

  Blood Dreams

  Blood Sins

  Blood Ties

  The Quinn Novels

  Once a Thief

  Always a Thief

  Romantic Suspense

  The Haunting of Josie

  Amanda

  After Caroline

  Finding Laura

  Haunting Rachel

  Classic Fantasy and Romance

  On Wings of Magic

  C.J.’s Fate

  Something Different

  Pepper’s Way

  If There Be Dragons

  Illegal Possession

  Rebel Waltz

  Larger than Life

  Time after Time

  In Serena’s Web

  Raven on the Wing

  Rafferty’s Wife

  Zach’s Law

  The Fall of Lucas Kendrick

  Unmasking Kelsey

  Outlaw Derek

  Shades of Gray

  Captain’s Paradise

  It Takes a Thief

  Aces High

  Golden Threads

  The Glass Shoe

  What Dreams May Come

  Through the Looking Glass

  The Lady and the Lion

  Star-Crossed Lovers

  The Wizard of Seattle

  The Delaney Christmas Carol

  PHOTO: © SIGRID ESTRADA

  KAY HOOPER is the award-winning author of Sleeping with Fear, Hunting Fear, Chill of Fear, Touching Evil, Whisper of Evil, Sense of Evil, Once a Thief, Always a Thief, the Shadows trilogy, and other novels. She lives in North Carolina, where she is at work on her next book.