by BJ James
“I did, the first night.”
“But in the end you slept?”
“In the end.”
“The horror that troubles your sleep never came?”
“Never.”
“Why?”
Why? With a sudden shiver, Valentina looked away. That was the crux of it. The crux of everything. Why, of all possible choices, had she chosen law enforcement as her life’s work? Why, on that dark and fateful day, hadn’t she been taken hostage instead of David? Why hadn’t she done what was needed to save him? Why did dreams of that day begin again at the lodge after so long?
Why, indeed, had they disappeared when Rafe Courtenay came to her?
She strove for rigid composure, but knew he heard the long, ragged breath that shuddered through her. She knew he sensed the strain in her. Moving restlessly, with her toes she traced and erased and retraced random patterns in the sand. “Who can say or explain? I can’t begin to define or interpret the rationale of any of this.” Pausing, she lost herself for a little time, exploring, weighing truth and reality.
Then, rousing, turning from within, she looked at him long and thoughtfully. “I suppose—” she stopped short, a small frown only a quirk of her brow. “I think... No!” she corrected adamantly, yet softly, this time with total candor. “I don’t think, I believe. I believe simply knowing there’s someone who understands, someone who cares, who would take my dreams from me and face the anguish of them in my stead, if only he could, has eased their hold.”
He heard caution in the stilted, carefully worded confession. She wouldn’t be so foolish as to say this fugue of the night had been vanquished forever. Nor would he. But were it not an end, they would deal with what they must. Together.
Covering their joined hands with his, he began. “A moment ago you sounded almost angry. Are you sorry the dreams are gone?”
Averting her head vehemently, using the curtain of her hair as her shield, she said, “I’m not sorry. I don’t want to keep reliving it again and again. But I don’t want to forget. I can’t. I mustn’t.”
“Is that why you won’t forgive yourself, Valentina?”
With startling intuition he’d laid bare her fear that in time, in the life-or-death essence of her work, if she let herself grow jaded, David would become simply a failure. The first, perhaps one of many. “I don’t know,” she admitted. “Maybe.”
“Forgiving doesn’t mean forgetting, Valentina. Nor does it diminish the loss. Neither does having done with the punishment and going on with your own life.”
“Is that what you think I’m doing? Punishing myself?” She still would not look at him. Couldn’t look at him. “In your infinite Creole wisdom, have you determined that I’m purposely perpetuating the guilt of David’s death by not going on with my life?”
Rafe turned her palm in his. A broad, masculine thumb stroked the scars and calluses left by the care and drudgery spent on the restoration of a dwelling. Endeavors better spent on the restoration of her spirit. Ignoring the bristle of contempt, he refused to back away. “Isn’t that exactly what you do here?”
Valentina snatched her hand from his. Bounding from the log, she stalked to the water’s edge. The bristle of contempt became the flash point of defense. Her arms were close about her, convulsing fingers driving into the flesh of her shoulders. “You don’t know anything about it. Not who David was, or what he meant to me, or how and why he died.”
“That’s true. I don’t know who he was or how he died. But I would be a fool not to realize that you loved him. That you were in love with him. I hope...”
“My, my, what an intelligent man you are, Rafe Courtenay.” Weary anger threaded through the interrupting mockery. “McCallum International is truly fortunate to have such an insightful man at its helm.”
“I hope,” Rafe resumed patiently, “the day will come when you tell me the rest. On that day, perhaps, you can forgive yourself and begin to live again.”
“I don’t have to tell you,” she said, lashing out. “You’ve read my dossier enough to have memorized it. You know what I did before Simon recruited me. You know where. All you need do to discover the rest is go there. Go to the city’s papers or libraries. Check their morgues, read the back copies you find in them. The years shouldn’t be hard to figure. You’ll find the story there, every gory detail, in black and white.”
“I could have, and I can,” Rafe agreed mildly. “But I won’t.”
“Why not? Why not spare me the inquisition and answer your morbid curiosity in one effort?”
“No papers from any morgue will tell me what I really need to know...the one really important factor.”
“And what would that be?”
“You, Valentina. The details of this as it relates to you. Only and always you.”
“Me! After your less-than-auspicious beginning with the cold-blooded, coldhearted bitch who can take the shot no one else would dare? Who walks away without a care or a backward glance? A freak.” This time her mockery was tenuous, and for its bitterness, not quite so biting.
“Amazing, isn’t it?”
“What does it mean?”
“Whatever we decide to make of it.” Easing back a mental pace, determined not to press a point before she was ready, Rafe forced a smile. He’d heard the camp scuttlebutt, felt the reluctant and resentful awe of men who regarded her exactly as she described. Cold-blooded, coldhearted. An aberration, if not a freak. A necessary evil. A view he’d shared. But as with Ranger Joe Collins, Commander Richard Trent, and a majority of the others—a view that had changed.
“That’s it?” Confounded and unsettled, she snapped, “You harass me in the desert, rejecting my plans, interrupting my usual procedures. When I leave, you follow me more than halfway across a continent. Next you browbeat secret and privileged information from a man as closemouthed as God. Then you invade my harbor, set up camp in my home, disrupt my life, play havoc with my mind and my thoughts, and that’s all you have to say?”
“For now.” He answered the tirade mildly, when all he could think was how magnificent she was. How brave.
“You are the most maddening man I’ve ever met.” A finger pointing emphatically drove home her point. “No one has made me so angry in years. Not since—” paling, she faltered “—not since...”
Unable to complete the unexpected thought, unwilling to face the man who provoked it, she stalked away. In her confusion she found herself at the point again. The last place she wanted to be, but the way home would take her past Rafe. All she could do was hope he would choose to leave the shore soon, and in the meantime, she must wait him out.
She knew her hopes and her plans weren’t to be as his hands came down on her shoulders. When she would have objected and flinched away from his touch, he stopped her with a gentle command.
“Stay.” Keeping her, even as he asked, he drew her back against him. With his lips brushing over her temple, he murmured, “Please.”
“Rafe...”
“Don’t.” The touch of her body, the wildflower scent, the heat of his own need intoxicated. “Don’t push me away. I didn’t come to make you angry, and I promise not to hurt you.”
She was unyielding in his arms, her body taut, resisting the tempting strength of his. In the measure of days, she knew little about him. Yet in the measure of men, she was certain he would never hurt her. Would never intend to hurt her. As she never intended to hurt.
“This won’t work,” she protested, with no definite thought to what she was saying or what she meant.
“It will.” He held her tighter, with cherishing care that was comforting and undemanding. “I know this is difficult, that painful circumstances must be faced and resolved. But give it a chance. Give me a chance. Let me help you deal with what you must. Let me go with you into whatever hell you consigned yourself to for causing David’s death.”
The ragged gasp she caught was long and rasping, but she didn’t pull away. She was too unnerved to move. Too devastate
d. Then slowly her head turned, left, then right. Then left again. Not in denial, but in pain. “You said you didn’t know. You said...”
His arms crossed over her breasts, the back of one hand stroked the smooth plane of her cheek. His voice was warm assurance in her ear. “I don’t know. I said I wouldn’t and hadn’t delved into your past.”
“David wasn’t in the dossier, and Simon might break his silence and his own rules by telling you where to find me, but he wouldn’t tell you about David.”
“Simon didn’t tell me.”
“Then who?” She turned in his embrace, to stare darkly up at him.
“You, sweetheart.”
“Only his name!” But how could she know there had been no more? How could she guard against the guilt that emerged in the night? What private memories had she babbled? What secrets?
Reading concerns so clearly shown on her face, Rafe wanted only to ease her distress. “Some things are spoken more clearly with actions than words.” Lifting a hand from her waist where it had fallen when she turned, he stroked the cords of tension at her throat. “The dream was the beginning. These tell the rest.”
Taking her hand in both of his, he opened her curled fingers exposing worn and callused palm. “And these.”
“We’ve discussed my work habits before.”
“Yes.” Nodding, he released her, but didn’t move away. “We have.”
Looking down at the sand, she muttered, “You read too much into a little.”
“Do I?”
When she didn’t answer, a finger at her chin lifted her face to his again. “You’re an honest woman, Valentina O’Hara. Except for Jordana McCallum, and except in matters regarding yourself, the most honest woman I’ve ever known.”
She didn’t want to like the soothing touch of his fingers at her throat. She didn’t want to see the blaze of need in his eyes. She didn’t want to go where this was leading. But nothing in the world could have stopped her from asking hoarsely, “So?”
“So, once again, my honest O’Hara,” Rafe teased softly, taking her gently where they both knew they must go. He was so close he could see the shallow rise and fall of her breasts beneath the taut gathers of the cotton T-shirt bunched and tied upon itself at the waist of denim cutoffs. He watched the sweep of her lashes and measured the visible throb in the tender hollow at the base of her throat. “Do I read too much into a little? Honestly?”
Suddenly this was not about David, or the past. This was Valentina and Rafe. Here and now.
Her lips shaped her answer without sound. With a shake of her head, and another sweep of her lashes, she met his intense study levelly. Walls built and rebuilt again came tumbling down for the last time. “No.” This time her voice was stronger. Then surer. “It isn’t too much.”
Then she was in his arms. As their lips met, neither would ever remember who had reached for whom. Nor care whose body flowed first against the other. With hungering mouths plundering and wondering hands caressing, the world could have faltered without notice.
The contact of their bodies was as powerful as an inferno. Its heat an arc of molten desire that burned and seared. A passion that, once unleashed, would know no ebb. No matter where. No matter that there were other issues to be resolved. Issues and concerns.
Because he was a man of principle and of honor, Rafe was first to move, first to force himself to back away. He was pale beneath the darkness of his skin. The battle to resist the driving desire drew the mouth that had kissed her so completely, so fiercely, to a thin, grim line. There was hunger in his eyes, yet he looked at her, gravely. “You were right.”
“I was? I am?” Struck by the certainty that he was going to agree this nameless passion between them was a mistake, she stumbled in retreat. Water lapped at her ankles and swirled unheeded about her toes. Giddy delight turned to pulsing pain. Her lips, still warmed by his kiss, were ridged in desperate restraint. Gathering the shreds of her pride, she met his piercing gaze with a lackluster calm. “How so?”
“I’ve been an arrogant fool.” The declaration was blunt and grating.
“Perhaps we both have been.” When she would have retreated deeper into the water, bleakly anxious to put distance between them, his fingers lashing out to circle her wrist wouldn’t allow it.
“I was arrogant. I was the fool, never you, Valentina. I judged you when I knew nothing of you. Measured you against standards never meant for one of your experience. I went to the desert and to the mountain prepared to use you, any way I could. Even as I abhorred what you were.” Correcting himself he said, “What I wanted to believe you were.”
Valentina remembered the hard, cold man who had accepted her skills and expertise, but made it no secret that he didn’t trust her choices. The same man who had ridden the desert with her, scaled a mountain of stone. Meeting challenge with challenge, coming, at last, to lie by her side for hours without question. Until the fateful shot was fired. “You distrusted me, I was everything you disliked, and then?”
With a wandering hand he brushed the hair from her shoulders, his fingers lingering at the tender flesh at her nape. “First I listened with more than my prejudices.” When she didn’t cringe from him, when he saw in her dark and lovely gaze no lingering malice for past sins, he murmured, “And then I held you in my arms and learned the truth.”
Fighting back a shiver and the need to turn her lips into his palm, she responded, “Only part of the truth.”
“Enough.” His fingers were a delicate vise about her neck, drawing her to him. “Enough about myself. Enough that I had to find you.” The weight on his heart lifted as she glided gracefully into his arms. “Enough,” he whispered, “for this.”
Valentina knew she shouldn’t go so willingly into his embrace. Much had been left unsaid, much unresolved. Yet there was a desperateness in her, a deep-rooted sadness that reached for the lost beauty of love. Reached greedily, though Rafe had not uttered the word.
As she had not.
As they never would.
But they could pretend. For a while she could make believe that she was whole, that she was worthy.
For a while, with his lips on hers and his body enticing, with clamshells and mussel shells and shells with names like broken angel and fallen angel tumbling at their feet...they could pretend.
She made no protest when he swung her into his arms. No protest when he carried her from the water, over dune and dock, through garden and lawn. None when he stepped through the door of her bedroom for the first time.
Kissing her with renewed passion that maddened and frightened and excited, he set her on her feet. Only to draw her back again into an embrace so close, so tight it seemed to promise forever.
“We’ll go to whatever hell it takes. Together, Valentina.” His pledge was a rasping groan. “But, before hell there is heaven.”
As if it were no effort and his hands were magic, her shirt was untied and drifting to her feet. As easily, as surely, as magically, the rest of her clothing and his were scattered across the floor.
Taking her by the hand he strode the length of the room to her bed. At its edge he stopped drawing her closer. His eyes were green fire as he looked down at her, seeking, discovering, his marauding gaze a caress. His kiss soothed the blush of her cheeks, his fingers stroked the mounting ache in her breasts. When he bent to kiss away the yearning havoc he’d made, with tender suckling he created more.
Valentina swayed and gasped and heard a cry. Not of pain, but rapture, and knew it was her lips that formed it as her body responded. And suddenly what was more than she had ever known was not enough.
Grasping his head, her fingers combing through his hair, dragging his lips from her breasts to her mouth, she kissed him. Her body curled into his, her nakedness inflamed and inflaming in the tiny frisson of time before she moved away. Taking his hand, she drew him down with her, down to her solitary bed.
Cotton sheets were like silk at her back, Rafe’s touch teasing madness on her body. He w
as a man who understood a woman’s needs. He knew and discovered the responsive curves, the secret and vulnerable clefts. Each drifting exploration, each tender caress left her writhing and throbbing, tumbling deeper into the whirlwind of lust and love.
When she could bear no more, catching his wrist between trembling fingers, she drew his hands to her lips. Brushing a kiss over his knuckles, her tongue tasting the salt of his flesh drew a groan from him.
Her smoldering gaze collided with his. There was the grimness of determined restraint in him. What more would come of this would be her decision. Tracing the tips of his clever fingers with her kisses, she made her choice. “Make love to me. Make love to me, now.”
When he hesitated, and it seemed he would move away, she held him tighter, keeping him. “Please.”
And still he waited as his gaze left hers, to glide over her, making love with each fleeting glance. His chest rose and fell in a long, stuttering sigh. His look was a strange mix of possession and bitterness, his voice hollow and deep. “I’m not David, O’Hara.”
Sunlight fell through squares of arched windows, casting patterns of light and shadow over her bed. Etched half in shade, half in light, his face was a study of bright strength and dark beauty. Two halves of the same face. Two qualities of the same man.
Rafe.
Releasing him, she raised a questing hand to his cheek. Like a sightless child, with a butterfly touch her fingertips skimmed over the slight hollow of his temple, his brow. Brushed over a fringe of lashes and down the bridge of his nose. She lingered a bit at the soft parting of his lips, and smiled at his roughly drawn breath.
Her palm curled at his chin, then slid over his jaw and into his hair. With a fistful as her leverage, she drew him closer. And when he did not resist, closer still. “I know,” she whispered as her lips almost touched his. “Dear heaven, I know.”
With her body inviting and arching to receive him, a single word seduced him.
“Rafe.”
Two more sealed his fate.
“My love.”
“I know a place.”