The Bride and the Mercenary

by Harper Allen

  “I don’t think you should stay here tonight.”

  His quiet words split the silence between them as explosively as if they’d been shouted out. After leaving Cosgrove, they’d driven back here without speaking to each other—without even looking at each other. Now Ainslie did look at him.

  “It’s after midnight, and as I understand it, the Agency now thinks I’m on your side. I can’t go home, Malone, and I’m certainly not going to dump myself on my brother so he can baby-sit me for the next few hours, especially since he just became a father today.” She jerked her chin at the sofa in front of her. “If I have to, I’ll sleep on that. But I don’t plan on sleeping much.”

  “Then you keep the gun.” He reached around to the small of his back and held it out to her. She stared at it without taking it.

  “What the hell for, Malone? I hate guns, you know that.”

  “Yeah, I know that.” He shrugged. “But it might make you feel safer.”

  She frowned in confusion. Then his meaning became clear, and she exhaled sharply. “Because I’m spending the night with an international assassin? If you were the Executioner, I’m sure you’d have bigger fish to fry than me, Malone. As it happens, I still don’t buy that ridiculous theory. For God’s sake, you’re basing it on a single fragment of memory, dredged up from a brain that suffered such extreme trauma that for a while you couldn’t remember anything. You saw a news clip of Mocamba’s death or read about it in a newspaper five years ago when it happened. Then when your amnesia was so total that you were searching for any memory you could to fill the void, you incorporated that recollection as one that you’d really experienced.”

  “I don’t think it works like that,” he said softly.

  “You don’t know how it works!” Her retort was instantaneous. She took a step toward him. “I don’t know how it works. But there has to be some innocent explanation for that memory, Malone, because if there isn’t then nothing makes sense in this world—and I’m having enough trouble trying to make sense of what I thought we had.”

  She took a shaky breath. “How could you have kept it from me about being a mercenary, of all things? When your time with the Agency was up, were you planning to go back to your real profession, dammit?”

  Instead of answering her, he turned away, walking over to the drapes at the window. Still with his back to her, his attention apparently focused on the street below, he spoke, his tone as flat as if he were talking about the weather prospects for the coming week.

  “Soldiering was all I knew, Lee. That world was all I knew. And then I met you, and I felt as if I’d been given a second chance—a chance I hadn’t deserved and hadn’t expected, even in my most fever-ridden dreams. You brought me to life again. And I was terrified of losing you.”

  He let the drapes fall closed. Still he didn’t face her. “When Sully introduced me to you as someone who worked for the government, I didn’t see the need to elaborate. The next day it was already too late. I’d fallen in love with you, and I knew if you learned I was no different from your father and your brother, you’d walk away from me as fast as you could—and I couldn’t blame you for that. Remember how we talked, that first night?”

  “I remember.” Pain washed through her and unconsciously she closed her eyes, trying to block the image that had come to her at his words—Malone in bed beside her after they’d made love for the second time, one elbow propped up on a pillow, his eyes gleaming faintly in the darkness as he listened to her tell him about her family. “I remember, Malone,” she said again, unsteadily. “I poured out my soul to you.”

  “I know. And the first thing I’d told you about myself had been a lie,” he said, turning from the window and facing her. The light from the one lamp in the room cast deep shadows on his features, making his expression hard to read, but even total darkness wouldn’t have been able to conceal the stark self-condemnation in his voice.

  “I wanted to be the man I’d told you I was, Lee. Obviously, I wanted it so badly that even now I won’t let myself remember the full enormity of my deception—including the fact that my past included much more than just the soldiering. But the night I asked you to marry me, I finally realized I couldn’t let it go on any longer. I’d made up my mind to lay all my cards on the table when I got back and just pray that you could forgive me.”

  He passed a hand over his face, and in the gesture there seemed to be a world of lost chances, missed opportunities, and hopeless regret. “But I never returned that night. It took me two long years to find my way back to you. When I did, I knew I would just have to turn around and walk away again—this time forever.”

  “Because you think you’re the—”

  Ainslie broke off in midsentence, freezing to attention. Malone had heard the same name that had caught her attention, she realized, because even as she turned an inquiring glance on him he was striding across the room to the radio on the small table by the wall, turning the volume higher with an abruptly tense flick of his wrist. The name was repeated in the unemotional tones of a late-night newscaster.

  “…tentatively identified as that of a government employee, Paul Malone. Although authorities are still not releasing details of the gruesome shooting, they are alerting the public to be on the lookout for an older-model sedan, black or dark blue in color, and with a crumpled front right fender. The driver is presumed to be armed and extremely dangerous, and may be accompanied by a female companion. Anyone who sights this vehicle is urged to call the following hotline…”

  “They got Paul.” Malone snapped the radio off and turned to her, his expression grim. “They got Paul, goddammit—and I signed his death warrant by going to see him. They must have arrived just after we left, and found out that he’d talked. I killed him, Lee. I killed him as surely as if I fired the bullet that took him down myself.”

  “But you didn’t fire that bullet.” Before she even knew what she was doing, Ainslie was standing in front of him, meeting his anguished gaze. “Paul didn’t deserve to die, Malone, and I feel as badly about this as you do, but the fact is that you didn’t fire that bullet. You and I both know you’re innocent, no matter what story the Agency is putting out.”

  She saw his eyes darken in belated comprehension, but she said it anyway.

  “You didn’t kill Paul, Malone. The Executioner killed him.”

  Chapter Nine

  He’d insisted she take the bed. She’d insisted that after the day she’d just gone through—a day that had started with a wedding that hadn’t taken place and had ended with a murder—not even the lumps in the sofa would keep her awake. He’d disappeared into the bedroom just long enough to change into a worn and faded pair of jeans to sleep in, folded his six-foot-plus frame awkwardly on the couch and refused to argue with her any longer.

  Despite what she’d told him, there was no way she was going to fall asleep. Staring up at the ceiling in the dark, Ainslie knew her wakefulness had little to do with Pearson or Paul Cosgrove, as wrenching as thinking about them was. Today had also been the day that the only man she’d ever loved had come back into her life.

  Or had he?

  He’d changed, she told herself unwillingly. The Malone she’d once known would have been in this bed with her. And perhaps she’d changed, too, because two years ago she would have insisted on falling asleep with his arms around her.

  I felt closer to him when I believed he was dead, she thought. It’s as if there’s a wall between us, and it seems to be getting higher all the time.

  But at least he was no longer convinced that he was responsible for the crimes the man called the Executioner had committed. And although she still found it hard to accept that he hadn’t been completely honest with her before, at least she now knew why he’d lied to her about being a mercenary.

  He’d been afraid of losing her. Some part of her could understand that, because she’d always been afraid of losing him. The only difference was that she’d never gone away—and, whether it had been his
fault or not, he had.

  “I got to thinking about it, Lee.”

  His low voice came out of the darkness. Her heart thumping, swiftly she sat up in the bed, barely able to make out his silhouette framed in the doorway of the room.

  “Thinking about what?” she countered, her tone an effort to mask her sudden nervousness.

  “About how unfair it was that you should get this bed all to yourself.” She saw him make a slight movement that might have been a shrug. “About how I wanted to be in here with you. Were you thinking anything along those lines?”

  In spite of the deliberate lightness of his words, there was an edge of uncertainty in his voice. She heard an echo of it in her own as she answered him.

  “Maybe. But I wasn’t just wondering why we’d ended up in separate rooms, Malone. I was wondering why we seemed to be in separate universes, when once upon a time we’d been so close that I’d felt we were two halves of the same whole. Have you thought about that?”

  “Yeah, honey, I have.”

  He sighed, and pushed himself away from the door frame. Walking over to the bed, he sat, and she realized as he did that he was wearing nothing under his jeans. She was suddenly conscious that her own attire consisted of no more than a heather-gray cotton sports bra with matching high-cut briefs.

  Her outfit wasn’t much skimpier than something she might wear in the ring, but for some reason she felt ridiculously exposed. She felt even more so a moment later.

  She felt rather than saw him bend and reach over near the wall. A faint glowing light suddenly softened the blackness surrounding them, and Malone straightened, his eyes not meeting hers. Ainslie looked down at the source of the light, and then back at him.

  “A night-light?” she said in disbelief. “A night-light in the shape of a— What exactly is that, Malone? A duck?”

  “I think it’s an owl,” he muttered. “I picked it up earlier today at a gas station convenience store when I was getting the car filled.” He looked over at her, his expression slightly testy. “It’s no big deal, Lee. Turn it off again if you want. I don’t have to have it on.”

  Ainslie sank back against the pillows, still watching him. “I don’t mind,” she said carefully. “I’m not that crazy about the dark, either, Seamus.”

  What had they done to him? she thought with a quick flash of anger that she was careful not to let show on her face. The physical changes that two years on the run had wrought in him she’d noticed earlier—the wary watchfulness, the lean and even more heavily muscled build, the coiled-wire tautness of his body. But what had living like a hunted animal done to the man inside?

  She felt tears suddenly spring to her eyes, and held them back.

  Some of the tenseness in his posture had eased. Leaning back, he looked over at her in the soft light, one corner of his mouth lifting wryly.

  “I let you down, Lee,” he said, his tone quiet. “I did the one thing I told you I’d never do—I walked out on you. That’s why we’re circling around each other like strangers, you wondering if you can ever trust me again, me wondering if you’ll ever forgive me for what I did to you. In the end I turned out to be just another man who’d left you.”

  “But it wasn’t your fault, Malone.” She shook her head in denial. “I know that now.”

  “It was my fault.” His jaw tightened. “If you’d known I was in the one profession you hated above all others, you never would have become involved with me in the first place. And some part of you had to know even then that I was hiding something from you, Lee.”

  “I think you’re right about that, at least,” Ainslie said slowly. “While we were together, and then after I’d been told that you’d been killed, I wouldn’t let myself examine our relationship too closely. I needed to remember it as perfect.”

  She frowned, trying to clarify her thoughts not only to him, but to herself. “Anything else would have seemed like a betrayal, somehow—a betrayal of you and of everything we’d been to each other. But even though you didn’t tell me the truth about what you did, you weren’t shot as a soldier of fortune, Malone. What happened to you happened while you were working temporarily for the Agency.”

  “Because of my mercenary connections,” he said shortly. “Either I went to the Agency or it came to me because there was a chance I could help them catch the Executioner, according to what Paul said tonight. Somewhere in the past our paths must have crossed, and that would have been in my life as a mercenary. When I met you, I thought there was a chance I could escape what I was. But all I did was pull you into a world you had never wanted to enter, Lee.”

  “It was the world I was born into, whether I liked it or not,” she said flatly. “I became a fighter, after all. Perhaps Thomas Sullivan didn’t walk out of my life without leaving me something to remember him by.”

  “But I did.” He took a deep breath. “I left you with nothing at all, not even hope. They made you believe I was dead.”

  He raked a tense hand through the spill of dark hair that had fallen across his forehead. “This wasn’t a good idea.” His smile was halfhearted. “I’d better take my night-light and get on back to my sofa.”

  At his small joke, the last cold vestige of the ball of ice that had lodged inside her a few hours ago when she’d first learned that he’d deceived her suddenly melted away completely. As he started to stand, she levelled a wide-eyed gaze on him.

  “I told you, Malone—I don’t like being alone in the dark, either.”

  For a moment even his breathing seemed to stop. Then he gave her a strained smile, exhaling sharply as he did so.

  “It’s been two years for me, honey. I’d better wait until I can manage slow and romantic, because that’s what I want to give you when we finally do make love. But right now I’m pretty sure that’s beyond me.”

  Without another word he turned and walked out, the corded muscles of his back gleaming in the dim light as he left the room.

  Ainslie heard the creak of protesting springs from the other room. She narrowed her eyes in the direction of the door, and waited.

  But not for long. Almost immediately the springs creaked a second time, and then he was leaning up against the door frame again, his posture deceptively casual.

  “I got to thinking about it, Lee,” he said unevenly.

  “Yeah, Malone.” She flipped back the covers from her legs. “Sometimes I think you do too damn much thinking. What makes you so sure I can manage slow and romantic tonight, either? If you keep sashaying around with your jeans half unzipped like that, I might not even let you get them all the way off.”

  She saw the quick flash of his grin in the shadows, and then he was pushing himself away from the door frame. “That’s pretty down and dirty, all right,” he said, walking toward her. “I probably can do a little better than that.”

  She began to move over, expecting him to get in beside her, but before she could wriggle herself into position he was on the bed, one jeans-clad leg on either side of her hips. With the same swift economy of movement, he firmly grasped her two wrists and pulled her gently up. She found herself rising smoothly back into a sitting position.

  “Hey,” she protested in a suddenly breathy voice, unable to take her gaze from the shift of heavy muscle in his arms. “Illegal hold, Malone.”

  “You wanted down and dirty.” He looked at her, his eyes as green as a cat’s, his hands still trapping her wrists. “That means no holds barred, O’Connell.”

  He turned one of her palms slightly outward, and in the shadows she saw him bend his head to her hands. The next moment she felt his tongue trace a slow, wet circle in the hollow of her palm, and she stifled a gasp. He didn’t raise his head, but continued licking his circular way down her palm to her inner wrist, adjusting his hold on her minutely.

  She felt his lips warm on her pulse. Then he did lift his mouth slightly, but instead of giving her a chance to recover her scrambled senses, he blew lightly on her still-moist wrist.

  Ainslie’s eyes
had been half closed. Now they flew open wide as a thousand tiny feathers of sensation swirled into life inside her like snowflakes trapped in a glass ball. She felt one of those feathers uncurl against her spine, and an involuntary tremor ran through her.

  He was watching her, she saw, his own gaze brilliant.

  “I want to do things to you, Lee,” he said softly. “I want you to do whatever you want to me. It’s been so damn long since I felt you beneath me.”

  “There’s been no one else for me since you,” she said unsteadily. “I just thought you should know, Malone. It was always you, even in my dreams. But I don’t expect you to have remained—”

  “My memory was gone,” he said, firmly cutting off what she’d been about to say. “But some part of me knew it wouldn’t be any good with anyone else. I never even looked at another woman, Lee.” He pressed his lips to the inside of her elbow. “I just thought you ought to know, too,” he murmured against her skin.

  He let his mouth trail slowly along her arm, always keeping to the soft and vulnerable underside. When he reached her shoulder, she felt his hair brush against the side of her cheek, and it seemed as if he was caressing her with every part of his body.

  Gently he released her wrists. Hooking one finger under the fabric of her bra strap, he slipped it off her shoulder. In the soft light she saw him smile.

  “One of these days I’m going to get you something decadent, Lee,” he said, a hint of laughter in his voice. “Like a thong and a lace push-up bra. Maybe garters.”

  “I’m not a femme fatale, Seamus.” She glanced down at the boy-cut briefs, the workout-wear top. “Besides, push-up bras need something to push up.”

  “You really don’t have a clue, do you, O’Connell?” He traced the swell of a breast, his touch light. “These are perfect. The way your waist curves in is perfect, and the way your hips flare out again is perfect. And don’t get me wrong about your tough-girl panties.” His smile was rueful. “You used to have a pair of jeans that rode low on your hips, and a T-shirt that didn’t quite cover your belly button. When you wore them together with your juvenile delinquent underwear, all day long I would keep catching glimpses of white waistband. It drove me crazy.”