Nicholas eased the hammer of the gun back into place and stood up. “I’m over here, Mike.”
Mike came running up the beach with Julian and Sai close behind him. “Thank God, you’re all right!” Mike glanced at the two men on the ground. “Any problems?”
“None. How about on your end?”
“We’re all fine. There were no casualties, though two of her men were wounded. We have them down the beach. I estimate about seven or eight men escaped in the two power boats they came in on.”
“Get up,” Nicholas ordered the man on the ground. “You’re going back to your boss.”
“You’re going to let them go?” Mike asked.
“They’re of no use to me. Mandarin won’t negotiate for them. You know that. Besides, I want a message delivered and this gentleman is going to deliver it.”
Within fifteen minutes the three other men had been loaded onto a boat. Julian was guarding the man Nicholas had questioned. Nicholas walked up to him. “Tell Mandarin if she wants a face-to-face meeting with me, to take the afternoon launch from the mainland in five days’ time. She’s to come alone.”
“She’d be a fool to agree to that,” the man said.
A thin smile narrowed Nicholas’s lips. “You obviously don’t know how badly she wants to kill me. Tell her I will reserve a suite for her. Tell her I look forward to seeing her again.” He nodded to Julian. “Let him go.”
A short time later Nicholas watched as the boat sped out to sea. Mike stood beside him, his feet apart, his hands shoved into his pockets. “Are you sure that’s the right thing to do? Inviting Mandarin here?”
“I’m sure.” Nicholas paused to light a cigarette. “We were lucky tonight. Mike. Someone could have been seriously hurt or even killed—one of the hotel’s guests... or Sydney.”
Mike looked appalled. “I hadn’t thought about Sydney. I guess whatever took her away this morning was fortunate. Otherwise she would have been with you.”
Without taking his eyes off the ink-black sea, Nicholas said in a flat, matter-of-fact monotone. “That’s right. If she had been on the island, she would have been with me.”
* * *
Sydney arrived back on the island late the next night. Mike was standing on the landing as the launch docked.
“Mike, what a nice surprise!” He dropped a kiss on her cheek.
“The mainland radioed that you were coming in.”
“Where’s Nicholas?”
“He’s waiting for you at his house. He gave specific instructions that you were to come right away.”
A thrill shot through Sydney. Actually she had harbored a secret hope that Nicholas would be waiting for her on the landing. She had been gone two days and had missed him terribly, and she had experienced a pang of disappointment when Mike met her instead of Nicholas. Now, though, Mike was telling her that Nicholas wanted to see her as much as she wanted to see him. “But what about my bag?”
“No problem. I’ll see to it. I have a Jeep waiting for you.”
She couldn’t drive very fast through the rain forest, and the short trip seemed to her to take an interminable amount of time. But at last the Jeep broke free of the rain forest. The black swans were already settled onto the lagoon for the night, and the lights of Nicholas’s house could be seen clearly.
Sydney raced up the steps and entered the main room. As always when she entered a room, her brain received what she saw as a complete picture, and the picture she received of this room was a beautiful one.
As usual with the things that surrounded Nicholas, there was a mystery and a darkness about the room, yet with a wondrously tranquil feeling. Leaf-patterned Thai silk wrapped the walls. Fifteenth-century Chinese celadon plates, along with rare antique jade pieces, added subdued color. Cream suede couches provided a lightness. And a huge square lilac onyx coffee table reigned supreme in the center of the room. On it, a gem-encrusted vase held sprays of white orchids.
An ancient copper tiger guarded one corner of the room; a tall gold and bronze elephant dating from 980 guarded another corner. A statue of a horseman aboard his steed done in the three-color glazed pottery that was so widely produced in the early Tang dynasty adorned the mantel. And other precious Oriental art was placed here and there around the room.
Nicholas might have smuggled art out of China, Sydney reflected, selling it to private collectors to earn his fortune, but this house was proof that he hadn’t been able to part with all of it.
It took less than a second for the entire room to register in her brain. The absence of Nicholas was notable.
But just then he walked into the room. He was wearing a beige sport jacket over black raw silk pants and a matching shirt. She rushed over to him, intending to throw her arms around him. “Nicholas! I missed you—”
“So you came back.”
His tone, the rigid stance of his body—something was wrong! Instinctively she stopped a few steps away from him. “Of course I came back. Did you think I wouldn’t?”
He walked to a side table and poured himself a drink. That was odd, she reflected. Unless it was wine with dinner, she had never seen him drink. He took a long swallow. “You’re a hard lady to predict, Sydney. I really didn’t know. At any rate, I’d like you to turn right around and go back to wherever it was that you went.”
“I don’t understand,” she said slowly.
“It’s simple. It’s over.” From an inside pocket in his jacket he withdrew a check. “This is made out in your name and in the amount you require.”
“I—I—I can’t take that!”
Something like pain crossed his face, then was gone so quickly she was sure she imagined it.
“You would have won it anyway, Sydney. This simplifies matters, that’s all.”
“But we made love!”
“We had sex, Sydney. Do you imagine you’re the first woman I’ve ever taken to bed?”
“No... no.” She ran her fingers through her hair. None of this made any sense. The man standing so coolly before her was a totally different man from the one she had left two days before. Maybe it was her Delaney pride, or maybe it was her Delaney stubbornness, but something was making it hard for her to buy what Nicholas was trying to sell her.
He emptied the contents of the glass down his throat and poured himself more. “I was totally honest with you, Sydney. I made you no promises.”
“And I asked for none.”
“No, you didn’t,” he acknowledged. “We had a good time, but—”
“A good time?” Tears sprang into her eyes. She hastily blinked them away, but she couldn’t prevent her voice from shaking. “That’s all it meant to you? A good time?”
He turned away from her as if he no longer wanted to look at her. Or as if he couldn’t, she thought. Was it possible that he was trying to hide something?
“I’m sorry, Sydney.”
His apology stunned her. “You once told me that you never apologized. What’s happened to change that?”
“Nothing’s changed. Just accept that maybe this one time I am sorry.”
“No! I won’t accept that! I won’t accept any of this!” She went to him and forcibly turned him to face her. “Now tell me what has happened since I’ve been gone.”
His lips moved, and he almost smiled. Certainly new emotion appeared in his eyes. “When did you get to be so strong, Sydney Delaney?”
“For most of my life I’ve had to be. It takes strength to control a stutter.”
“And it takes a different kind of strength to let go of the domination of your emotions that has controlled that stutter for so many years,” he murmured, looking down at her.
He was thinking of the night they had made love, and Sydney almost shouted with happiness. She was getting somewhere! “Nicholas,” she pleaded softly, “please tell me the real reason you want me to leave the island.” She put her arms around him and hugged him close. “I know there must be one...”
Sydney froze. Beneath his sport jacket there was a hard b
ulge. A distinctive bulge. And although she had never felt one in just those circumstances, she knew without asking that Nicholas was wearing a gun. She pulled away and looked at him with a question in her eyes.
He expelled a long, weary breath. “Why did I think I could pull this off? I should have known. You’ve proved the exception to every woman I’ve ever known since the first time I laid eyes on you.”
“Is that a compliment?” she asked, trying to instill lightness into her voice, although a distinct uneasiness was now running rampant through her system.
“Take it as a complaint.” He grinned and lifted the lid of a mother-of-pearl cigarette box, took a cigarette, and lit it.
“Okay, now suppose you tell me what’s happening here.”
He made a slow circle of the room, his head bent, occasionally lifting the cigarette to his lips for a hard draw. Finally he stopped in front of her and gestured toward the couch. “Sit down.”
“If you’ll sit down with me.”
Humor leaped into his dark eyes as he bent to grind out his cigarette. “All right, Sydney. You’re about to get your way. You can relax.”
“Good.”
While she took a seat on the couch, Nicholas shrugged out of his jacket and his gun holster. Carefully he laid them on a table, then came to join her. Sydney waited for what he was about to say, her heart cold. Somehow she knew that she was about to hear that the man she loved was in some kind of terrible danger.
“While you were away, Mandarin’s men made an assault on the island.”
Her gaze quickly scanned him from head to foot. “Were you hurt? Was anyone?”
“Two of her men were wounded.”
“But you?”
He smiled and put his arm around her, drawing her against him. “I’m fine, but the point is, Mandarin won’t give up. Knowing this, I sent her a message asking her to come alone to the island for a talk.”
“Nicholas, that’s so dangerous!”
“Not any more so than waiting, not knowing when she’ll hit again or where.”
“Do you think she’ll come?”
“Oh, yes. She’ll be here. I expect her to arrive in four days’ time. That’s why I want you gone.”
“I’m not going anywhere.”
He lifted her face to his. “Listen to me, Sydney. I have no way of knowing what will happen once she gets here. I can control the situation, but only so far, and that’s why I want you out of the line of fire.”
“I’m not leaving you. Besides, we made a deal. I’m going to win that money, because I have no intention of working for you.” She repeated. “I’m not leaving you, Nicholas.”
It was hard to tell with a man such as Nicholas, but he appeared moved. His hand caressed her cheek softly. “Sydney... you understand I can promise you nothing, offer you nothing. There’s a large chunk of my life left unresolved. And because of that, there will be danger, maybe even death. Until it’s resolved, one way or the other. I won’t be free to face the future. Maybe not even then.”
“I understand. Now you understand. We Delaney women are tough. When we love, we love completely. Maybe I will leave you one day, but it won’t be today. And it won’t be tomorrow, or even the day after. It will be on that day when I’m convinced that you really do want me to leave. and that there’s absolutely no chance that you will ever love me in return.”
Her words hit him with a force that left him breathless and confused. She was giving her love without reservation, baring her soul without regrets. To him what she was doing was overwhelming. “Sydney...”
To her he sounded almost helpless. She placed her finger on his lips. “Shhh. Don’t say anything more. Just make love to me. I’ve missed you more than I can say.”
He took her into his arms because what she asked was exceedingly easy for him to do... and because he couldn’t do anything else.
Nine
Nicholas raised up on an elbow and let his gaze roam possessively over the woman by his side. Sydney was asleep. Her hair was spread in a wild tangle over her pillow, spilling over onto his and appearing an even deeper plum red against the navy blue sheets. Her lashes fanned out over the ivory skin of her cheeks. Her lips, swollen from his kisses, were slightly parted.
Carefully he lowered the sheet from her body to reveal bare skin that still, after countless hours of intimate knowledge, reminded him of creamed velvet.
His gaze traveled to her breasts that softly rose and fell with her breathing. Her nipples, those delicate buds he so loved to suckle until she would cry out for him to stop torturing her and take her immediately, were relaxed. On impulse he bent his head to put his mouth over one. Gently he sucked until the nipple stood taut and firm. Sydney moaned, but didn’t wake. He switched to the other nipple, and with attention managed to bring it to the same state of arousal.
In her sleep Sydney’s hips moved and her head turned to one side. Nicholas wished he could leave her alone, but he couldn’t. He had never been addicted to anything in his life, but he had to admit that Sydney was coming perilously close to an addiction with him. It both bewildered and worried him, since an addiction implied a compulsive need for something or someone. And there was no way he could get around the fact that something inside of him felt right and complete only when she was by his side. As now.
He smoothed his hand down her stomach, then back up. Her breasts fascinated him. His hand closed around one perfect mound and gently squeezed, lifting the nipple back to his mouth. Hot and sweet, gratification flowed back to him in boundless proportions.
Her body fed him. Her body satisfied him. Sydney delighted him in ways he had never known possible, and he was amazed by all of it. When he was inside her, it was as if he had never made love with another woman. He knew he had, he just couldn’t remember, because Sydney had a way of obliterating all who had gone before her. He had come to hate the hours she spent at the blackjack table, even while he had to accept it.
But every night she came back to his house on the wild side of the island, where she gave him her complete attention. In his bed, under the stars that shone through the glass roof, she became an untamed wanton, and responded with the innate passion he had seen in her from the beginning. God, how he loved her that way!
Even asleep she had the power to arouse him. The suction of his mouth increased. Completely ready for her as he was, Nicholas grew frustrated and impatient.
Instinctively her hips raised again, and this time Nicholas slipped into her. As her tightness closed around him, he shuddered.
Sydney awoke as he came into her. His dark brown eyes were already heated with passion, and she smiled dreamily up at him. But the dreaminess soon vanished and her expression changed to ecstasy as he thrust deeply into her with an ever-increasing rhythm of his hips.
Soon the heels of her feet were digging into the backs of his upper thighs, and her arms were twining tightly around his neck. From head to toe she burned. She wanted desperately for him to put out the fire. She begged. She grew mad with her need. She cried out. She shouted. And only then did he do as she asked.
* * *
Charron’s Glass Palace was booked to capacity. Excitement was at an all-time high. It seemed that five nights before, a couple of the guests had wandered outside for a breath of fresh air and had heard gunshots. Those two people had told two more people, and those two people had told... The story spread.
There was no official version of what had happened, of course, since the ever-elusive Nicholas Charron and his men remained silent. But the guests on the Isle of Charron didn’t mind. The rumors and speculations that were flying fast and furious through the hotel and casino were enough to provide entertainment and dinner talk for years to come. Some guests had even refused to leave when their reservations were up. After all, they had no intention of missing the excitement. Perhaps in years to come there would be a certain cachet in being able to say that they had been on the Isle of Charron at this particular time.
And now a mysterious w
oman had come in on the afternoon launch. Fred, the bellboy, said she had been whisked up to a large suite without even registering. Someone thought he had heard the name Mandarin. Everyone waited.
* * *
Sydney rolled her shoulders, trying to ease the pain that stabbed between her shoulder blades. The pain was caused by too many long hours sitting at the blackjack table, but there was nothing she could do about it. Hour by hour her winnings accumulated. She now had over two hundred and fifty thousand dollars, and if her luck held, it would take only a few more nights of gambling to reach her goal. The big help had come when the table stakes had been lifted for her, by Nicholas’s orders she was sure, although she had never asked him.
But the tension of what she was doing was beginning to tell on her, for she could never let her mental alertness drop for one moment, since thousands and thousands of dollars were lost or won on the turn of a single card. And she couldn’t let herself think about just how much money was changing hands or how much five hundred thousand dollars really was. She had to keep the figures abstract.
But above and beyond the tensions related to winning an incredible amount of money, Sydney was worried about Nicholas’s safety. She knew that Mandarin had come in on yesterday afternoon’s launch and had been sequestered in her suite ever since. Nicholas had sent word to Mandarin that he would see her as soon as she was rested. But thus far, the only people who had seen the woman were the room service waiters and waitresses.
Sydney indicated to the dealer that she would like her earnings added to her account, then left the table. Even though she spent her nights at Nicholas’s house, she still kept her small room. Heading for the lift that would take her to the second floor, where her room was located, she saw a beautiful Oriental woman walking in the same direction.
An emerald green silk cheongsam skimmed the woman’s small and delicately boned body. Against the emerald green her skin appeared as pale and translucent as the petals of a water lily. Her hair, black and straight, was pulled back into a chignon and secured by two elaborately carved ivory combs placed on either side of her head. Her eyes were black, almond-shaped, and harder than any eyes Sydney had ever seen before.
Sydney, the Temptress (The Delaneys of Killaroo) Page 12