by Diana Palmer
He laughed. “I’ve been through here,” he replied. “I’ve seen airports and hotels all over the world, but my experience with open country has been mostly in the dark.”
She understood the reference at once. “You never talk about it, do you?”
“Wouldn’t dare,” he replied. “Most of it is classified.” He pursed his lips and smiled at her. “I trust you, but you’d need a government clearance to know particulars.”
She made a face. “I tell you everything,” she countered.
His eyebrows arched. “You do?”
“I told you about my mother and my father,” she pointed out.
His eyes grew sad. “And I told you about my daughter. I’ve never spoken of her to anyone outside my family, except people directly involved in the case.”
“I’m sorry you lost her in such a way.”
He averted his gaze to the scenery passing the windows, tall casuarina pines and royal palms lining the narrow paved road. “So am I.”
She pressed a wrinkle out of the soft fabric of her slacks. “Haven’t you ever thought about having another child?”
“No,” he said at once, and with ice dripping from the tones.
The violence of the reply disconcerted her. She met his eyes and almost flinched at what she saw in them.
“I won’t go through it again,” he assured her.
“But just because you lost one child in such a horrible way…!”
He held up a hand. “I won’t discuss it, either,” he said coldly. His silvery eyes were glittering like metal. “I appreciate your help, I really do. But if you have any illusions about why we’re here, let me disenchant you. We’re here to ask questions and get answers, not spend a few torrid nights in each other’s arms. I could walk away after and never look back. You couldn’t. You’re too young and too innocent for a casual affair. So we’ll do what we came here to do, go back to the States and get a quiet annulment. And there won’t be any complications. Least of all a pregnancy. Period.”
She felt as if he’d stuck a pin in her. He was intimidating like that. She was used to him being amused or teasing around her. He’d never been really harsh, except that one time when she messed up at dispatch and nearly got him killed. This was the real man behind the banter, and he was scary. No wonder Gail had said he was dangerous.
He realized that he was upsetting her and he forced himself to calm down. She was a normal, loving woman who wanted a home and family. Her feelings for him were getting in the way of her common sense, and that was only infatuation. She’d get over it. She was, as he’d already said, very young. Twenty-two to his thirty-two.
“Sorry,” she said, and managed a smile.
“No, I’m sorry,” he replied quietly. “I forget your age sometimes.” He forced a smile. “You’ll find a man who wants to settle down and have a family with you, one day. But it won’t be me. You know that already.”
She nodded. She wasn’t really agreeing, but it seemed safer to appear to acquiesce. At least he wasn’t looking at her with that icy glare anymore.
“Now there’s a dangerous method of travel,” she said to divert him, pointing to mopeds zipping past in the other direction.
He chuckled. “I had to appropriate one of those in another country for emergency transport once,” he confessed. “Rounded a curve and went right over the handlebars.” He shook his head. “That’s how I ended up with a steel pin in my leg. It’s a lot harder than it looks.”
“And you drive a Jaguar?” she chided.
He frowned. “Jags are built to be stable on the road at extremely high speeds. Mopeds aren’t.”
“Well, my brother thinks Jags can fly. He’s never been able to convince state troopers that he should be allowed to fly them on the interstate.”
He chuckled. “Me, either.”
“I wish we were going downtown. I’d love to see the old British Colonial hotel,” she mused.
“The what?”
“Oh, that’s not what they call it now,” she said. “It’s the Hilton Hotel these days. It’s right downtown, next to the wharf. It was the site of old Fort Nassau and the scene of many battles in the seventeeth century. It was also the place to be seen socially at the turn of the twentieth century. The Duke and Duchess of Windsor even attended parties there when he was governor of the Bahamas during the Second World War.” She smiled. “There’s a statue of the pirate Woodes Rogers right out in front of the hotel. Ironically, he was the first governor of the Bahamas.”
“Just as Henry Morgan, the pirate, was the first governor of Jamaica,” he chuckled. “His grave was lost in the late seventeeth century during a devastating earthquake that sent most of Port Royal to the bottom of the ocean.”
She shivered. “Yes, there was an earthquake in Portugal in 1755 that sent a stone quay into the sea, killing people who’d rushed there for refuge. They estimated that over 20,000 people perished in Lisbon in a matter of minutes, from the earthquake and the tsunamis that followed it.”
He stared at her. “You follow earthquake history.”
She laughed self-consciously. “Well, yes,” she confessed. “I practically live on the United States Geological Survey site.”
“So do I,” he exclaimed.
“Really!”
“Really. There and the Weather Channel and at www.spaceweather.com,” he added. “I follow sunspots and meteor showers and…”
“…and near earth asteroids on Spaceweather,” she laughed. “Yes. Me, too.”
His eyes were twinkling. “You have a telescope.”
“How did you know that?” she asked, startled.
“A lucky guess. I have one, too. You didn’t see it because it’s in my bedroom. It’s a composite, a…”
“Schmidt-Cassegrain,” she guessed, smiling sheepishly when he laughed. “How big is the aperture?”
“Eight inches.”
“Mine’s ten,” she bragged.
“Yes, but you live out in the country.” He sighed. “I’m in town, and the eight-inch lets in less light pollution.”
“You’ll have to come look at astronomical events with me, when we get through with our undercover stuff,” she said. “Boone had a small observatory built for me in the back patio. I can leave my telescope out in all weathers, because it’s waterproof.”
“I’d like that,” he said seriously. He was looking at her oddly. “In all the time we’ve known each other, you never mentioned liking natural events or astronomy.”
“It never came up,” she said.
“I guess not.” He liked what he was learning about her. But she was still far too young, especially for what he’d been thinking about when he first proposed this trip. He was vaguely ashamed of himself, more so when he recalled her recent turmoil in finding that she had a brother she didn’t even know about and that her uncle might be involved peripherally in the recent murder. Then, too, her mother had been shot. Perhaps that wouldn’t have bothered her some weeks ago, but since discovering her mother’s true situation, it had hit her hard. And he’d been thinking of a holiday romp with her, a sexual escapade that he could forget, but that she couldn’t. She cared about him. She really did. It was disturbing, on several levels.
Monica, his late wife, had liked his family’s wealth. Despite his job as a policeman at the time, she knew his family had money and she’d decided she might as well marry for money as love. Perhaps she’d been fond of him, but it had never been more than that. She’d been mostly unconcerned with Melly after her birth. Kilraven had doted on the child, taking her places with him, showing her off. He clamped down on the memory. It was painful. He recalled that Cammy, his stepmother, hadn’t liked Monica at all. Not that she liked any women her son and stepson brought around. But she’d often said that there was something dark and cold lying curled up in Monica’s brain.
“Deep thoughts?” Winnie asked gently.
“What?” He laughed humorlessly. “I was thinking about Monica. My wife,” he added when sh
e looked puzzled. “She lived in Neiman Marcus and Saks. She loved clothes and diamonds and parties.”
“She must have loved her family, too,” she said.
“She loved my money.” He sighed. “But she never bought a dress or a pair of shoes or even a toy for Melly. If I gave her money to buy stuff for Melly, she bought clothes for herself with it. I finally learned to shop for my daughter myself.”
Winnie was surprised. In the other woman’s place, she’d have been showering her daughter with presents, cuddling her, taking her places, taking photos of her night and day… She averted her eyes and her hands gripped her purse hard. “That’s sad,” she said.
“I asked her once why she didn’t ever play with the baby,” he recalled solemnly. “She said it was her job to have the child, mine to raise it. She’d done her part. She didn’t even like children, she just got tired of me badgering her about having kids.” He dropped his eyes to the floorboard. “Cammy might not be your idea of the perfect mother,” he added with a deep laugh, “but she was a hell of a stepmother. She was always taking me places, doing things with me, buying me stuff. When Jon came along, he was my brother, plain and simple—she treated us both just alike. Heaven help any teacher or bully who gave us trouble at school. Cammy would be on them like a duck on a june bug. Even Dad wasn’t ever so protective of us.”
“I’m sure she improves on closer acquaintance,” Winnie said stiffly. “I’ll see if Boone will loan me a cattle prod to carry if I have to talk to her again…”
He gave her an affectionate look. “Little blond chain saw,” he said with pure amusement.
He made it sound like a caress. She felt warm, safe, secure. She smiled. “I’m not like that, usually.”
The smile faded. “I know. You don’t assert yourself enough. People will walk all over you, if you let them.”
“You’d know.” She sighed.
“I’m used to walking on people,” he pointed out. “You have to stand up to me.”
“I’m still trying to stand up to Boone,” she said, wincing. “It’s not easy.”
“You did very well, convincing him to let you come down here with me,” he said somberly. “I was proud of you.”
She lifted her eyes to his. “You were?”
He nodded. “Stick around with me for a while and I’ll have you eating tigers with just a little hot sauce, raw.”
Oh, give me the chance, she thought. But she only smiled. “I’ll follow your sterling example.”
The car was slowing. It pulled up to a wrought-iron metal gate, very ornate, and Winnie jumped out and punched a code into the computerized access panel. She got back in. The gate opened.
“Boone had it installed,” she said. “We had a break-in a few years ago. Now we’re very security conscious.”
He nodded. He was going to make sure the security was top-notch while they were in residence. He didn’t want any surprise visits, just in case they ruffled enough feathers to invite unwanted visitors.
THE HOUSE WAS WHITE with a red ceramic tile roof. It sat well back from the beach, on a plot of land that was covered with casuarina pines and palms. Around the long front porch were hibiscus and lantana, and brilliant bougainvillea climbing the patio balcony.
“Nice,” Kilraven said as they walked up onto the porch, the driver following with their luggage. He had the driver set the bags down and gave him a substantial tip, with thanks. The man saluted with a big grin, and went back to his vehicle.
Winnie was putting her key in the door. She’d already disabled the security pad.
She opened it and sighed at the beauty of the interior. The furniture was pristine, the floors spotless and highly polished wood. There were original paintings on the walls, one of Boone and Clark and Winnie as children. The house had been in the family for two generations.
Kilraven walked to the portrait and studied it. Winnie had long, wavy hair. She was wearing a white dress and holding a red hibiscus flower, laughing. She was very pretty.
“I was five years old when that was painted,” she said, looking at it from beside him. “My parents were still together. We used to come here for several weeks in the summer.”
He nodded. He looked around. The furnishings were nice, but they looked new. “These aren’t very old,” he remarked.
“No. The last big hurricane that hit the island got the original house,” she said sadly. “The painting survived because it was on loan to a local gallery, which survived. We lost everything, except the shell of the house. Boone had it rebuilt. It’s a replica of the original, but without the things that gave it a history.”
“The painting survived, at least,” he commented.
“Yes. But we learned a hard lesson. Now we don’t bring heirlooms down here anymore. Just in case.” She turned. He was still looking at the painting. “I’ll bet you’ve lived through hurricanes at least once.”
He smiled faintly and dug his hands into his pockets. “Hurricanes, typhoons, tornadoes, sandstorms and enemy attacks with blazing guns.”
She grimaced. “I’ve never even been in a tornado, although one went right by the house not too many years ago.” She laughed. “And I’ve never had to face an attack by anybody armed.”
“No reason for you to have to,” he pointed out.
“Thank goodness.” She went toward the kitchen. “I phoned down here before we left San Antonio and had Marco come up and turn on the electricity and stock the fridge. He acts as part-time caretaker for us. He also owns a local art store.” She laughed. “He’s the reason we still have that painting. He has strict instructions to rush right down here and put it in storage if there’s even a gale warning.”
“You could take it to Comanche Wells,” he said.
“It belongs here,” she replied simply. “But we did have it copied.”
“Good thinking.”
“Are you hungry?” she asked.
“Starved.” He sighed. “Peanuts don’t do a thing for me.”
“In defense of the airlines,” she said, “they have to feed the monkeys something.”
“Why can’t they feed us real meals? I was on this flight to Japan,” he recalled with a smile, “and I asked for Japanese cuisine. It came in several stages, just as it does in Osaka at a good restaurant. I loved it.”
They went into the kitchen and Winnie opened the refrigerator. She reached in and then turned with a ham platter in one hand and a mayonnaise jar in another. “I’ve never been to Asia. How do they serve food?”
“In tiny bits,” he said. “On one plate, you might get a morsel of meat with a small slice of fruit. On another, a spoonful of salad. Dessert comes on a plate in the form of a walnut-sized scoop of plum ice cream with a small leaf and a drizzle of syrup for decoration. It’s edible art.”
“Wow.”
“Like they do gifts,” he said, moving to the counter to find plates and bread and in a drawer to pull out a knife for the mayonnaise. “It doesn’t matter what the present is, they’re concerned with the way it’s wrapped. The more elegant, the better.”
“You liked it there,” she commented.
He nodded. “Very much.” He chuckled as he watched her make ham sandwiches.
“What’s funny?”
“I was thinking that I could never commit a crime on the streets of Osaka without being immediately taken into custody. I’m more than a head taller than most people I met.”
She grinned. She looked down at his shoes. “And with bigger feet, I imagine.”
“That’s another thing, if you think you may need a second pair of shoes, you’re advised to take them with you. You won’t find a size to fit you unless you have feet the size of yours.” He was looking at her little feet in the high heels and his expression was almost affectionate. “What do you wear, anyway, about a five?”
“Five and a half,” she corrected.
“Tiny little feet,” he mused. “Pretty in those strappy high heels.”
She flushed. “Thanks.”
He took the knife out of her hand and put it on the table. His expression was unreadable as he suddenly lifted her by the waist, right up to his eyes. “You promised not to wear anything suggestive,” he said.
She gasped. “Listen, I’m covered from head to midcalf…!”
His mouth brushed hers, sending shivers of pleasure down her spine. “Those sexy little feet aren’t covered,” he whispered. He nibbled her upper lip.
“My…feet…aren’t covered?” she faltered.
“Sexy feet,” he whispered. His tongue slid under her top lip and explored the soft, moist flesh. His big hands tightened on her waist. He moved just a few steps to the counter and lifted her there, so that she was almost on a level with his eyes. His lips whispered over her face, from her cheek to her nose, down to the corners of her mouth.
While he was exploring her face and enjoying her helpless little gasps, his hands were busy on her jacket and the front clip of the bra under it. She didn’t realize it until she felt the air on her bare skin, until she saw his eyes dropping down, until she heard his breath catch.
She would have jerked at the bra, but the way he was looking at her made her heart stop. His hand traced over the high, firm swell of her breast, his fingers smoothing down over the suddenly taut nipple. It was like the night on his sofa, all over again, and she was helpless.
“Beautiful breasts,” he whispered tautly. “As pink as the inside of a conch shell. Soft. Silky. Delicious.”
As he spoke, his head bent. His lips took the place of his fingers in a light, whispery caress that was so tender it made her whole body clench.
“Sweet as honey,” he whispered. His other hand smoothed up her rib cage, over the breast he wasn’t kissing.
Winnie was on fire. She’d never been touched like that voluntarily before Kilraven came along. Once a boy had grabbed her on a date and hurt her when she fought her way out of his arms. No other man had ever been allowed to go this far.
She arched her back in helpless response to the sensations he was arousing.
“You like this, do you?” he murmured. “I know something you’ll like better.”
As he spoke, his mouth opened and he took almost her whole breast inside it, teasing the nipple with his tongue as the soft suction caught her in the grip of a hunger she’d never felt before.