by Carla Cassidy, Evelyn Vaughn, Harper Allen, Ruth Wind, Cindy Dees
There was a long silence and she knew he was probably irritated by her request. “Lynn, there’s nothing to be confused about. We need to leave here. Time is of the essence.”
“I got the urn, Uncle Jonas. I managed to get it and hide it before the FBI took me down. I wanted to surprise you with it.” It was bait she hoped he’d swallow. “I don’t want to leave it behind. I need tonight to get it from where I hid it. I have to be careful because the police are looking for me.”
There was another long moment of silence, and Lynn knew Jonas was weighing his options. The urn and vase were priceless, but so was his freedom.
“All right, I’ll meet you in the morning,” he finally said as greed ultimately won out. “Meet me at the airport. I have the plane ready to go.”
“We can’t meet there. My face is being splashed all over the news and I’m sure the authorities will be watching the airports. If you’re seen with me, you may be arrested as on accessory.” She hesitated, then continued. “I know just the place where it will be safe for both of us,” she continued. “You know I’ve been seeing Nick for the last couple of weeks.” Once again her gaze went to Nick. “He’s got a little cottage on Harbor Road. A couple of nights ago he made me dinner there and gave me the key to the place. We can meet there. He won’t even know about it.”
She gripped the phone tightly and looked away from Nick as memories of that night cascaded through her mind. They had nearly made love that night. She almost wished they had, that she’d have that memory to carry with her despite the knowledge that he’d used her.
“You’re sure it will be safe?” he asked.
“Why wouldn’t it?” she countered. “Nick told me nobody knows he stays there, that it’s just a little weekend getaway he keeps. It should be perfect for us.”
“All right. Ten o’clock,” Jonas said. “I’ll meet you there at ten. We’ll only have a few minutes, Lynn, then we must board the plane and leave. Richard will have the plane ready for us. I hope, I pray you’ll come with me, Lynn. I can’t imagine you not being with me.”
“I’ll talk to you in the morning,” she replied. “Uncle Jonas, I love you.” She disconnected the call before he could reply, before he could tell her that he loved her, too.
“Ten o’clock in the morning,” she said.
Nick stood. “I’ll set things up on my end, then we’ll get you to the house to freeze the rest of Jonas’s assets.”
While Nick got on his cell phone and made the arrangements he needed to make, Lynn slipped out the back door and stood on the small patio, staring out to where the moon played on the water.
She was betraying the man who had raised her and it weighed heavily on her heart. She thought of all the times she’d eagerly waited for Jonas to return home from his trips. How happy she’d been when he’d given her an assignment to retrieve a treasure. She’d been so sure she was doing good, pleasing Jonas and helping her country.
Instead she’d been nothing more than a common criminal, a highly trained burglar, the almost perfect thief. She’d used her computer skills to crack into security files. She’d used her physical skills to steal, all because she loved Jonas.
Jonas wasn’t the good man she’d believed him to be. The crimes he was suspected of weren’t just crimes of property; they were crimes of people. He belonged behind bars.
Nick stepped out the door. “Are you all right?” She hesitated, then nodded.
“I’m fine. This is just a bit difficult.”
He came to stand just behind her. She could smell his nearness and feel his body heat. “I know it’s difficult, Lynnette.” Again his voice was soft and filled with empathy. “But, it has to be done. I can’t begin to tell you the kinds of things that Jonas has done to hurt people. And I hate it that he’s hurt you.”
“I know.” She sensed that he was about to touch her, and she turned to face him and stepped aside, not wanting his touch, afraid that it would make her shatter into a million pieces.
He shoved his hands in his jeans pockets, his eyes dark and enigmatic. “You ready to go to the house and freeze the rest of his accounts?”
“I’m ready,” she said softly.
She knew it would be her last time in the house where she’d been raised. She knew that tonight she was closing the book of her past to open the book of an uncertain future.
Chapter 13
It was after two when they returned to the cottage. Lynn had stayed true to her word. She’d changed the passwords for the last of Jonas’s bank accounts, making it impossible for him to access any of them, then she had packed two suitcases of clothing and personal items and had left the mansion for the last time.
She hadn’t asked Nick to take her back to the motel. She hadn’t wanted to be alone. Being in the house again had been difficult. Knowing that she’d never again return had been nearly devastating.
While Nick waited downstairs with several other agents who were watching the house, Lynn had sat in her bedroom and cried silent tears of grief. The very fabric of her life had been ripped out from beneath her, and she mourned for the man she’d thought her godfather had been.
Godfather. Even that had been a lie. He hadn’t been good friends with her parents, he hadn’t adopted her through legal channels. He’d stolen her.
When she finally left the bedroom, her tears were spent, and she knew they were the last she’d ever shed for Jonas White.
She’d said painful goodbyes to Rita and Arturo, who were confused and frightened by the FBI who had the house staked out. The elderly Cuban couple were planning on staying with one of their sons and looking for new work. They were good, hard workers and Lynn felt confident they would have no problem being hired by somebody.
Rita had hugged her tight and sobbed and Lynn had silently cursed the man who had caused all this pain, the man who had betrayed all their love. She promised to keep in touch with the couple who had been like surrogate parents to her.
When they finally returned to the cottage, Nick finalized his plans for the morning meeting with his team, and she returned to the patio, once again looking out to the ocean.
When she’d been at the house she’d grabbed her cell phone and she now used it to call Dawn and arrange to meet her at the motel room around noon the next day. By then Jonas would be in custody and there was nothing else keeping Lynn here. She would be on to her new life and new challenges.
Arrangements made, she put the cell phone in her pocket and stared out at the waves. Always before when she’d gazed at the water she’d thought of the parents she believed had been lost in a storm. She’d mourned the parents she couldn’t remember and had wondered how her life would have been different if they hadn’t taken their yacht out on that fateful day.
Now she knew the truth—that there had been no eccentric couple who had drowned in a boating accident. Jonas had lied. Now she knew why her Internet search had yielded no results about the tragic boating accident. It had been a figment of Jonas’s manipulation and evil mind. He’d even manufactured photos and news clippings to satisfy the questions he’d known she would ask.
However, there was Dawn. The empty spaces in her heart filled with warmth as she embraced the reality of a sister. She and Dawn shared the same genetic makeup.
She leaned against the railing around the patio and stared at the moon overhead. She thought of a woman named Lorraine Carrington, Rainy, her mother. What exactly had happened to Rainy? Had she discovered what had been done to her, and had that been the reason for her murder?
She hadn’t asked Dawn who their father was. If she and Dawn had come from eggs from Rainy, then who had fertilized those eggs? There might be a man out there somewhere who was her biological father.
She wanted answers. She wanted to learn more about the woman who had been her mother and the friends who had held her dear.
She turned and looked through the window where Nick sat at the table. His thick, dark hair was tousled as if he’d run his hands through it more than on
ce in the last few minutes. His features were animated as he talked on the phone.
She didn’t want to leave here without making love to him. The realization hit her like a bolt of lightning.
It didn’t matter that he’d betrayed and used her. It didn’t matter that she would be leaving soon to explore the secrets of her own life.
What did matter was that, even knowing all this, she still wanted Nick. It was the one thing that was clear in her head, and the idea of being held in his arms and loved to the fullest extent both excited her and filled her with awe.
She turned back around and once again stared up at the moon. Beginning tomorrow she would be on a journey that would take her far away from Miami and everything she knew.
She should be afraid but she wasn’t. The inner strength she’d discovered she possessed filled her up, and in that strength she knew her own desire.
She heard the sound of the back door opening and closing, but didn’t turn.
Nick walked to her side, bringing with him the masculine scent of his that filled her head. “Are you all right?” he asked softly.
She nodded. “I’m fine. You seem to be asking me that a lot.”
“I know how difficult this must be for you.”
She finally turned to look at him. His dark brown eyes glittered in the moonlight. “It’s not as difficult as I thought it would be. If even half of what you’ve shown me is true, Jonas deserves to go to jail for the rest of his life.”
Nick leaned on the railing and looked up at the moon. “I was thirteen when I recognized that my father was a monster. I watched him beat a man almost to death. I knew at that moment that my only hope for a good future was to get away from him and I knew I wanted to choose a path opposite from the path he’d chosen.”
She memorized his features in her mind—the strong lines of his jaw, the slightly square chin, the rugged planes that somehow came together in a face both handsome and filled with strength and character. “So you became an FBI agent, fighting evil with good,” she said lightly, fighting her desire to lean against him.
“Something like that.” He looked at her once again, his gaze soft. “Lynnette, I meant what I said to you before you escaped from the police station. I never, ever meant to hurt you.”
“But it was your job to bring Jonas down, and I was a tool for you to use to do that,” she said, unable to help the touch of hurt that colored her tone.
He nodded slowly. “We’d worked so hard for so long to get to Jonas, and my supervisor was getting impatient. It was his idea to try to get at Jonas through you, and I agreed to it. I thought it was going to be easy.”
He reached up and gently swiped a strand of her hair away from her face. The gesture was achingly familiar, and a swell of desire swept through her. “But that night at Smokey’s when I held you in my arms, I realized this was going to be the most difficult assignment I’d ever accomplished. I wanted you, and it had nothing to do with my job or getting to Jonas, nothing to do with my supervisor telling me to get close to you. I wanted you for myself.”
She’d wanted to hear these words from him. She’d needed to know that what they’d shared had been real and not manufactured. “I want you, Nick. I want you to take me to bed and make love to me.”
He seemed to freeze in position, his gaze locked with hers. “Lynn, this has been a confusing time for you.”
“Wanting you is the one thing I’m not confused about. You don’t want me anymore?” She held her breath, wondering if he’d lied about his feelings.
His eyes flashed darkly. “You have no idea how much I want you.”
Her breath released itself on a relieved sigh. “Then show me, Nick. I don’t need any promises from you. I don’t need any tomorrows. I don’t need anything but this moment in time. Show me that you want me.”
He didn’t wait for her to ask him again, but rather grabbed her in an embrace at the same time his mouth crashed down to hers.
He couldn’t manufacture the fire in his kiss, the hunger that marked the way he pulled her tightly against him. There was no lie in his arousal, hard against her as she molded her body to his.
When he finally tore his mouth from hers, he gazed at her with desire shining from the dark depths of his eyes. “I don’t want to be somebody else who manipulates or uses you.” A deep huskiness filled his voice. “This can’t be about what I want. It has to be about what you want.”
“You can’t manipulate or use me, nobody can, ever again,” she replied with certitude. “But I know what I want, Nick, and more than anything right now I want to make love with you.”
Without saying another word he took her by the hand and led her back into the house. They went through the kitchen and living room and into his bedroom, where the only light was the soft moon rays drifting into the window.
He released her hand when they stood in front of his bed.
“No means no, Lynn. If you change your mind or have any doubts about this, all you have to do is tell me no and we’ll stop.”
If she’d wanted him before it was nothing like the passion that swept through her now. In reply she moved to the head of the bed and pulled down the bedspread and top sheet. She then turned to face him and pulled her T-shirt over her head.
Nothing else in her life was for certain except the very rightness of this tonight. She hadn’t lied to him before when she’d told him she needed no promises from him. She didn’t need the promise of a future. She just needed him now.
Once again he seemed frozen. Only his chest moved, rising and falling in accelerated breaths. His hungry gaze never left her as she reached behind and unfastened her bra.
The wispy garment fell to the floor as she kicked off her shoes at the same time.
The only thing he moved was his gaze as he watched her undress for him. Her bare skin warmed with a flush, and her fingers trembled slightly as she lowered her hands to the fastening of her jeans.
The sound of the zipper seemed unnaturally loud in the silence of the room, and the fabric rubbed her sensitive skin as she slid the jeans down her thighs. It wasn’t nerves or fear that made her tremble and flush, it was sweet anticipation.
It was only when she pulled her panties off that the inertia that had gripped him snapped. As she slid into bed beneath the sheet, he yanked his clothes off in a frenzy.
His shirt fell to the floor, exposing his beautiful, tautly muscled chest. He kicked off his shoes and pulled off his socks, then tore off his jeans in a near frenzy of motion. It was as if he was afraid if he didn’t hurry she might change her mind. But she wouldn’t. She knew this was what she wanted.
When he was naked, he slipped into bed and pulled her into his arms at the same time his mouth found hers. His body was warm against hers as he deepened the kiss with his tongue.
She moved against him, loving the sensation of his firm hairy chest against her taut nipples. A deep ache gnawed in the pit of her stomach, an ache that spoke of hungry need.
She gasped as his hands cupped her breasts, his thumbs raking over the peaks and shooting shivers of delight through her. His mouth left her lips and trailed down her throat, across her collarbones, then to one of her nipples.
Her hands clutched in his hair as his tongue caressed first the tip of one breast then the other. A building tension twisted inside her as her pleasure grew.
She moaned as his hands moved down her body. He splayed them over the flat of her stomach, then raked them down the sides of her hips. Once again his mouth sought hers in a kiss that swept all other conscious thought away.
“Lynn…sweet Lynn,” he murmured as his hands brushed her inner thigh. Her hips arched toward his touch, wanting the intimacy of his hands on her where no other man’s hands had ever been.
Still his fingers caressed the sensitive skin of her inner thighs. The soft, featherlike strokes electrified her as he teased and tormented her by not touching her where she wanted him most.
She moved her hands down his body. She tangled her
fingers in his chest hair, then moved them down across his muscular abdomen.
A moan escaped him as her fingers moved over his hips. Before she could explore his body further, he touched her at her center and she cried out his name.
His finger rubbed against her and it was as if every nerve in her body began and ended where he touched. Her entire body quivered. She moved her hips in a wild rhythm against him as the tension inside her built.
She was on fire, burning in flames of Nick. When she thought she could stand no more, when the tension inside her threatened to overwhelm her, it shattered and crashed through her, sending rivulets of warmth through her veins.
She was breathless and gasping but still not sated. She wanted more. “Nick…please…” She reached down and encircled his hard length with her hand. She liked the feel of him, hard and yet smooth and velvety.
“Lynnette.” He groaned her name and at the same time rolled away from her. He reached into the nightstand and pulled out a small foil package.
A condom. Relief flooded through her. She hadn’t even thought about safe sex. Thank goodness one of them had their wits about them.
He ripped open the package and rolled the condom on himself and when he hovered over the top of her she opened her legs to welcome him.
For a long moment he gazed down at her, and in his eyes she saw not only desire, not only want, but also a gentleness that spoke of something more.
She closed her eyes, not wanting to see that, knowing that if she saw that he truly cared about her it would only make leaving that much more difficult.
She gripped his hips and pulled him closer, letting him know she was ready. She tensed as he began to enter her. She expected pain, but there was none, just a bit of discomfort that lasted only a moment.
He lay perfectly still against her, not moving a muscle. “Are you all right?” he whispered against her ear. “Am I hurting you?”
“Yes…I mean no, you aren’t hurting me.”
Then he moved and she gasped as pleasure swept through her.