Cyn tapped her bottom teeth with the tip of her long fingernail as she scanned the pages of the paperback novel. Although she was having difficulty concentrating on the story, she was determined to finish the book. Reading was great escapism, and it had usually worked in the past to take her mind off her problems, but it wasn't working this evening.
She couldn't stop thinking about Nate Hodges, about the black limousine and the mysterious danger surrounding the man she longed to help. Slapping the book closed and tossing it down beside her on the couch, Cyn clinched her teeth, released a loud huffing breath and balled her hands into fists.
"Damn. Stop doing this to yourself." Jumping up from the couch, she headed toward the kitchen. If a good book didn't work, then maybe food would.
"Why won't he let me help him?" Cyn asked herself aloud. "He's so alone and in so much pain, and yet he keeps shutting me out."
She placed her hand on the refrigerator handle, but before she could open it, she heard several loud knocks coming from her front door. With her heart racing and her stomach swirling, Cyn rushed to the door, knowing before she saw him that Nate Hodges had come to her.
She swung open the door. His gaze met hers, his moss-green eyes pleading silently. She smiled. He looked so good, so very, very good. His jeans were old and faded but clean, and they fit his lean, muscular hips and legs like a snug, well-worn glove. His khaki-green cotton shirt encased his broad shoulders and chest tightly, then billowed out around his flat stomach and narrow waist. He had tied his hair back into the familiar ponytail. He looked big, rugged and dangerous. But in his eyes, she saw his soul, a dark, hungry soul in desperate need of light and nourishment.
"Nate."
He thought he'd never heard anything as beautiful as his name on her lips, and he knew he'd never seen anything as lovely as Cynthia Porter. Wearing a sheer yellow cotton blouse and skirt, with her golden-blond hair spilling freely to her waist and her flesh tanned to a tawny cream, she looked like a sunbeam—strong and bright and life-giving.
He wanted to bask in the warmth of her brown eyes, to reach out and draw her shimmering sweetness into his bitter heart.
"I need to talk to you," he said, thankful that she hadn't slammed the door in his face. Of course, he'd known she wouldn't. His heart had assured him that she would welcome him.
"Come in." She stepped aside to allow him the space to enter her living room.
He hesitated. "Look, we both know that there's something pretty strong going on between us, and... and I realize we can't just keep ignoring it."
"You're the one who's been trying to ignore it."
"Brown Eyes, I'd like nothing more than to make love to you, to explore the way I feel about you." He leaned toward her, placing one big hand on the doorframe. "But my life is complicated, too complicated to involve a woman like you."
"Then why are you here?" she asked, trying to disguise the catch in her voice, the disappointment in her heart.
"We can have this evening. That's all I can give you." He reached out and ran the back of his hand across her cheek, down her neck and chest to where her blouse covered her breasts. He wanted to say let me love you, let me drink my fill from your cup of life, let me find sanctuary in your arms.
"I don't understand." Her breath caught in her throat when his hand moved lower, down the front of her blouse, his knuckles raking across the small pearl buttons. "You keep...keep contradicting yourself. You say one thing, then do the opposite. You keep changing your mind."
He stopped his hand just below her left breast, spread open his palm and clutched her waist, pulling her toward him very slowly. "Come home with me. Give us this evening, and I'll try to explain."
She would never understand it in any logical fashion afterward, but her reaction to his request had nothing to do with rational thought. She swayed toward him, allowing him to enfold her in his embrace. She slipped her arms up and around his neck, standing on tiptoe to reach the band around his hair. With trembling fingers, she snapped the band, allowing his hair to fall freely down his neck and around his face.
He saw the hunger he felt reflected in her warm brown eyes, and he longed to take her mouth, to ravish her lips. But he didn't. He had to muster all his self-control. If he kissed her now, he'd be lost.
Rubbing her cheek with his, he held her to him, savoring the feel of her soft, womanly body. "Do you like steak?" he asked.
She cocked her head to one side, looked up at him and smiled. "See what I mean about saying and doing totally opposite things?"
"No contradictions," he said, loosening his hold on her. "My actions have been telling you that I want you, and what I'm trying to do with words is ask you for a date."
Cyn laughed, the sound deep and real and sweet. Her laughter filled his heart, warming the coldness, softening the hardness. "Are you inviting me to your house for a steak dinner?"
"Sort of." He released her completely, except for one slender hand that he held tightly. "I'm not much of a cook, but I can grill a steak, if you'll help with the potatoes and salad—"
"Do you like ice cream?" she asked, her whole body swimming with giddiness. She felt like shouting and singing and dancing around and around. She was going to spend the evening with Nate Hodges. They were going to have a date—a real, honest-to-goodness date. Maybe there was hope for them, after all.
"Love it," he said. "Why?"
Tugging on his hand, she pulled him inside her house and led him to the kitchen. "I'll pack a basket of goodies to take over to your house. We'll fix ourselves a banquet."
He wanted to tell her that she was the banquet, a true feast for his lonely heart and tortured soul. And he would tell her—tonight. * * *
Nate sat on one end of the tan leather sofa, and Cyn sat on the other end. She had curled her feet up underneath her skirt; he had stretched his long legs out on top of the metal trunk. One of her Patti Page cassettes played on his stereo, the music and lyrics of "What'll I Do?" filled the ultra-masculine room.
They had shared a delicious meal, after-dinner drinks and discussions on subjects ranging from the weather to politics. They'd even broached the subject of his boating business in St. Augustine, from which he'd said he was taking a leave of absence.
More than once she'd tried to steer the conversation around to his past, and every time he'd artfully dodged her questions. Finally she gave up and began entertaining him with stories of how her father had disapproved of practically every boy she'd ever dated.
"Once I realized that no matter how perfect a boy was, my father was going to find something wrong with him, I figured out a way to make him appreciate the fine young man I'd been bringing home."
"And just how did you do that?"
"I started dating the absolutely worst boys in school."
"Who were the worst boys in school?"
"Oh, you know, the ones who rode motorcycles, wore an earring and had hair down to their shoulders." Playfully she reached out and flipped the end of his ponytail.
"Did your strategy work?"
"Of course. And it only took two perfectly awful dates before Daddy was asking about 'that nice young man' I'd dated a few weeks earlier."
"Such a manipulative female." He laughed, a genuine chuckle from deep inside. She made him feel good. Damned good!
"Not manipulative, just smart."
"And did you enjoy being a bad girl?"
"I've never been bad. I've always been a good girl. Ask anyone who's ever known me." She sat up straight, easing her legs out from beneath her skirt, inching them slowly toward Nate's where they lay stretched out on the trunk. "Cynthia Ellen Wellington Porter has always been a strong, sensible, levelheaded girl who could shoulder any burden, overcome any tragedy, and take care of anyone and everyone who needs her."
"And who takes care of Cynthia Ellen?" The moment he felt her leg touch his, he wanted to pull her close, entwining their legs in a sensual braid while their bodies joined in a passion nei
ther could hide.
Cyn rested one of her legs atop his, the other cuddling beside it. "I take care of myself and everyone else. I have ever since my mother was killed in a plane crash when I was fifteen. I'm a take-charge person. I've been that way for so long, I can't be any other way."
"Didn't your husband take care of you?" Nate asked, wondering how a man could possess such a woman and not protect her as fiercely as he would the world's greatest treasure.
"Evan was a good man, but he was too busy taking care of all the kids at Tomorrow House to take care of me.'' Her eyes glazed over momentarily with a faraway pain, then brightened to their normal rich warmth. She felt as if she were betraying Evan's memory to criticize him in any way. It hadn't been his fault that he had never been able to give her the kind of possessive passion she had so desperately wanted.
Noticing Nate staring at her with a mixture of suspicion and understanding in his eyes, she tried to smile at him. "Besides, I didn't need taking care of. Haven't you guessed by now that I'm a mother-to-the-world type of person?"
"Mothers, even mothers-to-the-world, need husbands to take care of them." His own mother had desperately needed his father. She had been strong, strong enough to have and keep an illegitimate child in the morally judgmental fifties. But Grace Hodges had been so alone, so in need of—
"Nate, what's wrong?" Cyn asked, reaching out to take his hand, squeezing it tenderly.
"What?" He looked at her, his moss-green eyes slightly dazed.
"You looked so sad."
"I was thinking about my mother." He brought Cyn's hand to his lips, kissing it softly once, twice, three times. "She was a strong woman like you, but she needed someone to take care of her sometimes and there was no one there for her."
"Your father?" Cyn felt his pain. It filled his eyes.
It marred his handsome face. He made a sound somewhere between a groan and a snort. "I never had a father. I don't even know who he was. Anyway, it doesn't much matter. He's dead. He died before I was born."
"Oh, Nate, I'm so sorry." She held his hand even tighter, longing to take him in her arms and give him comfort. But she wasn't sure he would accept it, not right now when the pain was so great.
"All he ever gave her was me." Nate pulled away from Cyn's hold and stood up, his back to her. "A bastard child of uncertain heritage who never fit into her blue-blooded Anglo family."
Nate began to walk around the room as if movement alone would ease the tension from his big body. "His name was Rafael. She told me that much. I guess she had to, since she named me after him."
"Nathan Rafael." Cyn thought how well the name suited him, how perfectly it blended his mixed heritage.
"She said I looked like him, and I guess I must. I sure don't resemble anyone in her family, except for my green Anglo eyes."
"Your eyes?" Cyn asked as she stood up and went to him. "You have green eyes like your mother?" She touched his face with tenderness.
"Don't feel sorry for me." He stepped back, away from her touch. "I don't want your pity."
"What do you want from me?" she asked, her voice quietly pleading.
"Nothing. Everything. Too much. More than any woman could ever give." He couldn't stand seeing the look in her eyes, the pure, undisguised love. He turned away, moving toward the windows. Didn't she know that if he took what she was offering, he would destroy her? Even if Ryker didn't pose an immediate threat, Nate knew he would still be the wrong man for Cyn. She was so gentle and caring, so filled with love for the whole world. And he was a man filled with bitterness, a man who had spent a lifetime fighting the realities of a brutal world far removed from Cynthia Porter's awareness.
Following him, she placed her hand on his shoulder. She wanted to tell him that she was willing to give him everything, all that was her, every beat of her heart, every fiber of her being, the very essence of her soul. Didn't he know she already belonged to him?
"Take a walk with me," she said. "Show me the old mission again before it gets too dark to see inside." She wasn't quite sure why she'd made the suggestion, but somehow she knew it was the right thing to do.
Without turning around, he nodded. "No one knows for sure those old storage rooms were once part of a mission." Then he turned around, his face a mask of calm, hiding the emotions he was fighting to conquer. "Inside the sensible, levelheaded Cyn Porter is the soul of a romantic."
"Who, me?" She breathed a sigh of relief, knowing she could handle a cordial Nate much easier than a brooding man in pain. "Just because I love fairy tales and myths and want to believe in legends, you call me a romantic."
"Come on, Persephone. Go with me into the darkness." He held out his hand.
Cyn felt the instant chill, the shuddering anxiety that claimed her. His words held a meaning he had not intended. She reached out and took his hand, knowing that she would follow this man anywhere, even into the jaws of death—and beyond, to the depths of Hades or through the gates of heaven.
Twilight shadows fell across the earth while the fading colors of dusk painted the sky with muted tones of pink and lavender. A gentle evening breeze murmured through the trees and bushes, its cool breath caressing Cyn and Nate the moment they stepped outside.
"Is there no entrance to the mission inside the house?" Cyn asked when they stood in front of the arched doorway.
"I think there used to be, but someone plastered over it years ago. Probably long before your Miss Carstairs lived here."
Nate shoved the heavy door open, standing aside to allow Cyn to enter first. Even though he didn't believe in ancient legends and certainly not in ghosts, Nate felt the same curiosity here that he'd felt the first time he'd come to these rooms with Cyn. He couldn't quite pinpoint the source of his uncertainty, but he knew there was something here waiting for him, something he wasn't yet ready to accept.
Cyn stepped inside and stopped abruptly, hesitating until her eyesight adjusted to the darkness. Faint evening light seeped through the boarded windows and crept in from the open doorway. Slowly, cautious in her movements, Cyn walked inside, glancing around, searching for something, for anything, that could explain why this place drew her like a magnet. She'd felt it the time before when she'd come here with Nate.
She wasn't sure how she knew, she simply knew that once, long ago, something wonderful had happened here and something horrible. She trembled.
"Are you cold?" Nate asked.
"Don't you feel it?" she asked. "The joy. The pain."
Damn this place to hell and damn his crazy imagination. She'd asked if he felt it. Yes, hell, yes, he could feel it, but he didn't want to. "This is a damp, dark, musty old building. You're letting that stupid legend make you imagine things."
She moved around the room, quickly, almost frantically, her breath coming in quick, ragged spurts. "They were married here, you know. The priest married them."
What was wrong with her? Nate wondered. She was staring at the back wall as if she saw more than moss-coated shell rock partially obscured by a stack of battered furniture and decaying cardboard boxes. He reached out, grabbing her by the wrist. "Come on, Cyn, let's get out of here. Let's go for a walk along the beach."
"They died here," she cried. "He killed them both in this very room and dragged their bodies out onto the beach." Cyn fell against the wall, her hot, flushed face seeking comfort on the cool stone surface.
Just as her knees buckled and she began to sway, Nate caught her up in his arms and rushed outside. Deeply inhaling the clean evening air, he felt his chest rising and falling with the heaviness of his breathing. The moment she'd said they died here, he'd known the ancient lovers had been killed in the mission—the Timucuan maiden and her Spanish conquistador. But the images that had flashed through his mind had not been of long-dead lovers, but of Cyn and himself. And Ryker.
"Oh, Nate, you felt it, too, didn't you?" She clung to him, her slender arms draped around his neck, her fingers threaded through his hair.
"Cyn, don't do this to yourself." He carried her across the road and onto the beach.
"Are you saying you didn't feel them, feel their joy, share their pain?" she asked as he lowered her to her feet, allowing her body to slide down his slowly, sensuously.
"I'm saying that we both can't let our imaginations run wild." He wanted her. Now. His body was hard, pulsating, throbbing with desire. How could he answer her, how could he admit that even now, the passion flowing through his veins like an untamed river was more than one man's passion? How could he tell her, without sounding insane, that he wanted to make love to her again, to find the fulfillment he had feund only in her body, to come home to her arms and find the sanctuary his soul had sought for so long?
"It's as if we've been together before," she whispered, clinging to him, her lips pressed against his chest where she was unbuttoning his shirt. "Oh, Nate, I'm scared."
"It's all right, Cyn. I'll never let anything or anyone hurt you." Tonight is all you'll have with her, he told himself. Take her, only if you're sure you can let her go afterward.
"It's not just the legend. There's more." She breathed in the deeply masculine smell of the big man holding her so protectively in his arms. "I'm not afraid for them. They died hundreds of years ago."
"Don't think about it, Brown Eyes." He lowered his mouth, brushing the top of her head with tender kisses.
"It's us. You and me and the mission. And this beach. Oh, Nate, tell me what kind of trouble you're in. You need me. I can help you."
He took her mouth with the savagery of a man pushed beyond the limits of his control. Holding her close, Nate conquered her lips with unrelenting pressure, impaling her soft moistness with his tongue. Without really knowing anything, she already knew too much. She had sensed the truth as surely as he had. If he couldn't find a way to prevent it, Ryker would kill them both inside the old mission and drag their bodies onto the beach... the way the ancient conquistador's enemy had done.
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