by Cherry Adair
“I want more time together more than I’ve ever wanted anything. But no. The price is too high.”
The sun was moving, changing the patterns of sunlight and shadow all the way down the hallway, and Eden blinked as the bright stripe started moving over them, bathing them in warmth and golden yellow light. What a crock. If she was going to have this miserably depressing conversation she’d rather do it in shadow.
“I’m willing to risk it.”
“I’m not—” He frowned, brushing her cheek with his knuckle. “Jesus. What’s the matter? You’ve gone ash white.”
“Oh, my God! Gabriel! Look at Grandma Rose’s ring!”
She grabbed his hand where something glinted in the shifting light. “Look at the ring. Look at thering !”
“Yeah. I was going to give it back to y—”
“Lookat it,” Eden was practically vibrating with excitement, her fingers curled around his as she lifted their joined hands. Gabriel looked at the tiny silver ring on the first knuckle of his left pinkie. He brought his other hand up, and started to pull it off his hand.
“Christ, sweetheart. The last thing I want to do right n—Okay. Okay.” He held his hand up. “Hey. The black wore off. Looks like silver. Couple of hearts—what am I supposed to see exactly?” Gabriel lifted his head to stare at her with puzzlement. “It’s similar—” They turned at the same time, hands entwined as they faced Janet’s portrait.
“Not similar. It’sexactly the same.” Eden said softly. “Look at her finger, my love.”
He turned to look at the portrait of Janet. Where once she’d been bare-fingered, now she wore the twined silver hearts on her pale thin finger. The exact same ring Gabriel was wearing on his hand. “It can’t be.” But his heart beat wildly enough for him to believe that even this miracle was possible with Eden by his side.
“Itis. The curse is broken.” Her fingers tightened around his. “How does the end go? ‘Only freely given will this curse be done. To break the spell, three must work as one’? I gave you Grandma Rose’s ring freely. Do you realize what powers were at work to allow my grandmother to find your family ring at a Parisian fair sixty years ago? And strong enough to bring us together in these weird circumstances? Incredible.”
“Incredible? How about amiracle. ” He glanced down at the clasped hands where the sunlight bounced off the silver. “It feels warm.”
“Look at it! It’s glowing.”
“ ‘Three must work as one.’ ”
“That means your brothers must each be given one of the other pieces of the jewelry to break the spell completely.”
He already had his phone in his hand. Eden grabbed his wrist. “What are you doing?”
“Calling Duncan and Caleb—”
“You can’t. It has to be given freely, remember?”
“How will they know it’s the jewelry that will break Nairne’s Curse? Hell, how will they find the person who’s in possession of it? I have t—”
“They won’t. You didn’t. You can’t tell them anything, Gabriel. Not a word. Nairne made sure that all three of you would have to work together to break her Curse.” She wrapped her arms about his neck. “I think she meansat the same time. Let them each find their Lifemate in their own way. Let Nairne have her last word. Let this Curse be over for all time.”
“How did you get to be so wise?”
“Desperation?” Her tone was wry. Sunlight streamed over them, illuminating Janet’s portrait. It seemed to Eden as though the woman’s mouth had curved up—just a little—in a smile. She looked back at Gabriel.
He shimmered them to the bedroom and prone on the bed. With a smug smile, Eden opened her eyes as soon as he made their clothing vanish. Bathed in yellow sunlight she looked about as perfect as a wish. “God,” she said happily, snuggling her warm naked body against his. “I love that mode of transportation. I love being naked with you. I love you.”
“I love you, Dr. Eden Cahill. I love you more than life itself.”
She pulled his head down until he could feel her smile against his lips. Then pulled his mouth to hers and kissed him back with all the love she had in her.
She couldn’t breathe and she didn’t care. She wanted the kiss to go on and on. She could have been struck by lightning right there and then, and not cared. She was already being incinerated by Gabriel Edge’s clever—God,so clever—mouth. The sheer pleasure as his tongue touched hers, the slide and glide.
He dragged his mouth off hers, pulling in a deep breath that moved his chest against her aching breasts. Eden hauled him back for another soul shattering kiss. “I wasn’t done telling you how I feel.”
He touched her face, saw how her glorious brown eyes captured the light as she looked up at him. And knew that nothing, not even magic, could ever come close to the perfection of this woman in his arms. “We have the rest of our lives, sweetheart. We have the rest of our lives.”
“I know. How magical isthat ?”
Edge of Dangeris a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
A Ballantine Books Mass Market Original
Copyright © 2006 by Cherry Adair
Excerpt ofEdge of Fear copyright © 2006 by Cherry Adair
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Ballantine Books, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
BALLANTINEand colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
This book contains an excerpt from the forthcoming bookEdge of Fear by Cherry Adair. This excerpt has been set for this edition only and may not reflect the final content of the forthcoming edition.
eISBN-13: 978-0-345-49348-4
eISBN-10: 0-345-49348-6
www.ballantinebooks.com
v1.0
In loving memory of my father, Ralph Campbell
October 4, 1915–September 18, 2005
From curtain rise to curtain fall
He lived life to the fullest and with great gusto
Gone, but in my heart always.
I have been given this day to use as I will.
I can waste it or use it for good.
Whatever I choose to do is important,
because I am exchanging a day of
my life for it.
—ANONYMOUS
From across the room, Gabriel closed his eyes and imagined touching Eden’s soft, tender skin. Mentally he concentrated on arousing her.
He imagined his hand on the fullness of her breast, felt the weight and the texture. Jesus…he gritted his teeth, his own arousal profound and painful as he teased her nipple to a sharp point. Lips parted, a hectic pink bloomed in her cheeks. She was close. Damn close.
Jesus. This was killing him. Letting his mind touch her as he wanted to do, Gabriel eased her jean-clad thighs apart. Almost there.
Glass shattered, breaking the moment, and there was a yell from the kitchen. “Sorry!”
Eden moaned. Dazed and disoriented, she opened her eyes. “What the hell wasthat ?!” she whispered, shaken.
Duty o’er love was the choice you did make
My love you did spurn, my heart you did break
Your penance to pay, no pride you shall gain
Three sons on three sons find nothing but pain
I gift you my powers in memory of me
The joy of love no son shall ever see
When a Lifemate is chosen by the heart of a son
No protection can be given, again I have won
His pain will be deep, her death will be swift,
Inside his heart a terrible rift
Only freely given will this curse be done
To break the spell, three must work as one
Read on for an exclusive sneak peek
at the next pulse-pounding novel in the
Edge trilogy by
Coming in August 2006
from Ballantine Books
SANFRANCISCO
MONDAY, JANUARY16TH
15:15:47
“What does it matter what the hell she looks like?” Caleb Edge said into the phone, hoping like hell that the dark, primal lust he felt drumming through his veins didn’t bleed into his voice. He frowned absently at his control’s odd question as he shifted the compact sat. phone between chin and shoulder, and the binocs an inch left.
A foggy San Francisco street and a shitload of swirling fog separated the two apartment windows. The lights over there were on. The lights here weren’t.
His heart, which was normally as steady as a rock, still pounded uncomfortably sixty seconds after he’d lifted the binoculars to his eyes and taken his first look at her.
Bam!Caleb felt as though someone had punched him in the solar plexus, grabbed his heart, and squeezed.Hard.
That’swhat Heather Shaw looks like.
“She looks like a woman with more money than sense,” he told Lark absently. His heart was racing; he assured himself it was because his goddamned knee hurt like hell. He leaned a little more of his weight on the shoulder he had propped against the wall.
She’d pushed the sleeves of the thin purple sweater up her creamy forearms while she worked. The fabric draped over her tall slender body as if it had been custom made. Probably had. Heather Shaw had more money than many third-world countries.
“Interesting location for her to hide out.” Caleb dragged his gaze from the gentle swell of Miss Shaw’s breasts back to the top of her head.Look up again, honey, let’s see those gorgeous eyes again. “How long’s she been there?” Were her eyes green? Brown? Hard to tell from this distance.
“About six months,” his control, Lark Orela, told him. “Why?”
Reluctantly Caleb shifted the binocs. “Place’s pretty stark. Chair. Bed. Table. Nothing personal that I can see.”
“She’s been moving around.”
“Yeah.” And not easy to track down, according to Lark. Finding Heather’s fatherfirst would’ve expedited this op, and made it a hell of a lot more interesting, Caleb thought. Unfortunately Brian Shaw had been missing for the better part of a year. Interesting, but not surprising, that such a high-profile individual could completely obliterate his trail to disappear like that.
Which left his delectable daughter to the wolves.
Caleb figured he’d been in rehab for too damn long if justlooking at the tango’s daughter gave him a hard-on.
Long, elegant bones. Pale, slender fingers. Silky hair that would feel like sunlight on his skin. He was damn sorry now that he’d begged Lark to send him on a mission. Anywhere. Any damn thing to escape the hospital.
This had been the best Lark had come up with at short notice. Bullshit. She didn’t think he was ready.
This wasn’t an op. A simple question needed answering. Hell, someone could call it in.
But here he was. Because anything was better than being stuck in a rehab center for months on end. Surprisingly, Caleb’s reaction to the woman he’d been sent to find had been visceral and immediate. He liked women just fine. Hell, heloved women. But he’d never had such an instantaneous, energizing, chemical…joltlooking at a woman before.
Adrenaline junkie that he was, his physical reaction on seeing her—blood pressure up, libido up, temperature up—intrigued him. Pheromones were one thing, but he wasn’t even in sniffing distance of her.
His reaction was so immediate. So…primitiveit shocked the hell out of him.
Why her? Why here? Why now?
“Okay, then let me ask you an easy question,” Lark said in his ear. Caleb braced himself. Lark was an empath, and he didn’t want her picking up any screwy signals. “How’s the leg?” she asked, throwing him.
Yeah. Concentrate on something that made sense. The knee was sore. Which annoyed the hell out of him. The only person’s injuries he couldn’t fix were his own. Pissed him off to no end.
“One hundred percent A-okay.”
He’d been pathetically grateful when he’d gotten the call an hour ago during his hopefully final physical therapy session. Hell yeah, he’d check out Shaw’s daughter.Anything to cut short the boring sessions. He’d been going stir-crazy.
He’d commandeered an apartment across the street, one whose windows looked directly into hers. A typical winter’s day in San Francisco. Damp, misty fog eddied in gossamer ribbons between the tall, narrow buildings in an ever-changing screen that challenged a clear view into Heather’s apartment, even with her lights on. Caleb had seen enough.
“Liar,” Lark told him. “Dr. Long just told me you’re still favoring that knee.”
“Then why did you ask?” He’d had his knee replaced, but there’d been some nerve and muscle damage. It would heal. Eventually. These things usually did. He had plenty of scars to prove it.
Watching Heather Shaw was more interesting than discussing his knee, which ached like hell. Which in turn made him bad tempered. Which in turn made him even more antsy to get back to work so he could forget about it.
Based on photographs, Shaw’s daughter had changed some during the last year.
“To see if you’d lie,” Lark informed him.
Lying was the least he’d do to get back to work. He’d been off for three months now. Even one more day with nothing to do but physical therapy would drive him straight up the wall. “I have a medical release from the doctor and the therapist. So, quit torturing me, honey. Find me something.Anything. I beg you. This lack of activity has made me a basket case.”
“You’re a workaholic, Middle Edge.”
“You say that like it’s a bad thing. Come on, babe, help me out here. Send me to some exotic hellhole to kick some terrorist butt.”
“Can you run?”
“Better than most.” No. But he didn’t want his control to know that his doctors were right. He wasn’t fully back up to speed yet. But he’d get back into shape on the job. “And since when does an Edge need to run? We show up, take names and kick ass. There’s no heavy lifting and I like the hours.”
“That may be, but you should still take some downtime until you’re fully recovered. Think of it as a vacation.”
“I don’t want a vacation. I don’tneed a vacation.”
Lark had a pretty laugh, even if it was mocking. “You sound like a truculent five-year-old. But I agree. You can do your job just fine limping. Your trigger finger’s just fine. You brain wasn’t damaged—much—by that beating you took.”
“Heartless, Lark. I’m sharp as a tack.” Was she going to send him back in? Caleb imagined the young woman who was his control. Lark Orela looked like a cross between a biker chick and a Goth rocker. With spiked black and fuchsia hair, and half a dozen silver rings in each eyebrow, and one in her nose for God’s sake. But behind that pale face and scary black eye makeup lived the brain of a brilliant tactician.
The operatives under her control, Caleb included, weren’t fully aware of the full scope of Lark’s various wizardly talents, which intrigued him. Among other skills, Caleb was damn sure she was clairvoyant. But she never talked about it, and discouraged questions.
“Tell me what you see.” She circled back to Heather Shaw.
This was a “look-see.” He wanted back to work. Yesterday would have been good. “Are you sending me back into the fiel—”
“Observations, Edge?”
Lark was like a particularly friendly pit bull. Caleb shifted to do a quick scan of Shaw’s one-room apartment. “How the mighty have fallen. The walls are bare. No pictures. No knickknacks. Nothing whatsoever to personalize her living space.” The covers on the narrow single bed behind her were thrown about haphazardly. Restless night or lover?
His insides clenching at the thought of a lover surprised him. Good thing he would be with Kris-Alice in Germany within the hour. That was one of the benefits of being who he was. What he was. He could teleport with ease.
>
But to go and talk to Miss Shaw he’d merely stroll across the street and knock at her door. Caleb worked for T-FLAC/psi. T-FLAC was a privately funded counterterrorist organization. Psi was the psychic phenomena offshoot.
This wasn’t a psi op. He’d been in Silicon Valley undergoing forced physical therapy on his knee—hell, it had just been asmall bullet hole—when Shaw’s prints had been ID’d. Since he was closest, he’d been requested to get intel from the woman. Intel they sorely needed if they had a hope in hell of tracking down her father, Brian Shaw.