Golden Threads

by Kay Hooper

  Purring.

  Lara picked up her script and fished in the pocket of her jeans for her car keys. With utter calm, she said, “May I have my cat? I’m leaving.”

  Devon looked up at her, his eyes immediately narrowing. He rose, still holding Ching. “I’ll carry him out to your car,” he said slowly. “He’s heavy.”

  She acceded to that only because she didn’t trust herself to say another word without revealing the turmoil inside her. Silently, she led the way to the rear exit and outside. Unconsciously drawing deep breaths in the chilly night air, she walked to her car and opened the door, waiting for him to put the cat inside. When he silently did so, she got in and closed the door. She couldn’t close him out, though, because the window on the driver’s side was down several inches, and she heard him clearly.

  “Lara, what’s wrong?”

  She inserted the key and turned it. The engine made a healthy getting-ready-to-start sound, but wouldn’t catch. Lara waited a moment, then carefully held the gas pedal halfway down with her foot and tried again. Just the whirring of an engine that wasn’t going to start. She tried again, and again.

  “Damn,” she whispered.

  Opening the car door, Devon said, “Come on, I’ll take you home. You can call a garage tomorrow to have a look at it.”

  “I’ll call a cab,” she said tensely.

  There was a moment of silence, and then he took her arm and pulled her from the car. His grip was neither painful nor rough, but she didn’t think she could easily pull away from him.

  “Ching,” he said, waiting until the obedient cat joined them outside the car. He reached in for the keys, then shut the door and led Lara to his own vehicle. When he opened the passenger door, the cat leapt in without waiting to be told.

  Lara wasn’t given a choice; she was thrust unceremoniously inside. She didn’t fight him, mainly because she was trying desperately to convince herself that she was imagining things, letting her suspicions run away with her. Devon wasn’t her enemy; he couldn’t be.

  There was this affinity between them. And even though he was obviously fighting it, there was desire. It was real. They both felt it. He couldn’t have faked that…could he? Could he be ruthless enough to pretend desire—or use it—just to get information from her?

  No, he couldn’t do that, because she…Oh, dear God.

  Devon didn’t say a word during the drive to her apartment, and when they got there he didn’t give her a chance to escape him. He turned off the motor and then scooped up Ching somewhat brusquely, an action the cat protested with only a faint murmur. Then Devon got out of the car and came around to her side. She was already standing on the pavement.

  “I can—”

  “We have to talk,” he said flatly. He took her arm and led her toward the building.

  Minutes later, facing him in the living room of her apartment, Lara could feel her precarious control faltering. “There’s nothing to talk about,” she said, watching as he set Ching absently on the coffee table, shrugged out of his light jacket, and tossed it onto the couch.

  “No? You walked offstage looking like somebody had kicked you in the stomach. You look worse now.”

  “Thanks,” she said stiffly.

  Devon shoved his hands into his pockets and stared at her, his eyes narrowing. “You heard something,” he mused slowly, almost to himself. “Or were told something. What was it, Lara?”

  Refusing to be in limbo again, Lara wanted answers. Good or bad, she had to know. “Nothing much. Why were you watching this building last night?”

  He went very still. “Who told you that?”

  “Never answer a question with a question.”

  “Tell me, dammit.”

  “You first. Answer the question, Devon.”

  “You should know the answer.” His voice was impatient. “You wouldn’t call the police or anybody else. Did you expect me just to leave tamely? Whoever searched this place could have come back. I watched in case they did.”

  “Knight errantry?” She wanted to sound mocking, but her voice emerged unsteadily.

  Devon’s lips twitched suddenly, and he said in a dry tone, “No, you forget. I’m the prince. I could have used a couple of squires, though. It was cold as a witch’s broomstick out there last night.”

  Her suspicions wavered. That voice of his…And she didn’t want to believe he was her enemy.

  “Who told you, Lara?”

  Automatically, she answered. “Luke. He saw you around dawn as he was passing by.”

  “Luke,” Devon said softly.

  Lara hardly heard him. “You could be lying. How do I know you aren’t?”

  “Why would I?” he demanded, and then frowned in a sudden realization. “Oh, I get it. I’ve suddenly become one of the bad guys.”

  “How do I know you aren’t?” she repeated. “Nobody bothered me until I met you—”

  “Nobody bothered you until they found you. Dammit, Lara, you met several people when you met me. You joined a community theater group. And I was with you when you were nearly run over; have you forgotten that?”

  “No.” She swallowed hard. “But there could be two people—one trying to frighten me, the other…”

  “What? Trying to seduce you?” Devon’s mouth tightened. “If I’d been on that end of the plan, we would have been lovers last night.”

  Lara didn’t know what to believe; all her emotions were in turmoil. She felt so raw that a touch would have sent her screaming. “Maybe that’s what you’ve been fighting,” she heard herself say thinly. “It wouldn’t be so hard to pretend desire, but there comes a point when it has to be real.”

  He stared at her for a long moment. A muscle bunched under the tanned flesh of his jaw, and his eyes were so dark they were nearly black. Then, in a thickened voice, he said, “It is real. That’s the problem.”

  For a fleeting instant, Lara felt a feathery chill of fear. Because it would no doubt be a problem for a would-be assassin to feel real desire for his intended victim. But then, caught in the tortured shadows of his eyes, she saw and accepted the utter certainty that this man was no killer.

  She half-lifted her hands in a pleading gesture. “Devon, I don’t understand.”

  He hesitated, then slowly crossed the space between them to stand before her. “Lara…”

  The last scrap of her control deserted her. “Dammit, tell me what’s going on!”

  Silently, he pulled a leather folder from his pocket, opened it, and held it out.

  There was an ID card on one side, with his photo and name.

  On the other side was a badge.

  Chapter 5

  At first, Lara was aware of nothing except the irony of it. At no point had it even crossed her mind that Devon could have been a federal agent. She stared at the badge for an endless moment, then turned away and went to sit on the couch. By the time he joined her there, she was beginning to think again.

  “Why?” she asked.

  He didn’t need the question clarified. “More classified designs have disappeared,” he said in an impersonal tone. “It began to look as if your father was right about some organized group’s being behind the thefts. But we didn’t have a lead. Then we received an anonymous tip—maybe from the same person who warned your father—that you were no longer safe.”

  “So you were sent here.” She looked at him. “But undercover. I wasn’t warned. What was I supposed to be, Devon? Bait?”

  He didn’t flinch from her steady gaze. “Yes, if necessary,” he answered softly. “The consensus was that you were the only chance we had.”

  Lara drew a breath. “You guys play rough.”

  “I won’t try to justify that decision, Lara.”

  “Was it your decision?”

  He hesitated, then shook his head. “No.”

  She realized, suddenly, what he had said—if necessary—and a bitter pang went through her. She had been right, in a sense. There had been two. On different sides, yes, and usin
g radically different approaches—but sharing at least part of a goal: They both wanted information from her.

  “The music changes,” she murmured painfully, “but the dance is the same, after all.”

  “What?”

  “So I was going to be bait if necessary?” She laughed with no humor. “The FBI didn’t believe I’d told them everything; they made no secret of it. They thought I was holding something back. And they sent you to try once more to find out what it was. Is that your role at the bureau, Devon? Resident seducer?”

  “No.” His voice was bleak, and his shadowed eyes never left hers. “I was supposed to try and win your trust, I won’t deny that. I can’t. But what happened between us wasn’t part of the plan.”

  Lara forced herself to look away, fixing her gaze on the cat still sitting on the coffee table and regarding them solemnly. “Right,” she said. “Well, I guess you have to say something like that. After all, hope springs eternal. I just might be desperate enough not to give a damn why you’re here.”

  “Don’t, Lara.”

  “You’ll have to forgive me.” She kept her voice detached and polite. “I’m afraid I don’t know my lines. Outrage, maybe? Betrayal? Or should I just be quite pathetically grateful to have been treated like a mindless pawn?”

  “You could have called the bureau at any point,” he reminded tautly. “I urged you to—against orders, I might add. If you had done that, you would have been given a choice. To be hidden again, or to stay put. You had already made the choice, Lara. You didn’t want to run.”

  “But I didn’t know I was being used as bait! You should have told me. Why didn’t you tell me?” It hurt that he hadn’t been honest with her. She had broken all the rules to confide in him, while he had remained silent.

  Devon took a deep breath and then spoke steadily. “I’m an undercover agent. I’m always undercover on an assignment. You said I couldn’t know what it felt like to forget part of my life, my identity. To answer to a strange name. I do know what it feels like, Lara. I’ve known what it feels like for ten years. And in all those years, I never broke my cover. I never once told anyone who and what I really was, in large measure because my life depended on my playing the role I’d been assigned.”

  No wonder he had played the role of prince so convincingly; he was doubtless a natural actor, something the bureau had taken advantage of. And those past “roles” had, in all likelihood, been high-wire acts in deadly situations. She understood that, and the rationality of his defense made some of her bitter anger fade. But not all of it. “I wasn’t your enemy,” she whispered.

  “I know. I’d already made up my mind to tell you tonight—whether you believe that or not.” He sounded tired.

  “Why now?” Her voice jerked. “Because charm wasn’t working?”

  There was a moment of silence, and then he said, “We aren’t lovers.”

  Her heart seemed to turn over inside her, and Lara was dimly aware that it was a purely intuitive response to his statement, as if something within her understood everything he meant with those three simple words. She tried to tell herself that she was seeing only what she wanted to, believing what her heart demanded that she believe. And yet…She felt that odd tug, the pull of something stronger than she was, and the power of the bittersweet affinity she felt for him almost stole her breath. She didn’t look at him. Instead, all her other senses came tautly alive.

  “I noticed,” she said flatly. “So?”

  “We could have been. You can’t deny that.” His voice was harsh now—and hard. “We should have been. And if I was an agent who just wanted to use you, for bait or anything else, we would have been. I wanted information from you, right? I wanted you to tell me everything you know about the night your father died, even the memories you can’t bear to remember. And seduction would have given me that. So we should have been lovers.”

  “You were being noble?” she mocked with an effort that she hoped didn’t show.

  “It would have been the easy way, Lara. The quickest way. Just let nature take its course, and then listen to the pillow talk. And I was tempted.”

  She turned her head jerkily and looked at him. His face was drawn, his eyes glittering in a way she’d never seen before.

  Devon nodded. “Oh, yes, I was tempted—and not only because I wanted you so badly that I was half out of my mind. I was tempted because you wouldn’t run, and you wouldn’t hide, and I knew damned well you wouldn’t panic. They wouldn’t get any information from you, and I knew they’d have to kill you. So I was very tempted to take the quickest way to get the answers I needed from you.”

  “But you didn’t.” It was little more than a whisper.

  “I couldn’t do that to you. To us.” He rose abruptly from the couch and moved away with the stiffness of a man who was rigid with control or pain. “I wish I could say it was nobility, but it wasn’t. I simply didn’t want you to hate me.” Halting with half the width of the room between them, he faced her and shrugged wearily. “There aren’t any princes, Lara, except in books and on stages. The rest of us simply do the best we can.”

  He waited, feeling as tense as if he’d just bet his life on a very dark horse. He half-expected her to order him to leave both her apartment and her life. She had bitterly referred to herself as a pawn, and he knew what she meant, knew how she must feel about that. But he couldn’t go back and change the decision that had brought him into her life, any more than he could repeat these last few days.

  And he couldn’t expect a betrayal—even an incomplete one—to arouse in her anything but pain and disgust.

  She rose from the couch and came slowly toward him, and when she spoke it was in a voice he’d never heard from her before. A voice that reached inside him and touched something that had forgotten what gentle, understanding contact felt like.

  “I couldn’t hate you, Devon, even if I wanted to. I realized that tonight, when I thought you might turn out to be an enemy. And you didn’t trick your way into this prison of mine. You knew the way because you’ve been here or in a place very like this. I’ve known that all along. That’s why I’ve never been able to fight the way you made me feel.”

  He didn’t move when she stopped an arm’s length away. “And I know,” he said reluctantly, “that prisons are lonely places. Don’t misinterpret your own feelings, Lara.”

  “Is that what you believe I’m doing?”

  “I think it’s possible. Maybe even likely.”

  She looked up at him for a long moment, then said somewhat dryly, “I’ve been fighting this as hard as I know how. But it hasn’t done any good. I don’t believe in princes, Devon. And I don’t know so much about happy endings. But I’ve never felt the way I do with you. And that’s enough.”

  “The situation—”

  “No, it isn’t that.” Lara hesitated, but knew this had to be resolved now. Steadily, she said, “I’m not in the habit of misinterpreting my own feelings, and being in a…prison hasn’t changed that. I know how I feel. What I don’t know is how you feel.”

  “You know.”

  “No.” She smiled ruefully. “I don’t know. It could have been the role.”

  He matched her smile, even though the strain showed through. “I’m not the resident seducer at the bureau. That was never the plan, I swear to you. I haven’t been playing a role, Lara. Not when I’ve held you. Not when I’ve touched you.” His voice hoarsened on the last few words, and he cleared his throat. “We can talk about that later. I—”

  “We don’t need to talk anymore.” Lara had often been impulsive, and sometimes reckless, but she knew that neither of those emotions was driving her now. The timing was all wrong, she knew, because Devon was half-convinced it was the situation and not he who had sparked desire. But the certainty she felt went too deep to allow doubts to stop her.

  “Lara—”

  She took his hand and turned toward the hallway.

  His fingers closed almost convulsively over hers. “Honey, yo
u can’t be sure,” he said huskily.

  “I can’t be sure of much,” she admitted softly. “But I am sure of this, Devon. Very sure.” And she led him down the hallway to her bedroom.

  —

  “Yah,” Ching said softly. He jumped onto the couch and trampled methodically on Devon’s jacket until it was comfortably creased and folded. Then he turned around several times and curled up in a boneless ball with his ringed tail covering his nose. He murmured for a while in the back of his throat, the monologue holding a considering tone, then drifted off to sleep.

  He dreamed about chasing rabbits.

  —

  “You’re living for today,” Devon said as she turned on the lamp by her bed and faced him. “Lara…” His haunting voice was deep and rough, his expression taut.

  “And you know what that feels like,” she said, tacitly confirming his assertion. Then she smiled. “But, Devon, it doesn’t matter. Because if I knew, with absolute certainty, that a million tomorrows were waiting for me, it wouldn’t change what I want tonight.”

  “How can you know—”

  “I love you.”

  His breath caught with a harsh sound, and his eyes blazed with a sudden fire. He didn’t question the words, or deny them, even though the part of him that was an experienced agent urged him to. He accepted, because he needed her too badly to doubt the astonishing generosity that could allow her even to say that to him.

  Whether it was true or not.

  He reached for her slowly, but the instant his hands touched her shoulders something inside him seemed to break. It was all he could do to force himself not to crush her in his arms, not to hold on to her with all his strength, as if some incoherent fear within him whispered that she’d be wrested away from him.

  Lara melted against him, her arms sliding up around his neck, face lifting as he bent his head and captured her mouth with his. She felt a shudder go through his powerful body, and her own body trembled responsively. Her mouth opened to him eagerly, and a jolt of pure, raw desire seared her when his tongue touched hers. She had never felt anything like this mindless, compulsive need; it was as if she had to obey an instinct so ancient there was no name for it, there were no words for it.