TWICE A HERO

by Susan Krinard

  And she'd thought it was out of anger.

  "Perry," Liam said, striding to the window. "He masterminded it all. It wasn't enough for him that Caroline saw us together. He wanted me out of the way, and he didn't care if you were hurt in the doing of it." He stared out at the city. "I know you met me at the Poodle Dog on his advice.

  "But you didn't know about the wine. Or the carriage. The axle could have broken anytime once we started to race." His fingers worked into fists on the windowsill. "You could have been killed."

  "I… heard of the accident," Mac said, still struggling with shock. "You weren't hurt—" She moved toward Liam and stopped herself. "You think that Perry set up the accident and this drugged wine, and I was working with him?"

  "Damn it, Mac!" He swung to face her. "He's used you, deceived you just as he did me. You were a handy tool, no more." He made a low, bitter sound. "I had him investigated before our last expedition, when he began to show interest in Caroline. He wasn't merely a younger son cut off from his family's fortune, as I first suspected. He worked for the British government before I met him. As a spy—probably an assassin. He had no scruples. I went to Guatemala to warn him away from Caroline."

  Mac shivered and sat down on the bed. A spy? It certainly explained Perry's ability to get information and disappear so effectively. But an assassin…

  "I don't believe it," she said, preparing herself for a hopeless argument. "I don't believe that he tried to kill you, whatever his past. Yes, I met him—at the ball. And he was the one who told me about the carriage accident. I don't know how he found out about it, but he didn't have to volunteer the information. Especially if he considered me disposable." She concentrated on keeping her words calm and level and logical. "He knew you'd consider the accident proof that he was behind the attempt in the jungle, and he predicted how you'd react. But I chose to trust him. I wish I could give you a better reason than gut feeling and instinct." She waited for the lash of Liam's scorn and disbelief. "If I thought for a moment that he really meant to hurt you—"

  "You'd what?" He examined her face intently.

  She swallowed and looked down at her lap. "Isn't there something else you should be worrying about—like who's really trying to kill you?"

  His footsteps whispered on the carpet. "Do you mean the tongs, Mac? You overheard my meeting with Chen in the Gresham library."

  "Yes. Enough to know you were on your way to do something dangerous." She sat up straighter, hoping for information. "I know the tongs are criminal organizations that practically run most of Chinatown, but—"

  "They deal in human cargo, Mac. Girls brought illegally from China, bribed and coerced into leaving their homes, too young to fight or to know what they're getting into." He strode across the room and back again with brittle anger. "Children ruined by men who see them as commodities, whores to be used until they die of disease or violence or despair. A very profitable enterprise."

  The passion in his voice was more eloquent than any mere explanation could have been. Mac was almost humbled by it. This was a part of himself he kept hidden, a part that had revealed itself only in his obsessive desire to protect Caroline—and sometimes Mac. A part she still didn't understand.

  "Then… that's what you were doing the night of the ball, wasn't it?" she asked. "Something to do with these girls. Raids. Saving them—"

  "From their masters and from the corrupt outsiders who'd take their own cut of this obscenity. The law is all but useless in stopping it. For a year the band's been successful. Until the night of the ball, when the raid went sour. When someone betrayed us to the tongs."

  The informant. "Then you do have other enemies. These tong people—"

  "And their ally," he said. "Peregrine Sinclair."

  Oh, God. "Was he part of your group?"

  "He wasn't involved. He didn't have to be." Liam's mouth set in a harsh smile. "I've had him watched since I returned to San Francisco. He was clever, but not clever enough. My men saw him with one of the foremost tong bosses. He was the one who undermined the last raid. He's doing the tong's dirty work for them and for himself at the same time."

  Mac closed her eyes. Impossible. That Perry was so utterly villainous, so heartless, so capable of deceiving her…

  But even if he wasn't, Liam's danger had been real, and deadly. He could have died in that carriage accident, or on one of these raids. Cold lightning raced along her nerves.

  "Are you finally convinced that your ally is a blackguard?" Liam demanded.

  She couldn't lose faith now. "No."

  He slammed his fist against the wall, shaking the light fixture overhead. "He could have killed you without a second thought. You played Perry's game and helped rob a girl of her innocence—"

  "I what?" Mac jumped to her feet. This conversation was moving almost too fast for her to follow, but she refused to be left behind. "You mean Caroline? You never let me get close enough. What happened? Did she finally shatter your image of the delicate, naive Miss Gresham? Did it finally get into your head that no one can protect anyone from life the way you wanted to protect her?"

  She regretted her words as soon as she saw his stricken expression.

  "I'm sorry, Liam," she said. "Truly sorry. I never wanted to cause you pain—"

  Even if she'd been listening she couldn't have heard his footsteps, so quietly did he move. She looked up just as he reached her, as he caught her chin in his hand.

  "Don't worry, Mac," he said. "You'll make it up to me."

  She felt the heat reborn in him, burning away that all-too-brief insecurity, the doubt he couldn't allow himself.

  "Were you afraid I'd abandoned you?" he asked, stroking her cheek with startling tenderness. "I'd never have done that. I had plans to see you settled in a safe place, where you could live as you wished. You didn't give me a chance to tell you. But now it doesn't matter, does it?" He touched her lips with a calloused finger while his other hand began to work at the waistband of his trousers. "I don't give a damn anymore who you are or what you've done. I don't care if you worked for Perry or even if you're crazy. You succeeded, Mac. You made me want you."

  The top button of his trousers popped free of the buttonhole. He let them fall, giving Mac an eyeful of magnificently aroused male. She remembered the way that sleek hardness had felt under her hand, and against her—

  "No need to stare, darlin'. You'll see plenty and get a lot more before we're through."

  Darlin'. How long had it been since he'd called her that? Back in the jungle, when he'd played her for a fool…

  "It works better when you don't try to woo a woman with intimidation," she said, managing a semblance of sarcastic bravado.

  "You didn't need wooing yesterday," he said, trailing his finger to the hollow of her throat. "Pretty speeches are wasted on you. It's something a little rougher that excites you, isn't it?" He'd returned to that deep purr that made his blunt words unbearably erotic, lethally carnal. "Last night you were ready for me, wet for me." He rested his palm on the swell of her breast. "You were right when you said it was good between us. It'll be better this time. This time we won't stop."

  Her mouth went dry, robbing her of a retort.

  "Shall we find out if I'm right?" he said, kicking his trousers free.

  Still she couldn't move, frozen in an agony of terror and desire. Terror, not of him, but of herself. Of the wild feelings he aroused in her as he aroused her body, spinning her out of control. Of how desperately she did want him. Wanted him to make love to her, all the way.

  "You think you've won," Liam taunted, herding her back to the bed. "But there's always a price for victory, darlin'. Take it from me."

  Yes, there was a price. Mac had only begun to understand in the Poodle Dog, when he'd almost taken her there on the settee.

  It was hunger: a physical, aching need—the woman she'd never fully recognized within herself, coming to painful life inside her awakened body. Liam had done that. He had that power over her, a power too terrib
le to give to a man she should never have known.

  "It'll be good, Mac," Liam murmured. She felt the play of muscles in his thighs as he carried her with him onto the bed. He stretched out beside her, his hand resting on her hip in masculine possessiveness.

  She lay still while he ran his hand down her muslin-clad thigh and under the hem of the chemise. Well, Mac, she told herself, trying to maintain her calm, look at this rationally. You do want him. You can enjoy this for what it is. Exactly as he will.

  Her thoughts fragmented as Liam's fingers worked along bare skin. She bit the inside of her lip as he found what he was looking for and stroked her—once, again, a third time. His fingers found no resistance, no friction. He withdrew, but she felt no relief.

  "Ah, darlin'," he said, "you don't have to say a thing." He waited until she met his gaze and then deliberately licked her wetness from his fingers.

  The gesture almost undid her.

  "You want me inside you," he murmured. "You want me to take you hard and fast, the way I would have done it last night. Admit it." He pinned her down, his erection pressed to her inner thighs, his breath hot on her ear. "The woman in you wants to be tamed, and there's only one way and one man to do it."

  He began to stroke her again, pushing her chemise up over her thighs, her hips, to her waist. "You took from me. Now I'll do the taking. But you'll enjoy it, darlin', I promise you."

  His touch was expert. It couldn't have been more effective. In spite of all his threats of "hard and fast," he didn't hurry. His finger slipped inside her, moving with a rhythmic omen of what was to come. She jerked and arched against him.

  "That's it, darlin'. Give in." He pushed her chemise higher still, and then it was over her head and she was naked. Defenseless. His mouth found her breast, nipping and suckling. A moan betrayed her, and then there was no more point in pretending.

  And no more passively lying there like a frightened virgin—even if the latter designation was almost true. She'd be damned before she gave him all the advantages in this affair. There'd be two to tango, and she wasn't going to let him forget the experience.

  With a heave and a lift of one knee she encouraged him to shift position. While he was still off-balance she rolled, carrying him with her, until she was on top and straddling him.

  He didn't know what'd hit him. She reached down between them and found his prominence. No confusion there. She had him where she wanted him.

  "Since we're on the subject of confessions," she said softly, "I think it's your turn."

  She smothered his retort with a kiss designed to get his attention. She was a very fast learner; he looked almost dazed when she came up for air.

  "Admit it," she said. "Admit that you wanted me in the jungle as much as you want me now."

  She closed her hand around him, worked her fingers up and down his length until he shuddered as she had shuddered at his caresses. "Admit," she said fearlessly, recklessly bold, "that you want me the way you've never wanted any woman before."

  She waited. An eternity passed.

  "Yes," he said. He trapped her arms and pulled her down flat on top of him. "Yes, damn you."

  And he proved it with his kiss.

  Chapter Twenty

  One crowded hour of glorious life

  Is worth an age without a name.

  —THOMAS OSBERT MORDAUNT

  THEY DANCED.

  No decorous waltz this time, but a wild and primitive duet that began with a kiss and followed only one inescapable rhythm.

  It didn't matter that he was experienced and Mac had almost none. She knew her instincts were good when he groaned at her touch, at the stroke of her tongue on his neck and chest and belly. She gloried in the power of her newfound womanhood.

  But Liam wasn't quite prepared to surrender his traditional masculine prerogatives. When matters had progressed to the greatest extremity he rolled Mac beneath him again, parted her legs, and entered with a deep, bold stroke.

  He'd been right. She wanted him hard and fast. There was no pain, though she'd been celibate for more years than she wanted to count. He made her forget there was such a thing as celibacy. He made her forget there was anything beyond this rapture, this completion, this unbearable joy of taking and being taken.

  But it was more than that. A shifting had begun inside her, and she almost grasped the meaning of it before Liam drove it from her mind again.

  Plain, skinny Mac was gone, reborn like a phoenix out of the fires of passion, from the conflagration that consumed them both and left them weary and tangled in each other's arms.

  For a moment suspended out of all time they were in harmony, all conflict forgotten, content beyond joy. Mac took that moment and built a box around it within her mind, a case of velvet and satin and clouds and dreams. Wherever, whenever she went, it would go with her, protected and eternal.

  She didn't mind when Liam slept afterward. She studied his face, so unguarded in sleep. Almost gentle. Almost innocent. She could see the boy he'd been, the boy who had existed before the school of hard knocks got hold of him. A boy who'd fought all his life and didn't know how to stop.

  But there was so much she didn't know about him. So much she badly wanted to know. Who that boy had been. What he had suffered. How that suffering had built his obsessions and his need to save and protect those he thought incapable of caring for themselves.

  Like Caroline. Like the slave girls. Irrational in one obsession, noble in the other.

  Wanting even to protect her. Mac, who'd never had anyone but Homer try to protect her from anything.

  Liam had called her jealous. She was—jealous of the secrets Liam kept so firmly locked within himself.

  She brushed Liam's hair from his forehead and immediately flashed back to that time in the jungle when he'd come so close to death.

  God.

  Her hand trembled, and she snatched it away before she woke him. Suddenly, so suddenly, she understood what had changed in her heart even as Liam had filled her body.

  It was impossible. It was crazy. It was true.

  She rocked back and closed her eyes. When had it happened? How? Had it been during one of their numerous verbal battles? At Cliff House, when she first began to understand him, or at the ball, when she'd found the nerve to make her move and felt the depth of his response?

  Or had it begun the first time she saw him in the rain, a photograph come to life—a man she would never have met if not for a fluke of time and fate? A man who drove her crazy, a dyed-in-the-wool male chauvinist, arrogant as all get-out and totally oblivious to the feelings of any other human being…

  No. Not every human being. Just the girl who'd been his ward and the woman who loved him.

  Mac got up, pulled on her chemise, and wandered to the bay windows. The sky was patterned with scudding clouds against the darkness, as unquiet as her thoughts. The city was likewise dark except for the streetlamps and houses beyond the commercial district. Dark and alien. Not her city. Never her city.

  The room was chilly. She wrapped her arms around herself. Already the magic she and Liam had created was fading, bowing to reality. Was this what other women had to deal with… this clutching terror, this unfathomable sadness?

  Those hypothetical other women had choices she didn't have. Because sometime in the near future, once a few remaining complicated matters were cleared up, she wouldn't be needed here any longer. Her task would be complete.

  She could go home. Back to the place she belonged, just as Liam belonged here.

  Damn it. She wouldn't feel sorry for herself. She'd gone into this with her eyes wide open. So had Liam.

  The gulf of a hundred years separated them, and that was the least of the barriers between them. She'd done the best she could to foul things up for Liam. He could never accept the full truth of her reasons, intellectually or emotionally. His future would always be her past.

  But there was now. She could make the most of now. Liam had stamina—a heroic amount of it, and the night wa
s still young. For an egocentric scoundrel he was a surprisingly considerate lover.

  If it were only sex she'd have nothing to regret.

  She started back toward the bed, slipping the chemise from her shoulders. She would wake Liam in the best way she knew how, and do a little more forgetting in his arms…

  But she found him staring at the rosette on the ceiling, the bedsheets tangled around his hips.

  "You're awake," she said awkwardly.

  "Always the keen observer." He stretched, a flex and crack of muscles that Mac watched with fascination. Yes, where he was concerned she was a very keen observer. Not that she wanted to be too obvious about it.

  She sat down on the opposite edge of the bed, unexpectedly shy. He resumed his rapt study of the ceiling fixture.

  "I've been thinking, Mac," he said.

  She pulled her muslin wrapper over herself like a blanket. "Oh?"

  "Yes. About what's to be done with you after I deal with Perry."

  "Deal with Perry," she echoed warily.

  "I want you out of the way, where you can't be hurt. I've already made certain that he can't get anywhere near Caroline. But you…" He rolled onto his side and propped himself on his elbow, frowning. "You'll have to leave town, Mac."

  "While you kill Perry?"

  He flinched almost imperceptibly, and that gave her hope. "You know I can't let him go," he said.

  His words effectively banished any hope of renewing their physical communion. The atmosphere in the room distinctly favored war, not love.

  "You can't do it, Liam," she said, holding his gaze.

  He sat up against the headboard and folded his arms across his chest. "Did you think that because I slept with you I'd be taking your orders?"

  "No. But I had hoped maybe…" She twisted a handful of sheet in her fingers. "I thought you might finally be willing to consider me a friend."

  His silence made the laugh that followed all the more cutting. "A friend? That's a conversation we've had before. I've a much better use in mind for you."