"Yes, but without a plane I fail to see--"
The look she gave him would have sent O'Neal running for backup. "You have a plane, Max."
"It's been quite awhile since I last was here at Tranquility..." A plane? Where? Hidden in the three car garage?"It's difficult to recall exactly what..."
Her laugh was short and uncertain. "You'd really better stop delegating all the authority and see to some things yourself. There's a hangar out past the landing strip and I saw a tiny plane."
O'Neal's voice pounded away like a manic Greek chorus. Don't do it, Brody. You owe me your loyalties, not her.
"You have a commitment here, Kelly," he said, opting for the arrogant employer attitude. "Your first consideration should be the assignment."
The look of pain and disbelief on her face sliced through him like a machete. "You'll get your money's worth, Steel." She pulled her terry robe more closely around her body. "You may have already."
"Don't do this, Kelly." He dropped the pose as quickly as he'd picked it up. "Don't open yourself up for pain. He doesn't deserve you."
"Don't you understand, Max?" Her defenses were down, her vulnerable heart laid bare. "I have to."
"I'll send someone to help him." He must be going crazy. He could sneak off the island himself easier than he could convince O'Neal to help out with this.
"He's my father. It has to be me." She touched his arm. "What if I don't go and something terrible happened to him, Max? How could I live with myself?"
Direct hit.
Now they were on familiar territory. He knew all about wanting to help someone.
He knew all about not doing it.
All he had to do was think about the endless desert and a red-haired kid with more guts than brains...
"You couldn't live with yourself," he said quietly. "There's no damn way on earth."
"You'll help me?" Her hope was painful to hear.
"I'll give it my best shot."
"You're sounding more American every day, Maximilian Steel," she said, kissing his cheek. "I must be one heck of a teacher."
"You are," he said, pulling her into his arms. "You definitely are."
In just three weeks, she'd taught him more about love than he'd learned in the thirty-six years that came before.
#
By the time they took off for Fort Lauderdale, dawn was breaking over Tranquility Island. Feathers of rose and lemon and pale lavender streaked the sky as the sun ascended from the ocean.
"Great jumping weather," he'd said as they topped the clouds and she knew from the reckless expression in his eyes that he wasn't kidding.
At first Max had been reluctant to take her to the mainland, but once he decided to help her, he gave over to the idea with a single-minded intensity that Kelly found as exciting as it was puzzling.
Max insisted they wait until past midnight before slipping across the huge moonlit expanse of backyard toward the hangar she'd seen at the far end of the property. He seemed hyper and more than a little on edge, as if his adrenaline were pumping even harder than hers.
"You're acting like we're cat burglars trying to sneak off with the duchess's diamonds," she'd said as she watched him go through a long, painstaking pre-flight routine. "Do they have you under house arrest or something?"
She'd expected him to laugh or at least smile at her comment. She hadn't expected the silence.
A sense of unease crept over her like the fog rolling across the landing strip and it was still with her as they awaited clearance to land in Fort Lauderdale.
If she hadn't read the articles about Max in Time and Newsweek, she'd be wondering right now who exactly this man beside her was.
More and more often lately, he would say or do something so unexpected, so seemingly out-of-character, that she would find herself looking at him as if for the first time.
Sometimes it was a word uttered with the ironic top-spin of a New Jersey kid who grew up next door to Springsteen and Bruce Willis.
Sometimes it was a way of looking at things that could only be the vantage point of a man who started below the bottom and worked his way up. Sometimes it was something like this--turning the simple act of flying over to Fort Lauderdale into a cloak-and-dagger escapade worthy of a private eye novel.
Maybe it was just a rich man's game, sneaking out on the servants much the way a presidential son would sneak out on the Secret Service.
The rich are different.
F. Scott Fitzgerald had said it a long time ago in The Great Gatsby and apparently the statement still held true.
They landed at a private airport north of Fort Lauderdale a little after eight and after a brief delay at the rental car booth, they were on their way.
Apparently millionaires didn't worry about carrying mundane items like credit cards and driver's licenses and, despite her anxiety over Sean, Kelly had to laugh when she found herself handing over her New York State license and Visa card to the very curious young clerk.
She kept the needle nailed to fifty-five miles per hour; she couldn't afford the time a traffic ticket would take even though the road was empty and she longed to floor the accelerator.
By nine-thirty they'd parked their rented Buick in the lot and hurried into the Holiday Inn. Business people already flooded the lobby, looking for power breakfasts and great tans simultaneously. Crumpled copies of The Wall Street Journal and USA Today were scattered on the chairs and couches.
She tried the house phones to no avail then approached the registration desk with Max, in dark glasses, bringing up the rear.
"Sean Ryan's room number, please."
The man's eyes lingered on her face and breasts then snapped to attention when he noticed Max looming, dark and dangerous, behind her.
"We can't give out that information," he said, all business. "Use the housephone and they'll ring him."
"I already tried the house phone. They sent me here."
The clerk punched Sean's name into the computer and waited as it hummed into action. "No wonder you couldn't get him. He checked out last night."
"That's impossible! He said we'd have breakfast together this morning. He called me just--"
The clerk swiveled his video monitor around so she could see. "Look for yourself. He checked out last night, eight o'clock. Paid cash--don't see too many these days who do that."
Max put his hand on her shoulder and she turned to him, a cold dead feeling settling inside her chest.
#
Ryder smashed his fist into the wall in frustration. It would take hours until he felt the pain.
Max and Kelly were gone.
That noise he'd heard around daybreak hadn't been his imagination. He'd been lying in bed, half-awake and thinking about Joanna, when the sputtering sound of a single-engine plane floated in on the early morning breeze off the ocean.
No big deal, he'd thought, punching his pillow and burying his face in it. Some wrong-way pilot or a junket coming in from one of the Keys.
It wasn't a big deal--at least, not until he got up and couldn't find Max.
And couldn't find Kelly.
And couldn't find the old Piper Cub in the hangar.
He didn't have to be a genius to figure out where they'd gone; Sean's phone call the evening before had gotten under Max's skin in a big way.
If Ryder'd used his head he would have anticipated something like this.
Not if I take her with me....
Max had practically told him flat out he would take her to Fort Lauderdale to find Sean.
Only Ryder had been so smug, so certain there was no way off the island that he'd paid no attention.
PAX had come down on him hot and heavy for the slip-up. He didn't even want to think about what would have happened if PAX hadn't been able to instantly home in on Max and Kelly's whereabouts and surround them with security forces so discreet they'd never be noticed--and so effective, they couldn't be lost.
Twelve days until the New Year's Eve party in Rio--and, hopefu
lly, the end of Viktor Maksymenko's domination.
Maybe then Ryder would treat himself and Joanna to a long, long vacation.
If he lived that long.
#
"A mistake, Sean Ryan." Viktor Maksymenko's voice came to him through a dark tunnel of pain. "A most serious mistake."
Sean was lying in the back seat of the stretch limo, hanging on to consciousness by a fragile thread.
His last clear memory was of standing there at the bank of phones in the lobby of the Holiday Inn a lifetime ago when two men in un-Palm Beach black suits approached him.
The pain hammering across his forehead was a testimony to the friendly hello they'd extended him.
"I believe we settled this matter before," Viktor said, fingering the cast on Sean's wrist. The pressure increased subtly. "You do what we tell you when we tell you."
A blinding stab of pain raced up Sean could at least deny him that one satisfaction.
"A simple phone call," he managed. "Was that too much to ask?"
"The truth," Viktor growled. "Is that too much?"
Viktor motioned to his comrade on the jump seat and Sean braced himself for another assault.
"Who did you call?" Viktor roared as the first blow caught Sean along the side of his jaw. "Tell me!"
A thin ray of hope pierced Sean's black and dying soul.
They didn't know. This one time, he had an ace up his sleeve they couldn't touch.
Kelly was safe.
He might be damned, but his daughter still had a chance.
Chapter Twenty-Two
"You're an amazing man," Kelly said as they drove toward Palm Beach after leaving the Holiday Inn. "I don't think I could have resisted at least one I-told-you-so."
"I've never believed in cheap shots," he said, stealing a glimpse of her lovely face as the sun streamed in the windows of the Buick.
She laid her head back against the seat rest and closed her eyes. "There you go again. I'd love to know who taught you American slang."
She was a smart woman. He'd be wise to remember exactly how smart. "You forget I had an American father."
She didn't miss a beat. "You forget you told me he died when you were an infant."
"I went to school in your country."
"Oh, really? I thought it was only for a few years."
"Formative years," he said, grinning as they rounded a curve and past a string of neo-modern condo monstrosities.
"Why do I have the feeling you're not telling me everything?" she mused, opening those dark blue eyes and looking at him.
"Because no one tells everything, Kelly. Not in this world."
She shivered and wrapped her arms around her body. "That's not exactly what I need to hear today."
It wasn't exactly what he wanted to say but back at the Holiday Inn he had realized full-force what dangerous games PAX and the other side were playing with their lives.
Ryder and PAX and all the others were so concerned about keeping Kelly safe from harm, so worried about making sure Sean lived to tell his tale, that no one was giving any thought to the damage they were doing--damage that went beyond anything a gun or a bomb could possibly deliver.
He knew that back at Tranquility Ryder had probably called down the wrath of the angels on his head for taking Kelly off the island but what was done was done.
Sean had lived up to expectations and disappointed her once again.
Max intended to make up for it.
"This isn't the way back to Lauderdale, is it?" she asked as the first of the estates came into view. "We're headed toward Palm Beach."
"I wondered when you'd notice."
"Any particular reason, Max?"
On their right the ocean lapped gently against immaculately kept private beaches. On their left the old Post estate, Mar-a-Lago, appeared through a mist of bougainvillea and he had to congratulate Donald Trump for being smart enough to cop such a prize.
"It occurred to me that Christmas is six days away and I haven't done any shopping."
Her dark blue eyes widened.
"Right, Max, and I suppose you buy all your own stocking stuffers, don't you?"
"Is that so hard to believe?"
She leaned against the door and studied him. "You realize you're amazing. You'd never heard of cranberry sauce before but you know all about stocking stuffers."
"A matter of priorities," he said easily. A few weeks ago he would've broken into a cold sweat at being nailed like that.
Right now he didn't care.
Seeing the smile back on her face was worth a chance or two.
"I've never shopped in Palm Beach before." Her eyes twinkled. "Do they accept lowly Visa cards in Gucci and its brethren?"
"I'm sure arrangements can be made, Kelly."
She reached over and touched his forearm. "Thanks, Max," she whispered. "I owe you one."
But the question was, would she still think so two weeks from now when she found out the truth?
#
When she'd said the rich were different, Kelly hadn't known the half of it. Palm Beach proved it.
Hollywood mega-dollars might have the same face value but they didn't have the clout that old, old money carried. Palm Beach was all about names and families, about Vanderbilts and Merriweathers and Posts and money that had had a few generations to lose its newness and acquire a touch of class.
It reminded Kelly more of Manhattan's Park Avenue than of L.A.'s Rodeo Drive and she knew that this was one place where being the daughter of a movie star meant exactly what it should mean: absolutely nothing.
She and Max split up in front of Van Cleef & Arpels on Worth Avenue with promises to meet there at one o'clock and lunch together at a French cafe tucked in one of the vias off the Avenue, and she set off in search of bounty.
She was already an expert in the art of acquiring bargains where no bargains should be found and in record time she'd discovered a gorgeous pair of crystal wine glasses at Cartier for Natalie and her husband and fountain pens with gold nibs for each of her highly-rated instructors and arranged to have everything sent immediately.
As if that weren't wonderful enough, she still had room on her Visa card for more.
On principle she refused to buy a single thing for her father even though Brooks Brothers had the perfect shirt and jacket for an aging swashbuckler. Brooks Brothers also had a few items she thought Max Steel might like but a button-down shirt or rep-striped tie wasn't exactly what she had in mind for him.
Actually she didn't know what she had in mind to get him for each time she thought of something perfect it was either too expensive or too much like something he already had.
And there was the biggest problem of all: what do you get for the man who really did have everything? Short of buying one of the estates she'd coveted as they drove up A1A, she couldn't think of anything.
At least she couldn't until she walked into Sotheby's and struck up a conversation with an antique book collector who happened to have a first edition of Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby and--well, she couldn't resist.
"You're looking happy for a woman with only one package," Max noticed as they settled down in the cafe for lunch and she placed that one precious package on her lap.
"I discovered the wonderful words 'We Ship Anywhere,'" she said as she unfolded her linen napkin. "It's an amazing world, Max Steel."
"That's for me, isn't it?"
She grinned and opened her menu. "None of your business."
"A shirt from Brooks Brothers?"
"How unimaginative."
"Cuff links from Van Cleef?"
She opened her eyes wide in horror. "On my budget?"
"Something leather from Gucci."
"Don't go getting kinky on me, Steel."
He reached for the package on her lap but she slapped his hand away.
"At least a hint, Kelly."
"You can wait until Christmas."
"Do the words noblesse oblige mean anything to you?"
She shook her head. "Not one blessed thing."
He made a point of moving a large flat box from one jacket pocket to another but she refused to give him the satisfaction of asking about it.
"You're not curious?" he asked after they placed their orders.
"Not at all." She sipped her iced water and glanced out the window. "Lovely view, isn't it?"
He whipped out the box again and laid it on the table between them.. "This is for you."
"I had a feeling it was."
"You don't want to know what's in it?"
"Of course I do, Max, but I can wait until Christmas."
He mumbled something in Portuguese and put the box back in his pocket which was a lucky thing because if Kelly had to look at it another ten seconds without knowing what was inside, she wouldn't be held accountable for her actions.
They talked all through lunch and to her relief the subject of Sean Ryan never came up. Max acted as if this trip to Palm Beach were just a normal shopping excursion and not the end result of her father's demand that Kelly meet him in Fort Lauderdale.
If she'd thought herself in love with Max before, it was nothing compared to the intense wave of emotions she was feeling now.
"You were right, you know," he said as they strolled through some of the quaint Palm Beach alleys that led to the vias with their fashionable shops and the Rolls-Royces idling at the curb. "The rich are different."
"No, Max," she said, patting her first-edition Fitzgerald which contained that very thought. "Not as different as I first thought."
Beneath Max Steel's Turnbull & Asser shirt beat a heart of 18 karat gold.
#
They were on their way back to the rented Buick when she saw it.
It made even a faceless mannequin look fabulous.
She stopped in front of the store window and stared at the dress like a foolish schoolgirl.
"Try it on," Max urged, laughing as she exhaled on a long, covetous sigh.
"No," she said. "Then I'd only want it more."
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