At great risk Sean had filtered out bits and pieces of information over the past four years that had kept PAX one step ahead of the plot to contaminate US groundwater.
What happened to Ryder O'Neal--and eighteen other hapless party goers--New Year's Eve was just a foreshadowing of the terror they'd had in store for America.
Sean had suffered a broken pelvis during the jump and a few contusions but basically he was hale and hearty and ready to face the music. The bond between father and daughter was badly damaged but there remained a slender thread of hope for the future.
At the moment that was enough for Kelly for her heart was so filled with love for Max that she couldn't see straight.
Wonderful amazing Max, who had turned out to be a hero in the truest sense of the word.
Her father owed his life to Max's bravery, an act of such daring and ingenuity that even veteran PAX operatives made it their business to call Max or come by to shake his hand.
How could you not want to spend your life with a man like him.
But when would he get around to asking?
#
Four days after New Year's Max and Kelly went to the PAX-run hospital outside Rio to visit Ryder, who was still recovering from the vicious flu that Viktor had planted in the party pate.
Ryder's wife Joanna had flown down from New York to be with her husband. She'd brought along some amazing news of her own and now he claimed his queasy stomach was sympathetic morning sickness.
Kelly learned that two of Viktor Maksymenko's cohorts were in custody but the man himself had escaped. No one was foolish enough to think this would be the end of their machinations but a very real, very serious threat to the health of millions of innocent Americans had been averted and for that, the organization was thankful.
But no more thankful than Kelly.
If Max would only stop talking about his past and start talking about their future, all would be perfect.
"Come on," said Max, hurrying her through the hospital corridor that afternoon. "I think you'll really like Joanna."
"Ryder's wife?"
"His one and only." Max shook his head in wonder. "Can you imagine O'Neal a father?"
"I'm having enough trouble imagining him as PAX's resident wonder boy." She hesitated outside O'Neal's room. "Are you certain he wants to see me? I said some pretty terrible things to him back at Tranquility."
"He's a big boy. He can take the heat."
"I threatened him. I told him if he did anything to hurt you..." Her words drifted off. "It wasn't charitable."
"You love me," Max said with the confidence of a man new to such things."Love makes us do crazy things."
"Like believe you were a Brazilian billionaire?"
He touched her cheek. "Like fall in love with me."
"That was easy, Max," she whispered. The easiest thing she'd ever done.
"I'm not rich," he warned her again. "No private jets or secluded islands."
"That's fine with me."
"I'm not Brazilian."
"I already told you I love American men."
"I'm opinionated, arrogant, lazy, and latently ambitious."
"I like a man with a sense of himself."
"They're talking about keeping me on the PAX payroll."
"I'm not surprised," she said. "They asked me about it, too."
"Isn't there anything I can say that will discourage you?"
"Nothing I can think of."
"I live in Millstone, New Jersey."
"New Jersey," she said with a contented sigh. "The Garden State."
"Once you say yes, there won't be any turning back. I'll never let you go."
"I believe in you," she said softly. For a woman who had grown up believing only in herself, it was a miraculous revelation."I can't think of anything more wonderful than spending my life with you."
"You'll marry me?"
"Max Brody," she whispered. "I thought you'd never ask."
~~end of A FINE MADNESS~~
Author's Note
Readers are everything.
Seeing your name in print is terrific. Good reviews put a smile on an author's face.
Royalties help keep the wolf from the door. But the absolute best thing about being a writer is being read.
Knowing that your words are making someone you're not even related to happy. Knowing that your story is helping to make a bad day better for a stranger who needed to escape for a few hours. Knowing that the imaginary friends you've spent the last few months with are out there in the world becoming just as real to a reader you'll never meet, but know and love just the same.
See what I mean?
Readers are everything.
Thank you from the bottom of my heart for being there.
And, if you're new to my work, welcome. I hope you'll read a few of my other titles and let me know what you think. You can always reach me on Facebook or Twitter as barbarabretton, or directly through my website www. Barbarabretton. com
Happy Reading !
Falling in love was easy
Staying alive? That's a whole other story . . .
Ryder is an undercover operative for PAX, a worldwide antiterrorist agency that flies beneath the radar
Joanna is a Hollywood makeup artist whose magic turns fantasy into reality on a daily basis
He's a spy looking to come in from the cold
She's a woman who's never had a real home
Sizzling passion . . . heart-stopping danger . . . the ultimate choice . . .
#
PLAYING FOR TIME
The PAX Series - Book 1
Chapter One
Ryder O'Neal swore as he rearranged his right leg on top of the mahogany table in front of his couch. The cast was heavy and hot and it itched like hell, and after six weeks of imprisonment, Ryder was at the end of his rope.
Alistair Chambers's urbane laughter was just about enough to send him over the edge.
"Better watch it, Chambers," Ryder said, waving his crutch aloft. "This could be a lethal weapon.'
The older man folded his slim, impeccably tailored frame into a chair close to the couch.
"Courting danger is my forte," he said, his voice revealing his British origin. "I am ever fearless." He handed Ryder a glass of Scotch.
The drink warmed its way down Ryder's throat and mellowed his mood despite himself. "What you are," he said, "is a royal pain in the –"
"Save your American vulgarisms for someone else," Alistair broke in. "I am impervious to such blatant ploys for sympathy."
"I don't want sympathy. I want my freedom."
Alistair made a show of looking around the elegantly appointed apartment. Except for the stacks of notes on the desk and the mass of electronic equipment locked away in the two spare bedrooms, the place was straight out of Architectural Digest. "I see no bars at the windows, my boy, and no shackles upon your wrists."
Ryder pointed toward the heavy cast on his right leg. "Who needs shackles when the prisoner has a fractured femur?"
"Six weeks ago you didn't know what a femur was."
"Six weeks ago I didn't need to know what a femur was."
"This is right and just punishment for carousing on that godforsaken mountain in Vermont. A more sensible man would have amused himself with diversions of a different nature."
Ryder drained his drink and put the glass down on the windowsill behind him. "Like that blonde I saw you with after the Summit meeting?" The state of Vermont had recently played host to a US-USSR summit meeting on combating global terrorism, a topic with which both men were well-versed.
Alistair arched one supremely elegant brow. "Dare I mention the brunette who signed your cast with a rather interesting, if physiologically unlikely, proposition?"
"That proposition was in Hebrew," Ryder said. "Isn't there one damned language you can't read?"
"I can decipher double entendres in eighteen modern languages plus Latin and Greek. One never knows when such knowledge will prove usef
ul."
Ryder stretched and yawned theatrically. "Isn't it time you went back to the hotel?"
Alistair crossed his left leg over his right and settled back in his chair. "Would you be trying to rid yourself of my company, my boy? And here I was about to ask you to have dinner with me at O'Shaughnessy's."
O'Shaughnessy's, in Boston, was one of the more popular watering holes of the cloak-and-dagger set and an easy hop in the organization's private jet.
Heavy-duty bribery was hard for Ryder to ignore when he'd been staring at the same four walls all day, but he'd make a valiant attempt. He turned on the television with the remote control. The theme music from General Hospital filled the room. If that didn't drive Alistair – good-natured snob that he was – out of the apartment, nothing would.
To Ryder's dismay, Alistair seemed oblivious to the barrage of diaper and soap powder commercials that followed the opening credits. The older man took a long sip of his own drink then fixed Ryder with one of his patented upper-crust looks.
"Your plebeian pursuits won't drive me away, Ryder, try as you might. I enjoy General Hospital."
Ryder zapped through the stations until he reached MTV. He grinned as Alistair winced at the onslaught of heavy-metal music. "Do I see you heading for the door, Chambers?"
Alistair rose from his chair and turned off the TV. He then grabbed the remote from Ryder and stashed it in the pocket of his Harris tweed blazer.
"Rudeness in one as brilliant as you can be overlooked occasionally," Alistair said. "But I wouldn't push the boundaries of my largesse."
Ryder sighed and leaned his head against the back of the couch. "Leave me alone, Alistair," he said finally. "I just want out."
The older man walked over to the bar. "And that, dear boy, is the rub." Ryder watched as he poured two more jiggers of Scotch into heavy Baccarat tumblers. "We simply cannot afford to let you go."
"No one is irreplaceable. You can do better."
"Would that we could," Alistair said, handing him a glass. "God knows my life would be simpler with a less demanding resident genius. The fact remains, however, that you are still the best there is."
"I'm burned out."
"Hence this wonderful apartment I've presented you with." Alistair spread his arms wide. "Your personal refuge while you recover your enthusiasm."
Ryder wasn't certain his enthusiasm was recoverable.
The prestigious old Carillon Arms with its vaulted ceilings and marble floors was a Manhattan status symbol. The building was going co-op, and apartments were at a premium since few vacancies existed. Many of the tenants had been there forty or fifty years and, thanks to New York City laws, were protected from eviction but not, unfortunately, from harassment by landlords eager to turn a whopping profit. Some of the stories of harassment Rosie Callahan, a longtime resident, had told Ryder belied the tasteful Carillon exterior.
But then Ryder knew all about false exteriors. You couldn't be in his line of work and not know that things were rarely as they seemed.
Alistair, and the organization, had been exceedingly generous in acquiring one of the pricey apartments for Ryder as a get-well present – a get-well present that came with more than a few strings attached.
"You don't play fair, Chambers." He glared over at his friend and mentor.
"I know. That's the simple beauty of my strategy."
"If I didn't have this damned cast on my leg you'd be in big trouble."
Alistair strengthened the left cuff of his Brooks Brothers shirt. "I tremble even as I think of your wrath."
Ryder's normal good humor was beginning to surface despite himself. "You know what you can do with your British reserve?"
Alistair's blue eyes twinkled. "I already have, my boy. Many times."
Ryder motioned toward the opulent apartment with its cavernous hall and many bedrooms. "You realize even this won't change my mind, don't you?" I'm through. Out. Officially retired." Never mind the fact that he'd been spending his idle hours working on a prototype for a device to detect plastic explosives. Chambers didn't need to know everything.
Alistair finished his second Scotch and put the glass down on the highly polished end table. "You're on a leave of absence."
"The hell I am."
"You always say that." Alistair's stiff-upper-lip demeanor usually amused Ryder. Today it made him crazy. "After each and every job, you say that. I just ignore you."
"You'd better stop ignoring me." Ryder's voice was filled with not-so-righteous anger. "I didn't bargain on a busted leg as part of the deal."
"Oh, come now. You sound as if you were injured in the line of duty. I have no sympathy for a man who breaks his leg getting off a ski lift."
Ryder chose to ignore the dig.
"You are but thirty-four, Ryder. Certainly you have a few good years left."
Ryder considered the work he'd been doing the past fifteen years. "It's a miracle I made it this far. Why press my luck?"
"Because you'd go slowly mad if you stayed home counting your money." Alistair stood up and walked over to the window overlooking Central Park. "Because it's in your blood just as it's in mine, and you'll never be free of it."
"You always were an optimistic sort." He tried to ignore the uneasy feeling the other man's words brought to life. Memories of the colleagues lost over the years to madmen and geniuses were the most powerful tool in Alistair's arsenal. "I'll check into the Betty Ford Clinic. Maybe they can find a cure."
"There is no cure," Alistair said. "Danger is addictive. Once you get a taste of it, you're hooked."
"I can give it up."
Alistair's expression as a painful mixture of affection and disbelief. "We all want to," he said. "Damned few of us can pull it off."
For the second time in as many days, Ryder thought of Valerie Parker and the life he might have had with her if his ambition hadn't come first, last and always. She was now someone's wife and someone's mother, contentedly hidden away in English suburbia, with Ryder O'Neal a distant, unhappy memory.
And yet lately Valerie had been popping into his head at odd hours, causing Ryder, never an introspective man, to take a step backward into his past and face the fact that in this one thing, he had failed and failed badly.
He carried no torch for her; in fact, he wondered if he'd ever really loved her at all. Certainly no man who loved could ever have been so callous, so unfeeling as he had been years ago.
No. Valerie was now a symbol for something that went far beyond his shortcomings of the heart; she represented the part of Ryder that had been ignored during his fifteen years of duty with PAX.
"Does that invitation to O'Shaughnessy's still hold?" he asked.
"All it takes is one phone call and we're off."
Ryder grabbed for his crutches and pulled himself up from the couch.
"Then make the call," Ryder said, "and let's get the hell out of here."
He'd had a glimpse into his future and he didn't like what he saw.
Not one damned bit.
#
On the ninth floor of the Carillon, it was the present that was the problem.
"For heaven's sake, Holland, will you put that stuff down?" Joanna Stratton grabbed the tube of undereye concealer from her best friend and stashed it in the pocket of her grey trousers. "You've used enough to camouflage the Sixth Fleet."
"The Sixth Fleet, maybe, but not these circles under my eyes." Holland pulled another tube of cover-up cream out of Joanna's enormous makeup kit. "I'm bringing in the reinforcements."
Joanna watched Holland add a third layer of Alabaster 1A. "Who's supposed to be the expert around here anyway? I thought the idea was to look natural." She groaned as Holland blended the light concealer with the darker foundation. "You should have told me you were auditioning for the Kabuki theater."
"I'll ignore the insult if you'll tell me how to cover the dark circles so I don't end up looking like a raccoon." Holland pointed toward the life mask Joanna had done of her a few days ago.
"Even that thing had circles under the eyes."
Joanna pulled the makeup kit away from her friend. "Sorry, pal. Trade secret."
"Do you accept bribes?"
"Only if they include dinner at Tavern on the Green and my own Porsche."
"Europe must have agreed with you, darling. Gone only three months and you've become positively autocratic."
"And you've become positively neurotic." Joanna moved aside Holland's life mask and one of Rosie Callahan, her next-door neighbor, and perched on the windowsill next to her mother's antique rolltop desk. Cynthia was in Greece getting to know the latest man in her life and Joanna was availing herself of her mother's rare generosity and vacationing at her Manhattan apartment.
"What on earth is the matter with you?" Joanna asked. "You've been acting strange all morning."
"It's pretty obvious, isn't it?" Holland leaned forward to check the faint laugh lines at the corners of her mouth. "I'm forty-two years old and I'm beginning to look it."
Joanna, a professional makeup artist of some renown, understood beauty and its relationship to aging the way few others did. It was her business to understand the subtle pulls and tugs made by gravity and time and how best to hide them.
When she looked at Holland, she saw a beautiful woman who looked exactly what she was: a woman, not a girl.
"What's wrong with being forty-two?" She named forty-something actresses whose careers were definitely in high gear.
"They're the exception, honey, not the rule. It's a tough world out there, and the older you get, the tougher it gets to survive."
"No wonder you've been troweling on the makeup like camouflage paint. You're preparing for war."
"Laugh all you want. Ten years from now you won't think it's so funny." Holland waved a wand of mascara in her direction. "Just don't come crying to me when you find your first laugh line."
Fine Madness Page 21