The woman, he admitted ruefully, he'd seen naked behind a bath towel, the woman who had legs longer than any woman her size had a right to, the woman whose lush curves did hot, aching things to his libido.
The woman he knew, to his regret, had been sleeping naked in the bunk only a few feet away. Should have made her buy pajamas, he thought ruefully. Not that it was any better in the snug jeans she'd put on this morning. Or even in the loose T-shirts. A bra had not been among their purchases that day, and even the looseness of the soft cloth didn't conceal the fact that her breasts were full and free beneath.
He'd never reacted like this to a woman before, so hot and so fast. He didn't understand it. She was the kind of woman he usually felt driven to protect, not driven to grab and take and take and take again until this throbbing need was eased. Yet that was what he'd imagined doing, last night, had imagined covering the short distance between them in mere seconds, of scooping her up out of that bunk and bringing her back to his, of burying himself inside her until this compulsion went away and he was back to normal again.
"Come on," Shiloh was saying, jogging him out of his reverie, "don't you even care that we found out who she is? You're the guy who was going nuts, remember?"
I still am, he thought, very much aware of Con's eyes on him. He could almost see his old friend speculating madly. He didn't know quite when he'd decided not to tell them she was here, and he certainly didn't know why. But he knew he'd decided, just the same.
"Sure I do," he told his sister quickly. "I'm just … tired, that's all."
"Well, that's your own fault," Shy said. "You're the one who wanted to come down here and play live-aboard. There's a perfectly good bed up at the house."
"Yes, ma'am," Linc said meekly.
Con laughed. "Got a mouth on her, doesn't she?"
"Always did," Linc agreed with a laugh.
Shy made a face at him, and held out the newspaper she'd been clutching since she'd come aboard. "Do you want this, or not?"
He took it, realizing as he did that Shy had folded it to show an article in the lower left corner of the front page. It was his last rational thought for several moments, as he stood staring at the picture that accompanied the article.
The black-and-white photograph didn't capture the true hue of her eyes, or the shade of her hair. This woman's eyes were flat, dull, not vivid blue. Her hair, pulled starkly back into a chic twist at the back of her head, looked merely blond, not like pale, flaxen spun silk. She looked beautiful, poised, and glossy. And utterly lifeless.
Yet there was no doubt, no mistaking the fact. He didn't need to read the caption to know that this woman was his mermaid. But he read it anyway. Lansing. Her name was Chandra Lansing. Of Rancho Palos Verdes, California. And they were calling her a socialite, whatever that meant. Linc's eyes flicked back to the headline. "Wife Of Local Businessman Missing, Probable Suicide," it blared.
Wife. She was married.
He felt a churning in his belly that made him swallow tightly. On some other level, one that wasn't quite so stunned, his mind was noting the oddity of the fact that of all the information now before him, what had knocked him for a loop was the knowledge that she was married. He'd been dreaming of her, aching for her, needing her for aeons it seemed, and she was married.
Giving a sharp shake of his head, he took in a quick, deep breath, and read the article. It detailed the few facts the authorities had, that the missing woman had been aboard her husband's yacht, headed south from Marina del Rey. He was to have joined her in a couple of days for a Mexican vacation. Three days ago, she had been discovered missing, and presumed drowned, while the yacht was just north of the Mexican border. No body had yet been recovered, but the fruitless search had been called off this morning.
Linc's brow furrowed. The Mexican border? True, they were within a hundred miles or so of the international line, but he didn't think that qualified as "just north" of the border. He read on, his stomach lurching again when he came to the statement made by one Daniel Lansing, described as a prominent local businessman, owner of a nationally known pharmaceutical company. His wife had been, the man said, moody, depressed and nearly unbalanced for some time.
And, he'd said regretfully, he'd had to leave her alone a lot lately, to make sure Lansing Pharmaceuticals remained, in these trying times, the success he'd made it. She had resented the drain on his time. The vacation had been his attempt to make it up to her, to help her out of her depression, to give her a change of scene. Because he had loved her so much. And then, the article stated, Lansing had been overcome with grief and unable to continue the interview.
"—her, isn't it? The description matches perfectly."
It took Linc a moment to look away from the grainy photograph and to respond to Con's words.
"Yes," he said slowly. "It's her."
"We thought so when we saw it this morning," Shy said. "So, that explains it. Explains why she ran from you, too, I guess. She didn't want to be saved."
"Then why was she trying to swim to shore?" Linc said, half to himself.
"She changed her mind?" Shiloh suggested. "I imagine drowning is not the easiest way to commit suicide."
"Which explains why you spend half your time on the water," Con put in, giving his wife a wry smile. Then he looked at Linc. "What I'd like explained is that bit about it happening just north of the border."
"Me, too," Linc said.
"Maybe that's just when they noticed she was gone," Shy said. "If they were making top speed, they could have been almost to the border from here in a couple of hours. If they were used to her moping in her cabin or something…" She ended with a shrug. "Anyway, you're well out of it. She sounds like she's cut from the same cloth as our loving mother."
Linc's head snapped up; he'd been staring at the picture again. She looked so stiff, so lifeless in it, her beauty a cool and remote thing. "What?" he said, looking at his sister.
"I meant she sounds just like Mother. Self-centered, resents her husband's work, prone to hysteria."
"She's not—"
Linc broke off suddenly, biting back what he'd been about to blurt out. Con was looking at him with that assessing look of his, but Shy's expression softened, changed from the implacable look she always seemed to wear when talking of the woman who had, unknowingly, so shaped her life. The woman who had driven Shy to prove, over and over, that she was nothing like her.
"I know, Linc. I shouldn't be bitter. It's not her fault that she has absolutely no stomach for reality."
She thought he had been about to defend their mother, Linc realized with relief. And he was going to go on letting her think it, for now at least. Until he got some answers—real answers—out of his charming stowaway.
"I quit making apologies for her a long time ago," Linc told his sister. "About the time she left Dad for somebody 'whole.'"
"I quit the day she didn't show up for your graduation from Annapolis," Shy said sourly.
"I know," Linc said softly, that day even sharper in his memory because of talking about it with Chandra. "But you know, it didn't really matter. I had this little, fire-haired brat there, looking at me like I'd just saved the world, and I didn't need anything more. I didn't miss her at all."
Shy stared at her brother, emerald green eyes wide, color flooding her cheeks. "I… You… Wow," she said, helplessly.
"You're going to have to teach me how you do that," Con observed mildly, looking from Linc to his speechless wife.
"You do quite well enough on your own," Shy, recovering, shot back at her husband. Then she looked back at her brother. "Just be glad," she said, "that you're not mixed up with another one just like her. Women like that will drain the life right out of you. If they don't break you by making you live your life to suit them, they break you with the burden of always having to do what they're too weak to do for themselves. They—"
Shiloh stopped suddenly as Con moved to put his arm around her shoulders. She looked up at her husband. Linc c
ouldn't see any change in his friend's expression, but Shiloh let out a tiny sigh.
"I'm sorry. I was really winding up, wasn't I? I thought I was over that."
"Green-eyes, it's buried so deep inside you, you may never get rid of it," Con said, his deep voice vibrant with understanding. "But that's okay. I can live with it."
"I love you," Shy said suddenly.
Con blinked. A smile curved the corners of his mouth, and Linc saw again the man he couldn't quite believe existed, the man his sister had created out of a cold, withdrawn loner. "I love you, too," the new Con said roughly, as if his throat were tight.
Linc smothered a sigh of his own when, after grudgingly accepting his refusal to move back into the house, Con and Shiloh accepted instead his promise to come for dinner tomorrow, and left. Judging from the look in their eyes as they had gone, and the way they stopped for a long, passionate kiss at the far end of the dock, he had a pretty good idea that they were headed straight home. And what they'd be doing when they got there.
He'd done the right thing, he mused as he watched them climb into Con's car, which had been parked next to the Blazer he was still borrowing, and speed off. Two years married or not, the McQuades were still very much on their honeymoon, and they didn't need him living with them, no matter how sincere the offer.
Besides, he muttered under his breath as he looked down at the newspaper he still held, he had other problems to deal with. Stuffing the paper into his back pocket, he slid open the hatch and started down the steps. Then he stopped as, in a sudden spurt of self-knowledge, he realized that he was glad he had this to deal with; it kept him from feeling that emptiness inside him.
Should have gone to work for Con while I was on leave, he thought wryly. Some work is all it takes to keep my little mind occupied. And Con had told him he had an instant job with WestCorp any time he wanted it, per Sam West himself.
Maybe, he thought as he went on down into the cabin. There had been a time when he never would have considered leaving the navy. But that had been before he'd spent so long playing the black hat, white hat game, before he'd spent so many years walking in the shadows.
Too long? He'd wondered that when he'd met Con for the first time, seen the darkness that haunted him, threatened to swamp him. He'd seen himself in his friend's haunted eyes, seen what he would become, what he would have been already had he not had the love of his father and his little sister to keep him on an even keel. Con had had no one, and Linc suspected that only finding Shy had saved him from going over the edge.
Was he on that edge himself, now? Was that the reason for this constant state of discontent he'd been in lately, this restlessness that he couldn't seem to ease? Or was it just that he'd been alone too long, with no one—
His thoughts stopped short as he reached the bottom of the steps. Chandra was sitting on the edge of the dinette seat, tying on the tennis shoes he'd bought for her yesterday. She'd brushed her hair out, and it swung forward in a shining, pale mass, obscuring her eyes even as it bared the fragile nape of her neck. On the table beside her was a plastic shopping bag, the handles tied together at the top. It apparently held all the meager possessions she now had; he could see the bristles of the hairbrush poking through the plastic.
Chandra didn't look up when he walked over to stand before her. She concentrated on tying the lace on the left shoe as if she were planning a battle strategy. As, perhaps, she was, Linc thought.
She finished, stood up, and reached for the bag, still not looking at him.
"You want a stick to tie that to, like in the movies when the kid runs away from home?" he asked casually.
She turned then, and he saw a little shiver ripple through her before she steadied herself and looked up at him. "I'm not running away from home," she said, pronouncing each word with careful concentration. "This is not my home, and I've too long treated it as such. I will leave now, get out of your way. I will find some way to pay you back for all you've done, Mr. Reese."
The walls were back up, and they were much more solid this time, Linc thought. Why? He studied her for a second before it came to him; she must have heard them talking. "I don't remember saying you were in my way. And I didn't ask you to pay me back."
"No, you didn't, did you? But then, you're apparently used to the burden of having to do for a woman what she's too weak to do for herself."
So she had heard them. Linc winced; Shy's words would seem undoubtedly harsh to someone who didn't know what she'd gone through. "Look, I know my sister probably sounded a little rough, but—"
"I'm sure she has every right to feel the way she does," Chandra said unexpectedly. "I presume it was your mother she was trying to prove she wasn't like?"
Startled by her quick, accurate deduction, Linc nodded. "Our mother was … she didn't deal with life well. The least little crisis, and she was a shivering wreck. She wasn't exactly cut out to be a military wife. Or mother."
Chandra's eyes flicked to the top photograph on the bulkhead, then back to him. "Is that why she wasn't there? At your graduation?"
Linc hesitated. But it seemed clear now that she wasn't connected to his work in any way, so he supposed it didn't matter.
"She hated the fact that I chose the navy. That was her way of driving the point home."
"I'm sorry," Chandra said quietly. "That must have hurt you a great deal."
Linc shrugged. "I was used to it by then. I'd watched my father try to deal with her for years. It had made him old before his time, and I wasn't going to let her do it to me."
"That's your father?" she asked, looking at the photograph again.
Linc's instinctive protectiveness of the brave, gallant man who had been his role model since boyhood rose to the fore. "Yes," he said gruffly, ready to go on the attack.
"He's … very handsome. You hardly notice the chair," Chandra said, and he relaxed a little. Then she looked at him, her wide blue eyes troubled. "Did she really leave him for…?"
"The local high school football coach," Linc said sourly. "Whose worst problem was deciding which side to part his hair on." He felt the old bitterness welling up, and fought it back. After a moment he shrugged. "She was in way over her head as a military wife. She nearly drained the life out of my father as a result. Shy's right about that."
Chandra stiffened at his words, as if she'd forgotten for a moment what she'd overheard, and her resultant intentions.
"Your sister is right about many things," she said formally. "Including me. I am quite inadequate in any kind of crisis, and as she said, I have no stomach for reality." She picked up the bag from the table, then met Linc's eyes once more. "You are well out of it, Mr. Reese. But I thank you for all that you've done."
She moved to one side, obviously intending to head for the steps, but there wasn't enough room for her to get by Linc's solid body. And he didn't move to let her pass. He just looked at her, his mind assessing rapidly.
On the surface, he thought, everything she—and Shiloh—had said appeared true. But there was a difference here, a contrast between this woman and his mother. His mother had succumbed to even the vaguest of her fears. This woman had fought them, all of them, and her own terror, every step of the way. She had fought to stay afloat when she had to know she had no chance, she had tried to get herself out of what she feared was a trap with a gun she had no hope of using, she had bluffed him out and escaped when she thought she had no other choice.
These were not the actions of a weak-willed, inadequate woman. That she hadn't been able to carry them off wasn't her fault; no one could perform what they hadn't been trained for. Nor, be thought slowly, were they the actions of a suicidal woman. Or an unbalanced one. He'd seen only fear in this woman, not insanity. And who knew better than he what fear could do to a person?
"Sit down, Chandra,"
She drew back, her eyes widening. His tone had been quiet but unmistakably firm, and she backed up a step, away from him. He followed, and she backed up again. She was watching him wi
th alarm, her hands clenching around the plastic bag, making it crackle in the silence. He took another step toward her. She backed up again, this time coming up against the settee. She sat down abruptly, and Linc guessed it was more from the trembling of her legs than in any answer to his command.
He leaned one hip against the edge of the smaller table that was opposite the large dinette table. He crossed his arms across his chest. From here he could stop her if she decided to run, no matter what direction she chose. She realized it, and sagged back against the cushions of the settee. When he spoke, it was in a voice that had intimidated unwilling informants far stronger than she.
"It's time for the truth, Chandra. The real truth, not that half-baked story you gave me before. I let it slide because I knew you were scared. You didn't trust me, and I didn't blame you. But you're going to have to trust me now, because I want answers. Lots of them."
"I told you," she began shakily.
"I'm through playing games, Mrs. Lansing."
She let out a gasp as he reached back and yanked the folded newspaper from his pocket and tossed it down onto the table. He saw her stare at the picture for an instant, saw her eyes widen as she read the headline, then saw her start to read.
"Damn him," she whispered after a moment.
"The truth, Mrs. Lansing."
She looked up at him, her eyes pleading. "Linc, please, just let me go—"
"So now it's 'Linc,' is it? No more 'Mr. Reese'?" His voice was harsh now, and he knew that he'd lost any professional detachment; he'd lost it the moment she'd said his name. "The truth, Mrs. Lansing. Now."
"Don't call me that!"
She looked as startled at her own vehemence as he felt. "Why?" he asked, watching her face. "It's your name, isn't it?"
"It's a reminder," she said, her voice bitter, her body rigid now. "A reminder of how utterly stupid I can be."
"You may be many things," Linc told her, "but I don't think stupid is one of them."
She gave him a glance rife with disbelief before she said, "I'm also crazy, remember? It says so, right there." She jabbed at the newspaper. "There's your answer. Just ask the man. He'll tell you I've lost my mind, that I forget things, lose things, can't remember what I did or said yesterday. So just let me get out of here, and we'll both be better off."
TO HOLD AN EAGLE Page 9