The Impossible Alliance

by Candace Irvin

  Hell, not after this past day.

  But if there was any hope left in his brain that he was still caught up in some Demerol-induced dream, that name on this woman’s lips shattered it. This was no dream.

  It was a nightmare.

  Even as he replayed the conversation that had taken place in that guest room three months before, he knew Alex might not have heard everything, but she had heard enough. Enough to form the wrong impression, that is. Judging by the pain in her eyes, Alex had clearly misinterpreted his relationship with Janice. Unfortunately she also clearly believed that because of that steamy necking session on the bed, she was entitled to an explanation. She was right.

  He stared at the scarlet proof at the base of her neck, taunting him as it peeked out from beneath the collar of her sweater as she leaned down to snag his jeans from the floor. The last time he’d left a mark like that, he’d been a fifteen-year-old boy fumbling around on the porch with a girl.

  For the third time in thirty minutes, he’d allowed Alex to gain the upper hand without even realizing it until it was too late. First the gate, then the syringe. And now, his pants. Though her fingers were carefully smoothing the wrinkles from his jeans, there was no doubt in his mind those fingers would dig in the moment he reached for his pants.

  “Well? Are you going to answer me?”

  He was tempted. Lord, was he tempted.

  At least then one of them would be able to fight the smoldering desire that still threatened to consume him. Hatch was right about one thing. Alex was a damned good agent. Downright ingenious at times. Given the convoluted signals his brain, his mouth and his body had been sending all week, she’d go snooping. Frankly he was surprised she hadn’t already. He wouldn’t even have to tell her everything. All he had to do was give her enough rope to hang himself. By the time they completed their mission and she discovered how tightly the noose fit, he’d be back on that ranch. A world away from the one woman who’d actually made him pray for a miracle.

  Unfortunately miracles didn’t exist.

  Reality did.

  The inescapable reality of being teamed up with a partner—however intoxicating she might be—who still didn’t even trust him enough to share her real name. The reality of having a boss who’d never before withheld vital information about a case, but now had. Then there was the harshest reality of all—knowing that he agreed with both of their decisions, however separately they’d been arrived at.

  It didn’t matter. The result was the same.

  He didn’t need any more classified information in his head than was absolutely necessary for him to complete this final mission. Because while he’d never spill a word of it willingly, eventually—as Janice had so succinctly put it—he’d no longer have the choice.

  No, there was no way he could tell Alex the truth, not even to save his soul.

  He forced himself to stare into her eyes. “I’m sorry, Alex. But this, us, it can’t be. We can’t be. It’s not that I’m not interested.” He ignored the fire searing up his own neck as he dragged his gaze to the scarlet brand on hers. “Hell, we both know by now I’m very interested. But I can’t act on it. I won’t. I shouldn’t have even allowed tonight to happen—and before you ask, no, I don’t want to talk about it. Please forgive me. I’m asking as a fellow agent and, I hope, as a friend. Accept my decision.”

  She didn’t speak.

  Nor could he find anything to add.

  This time, the silence seemed to drag out forever.

  He wasn’t surprised. Nor was he surprised when she reached out to carefully settle his jeans into his hands. He wasn’t even surprised when her fingers shook as she withdrew them and then turned to retrieve the expended Demerol syringe from the desk and carry it with her to the door. After all, his fingers were trembling, too. He wasn’t even surprised when she opened the door and murmured something about stretching out on the couch, assuring him she’d wake long before the maid arrived. He wasn’t even surprised when the door shut. But he was hurt.

  So was she.

  He reminded himself that it was for the best. For her, for him, for their mission. If Orloff was right, they’d be bumping into Bruno DeBruzkya soon. Perhaps even luring the man closer with that antique ring. If and when that happened, he’d need more than his wits about him. He’d need her complete trust. If Alex ever discovered who Janice was, she’d never be able to give it. If watching his mother fade away day by day while he was growing up had taught him anything at all, it was that.

  He was right not to tell her.

  Jared glanced at the fluid level in the second bag of packed red blood cells, willing them to drain more quickly though the thin loop of IV tubing and into his antecubital vein before he jerked his gaze back across the triage bay. He frowned as it settled on Alex. He’d spent half the night dreaming about his decision to withhold information from Alex, only to discover on waking that Alex was definitely holding out on him, as well. The first peg of proof had been her conspicuous absence this morning. Not only had Alex left for the hospital without bothering to nudge him, but according to the nurse who’d greeted him at six a.m., Alex had arrived at five, before even Orloff and half his staff had checked in.

  At first he’d chalked up the abandonment to a desire to get away from the awkwardness that had been hanging between them since that session on the bed, maybe even a lingering desire to make sure he got enough rest. But then he’d reached the main triage bay and discovered that not only had Alex arrived before sunrise, so had the medical supplies she’d ordered less than twelve hours before.

  FedEx did not deliver before the crack of dawn. Especially to a country that had been all but catapulted back into the Dark Ages.

  And then there was the main packing slip for the mountain of supplies. He’d been inches from scanning the cover sheet when Alex had snatched up the manifest and shoved it into her pocket. Before he could blink, she’d grabbed four units of packed red blood cells—B negative—from the cold box that had arrived, as well, and immediately ordered him to pump the first two into himself, the others into the kid.

  Yes, they needed them, but that didn’t explain why she and Orloff had both downright demanded that he lie in this particular cot on the far side of the room, fifteen beds from the kid and twenty from that mesmerizing pile of overflowing boxes. Not when there was a vacant, albeit slightly stained, cot two feet from Alex and Orloff’s overworked hands.

  Almost everyone had been roped into service, racing against the early-morning clock to stow the sudden embarrassment of riches in the triage bay’s cupboards and makeshift shelving before the armed receptionist and crowd-control stooges arrived to allow the line of patients inside the hospital’s main doors.

  Or worse, before DeBruzkya arrived.

  Jared focused his attention on Alex as she and one of the nurses turned to shoulder matching stacks of blankets through the staff milling about. She and the nurse stopped to deposit a blanket at the foot of each cot, adding a potential, desperately needed layer to each existing threadbare sheet. Fortunately or unfortunately, he wasn’t sure which, the nurse had inadvertently selected the opposite side of the bay, leaving Alex to service his.

  Damned if his blood didn’t begin to simmer as she gradually made her way to the foot of his cot.

  What would she say?

  What would he?

  Roman had reintroduced them to his staff upon his arrival, blaming language differences as he shrugged off what he’d claimed was his mistake. Last night Orloff discovered that “Alice” and “Jeff” were in fact, married, not engaged. Due to the continuous stream of as yet unboxed supplies, not to mention Alex and Orloff’s subsequent order that he receive his two units of packed red blood cells immediately, “Jeff” and “Alice” had not had a chance to speak to each other since.

  Jared was beginning to suspect it was deliberate on her part.

  She surprised him by briefly meeting his gaze as she reached the cot housing the soldier he and Orloff had operated
on last night. Since the soldier was still unconscious and, unlike most patients, without a relative in attendance, she took the time to spread a blanket over a sheet that already needed changing. She dropped off thermal blankets at the base of three more cots before reaching the child who’d received two units of his blood. He’d long since rigged two more units from the supply Alex had somehow scrounged up. Jared stared at the thick swaths of gauze now covering the stumps where Mikhail’s right leg and hand had been as Alex approached the grandmother, dozing lightly in the chair beside him. To his surprise, she tapped the woman’s shoulder, leaning down and smiling gently as the woman woke.

  He was even more surprised when Alex tucked her free hand beneath the hem of her sweater and pulled a tiny square of paper from the pocket of her jeans. He stiffened as she slipped the square of paper into the main fold of the blanket, murmuring something to the grandmother as she passed both blanket and paper to her. The woman nodded, then carefully tucked the latter beneath the collar of her rather drab, but generous dress into what he imagined was an equally generous bra.

  There appeared to be no end to Alex Morrow and her secrets, did there?

  He shifted his gaze as Alex turned, waiting until she’d reached the foot of his cot before he met it again.

  “Morning.”

  Mindful of their audience, he managed to match his “wife’s” tentative smile as she laid one of the two remaining blankets at his feet—until he spotted the mark he’d left at the base of her neck peeking out from beneath her collar. She followed his gaze as she rose, the sudden flush staining her cheeks now rivaling the scarlet evidence of their passion.

  Of his passion.

  He opened his mouth. To say what, he had no idea, but she turned before he could find his voice. She escaped him in favor of the slumbering patient in the final cot.

  The woman’s elderly husband rose from the wooden chair at the head of the makeshift hospital bed and met her at the foot. “I can get it.” Speculation slipped into the rheumy blue of his eyes. The man smiled and reached out, patting her smooth hands with his gnarled ones, as he retrieved the thermal blanket. “Go ahead, assist your husband.”

  Jared couldn’t help it, he grinned.

  Not so much at her as at them.

  Judging from the flush now bleeding from her face, Alex evidently had had no idea the man spoke English. A slow and somewhat stilted English, yes, but it was a heck of a lot better than his German—even hers. His smile faded as the man turned to spread the blanket over the sheet molded to his wife’s emaciated legs before pulling the edge up to tuck it beneath her chin. The old man kissed her cheek gently and retrieved her liver-spotted hand once more as he reclaimed his chair.

  Jared averted his eyes as the bitter irony of being chained to this particular cot beside this particular couple seared into him yet again. Unfortunately in avoiding his painful past, he’d run smack into his agonizing present. Into her. He clenched his jaw as Alex stared at the couple, clenching even harder as that soft gaze began to mist in earnest.

  Christ, no. Don’t let her cry.

  Somehow he knew it would kill him more quickly than the pity.

  He cleared his throat, breathing easier as she turned to him, despite the fact that she reached for the blanket.

  “That’s okay. I’m fine.”

  She shook her head, glancing at the old man’s now drifting eyelids as she spread the silver fabric over Jared. He forced his lungs to draw another breath as she tucked the edges of the thermal blanket beneath his thighs. There was no doubt in his mind. Last night hadn’t had a damned thing to do with the Demerol—or the exhaustion. Over one and half units of packed red blood cells already inside him, and he was still suffering from dizziness around Alex. From the traitorous desire.

  The collar of her dark blue sweater gaped as she leaned close to tuck the edges of the blanket about his waist. The scarlet mark taunted him from beneath. It looked angry, painful. He reached out without thinking, smoothing the tip of his finger over the stain.

  “Does it hurt?”

  He felt her breath catch beneath his finger. “No.”

  He traced his finger around the angry mark, over it. The flesh beneath was noticeably hotter than the surrounding ivory skin. Suddenly he wanted more than anything to cool the erotic brand his mouth had left, to erase it—and not yet.

  He swallowed slowly, carefully. “I’m sorry.”

  She shrugged off his whispered apology. “I’m not.”

  Her pulse throbbed beneath his thumb as it slipped down to connect with the hollow at the base of her neck.

  His pulse throbbed, too, along with something else. Just like that, the light-headedness returned.

  Evidently the fresh blood he’d been pumping into his arm for the past thirty minutes had missed the “Welcome to My Body—Here’s Where You Can Go and Where You Can’t” anatomy lesson on the way in. Half of the lesson, anyway. His cache of new cells might be latching on to oxygen in his lungs with a vengeance, but they’d completely missed the turn that would take them due north, abandoning his brain altogether as the blood headed down en masse to pool low.

  Very low.

  He cleared his throat again and pulled his hand away. The fog cleared as she straightened. Chained to the cot by the damned IV line and dangerous desire to keep her at his side, he snagged her wrist and glanced toward the center of the triage bay. “What was on the paper you gave the old woman?”

  She stilled beneath his hand, but her pulse thundered.

  He probed her gaze slowly, deliberately shifting his fingers, sliding them directly over the pulse point as he continued to stare, letting her know by his own steady gaze, as well as the gentle but firm pressure directly over her wrist, that he was gauging her every reaction, her every emotion. Her every word.

  “Well?”

  It was last night all over again and she knew it. Only now he held the gate, the syringe and his jeans.

  “A phone number.”

  He pressed his fingertips ever-so-slightly deeper into her flesh. Into her pulse. “Whose?”

  “Harold Blaine.”

  ARIES’s own master of disguise. Their prosthetics expert. The man who’d crafted her face, her jaw, her chest.

  “Are you sure that’s wise?”

  “Yes.”

  The fierce light in her eyes startled him, as well as that flash of intense, almost bottomless pain.

  He loosened his grip without thinking.

  Before he could stop her, she’d tugged her wrist from his hand and turned to flee. He tracked her with his gaze as she headed for the gradually dwindling mountain of supplies at the far end of the triage bay, assuring himself he was studying a fellow agent as she moved, attempting to ascertain whether or not she was lying or telling the truth. Whether or not she was using him for her own bizarre end. He was not lying here, chained to this damned cot, willing her to come back so that he could pull her close and soothe that inexplicable, but absolutely genuine pain from those green eyes.

  By the time she returned to Orloff’s side, she’d managed to mask whatever it was that he’d seen. He was certain when the man shifted his attention from the manifest in his hands to her. She returned Orloff’s smile easily.

  Too easily.

  She sure as hell had never smiled at him like that.

  Dammit, he was not jealous. He was not.

  He sighed heavily.

  “Have no fear. He will not encroach.”

  Jared swung his gaze to the cot beside him, up to the speculation swimming within those still sleepy and still rheumy, but also very sharp, blue eyes. The old man nodded and patted his slumbering wife’s hand, tucking it beneath the blanket once more before he turned to face Jared full on.

  Jared opted for obtuse. “Who?”

  But those rheumy eyes saw right through him. The old man smiled. “I think you know. You would be wise to keep an eye on your wife, Doktor. You are both young, prone to the doubts and insecurities that befall the young. T
rust me when I say there will be many men in the years to come who will see the jewel you see in her. Though I do not believe Doktor Orloff would try to woo her from you, there are those who would. Worse, those who would simply take.”

  Jewel?

  No, it had to be a coincidence.

  Still, two warnings in two days. From two different men. Though motivated by two separately perceived reasons, it was more than enough for him to take note.

  While he doubted the latter half of this second warning pertained to DeBruzkya and his men, he’d be a fool to rule them out. Jared dropped his stare to the old man’s wife, to the thin strands of white that had been carefully combed during the night. He knew full well by whom. He didn’t need to draw on his memory to know that the old woman was beyond even the most basic of personal hygiene ministrations. Proof enough that, given the nature of his wife’s dual illnesses, the old man had probably run into DeBruzkya during the general’s weekly visits more than he’d cared to.

  Jared nodded slowly and formed his response even more quietly, in case any of the other patients surrounding them spoke English, as well as the old man did. “Are you referring to someone…high up?”

  The speculation smoothed into respect.

  Jared knew then his instincts were right about more than Alex. Despite the man’s eighty-odd years, he suffered none of the symptoms of his wife’s underlying illness. The man’s brain was still as sharp as his tongue—in several languages. But was he brave enough to use it?

  “DeBruzkya?”

  To his surprise, the man didn’t nod his snowy head, he shook it. “But you are…not far off.”

  “How far?”

  To his irritation, the man shrugged and fell silent.

  Now what? The old man knew something. Something big. But for some reason, he’d decided to clam up.

  Guilt settled in as that gnarled hand slipped back to the cot, back beneath the blanket and threadbare sheet. Jared knew exactly why the man wouldn’t finish. His wife was in this cot by the grace of DeBruzkya’s thugs. They had let him in those double doors week after week, month after month. Given the woman’s deteriorated mental state, they’d been letting him in for several years. He should know; he’d seen the old man corralling the woman in line for hours the morning before.