“Too late, sweetness,” he whispered dryly. “As was your intention, I think, when you grabbed me.” With a cynical twist to his smile, he turned toward the eager photojournalist, still snapping off picture after picture.
“No,” she whispered urgently, pushing him back. “Don’t let him see the scarred side of your face!”
His face cooled with instant comprehension and complete self-control. With a pang, she knew her chance of making a connection to him was gone. He shrugged and moved into the shadows. “Sure. I don’t particularly want to be scrutinized as the walking freak show fiancé or husband of the beautiful Verity West. Just as well, I haven’t seen my parents since before the accident, and nobody outside the Nighthawks knows about it.”
She closed her eyes. She’d foreseen this, but it slammed into her soul—the guilt of a woman who knew too well how it felt to need to hide from ridicule. And she’d done it to him, she’d made him feel not good enough for the person she was now.
Damn you, Nick—you opened the door, then gave him the ammunition to slam it right back in my face.
With all her will, she turned to Gary Brooks, mustering up the haughty, imperious look that had first given her the Iceberg tag, but Tal spoke first from within the shadows, his graveled voice strong and confident. “We’ll do you a deal, mate. Take off for now—hold those shots, and we’ll give you the announcement of your life, complete with exclusive photos.”
Mary-Anne gasped. He’d not only grasped Nick’s take, he’d taken full control of the mission in three sentences. Yes, a perfect take on what Nick would want. He and Nick were alike, all right, and in more than just looks.
“Just one photo of you both first, face-on,” the man pleaded, who’d obviously already caught on: he wasn’t arguing.
“Tomorrow, in Sydney.” She jumped in, before Tal could speak. When the journo looked mutinous, she added, “Do you know who this is, Gary? It’s the man all the stories were about three years ago. You’re going to have the scoop of your life in twenty-four hours. I’m willing to put that in writing, if you go away now. We’ll meet you at the Grand Hotel, tomorrow at four.”
Gary Brooks’s eyes lit with a mingled kind of ecstatic wariness. “I’ll release every damn picture by tomorrow if I don’t get that contract,” he threatened, and left.
“Well, you sure know how to take charge of a situation, don’t you, sweetness?” Tal spoke from the superheated half darkness of the wall. “He must have taken about twenty-seven shots of us eating each other alive. Anson will be happy with our progress. We’d better call him to get a real marriage certificate.” He shrugged. “We can stay together a year or two, make our families happy, go home for visits, right? I’m not going to risk hurting Mum and Dad, or Aunt Miranda and Uncle Ed—not for any of Anson’s save-the-world principles.” His eyes glittered with sardonic humor. “And Greg was my best mate for twelve years—we still call each other now and then. I won’t dump his little sister, sweetness. You’ll have to dump me.”
Not knowing what to say, she nodded. Everything he said was right, with the mission and their families in mind—but considering their mind-blowing kiss and its degrading, tacky aftermath, his self-control chilled her soul. “I don’t want to get married in Cowinda,” she said quietly. The one thing she couldn’t face. A real-yet-sham wedding with Tal was bad enough, but she’d never survive the hype and happiness of everyone in Cowinda. She’d break down for sure.
He gave a short laugh, without humor. “Fair enough—it’s too personal for us both. We’ll do the whole thing in Sydney. We can call our parents when we get there and tell them what’s going down. What’s the condensed version—that we met again by accident and fell madly in love?”
It took all her self-control to keep the tears in. If he knew how she’d dreamed of that since they’d passed each other in the hall at headquarters in Canberra three years ago. How she’d wished she wasn’t urgently needed in Nick’s office just as he was leaving on assignment… “That’s about the size of it.”
“Okay, done. We’ll say problems with your schedule kept us from coming home for the wedding. They’ll understand that, and be too busy to think about being hurt, I hope.”
“I think we’d be better off giving it a day or two. We need to orchestrate our romance a bit.”
His mouth twisted. “Wining and dining, sizzling slow dances, a few kisses. Yeah, a whirlwind society courtship sounds like the perfect end to our decade-old torrid billabong affair. Being in Sydney should maximize the impact. If we hide my face, that is. How does Anson plan to do that, by the way? And why?”
There was no easy way to say it. She took a breath and blurted it out. “Burstall might not know your real name, but he knows you survived the blast. He knows you’re Australian, and he also knows you’re a doctor because of the kit you left at the village.” She heard her own voice, full of quiet despair. “He knows the extent of your injuries, too—there were several unauthorized hits on your hospital records at the database. You were admitted under a fake name, but we can’t take risks. You’re relatively safe to go to Amalza if he sees no sign of your injuries or scars, but if we go to the Embassy and you show up with your face as it is now, along with your limp, and being an Australian doctor—all the world knows your profession, thanks to Ginny—it will only take seconds for Burstall to put two and two together, and he’ll kill us both.”
The deadly cold look on his face said it all: he already knew what she was going to say before he asked. “What’s the plan?”
Her fists clenched at her sides, knowing that her secret hope of making their “passionate affair” real, was fading with every word she said. “For you to look as much like your old self as possible. Nick had a special set of inserts made to put inside about five different pairs of shoes, to minimize the limp—and you have to wear special cover-up makeup over your scars, so your face looks the way it used to.”
The silence was sickening. “Makeup. Like a bloody girl.” He stared at her as if she’d grown another head. “I’m supposed to put makeup on my face. That goop you girls used to wear for school shows that made you look like you’d shoveled dirt on your faces. I’ll look like a bloody cross-dresser.”
A typical Outback boy’s opinion of any kind of makeup. She sighed. “If it helps, this isn’t that thick pancake stuff—it’s makeup that won’t look fake at all. It doesn’t look like goop. It will be specially made to suit your skin color, and there’s a polysynthetic cover to make it look and feel like skin, so it won’t smudge or come off easily. The cream also has vitamins and collagen to actually help lessen the redness. I’ve used it to soften my freckles. It works. And it’s for your protection.”
“I don’t give a damn if it works. I’m not a bloody actress, and I won’t make myself look pretty for anyone—not even you.” His face was controlled, his fists clenched hard. “I’m not putting any crap on my face. Take me as I am or leave it.”
She moved into the shadows beside him. “I can’t. If Burstall sees the scars, he’ll kill us both. It’s not just you taking a risk by going as you are. You’ll put me in danger, too, and every operative on the island. I can’t marry anyone else without it looking like a setup. Without you, we’ll have to send another team in without the cover of being my personal bodyguards or journos covering our honeymoon. Burstall and Falcone will have them killed within an hour of their arrival on the island.”
He invoked the name of his savior, but Mary-Anne didn’t think he was asking for help. What could she say or do to make this easier? “Tal, I didn’t want to do this. Nick ordered it. If it weren’t imperative for the mission—and to save your life—”
“I know.” He didn’t jerk away from her, didn’t whiten or show any signs of fury. He simply crossed to the roller door and shut it. “Fine. I might even get to like it, huh? If I learn how to use it right, I can keep it on hand for all social events in the future.” He grinned at her, but she could see the gritted teeth, the bleak look of self-hate in his
eyes. “That was one hell of a kiss, by the way—but you always were a bloody good actress. Your iceberg rep just got flushed down the toilet. Good work.”
She moved farther into the shadows, to cover the shock that drained all the blood from her face.
So despite the obvious signs of male arousal, and the hard passion in his mouth and hands, had Tal only been pretending to want her, just as he’d said? Had he been acting, maybe turned on a bit but not enough, while she’d floated three feet above the ground in some love-starved, ecstatic-cloud cuckoo land?
The same old irony. The only man who could tempt her out of her iceberg reputation—who suddenly made her feel as though her fame, success and life with the Nighthawks was some kind of tundra-filled wasteland—was the only one who didn’t want her.
His voice, quiet and unemotional, broke into her despair. “What’s next, then? What do we do?”
Helpless, not knowing what to say, she shrugged.
He rolled his eyes. “Come on, Mary-Anne. Our cover depends on what you’d do if this were above and beyond the job. What would you do if we were normal lovers? Imagine you’d come here as a tourist, saw me for the first time in ten years and fell for me again so fast you were caught here almost doing the deed with me,” he finished with the dark, sardonic smile she’d never seen on his face when they were kids. “What would you do now?”
The cover, the cover! How can he be so clinical? She’d given him the idea of revenge, but he’d taken the bait and swum right into the ocean with it. How could he still be so thoroughly on the mission when all she wanted was another hot, glorious kiss—dragging him inside that plane and…ooooh, yeah…
“Take off in the plane and find somewhere private for us to finish making love for the next day or three,” she answered his question, still half locked inside her gorgeous dream.
Tal burst out laughing, hard-edged, ironic, stabbing her heart with its icy control. “Sounds like a good plan to me. Okay then, Miss West—” he added with a swift, mocking bow. “So we go to your place? Sydney’s probably the best place to do it.”
She blinked up at him. “Um, what?”
His grin twisted. “To start our assignment. Don’t worry, Miss West. You can safely get in the plane. I’ll keep my distance.”
Too stunned to do anything else, she obeyed him, climbing up into the cockpit without a word. She sat frozen while he opened the hangar, checked to be sure the journo had gone, limped to the plane, climbed in and prepared for takeoff. She was silent right through takeoff, her mind busy reliving his words.
So Tal was where she’d been ten years ago. Impossible to believe she wanted him. Sure that his accident, and her life now, changed the way she’d once wanted him…
When you lose someone you love so much you want to die, too, you know how they feel—and you’d do anything to stop it.
She closed her eyes, wanting to smack her own forehead for her unthinking stupidity. She should have known, should have realized how Tal would take that—just as she’d have taken it if she hadn’t met Gil. Verity West, beautiful, curvaceous man-magnet, never needed to hide from the world…but, like Tal, Mary-Anne Poole-West still wanted to.
This assignment would be the hardest of her life—in many more ways than one.
“Where are we heading?” she yelled over the noise of the engine, frowning straight ahead.
He shrugged and handed her a headset similar to his own so that they could speak normally. “Your place would be the most logical place to hide out. We’ll tell Anson to meet us there with our kit. I assume you brought backup to the island to bring our stuff to us, and contact that journo?”
He wasn’t just with her on the mission, he was light-years ahead of her. She nodded and waited for the rest.
“Good. Then we might as well get going straightaway, and gain some ground on selling the romance of the year. Today’s as good as any other day to start. No point in mucking around.”
After a moment’s stunned silence, she blinked and started laughing—laughing so hard her body jerked and tears streamed down her cheeks.
He turned to her, frowning. “What?”
“You sure know how to shatter a twenty-year dream, Tal.” She wiped her face with her hands. “I used to imagine you asking me on a date, or romancing me, or proposing to me almost every day—and my fantasies never included ‘no point in mucking around.’”
He gave a slow, reluctant grin. “Sorry about that.” He turned back to his controls. “But then, your romantic proposal probably didn’t include a few other things it’s got, like a banged-up face and leg. I bet I wasn’t a has-been, washed-out beach bum, either. I seem to be good at destroying your dreams, Mary-Anne.”
“And you?” she asked, hearing the emphasis he’d put on her real name. “What about your dreams? Aren’t they ruined, too?”
“I don’t have dreams.” He thumped his damaged thigh. “Let’s leave the past out of this, as far as we can. Your dreams came true years ago—you’re everything you ever wanted to be. And I’ll bring Burstall down. That’s all I ask.”
She stared at him, her pain a choking ball in her chest. “Did the accident take so much away from you?”
“Don’t, all right?” he all but yelled. “I’m here. I’m in on the mission. Just let me handle this my way.”
“Tal—” She remembered her words to Nick a few days before about a shined-up penny, and felt helpless. What could she say? How could she ever make him believe he had so much more than his looks, when she still didn’t believe in herself?
They were a pair of cripples, she and Tal: hostages locked in cages so close to identical they could see the other’s pain, recognize and understand their fears, yet couldn’t reach out to heal. Past and present locked in silent, fruitless battle on opposite sides of the field.
Her empathy was as useless as it was heartfelt.
She blew out a frustrated sigh. Oh, why didn’t she know what to say or to do to help him, like she used to?
Because back then I knew him like my own soul, and loved him with such blind devotion I’d have walked through fire for him.
But that time was gone, and she couldn’t use it. There was nothing left between them to trade on—no certainties, no guarantees. She didn’t even know if he wanted her beneath the ice-cold need for vengeance against Burstall.
She was walking in darkness with Tal, not knowing what he thought or felt, and that hurt more than almost anything had since the day Gil told her about the multiple, inoperable benign brain tumors that might leave him with only months to live.
How could Nick ask her to do this? How was she going to get through it?
“Okay.” She shrugged, wishing everything didn’t always have to hurt with Tal. “Let’s get this assignment on the road.”
“The shipment of arms is on its way to Dilsemla. I’d appreciate knowing when your end of the bargain is forthcoming.”
Burstall pushed a pawn across one square, bored but knowing he had to play a game not of his choosing at present. “I have someone checking out the possibilities at present, Mr. Falcone. With the UN interested in Tumah-ra’s future, it’s…awkward.”
“For your someone, perhaps. Are they expendable?”
“Not at present. They’re my only concrete link to finding the favored name for the oil contract.”
Robert Falcone, a well-built, dark, intensely controlled man in his late forties, moved his knight with precise care. “I see. How many names are up for discussion at present?”
“Seven. The usual big boys, and Haversham.”
Falcone seemed pleased at the news. “Can we persuade the UN representatives toward Haversham in any way?”
“Only by our silence.” You idiot. “Trust me, Mr. Falcone. I was a Federal agent for nine years. They know who we are and all our associates—even vague ones.”
“I’m aware of that,” Falcone snapped, and Burstall held his breath—but the gentleman gunrunner and drug dealer, well known for ordering a hit on whoev
er annoyed him, went on smoothly. “I have someone in mind.”
Curious now, Burstall lifted a brow and waited.
Falcone leaned forward, his normally bored eyes glimmering. “I’ve heard reports that Verity West is coming here incognito for a fortnight’s holiday early next week.”
He wanted to yawn. Falcone’s well-known sexual appetites left him cold. All he wanted was to get the Nighthawks here, any how, any way. His hunger for revenge on Mitch McCluskey for killing his twin sister—his gnawing need for pretty-mouthed Lissa—grew daily. “How do you know—and what possible influence could she have with the UN delegate?”
Falcone chuckled. “You’re not the only one with spies, dear boy. I’ve had her—shall we say, watched—for years. I have a man on her now.”
Something in Falcone’s words chilled Burstall. “And?”
“The delegate, like many men, is a massive fan of hers. If she can get his ear—”
“How do you propose to do that?” As if I didn’t know.
Falcone laughed gently. “By getting in her ear. Oh, what a challenge—making the famous Iceberg melt. For years I’ve thought about getting up close and personal with that beautiful, ice-cold lady and making her melt for me.”
He put his hands beneath the table so he could drum them in silence on his legs. His jaw ached from the need to yawn. This man was so boring Burstall even had occasional second thoughts about using his money. “I hear she’s not susceptible to any lures of wealth. Or to mixing with the rich and famous.”
Falcone only smiled, all his famous polished address back in place, cool and smooth. “Oh, she does—and has. You see, it’s not the famous that lure the lovely Miss West, Mr. Burstall—it’s the infamous. I met her once, briefly, at a party that was, shall we say, not quite kosher, or government-friendly? The lady has a penchant for walking on the dark side, and flirting with danger. There’s more than one way to skin a bankroll, Mr. Burstall—and to make a reluctant woman eager to please you. Knowledge is a useful tool. And if all else fails, there is a man in her past—a man she was extraordinarily fond of…”
Can You Forget? Page 6