“She wasn’t,” Denise said wearily, dragging a hand through her sandy hair. “Not down at the lake. McGowan put a bullet through her, or tried to.”
“Hank?” Lillian’s gray eyebrows flew up. “Hank shot the vice president?”
The uniformed stewards ranged around the huge cabin listened with wide-eyed astonishment. All the crew knew was that a call from the president had cut short the vice president’s scheduled vacation. And that an “accident” of some sort had occurred just prior to their departure from the cabin for Sacramento.
“It was a mistake,” Denise said, confirming the story. “One McGowan’s already paid for,” she added. “I put a bullet through his shoulder.”
“Good heavens!” Lillian repeated faintly.
“She’s a damn hard woman,” the caretaker stated, panting. He leaned a forearm against the bulkhead to catch his breath. The effort of climbing the stairs had pearled his face with sweat and darkened a spot on the shoulder of the jacket he’d borrowed from Herrera. He’d insisted on coming along, but it had obviously cost him.
The arrival of Cowboy, Herrera and an enthusiastically sniffing Radizwell snapped Lillian into action. In her best drill-sergeant manner, she took charge.
“I’ve laid out clean clothes in your stateroom, Mrs. Grant. I knew you’d want to shower and change as soon as we took off. Hank, you come with me. I’ll look at that shoulder. Steward! Take this animal to the aft compartment. He stinks!”
“The understatement of the year,” Maggie murmured.
Unfortunately, Radizwell refused to be separated from his pal, Adam. Maggie suspected the delicious aromas wafting from the galley had something to do with his fierce, growling stance. The hound wanted his share.
So did she. As her nose picked up the mouth-watering scents, her bruised stomach sent out a series of growls very close to Radizwell’s in volume and intensity. Suddenly Maggie realized she could fulfill all three of her most immediate needs and still maintain her role.
“Why don’t you come with me, Adam?” she suggested. Keeping her tone light, for the stewards’ sake, she nodded toward the forward compartment. “You said you needed to contact your people to let them know about our change of plans. You can use my office while I shower and change. Then we can have a bite to eat.”
“Fine.”
“We’ll serve as soon as we’re airborne,” the head steward added helpfully. “We’ve prepared a vegetable quiche for Mrs. Grant, but perhaps you’d prefer a steak, sir?”
“Steak,” Adam replied, his eyes glinting. “Definitely the steak.”
In the privacy of the well-appointed bathroom, Maggie made free use of various sundries kept on hand for the vice president. It was amazing how much a toothbrush and the prospect of soothing, perfumed lotion after a hot shower could revitalize a woman.
The prospect of the hot shower itself was even more revitalizing. Eagerly Maggie shed her boots and socks, along with the turtleneck and brown pleated pants, now a great deal the worse for their wear. Her movements slowed a bit when it came to removing the bodysuit.
Wincing, she twisted to one side to reach the Velcro straps. Her stomach muscles screamed a protest as the supporting shield fell away. Using both hands, she lifted the hem of her thermal undershirt, then froze. Her jaw dropping, she surveyed the effects of the rifle shell in the bathroom mirror.
A bruise the size of a dinner plate painted her middle in various shades of green and purple, with touches of yellow and blue thrown in for dramatic emphasis. She gulped at the dramatic colorama, then tugged the shirt over her head and bent to push off the bottoms. An involuntary “Ooooch” escaped her when she tried to straighten up.
Realizing that she might have to adjust the scope of her plans for the next few hours or so, Maggie padded to the glass-enclosed shower. Under her bare feet, the floor vibrated with the power of the 747’s huge engines. While she waited for the water to heat, Maggie let her appreciative gaze roam the wood-paneled bath.
Air Force Two was a model of efficient luxury. It had to be. It served as a second home for the vice president on her frequent trips around the globe. Just as her predecessors had, Taylor Grant represented the president at everything from weddings to funerals of various heads of state. This duty required extensive traveling, so much so that Mrs. Bush had once quipped that the vice president’s seal should read Have Funeral, Will Travel.
Maggie smiled at the thought and stepped into the shower. With a groan of pleasure, she lifted her face to the pulsing jets and let the hot water sluice down her body. Sighing in sybaritic gratification, she dropped her arms to her sides while heat needled her shoulders and breasts.
She was still standing in a boneless, motionless lump when the shower door opened.
“The steward just served your dinner,” Adam said, his face grave. “Having experienced firsthand how testy you get when you’re hungry, I thought I’d better let you know immediately.”
“Thank you,” Maggie replied, equally grave, as though she weren’t standing before him completely naked.
Through the mist of the escaping steam, she saw that he’d taken advantage of the selection of sundries in one of the other bathrooms, as well. The dark bristles shadowing his cheeks and chin were gone, and he’d made an attempt to tame his black hair. He’d scrounged up a clean white shirt, but wore the same snug jeans and ski boots.
Adam appeared just as interested in her state of dress, or undress, as she was in his. In a slow sweep, his gaze traveled from her face to neck to her breasts. Maggie felt her nipples harden under his intimate inspection, and a twist of love at the sudden pain in his eyes when he saw her stomach.
“Remind me to give the chief of Field Dress a superior performance bonus when this is over,” he said fiercely. “A big one.”
Maggie was too busy enjoying the blaze of emotion on his face to spare more than a passing thought for the pudgy, frizzy-haired genius who’d produced her torturous corset. A fiery warmth that had nothing to do with the water steaming up the shower enclosure coursed through her belly, and her muscles contracted involuntarily. Maggie ignored the stabbing ache in her middle and focused instead on the ache building a little lower.
Lifting his gaze to hers, he smiled. His eyes held a tender softness in their blue depths that Maggie had never seen before. One that intensified the liquid heat gathering low in her belly.
“Do you want to eat now, or later?”
“Now,” she told him with a grin. “And later.”
As she watched Adam strip off his clothes, Maggie thought she’d melt from the sizzling combination of hot water and spiraling desire and disappear down the shower drain in a rivulet of need. From a snow cave to a 747, she thought. From under the ground to a mile above it. From an attack beside a frozen lake to a ring of fire beside a deserted shack. Out of all the missions she’d ever been on, she knew this one would always remain vividly emblazoned in her mind.
And when Adam stepped inside and closed the shower door behind him, Maggie knew the expression in his eyes would always—always!—remain imprinted in her heart.
Water streamed over his broad shoulders and down his chest as he buried his hands in her wet hair. Tilting her face to his, he smiled down at her.
“I love you, Chameleon. In all your guises. But I love you in this one most.”
His use of her code name gave Maggie a little dart of pleasure, then one of pain. Her personal relationship with Adam was so inextricably bound to her professional one. Yet she knew in her heart that couldn’t continue. They’d stepped through the barriers that separated them, and there was no stepping back. Not now. Not ever.
“I love you, too,” she whispered, sliding her palms up the planes of his water-slick chest. “In all your guises. Special envoy. Director. Code name Thunder. Plain ol’ Adam Ridgeway. But I love you in this one the most.”
She wrapped her arms around his neck and brought his mouth down to hers. He tasted of warm, rich brandy. Of smoky fire. Of Adam.
Rising up on her toes, she brought her body into his. She managed to contain her startled gasp when her bruised tummy connected with his, but he didn’t miss the tiny, involuntary flinch. Sliding his hands down the curve of her waist, he grasped her hips gently and pushed her away.
She murmured an inarticulate protest.
Guiding her gently, he rotated her slick body until she faced the wall. “Like this, my darling,” he whispered in her ear. “Like this. I don’t want to hurt you.”
Maggie discovered that “this” wasn’t bad, after all. In fact, she thought on a gasp of pure pleasure, “this” was wonderful. Adam’s broad chest felt solid and strong and sleek against her back. The way he reached around to mold her breasts with both hands sent waves of sensation washing through her. The touch of her bare bottom against his belly was even more electrifying. Hard and rampant and fully erect, he pressed against her.
Bracing her palms on the shower tiles, Maggie arched her back. Her head twisted, and he bent to take her mouth. While his tongue and hers met in a slow, sensual dance, his hands played with her nipples. With each tug and twist, fire streaked from Maggie’s breasts to her belly. With each nip of his teeth against her lower lip, she felt the sting of need in her loins.
When his hands left her breasts to brush with a feather-light touch down her middle, her pelvis arched to meet them. Her head fell back against his shoulder as he parted her folds and opened her to his touch and the pelting of the pulsing water. Maggie gasped at the exquisite sensation.
“Adam! I don’t think— I can’t hold— Oh!”
“Don’t think,” he growled in her ear. “Don’t hold back. Let me love you, Maggie. Let me feed your soul, as you feed mine.”
When her soul had been fed, twice, and Adam’s at least once, they decided it was time to feed their bodies. While he used one of the fluffy towels monogrammed with the vice president’s seal to dry himself, Maggie pulled on a thick, sinfully soft terry robe.
Plopping herself down on a vanity stool, she treated herself to a spectacular view of Adam’s lean flanks and tight white buns as she towel-dried her hair.
“Mmm… Nice.” Her fingers curled into the towel. “Maybe that steak could wait a few more minutes.”
“The steak might, but Radizwell probably won’t. I left him sniffing around the office. If we don’t get back in there, he’s liable to—”
“Adam!” Sheer panic sliced through Maggie. Throwing the towel aside, she jumped off the stool. “You didn’t leave that animal in the same room with my steak, did you?”
The terry-cloth robe flapped against her legs as she rushed through the paneled bedroom and threw open the door to the office.
“I’m going to shoot him!”
Hands on hips, Maggie glared at the shaggy creature stretched out contentedly beside the litter of dishes he’d pushed off the table onto the floor, all of which were licked clean. Sublimely indifferent to her anger, Radizwell raised his head, thumped his tail at Adam a couple of times, then yawned and laid his head back down.
“I’ll shoot him!” Maggie snarled again. “I’ll skin him. I’ll—”
“Strange,” Adam murmured. “McGowan said Taylor threatened to do the same.”
“It’s not strange,” Maggie fumed. “It’s natural. It’s possible. It’s very likely, in fact, that someone will do so in the very near future. Why Taylor would keep this obnoxious, smelly, greedy beast is beyond me.”
“Probably for the same reasons you keep a bug-eyed reptile with a yard-long tongue.”
“Terence,” Maggie pronounced with lofty dignity, “has class.”
Adam laughed and lifted her in his arms. Taking care not to bump her stomach, he carried her to the wide leather sofa at the far end of the office.
“It’s not funny,” she muttered. “That…that Hungarian ate my steak!”
“My steak, remember? Don’t pout, Maggie. I’ll order another one. I seem to have worked up quite an appetite.”
The head steward delivered Adam’s second dinner some time later.
By then, Maggie had retreated once more to the bedroom to finish dressing. She couldn’t bear the thought of strapping the body shield on over her sore stomach again, and she left it on the dressing stool.
To her surprise, the pantsuit Lillian had laid out fit perfectly even without the tight corset. A size eight, no less! She smoothed her hands over trim hips covered in a soft, pale yellow wool and admired her silhouette in the mirror. Biting her lip, Maggie debated whether she should forgo her half of Adam’s second steak, after all.
Nah! Not this time!
She flipped off the lights, casting a last look over her shoulder at her reflection in the mirror.
Maybe next time, though.
They had just polished off their meal when Cowboy rapped on the door. Poking his sun-streaked blond head inside the office, Nate Sloan gave them a lazy grin.
“You two finished chowin’ down yet?”
“We’re finished,” Adam replied.
“About time!”
Nate strolled into the office with his graceful, long-legged gait. Radizwell lifted his head lazily, issued a halfhearted growl, then thumped it back down again. A juicy steak appeared to have the same mellowing effect on his temperament as it did on hers, Maggie thought in amusement.
“Jaguar’s been trying to raise you for the last half hour,” Cowboy said casually. “Forget to put your transceiver back on, Chief?”
Adam glanced down at his wrist, which was bare except for its dusting of dark hair. “Apparently.”
Maggie remembered last seeing the thin gold watch tossed on the bathroom carpet, along with Adam’s clothes.
“Jaguar said he could wait, so I decided not to interrupt your…meal.”
“I’ll go get the transceiver,” Adam said, unperturbed.
Maggie, on the other hand, wavered between a grin and a ridiculous blush at Nate’s knowing look. She struggled with both while he sprawled with his customary loose-limbed ease in the leather chair opposite her and regarded her with a twinkle in his hazel eyes.
“We were all taking bets on which way this mission would go, you know.”
“Is that right?”
“We figured you and the chief would find a way to patch up your differences or come back ready to use each other for target practice on the firing range. Looks like you did some patchin’.”
Maggie tucked her legs under her and rested her hand on her ankle. The glint of gold on her ring finger caught her eye. She smiled, realizing that she and Adam would have their forever, after all.
“I’m not sure I’d call it patching,” she said, her smile easing into the grin she’d struggled against the moment before. “And we still have a few significant differences to work out. But we will work them out, one way or another.”
Nate’s eyes gleamed. “He’s a good man, Maggie. One of the best.”
“The best,” she replied.
“Hellfire, woman, it took you long enough to recognize that fact.”
“I recognized it a long time ago. I just wasn’t ready to do anything about it.”
“Why not?”
Her smile slipped a bit, but she answered easily enough. “He’s my boss, Nate. He’s had to maintain a distance, an objectivity, just as I’ve had to keep my personal feelings separate from my professional ones.”
“And now?”
“Now? Now I couldn’t separate them if I tried.”
“So what are you going to do about it?”
She hesitated, not quite ready to put into words the decision she’d come to in the shower, but Nate already knew the answer to his question.
“You’re going to leave OMEGA.”
Maggie nodded. “I have to. Wherever our relationship goes, I have to leave OMEGA. Neither one of us can operate the way we have been. Not anymore.”
“Adam might have something to say about that.”
A gleam of laughter crept into Maggie’s eyes. “I’m sure he wil
l. He usually has a long list of items to discuss with me when I return from a mission.”
She stretched, feeling immeasurably relieved now that she’d taken the first step.
“There’s nothing to discuss about this particular matter, though. You know Adam’s needed more at OMEGA than I am. He has the president’s ear. He moves in the kind of circles necessary to carry off his double role as special envoy and director of OMEGA. He’s the best man for his job. The only man.”
“So what will you do?”
“I don’t know.” She glanced around the wood-paneled compartment. “Maybe I’ll run for office. I could get used to traveling like this. And there are a few issues I’d like to tackle.”
“Such as?”
“Such as the distribution by gender of toilets in public places.”
Nate gave her a look of blank astonishment. “Come again?”
“You don’t think all those long lines outside women’s rest rooms are a violation of the First Amendment? Or whichever amendment guarantees us life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness?”
“Maggie, darlin’, I can’t say I’ve ever given women’s rest rooms much thought.”
“Neither has anyone else,” she said sweetly. “That’s going to change.”
Nate was still chuckling when Adam came back into the office a few moments later. His blue eyes gleamed with a suppressed excitement that didn’t fool Maggie for an instant. For once, Adam Ridgeway’s cool control had slipped.
“What?” she asked, sitting up. “What is it?”
“I just talked to Jaguar. We’ve got it, Maggie. We’ve got the ‘why.”’
“We do?”
She scrambled out of the leather chair.
Detouring around a half acre of prone sheepdog, she joined Adam at the vice president’s desk. Her eyes widened as she scanned the notes he’d scribbled during his conversation with Jaguar.
“Adam! You were right! First Bank is managing James Elliot’s blind trust during his term as secretary of the treasury. That might be the connection.”
“They’re managing more than a blind trust. Elliot has several accounts with them.” Adam smiled grimly. “Accounts he failed to disclose during his background investigation and his Senate confirmation hearing. Accounts that received large electronic deposits from offshore banks.”
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