by Kay Hooper
Rafferty was watching her, curiously still. After a tiny pause, he said, “No. Perhaps he won’t. I think any man would act against his own nature for you, Sarah.”
“I’m ordinary.” She looked out over the water, very conscious of what still hung in the air between them. He had said he loved her, and she had said nothing. She couldn’t think, and what she felt was too new and violent to be channeled sanely.
He moved suddenly, sitting on her lounge with a hand on either side of her hips. “Ordinary? If you were ordinary, Sarah, you wouldn’t be here. And I wouldn’t be here asking if it matters at all that I love you.”
She looked at him finally, trying desperately to cope with the wild recklessness of what she felt. “Don’t. We can’t—I can’t let myself—”
Rafferty swore softly and his eyes glittered. “I can’t be kind, Sarah. I can’t promise to give you time. I can’t afford that luxury. If I know you care, know there’s a chance for us, then maybe I can play my part in all this. But I have to know that.”
Sarah didn’t know what she would have said then, and was grateful they were interrupted.
“Excuse me,” Captain Siran murmured silkily.
Rafferty looked at him, a hard look that didn’t invite him to linger. “What is it?”
“We are ahead of schedule,” Siran said in a precise tone. “I therefore took the liberty of changing course slightly. There is a small uninhabited island just ahead. Perhaps you would care to go ashore for a few hours? The lagoon is perfectly safe for swimming, and it is a lovely island.”
“All right,” Rafferty told him. He looked down at Sarah as the captain left them alone again. “I’ll go down and have Harry fix us a lunch while I’m changing.” His gaze skimmed her bikini. “You’re … just fine as you are.”
Sarah remained where she was for a few minutes after he went below, then got up and slowly pulled on her caftan. She had sunglasses, lotion, and a few other things in a colorful straw beach bag on deck, and she picked it up absently.
Hours alone with a handsome man on a deserted island—the stuff of real romance.
She moved to the railing and watched the small dot of green grow larger as they neared, only half aware that Tom and Dick were preparing to lower the small launch into the water. She had scant time to find an answer for Rafferty, but it wasn’t time she needed. She knew the truthful answer.
And she was afraid. Too afraid to let herself believe what she felt. It was true that Rafferty could hurt her far worse than Andrés Sereno ever could. And that was frightening. But what frightened her far worse was the memory of a professional agent who had lost her life and that of her partner because she had dared to love. Because she had taken that chance. And if she hadn’t been able to cope with the madness of love in the midst of a dangerous assignment … what chance had Sarah?
The human element. They hadn’t chosen this, but they had to deal with it.
The fatalism born on a moonlit beach crept over Sarah again as she waited for him, and she welcomed it. Of course it wasn’t love. She couldn’t let it be love. It was passion, and that could be dealt with. She closed her mind to thoughts of what lay beyond the island they approached. That other island was still days away.
This was the one that mattered.
Siran watched the launch until it reached the island, then selected a particular channel on the radio and made a call. It was answered promptly.
“Go.”
“They are on the island,” Siran reported tonelessly. “Their plan is to remain several hours. Over.”
“And the other boat? Over.”
Siran glanced down at an unusual bank of equipment. “Not visual yet, but I have them on the scope. The boat will see us clearly, but will approach from the other side of the island as projected. Over.”
“Do nothing—repeat, nothing—to interfere. When your passengers are aboard again, proceed on course for Kadeira. Report to me again on Thursday morning. Understood? Over.”
“Understood. Over and out.”
Siran turned off the radio and sat back. Reflectively, he lit a cigarette. Still and silent as a lazy cat, he waited, dark eyes scanning the horizon.
Rafferty watched her swim, his own motions automatic. She had pulled a rubber cap over her beautiful hair and swam with expert ease, but her delicate face held an abstracted expression. For his part, Rafferty used the swimming as exercise badly needed to burn off some of his restless energy.
He knew he had pushed her with his insistent question on board the yacht, but he also knew he no longer had a choice. Finding out what part Sarah was slated to play in the coming assignment had changed everything. She was vulnerable now, and in the fabric of pretense surrounding them, Rafferty had to be certain that she held the same thread of reality as himself.
They were real. What they felt was real.
The reckless fatalism he had recognized in her earlier had posed no threat—then. By proposing a game in which she could have tested herself and the limits of that newfound daring, he had ensured that she would have the time she needed to discover for herself what was real. But that was no longer possible, he thought.
How could he make her understand what he feared? He feared for her because she would be so dangerously close to a man the world called a monster. He feared for her because that man would likely be even more unpredictable where she was concerned. And he feared for her—and himself—because a man with the sheer magnetism of Andrés Sereno could prove a formidable rival. Particularly when the woman both men wanted was enmeshed in a web of falsehood and deceit and imbued with a reckless fatalism.
It didn’t matter, Rafferty thought, that Sarah felt distaste for Sereno and his methods. The point was that she had nothing real to hold on to. Even her own emotions and reactions were unfamiliar to her, and heaven knew the situation facing them threatened to produce the kind of tension and anxiety that was virtually guaranteed to batter certainty about anything.
Rafferty followed her with his gaze, trying to decide what to do, trying to ignore the effect her black bikini was having on his senses. Not that he could.
They had been silent all the way to the island, and she had gone into the lagoon to swim without a word. He watched her, and thought: What will be, will be.
Rafferty followed her at last to the wide strip of white beach. He was aware that he was no nearer to solving the problem. He had the faintest flicker of an idea, but didn’t know if it would work; still, he had to try. He had no choice. If there was time … perhaps. If there was in Sarah some deeply buried stubbornness, some reluctance to surrender herself totally to a destiny uncontrolled by herself.
Perhaps.
They had drawn the launch into shallow water in the lagoon and tied it to a twisted palm, and they’d spread out a blanket on the sand. It was a secluded spot; they couldn’t see the yacht because the mouth of the lagoon was narrow and virtually hid the open sea beyond. And the island was quiet, with only a soft breeze rustling the palms and the faint twittering of birds to be heard.
Rafferty dried off with one of the towels they’d brought along, watching while she did the same. It was cooler here, shaded, and Sarah had pulled on her caftan after releasing her hair from the swim cap. He shrugged into a pale green shirt, but left it unbuttoned.
They were sitting on opposite corners of the large blanket, and he felt wryly amused for a brief moment. But only for a moment. “Anything to drink?” he asked finally.
Sarah opened the basket Harry had sent along. She gazed at the contents, then said unevenly, “Harry’s a romantic; he sent wine for lunch. However …” She reached in and withdrew two cans, handing one to Rafferty. “Soft drinks too.”
Rafferty took a swallow of his drink, mentally and physically bracing himself. “You’ve had time. Does it matter at all that I love you?”
“Of course it matters.” She was staring at her drink, then she lifted shy eyes to meet his.
“How does it matter?” He deliberately kept his v
oice impersonal, forcing all his thoughts to focus on what he was trying to do. To let nothing else distract his mind. During his work in the criminal courts he had learned to do just that, to concentrate all his energies on the intent to pull a desired response from a witness. Sometimes it worked.
“It matters … because I know you—you believe that.”
“That’s all?”
She made a helpless gesture, beginning to look troubled and unsure. “All? No, it’s not all. You know very well I’m not—not indifferent.”
He laughed shortly, forcing the sound out and keeping his eyes coolly focused on her.
Her chin lifted at his derisive laughter. “All right, then. I want you, Rafferty—is that what you want to hear? You know it’s true. We’d be—we’d be lovers now if you hadn’t proposed that little game.”
“Forget the game,” he said in a hard tone. “That fell apart when Sereno entered the picture. You can hardly try to seduce me while convincing him you’re on the fine edge of being available, now can you?”
“I said I wouldn’t—”
“We’re here alone together on a deserted island,” he went on as if he hadn’t heard her, his voice deliberately stony. “Nice timing, huh? We’ve got the whole day. No one to bother us. No one to interrupt. And we want each other.”
Her eyes were filling with tears, her delicate face revealing how bewildered she felt. And Rafferty hated what he was doing. But he gritted his teeth and forged ahead, gambling his future on the instinct telling him this would work if anything would.
“You said you wanted to take full advantage of the voyage, remember, Sarah? You also said it was me that changed things on that beach, and not a full moon and a strip of sand. Not just an itch anybody could scratch, remember? Well, since we’re fated to work our way through this passion of ours, maybe we’d better start.”
“I don’t understand—”
“Oh, I think you do.”
Sarah tried to draw a breath, discovering it did nothing to slow the panicked thumping of her heart. All during their swim, she had been conscious of excitement, stealing glances at him but finding his own lean face preoccupied. Still, she had expected Rafferty to follow up on the declaration he’d made on the yacht. And she had been prepared to abandon herself, to let these fateful hours alone with him carry her where they would.
But Rafferty wasn’t the same man somehow. His handsome face was impassive, his voice all but indifferent. He spoke of love and passion in an utterly matter-of-fact manner, as if those emotions were simply knotty problems to be dealt with in order to get on with more important matters.
But Sarah was remembering a moonlit beach and glittering tawny eyes, and her body was heavy and tingling. If he had reached for her, held her, she would have forgotten everything but him. This implacable “discussion” shocked and confused her, and her body’s reaction to him made the rest all the more bewildering.
She got to her feet shakily, hardly aware of setting her soda aside, watching as he did the same and rose to regard her with shuttered eyes.
“What are you saying?” she managed at last.
He lifted an eyebrow at her, the perfect expression of polite disbelief altering his face for an instant. “It has to be spelled out? All right. What I’m saying, Sarah, is that since you aren’t prepared to fight fate, we might as well begin this passionate affair of ours. That is what you expect, isn’t it? A shipboard romance, over at journey’s end? You’ve never for one moment believed there could be more than that between us.”
“Rafferty—”
“I tell you that I love you, and you’re completely convinced that I mean it—for the duration. Fine. If I have to say good-bye when this is over, I at least want a memory. And since the remainder of this voyage promises to be a bit cluttered for you, it looks like this is my best chance. Oh, you don’t have to worry,” he went on casually. “I won’t be a problem for you. Unrequited love is so boring, isn’t it? I’ll just count this madness of mine as a learning experience. Next time I’ll make certain I don’t fall in love at the wrong time.”
Panic was still rising, and Sarah had the peculiar feeling that a stranger confronted her. A frightening stranger. And when he reached for her, his face still impassive, panic choked her. This wasn’t—this wasn’t right. She couldn’t do this, couldn’t let her body’s reaction to him fling her into a cold-blooded affair meant to last only until …
“No.” She backed away from him, her denial choked, her face white and dazed. “No, I can’t—you said you loved me.”
“But that doesn’t matter to you,” he said remorselessly. “You don’t really believe it. So it isn’t important, is it? The only thing that’s important is this attraction we feel. We were destined to be lovers, Sarah, you know that. And there’s no use fighting fate, is there?”
Baffled, hurt, Sarah tried to make sense of what she was feeling. Her recklessness surged, along with the willingness to be carried away on a tide of emotion. And in that moment the fusion Rafferty had relentlessly striven for took place.
The heedless abandon born on a moonlit beach collided violently with a lifelong caution and prudence, and the vastly different traits merged simply because they could coexist no other way. A transition that should have been gradual was forced, hurriedly and painfully, leaving Sarah shaken and curiously numb.
She wasn’t aware that she was crying at first, feeling only a dim grief for the giddy, brief freedom of recklessness. Then she realized that Rafferty was holding her, that he had picked her up and then sat down to cradle her on his lap, and that he too was shaking.
“I’m sorry,” he was murmuring unsteadily into her hair. “I didn’t want to hurt you. I never want to hurt you.”
“Why—?” she whispered, wondering why she didn’t blame him for the distant pain.
He held her closer, tighter. “Darling, I don’t want you to say yes because you feel powerless to fight this. I can’t let you feel that way, because you’re going into a situation where it could destroy you.” His voice was low, intense. “Destroy us both.” He drew a deep breath. “Lord knows I want us to be lovers, but it’s because I love you. I don’t want just a memory, and I’ll fight like hell to make certain I’m not left with only that.”
He tilted her face up and kissed her gently, his eyes as shadowed as her own. “A good friend taught me a lot about control,” he told her soberly. “He controlled obsessively, and it nearly destroyed him. But there’s a middle ground, Sarah, and that’s where we have to stand. If we let ourselves be powerless, we’re asking to be carried along on someone else’s tide. We have to fight to discover what’s real, and what we really want.”
She gazed at him, wondering at the change in his expression. No longer impassive, his eyes no longer shuttered, he was looking at her now with a face haggard with emotion and eyes that held pain and remorse and driven determination. She swallowed the lump in her throat, grappling with what he was telling her, understanding even before she consciously realized it.
“You did that deliberately. You wanted me to be responsible. To decide.”
He brushed a strand of red-gold hair away from her face, his lips tightening briefly as if in anguish. “I had to. Because if you once let yourself be swept away without fighting, Sarah, it’d be easier to give in next time. Easier to just take the simple way, the reckless way. And that wouldn’t have hurt you with me, because I’d wait until you finally faced it, and I’d do my damnedest to help you through it. But if you did take the easy way with me now, there’d be no time for that. No time to work through it. Because you have to deal with Sereno so quickly, and he won’t wait.”
She stiffened and started to pull away, but Rafferty held her firmly, and his voice was flat.
“We’re not talking about sex, Sarah. We’re talking about emotions. And if you don’t think you can fight me—how you feel with me—then how could you possibly think you’d be able to fight him?”
Hovering on the edge of anger, Sar
ah was drawn back by the sudden understanding of what he meant. He wasn’t accusing her of having no moral standards, nor was he implying that she was so sexually susceptible even a charming animal could get her into his bed. What he was saying was that if she allowed herself to remain passive in a man’s arms once … then it would be the easiest thing in the world for that to happen again.
Appalled at the realization, she asked a little breathlessly, “Are you telling me to fight you?”
“Yes.” His response was instant. “I don’t want to sweep you off your feet, Sarah. I don’t want a blind lover. I want you to know what making love with me will mean. Not an affair, not a shipboard romance, and not a fling because we’ve been thrown together in an impossible situation and it’s easier to give in rather than understand.”
Sarah’s eyes widened. “That’s what—I was afraid it’d happen to us. Afraid that if my mind was involved, I’d somehow get us killed when there was danger. I thought if—if we were lovers without being in love …”
Rafferry remembered her agent friend, and understood. He nodded slowly. “You wanted to be swept away, because you’d convinced yourself that if it was only passion, there was no danger. You weren’t afraid ours would be a passing affair, Sarah. You wanted it to be just that. Nothing dangerous. Nothing threatening. We’d part when it was over … but we’d both be alive. That’s it, isn’t it?”
“I think it is,” she whispered, staring at him. “Rafferty … I’m sorry.” She buried her face in his neck, her arms slipping inside his shirt to hold him.
His arms tightened, and his voice was husky. “I’m just glad you realize that now. Sarah? I do love you.”
Because she knew he was waiting, she looked at him finally, and felt her heart turn over. “I—thought I was feeling so much before, but I wasn’t letting myself feel at all.” But now she was feeling, and it was in her eyes.