"I'm glad we caught up with you, Mr. Hsiang," said Catlin, recognizing the silhouette as quickly as Lindsay had. "The night has barely begun. Lindsay and I were just going to celebrate the canister over some fine cognac. We'd be delighted if you joined us."
Illuminated from below, Wu's face looked like a stranger's, enigmatic, almost sinister. "It is most kind of you to include this humble person in your celebration," he said. His soft voice carried clearly in the damp air. "I am heavy with regrets that I am unable to accept your most generous invitation. The night is indeed only a child, but I am in the autumn of my years. Forgive an old man his much needed rest."
"Of course," Catlin said, tightening his fingers warningly on Lindsay's waist, silently telling her not to speak. "Lunch, then. Tomorrow? Lindsay tells me you have some wonderful things in your shop."
Wu bowed very slightly. "It is always an honor to serve a notable collector of bronzes such as yourself, Mr. Catlin. My small and humble shop is open six days a week. Whenever you find time to visit, you are sure to find something of interest to entertain your hours. Now, if you will please be so gracious as to excuse this unworthy old man, I find that the chill of evening makes my ancient bones complain and my mind dream softly of fragrant tea and the small comforts of my home."
"I hope we can see you soon," said Catlin, acting as though he were oblivious to the currents of evasion and withdrawal that swirled through Wu's very polite phrases. "Lindsay is always talking about you."
"Catlin, don't," Lindsay whispered, ignoring the painful] pressure of his fingers digging into her waist.
"She is most kind to remember a worthless old man," Wu said, speaking effortlessly over Lindsay's subdued protest. "I would not presume upon the friendships of the past by expecting her to resume them in full enthusiasm when her present overflows with new people and experiences. For her to display such kindness and generosity of spirit toward my worthless person would be unthinkable."
In aching silence Lindsay watched Wu retreat through the thick shadows and shafts of light that criss-crossed the walkway. She didn't trust herself to speak. The damp air would have amplified even the softest voice until it rang through the night like a cry for help.
Catlin gave her a hooded look, stretched his arms above his head and then draped them loosely over her shoulders. "Where do you want to celebrate?" he asked in a normal tone.
Lindsay turned and looked at him, saying nothing.
"Jet lag?" Catlin asked sympathetically. "C'mon," he said, tugging her down the path again. "I know just the thing."
"Good," she said flatly. "I need it, whatever it is."
He laughed and kissed her lips briefly. "Carte blanche is a dangerous thing to give me, honey cat."
"Don't I know it," she retorted, trying to conceal the bitterness in her voice.
Lindsay reminded herself that none of what had happened was Catlin's fault. He had warned her. She had believed him. But she hadn't believed that Wu would be the first to turn away from her, the first to lead the chorus of withdrawal and disdain. In her heart she hadn't believed that he would turn away from her at all. She had assumed that somehow he of all people would magically believe that she had good and worthy reasons for whatever she did, however unworthy those actions might appear on the surface.
"First we'll go to the hotel," Catlin said cheerfully, pulling Lindsay along in his wake with a strength that wasn't nearly as jovial as his voice. "A long, hot shower and two fingers of cognac for starters. Then I'll give you a rubdown that will unravel every nerve in that sexy body."
"Wonderful," said Lindsay, wincing at the rawness of her own voice.
She hoped that anyone overhearing the conversation would assume that it was passion rather than tears thickening her throat. Even as the thought came, rebellion flared suddenly, wildly, within her. She was so tired of monitoring each word, each intonation, of being on stage every minute of every day.
The strain of it was like acid eating into her will, dissolving it. Dissolving her.
And there would be no peace back at the hotel room. There a different round of lies would begin while she tried to conceal her attraction to Catlin and tried not to remember all the small touches and hot caresses they had shared during their time onstage. Concealing and forgetting her response had become more and more difficult with each night she had spent talking to him, laughing with him, learning from him, sharing her thoughts with him in the hours before he had curled up on her lumpy couch and slept until dawn.
She knew that he wanted her. She knew that he wouldn't take her, because she wasn't a casual kind of woman and he was a man who started nothing he couldn't finish. Even though he might call her a fool for putting herself at risk over something as ephemeral and intangible as the relationship between two nations, she knew that he liked her and respected her intelligence. Just as he must know that she respected and liked him, no matter what his past might have been. Those kinds of mutual discoveries were unavoidable between people who literally lived in each other's pockets.
It would have been easier if she had liked him less each day. As it was, the enforced mental intimacy of the offstage hours made Catlin's careful avoidance of any physical intimacy during those same offstage hours all the more obvious, all the more telling and all the more difficult, almost to the point of impossibility.
Living with Catlin, living a lie when the truth of her feelings was screaming silently within her, made for the kind of loneliness that eroded Lindsay's soul. Now there would be no space remaining for anything but lies. She would have to share the same bed with Catlin, listen to him breathing, feel his warmth radiating out to her. So close, and never more far away than in the hours between darkness and dawn. A second act, harder than the first, more relentless.
Impossible. She couldn't do it. She simply couldn't. The realization made her draw a ragged breath. She fought to control her thoughts before they spiraled any further down into darkness and despair.
"Come here," Catlin said huskily.
He pulled Lindsay into the shadow that lay thickly behind the landscape lights. For an instant there was only the rigidity of her resisting body, then she made a small sound and leaned against him, shuddering silently. His hands hesitated before moving soothingly over her hair and back as he gathered her closer.
Goddamn you to hell, Chen Yi! And goddamn me for helping you!
Nothing of Catlin's savage thoughts showed on his face or in his touch or in the bleak eyes searching light and shadows for any sign of watchers. For the moment there was no one close enough to tell the difference between passion and compassion as he held her.
"Try not to cry," he breathed against Lindsay's ear. "And be damn sure not to cry once we're in the car. It's probably bugged by now," he added grimly.
Or, to be precise, he had to assume it was bugged, because it was too dangerous to assume anything else. The Asian man who had fled the auction after recognizing Catlin was fully capable of getting and using electronic surveillance equipment, as well as other more deadly devices.
"Wait until we're back at the hotel," Catlin continued very softly. "Then I'll turn the shower on full and shut the door and you can cry until hell won't have it if that's what you want. But not now, Lindsay. Not now. We're sure to meet someone between here and the car. It would be hard to explain why you're crying when we should be celebrating getting our hands on that spectacular canister.''
Catlin's words swirled around Lindsay like dark leaves borne on a cold wind. She didn't want to hear them, didn't want to feel the coolness of rationality on her skin. She wanted to scream and claw and curse in a searing release of all that had been building inside her since her mother had died and a dragon called Catlin had walked into her life, turning it upside down.
He felt the rigidity of Lindsay's body as she fought to control the emotions ripping through her. He knew what she was going through, knew the trapped feeling that came when your adrenaline was pouring and your body w
as clamoring for physical release and your icy mind knew that to make one sound, one move, was to die. There was no physical outlet, so you turned against yourself and you raged in silence, pulling yourself apart.
He couldn't let that happen to her.
Deliberately Catlin shifted his hands, arching Lindsay against his body as he had earlier. He gave her no chance to resist effectively. Her arms were pinned against his chest, her head held in place with his hand gripping her hair. As she opened her lips in surprise, he took her mouth, filling her before she could make a sound.
For a moment she continued to fight him, twisting wildly against his superior strength and knowledge. And then the inchoate angers of the past few weeks focused in a soundless explosion of passion as she accepted the outlet that he was offering. Hands that had been futile fists became fingers searching beneath his suit coat, digging into his hard flesh with a force that would have been painful if he hadn't been as angry as she was beneath the cold necessities of the act.
There was as much rage as there was desire in Lindsay's response. Catlin knew it, encouraged it with hoarse words as her nails sank into the fabric of his shirt and raked over his chest. The feel of his flexed strength raced through her, making her moan deep in her throat. It was the only sound possible to her, because her mouth was wholly involved with his in a way that was utterly new to her. She had never felt a man's textures with such violent clarity the hard smoothness and primitive serrations of his teeth as he captured her lower lip, the sensual roughness and surprising smoothness of his tongue, the unique heat and taste of his mouth biting into her. With a small sound she tried to get even closer to him, burning him as she was being burned.
Catlin felt the change in Lindsay's body as she went from conflicting emotions to focused desire. She fitted against him perfectly. Her body was a taut, supple curve burning him from his knees to his mouth mated with hers in a hot promise he knew he should not keep. Hunger exploded him, the hunger that had never ceased prowling since he had seen her through a two-way mirror. A wave of heavy, wild heat surged in his blood, pulsing in time with his increased heartbeat, making him want to groan with pleasure and need.
For a few minutes Catlin knew nothing but Lindsay's heat and his own hunger. After the first shock wave of desire ripped through him, he told his hands to stop kneading her resilient body, to stop rocking her hips against his violently aroused flesh. Finally he forced his hands to slide slowly up to her back, but even then the primitive, provocative caress of her hips moving against him didn't stop. He groaned and his hands swept down, clenching into her, holding her against his hardened body with a strength that was just short of bruising. She flowed closer, and then closer still. Her tongue matched the primal rhythms of her hips as her mouth drank from his as though she would never get enough.
"Sweet Jesus," groaned Catlin, tearing himself away from Lindsay. "No more. You're burning me alive."
Lindsay stood swaying, bracing herself against his powerful arms, dazed by a consuming desire she had never before known.
"Catlin?" she whispered. She saw his face drawn with the same sexual tension that had made his body so incredibly alluring to her. Then she realized what she had done. In her own need for an outlet, any outlet, she had inadvertently punished Catlin for the painful role she had to play, a role she had chosen to play in spite of his blunt warnings. "Oh, Catlin, I'm sorry," she said wretchedly. "I don't know what "
His hard hand over her mouth stilled the incautious words. He let out an explosive breath, counted to twenty and smiled ruefully down at her. Reluctantly he removed his hand, because the heat and softness of her mouth were burning through necessity's cold resolutions, tempting him unbearably.
"It's all right," he said, his voice the thinnest thread of sound. "I asked for it. I just didn't have any idea how much you could deliver." Abruptly he closed his eyes for a few moments, because it was a lot easier to keep his hands off Lindsay if he couldn't see her breasts stirring with each of her too-quick breaths. "Think you can keep it together long enough to get to the hotel?"
The sound she made could have been an inarticulate protest or harshly suppressed laughter. She followed Catlin's lead, closing her eyes and taking a long, raking breath. She didn't know what to do with the wildness singing in her own blood, her own body, a consuming heat that was equaled in the man whose hard hands were even now supporting her. Nothing in her experiences with men had prepared her for the elemental sensuality that now prowled through her on unsheathed claws. The violence of her feelings shattered her. It was as though she had spent a lifetime waiting for a man to release and then match her passion.
"Lindsay, move."
The whisper was a raw demand, as hot as the male breath searing her temple. Without a word she turned away from Catlin, stepped back out onto the pathway and began walking toward the car. The emotions that had driven her first to the edge of raging tears and then to the brink of irretrievable passion still seethed within her, but she was no longer on the breaking point of explosion. She could take a few deep breaths and face the rest of the demands of the act until she was in the privacy of the hotel shower with water pouring over her, drowning out everything, washing it all away.
Catlin caught up within two steps. When he heard a group of people coming up from behind, he took Lindsay's hand. He felt the subtle shiver that went over her at his touch, and he cursed the sensuality that was as much a part of her as her indigo eyes. He would never have guessed her sensuality from reading her file, which meant that under normal circumstances, she kept herself very tightly wrapped. But living undercover was hardly normal. It had a way of eroding even the most strongly held habits of civilization. He wondered if she had realized that yet.
Then he wondered if it would help her when she did realize it.
Understanding the psychological dynamics of undercover living hadn't helped him. Not at first. He hadn't believed that the emotions and philosophies he had thought so deeply embedded in himself could be swept away in the primitive demands of sheer survival. Living undercover peeled you down to the enduring core of your mind and if there were no core no center, you simply were peeled until nothing was left but a vacuum waiting to be filled. At that moment you became the ultimate actor, a human chameleon with no more morals than your reptilian namesake.
That hadn't happened to Catlin, but it had been a long cruel descent to the central core of personal reality. For others he had known, the trip had been even more cruel, for there had been nothing waiting at the center but the terrible knowledge of emptiness.
"Wait," Catlin said, pulling Lindsay to a halt on the last curve of the path before the road was revealed between the thickly grown trees. "No matter what happens, don't go to the car until I come back for you."
The tempered edge of his voice brought Lindsay oat of her inner turmoil. She looked up to see the same primal aspect of Catlin that had surfaced the night she had called out in he sleep and he had appeared in her doorway naked but for the gun in his hand. Catlin the hunter, the predator, the man who radiated both violence and restraint.
He bent over her, murmuring words that barely reached her ear. "If you hear anything odd, run like hell for Wang's house and then call the number Stone gave you."
"How did you know about the number?" whispered Lindsay, for it was easier to ask questions than to try to comprehend the sudden change in Catlin.
"It's what I would have done if you were my agent," he said, his tone neutral, just above the threshold of hearing. "Remember. Don't come until you see me and you're sure that I'm alone." His fingers tightened suddenly on her arms. "Promise me."
Helplessly she nodded, not understanding.
"Good," he murmured, releasing her.
Without another word Catlin turned and walked soundlessly down the path, keeping to the deepest shadows. He had already picked out his vantage point earlier in the evening, on the way up the trail. He eased between two large pines, letting the fallen
needles cushion the sound of his footsteps. The low branches broke up his silhouette, transforming his wine-colored shirt, black jacket and charcoal slacks into just a few more tints of darkness among the thickly layered shadows.
In front of him the hill sloped steeply to the street. Without moving anything but his eyes, Catlin looked to the left, where he had parked his car down the street and across the dark pavement, within the circle of golden light thrown by a corner street lamp. There was no car parked close to his. Nor was anyone walking nearby. Two limousines were parked farther up the street. Their drivers leaned against the fender of the nearer limo and talked, their clearly pitched Cantonese speech expanding into the night like the sharp, invisible smoke from the cigarettes both men held between their fingers.
The FBI escort was reasonably discreet. The car was parked downhill from the walkway. The driver had adjusted the mirrors so that he could check on both the path and Catlin's car without turning to look over his shoulder.
Catlin would have given a great deal to be able to have a radio connection with the FBI agent. There were a few questions Catlin urgently wanted to ask. Had the Asian man who had bolted earlier from Wang's house gone into one of those dark-windowed limousines? Was he sitting in there right now, waiting with a highly illegal, highly lethal Uzi in his lap, hoping that Catlin would carelessly appear and let him finish something that had started many years and thousands of miles away? Would Lee Tran expect Catlin to appear on the walkway with a woman whose pale hair would show up like a beacon in the dark?
Tell Me No Lies Page 22