“Yeah, I’m sure. Do you know what he was talking about?”
She leaned forward, her eyes gleaming with excitement. “Lassiter, ‘Rappaccini’s Daughter’ is one of Hawthorne’s short stories. It’s about a man who was willing to sacrifice his own daughter for the sake of his science.”
Lassiter sat back in his chair. “Well,” he said. “Maybe Bond really was trying to tell me something.”
“Like the fact that he’s my father?” Melanie bit her lip. “But he can’t be. My father wasn’t Australian.”
“How do you know? You said you didn’t remember anything about him, not even the sound of his voice. Besides, accents can be faked just like death certificates.”
“My God, Lassiter. How are we supposed to make sense of this? It’s like a dream. Nothing is real. I don’t know what to believe anymore. I don’t know who I can trust.”
Lassiter waited a heartbeat, then said, “Maybe it’s time we started trusting each other.”
Her gaze dropped. “I don’t know if I can do that. I don’t know if I want to trust you.”
“Why not?”
“Because the last person I ever truly trusted was my father. And look what he did to me.”
THEY LEFT THE CAFÉ and headed toward Melanie’s hotel. As they neared the plaza, the streets came alive with music and laughter from the restaurants and cantinas, but the sound did little to assuage Melanie’s growing fear that she was being constantly monitored. Her every move watched by unseen eyes. Her every thought analyzed to be used against her. She couldn’t shake the notion that nothing was as it seemed and never had been.
She glanced at Lassiter. Could she trust him? She wasn’t at all certain she would ever be able to trust anyone again, but she remembered something she’d learned years ago in rehab. Take small steps and take them one at a time.
So she kept on walking beside him. And after a while, she felt some of her uneasiness slip away.
“When I told you earlier that I’d been in rehab, you didn’t show much reaction,” she said. “Don’t you want to ask me about it?”
Lassiter shrugged. “It’s none of my business. If you want to talk about it, fine. I’ll listen. But you don’t owe me any explanations. And you don’t have to justify yourself to me.”
“I wasn’t going to do that.” She sounded a little defensive. “But I thought you should know that it’s all behind me. I’m a different person now. If we find ourselves in a tough situation, you can count on me. I won’t fall to pieces.”
He almost smiled at that. “You’d be about the last person I’d expect to fall to pieces.”
“Don’t give me too much credit,” she said. “I’ve hit rock bottom more times than I care to remember. There was a time when no one could count on me, including myself.”
“People change.”
“People change? That’s all you have to say about it? Lassiter, are you telling me you don’t have even the slightest bit of curiosity about what I did back then? About the kind of person I was?”
“No,” he said. “I don’t.”
Melanie didn’t quite know how to take his answer. The men who had come and gone from her life had all said they didn’t care about her past, but when push came to shove, they did. And somehow it always came back to haunt her. To hurt her. “You don’t care because you don’t care about me or because…you accept me for who I am?” To Melanie’s surprise, her heart had started to pound against her rib cage. So hard it was almost painful. Which was strange. It wasn’t as if his answer mattered to her or anything.
He stopped walking and turned to her. “You really want to know what I think of you?”
She nodded and swallowed, bracing herself for the truth. And for just a moment, his face blurred and she saw Andrew staring down at her. What I see when I look into your eyes scares the hell out of me, Mel.
“I think you’re a survivor, just like me.”
She gave a shaky laugh. “It’s good to know we have something in common, I guess.”
“We have more than that in common, and you know it.”
A tremor coursed through Melanie at what she saw in Lassiter’s eyes. It was the same thing she’d seen back at the café. The same thing she’d seen in his quarters the night before.
Melanie was no stranger to passion, but somehow she knew with Lassiter it would be different…and possibly devastating.
“I’m not sure I’m ready for this,” she murmured.
“Only one way to find out.” He wove his hands in her hair and lowered his head to kiss her.
The heat between them was immediate, intense and completely overwhelming. Melanie’s eyes fluttered closed as her breath caught in her throat. She wanted Lassiter, had wanted him from the moment she first laid eyes on him, more than she’d ever wanted any man.
He walked her back into the shadows as she wound her arms around his neck and kissed him back. Kissed him with a dark, urgent hunger that shocked and thrilled and scared her all at the same time. She kissed him as if her very life depended on it.
And Lassiter responded just as she’d hoped he would. He ground his body against hers as his tongue savaged her mouth. His hands slipped inside her shirt and moved up her back, sending hot and cold chills up her spine. Then slowly he slid his hands down her sides, letting his thumbs play over her breasts with a hot, sure touch that drew a violent shiver from somewhere deep inside her.
Melanie curled one leg around his as her hand moved to the front of his jeans.
He pulled away, breathing hard as he buried his lips in her neck. “Are you sure? Someone could see us here.”
She drew his mouth back to hers. “I don’t care,” she whispered. “I don’t care, I don’t care, I don’t care.”
THEY KISSED in the elevator all the way up to her room. They kissed while Melanie clumsily inserted the key into the lock and opened the door. And then, staggering inside, Lassiter kicked the door closed behind them as he hauled her up against the wall and kissed her some more.
Melanie was on fire by this time. She slid her hands up his arms, over his shoulders, across his chest, reveling in the hard ripple of his muscles. He was in terrific shape, which certainly seemed to bode well for the next several minutes of what she fervently hoped would be an intense physical workout.
He finally tore his mouth from hers and stepped back long enough to rip her tank top over her head and then to do the same with his own shirt. By the time he was finished, Melanie had struggled out of her jeans and kicked them aside.
“You’re very efficient,” he muttered, pressing up against her. “I admire that in a woman.”
“I know what I want,” she whispered, dragging his mouth down to hers. “And I’m not afraid to go after it.” She kissed him then in a way that drew a deep, masculine, thoroughly erotic groan from his throat.
When he pulled her into his arms, Melanie went with open eyes and an open mind. When he lifted her off the floor, she locked her legs around him tightly.
“Easy, baby. Give me some room to maneuver,” he muttered.
“Sorry.” She placed her hands on either side of his face, kissing his eyelids, his nose and finally his mouth as he fumbled with the zipper of his jeans. By the time he stumbled back to the bed, he was already inside her.
He sat on the edge with Melanie draped around him, moving so frantically at first that he grasped her hips to slow her. When he lay back on the bed, he pulled her down with him, capturing her breasts with his hands and then his mouth, sending thrill after thrill spurting through her bloodstream.
“Man, you’re good at this,” she gasped.
“Am I?”
“You can’t tell?”
“You do seem pretty turned on,” he said appreciatively.
“Yeah. And Siberia is pretty cold in the winter.”
The truth was, Melanie had been close to the edge ever since they’d first kissed on the street. Dangerously close. Scarily close. And then, when he’d gone all he-man and ripped off his
shirt, exposing all that beautiful tanned skin and those glorious muscles…
She sighed in ecstasy. She didn’t like to think of herself as the shallow type. She’d been attracted to men in the past for all kinds of reasons. But Lassiter…well, there was just no point in lying to herself about it. He was one seriously hot guy. All she had to do was look at him.
But she was doing more than looking, and so was he. His hands were all over her, finding all kinds of erotic little places.
“Hey, be careful there,” she murmured.
He gazed up at her with smoldering eyes. “Why’s that?”
“One wrong move…or should I say one right move…”
“Then you’d better hold on.” He gave her a look that ratcheted up her blood pressure another notch or two. “Because this is about to get interesting.”
“Interesting, I can handle. It’s what you were doing before…oh, God…”
Still entwined, they rolled, until Lassiter was staring down at her, his gaze dark, deep and blazing hot. “You are one gorgeous woman,” he said almost reverently.
The tone of his voice rattled her for a moment. “Ditto,” she said breathlessly. “I mean, about the gorgeous part. Obviously, you’re not a woman.” Her eyes widened. “Obviously.”
And then as he began to move inside her, the earth moved around her. Melanie closed her eyes, giving herself up to a pleasure so intense it was almost painful.
LASSITER WAS NOT the kind of guy to linger in the afterglow. He rose in the darkness and grabbed his clothes from the floor, dressing with a quick efficiency that might lead one to conclude he was no stranger to hasty exits.
Melanie lay naked on the bed, curled around a pillow, as she watched him. “You don’t have to hurry off on my account, you know. I’m not the kind of girl who expects dinner and a movie afterward.”
He pulled on his jeans and snapped them. “I’ve been gone from the compound a long time. I have to get back before someone misses me.”
“Would I run you off even faster if I asked when I’ll see you again?”
He sat down on the edge of the bed to put on his shoes. “Soon. I’ll be in touch.”
“Oh, I think I’ve heard that one before,” she murmured.
He turned to glance at her, a shadow flickering across his features. “Not from me you haven’t. And just for the record, I’m not running away. I do have to get back.”
Melanie propped herself on her elbow. “It’d be okay if you were. I’d understand. I’ve done it myself.”
“I’m not running away.”
“I mean, it’s not like we need to get all strange about it or anything. It was just sex. Great sex, but…sex, right?”
He was dressed now and he rose to stand over the bed. “I’m not running away,” he said. “And if I were? It might be because it wasn’t just sex. Did you ever think about that?”
LASSITER LEFT Melanie’s room the normal way. He opened the door and slithered out into the hallway, like the snake that he was.
He hadn’t lied when he said he had to get back to the compound. He did. But it wasn’t imperative that he leave that second. He could have hung around for a few minutes and…what? Made small talk until they ended up making love again? And that was exactly where it would have led. No use kidding himself about that.
He paused in the hallway and frowned back at her door. Even now he had the strongest urge to go back inside and take her again if she’d let him. He couldn’t get enough of her, and it wasn’t just sex, no matter how hard she’d tried to convince him otherwise.
A casual encounter he could handle. He lived for meaningless sex.
But the problem was, if it had just been about sex, Lassiter was pretty sure he wouldn’t be feeling as if the floor had just dropped out from under him.
ACTUALLY, MELANIE had considered the possibility that Lassiter’s hasty departure had been triggered by more than his desire to escape an awkward moment. After all, he had to realize by now that she wasn’t the kind of woman who needed assurances or empty promises. She knew the score. She’d been around the block a few times. She wasn’t looking for anything permanent here, either, so why had he felt the need to run?
Because maybe, just maybe, she’d gotten to him in a way that frightened him. Just as he frightened her.
Sex was one thing. But an emotional commitment…that led to danger. That led to disappointment. That was not good.
But something had occurred to Melanie earlier as she’d lain in Lassiter’s arms. Something she couldn’t get out of her head now. Maybe their being in Santa Elena really wasn’t a coincidence. Maybe someone—or something—had brought her and Lassiter here at the same time…because they were meant to be together.
MELANIE DREAMED she was on board the submarine that night. But she couldn’t see Lassiter anywhere. She couldn’t see anything, in fact. It was pitch-black where she was. And cold. So cold her body was going numb.
Somehow she knew that everyone else on board was dead. She was the last one, and she wanted nothing more than to find a soft place to curl up and join them.
But it wasn’t yet time for her to die. She still had questions. She needed to live in order to find out the truth, but she couldn’t seem to shake off her growing lethargy. She couldn’t breathe. The air had run out.
Suddenly the dream changed. Melanie was no longer aboard the sub, but she still couldn’t breathe. Something was pressing against her face, covering her mouth and nose, blocking her air…
Someone was trying to smother her!
Melanie fought her assailant with everything in her, and when she finally slung the pillow from her face, she bolted upright in bed, gasping for breath as her gaze darted around the darkened room.
She’d been certain her attacker would be hovering nearby, ready to pounce on her again before she could gather her strength.
But no one was there. She couldn’t see so much as a glimmer of light that would have given away the presence of a doorway through which her assailant might have escaped.
It had been a dream, she thought in relief. A shrink might even conclude that the nightmare was directly related to her growing feelings for Lassiter and her rather claustrophobic fear of commitment.
Getting out of bed, she walked into the bathroom to splash cold water on her face. As she patted her skin dry, she glanced at her reflection. The woman in the mirror was the same one who always stared back at her. Same eyes. Same nose. Same mouth. But the problem was, Melanie had no idea who that woman was.
She dreaded the moment when Lassiter would look deep into her eyes and see nothing but the emptiness inside her.
As she started to turn away, she caught a glimpse of something in the mirror that caused her heart to jump. She could see into the bedroom, and for just a split second, a shadow moved just beyond the doorway.
Someone was there.
Frantic, Melanie glanced around for a weapon. Except for a can of hairspray, the bathroom contained nothing remotely deadly. If she had a match or a lighter, she might have been able to fashion a blow-torch the way Agent 007 had done in a movie. But Melanie didn’t have a light, and this wasn’t Hollywood. There wasn’t even much hairspray left in the can. At best, she had one good shot at the intruder’s eyes.
Padding silently across the floor, she glanced into the bedroom. She didn’t see anything at first, but then, as her eyes adjusted to the darkness, she saw the telltale shimmer of light across the room near the French doors.
In the split second before the light faded completely, Melanie had the uncanny feeling that someone was watching her from the other side.
Chapter Eleven
The guard at the gate wouldn’t allow her through, even though she’d worn her best skirt—a filmy affair with a side split that showed plenty of leg—and high-heeled sandals that were ridiculously inappropriate for jungle wear.
Melanie lifted her sunglasses so that the guard could see her blue eyes as she gave him a smile designed to make a young, virile man
forget about duty, honor and country. And in his case, all he had to worry about was his job.
“Are you sure you can’t let me in? Just for a few minutes? I won’t stay long, I promise. I drove all the way from Santa Elena just to see him, and it would be such a shame if I didn’t even get to say hello.”
The guard’s expression remained taciturn even though his gaze dipped appreciatively to her legs. “No one is allowed inside the compound without permission from Kruger. Sorry.”
She sighed in discouragement. “Can you call him for me at least?”
Before the guard could answer, another car pulled up on the other side of the fence, and a tall, middle-aged man climbed out. He strode toward the gate, his bald head gleaming in the sunlight. “What’s going on here?”
The guard stepped quickly away from Melanie’s vehicle. He didn’t salute the newcomer, but he very visibly came to attention. “Mr. Kruger,” he said with more than a hint of deference. “I was just telling the young lady here that no one is allowed inside the compound without your permission.”
The bald man’s gaze fell on Melanie then, and a slight tremor slid up her backbone. He had a pleasant face, but there was something in his eyes, a hint of ruthlessness that made her think he was not a man to be trifled with. She didn’t so much as bat her lashes at him as he approached her.
“I’m Hoyt Kruger,” he said, extending his hand. “What can I do for you?”
Melanie placed her hand in his and felt something akin to an electrical shock surge along her nerve endings. It wasn’t sexual tension or even attraction. It was something more disturbing. An odd sort of recognition even though she didn’t think she’d ever met him before. Not that she could remember, anyway.
She managed a smile. “My name is Melanie Stark. I’m a friend of Dr. Bond’s. I was hoping to see him today.”
Kruger’s brows lifted slightly in surprise. “Angus Bond? Amazing what an Aussie accent will get you.”
His Mysterious Ways Page 12