by Kay Hooper
“Oh, Luc doesn’t wear his heart on his sleeve, and neither do you. He doesn’t talk about himself, either. But I’ve been around him a good deal the last year or so, and I’ve seen. He goes out with women from time to time, but there’s never more than a flicker of interest before those dates, then nothing at all afterward. Josh says he’s been that way for ten years.” Softly she added, “He carries a picture of you in his wallet, did you know? I saw it by accident one day. You were much younger then. And you were laughing.”
She hadn’t known, and Kyle felt hot tears dammed up behind her eyes. But she didn’t cry. She hadn’t cried for a long time. After a moment, in a voice devoid of emotion, she began telling Raven what had happened ten years ago. She spared neither Lucas nor herself in the telling, because she had to talk about it. Quite suddenly and with no ability to fight it, the need to talk rose up powerfully and pulled things out of her that no one except Lucas had ever known. It was a needed release, a thaw of emotions held frozen and at bay too long.
Raven was silent throughout, her expression compassionate and understanding. Then, when Kyle’s voice had stilled, she began talking herself.
“I used to believe that love was something gentle and kind, something warm and comforting. But that was a very long time ago. The work I chose after I left school was … well, difficult. It was a life made up of lies and deceit, with no room for friends or family and no time for uncertainty. Josh says I walked in the shadows of dark streets and he’s right. I had to be different people, terrible people, to do my job. I had to submerge everything I really was, everything I felt. And because of that, I was always afraid of losing who I was, afraid of having my true self slip away or change … for the worse. So I built careful walls around the innermost part of myself. A lot like the walls your family built around you. They expected you to be something you weren’t, something you couldn’t be, and I had to be something I wasn’t. We were both hiding inside walls.”
“Did you break out?” Kyle asked, remembering her own dam-burst of emotions.
“Yes.” Then, softly, she said, “Thanks to Josh. That man taught me more about trust than most people learn in a lifetime. I didn’t expect his trust; I had no right to. I didn’t even believe in it. The evidence against me was damning, and any other man would have thought me worse than a … a whore. But Josh loved me in the face of all odds and despite evidence against me that he couldn’t disprove even with all his money and power and connections.”
“How lucky you are,” Kyle murmured.
Quietly Raven said, “He wasn’t an undercover cop with all the lies on his side. And I wasn’t a seventeen-year-old as desperately fragile as a baby bird teetering on the edge of its nest.”
Kyle was silent.
“Think about it,” Raven urged. “As hard as it was for you to wake up alone and bewildered, you could soften the pain with all those idealistic romantic dreams that young girls cling to. But Luc didn’t have that option. He had walked dark streets and seen terrible things, and he didn’t believe in dreams.”
“He believed my illusion.”
“Did he? No, Kyle. I know how he felt—because I felt that way with Josh at first. I felt so dirty and hurt inside by what I’d seen, what I’d done, and Josh looked at me with a kind of love I didn’t even believe in anymore. But I cherished the way he looked at me, because it was so far above what my life was. I was lucky. Josh was stronger than I was, and determined, and he was patient because he believed so completely in what we felt for each other.
“But Luc, what could he do, Kyle? Tell you about those dark streets and shadows, yank you from that nest you had to climb out of yourself? Tell you he wasn’t what you thought he was? At that age it hurts so much worse to lose a dream than something real. He knew that. And he was going to hurt you, no matter what he did. He knew that too. It must have been hell for him on the last night with you. He loved something so fragile, he knew he’d destroy it if he stayed, change it irrevocably if he left.”
Both women were silent for long minutes, Kyle gazing ahead of her with hot, inward-turned eyes and Raven watching her quietly. And then Raven spoke again.
“He did what he had to, you know. In an impossible situation he picked the option least damaging to you. Whatever his reasoning was then or now, he tried not to hurt you any more than he had to. He was probably afraid to get in touch with you later, afraid you’d never forgive the hurt or that you wouldn’t be interested in the real man. Then the months turned into years and you had been apart too long.”
“Then Hagen called,” Kyle said slowly.
Raven nodded. “Giving him an excuse to see you again—and even the best of men have to deal with their pride. He had a reason—a businesslike, impersonal reason—and the rest depended on you.”
Struggling to understand, Kyle said, “But when he left me, he believed I’d been buying and selling drugs.”
“Is that what he told you?”
“He said that he wasn’t sure, that perhaps he’d been more afraid then of me being disillusioned by him than of him being disappointed in me. I see now why he wasn’t willing to confront me with it, to ask me. But he could have asked without really telling me about himself. Couldn’t he?”
“Would it have changed anything if he had confronted you?”
“I don’t know. Maybe. I think it wouldn’t have changed anything between us, but my brother—”
“That idol would have fallen off his pedestal a little sooner,” Raven said. “But you wouldn’t have been able to help your brother, Kyle, not even if you’d known. People who use and push drugs just don’t respond to loving concern. Believe that.”
“People quit drugs.”
“Yes. Would he have quit?”
After a moment Kyle sighed. “No. Not Dorian.”
“Then nothing would have changed even if you’d known.”
“It’s so complicated.”
Raven smiled. “Love always is. It’s caring for someone more than you care for yourself. And Luc hurt himself more than he hurt you ten years ago. He left you alone and confused, yes, but you were capable of building your own illusion and keeping it safe, Kyle. He made himself walk away from that brief, beautiful illusion you gave him, and he wasn’t capable of healing the wound with lovely dreams.”
“Where does that leave us now?” Kyle looked at the woman who had also walked dark streets, wondering if it was possible to understand the grinding heartache of a life such as that without living it yourself.
“He came back to you,” Raven reminded.
“He had to. He wasn’t given a choice.”
“There are always choices. Hagen’s plan was the simplest but not the only one. Lucas went up to your cabin because he wanted to, Kyle. He wanted to see you again, whatever it cost him. Can you imagine what kind of courage that took? For all he knew, you could have despised him. He had no reason to believe you wouldn’t. At best, he knew he’d have to face pain again. The pain of memories.”
Kyle remembered a white, haggard face and a quiet, deep voice opening old wounds and exposing new ones in vulnerability. “I—I know. He says he loves me.”
“Of course he loves you. He never would have walked away if he hadn’t then. He wouldn’t have come back if he didn’t now.”
It was so complicated, such a raging mass of conflicting emotions and memories and dreams, and Kyle didn’t know if she could absorb it all. But as she sat there in the peaceful gazebo, feeling the crisp early-winter breeze, something inside her opened up and she felt a peculiar little flutter like the brush of soft wings. The churning confusion eased, leaving her feeling battered but calm.
“It isn’t easy to trust,” she said.
“No,” Raven agreed. “Not easy at all. But some things are worth the gamble, Kyle. He loves you. And I think … if you can put away those pretty dreams of knights on white chargers, you’ll find something a seventeen-year-old girl could never even imagine. Chargers are outdated, you know—white or otherwise
. And modern knights tend to be unsung heroes. They do quiet, dangerous things sometimes. They love and hurt and bleed. They even make mistakes.”
“I know.” And she did. For the first time she did.
Raven got to her feet and stood for a moment, looking down at Kyle. Softly she said, “Idols that fall off pedestals don’t always break. Sometimes they get up and brush all that glittering dust away—and you find out they’re just as tall without something to stand on.”
Kyle looked at her and smiled. “Thank you.”
Smiling in return, Raven said, “I have a good memory for mazes. I’ll go meet Josh and Luc and tell him where you are.”
“I hate mazes!” Josh said with considerable feeling, batting at a protruding arm of greenery. “How long have we been lost in this one?”
“Hours.” Lucas was equally disgusted and quite definitely edgy. “What is Raven telling her?”
Josh paused to contemplate a dead end, muttered a curse as they retraced their steps, then looked at his friend. “How should I know?”
“Well, she’s yours, after all.”
“Be that as it may,” Josh said, “I can hardly read her mind. Especially not with four acres of bushes between us. Just thank your luck she’s not with Serena.”
Mentally Lucas did. Fate had at least been kind to spare him the intervention of Josh’s sister. Serena had a heart of gold, with an unnerving subtlety and the force of a Sherman tank.
They came to an intersection and stood staring at three possible avenues of progress.
“Which way did we come?”
“That way. No—that way. Hell, I don’t know.”
“We could sink our pride and start yelling,” Josh suggested.
“I will if you will.”
“This way,” Josh decided firmly, heading down the middle path.
Minutes later, exiting again, Lucas said, “Buy this maze so we can burn it.”
“It’s not worth the match. Got any bread crumbs?”
“Not on me, no.”
“Pity.”
FIVE
OVERHEARING THIS CONVERSATION from three feet away on the other side of the hedge, Raven enjoyed it so much that she retraced her own steps back to the center and told Kyle about it. And Kyle, feeling more lighthearted than she had in years, went back with the other woman to eavesdrop shamelessly on the men. Both women enlarged their respective vocabularies of colorful curses, even Raven widening her eyes at some of her husband’s phrases.
“And you think you know a man after living with him for a while,” she murmured.
Soft as her voice was, it caught her husband’s attention.
“It’s Raven. She’s over there.”
“The whole world’s over there,” Lucas said irritably. And, a moment later, “There isn’t any way to get over there. Kyle? Are you with Raven?”
“Of course I am, Luc,” she called back.
“At the center?”
Raven laughed. “Sorry, guys, you aren’t even halfway there. We got bored and came to find you.”
“Well, find us!” her husband commanded.
Raven murmured something to Kyle, who nodded and vanished back into the greenery. Then Raven walked four steps right, turned left, and walked two more steps. She smiled. “Hello.”
“You enjoyed that,” Josh accused.
“Immensely. Luc, if you want Kyle, I can tell you how to find her. You do want her, don’t you?”
Lucas stared into limpid violet eyes. “Yes, Raven,” he said with strained patience. “I want Kyle. Where is she?”
“In the center.” Raven gave him precise directions, then watched him turn a corner and disappear.
“If you weren’t my dear and only love,” Josh told her thoughtfully, “it’s quite likely I would strangle you.”
With a sultry look perfected back when such things had been needed in her various roles, Raven murmured, “Wouldn’t you rather chase me naked through the bushes?”
“Only if you run slowly and leave a trail of clothing for me to follow.”
“You didn’t need a trail in the Catskills.”
“Was that you I was chasing? I could have sworn that was my blond harem.”
“You can run, darling,” Raven advised. “But you can’t hide.”
He couldn’t run very far, either. The path he chose was, of course, a dead end. Not that either of them minded.
“What are they doing?”
On a wooded hill within the huge estate, Kelsey peered through his binoculars, then replied to the question cheerfully. “Playing in the maze.” Even as he spoke, he hooked a finger under the earpiece of his headset and pulled it away from his ear. He waited until the sputterings had subsided, then replaced the earpiece and spoke again into the microphone. “Give them time, boss, they just got here a few hours ago.”
“They haven’t even begun to search?” Hagen’s voice demanded.
“I have no idea. The directional mike just picked up a hodgepodge of voices while they were in the house. They might have looked before they came outside.” Kelsey put his binoculars aside and sat back to contemplate the distant mansion. “Besides, it’s a big house, and right now it’s full of people settling in for the weekend.”
“A perfect time to search.”
“Luc won’t forget what he’s here for, boss.”
“Playing in the maze,” Hagen muttered. Then he sighed. “Are they still there?”
“I’m not going to look,” Kelsey told him. “I’m a gentleman. Kyle says so.” And he hooked his finger under the earpiece again.
Lucas found the center of the maze with no trouble, surprised at how simple it was once he’d been given the key. He saw Kyle in the gazebo as soon as he came out into the open and approached her somewhat warily. The frustrating but comical interlude out in the maze notwithstanding, he was still a bit off balance after what had happened in the trophy room.
He stepped up into the gazebo as carefully as he would have entered a dark room with which he was unfamiliar, trying and failing to read her expressionless face and serious eyes. Searching for something casual to say as he sat down on the bench beside her, he asked, “How old were you when you discovered the key?”
“Ten. Whenever we came here, I’d lose myself in the maze. My mother was appalled, of course. They would usually find me here in the gazebo, face dirty, shoes scuffed, skirt torn. I loved it out here.”
He nodded, watching her. “Kyle—”
“You asked me something in the house,” she said, interrupting. “The answer is that I don’t know when Martin decided he wanted to marry me. He proposed for the first time two years ago.”
After a moment Lucas asked, “Why didn’t you answer when we were in the house? Why tell me now?”
“Maybe … maybe I wanted Martin to be the buffer between us,” she said slowly.
“Is he?” Lucas asked in a steady voice.
“No.” For the first time she reached out to him consciously, resting her hand over the strong one resting on his knee. “He could never be that. No one could ever be that.”
He looked down at her slender hand, a muscle in his jaw flexing, then met her darkened eyes again. “Kyle, don’t say anything you don’t mean.”
She smiled a little. “I won’t. I don’t know where we’ll end up, Luc, I really don’t. But I think I’m falling in love with you. I think I’m falling in love for the first time.”
He went deathly pale suddenly, so suddenly that she was frightened. But before she could speak, Lucas lifted her hand to his cheek and cradled it there.
“I never knew what it meant before now,” he said almost inaudibly.
“What?” she whispered.
“A reprieve from hell.”
Kyle’s throat was aching. She went into his arms and held him as he held her, in a fierce but passionless embrace. He hadn’t let her see it, she realized. He hadn’t let her see how much it meant to him until now.
Raven had been right, she thought
, filled with pain. Fallen idols didn’t always shatter. And sometimes they were much taller standing on solid ground.
Kyle watched him across the room, barely hearing the conversations all around her. He looked almost unnervingly formal in the black tuxedo, but the slip of red cummerbund showing just above the button of his jacket looked piratical. His silvery hair gleamed in the bright light of the huge salon, where most of the guests had gathered after dinner. His handsome face was inclined politely as he listened to the woman clutching his arm.
“That woman,” Raven murmured suddenly in Kyle’s ear, “is a piranha with a full set of teeth!”
Kyle sipped her drink, then said, “Uh-huh. I saw Her Highness make a dead set at Josh, What’d you say to her? The venom in the look she sent you later would have killed ten cobras.”
“What I said—”
“What she said,” Josh said, interrupting smoothly as he appeared beside them, “was in Spanish, thank heaven. Since Rome looked blank, I gather he doesn’t understand the language.”
Kyle shook her head. “He’s tone-deaf and says that makes it impossible for him to speak or understand anything but English. What did Raven say to her?”
“You’re too young to hear it.” Josh looked reflective. “I’m too young, in fact.”
“You speak Spanish?” Kyle asked him curiously.
“He speaks it like a native,” Raven told her. “So do I. Her Highness, however, does not.”
Mildly Josh said, “She claims to be a reincarnated member of the Aztec race, remember? Not necessarily Spanish in this life or familiar with the conquistadores in her previous one.”
“But she understood you?” Kyle asked.
“Oh, she understood,” Raven smiled gently. “It was very basic, gutter Spanish. And she responded in kind, but her retort was halting, mispronounced, and entirely too formally constructed. She’s had lessons—and recently.”
Josh looked up to see Lucas and Princess Zamara approaching and murmured, “Darling, please restrain yourself, all right? We don’t want to get thrown out of here.”
Raven slipped her arm through his and said softly, “Of course, darling. But if she starts stroking your lapel again, I’m going to draw blood.”