скачать книгу бесплатно
Her smile flickered and finally went out. Her gaze wandered away from his face and was jerked back, like a restive horse fighting the reins, to meet his, this time with defiance.
“Well?” he said. Gently rather than with impatience.
He heard the slight catch in her breathing. “Well, what?”
“I know you’ve been wanting to ask questions. So—ask.”
Chapter 4 (#ulink_df1278e2-9ce6-5495-8fce-bfdbd0178db3)
She stared at him a long moment more, and this time when her gaze slid away she didn’t force it back. He saw the muscles in her face flinch and her mouth quirk with an attempt at a smile. As he watched the emotional struggle play across her familiar features, it came to him that this was a Yancy Malone he’d never seen before. Jolted, he realized in all the times he’d shared her bed, as intimately as he’d known the secrets of her body, he’d never once seen her angry. Or wounded. Afraid or sad.
Or if she had been, he’d been too selfishly involved with his own needs to notice.
She shrugged finally and shook her head. But still no words came.
Out of sheer self-preservation, Hunt did what he’d always done when unwanted emotions threatened to pierce his armor. He turned on the charm. He put on a smile, one that was just a bit crooked. “Don’t tell me Yancy Malone doesn’t have questions to ask, because I won’t believe it.”
She made a sound that might have passed for a laugh if the light had been poorer. If he hadn’t been able to see that unfamiliar pain in her face. “I’d think you’d be happy about that.”
“Come on. I always loved your questions.” He paused and added with another wry smile, “It was so much fun to shut you up.”
For Yancy, the unmistakable growl of intimacy in his voice brought a fresh flood of memories... A face, a voice, a body...the sound of a laugh, a remembered look, the shape of a mouth.
Almost in a panic, she thought, But I can’t remember the feel of that body...can’t remember what that mouth tasted like.
Her memories were like recalling a movie or a television show she’d seen. She couldn’t seem to bring them into focus with her own reality or with the man standing before her now.
Strange to think I once shared a bed with this man—more than once. So many times...and yet I don’t think I know him at all.
What was it that was so different about him?
Oh, certainly he looked different, with the full beard, the turban, the Afghan tunic, vest and loose-fitting trousers—though here in the privacy of his home he’d shed the turban and vest. But it was more than that. It was, she realized in a late flash of insight, not what he looked like, but the way she saw him.
When she’d first met him he’d seemed to her like an invincible man-machine, a superhero, a life-size action figure. Later he was her shadow lover who came and went in the night like a ghost. But something had happened since the last time she’d seen him, the night he’d brought Laila to her and then disappeared without a trace.
Something’s changed.
Maybe I’ve changed.
Older now, perhaps wiser, and from the perspective of motherhood, she saw him as a mere human being, a man, one with flaws, one who’d loved a woman, fathered and then abandoned a child.
Though, oddly, he seemed no less imposing because of that.
If anything, even more so.
Yes, definitely more so.
I don’t know how to talk to him now. We never talked much before. Never had to. Meaningless love-words, whispered in the darkness...laughter and sighs...forbidden thoughts and questions never voiced. It was enough then.
Not now, though. Now the reality was, they shared a child. Like it or not, difficult as it might be, she would have to learn new ways to communicate with the man who was her adopted daughter’s biological father.
Shouldn’t be too hard, right? Communicating is what I do.
But it was he who spoke first.
While she was still thinking how to begin, he said hoarsely, “You have to know I never intended to drop her in your lap and—”
“Disappear?” Caught unprepared, she spoke with more bitterness than she’d intended or wanted to. Of course, it’s about Laila. It’s only about Laila. Remember that.
He drew in a sharp breath. “That’s not—”
“But you did,” she said, giving no quarter now that she’d regained her footing, skewering him with her gaze—her interviewer’s stare, the one that demanded answers, that refused to back down. “Didn’t you?”
He nodded, glaring back at her like the warrior he was. “I thought I’d be able to come back for her.”
“But you didn’t. You didn’t send word, leave me instructions, a message, anything.” Not accusing, simply stating facts they both already knew.
“I couldn’t.” He didn’t raise his voice, and it was like stones dropping into a well. “You know what my job is—was—like. The mission was—”
“Secret.” She nodded, smiled painfully. “This is where you tell me you can’t tell me anything, right?”
“I sure as hell couldn’t then,” he snapped.
“Does that mean you can...now?”
“Some things...” he said stiffly. “Maybe...when you’re ready to listen.”
She sucked in a breath and managed to keep a rein on her anger, though what she’d have loved to do more than anything just then was kick him. She managed not to, partly because it occurred to her, with her experience as an Emmy-winning reporter and hard-nosed interviewer of the famous and infamous, that his macho attitude—face set in stone, arms folded on his chest—was more defensive than imposing.
Switching gears, she said quietly, “What did you think I was going to do, Hunt? I had no experience with kids, let alone a traumatized child. I was in no way prepared for...for that. Why did you do it—bring her to me, of all people?”
He coughed, the universal indicator of masculine discomfort. “Well, hell, that’s a no-brainer. I came to you because I knew about that outfit you belong to...that—”
“INCBRO.” And was that all, Hunt? The only reason?
“Right. I knew you could get her to safety through them. I figured I’d come back and find her when I—” He stopped abruptly and ran a hand over his face and beard, a gesture of distraction she wouldn’t have thought him capable of—the Hunt she’d known, the superhero warrior. “That’s not— Look, you were the only person I could think of. That I could trust.” And then, in a voice that seemed to come from the depths of his soul, he whispered, “I sure as hell never thought you were going to adopt her.”
She didn’t answer for a moment—her mind was too busy throwing up barricades and battening down hatches. Keep your distance, Malone... Don’t let your own emotions get in the way. Your job is to get him to reveal his. And his intentions. Is he going to try to take her away from me?
But in that small silence Hunt must have seen an opening, and he took it.
“Okay, Yankee. What made you do it?”
It was her turn to suck in a breath—she hadn’t expected him to turn it around on her. At least, not so soon.
Hoping to buy herself some time, she said sharply, “Do it? You mean, adopt her? What kind of question is that? Why does anyone adopt a child? Because—”
“Usually because they want one very badly,” Hunt said, and though his eyes were hidden now by the deepening dusk, she could hear the steel in his voice. And the disbelief. “You said it yourself—you hadn’t had any experience with kids until I dropped one in your lap. It never occurred to me you’d suddenly develop motherhood instincts. I thought you’d get her to safety through that child-bride rescue outfit you work with. I figured you’d—”
“Pass her off like a hot potato? A traumatized little girl?” Again her voice came sharper and louder than she’d planned, partly because the words he’d spoken hit so close to the mark.
Motherhood instincts? I was terrified, Hunt. Bullets flying past my ears never scared me so much as those shimmering golden eyes gazing up into mine. And when a tear detached itself from the shimmer and slid away down her cheek... I didn’t have a clue what to do. I remember kneeling down...putting my arms around her...feeling her body trembling. She was trying so hard not to cry. I think I picked her up then. I must have, because I woke up on my cot with her wrapped in my arms, sound asleep.
She paused, then went on in a half whisper. “What kind of person do you think I am?”
“I don’t really know that,” he said, matching his voice to hers. “Do I?”
“You know a whole lot more about me than I do about you.” She threw that at him, tight and quivering with emotions, three years’ worth of fear and uncertainty and unanswered questions. “I live my life in the public eye. You live yours in the shadows. You’re a...a—”
“Ghost?” A single word, spoken softly in the darkness.
Her chest constricted with the pain of remembering. She gave a helpless whimper of a laugh and turned away from him.
His voice followed her. “You still haven’t answered my question.”
She shook her head and looked up at the night sky, where the stars were veiled by the lights of the city, as they were in New York and Los Angeles and all the other cities where she lived most of the time. Starry nights were one of the things she missed now that she was no longer reporting from remote battlefields.
“Why did I keep her with me and not hand her off to some stranger?” She paused, then took a careful breath and answered truthfully. “At first, I guess it was because she seemed so...lost. So scared. So wounded.” She has your eyes. Did you know that? I know it’s not unusual for Afghans to have light-colored eyes...blue or green or hazel eyes. But Laila’s eyes are your eyes. “The way she looked at me...as if she trusted me.”
“I told her she could.”
How different his voice sounded. Did she only imagine it was emotion she heard? Or was she projecting her own inner turmoil onto him? Surely the Hunt Grainger she knew would never allow himself to be caught in such an unguarded moment.
But then, I really don’t know him at all.
If only I could see his face, she thought, then remembered, The same darkness protects us both.
“And was that it?” His voice was relentless. Implacable. “Just...she looked scared? So you decided to take on the responsibility of raising a child? Come on, Yancy.”
He’d had enough interrogation experience to know when someone was lying to him. Or being evasive, at least.
He knew he’d cornered her, so he wasn’t surprised when she jerked around to face him, squaring off again, obviously angry, struggling to find the right words. Which was pretty amazing, considering words were ordinarily her best weapons of choice.
The qualities of the night hadn’t outwardly changed—the same soft darkness, the sound of trickling water from a fountain in a neighboring garden set against the far-off percussion of city traffic—but the courtyard was no longer peaceful. Now it seemed more like a battlefield, crackling and humming with tension.
“Obviously, Laila isn’t—wasn’t—just any child.” Yancy’s voice was infused with the same tension that filled the air around them. “And even if she was, we don’t simply pass them along, like...like shipping off a package on a train. Every case is different, and we always try to do what’s best for the child. Sometimes that means educating the family, even paying a bride-price or school tuition so the child can stay with her parents. We only take a child away if she’s an orphan or in immediate danger.”
“She was—I told you that.”
“In danger, yes. But not an orphan, not entirely. She had a father, someone she knew.” She paused, and there was accusation in the silence. Then, in a breaking voice, she said, “I thought she had you.”
“So, you kept her because she was mine?” It took some doing, but he managed to keep any trace of emotion out of his voice.
“Of course I did,” she lashed back, then caught a breath that suggested she might not have wanted to admit that. After a moment, she said on the exhalation, “She was yours—you’d told me that—so naturally I assumed you’d be coming back for her.” Again she paused, and this time when she went on it was in her reporter’s voice, vibrant with controlled passion. “Which I thought would be a few days. Then a few weeks. But you didn’t come back, and after a whole year had gone by, I thought you must be dead. Surely you were dead, because, I thought, how could any man abandon his own child without one word?”
Or me! The thought intruded, slipped past her defenses. How could you abandon me?
She rushed on before he could respond. “Anyway, by that time I’d grown so attached—” She shook her head as if throwing that word away. “Okay, I’d fallen in love with her. It’s not hard to do, you know. I couldn’t bear the thought of losing her. So I started the process of adopting her. It wasn’t easy, but I’m in a unique position to get some strings pulled and cut through a lot of red tape. The adoption was final six months ago. She’s my child, Hunt. My daughter.”
“Did you even try to get in touch with me?”
She gave a huff of laughter. “Seriously? I’m a reporter, remember? I called in every favor, accessed every contact I had. Brick walls. Everywhere I turned, the story was the same. You’d been killed in action. The rest was classified. They wouldn’t even give me your family’s location so I could tell your parents they had a granddaughter. I thought— Never mind what I thought! Why am I answering your questions? You’re the one who owes me an explanation. A hundred explanations.”
The words seemed to ring in the quiet courtyard, like the after-humming of a struck gong. He listened, and it seemed as though he could feel the vibrations in his own chest. A hundred explanations. Yes. And it still wouldn’t be enough.
“I’m sorry,” he said stiffly.
She uttered a high sound, too sharp to be laughter. “Is that all? Seriously? Even now? Just...I’m sorry?”
He stared at her. His eyes felt hot and his face like stone. What could he say to her? He didn’t know how to talk to her, not this way.
In the darkness, touching her...he’d felt as if the depths of her soul, the secrets of her heart, the mysteries of her mind were all accessible to him, in protected vaults to which only he held the key. And that, if he wanted to, when the time was right, he could open the doors, unlock the secrets, learn what treasures she kept hidden from the rest of the world.
That was then. In the darkness...touching.
This is now, and everything has changed.
The physical distance between them was small—an arm’s length, no more. He could have reached across it and touched her—her face...her hair...her neck. He remembered the way it smelled, that soft sweet curve of neck and shoulder, hidden by the thick fall of hair, warm and musky from sleep. Memory struck like a knife in his gut so that he winced as if with physical pain. Because he knew the distance between them was a bottomless chasm, one he didn’t know how to cross.
“You know I’ve never been able to talk about my missions,” he said at last.
So, it’s come back around to this. The mission. As it always would.
As Yancy gazed at him through a haze that was half tears, half anger, it appeared to her as though Hunt was moving away from her, as if she was on a fast-moving train and he was left standing on the station platform. She felt an almost overwhelming sense of grief and loss.
She made a small, helpless gesture, taking in the whole of him—clothes, beard, surroundings. “That’s what this is—all this—a mission?”
“Of course.” With arrogance in his voice and his arms folded on his chest, in the near-darkness he seemed to become the Afghan chieftain he pretended to be.
“And you can’t tell me anything about it.”
“No, I can’t. Not until it’s done.”
“What happened today—did that have anything to do with your mission?”
“I don’t know. I wish I did.”
She turned away, choked by her own frustration, unable even to say good-night.
His words stopped her. “But I can tell you about her.” She looked back at him, at his silhouette against the lighter sky. “About Laila. Her mother. How it happened. If you’d care to hear.”
Was there entreaty in his voice? She so wished she could see his eyes, his features—though she doubted they’d have told her much. She took a deep breath and, with great effort, said carefully, “I would. Of course.”
Now there was no sound at all in the courtyard; the background noise of the city had faded away and the fountain had ceased its music. The darkness seemed to enfold the two of them in its own embrace. Wrapped in it, she could feel his heat, smell his scent. So close...too close...
She put out her hand expecting to touch his chest, meaning to hold him at bay, knowing she had no will to resist him if he chose to move closer. Her hand encountered only air. It was her perceptions that made him seem so near. To disguise the gesture she turned it into something else.
“But first—” She turned quickly, before he could guess how close she’d come to stepping into his arms. “First, just let me check on Laila. It’s a strange place... I don’t want her to wake and be frightened. It’s been such an eventful day—”
