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“Ex-Lieutenant Brendan McCall of the U.S. Navy SEALs, at your service, ma’am.” He made a tiny, self-mocking bow.
Silence for a moment. “Why ex?”
Oh, man, she knew where to hit…and he had to tread carefully here. If she was Delia, she might know why he was “ex” Lieutenant McCall. Her father would’ve had him investigated for sure.
And the utter truth of that left him speechless and his head spinning. Why hadn’t he thought of that? The proverbial had hit the fan a decade ago, and it was only now that he finally got it. Her father had me investigated. That’s why she never called me. That’s why she’s been looking at me as if I’m a monster. She thinks I’m a traitor to my country, in Falcone’s pay now.
Ghost would have his hide for this, and strip him of his commander’s rank, but he had no choice. He couldn’t wait for clearance now. If he put her off now, she’d slam the emotional door and never open it again. “I was dismissed.” A bald, blunt statement that in no way hid the lingering shame. Even though it was a top-brass decision for the greater good, and he’d agreed to it for international security, the sting still whipped him with merciless taunts—always your father’s son, McCall—especially if he’d lost Delia because of it.
There was no going back: his reputation as a SEAL, one of the white knights of national security, had shattered years ago. He couldn’t go back to the States without dismantling a decade of lies, and blowing apart assignments that hinged on his being able to infiltrate illegal rings that accepted him as one of their own. He had to remain a seeming criminal for the sake of international peace and security. He couldn’t go home, could never see anyone he knew or cared for again—
Yeah, a little voice jeered. There’re so many of them. That was why he’d taken the job with the Nighthawks, and accepted the cover that ruined his reputation. He had nobody to hurt. Besides his old SEAL buddies, there was no one to give a toss that he’d apparently sold secrets to the enemy just before a war.
Ten years later, he wondered if the price he’d paid was higher than he knew. The whispers that someone in the SEALs had sold out had been nudging around before he took the op; Ghost had used the story to give his disappearance credence.
Had Eduardo de Souza put two and two together and made an equation that spelled disaster for his heart, and Delia’s?
He couldn’t tell her. It would clear him in her eyes, yeah, but it would condemn her beloved father as a snob who’d torn his daughter’s life apart for the sake of bloodlines. For Eduardo de Souza had been Brazilian ambassador to the U.S.A., with the resources to find the truth. He could’ve easily verified the stories, discovered that Lieutenant McCall was a man with full military honors and an open offer from his admiral to return to the SEALs anytime he tired of playing international spy.
To clear his name in her eyes, to restore her trust in him, he’d have to destroy her beloved father’s memory.
“Touchy subject, I think?” Her soft voice broke through his inner blackness like a half rainbow in a storm cloud. “You don’t want me to ask you why you were dismissed.”
The unexpected understanding made his hands tighten on her shoulders. “No, I don’t. Thank you,” he said quietly. Few people in his life had respected his need for privacy and silence.
“So then, are you going to tell me why you were in my garden at two in the morning, terrifying me?” Far from belligerent, her voice was low, musical with feminine huskiness, a siren’s song.
He took the final step, putting his body within an inch of hers. “Did I terrify you? Do I terrify you?” His heart pounded out a different, insistent rhythm. Trust me, Beth. And it gave him a tiny start of surprise that her chosen name sprang to his mind, rather than her real name. Maybe it was because Beth, with its gentle, quiet loveliness, suited her so well.
She looked at him, then away, leaving a flash of incandescent blue behind that burned in his memory. “Yes, you terrify me…”
But it hadn’t been terror in her eyes then. Temptation slammed him in the guts, leaving him under its command. Her face—that unforgettable face, those amazing eyes, filled with desire and need—need for his touch…
She wanted it as bad as he did. Wanted him.
It would shoot all the Nighthawk rules to hell, rules he’d followed with the fanaticism of a zealot since joining the spy group ten years ago. If Anson knew, he’d strip him of his rank, turf him out of the Nighthawks, but right now he didn’t give a damn. With a low growl he reached for her—
“No.” A quiet word, weak and shaking, but combined with muddy hands that trembled and eyes filled with sudden, doe-like terror, it held all the force of a Mack truck.
He dropped his arms as if she’d used the baton on them. “Don’t be scared of me, Beth,” he said softly. “You know I’d never do anything to hurt you.”
She turned away, concentrating on her sodden, shapeless lump of clay as if it held all the secrets of life. “I don’t know anything about you, McCall. Don’t tell me anything. I don’t want to know. I just want you to leave. Get out of my life.”
He took the blow in silence, still and cold. Well, what had he expected—that she’d actually give a damn if a guy like him lived or died?
Oh, he had friends, the guys on his old SEAL team had never believed the rumors about his treason. To a man, they’d still eat a bullet for him. His navy seniors would return his rank to him, and give him a new team any day he asked. His fellow Nighthawks would jump out of a plane, chopper or ship to save him, but because of the necessity of absolute anonymity in the job, when he went home, he was alone.
Nothing new. It had been that way since he was eight years old. He’d been alone his whole life. Just the way it was.
He thought he’d learned to live with it. Obviously not since he’d returned to Delia’s—Beth Silver’s—life, and the strange thing was, it didn’t matter to him right now if she was Delia or not. He needed her with the same gut-burning intensity he’d felt ten years before, and hadn’t known since.
“Yeah, sure. I’ll go.” His voice grated a little, so what? It wouldn’t happen again. This wasn’t anything he wasn’t used to. He’d get over it. Get over her.
There was no other choice.
He turned at the door, hoping to God his face didn’t mirror the torture inside him. “But I’ll be back.” He walked out, willing his gut to untwist enough so he could breathe again.
Chapter 4
Come to hell, baby…
Even knowing she was playing with the destructive conflagration of a volcanic eruption, it had taken everything she had to hold out against the pull. The need.
Despite the orders she knew he was under, he’d given her the truth, trusting her with a painful piece of his past, and she heard his soul’s call in return. Beth was his unspoken cry in the perimeter of the shadow-world they both inhabited—and it was the name she heard inside him, the acceptance of who she said she was, that all but undid her.
Almost as much as the man himself.
Oh, the man. Even when he’d had the tourist’s mask in place, all she saw was the dark-hearted barbarian, the savage heathen pulling her out of her ordered, controlled, hemmed-in life. She heard it, heard all he wanted to say to her in just the air he breathed. The wild singing, like pagan night revels, bursting to life from deep within the tight-leashed male strength of McCall, commanded the long-dormant woman in her soul. Come to hell…
Drawing her there irresistibly. A mirror image to the mystery inside herself. McCall had scorch marks on his soul, a deep core of loneliness waiting to be unleashed, and a young boy’s dreams lying in scattered shards at his feet.
Yet like a mad, vulnerable boy playing a game beyond his ken, he picked them up and tried again, facing danger down with a grin and a challenge thrown like a gauntlet on a jagged cliff in a lightning storm, daring it to kill him. Come and get me, baby.
Temptation flooded her, almost beyond control. Her no had been a flickering defiance, all but whispered. He knew—he had to know the desire inside her, even as she tried to deny it—but he’d respected it. Respected her will, her wishes. He’d walked out when she’d asked. The sight of him leaving, his voice guttural and his eyes holding the very soul of darkness and self-hate, had gutted her. If she could have made herself speak, she’d have called him back.
Like a sudden slam in her ribs, she remembered five years ago, and the midnight call that had sent her and Danny on a life-or-death bolt across the world. Falcone’s men shot Dan through the forehead. He’s dead, love. Leave the country now, follow the procedure Dan set up for you, or they’ll find you within hours.
She shuddered. Even if she didn’t believe McCall was one of Falcone’s men, she couldn’t tell him. She couldn’t give in to the temptation to touch him. She had to get rid of him somehow, before they killed him just for knowing her.
I’ll be back.
For his sake, she had to pray he wouldn’t.
She started when the bell tinkled, announcing a customer. Looking at the sodden mass beneath her fingers, she groaned to herself. Oh, boy, she was losing it. Sitting here destroying her work, wasting time thinking about McCall when she should be making her plans for escape….
“Here. You need this.”
Starting with the rough, gravel-over-velvet voice from in front of her, she glared up at the dark, mysterious and so-very-sexy reason for her turmoil. Well, he said he’d he back…she just didn’t expect it so soon, nor had she expected him to be soaking wet and wearing an ankle-length dark leather coat, wrapped around him like the storm outside. “W-what’s this?”
His gaze on her was lush heat locked inside savage concern. “A sweet roll, fresh fruit and coffee. You need it.”
Unable to face him after he’d met her cruelty with rough kindness and care, she lowered her eyes. The fretful nap she’d fallen into after dawn left her too distracted to think of eating while getting Danny ready for school, and she’d forgotten lunch.
How he knew, she didn’t question. She lifted her clay-coated hands. “Can you mind the store while I wash?”
He shrugged off the coat, hanging it on the door hook. Beneath the damp, close-fitting deep green knit sweater, his muscles flexed and rippled with the movement. Danger honed inside dark masculine beauty. “Are you sure you trust me in your precious store? I could have a moving truck around the bend.”
She threw him a wry glance. “Somehow I don’t think it’s my pottery you’re after.” Even if he looked throughout the store, even broke into the house and ransacked it, he’d find nothing.
Good reminder. The world righted itself again. That big, muscular bronzed body of his was unkickable…and that was as far as she’d trust him, no matter how often he fed her.
She got to her feet, and the world took a sharp turn right—uh, right or left? She blinked to reorient herself, but even half a dozen did nothing to reduce the sudden vertigo.
The low growl shivered into her nerve endings; his arms came around her, keeping her upright. “Come here.” A moment later she was in the big, padded wing chair she kept for customers. He crouched down right beside her, putting a morsel of warm sweet roll between her lips. Its rich flavor burst onto her tongue with lush stickiness. “How long has it been since you ate?”
She welcomed the taste of the honey, nuts and fruit inside the roll, like a fruity baklava, with a soft moan of delight. “I haven’t been hungry.”
He fed her another piece. “Get hungry. You can’t get away with erratic eating habits anymore. You’re a mother.”
His blunt words made her stiffen, but he was right. She couldn’t function properly if she allowed the stress of McCall’s eruption into her life to disrupt her eating habits. She couldn’t escape if she was too weak to run.
How ironic that the one person who should want her weak and needing and afraid was feeding her, taking care of her, keeping her strong.
He’s just trying to make me trust him. But she couldn’t stop eating the wonderful food, couldn’t hold back from looking into his eyes…eyes so tense and filled with commanding, compelling desire, she gave a hot shiver. His taut, muscular frame, masking burning heat and hiding a leashed savagery, made her feel alive and strong—and like a woman for the first time in a decade.
“C’mon, Beth, I know you like it. Open your mouth.” The low, sensual growl didn’t startle her; it had long ago become part of her, waking or sleeping, an internal “on” switch only he knew how to find in her. She opened her mouth for him without even making the conscious decision.
Frozen. She’d been frozen since Papa told her that the man she adored was a traitor to his country. Her emotions encased in a delicate layer of ice, afraid to trust her own judgment. Now the ice was melting. With one look from his forest eyes, fire slammed into ice and kept on burning, hard and bright and remorseless as the sun. Within a day he’d brought her back to life. The ice that had been her protection for a decade was a puddle of warm, slushy water at his feet.
She automatically opened her mouth for more food when he urged her, finishing the roll and fruit salad with yogurt.
“Good girl,” he whispered in her ear, making her shiver, warm and sensual. Fear and distrust, sweetness and pain, defiance and trust and need…McCall left her in a perpetual state of confusion. A man absolutely and utterly wrong for her, yet so right….
Yes, a hit man in the employ of an arms and drugs dealer would be just right for a woman on the run.
Yet when he held the polystyrene cup to her mouth, she drank, as trusting as a baby, and another taste explosion filled her. Oh, joy—her favorite South American blend of mocha coffee! She moaned as the exotic sweetness ran riot on her tongue. With cream and sugar, just as she liked it. Just as he’d brought it for her years ago, complete with hamburger and fries. Nobody else dared give her food that could make her put on a single ounce. But Brendan had known how much she loved rich food and drink; it was her personal ambrosia and nectar, and by the time she’d met him she’d no longer cared if she was super-thin or not, a supermodel or not. And he’d known that, too.
He knew too much…oh, dear God, what had she done? He’d set her the simplest of tests, and she’d failed!
She didn’t dare let her gaze fly to his, or let herself stiffen. Danny, think of Danny! “Oh, this coffee’s good….” Her purr was alive with sensual discovery. “Would you mind telling me what blend it is? I’ll have to put it on my shopping list.”
“Games can only last so long.” He tipped up her chin, making her look at him. “I didn’t buy the coffee to trip you up.”
Maybe he hadn’t, but she had tripped up, and they both knew it. “I’m feeling better now.” She got to her feet. “Thank you,” she said simply. “I hadn’t realized how long I’d gone without.”
He shrugged. “It’s been a while, but I’m kind of used to doing it.” For you.
The unspoken words shimmered in the warm, fragrant air inside the studio, the dangerous half light of the storm outside, and she wanted to scream. For years her cover had been impenetrable. Now, within a day, she was giving herself away with every word and act. Even to allowing him to feed her foods he knew his Delia would have loved. Dizzy as she was, her strict upbringing would never have allowed her to trust a real stranger so completely, the stranger she’d claimed McCall to be…and no man would know that fact better than he, who had seen her freeze when any other man even tried to make the slightest move on her.
She’d never allowed any man to touch her but her beloved SEAL, her Brendan, whom she’d brought to life as he had her.
From that first brooding look, she’d been intrigued; but when he didn’t try to touch her apart from the demands of the photographer, she’d felt drawn. Then, when he actually made her smile and even laugh amidst the crowd of bodyguards, hangers-on and wanna-bes she’d so hated, she’d tumbled, head over feet, straight into first love. She’d given Brendan her heart and soul, her hopes and dreams. So he’d learned what she couldn’t resist, and gave it to her with the smile that made her want to do anything to please him.
Damn it, she’d just revealed another chink in her armor—her unconscious acceptance of the rights she’d once given him to touch her, feed her, care for her. The past she’d tried so hard to lock away in darkness had been brought to light with a stupid cup of coffee and sweet food.
Pull yourself together! Danny’s innocence and freedom—and your life—depends upon this. McCall’s knowledge of you is stronger than anyone alive. You can’t let him see inside, just like he won’t let you see inside him.
Denial was not only superfluous at this point; it was ridiculous, beneath her intelligence and his. So she chose to take refuge in deflection. “I need my wheel now, Mr. McCall.”
His eyes turned as dark as the crashing clouds outside as he got to his feet. He stood before her with feet splayed and arms folded, aggressively male. “Playing the fiddle while Rome burns? It’s too late, too dangerous, to continue to deny what I already know is the truth. We have to talk.”
Meeting fire with fire, she lifted her chin in cool challenge, daring him to keep trying to get inside her mind. “We do? We do—does that mean you’ll give me something beyond your tourist prattle and your former rank and serial number?”
The walls slammed into place before her eyes, bricks and mortar rendered in granite. “I thought not.” She nodded toward the door. “Mr. McCall, this is still my property. Watch from across the street. I may not have any customers until after the storm, but you’d scare any off that dared to come out in this weather.”
He took a step toward her, two. “That’s the intention.”
Her eyebrows lifted. “Well, we’ve come forward—some honesty at last. Maybe soon you’ll even tell me what you want from me.”
Taking the final step, he touched that high-held chin. His gaze, burning hot and dark as starless midnight, settled on her mouth, and she shuddered in raw desire and hopeless confusion. “Take out the ‘what’ and ‘from,’ and you get the picture. I want you, no matter what your name is.”
Aching, she lifted a hand, and the dry clay on her fingers and palm cracked and fell to the floor at the same time as thunder split the sky outside—and his last words penetrated her consciousness. Her hand fell. “More honesty. That’s impressive. A shame it all seems to revolve around your delusions of who I am.”
He gave a low growl of frustration and cupped his hand around her arm, his touch as tender as his words were uncompromising. “You don’t have much time left. They’re on the move. He’ll come himself this time. And he’s not coming to reclaim his wife. You humiliated him in front of his people, his world. He’s coming to kill you personally.”
On some deeper level she felt the gentle motions of his hand supporting her, but over and above it was the whitening of her cheek, like a gunshot to a vein leeching out her life force. Control, control… It took all she had, drawing on strength she didn’t know was still inside her after so many years on the run, but she didn’t sway into him, or lean on him. “Let go of me.”
His hand dropped. He took a step back. Watching her.
Her eyes held his, shattered, pleading. “Let me go. Please. I can make life safe for my son again, if you leave for an hour.”
Fingers curled into palms, making tight fists, as his eyes squeezed shut. A breath came from him as if it had been forced, a warm, coffee-scented zephyr from the heart of a man in torture. “I can’t. God help us both, Beth, even if you and your son weren’t in more danger than you can handle, I can’t.”
She dragged in air. His scent came inside her like a beloved enemy, and she knew that scent, heat and coffee and rain, ancient pain and pagan need, would haunt her for the rest of her days. “Don’t do this to me. Don’t destroy my life.”
Eyes bleak as midwinter opened. “I don’t have a choice. You have a day, two at most. You’ll need me when it all goes down.”
You don’t have much time. They’re on the move. The echo of his voice kept resonating back to her, each time more urgent, more imperative. You humiliated him…he’ll kill you personally.
Given what Ana had told her about Falcone, every word made perfect sense. Did he know from personal experience?
“There’s an umbrella in the stand behind the door,” she said quietly. It wasn’t an inference; it was a command. Go.
Without a word he tossed the coat over his shoulder and strode out into the rain. Half-wild storm winds swirled around him, soaking him. And from the hill across the road he watched still, tense and strong and with an overwhelmingly masculine beauty. Yet he’d never looked more alone.
She turned from the sight, aching with regret for what couldn’t be. Whether he was a good guy or in Falcone’s pay, no matter how she felt about him, she didn’t have a choice.
You have a day. Two at most.
She’d been responsible for enough deaths. She had to get away—from here, and from McCall—before she killed him, too.
McCall stood across the road, watching her close the store. Though the rain worsened with the close of day, his coat stayed slung over his shoulder; he barely noticed the lashing bite of the hard-hitting needles of water. All his life, from fishing boats to the navy and SEALs, and now with the Nighthawks, he was used to extremes of weather, especially water. He was used to being alone and cold; it didn’t bother him.
What got to him was Beth dismissing him. Take the umbrella and go. Watch me from outside, out in the rain where you belong.
Even when she’d said she loved him a decade ago, he’d always felt on the outside looking in with her, a guttersnipe daring to look at a duchess. Nothing had changed in ten years, except her address and marital status. The freezing tone of her voice—the dismissal bordering on contempt—left a slightly acrid taste in his mouth, as if he’d inhaled the cordite from a smoking gun.
Yeah, and the gun was from his own pocket. Being near her was a constant game of Russian roulette, yet like a fool he just kept on turning that barrel….
