The Phoenix Encounter

by Linda Castillo

  Lily cut the thought short with brutal precision. Now wasn’t the time to remember how well she’d once known this man.

  “You can’t possibly be my contact,” he said after an excruciating minute.

  “I am.” Having lost her appetite for the tea, she took it to the sink and dumped it.

  “Lily, for God’s sake, I thought you were dead.”

  For a while, Lily had thought she’d been dead, too, only to realize that sometimes it was much more painful to be alive. The old pain roiled inside her as the memories shifted restlessly. Memories she’d refused to think of because the pain was too great. Memories that had eaten at her from the inside out for nearly two years. If it hadn’t been for Jack, she wasn’t sure she would have survived. Sweet, precious Jack had given her hope when the last of her hope had been all but ripped from her heart.

  Gathering her frazzled nerves and the tangled remnants of her composure, she turned to face him. “As you can see, I’m very much alive.”

  “I can see that. But…my God, how—”

  “I was injured.” Self-conscious, she touched the scar at her temple and tried not to remember that her physical injuries had not been the worst of what she’d endured.

  He stared at her with those hard eyes, and she knew the shock of seeing her was giving way to the need for an explanation. A explanation she had absolutely no idea how to relay. She’d consoled herself with anger in the weeks she’d been held captive, tried hard to convince herself that Robert had abandoned her. Some days she’d even believed it. Days when it was easier to be angry than it was to hurt.

  “Why didn’t you contact me?” he asked incredulously. “Why didn’t you let me know you were alive?”

  Because she hadn’t the slightest clue how to answer him without opening a Pandora’s box of pain that would change both of their lives irrevocably, she turned to rinse the cup. Stacking it neatly on the rack, she crossed to the fire to warm her hands, aware that Robert had trailed her.

  “I can’t discuss that right now,” she said.

  He stared at her, his expression incredulous and angry. “I deserve an explanation, damn it. We were…together.”

  Pulse pounding like a jackhammer, she stared at him. “It’s in the past, Robert. Let it go. I’ve moved on. Maybe you should have, too.”

  Robert felt as if he’d been slapped. “I want to know what happened.”

  “No, you don’t.” Because she couldn’t bear to look at him and think of those terrible days, she walked into the small living area and motioned for him to take one of two chairs in front of the hearth.

  Never taking his eyes from her, he started for the farthest chair, but had to cross in front of her to reach it. Feeling as if she’d suddenly strayed too close to a rogue tiger in a flimsy cage, she backed up a step, trying not to notice the way he winced when he sat down.

  “You’re limping,” she said, watching him closely.

  “It’s an old injury.”

  She wondered which were worse, the injuries that left scars on flesh or the ones that left an indelible mark on the psyche and shattered the heart. “If you want to get into some dry clothes, I can hang yours near the fire.”

  He looked at the sweater and jeans that clung damply to his frame. “I’ve got a change of clothes in the duffel.”

  “You can change in the back. There’s a room for you.”

  Robert grabbed his duffel and slung it over his shoulder. Lily rose and walked through the kitchen to the small room that had been added to the cottage as a pantry many years ago, back when people had had food. With wood plank floors and shelves holding a meager supply of canned vegetables and fruits, it was barely large enough for the cot, let alone a man of Robert’s size. But it was all she had and it was going to have to do.

  He stepped into the room and set his duffel on the narrow cot. The mirror above the sink caught his stare, and their eyes met, held.

  Lily felt the contact like the blast of a mortar. Looking quickly away, she stepped back. “There’s no door, but Jacques put up this curtain to give you some privacy.”

  “This is fine.”

  “I’ll just…be in the living room.”

  “I’ll be there in a minute.”

  She wasn’t sure why she hesitated. Maybe because there was so much more she needed to say. Maybe because she wasn’t quite sure if he was a figment of her imagination. But she couldn’t stop looking at him. By the time she realized what she was doing, it was too late for her to escape.

  Never taking his eyes from hers, Robert reached for the hem of his sweater and pulled it over his head. Lily’s breath stalled in her lungs as his magnificent chest loomed into view. She saw a thatch of dark hair. The ripple of muscle beneath taut flesh. Vivid blue eyes that discerned a hell of a lot more than they revealed. The sight of him shook her, and for a moment she couldn’t move. She’d faced a lot of terrible things in the years she’d been in Rebelia, but oddly none of those things had unnerved her as much as the sight of Dr. Robert Davidson taking off his shirt.

  “Maybe you want to stay while I change pants, too,” he said.

  Feeling a hot blush burn her cheeks, she yanked the muslin curtain closed and fled.

  Lily’s heart was still beating heavily against her breast a few minutes later when Robert walked into the living area and found her at the hearth.

  “Where do you want me to put my clothes?” he asked.

  She turned to find him standing right behind her, his wet clothes in a bundle. He’d put on a flannel shirt over a black T-shirt. The faded jeans he wore fit him loosely, but there was no denying the sinew of his legs or the bulge of his manhood beneath.

  Barely sparing him a glance, she took the clothes from him. Pulling a ring set into the wall over the hearth, she stretched the thin cord to the opposite wall and secured it to a small hook. Once the line was taut, she set about draping his jeans, shirt and jacket over the cord. She could feel his eyes on her as she worked, but she didn’t dare turn to face him. She had to get herself calmed down first.

  “How is it that you’re here?” he asked when she’d finished.

  Because she didn’t feel capable of explaining something so complex at the moment, she hedged. “I could ask you the same question.”

  “All right. I’m working with a group of French doctors on a humanitarian—”

  She swung to face him. “That doesn’t explain why you’re here. In my house. I wasn’t expecting an American.”

  “Exactly who were you expecting?”

  “Someone…who needed information. For the cause.”

  “The freedom movement?”

  “That’s right.”

  He shrugged. “You got me.”

  A vague sense of uneasiness rippled through her. Robert Davidson might be a smart man, he might even be brilliant, but he’d never been a good liar. “I don’t understand what part you’re playing in this.”

  “Maybe you don’t need to know. Maybe I just want you to talk to me about what you know. About what you’ve been hearing.”

  “Why are you here?”

  “Let’s just say I’m not here for the weather.” He rolled his shoulder. “I want information.”

  “What kind of information?”

  “You’re involved with the freedom movement.” He shrugged. “Maybe you know something that could be useful.”

  “Like what?”

  He hit her with a direct stare. “What do you know about Bruno DeBruzkya?”

  Another ripple of uneasiness went through her, only stronger this time and she fought a slow rise of panic.

  When she didn’t answer, he smiled, but it was a cold, hard smile. “Okay. If you don’t want to talk about DeBruzkya, we can always go back to him.” He looked around the room. “Maybe you could start by telling me what you’re doing here. Why you’re living here. Like this.”

  The question shouldn’t have startled her. She’d known he would eventually begin asking more personal questions. Risking a lo
ok at him, she found him watching her intently and felt his stare all the way to her bones.

  “That’s not a difficult question, is it?” he asked.

  No, she thought. He wasn’t asking the difficult questions yet. But she knew they were coming. And she had absolutely no idea how to answer any of them.

  “I’m involved with the freedom movement. I get food and medical supplies to the sick children. The orphans. I raise money, collect food and toys and try to give them hope, let them know someone in the world cares.”

  “You still working?”

  “I wrote for the Rebelian Times Press for a while.”

  “And now?”

  “A few months ago DeBruzkya took control of the media, and I just couldn’t do it any longer.”

  “Censorship,” Robert said with distaste.

  Lily nodded, feeling the same distaste all the way to her bones. “I kept writing. About the war. About the people. The children. They’ve all got stories to tell. Some of them are quite amazing.” She grimaced. “I didn’t have an income, but by then the economy was so bad it didn’t really matter. I sent pieces to the Guardian in London and the New York Times. One thing led to another, and before I knew it I had started a sort of underground newspaper.”

  He cut her a sharp look. “Jesus, Lily…”

  “The Rebellion is printed weekly. For some people, it’s the only way they can find out what’s going on in their own country that isn’t fabricated by the government or part of DeBruzkya’s propaganda.”

  He stared at her intently. “DeBruzkya doesn’t tolerate journalists who print the truth. He’s murdered them in the past. Damn it, Lily, he’s brutal—”

  “He doesn’t know about the Rebellion.”

  “Lily, for God’s sake, how can you be so naive?”

  “I may be a lot of things,” she snapped, “but naive isn’t one of them.”

  Rising abruptly, Robert limped to the fire. Setting his hand against the mantel, he leaned and stared into the flames, the muscles in his jaws working angrily. “DeBruzkya is ruthless. If he wants to find you, he’ll stop at nothing until he does.”

  The words chilled her, but Lily didn’t let herself react. She might be afraid on occasion, but she refused to live her life in fear. She refused to let it make her decisions for her. “I’ve been careful. I write under a pseudonym. He doesn’t know I’m an American. He doesn’t know where I live.”

  “I don’t understand how you can believe that, unless you’re into denial.”

  “I’m not denying anything.”

  “He’s a dangerous son of a bitch, Lily. Especially to the people who’ve crossed him.”

  “I haven’t crossed him.”

  He cut her a hard look. “I’d say running an underground newspaper in the midst of his dirty little war qualifies as crossing him. Information in the wrong hands can be a dangerous thing to a dictator.”

  “It would be a thousand times worse if I sat back and did nothing.”

  For the first time the layers of anger thinned enough for her to see the raw pain beneath, and she knew his concern for her was real. The realization touched her, and she felt her emotions shift dangerously.

  “Why do you do it?” he asked quietly.

  For the lost ones, she thought. “Because I have to.”

  He contemplated her like an angry dog that had just been swiped by a unassuming feline. Lily stared back, wondering how he would react if he knew everything.

  And as she gazed into the electric blue of his eyes, the endless months they’d been apart melted away like steel in a smelter. The pang of longing was so powerful that for a moment she couldn’t catch her breath. The urge to go to him pulled at her like a dangerous tide. A riptide easing a hapless swimmer into a treacherous sea.

  But because she knew he represented a very real danger to her—because she represented an even bigger threat to him—Lily banished the thoughts. She could never think of Robert in those terms again. Going to him, touching him, getting too close were things she couldn’t allow herself to do. Giving in to the feelings coiling inside her might just get them both killed.

  A cry from the bedroom at the rear of the cottage jolted her. She felt Robert’s questioning stare on her, but she didn’t dare meet his gaze. In her peripheral vision she saw him glance toward the rear of the cottage, and a shudder ran the length of her. For a instant, she stood there, frozen with indecision, a hundred emotions pulling her in a hundred different directions.

  “Is there a child here?” he asked.

  Trying in vain not to shake, Lily rose from the chair. “That’s…Jack.”

  “Jack? Who is Jack?”

  She started toward the bedroom, keenly aware that Robert was following her and that she didn’t have the slightest idea how she was going to explain a one-year-old baby to a man who had every right to know.

  Lily closed her eyes. “Jack is…my son.”

  Behind her, she heard Robert stop dead in his tracks, but she didn’t slow down. She didn’t turn to look at him. She wasn’t sure what her eyes would reveal if she did. She’d never been able to lie—not to Robert. She wouldn’t lie now—even if the truth was more brutal than any lie she could have fabricated.

  Jack is my son.

  The words reverberated like the echo of a killing shot inside Robert’s head. He stood in the semidarkness of the hall and watched Lily disappear into a small bedroom at the rear of the cottage, his head reeling.

  Lily had a child. He couldn’t believe it. Couldn’t believe she’d moved on so easily while he’d spent the last twenty-one months crippled by the past. The thought angered him, shook him more than he wanted to admit. He tried to blame his reaction on exhaustion and stress and the shock of seeing her again after believing her dead for so long. But he knew there was more to it than that. Knew it went a hell of a lot deeper than any of those things.

  Movement down the hall yanked him from his dark reverie. He looked up to see Lily holding a small bundle wrapped in a blanket. A blue blanket. He wondered how, in a country as devastated as Rebelia, she’d managed to find a blue blanket for her baby boy.

  He stared at her, then the child, trying desperately not to think about what her having a child meant.

  I’ve moved on. You should have, too.

  The full meaning of the words penetrated his brain. Evidently, she had, indeed, moved on. Judging from the size of the baby, she hadn’t waited too long after Robert had left to do so. He wondered who the father was and tried like hell to ignore the knot of jealousy that tightened in his gut. He knew it was stupid to feel that way. His relationship with Lily had been over for a long time. Any feelings he’d once had for her had been replaced by bitterness.

  The bitterness surged forth now with such force that Robert could taste its acrid flavor at the back of his throat. He watched her approach, then pass him without acknowledging him. Feeling angry and out of place, he trailed her to the living room, then paused to watch her spread a blanket on the sofa and lay the child down to change him.

  “He’s your…son?” he asked.

  She didn’t look at him but continued tending the baby. “Yes.”

  Robert felt the affirmation like a physical punch. Lily had a son. He couldn’t believe it. His brain simply refused to absorb the information. “How old is he?”

  She did look at him then, but her hazel eyes were cool. “About nine months.”

  Mentally he calculated the months, felt a hot cauldron of anger begin to boil. No, she hadn’t waited very long at all.

  “His name is Jack,” she added.

  “Jack.” He repeated the name, thinking of the young man who’d brought him here. His name was also Jacques, but he’d had a French accent and pronounced it differently. Robert wondered if Jacques was this child’s father.

  Robert thought of the endless months of grief. The kind of black grief that ate at a man’s soul and changed who he was. He thought of all the surgeries that had been required to repair the shattered bo
ne in his thigh. The ensuing months of rehabilitation. The knowledge that he would never be the same. He thought of the secret hope he’d held in his heart that Lily would show up alive and smiling and ready to spend the rest of her life with him. God, he’d been such a fool.

  It infuriated him that while he’d been going through all those things, she’d taken up with another man—and had a son with him.

  Anger and jealousy melded into a single, ugly emotion and snarled inside him like a rabid beast. He wanted to lash out at her. The words were poised on his tongue, sharp as a knife and ready to cut. But he knew better than to let that beast out of its cage. Knew it would take him apart if he let it.

  With the mission foremost in his mind, he couldn’t let that happen.

  Relieved that Lily was busy tending to the baby, Robert closed his eyes, willing away the emotions swamping him. She’d moved on. He had to accept it. She was alive. That was the important thing. It would have to be enough.

  “He’s been ill,” she said, fastening old-fashioned diaper pins at Jack’s pudgy hips. “I’ve taken him to the doctor in the village, but Dr. Salov hasn’t been able to give me a diagnosis.”

  Robert’s attention snapped to Lily. “The baby has been sick?” For an instant, angry male and concerned doctor clashed. Then his physician’s mind clicked into place. “What are the symptoms?”

  Lily lifted the child, then pressed a kiss to his forehead. “The symptoms haven’t been consistent, but several times I’ve noticed that his fingers and toes are blue. Sometimes he’s cold to the touch. He had a low-grade fever last week, but it went away after a couple of days.” She looked at the child in her arms, worry creasing her brows. “Sometimes he’s…lethargic. He sleeps a little too much. Some days he doesn’t eat enough.”