REILLY'S RETURN

by Amelia Autin

  The gun thudded to the table, and the eyes that met hers were dark and dangerous. "What the hell is that supposed to mean?"

  "Just what I said. I know you're stuck with me for now, until you catch David Pennington, but you don't have to pretend you care. It's not necessary, and frankly, I'd just as soon you didn't."

  He was out of his chair and grasping her shoulders before she knew it, pulling her to her feet. Warmth pulsed off him in angry waves, and Mandy's head swam dizzily for a moment.

  "Don't push me," he warned, and a frisson of fearful excitement ran down her spine. His grip tightened, and she knew there would be faint, smudgelike bruises on her arms come morning, but she didn't mind. At least Reilly was showing her some honest-to-God emotion, rather than that wooden detachment he'd displayed earlier.

  "Let me go," she demanded, struggling just enough to show she meant business, but not enough to actually break free. "You've made it very clear what you think of me and I don't want you touching me anymore."

  He ignored her struggles and pulled her closer. A fine tremor ran through him and transferred itself to her. "Is that what you really think? That I don't care?" When she didn't answer he shook her and said in a tortured voice, "I wish to God I didn't care. Then maybe I could forget." He paused for a harshly drawn breath, then whispered, "Maybe I could forgive."

  That stung Mandy on the raw. She fought Reilly for real this time, with all her strength, and finally wrenched free. She backed away, panting a little, the pain in her arms nothing to the pain in her heart. "I can't make it go away." Her breath caught, but the words kept coming. "I can't go back in time and make it never happen, just as I couldn't change what supposedly happened to you."

  He flinched, but she was past caring. "You're not the only one who can't forget, you know," she flung at him. "I tried. I thought Cody could make me forget what it was like to make love with you, what it felt like to sleep in your arms, but—"

  "Is that what you thought I meant? That I couldn't forget about you and Walker?" Reilly shook his head and laughed without humor. He passed a hand over his face, and when he looked at her again she was shocked by the bleakness in his eyes. "No, Mandy," he said, shaking his head again. "It's not what you did I can't forget. It's what I did."

  "What do you mean?"

  His face twisted, but he didn't spare himself. "I killed our baby."

  A denial sprang to her lips, but before she could speak he said, "Don't bother denying it. You almost came right out and accused me of it this morning."

  "I was upset, but—"

  "No. You were honest. Brutally honest, but…" He shrugged his shoulders. "You blame me for losing the baby, and I understand that." His voice shook with repressed emotion. "I blame myself, too."

  She didn't know what to say. He was right in a way, and she'd be lying if she said otherwise. A part of her did hold him responsible, but in her heart of hearts she knew the fault wasn't entirely his. If she'd told him about the baby sooner, when she'd first suspected she was pregnant, maybe things would have been different. If she hadn't been such a coward…

  She had to know the answer. "If I had told you about the baby before you left, would you have taken me with you?"

  Because she was half expecting an emphatic confirmation, she was surprised when none was forthcoming. "Reilly?" she asked, hesitant now. "What would you have done?"

  His lips thinned beneath his mustache. "I know what you want me to say," he said curtly. "I wish I could say it. The truth is, I don't know. A baby would have made you even more vulnerable, and I was a hunted man. Given the situation with Pennington…" He met her eyes squarely. "I just don't know if I would have done anything differently."

  It made absolutely no sense, Mandy thought. She should be angry with him. Or hurt. Or any of a dozen emotions other than what she was feeling.

  Loved. Cherished.

  The memory of the night he returned flashed through her mind. Reilly covering her body with his own when the first firebomb crashed through the window. Dragging her after him with a death grip as he crawled toward safety. Braving the wall of flames in the kitchen to rescue her when the second firebomb trapped her without an escape route. Shielding her in the tunnel when the propane tank blew.

  Reilly was a born protector. She'd had some inkling of it after they'd made love last night, but she saw now that it went far beyond just being a cop.

  There were other signs, too, obvious now that she thought of it. Reilly jury-rigging a security system for her out of little more than rope and wire. Leaving her his spare gun and making sure she knew how to use it. Going after last night's intruder alone, leaving her behind in the relative safety of the cabin.

  Protector. That one word defined him in ways she was only beginning to understand and accept. It was what made him go after Pennington in the first place, what made him willingly take risks other men balked at.

  It even explained why he'd resisted taking what she'd shyly offered him only a couple of weeks after they'd first met. Most men would have jumped at the chance, but not Reilly. He'd turned her down so gently that it hadn't seemed like a rejection, but a compliment, and had only made her love him more. He'd held off for almost two months—even though she'd made it perfectly plain how much she wanted him—protecting her from him and his secret past.

  And because he was a protector, he couldn't forgive himself for the loss of their baby.

  He wouldn't take the easy way out, either. She'd given him the perfect opportunity to sidestep responsibility, but he hadn't taken it, preferring the honesty between them that she'd demanded. Could she be any less honest with him?

  "It wasn't all your fault," she whispered.

  "Yes, it was. I should never have involved you, back then or now. If I'd never touched you, none of this would have happened."

  Mandy shook her head. "You talk as if I had no say in the matter. Let me remind you that I seduced you the first time." She blushed a little, but went on. "I was the one who wouldn't let you leave."

  A tender smile softened his face momentarily, tilting up the corners of his mouth in the way she'd always loved, and she sensed that if things had been different between them he would have reached out and caressed her cheek. "I remember," he said. The smile faded and he just stood there watching her. He didn't say or do anything else, but his vivid tawny eyes betrayed him.

  "Reilly?" She took a step toward him and spoke his name before she was aware.

  "What?"

  Suddenly flustered and unsure, she shook her head and said, "Nothing."

  An age-old weariness seemed to settle on his shoulders. "Can't you tell me?" he asked gently. "Have I killed your trust along with everything else?"

  The vulnerable expression in his eyes freed her tongue, and she blurted out the question she'd longed to ask. "You don't really hate me, do you?"

  Pain flickered across his features, a response he didn't even try to hide. Then he shook his head.

  "Then why did you say what you said this morning?"

  "I said a hell of lot of things this morning. Which one in particular?"

  "That it wouldn't have mattered if I'd explained about the baby and Cody before we made love last night."

  His harsh laugh startled her. "That wasn't what you asked," he said. "You asked if it would have made a difference in how I felt."

  "It's the same thing."

  This time he did reach out and touch her, brushing a tangled curl away from her face and tucking it behind her ear. "No. It's not."

  "I don't understand."

  He hesitated. "I don't know if I can explain. I told you before, I don't have a lot of experience in talking about my emotions."

  Mandy remembered Reilly's confession last night that he'd grown up in orphanages and foster homes, and understood. It was hard to break the habits of a lifetime. She needed an answer, though, so she pleaded, "Please try. I have to know."

  "I went over and over it in my mind last night," he said after a moment. "I was angry,
angrier than I'd ever been in my life. I couldn't believe you'd betrayed me like that, not after…" He ran his fingers over his face, feeling the changes plastic surgery had wrought. "This was for you, so I could come back for you someday. I wouldn't have done it otherwise."

  "I … I think I knew that."

  He didn't acknowledge her interruption. "I thought you'd been lying to me all along. That you never loved me."

  "Oh, no!"

  "Yeah." His eyes darkened. "I wanted to kill Walker for touching you, as if wiping him out could wipe away the images of you in his arms."

  She'd asked for the truth, Mandy thought, but she didn't know if she could bear seeing Reilly lay his heart open like this.

  "When Walker told me about the baby this morning," he continued, "and that you'd almost died, I knew deep down that I had no one but myself to blame for all of it."

  She couldn't let him suffer like this. She threw herself at him, wrapping her arms around his waist and pressing her face against his shoulder. "It was my fault, too."

  She felt the struggle within him before his arms reluctantly closed around her, almost as if he thought he didn't have the right to hold her anymore. "I thought nothing could hurt worse than hearing about the baby," he said in husky tones that reverberated through her body. "Then you told me you tried to kill yourself."

  * * *

  It was past midnight on the East Coast, but David Pennington wasn't asleep. When the phone rang he picked it up and waited impatiently while the man known as Centurion identified himself with the proper code sequences. Then he listened intently to the information the man imparted, nodding his head in silent agreement with the plan sketched out for him.

  After a couple of minutes he frowned and said, "No, that's not necessary. I'll find my own way there. You just make sure Callahan shows up on time and not before."

  "Yes, sir."

  "Don't screw it up this time. If the operation goes smoothly, I'll consider removing the black mark from your record." He didn't have to add the unspoken threat that accompanied his statement. He seldom had to. Few men received second chances from him.

  "Thank you, sir. You don't have to worry. Everything will go like clockwork tomorrow night."

  "Make sure of it," Pennington said, then hung up abruptly and dialed another number. Minutes later, his flight to Wyoming was arranged.

  He sat back in his chair, sipping his brandy, mulling the plan over in his mind and finding no flaws. Then he considered his adversary.

  Callahan was a fool for going back to Black Rock, he decided. With his new face, Callahan could have escaped detection if he hadn't returned for the woman. But every man had at least one weakness. It hadn't been too difficult to spot Callahan's.

  Pennington chuckled to himself, a sinister sound made all the more so because he was alone in the room. I can't wait to see Callahan's expression, he thought, when I tell him who betrayed him. When I tell him that he and Centurion share the same weakness.

  * * *

  Chapter 13

  « ^ »

  Mandy rubbed her cheek against Reilly's chest as if she could erase her confession of attempted suicide that way. "I shouldn't have told you."

  "It was true, wasn't it?"

  "Yes, but—"

  "Then you should have told me."

  "Not like that. Not as a way to hurt you."

  "Oh, Mandy." The sadness in his voice made her lift her head to gaze up at him. "I would have been hurt no matter how I learned about it."

  She closed her eyes to shut out the naked emotion reflected in his face, then rested her head against him once more. They stood like that for a span of time that seemed endless, then Mandy sighed and gently attempted to disengage herself from Reilly's embrace. His arms tightened around her momentarily, but then he loosened his hold and freed her. She moved a step or two away and brushed her hair back nervously.

  "So where do we go from here?" she asked with a catch in her throat.

  "I don't know." He leaned his weight on one hip and tucked his hands into the back pockets of his jeans. "The way things stand right now, I shouldn't even be thinking about anything past tomorrow."

  His statement reminded Mandy that their personal crisis wasn't the only one they were facing. She was just about to agree that they should wait to talk about their future, when he asked diffidently, "Where is it you want us to go?"

  "After … after everything is over," she said, still refusing to accept the possibility that after the confrontation with Pennington, Reilly might not even be alive. "Afterward, are you planning to stay … in Black Rock?"

  He shook his head slowly. "I can't. No matter what happens tomorrow, there's still a chance someone might come gunning for me. This is the first place they'll look."

  "Will the witness protection program give you a new identity? A new life?"

  "I won't be going into the program again."

  Mandy wrinkled her brow. "Why not?" The answer came to her and she said, "You don't trust them anymore."

  "No. I don't." He moved impatiently. "It probably isn't their fault that Pennington's men tracked me down, but I won't take that chance again."

  She hesitated. They had settled nothing between them as yet, and she knew those emotional issues should be dealt with before asking the question uppermost in her mind. But time was short. If she didn't ask him now, she might not have another opportunity, and she wasn't about to let him leave without hearing his answer. "When you go," she said straight out. "Are you planning on taking me with you?"

  His eyes narrowed a fraction. "I guess that depends on you."

  Having screwed up her courage to ask the first question, the second wasn't quite as difficult. "Do you want me to go with you?"

  "It would be safer for you."

  "That's not what I asked." Her heart was pounding. "Now that you know about—" she couldn't bring herself to say Cody's name "—about everything, do you want to take me with you this time?"

  "This time?" He shifted the emphasis to the last two words of her question, denying it with a shake of his head. "I've always wanted you with me."

  Reilly's low-voiced confession went straight to her heart, temporarily depriving Mandy of speech. His next words brought tears to her eyes.

  "Then. Now. It makes no difference. I've always wanted you with me," he reiterated, "and I always will. I don't know what that says about me, about my pride, but—"

  "Pride doesn't come into it," she said fiercely, making a valiant effort to hold back the tears. "Will pride sleep in your arms? Will pride guard your back? Will pride give you children to—" She almost couldn't finish. "To love and cherish and protect?"

  He seemed taken aback at first, then he closed the distance between them, grasping her arms with a fine disregard for his strength. "You said—" He choked on the words. "You said this morning that you couldn't have children anymore."

  She was confused for a few seconds, wondering what on earth he was referring to. Then she understood. Her voice was gentle as she explained, "I said I would never carry a child again. Not that I couldn't."

  His grip relaxed a little, but he was still tense. "But…"

  A dozen different responses occurred to her, but Mandy went with her instincts. "I said something else this morning," she reminded him, capturing his right hand with both of hers and cradling it against her cheek. "I said I knew I would never love again. That implied I had a choice in the matter. What I should have said was, I could never love again. Not after loving you."

  There was a fine tremor in his rigidly held muscles, and his voice wasn't quite steady. "You have a choice now."

  She turned her head slightly to kiss his palm. A tremulous smile underscored the simple conviction in her tone as she said softly, "No. I have no choice at all. I never did."

  He stood frozen for a moment, as if he were afraid to believe it, then he gathered her close. "Oh, God," he said, and for him it was a prayer.

  He covered her face with frantic kisses, and when h
is lips eventually found hers, she kissed him back with the same intensity, the same yearning. Then she was swung off her feet into his strong arms. He carried her to the bed in the corner and laid her on it, following her down without giving her a chance to change her mind. Not that she would have. Not when he whispered her name again and again, his husky, urgent words sending shivers coursing through her body.

  Somehow their clothes melted away and they were naked, skin to skin, in a glorious riot of sensations that reminded Mandy of the first time they'd made love, the first time she'd known the unique feel of a man's naked, muscled body hard against her own softness.

  He cupped her breast with his hand, bending his head to taste and tease, and her whole body clenched, then shook, when he began to suckle. Her bones had liquified and the internal throbbing had grown unbearable when he finally lifted his head and positioned himself between her legs.

  Yes, she thought at the first blunt probing. Yes, yes, yes!

  Then he was inside her and she couldn't think at all, only feel. He took her higher with each thrust, pulling her knees up around his hips, allowing him deeper access to her body.

  She cried out and arched like a bow when the first orgasm struck without warning, but Reilly gave her no respite. He held her in place and continued riding her with stroke after steady stroke, his lips drawn back in gritted determination not to let his control get away from him.

  She wanted to rest for a minute, to catch her breath, but he wasn't having any of that. He nuzzled her cheek, then turned his attention to her ear, and she shuddered each time his tongue made forays into the delicate shell. All the while, his body kept up its rhythmic movement inside hers, until another shattering peak was reached.

  He paused for a few seconds, corded muscles standing out in his neck and his body trembling against hers as he fought his own release, but he conquered it and soon picked up where he left off.

  "No," she pleaded, while ripples of completion still pulsed through her. "Reilly, I can't."

  "You can," he reassured her, capturing her lips. His tongue slid inside her mouth and out again, mimicking the hard-driving rhythm of his body.