Lover, Stranger

by Amanda Stevens

  “Please don’t,” Grace said breathlessly. She put her hands to his chest, but it was a meaningless gesture. She wasn’t going to push him away. It took every ounce of her strength not to pull him closer.

  “You feel it, too. I can see it your eyes.”

  “Please—”

  He drew her so close, their lips were only a heartbeat apart. “You want me to kiss you,” he said almost accusingly. “Almost as much as I want to.”

  “Ethan—”

  The space between them evaporated. “Tell me to stop,” he murmured against her mouth.

  Grace said nothing. Instead she closed her eyes and waited for the inevitable to happen. Waited for her life to come tumbling down around her. When it didn’t, her relief—or was it disappointment?—was so intense, her head spun dizzily. She opened her eyes and gazed up at him.

  Something glimmered in his eyes, something that looked almost like triumph. He dropped his hands from her shoulders and backed away. “I told you it wouldn’t be easy,” he said, in a tone that sounded more like a threat than a warning.

  GRACE LAY IN bed that night, wide awake and listening to the street noises outside her hotel. The room was dimly illuminated by streetlights and neon signs that caused shadows to leap and cavort across the walls and ceiling, like demons celebrating some dark victory.

  Earlier, she’d opened the curtains so that she could see the balcony outside the sliding glass doors. Airplane lights twinkled in the night sky, and between the slats of the balcony railing, she could see the faint movement of pine boughs stirring in the breeze. She would have liked to open the doors, letting in the breeze and the scent of evergreen, but she never slept with the windows open. Her doors and windows were always closed and always locked.

  Grace stared out into the darkness and thought about Ethan, wondering what he was doing tonight. His house was under surveillance and secured by a state-of-the-art alarm system that even an FBI agent couldn’t find fault with. There was no reason for Grace to worry, and yet she was worried. She couldn’t shake the uneasiness that had invaded her thoughts since she’d left Ethan at the chapel this afternoon.

  I’m not that man, Grace.

  What had he meant by that? What had he meant when he’d said, What if I told you I’m not the man you think I am?

  Was it wishful thinking on his part? The denial of a man with no memory learning things about himself that were more than just unpleasant?

  No wonder he was so confused. The man who altered criminals’ faces for money was a direct contradiction to the man Rosa had told Grace about earlier. A man who could transform hideous monsters into angels. A man who changed children’s lives forever.

  Was Ethan Hunter a saint with a badly tarnished halo, or a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde—a man with two entirely different sides to his personality?

  Grace shivered in the gloom, considering all the possibilities but trying not to dwell on the one thing Ethan had said that perhaps troubled her the most

  Why do I feel as if I know you better than I could ever know the woman who claims to be my wife? Why do I know how your lips would taste if I kissed you right now? How your body would feel beneath mine if we—

  Grace sucked in a long breath, trying to remember her objectives, but the situation had taken a turn she couldn’t have anticipated. It had seemed so easy when she and Myra had first devised the plan. Come to Houston. Set up surveillance and a cover for Grace. Wait for Dr. Ethan Hunter to arrive from Mexico and then approach him. Convince him to cooperate so that Trevor Reardon could be drawn out into the open.

  But then everything had gone wrong. It had all happened too quickly. Ethan had come back from Mexico weeks earlier than planned, before complete backup and support were in place. And then Amy Cole had died. The entire operation had had to be hastily revised, and now everything hinged on Grace’s ability to perpetuate her deception. To remain close to Ethan.

  But what happened when it was all over? Originally, Grace hadn’t stopped to consider what would happen to Ethan once Reardon was safely behind bars again. Or dead.

  But Ethan had his own sins to answer for, and leniency would depend on the extent of his cooperation. Grace hadn’t thought to be involved in anything beyond Reardon’s capture, but now she realized how difficult it would be to walk away, to never look back, to betray a man she was deeply attracted to.

  For a moment, she considered calling Myra and asking for advice, but somehow Grace thought this was beyond the older agent’s field of expertise. She didn’t think Myra had ever been torn like this. Grace couldn’t even imagine Myra Temple falling in love.

  She couldn’t imagine herself falling in love, either. Though it was true she was attracted to Ethan, that they shared a connection she couldn’t begin to explain, it certainly wasn’t love. It couldn’t be love because Grace was immune to that emotion. She’d promised herself a long time ago that she would never again be vulnerable, and love made you vulnerable. It made you weak. It made you forget who you were and what you had to do.

  Grace knew exactly who she was. She was a federal agent on the trail of a ruthless killer. And she knew what she was. A woman who would do anything to bring down the man who had nearly destroyed her.

  Ethan Hunter could not be allowed to get in her way. She would use him and she would betray him. And in the end, she would walk away from him.

  SOMETIME AFTER TWO in the morning, Grace managed to doze off. But her dreams were filled with distorted images from her past and her present. She saw Trevor Reardon smiling down at her, but before she had time to draw her weapon, his face turned into Ethan’s. And he was still smiling. Still taunting her.

  Grace hovered in that nether realm of dream and reality. She knew she was still sleeping, but she was powerless to control the images playing themselves out in her mind.

  In her dream, the phone was ringing. As if watching a movie, she saw herself pick up the receiver and lift it to her ear. “Hello?”

  There was no response, but she could tell someone was on the other end. She caught her breath, waiting, while a fine sense of dread seeped over her. “Who’s there?”

  Silence.

  Then a deep, seductive voice said in her ear, “I liked what you were wearing at the funeral today, Grace. Black becomes you.”

  They were almost the exact words Trevor Reardon had spoken to her fourteen years ago, after her family’s funeral. Fear exploded inside Grace, and she gasped in horror.

  Wake up! It’s only a dream! she tried to warn herself.

  Some part of her knew that it was a nightmare, but Grace was powerless to break free of it. She tried to fight her way to consciousness, but it was as if invisible hands were holding her down, pulling her more deeply into sleep.

  It all seemed so frighteningly real. Grace heard herself say, “Where are you?”

  And that sensuous voice replying, “Closer than you think. ”

  “How close?”

  Another pause, then, “You still favor pearls, I see.”

  There was something about his voice, something that triggered a flash of insight. Grace struggled through the layers of sleep, trying to cling to that elusive revelation that had come to her in the dream.

  Something about his voice...

  Yes! That was it! She’d heard that same voice recently, only...somehow it had been different, distorted. She hadn’t recognized it because he’d disguised it.

  As the cobwebs of sleep began to clear, Grace lay beneath the covers, trembling. The dream lingered. The fear it generated made her head swim, and she couldn’t think straight. For a moment, Grace considered fixing herself a drink to steady her nerves, but that wouldn’t help. It never had before.

  She glanced at the nightstand beside the bed, wondering what time it was. In the glow of the clock face, she saw the tiny pearl studs she’d worn to Amy’s funeral yesterday.

  Forcing herself to get up, Grace crossed the room to the window and stared out into the gloom. Dawn was breaking over the city, and
she could see a fleet of lowlying clouds moving in from the coast. The castoff glow of the sun, still hidden below the horizon, tinted the edges with a golden pink that gradually deepened to violet.

  It was that strange time of morning, before the sun came up, when the shadows outside deepened and the night terrors had yet to flee.

  Grace’s first instinct was to run. To pack her bags and leave the city as fast as she could. And that impulse surprised her. She’d thought about this operation long and hard, even before she’d learned Reardon had escaped from prison a second time. She used to daydream about meeting him face to face. She used to picture his features on the targets she destroyed with her pistol at Quantico and wonder what it would be like to look him in the eye the exact moment she put a bullet through his heart.

  Reardon’s face would be different now, but somehow Grace had thought she would know him anywhere. She’d wanted to believe that the evil inside his soul would radiate from his body like an oily, black aura, but no one she’d met recently had aroused that kind of suspicion in her. She’d even considered the possibility that Reardon was hundreds, perhaps thousands of miles away, and that whoever had killed Amy and had tried to kill Ethan was someone else. Pilar or Kendall or even, as the police thought, a stranger looking for drugs.

  But Grace had no more doubts. She was sure now that she’d heard Reardon’s voice recently, but she couldn’t think where. At Amy’s funeral? She’d talked to a lot of people there she hadn’t known, men and women who claimed to be friends and acquaintances of Amy’s. Had one of them been Trevor Reardon? Had she been that close to him? Had he...touched her?

  Grace shuddered in revulsion. Obviously, Reardon had managed to disguise his voice well enough to fool her for a while, but there was a quality about it that couldn’t be altered. In her sleep, Grace had remembered that quality.

  Was he out there somewhere? Was he watching her even now? Was he finding her in the crosshairs of a high-powered weapon, laughing all the while at her foolishness? Her weakness?

  Grace’s insides quivered with fear and dread, but she forced herself to remain at the window. She was safe for the time being. Reardon wouldn’t shoot her here. Not from a distance. He enjoyed killing too much. For him, death was a personal experience. An intimate one. He would want to enjoy it to its fullest potential.

  When he came for her this time, Grace knew it would be more for pleasure than revenge.

  Chapter Nine

  “Buenos días,” Rosa greeted the next morning. She stood back so Grace could enter.

  “Good morning, Rosa. Is Ethan in?”

  “He’s upstairs in his study.”

  She led Grace up the stairway and through the living room, then tapping on the study door, she opened it a crack and announced Grace’s arrival.

  Ethan was sitting behind his desk, studying a legal document that was several pages thick. When Grace entered the room, he looked up. “Morning. Or is it still morning?”

  “Barely.” Grace glanced at her watch. “It’s just after eleven.”

  Ethan’s eyes looked a bit unfocused, and his lower face was shadowed with beard. Grace wondered if he’d been to bed at all last night, or if like her, his sleep had been plagued with nightmares. Self-doubts.

  He glanced at Rosa still hovering in the doorway. “You can leave whenever you need to. Don’t worry about me. I’ll manage just fine.”

  Rosa’s dark eyes darted from Ethan to Grace, but this morning she didn’t appear to be as disapproving. Grace wondered if she’d managed to win the housekeeper over, but if she had, it was a hollow victory because it had been won by deception.

  Rosa shrugged. “Adiós then. I’ll see you in a few days.”

  After she’d gone, Grace turned back to Ethan. “Where’s she going?”

  “Her grandson is sick, and her daughter needs help so I gave her some time off. Under the circumstances, I thought it a good idea to get her out of the house for a few days.” His ominous words reminded Grace all too clearly of the dream she’d had last night

  “As a matter of fact,” Ethan said, “I’ve been thinking about your safety as well. I want to talk to you about something.”

  He seemed different this morning, and Grace’s first thought was that he’d gotten his memory back. “What about?”

  “I realized this morning that I’ve never even been to your apartment. I don’t even know where you live.”

  Grace frowned. “So?”

  “So...how safe is it? Do you have a security system? A gated entry? A guard who patrols the grounds?” Ethan sat forward suddenly, his dark eyes intense. “If Reardon is watching my every move as you seem to think, then he knows you and I are working together. He knows you’re Amy’s sister. He may even know where you live.”

  There was no doubt in Grace’s mind that Trevor Reardon knew where she was. Not after last night. “We can’t do anything about that,” she said, evading Ethan’s questions. “But believe me, I take every precaution. You don’t have to worry about me.”

  “But I do worry.” His eyes deepened, and Grace could have sworn his gaze dropped to her mouth. She couldn’t help remembering the way his lips had felt against hers. “What precautions do you take? Do you own a gun?”

  She forced herself to hold his gaze. If she looked away, she would be admitting her discomfort. “Why do you ask?”

  He shrugged. “It’s a logical question. How are you going to catch Reardon if you don’t have a weapon?”

  Grace hesitated. “All right, yes, I have a gun. And before you ask, yes, I do know how to use it.”

  “Why does that not surprise me?” he muttered.

  “I’ve also taken some self-defense courses.” She wasn’t sure why she added that except perhaps to let him know that if push came to shove, she could more than hold her own—against Reardon or anyone else.

  “Somehow I think it may take more than a karate chop to bring down an assassin turned terrorist,” he said dryly.

  Grace almost allowed herself a smile. “That’s what the gun is for.”

  Their gazes met. Something that might have been admiration glimmered in his eyes. “Still, I think you’d be safer, maybe we’d both be safer, if you moved in here with me. The security system is first rate, and besides—what was it you said the other day? You watch my back and I’ll watch yours? It would be easier to do that if we were both in the same location.”

  She wasn’t sure why his words surprised her so much. Maybe because when she’d hinted the same thing that first night, he’d made it all too clear that he had no intention of inviting her to stay in his home. Now, he was acting as if the idea was his and that it made all the sense in the world.

  Grace knew she should leap at the chance to move in with him. Her main function in this whole operation was to get as close—and stay as close—as she could to Ethan so that when Reardon came after him, she would be ready. But now she had to wonder if proximity to Ethan would be such a good idea. Would she be able to remain alert and focused, or would her attraction to him make her careless? Reckless?

  A shiver of awareness slipped over her.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked. “You know as well as I do it makes sense for us to stick together.”

  “Yes, I know, but—”

  “But what?” His gaze became even more penetrating. “Are you afraid to move in here? Are you afraid of me?”

  “No. Of course not,” she said almost too quickly. “I’m not afraid of you.”

  “Then who are you afraid of? Reardon? Yourself, maybe?”

  Grace felt a prickle of anger at his assumption. “Contrary to what you seem to think, I’m not the least bit worried that I won’t be able to constrain myself in your presence.”

  Amusement flashed in his eyes. “Then what’s the problem?”

  “A little thing called appearances,” she said. “What will your neighbors think if I move in here with you? You’re still married, Ethan.”

  “Not anymore.” He picked up the blue-
backed legal document from his desk and handed it to her.

  “What is this?” she asked doubtfully.

  “A courier delivered it this morning. It’s a final divorce decree.” Something very subtle changed in his voice. “As of today, I’m a free man, Grace.”

  She took the document and skimmed the front page. “I don’t know whether to offer my congratulations or my condolences,” she tried to say lightly.

  One dark brow arched. “You’ve met Pilar.”

  When Grace said nothing, he sat back in his chair and his eyes grew pensive. “It’s strange to have proof of the ending of a marriage I don’t even remember. But I guess this explains why Pilar was so eager to clean out the cash from the safe. A little something extra added to the settlement.”

  Grace handed the document back to him. “Have you heard from her?”

  “No, and I don’t expect to. Unless I see her tonight.”

  “Tonight?”

  He paused. “A woman called me this morning. She said her name was Alina Torres. She talked for five minutes straight before I finally figured out she’s Hun...my secretary.”

  “What did she want?” Grace asked.

  “She reminded me that I have an invitation to some sort of charity benefit tonight at the Huntington Hotel. The proceeds will go directly into a building fund for a new children’s wing at St. Mary’s Hospital. According to Alina, I’d previously sent my regrets because I hadn’t planned to be in town, but now that I’m back, she thought it would be a good idea for me to go. It seems I’m being presented with some sort of citation.”

  Grace’s frown deepened. “Do you want to go?”

  “Not particularly. But I’ve been thinking about what you said the other day. That the best way to draw out Reardon, or whoever wants to kill me, is to go about my normal business. The event tonight is written up in the paper today. If Reardon is keeping tabs on my activities, then he’s bound to see it.”

  Ethan handed Grace a folded newspaper, and she read the headline.