He was wearing a fur hat, dark wool trousers tucked into high boots, a heavy coat that hung open to show its sheepskin lining and a laced-up vest over a dark green shirt. In the crook of one arm he carried a rifle-not the first time Lucia had seen him with a weapon in his hands, of course, but this time Corbett seemed at once less lethal and more…stalwart. Masculine. Though, that may have been partly because he was also unshaven, the dark stubble and cold-reddened cheeks making his eyes seem even bluer than they usually were.
I can’t stare, Lucia thought, and quickly looked away. My eyes…my face will surely give me away.
But Corbett barely glanced at her, his eyes flicking over her as he nodded a mute good-morning.
Lucia watched silently from the corner of her eye as he put the rifle on brackets above the door then turned to greet Kati with a wide smile, bending down so she could kiss him soundly on both cheeks. This activity left him liberally dusted with flour, which Kati tried to brush off his vest, only making matters worse.
Sadness, a kind of wistful envy, caught at Lucia’s throat as she watched the two of them laughing and bantering back and forth with what was obviously easy familiarity and genuine affection. It spread through her chest like a strangling vine, when Corbett, having shed his coat and hat, seated himself at the table and faced her at last, and she watched the robust stranger vanish in a heartbeat, along with the smile.
“Did you sleep well?” The question and tone were formal, proper, correct. Corbett as usual.
The well-trained butler was back, Lucia thought as she replied, “Yes, thank you for asking,” determined not to be outdone in the matter of manners, at least. She picked up her coffee cup and sipped without tasting.
“I see you’ve met Katalin.”
“Yes, though the introductions just about covered the extent of my Hungarian.” She smiled and raised her cup to Kati, who was standing behind Corbett, beaming at the two of them, floury hands wrapped in her apron.
“Ah. Perhaps I should tell you, Kati can speak English,” he said dryly. “She just prefers not to.”
Upon hearing this, Kati made a hideous face at Corbett’s back, and Lucia ducked her head and drank more coffee to hide a smile and a quivery gulp of laughter.
After a moment she set down her cup and steeling herself, lifted her eyes to his face. He wasn’t looking at her, of course. He hadn’t, not really, not directly in the eyes, since the encounter in his dressing room. When he’d come so close to kissing her. So this was how it was going to be from now on?
Damn you, no!
Clamping her teeth together, she counted slowly to five, then asked bluntly, “And how are your ribs this morning? Were you able to get any sleep?”
He grunted and made a brushing motion with his hand, dismissing both the question and his injury as of no consequence. So much, she thought, for good manners.
Silence fell, except for Kati, who had gone back to her pastry and was once again humming the catchy Hungarian tune. The room was sultry and fragrant with cooking smells. Warm. Cozy. Comfortable. Or it should have been.
The silence became too much for Corbett. The twin spots of color on Lucia’s cheeks shamed him. The images in his mind tormented him-her eyes, bright with angry tears as she’d said the words he’d been hearing ever since, even in his sleep.
“You’re not my teacher anymore…”
But what had happened-almost happened-between them was in no way even remotely her fault. He was behaving like a first-class jackass.
Taking up his coffee cup, and along with it his lagging self-control, he produced what he hoped was a pleasant expression and directed it at the object of his tortured thoughts.
“So,” he said, “what do you think of my hideaway?”
She gave him a sideways glance as she attacked a chunk of kolbász with her knife and fork-obviously angry with him still. “I haven’t seen much of it, except for my room and this one.”
“Well, then, you’ve seen most of it. Other than that, there’s just my study. There.” He gestured with his cup toward one of the two doors that opened off the back of the kitchen.
She paused with a bit of sausage halfway to her mouth to look at him with eyebrows raised. “Then…I’ve taken your bedroom?” She put down her knife and fork, her lips tightening. “You shouldn’t have done that. I can just as well sleep in the study.”
“Actually, you can’t,” Corbett said, spearing a slice of ham with his fork and bringing it to his mouth. “I’ll show you around in a bit, if you’d like. After we’ve done as much damage to this excellent repast as we possibly can. Kati will never forgive us if we don’t.”
He looked at his old friend in time to catch her putting her tongue out at him, gave her a smile in return, then glanced at Lucia and found her staring fixedly at her plate, as though she was about to burst into tears.
What the bloody hell did I say now? Resigned to the fact that he was never going to be able to understand the woman, he stabbed at a pickled pepper and made no further attempt at conversation for the remainder of the meal.
Though she had no appetite, Lucia managed to eat a roll and a piece of the spicy, hard Hungarian sausage, as well as some peach compote that was really quite delicious. Resisting Kati’s urging to eat more, she excused herself and went to the bedroom, where she tidied the bed, brushed her teeth, then packed all her things back into her suitcases. She was determined not to put Corbett out of his own bed for one more night.
She gave her face a critical once-over in the bathroom mirror, decided against lipstick, then took a fortifying breath and went back to the kitchen, where she found Corbett leaning against the sink and chatting quietly with Kati, evidently waiting for her.
When Lucia entered, he straightened and turned to put his cup in the sink, then placed one hand on Kati’s shoulder and said something to her in Hungarian, too low and rapid for Lucia to catch.
He turned to her, his expression relaxed and pleasant but completely impersonal, reminding her that she was an employee and temporary guest, nothing more. “Ready for the grand tour?”
“Absolutely. Will I need a jacket?”
“For the moment, no. We’ll do the indoor bit first. Shall we?” He waved her toward the far end of the kitchen, opposite the door he’d come in through and to the left of the bedroom. “First, this is the pantry-or storeroom, actually.” He reached past her to open the door on the right and gestured for her to precede him.
As she stepped through the door she saw only blackness. Then bright light flooded the area around her as Corbett reached past her to flip on the switch. Beyond the light the darkness thinned to gray, and she could see that they were not in a room at all, but in the cave itself. The air was cool, and in spite of the quiet hum of ventilation fans, she could detect a faint odor of sulfur.
“Don’t mind the smell,” Corbett said, as if he’d read her mind. “There are thermal springs back in there. That’s where we get our hot water. I meant to warn you-we do filter the water, but you might still notice the sulfur smell. Don’t worry-the cold water, for drinking and cooking and such, comes from a well outside.”
“You’ve certainly made good use of your natural resources,” Lucia murmured, gazing around at the shelves and boxes filled with provisions. “Are those fans the only ventilation? I feel a breeze.”
“Oh, no. The fans merely augment the natural airflow. There’s a sort of chimney back in there, you see. Comes out in the castle ruins on top of the hill.”
“There’s a castle? Really?” She turned to him, her anger with him forgotten, for the moment. “Is it yours? Can I see it?”
His smile flickered like a faulty lightbulb; his eyes touched her, then looked away. “Yes, of course. Though it’s nothing but a ruin now, I’m afraid. In medieval times, the castle’s defenders used the chimney and the cave as an escape route, and as a secret means to bring in water and supplies during a siege. They carved steps and handholds that are still there, although I don’t imagine anyone�
�s used them for a good many years.”
Lucia would like to have asked to see the secret escape route-certainly she’d have asked many more questions. But she could see Corbett was impatient to get on with the tour, so she merely murmured, “Fascinating,” and followed him back to the kitchen.
“And this,” he said, closing one door and opening the other, “is my…study-for want of a better word.”
Acutely conscious of the person whose private space she was about to enter, Lucia peered hesitantly over his outstretched arm. Then, with an awed, “Oh, my goodness…” she advanced past him and into the room.
The room was smaller than the bedroom, well-ventilated and, when Corbett flipped a switch, brightly lit. And almost every square foot of space was taken up with state-of-the-art computers and the very latest in communications equipment.
She whirled back to Corbett, a dozen questions poised on the tip of her tongue. One side of his mouth tilted upward in a sardonic little smile.
“So I trust now you can see why you really cannot sleep in my study.”
“But…I don’t understand. How-I thought we were pretty much in the middle of nowhere.”
“Oh, we are. However, there’s a very powerful satellite dish hidden amongst the castle ruins on the hill above our heads. Though, I do come here occasionally to restore my soul, there are a good many reasons why I can’t afford to be out of touch with the world and the people I’ve left behind. Not completely, at any rate.”
She stared at him as realization dawned, and the room seemed to shrink and grow darker around her. And then, with the impact of a wave thumping onto a hard sand beach, all the events of the past forty-eight hours came crashing in upon her, and her insides went sick and cold with dread. Through the ringing in her ears she heard her own voice.
“Have you…been in touch with…anyone? Since we got here?”
He nodded, his mouth grim. “I have.”
“And…have you heard? Anything? About the boy, I mean. Your son. Is he-” She pressed her fingertips to her lips and swallowed past a painful sticky dryness in her throat, but couldn’t bring herself to say the word.
Chapter 6
“He’s alive,” Corbett said. “For now.” He turned abruptly to leave the room, plainly expecting her to follow.
“For now?” She hurried after him, her voice bumpy with conflicting emotions. “What does that mean?”
He closed the door to the study and took two strides into the now-empty kitchen before spinning to face her, moving like an out-of-balance wheel. “He survived the surgery. Apparently the bullet he took in the belly clipped some vertebrae on the way out. Did some damage to the spinal cord.” His voice was quiet, but his eyes burned fierce and bright beneath a lock of hair that had fallen across his forehead. He raked it impatiently back with his fingers. “He’s paralyzed. No way to tell if it’s permanent until the swelling goes down.”
“Oh, God.” Lucia groped for support with one shaking hand and found the back of a chair. “Corbett, I’m so sorry. I never meant-”
“Oh, for the love of God, will you give off blaming yourself?” His words lashed out at her with a careless fury she’d never seen in him before, and she drew back, shocked. “The boy took a gun and went looking to kill someone with it and got himself shot, instead. Whose fault is that? His, I expect. And his mother’s, for putting the hate in his heart. Mine for sure, for putting the hate in hers. It sure as hell wasn’t yours. And somewhere in that frozen rock she calls a heart, the bi-the bloody woman knows it. It’s not you she wants to hurt, anyway, though she won’t hesitate to kill you if she thinks doing so will hurt me.”
And would it hurt you, Corbett?
Stupid thing to ask. Of course it would. He cared deeply about all his agents, she knew that.
She whispered, “Why does she hate you so much?”
For a long suspenseful moment she waited, feeling the burn of those eyes and wondering. But then…the fire in them slowly died, and instead of answering her question he said gently, smiling a little, “I thought you wanted to have a look around.”
She shook her head and gripped the chair back harder. “I deserve to know, Corbett. Since it appears your past has turned my life upside down.”
He gave a soft huff of laughter that held no amusement. “Yes, I suppose you do.”
But he realized as he said the words that even if it had not been so, he wanted very much to tell her…everything. He was a secretive man. By nature, he’d always thought. And this sudden desire to share with a woman the most intensely personal events of his past-and arguably those of which he was least proud-struck him as very odd. Certainly out of character.
“I’ll tell you what,” he said, “since it’s rather a long story, why don’t you go and put on your winter woolies, and I’ll bore you with it while we have a nice walk outdoors. I don’t know about you, but I could use a bit of fresh air.”
She gave him a long look before she turned and went into her room, and he knew from the set of her chin she wasn’t about to let him off the hook. Of course, she had no way of knowing he didn’t want to be let off. He’d kept his sins to himself for a long time. And he was looking forward to this moment of confession.
Lucia wasted no time getting into the ski jacket and boots Corbett had given her. Finding the cap in one of the coat’s pockets, she put that on, as well. When she returned to the kitchen, she found Corbett ready and waiting, bundled up in his sheepskin-lined coat and fur hat, rifle in hand.
Neither of them said anything as he opened the door and waited for her to go through ahead of him. As she had very little recollection of her arrival the night before, she was interested to find herself in a windowless but well-lit passageway. At the end of this another door opened into what appeared to be a cellar, from which a flight of wooden stairs led to a landing and yet another door. Corbett, leading the way, gave a polite knock, then opened the door into a kitchen very much like the one they had just left.
“Kati and Josef live here,” he said as he once again held the door for her. “Though I doubt they’ll be here at the moment. Probably in their workshop-it’s just across the yard.” At Lucia’s questioning look, he first closed the door to the cellar, then explained as he made his way through the quiet house ahead of her. “Josef used to work for the regional electric company, so he was able to do most of the electrical work on the cave house himself. Now that he’s retired, he and Kati make handcrafted furniture and knickknacks for the summer tourist trade. He makes and Kati paints.” He paused and waited for Lucia to catch up. “As you’ll see when we get outside, this house sits on top of the only entrance to the cave. The only way, in or out, is through here.”
“Except for the chimney,” Lucia reminded him. He looked at her thoughtfully, and she said, “What?” beset by the kind of obscure guilt law-abiding people often feel in the presence of police officers. “I’m not exactly planning on trying it.”
“I do hope you mean that. You’d mostly likely kill yourself, which would rather defeat my purpose in bringing you here, wouldn’t it?” His expression was one she knew well: imperious…aloof.
She had a strong urge to slug him in the solar plexus, until she remembered he was already encumbered by fractured ribs. She said, instead, gesturing to the sofa in the room they were passing through, and the folded comforters piled on one end, “So this is where you slept last night, I presume?”
“Yes. Kati and Josef were kind enough to lend me their couch. And, no, you cannot sleep here instead,” he added, as she was opening her mouth to suggest just that.
She was about to cast him a resentful look when her eyes fell on the rifle he held cradled in his arms. “Of course not,” she murmured demurely. “I know that.”
“It’s called protective custody. You, my dear, are the protected. I am the-”
“I said, I know,” she snapped, glaring at him.
She has the heart of a lioness, Corbett thought, turning away to hide the admiration he felt
for her. And the sympathy. How she must hate this!
He opened the cottage’s front door and heard a small gasp from behind him. “Yes, I imagine it is a bit of a shock after being indoors where it’s so warm, but once you get used to it, it’s really quite-”
“Oh, wow.”
He turned just as she moved out onto the porch steps, in time to see her face light up with wonder.
“It’s so…beautiful.”
He glanced back at the view he’d seen so many times, in so many different seasons, and still never tired of: The snow-covered hillside with dark splotches of rocky outcroppings and small stands of evergreens, dropping away to the valley floor, shrouded now in a soft, wispy blanket of fog. The woods off to the right with outlines of trees like pen-and-ink sketches on downy-white paper, and to the left, the stone-cobbled lane looping down to the village, where red-tiled and reed-thatched roofs alike wore four-inch blankets of snow, and smoke rose in puffs from tall, stone chimneys.
He looked at Lucia again, saw her smile and the way her eyes sparkled and her nose, cheeks and chin bloomed red with the cold, and something tightened in his chest, his throat aching in unfamiliar ways.
“Beautiful,” he said, “but a bit cold, I should imagine, for a girl raised in California.”
She gave him an odd look-almost resentful, he thought-as she made her way down the steps, boots squeaking on the snow where Kati’s and Josef’s footsteps hadn’t already crushed it.
“There’s some fairly nice skiing hereabouts,” he said in what he hoped was a winning way, because he felt an unaccustomed need to bring back the smile. “I know you don’t ski, but I can teach you, if you’d like.” Perhaps not as winning as he’d hoped. Rather stuffy, in fact. Like the teacher, as she’d forcibly reminded him recently, he no longer was.
It seemed she agreed, because the look she threw him was definitely not the one he’d hoped for.
“There are mountains in California,” she said in an uneven voice as she trudged off down the snowy pathway to the front gate. “The fact that I don’t ski isn’t because I never had the opportunity to learn.”
Lazlo’s Last Stand Page 8
