Wildfire

by Anne Stuart

  She looked up at him, her face still in the shadows. He hadn’t changed either, and his linen shirt was still damp, clinging to his chest, revealing more muscle than she would have thought for such a lean body.

  “Are you going to just stand there?” she said, not bothering to hide her impatience. “Or are you some troll guarding the entrance, and you want me to pay my way?”

  She caught him off guard. His slow smile widened, and she felt a sudden tightening in her stomach. This dangerous, dangerous man shouldn’t have a smile like that, one that was absolutely breathtaking. “Depends on what you have to offer,” he said.

  She didn’t smile back—she couldn’t afford to—but resisting that smile was ridiculously difficult. “Not much that you would want.”

  “I don’t know about that,” he said, and she held her breath as he moved, knowing he was going to touch her.

  Instead, he stepped back, holding the wide door open for her to roll the chair through, and her sense of relief was so strong she almost missed her own thread of regret. Yes, he was a danger. But she didn’t frighten easily.

  The moment she reached the rain-washed flagstones of the balcony, she forgot all about him. She could see the ocean from up here, the sun as it was dipping lower and lower in the west—the scents of the island were almost overwhelming. Even after all this time she felt herself seduced by the beauty of the place, the feel of the hot, lush air on her skin, the soft breeze ruffling her hair, the sinking sun warming her face.

  “Isn’t this better?” He was right behind her, too close, and once more she had the odd sense that he was going to touch her.

  He didn’t.

  “Much better,” she said, unable to keep the note of longing from her voice as she looked out over the sandy beach where she used to run, the riot of flowers in the garden she’d once planned and tended.

  She felt him step back. “I’ll leave you to enjoy yourself,” he said.

  This time she did turn, moving her chair to look up at him. “Why did you do this?”

  His expression had frozen, and she realized belatedly that he hadn’t had a good look at her yet. “What the fuck did you do to yourself?”

  She was tempted to wheel away from him, but that would be even more awkward. She could feel heat flame her face, but she did her best to look calm. “Archer told you,” she reminded him. “I fell down the stairs.”

  “How?”

  “What do you mean, how? How does anyone fall down the stairs?”

  His green eyes were eagle-sharp, all charm vanishing. “You look beat to shit,” he said, “but a fall down those stairs, with the wheelchair on top of you, could have killed you, or at least broken a few bones. Yet you look like you took a tumble in your bathroom, not defied death. I’m still asking you. What happened?”

  She could tell him none of his goddamned business, but that might seem defensive. The last thing she wanted him or anyone else to know was that she had to put up with Archer’s sadistic abuse. It shamed her.

  She had no choice but to compound the lie. “I didn’t fall all the way down the stairs,” she said. “It was just partway, and I fell out of the wheelchair without bringing it with me. In fact, there’s nothing to make such a fuss over. I felt dizzy, came out of my room to call for Joe, and the next thing I knew I was halfway down the stairs, hurting like hell.”

  He looked at her for a long moment, his eyes running down her body, from her bare feet peeping from beneath the sundress to her bare arms. “And you’d have no reason to lie,” he said eventually.

  “Of course not!” she said, surprised enough to sound believable. “Why would I?”

  “You tell me.” He leaned over, placing his hands on the arms of the wheelchair, trapping her. But then, supposedly I am already trapped, she reminded herself.

  “Look,” she said in a reasonable voice. “My husband loves me, and even if he didn’t, he’s very careful about his possessions. He wouldn’t let anyone get away with hurting me.”

  “I’m sure he wouldn’t,” Mal said. He leaned forward and his fingers brushed against her upper arm with exquisite tenderness. “You just happened to land on something that left a bruise with a remarkable resemblance to a hand.”

  She looked down. It was there on her arm, the outline of Archer’s hand where he’d gripped her so tightly it still ached. She met Mal’s calm gaze. There was no pity, no emotion at all. “So it does,” she said, shrugging, able to stop her wince in time. “Do I strike you as the kind of woman who would allow herself to be manhandled?” She almost didn’t want him to answer.

  “It depends who and what you really are,” he said. “And whether you really belong in that wheelchair.”

  The words were like a punch in the stomach, but she managed not to react. “Oh, actually I’m just fine. I spend all the time in my room tap-dancing—I hope the noise hasn’t bothered you.”

  There was the faintest hint of a smile on his mouth, but he didn’t say anything, just started for his open door. He paused at the entrance. “I’ll leave you to enjoy some time to yourself. Feel free to tap-dance if the mood strikes you.”

  “Why did you unlock the door?” she said suddenly, unwilling to let him leave. “I don’t think my husband will approve.”

  “No, I suppose he won’t,” Malcolm replied. “He likes to keep you like a rare specimen, a butterfly under glass. That way he can take you out any time he wants and pull your wings off.”

  He knew. Of course he did—Mal wasn’t a man who missed anything, and adding two and two wasn’t rocket science. She wasn’t going to bother denying it.

  “But they always grow back,” she said. She tried for an easy laugh, knowing it was unconvincing. “I’ll just enjoy the terrace while it lasts.”

  “Oh, it will last,” he said smoothly. “Your husband will do it if I ask him.”

  “My husband doesn’t do anything he doesn’t want to do. That’s the advantage of being a billionaire. Why should it be any different with you?”

  “Leave that up to me,” Malcolm said.

  Before she could ask another question he was gone, and she breathed a reluctant sigh of relief. She’d said more to him in the last five minutes than she’d said to anyone else in the years since she’d been shot. Those were dangerous waters.

  She rolled the chair back to the edge so she could look at the sea, all the time conscious of the camera on the overhanging roof trained on her. At least the cameras were stationary, and it was easy enough to figure out the trajectory of its view—where she’d be safe to move, where she wouldn’t be watched.

  Would Malcolm really be able to convince Archer to leave the door unlocked, the stretch of balcony cleared? Archer wouldn’t have much excuse not to, but that wouldn’t faze her husband. If he wanted her locked up, he would do so.

  And what kind of leverage did Malcolm have? Archer could buy anything he wanted, steal it, murder to get it. He had all the money he could ever need, enough power—personal, financial, and political—to keep him happy. What could someone like Malcolm Gunnison possibly have to offer that would compete with that?

  As if summoned by her thoughts, Archer strode out onto the beach, wearing his swim trunks, one of the women on his arm like a trophy. From that distance Sophie couldn’t quite tell which one it was—the three of them looked alike, but from the immovable plastic boobs she guessed it was Rachel who was dressed in the monokini. They were at the water’s edge when Malcolm joined them, and for a moment Sophie’s breath caught. He’d changed too, in record time, and for a moment she couldn’t pull her eyes from him.

  He should have looked thin and weak next to Archer’s bulked-up physique, but Sophie wasn’t fooled. Beneath the smoothly tanned skin were taut muscles, possibly even a match for Archer’s brute strength.

  Malcolm said something and Archer threw back his head and laughed. He glanced up at the balcony, and if she hadn’t been shielded by the half wall he would have seen her there, watching. In fact, he gave a little wave in he
r approximate direction anyway, seemingly lighthearted, as if he hadn’t used his fists on her less than an hour ago.

  So Malcolm must have told him he’d unlocked the door, and Archer wasn’t objecting. What kind of hold did Mal have over her husband?

  She glanced over at his door. He’d left it open, but there was no way she was going to risk searching his room in broad daylight. For all she knew it could be a trap—she didn’t trust Mal any more than she trusted Archer. In fact, she trusted him less. With Archer she knew what she was facing. Malcolm Gunnison was an enigma, and she wasn’t about to risk anything, ever again, on some damned man.

  Chapter Eight

  Malcolm took his time getting back to his room. If there was any trace of the operative Sophie had once been, she would have used that time to search his room, and he’d left an almost imperceptible thread across the threshold of the French doors leading out onto the balcony. It was still in place. His own room was three steps down, and she wouldn’t be able to manage it in her wheelchair, but he’d wondered. Either she’d gotten rusty, or she really did belong in that wheelchair.

  There was no sign that she was faking—he was simply trained to question everything. He’d checked the soles of her shoes and the bottoms of her feet—always a simple tell if someone actually walked. None of the countless pairs of sandals had ever touched the ground, and her perfectly manicured feet looked soft and useless. He’d put a bug in her room, one she hadn’t found, but he’d heard nothing unusual during the night—when she got up to go to the bathroom the sounds were clearly that of someone using a wheelchair. Then again, she still had all her cameras in place and a former operative would know that. She wouldn’t dare slip up.

  He could always go in and pull out her cameras as well. Archer had accepted Malcolm’s own debugging, but he might not be so sanguine about the surveillance on his wife, particularly when he got off on hitting her. He probably kept the surveillance tapes and watched them late at night, jacking off, the asshole. Then again, he’d suggested that Malcolm fuck her, and Malcolm could make it clear he never enjoyed an audience. It would be a good enough reason.

  Except that if he were really going to screw her he wasn’t going to take any chance that Archer could watch.

  He still couldn’t figure out why the hell Archer wanted him to bone his wife. It had to be some kind of test, or even a punishment for his bride. He’d known Sophie had come from the Committee—otherwise there’d have been no need to try to kill her, and then keep her prisoner on this island. Whatever game he was playing, Mal had to make sure he wasn’t going to end up on the losing side. Sophie’s place there was a foregone conclusion, and he couldn’t jeopardize his own position in trying to protect her.

  He showered off the salt water, pulled on boxer briefs, and headed into the closet. They’d said her fate was up to him. He could kill her if he needed to, leave her, or bring her out. She’d committed an unpardonable act, and he’d had every intention of letting her fend for herself. That was before he’d seen her, though.

  She wasn’t his responsibility, he reminded himself. He was there because she’d failed, and it had taken this long to build up the intel, the infrastructure, to get close to Archer again. She deserved nothing.

  He rose, glancing out the open French doors to the sunset streaking the sky. He didn’t have to decide yet. Not until Archer’s fucking scientist showed up with the RU48. Until then he’d take it one step at a time. In the meantime he was going to head downstairs and see if he could catch her in some microscopic move that would prove whether she really couldn’t walk. If she was faking it, then she had to slip up sooner or later. If she wasn’t faking, if she really was stuck in that wheelchair, he didn’t know if he still had enough of a conscience that he could live with leaving her behind. Not that he owed her anything—he’d killed for less of a reason than her mistakes.

  He should be thinking about his mission, not wasting his time on an extraneous detail like Sophie. He dressed and was headed for the door when something stopped him; that damned, illogical voice that had been interfering more and more with his life. He glanced out at the balcony—no sign, no sound. He should simply go down to dinner, but he knew he wasn’t going to.

  Sophie was sitting in her chair, just inside her open door, reading a massive book. She knew he was there—he could read it in the slight twitch in her bare shoulders above the sundress, but she deliberately didn’t look up. All right, he could go with that. He stood there and watched her with interest.

  The bruises on her arms could have been worse, he supposed. The imprint of a handgrip was clear, and there were other marks as well. He couldn’t see the pattern of old breaks, so at least Archer had stopped before he reached that point. She was holding a pack of ice to her face, the darkening bruise on her jaw clashing with the flush of pink on her cheeks, and the spattering of freckles was still there from her time in the sun, an oddly lighthearted counterpoint to the signs of abuse. Her shoulders had a touch of color as well, and he noticed that the golden freckles had traveled there too.

  Her brown eyes were expressionless as they took him in, and she dropped the ice pack on the table and closed the book, not bothering to hold her place. Momentary insanity, he told himself, strolling through the door to her side. He’d always been a sucker for vulnerable women. Madsen told him it was his knight-in-shining-armor complex. “That doesn’t look like much of a page-turner,” he said in a cool voice that gave nothing away.

  She handed it to him, and the damned thing must have weighed five pounds. “War and Peace?” he said in surprise. “You strike me more as the bodice-ripper type.”

  She scowled at him, then winced as the expression must have tugged at her bruised cheek. “This was Archer’s idea. He thought, since I had so much time on my hands, that I should improve my mind. He sometimes forgets that I’m not another Rachel.”

  “Which one is Rachel?” He knew perfectly well who she was—he knew everyone on the island—but he wanted to see her reaction.

  “She’s the one with the plastic boobs.”

  He nodded, hiding a smile. Sophie was probably a respectable 34B, if he knew women, and he did, but when it came to boobs and thighs, American women were notoriously insecure. Most women who worked for the Committee didn’t bother with such shallow concerns, but Sophie had been out of the game for a long time.

  He was watching her legs covertly, careful to make sure she didn’t realize what he was doing. Not a twitch. Had Archer hit her there as well? He shrugged. “I hadn’t noticed.”

  She gave him a disbelieving look. “Don’t be ridiculous. She shoves them in everyone’s face.”

  He hid his amusement. “Maybe she’s not my type.”

  “She’s every man’s type.”

  “Maybe I don’t like women?” he suggested.

  She didn’t even pause. “I’d have a hard time believing that,” she said flatly.

  That was enough to startle him again. “What makes you say that?” He’d never had any problem convincing people he was gay if his role called for it.

  She tilted her head back, examining him slowly, as if considering. “Instinct,” she said finally.

  “You have such infallible instincts when it comes to judging men?” It was a low blow, and cruel, but he said it anyway.

  Her expression was stony. “No. Just when it comes to you.”

  “I’m flattered.” In fact, he was wary. She was more observant than he wanted her to be, a needless complication. He should never have cleared off the balcony for her, never have taken her down to that small crescent of beach. Not that he didn’t have the perfect excuse—Archer had asked him to screw her. But since he had every intention of resisting temptation he should have just kept his distance.

  It was definitely odd—usually he was either attracted to a woman or not, and there was nothing more likely to make him lose interest than complications. Sophie MacDonald was beyond complicated—she was a Gordian knot of epic proportions. The last thing
he needed to be doing was thinking about what she might like in bed. What would please her. How much she could feel.

  A soft breeze came up, blowing her skirt against her motionless legs. “May I help you downstairs?” he said, seemingly the perfect gentleman, when in fact he wanted to hold her again, see if he could figure out exactly what was wrong with her lower limbs.

  She shook her head. “I’m not invited down tonight. Archer decided I’ve had too much stimulation and need a quiet night in my room.” Her words were calm, her face expressionless, and yet he could practically feel the rage vibrating through her. Her mask was slipping, at least when he was around. Did she have any idea how dangerous that was?

  “Nonsense.” Before she could realize what he was doing, he’d scooped her up out of the wheelchair. She resisted for a moment, but her legs were motionless.

  “Archer isn’t going to like this,” she warned him.

  He shifted her a little higher. “Put your arms around my neck so I don’t drop you,” he said, and he half-expected her to hit him. She hesitated, and then to his surprise did as she was told, her body relaxing against his just slightly. Just enough.

  He looked down at her, and then he did one of the stupidest things he’d ever done in his entire life. He dropped his head down and brushed his mouth across hers, lightly.

  Her shocked intake of breath was amusing. “Why did you do that?” she demanded, sounding angry and confused.

  He shrugged, shifting her closer against his chest. “I wanted to see if I liked it.”

  She was struggling under some strong emotion, but he couldn’t quite tell what it was. Fury? Longing? A combination of both? “And did you?”