Wildfire

by Anne Stuart

  She sighed, settling in more deeply, but the exhaustion that had been chasing her downstairs seemed to have traded itself for unruly thoughts. She had every right to luxuriate in this bed. In his bed. She’d spent enough time in her own narrow bed to last her a lifetime, and where else was she going to go, Archer’s vast bedroom? Not if she wanted to keep from throwing up.

  There was just one problem, she thought, opening her eyes to the murky darkness. Lying naked in his sheets effectively stripped away whatever defenses she had left. She was the very essence of vulnerability where she lay, and her choice was simple. Leave his bed, and all uncomfortable thoughts of him, or stay where she was and accept things.

  She wasn’t moving.

  All right, she thought. Let’s look at this from a practical standpoint. Her reaction to him was completely logical—it would have been odd if she hadn’t responded. A, he was gorgeous in his lean-hipped, clever kind of way. B, even if he hadn’t actually offered her a way out of this mess, his appearance on the island had been a catalyst for change, and it was normal to feel grateful. C, he was . . . sexually capable. He had aroused and then satisfied her more than anyone she’d ever been with, but she could blame her long abstinence for that. Besides, wasn’t danger an aphrodisiac?

  E . . . or was she on D? Anyway, he was the first and only person who knew the truth about her, that she could walk, that she was filled with fury, not forlorn love for Archer. The very thought of that made her ill, but she’d been playing her part so well for the past few years that a lesser woman might even start to believe it.

  So why else was she so infatuated with the man? He’d given her a gun, then taken it away from her, putting her in danger, but then returned it, and it had to qualify as the best present, under the circumstances, in the history of present giving. His light mockery annoyed and aroused her. He was a smart man, and not a sociopath, and she’d always had a weakness for smart. He’d stood up to Archer for her, the first person ever to do so, and he’d succeeded. He’d kissed her when she thought she’d never be kissed again. He’d held her when she shook and wept. He had wickedly clever hands, and she wanted . . .

  Damn. Erotic fantasies had no place in this bed, she thought, moving beneath the sheets. She had to stop thinking about him, about his body, the smoothness of his skin over taut muscles, the taste of him in her mouth, the warmth of his body against hers, the . . .

  “Oh, fucking hell!” she said out loud in total disgust. The more she fought it, the more power it had over her. She might as well accept the fact that she had a . . . a crush on him. Like a lovesick teenager.

  She tried that notion on for size, but it didn’t feel right. There was no fluttering in her heart when she saw him, no worrying about what he thought of her. He probably disliked her as much as she disliked him. Which was monumental, of near-nemesis proportions, and . . .

  There’s a thin line between love and hate. Where did that come from? And how stupid was that—if you loved someone, you cared about him, worried about him, wanted to do things for him . . . you loved him. If you hated them, you wanted them dead. Very simple and mathematical.

  There was an easy way to put it in perspective, she told herself, rolling over in the bed. The mattress was perfect, neither too hard nor too soft, the sheets were like smooth silk, and she couldn’t get comfortable.

  Love was sacrificing your own good for others. It was about compromise, about letting go. If someone wasn’t getting off this island alive, and it was up to her to choose, would she choose Mal or herself?

  On the face the answer was easy. She’d fought long and hard to survive—there was no way she was giving up now. She hadn’t killed anyone just yet—unless she’d accidentally offed Dr. Chekowsky—but Malcolm had. She was basically a good person, determined to do the moral thing within the ruthless confines of the Committee. She doubted the same thing could be said of Malcolm. He wasn’t evil, but he certainly wasn’t good.

  She’d been a complete idiot, surprising considering the time she’d spent in the State Department. The Committee was responsible for some very bad things. Collateral damage kind of things. Innocents killed. Stable governments destroyed. Bad people getting their way. If Mal were to die, his death wouldn’t have any impact on her life. Once she got off this island, she was never going to see him again anyway.

  If she ever had to make some kind of Sophie’s choice and decide whether she or Mal survived, there was no question. She closed her eyes, picturing a firing squad aimed at the two of them, and only one of them going down, riddled with bullets. No, her choice of who would live was simple.

  Malcolm Gunnison.

  “Stupid bitch,” she said out loud, disgusted with herself. But the bottom line was that it mattered. Whether she ever saw him again or not, she needed to know he was still alive, was still being a pain in someone’s ass. She tried to talk herself out of it—picturing him in bed with all the other women who would follow, picturing his snark and mockery. He was the one who should get the bullets, not her.

  But she couldn’t. She couldn’t imagine living when he was dead—it was that simple. She couldn’t even blame Stockholm syndrome—he wasn’t the one who imprisoned her. If she were the fool she’d once been, she’d say she’d fallen in love with the bastard. But of course she hadn’t—you don’t fall in love that quickly, that easily, especially with an SOB like Mal. There was no such thing as soul mates, and just because her entirely fucked-up instincts told her he was the one was . . . was . . . insanity. Once she got away from here, she’d be much more sensible.

  But right then she lay in his bed and touched herself beneath the sheets and longed for him with every bit of her being. Maybe, just for tonight, she could be in love with him. There was no one to know, no one to witness, no one to pass judgment. She could allow herself that much.

  Tomorrow she’d be sensible. And if he ended up in front of a firing squad, she would give the order to fire.

  It took him longer to cross the island than Mal expected. Trees were down everywhere, some uprooted, some snapped in half, and he tried to remember if there were any large ones near the house. Had Sophie stayed in her room like a sensible human being, or had she tried to take off the first chance she got? He hoped to hell not. If she had, she might have been one of those unrecognizable bodies bobbing in the waves. Archer MacDonald had already miscalculated, leaving too late, and they’d been hours ahead of any possible time Sophie could have set out. If she’d gone, she was dead, and the sooner he accepted that fact the better.

  But he didn’t have to accept any facts until they were staring him in the face. He moved as fast as he could through the debris, but the heavy rain and wind kept his pace to not much more than a crawl, and the meager daylight beyond the clouds didn’t help. She was not going to be dead. He was sure of it. He’d know if she’d been an idiot and taken a boat out and drowned. Well, of course she was an idiot, absolutely fearless when she should be hiding in a closet, but she wasn’t stupid.

  The house was at a much lower point on the island than the sugar mill, which was still standing tall. How high had the waves risen? Were they going to get any higher? He couldn’t imagine them reaching the second floor of the house, but if everyone else had left the island, Sophie was unlikely to stay in her room, and storm-driven waves could rise fast.

  No, she’d be fine. He had good instincts—he had to—but he never treated them like gospel. And in fact, it wasn’t his instincts that told him she wasn’t dead. It was something else, something indefinable, as if there’d be a hollow place somewhere inside him if she were gone.

  Ridiculous, he thought, wiping the rain out of his eyes and plowing onward, shoving branches out of his way. And why the fuck did he care? He’d been ready to leave her on the island and let the Committee sort her out. He was going to put in a good word for her, despite the fact that she’d done everything she could to get in his way. He didn’t know whether it would be up to Madsen or James Bishop to decide what to do with her, but
both were reasonable. He had little doubt they’d bring her back to the States and resettle her. In the end it hadn’t really been her fault that the mission had become such a clusterfuck.

  For some goddamned reason he was worried about her. Again, that was the problem—he couldn’t afford to think about anyone but the mission and his own safety, and his safety came second. At least he’d accomplished the first half of the job. Archer MacDonald lay crumpled at the bottom of a cliff, though at this point the rising tide could have very easily carried his body out to sea. He still had to find Chekowsky and deal with him—at least he’d gotten a name out of Archer during the rough trip back to the island—but that didn’t give him much of an advantage. As soon as he was sure Sophie was safe and taken care of, he could cut her out of his life.

  He looked up, squinting through the pounding rain, and saw the great bulk of the old plantation house ahead of him in the distance. It was still in one piece, and there was no water surrounding it, though the rising tide might make it there soon. There were no lights on, but that was to be expected. He doubled his efforts, sprinting across the field, deftly avoiding the mess of tree limbs and branches that the storm had brought down.

  He didn’t bother trying to be quiet as he climbed onto the wide veranda, and he half-expected the front doors to be locked, but they opened easily, and he stepped in out of the downpour, leaning against them.

  It was warm and dry in there, though his wet, clammy clothes were making him want to shudder. There were candles on the coffee table in front of the smothering sofa of doom—most of them had burned out but two were still glowing. He pushed away and moved over to the couch, thinking he’d find Sophie asleep on the treacherous piece of furniture.

  She wasn’t there. He glanced at the table—it looked as if she’d done nothing more than gone to the kitchen and brought food back. There were three different plates with nothing but crumbs left on them, two wineglasses, two empty glass Coke bottles, and an empty bottle of a really wonderful cabernet. If she’d downed all that she must be upstairs, sound asleep.

  With a sigh he piled up the plates and glasses and carried them out to the kitchen. There was no second bottle of wine, so he made do with a Corona—Archer wouldn’t be needing them anymore. He knew he should eat something, but he was too damned tired to feel any interest in food. He drank down the beer in four gulps, set the bottle down, and reached for his belt, dumping his wet clothes on the slate floor in the kitchen.

  He’d hoped that the soaking rain would wash the salt spray off his nude body, but he still felt sticky. The power was off, and he had no idea whether the water depended on electricity. He wasn’t in the mood to experiment, so he simply went out into the tiny kitchen courtyard to stand there and let Mother Nature wash him down. The hard pellets of rain slammed against his body, and for a moment he shivered, then controlled it. He needed a nice warm bed. He wanted a nice warm body, Sophie’s body, to wrap around, but that was a very bad idea.

  He tripped on Sophie’s wheelchair on his way back in, and he shoved it out of the way, then paused. What the hell was that doing there? Was there someone else on the island? It had looked as if Archer had sent everyone away, but maybe he’d left someone behind.

  He froze, as the unacceptable flooded into his mind, and once there, he couldn’t get it out. Had Archer left someone behind to kill her? Anything was possible. Otherwise what the hell was her wheelchair doing in the kitchen? In front of the door to the wine cellar, he realized, and if anything he felt even colder than before.

  If someone was going to hide a body, the wine cellar would be the perfect place. Getting rid of a corpse in what amounted to a hurricane was problematic, to say the least, but leaving it around tended to get unpleasant. The cellar would be naturally cool, keeping decomposition to a minimum. He kept his thoughts businesslike, straightforward. If she was down there, it was too late to do anything about it. No one would dare make a mistake a second time.

  He knew he ought to go down there and look. There was a combination lock on the door, and he needed to find something to cut through it. Whether or not he wanted to see Sophie’s body, he had to find out.

  Corpse, he reminded himself, using the word deliberately. If, despite his instinct and ridiculously romantic imaginings, she was dead, then the sooner he accepted it, the better. People died all the time. Sophie Jordan had no family left, no one who cared about her. No one to mourn her.

  He realized he was shivering again, and he broke out of his momentary trance. He needed to search the rest of the house to make certain she wasn’t hiding somewhere, and then he’d need the proper tools to break in. He was going to need some clothes on first—he never would have imagined feeling so cold on a tropical island. So cold it felt as if he’d never get warm again.

  He moved through the living room, pinching out the last two candles. Her killer would still be around—there was no way to get off the island in this weather, and whoever had been here wouldn’t have been gone long. He didn’t feel like facing the man he would torture and kill, very slowly, before he got clothes on.

  He looked up, and the door to her room was closed. A faint spark of hope went through him, and he went up the marble steps three at a time, pushing open her door, ready to annoy her.

  The bed was empty. He sagged against the doorjamb, unmoving for a moment, as that hollow feeling he’d imagined started growing inside him. There was nowhere else she would be on the island—the only place she would have gone was high ground near the sugar mill, and he’d seen no sign of her. He was going to have to go down into that claustrophobic wine cellar that Archer had showed off earlier in the week and find her lifeless body.

  He shook himself. It wasn’t like him to jump to conclusions, but he was cold, exhausted, and his emotions had been haywire from the moment he looked into Sophie’s huge brown eyes. And he’d been fool enough to think he no longer had any emotions.

  Feeling numb, he moved away from the bedroom, pushing open his own door in search of clothes and calm.

  There she was, her hair spread on his pillow, sleeping peacefully. He stayed very still, watching until he could see the rise and fall of her breathing. She was fine.

  There were leaves and flowers on the wet floor—either she had opened the door or it had blown open. It didn’t matter. He could smell the scent of gardenias and could even pick up the soft sound of her breathing, despite the noise of the wind and rain overhead. He glanced down at his hardening cock, and he wanted to laugh. Five minutes ago he was in the depths of despair and now he was back to being a horny bastard.

  Well, “depths of despair” is a little too dramatic, he reminded himself. He might be a little conflicted when it came to her, but he was hardly in . . . well, he was hardly . . . he couldn’t think of an acceptable phrase. He simply hadn’t wanted her to be dead—for some reason that had been extremely important.

  So she was back to being a pain in his ass and almost irresistible. Archer was dead—Mal no longer had any excuse to touch her, other than the strongest one: he wanted to. If he had any sense, he’d close the door and head back to her room, sleep in her bed.

  If he had any sense, he’d never have touched her in the first place. Face it, he told himself. You’ve got a thing for the girl. The more you fight it the worse it’ll be. Get in there and fuck the shit out of her and you’ll be able to walk away.

  Silently he moved into the room, coming around to the far side of the bed, staring down at her. A good operative would have known he was there, he thought, and a moment later her eyes opened, those warm brown eyes that were the best thing in the world.

  She just looked at him, not moving. “You’re back,” she said in a low, sleep-husky voice, stating the obvious.

  “I’m back,” he agreed, being just as predictable. “Why are you in my bed? Something wrong with yours?” It wasn’t the most welcoming of statements, but his natural wariness had kicked in.

  She opened that gorgeous mouth of hers to say something, th
en seemed to think better of it, as tension stiffened her body. “Is Archer with you?”

  Just to be an asshole he gave an exaggerated look around him. “I don’t see him anywhere, do you?”

  Her shoulders didn’t relax. Bare shoulders, which meant she was probably naked between his sheets. His cock got even harder at the thought, but he didn’t change his expression.

  “Is he on the island?”

  He should take pity on the edge of fear in her voice. “Nope,” he said. By now Archer’s body would be washed out to sea for the fish to nibble away at, but he wasn’t ready to offer that information.

  “Is he coming back soon?” Her voice was marginally less nervous.

  He glanced toward the French doors and the storm raging outside. “Not likely.” Years of training were hard to break, and he couldn’t bring himself to tell her the truth, not when he was still unsure of her.

  Then again, he’d learned not to trust anyone, and life had born his skepticism out. The woman in front of him could be a treacherous snake or an unwitting temptress. He had his own opinion, but that wasn’t enough to go on. Not yet.

  “Okay,” she said, and for some reason the nervousness hadn’t left her. “I’m sorry I usurped your territory. I should be in my own bed.”

  He didn’t respond to that one—she was just asking for flattery. She had to know he found her almost irresistible. “You still haven’t told me why you’re here. Is your bed made of nails or something? I wouldn’t put it past Archer.”

  “It’s a hospital bed—they’re made to be uncomfortable,” she said with a grimace.

  “So like Goldilocks you decided to check out the competition and this one was just right?” He was mocking her again—trying to keep her at arm’s length when he wanted nothing more than to pull her into them.