by Anne Stuart
He wouldn’t leave her at the security check-in. “Are you afraid I’m not going to get on the plane, James?” she demanded. “I promise, I’m not going to show up at your door looking like a lost sheep.”
“I know you’re not. My mama taught me to make sure a lady gets to where she’s going,” he said, his drawl deliberately more pronounced.
She swallowed her snarl. So they waited, on hard plastic chairs, surrounded by noisy children and bickering parents, worried grandparents and impatient businessmen. They waited, and Annie ignored years of indoctrination, refusing to fill the time with the polite small talk she’d become so adept in.
They finally announced her plane. She rose, and James rose, looming up beside her, remote and removed. He seemed older now, miles away from her, and she wondered if he felt relief that he’d finally managed to get rid of her. She wondered if he really believed what he’d told her.
She looked up at him, smiling brightly. “Good-bye, darling,” she said in a silken voice. And she flung her arms around his neck, pressing her open mouth against his.
She expected annoyance, tolerance, perhaps even a distant amusement. She hadn’t expected his reaction.
His arms closed around her like a vice, pulling her tightly up against him. And she didn’t have time to kiss him—the touch of her mouth against his seemed to ignite a firestorm. She could feel him through every inch of her body, the lean, deceptively strong body beneath the suit, the heat and lure of muscle and sinew, the sheer intensity of him. She felt as if she were being absorbed into a maelstrom, and all she could do was hold onto him as he kissed her, he kissed her, using his tongue, kissing her with a thoroughness she’d never experienced. His hands slid down over her hips, pulling them up against him, and she could feel how hard he was, feel the need and tension rippling through his body.
She was vaguely aware of the noise around her. The chatter of tourists, the smattering of applause. But it came to her from a distance. All that mattered was James, his mouth, his hands, his body.
And then he broke away from her. Distancing himself physically, emotionally, taking a few steps back when she wanted to scream at him, to claw him, to beg him to take her back to the car, to a darkened alley, anywhere …
But he wasn’t going to. She knew that as she saw the defenses shutter his face once more and he was the distant family friend who’d never touched her.
And she wouldn’t beg. All she could do was keep her dignity, her battered sense of humor. “You should say good-bye more often, James,” she said lightly.
There was no answering warmth in his bleak eyes. “I’ve said enough good-byes to last me a lifetime,” he said. And he turned and walked away.
Ah, she’d been full of plans for him. The memory of that kiss had warmed her during the trip back to Boston, stirred her for the next few weeks, and she anticipated Christmas with a mixture of dread and delight. She had a month off at Christmas, and she would concentrate on James, who always spent the holidays with them since his own family had died. She would ignore her father’s disapproval for once in her life, she would conquer James’s idiotic, noble reservations, and it would be very sweet indeed.
But James hadn’t been there that Christmas, for the first time in fourteen years. Win murmured something about him spending the time in Europe, but before Annie could accuse him of interfering, she met Martin Paulsen. Martin, who was everything she’d ever fantasized about. Martin, who gave her everything she wanted in bed, never frightened her, never made any demands, and kept her so mesmerized that she couldn’t think of anything else.
They’d been married that June. And James had been there, looking older, more distant than ever. She’d forgotten her fierce passion for him. She’d even danced with him at the wedding and accepted his chaste salute on her proffered cheek.
And three years later, when the haze of passion had finally lifted and she realized how truly empty her marriage was, she got a quiet, uncontested divorce with Win’s help and never looked back.
She was looking back now. She was looking backward, forward, upside down, and in dark corners to try to make sense of her tangled past. And as she bounced along in the tiny plane, the familiar stranger beside her, a sudden, painful thought struck her, and there was no way she could dismiss it.
“You said Win molded me,” she said abruptly.
James turned to look at her through the murky light of the small plane. “You know that as well as I do,” he said in a husky voice.
“You said he chose my men for me. What did you mean by that?”
He shrugged, turning away from her. “I don’t know what the hell he did, Annie.”
“Yes, you do. He chose Martin, didn’t he? He approved of Martin and me, threw us together.”
“I’d say that was obvious.”
“Did he want me to marry him? Did my father have a hand in that as well?”
He turned then, and she held her breath, dreading the answer. She should have known James wouldn’t sugar-coat it. “Annie, your father controlled every man who ever came near you. He picked Martin out of his recruits, groomed him to be exactly what you dreamed about, and handed him to you on a silver platter. You took him with slavering gratitude.” There was no missing the faint bitterness in his voice.
“Why?”
“Because he wanted to keep you away from me. He didn’t trust me to keep my distance, and he didn’t trust you. He knew how determined you could be, no matter how he tried to mold you into someone more amenable.”
“Why Martin? Why not you?”
“Because he could control Martin. Martin was his creature, his perfect proxy husband for you. Martin was just like him in so many ways. He considered me a more volatile proposition.”
“So my father set me up for a lousy marriage because he was afraid I’d get involved with you,” Annie said, trying to keep her voice level. Everywhere she turned there was a new betrayal, and she wondered how deep that betrayal went. “What a foolish waste of time. Considering that you didn’t want me in the first place.”
He turned and looked at her. There was an odd light in his eyes, and he smiled at her. The feral grin of a jungle cat. “Didn’t I, Annie?”
Chapter Fourteen
It took them three days to reach Ireland. Three goddamn miserable days, during which he kept her so drugged up she barely realized where she was. At least it stopped her questions. It closed her haunting eyes. It smoothed the worry from her face and made her look far too young for him once more.
He needed to remember that. She would always be too young for him, in experience, in the cold, cruel facts of life. It was her blessing, and his curse.
He got drunk whenever he could. During the long night flights, when there was no way anyone could get to them, he’d make his way through a quart of tequila and watched the woman asleep beside him. He usually managed to sneak the stuff into her food, but once or twice he had to resort to a hypodermic needle when she got too restless. He wondered if she’d notice the tracks.
The trailer was equipped with everything. Weapons, the makings for bombs and mind-altering drugs, the stuff for phony passports and ID’s. It had been a simple enough matter to make an arrangement via a cellular phone to get what he needed together. It kept his mind off her body, her mouth, while she slept.
Nothing, not even the booze, could distract him now. She noticed too much. She was her father’s daughter, in certain ways that he didn’t want to admit. But he’d never lied to himself about anything. Not about who and what he was. And who and what he wanted.
He wanted Annie.
He just didn’t plan to take her if he could help it. Because to take her would be to sign her death warrant.
He wasn’t even sure where they were going. Ireland was a small country, Northern Ireland even tinier, but there was a whole world there. The last place Win Sutherland had been before he returned home to face his execution.
In the end he simply followed his instinct. For the first time i
n more than twenty years, he went home.
Derrymore hadn’t changed. A few more bombed-out buildings, a few less tanks patrolling the streets. But the look on the pale, pinched faces of the people was still the same, from the very young to the very old. Hatred and fear.
He’d looked the same. For more than twenty years of his life he could look in a mirror and see that same, hollow-eyed rage. But he’d learned to hide it. Learned to bank it, channel it, use it. Learned to kill for someone else’s patriotism and not his own.
He could thank Win for that. He could curse Win for that. He’d saved him and damned him at the same time. And never a day went by when he didn’t wish he’d starved to death in Highroad Prison.
Annie was moving, but just barely, her mind still befogged by the drugs he was giving her. He steered her through the narrow streets to the empty house he’d found, surrounded by other derelict buildings, shutting down his own reaction to it. It was a tiny, dismal place. He’d never been in this particular council house. But he knew it as well as he knew his soul. The smell of it. The random, cheap furnishings and tattered wallpaper. The luminous pictures of a wavy-haired Jesus praying over his poor, benighted followers.
There were two bedrooms. He took her to the smaller one, to a bed that was little more than a narrow cot, pushing her down on the mattress and pulling a thin blanket up around her. She watched him, silently, as he pulled off her shoes, checked the tiny window, and then turned back. Her eyes had already closed once more, and she was breathing the shallow, steady sleep of the drugged.
He didn’t dare give her any more. He’d lost track of how much she’d had, and the stuff he’d pumped into her was still experimental enough that he couldn’t be sure of the consequences. She was out once more, and he could only hope she’d stay out long enough for him to reconnoiter, gather some preliminary information, and get back to her.
He stood over her. It was dark and cool and bleak in the room, and her face was pale and still. Almost deathlike. And he’d seen death too often.
He touched her throat, but she was warm, and he could feel the lifeblood pulsing through her. He slid his hand down her blouse, opening the buttons. She had small breasts, encased in a flimsy lace bra, and her nipples were hard in the chilly room.
So was he.
He moved away from her, pulling the blanket back over her. She slept on, oblivious, and he backed out of the room before he could change his mind.
Annie’s dreams were cloudy, full of blood and death and heavy eroticism, and they seemed to go on forever. She was caught in a thick fog that she couldn’t bat away, and she lost track of time, of place, of anything but the man beside her, touching her, holding her, keeping her still. She felt oddly weightless and she dreamed there were airplanes, but she couldn’t summon up enough energy to ask where they were going. She knew they landed, but everything looked dark and strange to her.
She knew she slept. And this time her dreams grew more solid, and she felt his hand on her breast, and she wanted to cry out, but she couldn’t move.
She hated it. Hated being trapped and vulnerable. Helpless. She wanted to take his hand and hold it to her breast. She wanted to pull him into bed with her, to tell him what she wanted and to take it.
But Win stood behind him. Not as she’d found him in death, still and silent. But covered in blood, screaming a voiceless scream, and she wanted to scream as well. To tell him to go away, leave her alone, leave James alone. They’d paid too much already.
And then the dreams shifted, stopped, turned into peaceful fields of daisies, with a bright sun overhead and green grass all around, and everything was calm and gentle. Until she looked down beneath her, at the man lying there, and saw it was James. With his neck broken, as Win’s had been.
She sat up with a cry that barely made it past her lips. She was in total darkness, cold, disoriented, and alone, and the panic was so deep she shook with it.
She was surprisingly alert, after what seemed like days of drifting. It was a small room, with a high, narrow window, and she seemed to be on a bed, fully clothed, with her shoes missing. And her shirt undone to her waist.
She refastened the buttons with shaking hands. She was cold, she was dirty, and she was hungry. She could do something about that. The fear and the solitude would have to wait.
Where was she? And even more important, where was James? Where had he brought her, and why had he abandoned her? The floor was rough wood beneath her bare feet, and her seeking hands could find no light switch on the plaster walls. She eventually encountered a string overhead, and the faint, bare lightbulb clicked on with a tug, illuminating a room better left in the dark.
The mattress was bare ticking, covered with a thin blanket. The walls were gray, the rusty radiator beneath the window had stained the floor, and the place smelled of cabbage and musty, closed-up places. And poverty.
Odd, that she’d know the smell of poverty, she thought, when she’d lived her entire life in privilege. But she recognized the hopeless stench of it, and it added to her sense of desolation.
She’d thought the trailer park was bad. This place was far worse, and she wondered if James lived out his life in places like this one. If he felt safe only in misery.
She found a shower with lukewarm water and a backpack with clean clothes. She found an empty kitchen, some cold fish and chips wrapped in paper, three empty bottles of beer and one unopened one. Obviously James had been there.
The fish and chips tasted of pure grease, but it felt as if she hadn’t eaten in days. The warm beer was better, and she drained it quickly. The night was growing colder and darker around her, and she felt weak, vulnerable. Where the hell was James?
He would come back to her sooner or later, she told herself. She had no doubt of that. He wouldn’t have kept her with him for so long only to abandon her.
But what if he had no choice in the matter? What if the forces of darkness that had been shadowing them finally closed in? What if James was lying dead in some alleyway, and she was alone, helpless, lost?
She shook herself. She’d never been lost in her life. She was strong and resourceful. If James didn’t return, she would go out looking for him.
She heard the rattling of the doorknob with almost pathetic relief and she rose, starting toward the front hallway, trying to curb her smile of relief, when something stopped her. Alone in the narrow, darkened corridor she realized belatedly that someone wasn’t unlocking the shabby front door. They were trying to break in.
She backed away in sudden, silent terror. Whoever was out there hadn’t made a random choice of houses to break into. He, or they, knew what they were looking for. James. And Annie.
She couldn’t think of anywhere to hide. The house was stark, barely furnished, and there were no closets. The rusty shower had no door or curtain; the bed was almost flush with the floor.
In the end she had no choice. The door finally gave way, and she had no place to run but the tiny living room, ducking behind the open door and holding her breath.
Whoever it was came alone. She held still, listening, praying it was James, that he’d forgotten his keys, that he’d never had keys to this strange, empty house in the first place. But the man moved with too much noise, too little grace, for all that he was trying to stifle any sound he might make. It wasn’t James. Therefore, it was the enemy.
And if he was making an effort to be silent, he must know he wasn’t alone in the house. Had he come looking for James? Or had he already taken care of him?
She was cold, barefoot, damp-headed. He would see signs of a shower in the bathroom, he would see the food she’d just abandoned in the kitchen. She couldn’t wait and have him find her. She’d have to make a run for it, barefoot and all, the moment he stepped into one of the back bedrooms. She’d simply have to pray that she was faster than he was, and that she could disappear into whatever lay beyond the front door.
Count to five, she told herself. Count to ten. Don’t make a break too fast, don’t
wait too long. Take a deep breath, and go …
He caught her in the hallway. He was no more than a burly figure, fierce and strong and solid, and he caught her and slammed her against the wall, so hard that the wind was knocked out of her, so hard that the world shifted and turned, and she knew she’d never have time to regain her breath. He was going to kill her before she could fight back, and she heard the foul cursing under his breath, saw the arm raised to strike her as she tried desperately to scramble out of his way. He had a knife, and he was going to use it.
She didn’t want to die in this dark, smelly hallway, die at the hands of a squat, shadowy figure. Her breath came back in a great sucking rush, and she screamed, a loud, shrill cry, and his name echoed harshly through the almost empty house.
“James!” she screamed, holding up her arms to try to ward him off as he slashed at her. “Help me!”
There was no cut, no sting, just hot wet, blood pouring down her arm, and she knew if he slashed again she couldn’t fight him off. James would come back to find her in a welter of blood. Would he grieve? Or was he already dead as well?
“Bitch,” her attacker muttered in a voice thick with Ireland in it. “Bleedin’ Yank bitch.” And the knife slashed down again, toward her face.
It never connected. She hadn’t heard him come in, and neither had her attacker. In the darkness and horror he was only another shadow, taller, leaner, picking the short man up and throwing him against the wall with the ease of powerful rage. It was a murderous stranger, it was James, and she wasn’t going to die.
The man seemed to crumple within himself, and the knife skittered across the floor as he collapsed, seemingly unconscious, no longer a threat. Annie tried to move, to take a deep, shaky breath, only to watch with numb horror as James picked up the knife and advanced on the comatose man.
“No,” she gasped, but the word was no more than a choking whisper, and if he heard it, he ignored it, kneeling down over her attacker, shielding him from her sight. When he rose, the man lay facedown on the floor. And blood pooled beneath him.
