by Cindy Dees
Jagger nodded cautiously. Don. The name sounded familiar. But he wasn’t putting a face with it. Last thing he remembered, he was driving a boat across the open ocean with no land in sight anywhere. Fuzzy recollection of an explosion throwing him high into the sky tickled at his memory, but that could be from a dozen war zones he’d fought in over the years.
Emily’s palm was cool against his forehead. “He still feels warm,” she said worriedly.
Lyle shrugged. “It may be another day or two before the fever’s completely gone. We’re still gonna have to watch for relapses for a few days.”
Emily nodded and glanced down. “Are you hungry, Jagger?”
“Yeah. I guess I am.”
Lyle cautioned, “Go easy on ’im. Start with something simple like chicken noodle soup. He’ll need to work his way up to your world-famous enchiladas.”
Emily grinned. “Aha. The truth comes out. You just want us to stay for my cooking.”
“Damn straight, girl.” Lyle laughed.
Jagger never dreamed that a simple bowl of soup could taste so good. Maybe it was the not eating for several days. Maybe it was two years of tough jerky and rotting fruit and tasteless oatmeal. But either way, he savored each and every drop of the rich broth. And then came orange juice. Surely it was God’s own nectar. He’d never tasted anything so zesty and refreshing.
Lyle helped him to his feet a little while later and guided him to the restroom. Afterward, he noticed a door that looked as if it led outside. Jagger murmured, “Any chance I can step out for a minute? It’s been a long time since I saw the sun.”
Lyle threw him a knowing look. “I was one of the medics who repatriated POWs in Germany when they came out of ’Nam. If you wanna talk, I’ve heard it all.”
Jagger nodded. He wasn’t ready for an amateur shrink quite yet. He just wanted to feel sunlight on his skin before this dream faded away and was replaced by the harsh, cold reality of another crate.
An ocean breeze caressed his skin as he stepped onto a long, covered porch. Emily was already out there sprawling in a chair, eyes closed and face lifted to the sun.
“Hey,” he murmured as he eased gently into the chair beside her.
Her eyes flew open. “Should you be up and about yet?”
He shrugged. “Lyle didn’t stop me from coming out here.”
They sat together in silence for a time. It was tranquil. The sound of the waves a hundred yards away was soothing. He’d gotten so sick of listening to water over the past two years, he was surprised to find it pleasant today.
“How much do you remember of the past few days?” she eventually asked cautiously.
“Not much. Why?”
“Just wondering.”
He frowned, suspicions aroused. That was the sort of question people asked when they were hinting around about something. There was more to it than idle curiosity. What was she worried about him remembering?
She distracted him by murmuring, “You talked a fair bit in your delirium.”
Delirium? Holy—“Did I say anything interesting?”
“You said quite a few interesting things. You talked about your captivity mostly.” She hesitated and then added, “When I was draping you in cold towels, I saw your scars.”
Ah. Mentally, he winced. He’d figured at the time he picked up most of the injuries that he’d be pretty much done with the ladies after his ordeal was over. No woman would find his freakishly scarred body attractive. His captors had marred him pretty much from head to toe.
“It’s an impressive collection,” she commented neutrally.
“Impressive? Is that what you’d call it?” he asked bitterly.
In a flash she was on her knees before him. He stared down at her, startled.
“Jagger, I swear I had absolutely nothing to do with your capture. I had no knowledge of it and I didn’t set you up. I was furious, in fact. I thought you ditched me the morning after—well, you know what after.”
He stared down at her skeptically. Words were cheap. Just because she said so didn’t mean he ought to believe her. But there was something…hovering just beyond recollection. Something important that happened during his fever. Did it have something to do with this? The gaping hole in his memory was frustrating.
“Does Lyle have a telephone?” he asked.
She shook her head. “But he has an Internet hookup if you want to e-mail someone. Friends or family…” She broke off leadingly as if she was fishing for information about his personal life.
“I was thinking about my superiors, actually. They must think I’m dead by now.”
“Uh, there may be a problem with that.”
Here it came. The smooth redirect to keep him from contacting any outsiders to let someone know he wasn’t shark bait.
“It seems that AbaCo planted some false information with the FBI about you and me. Well, false in your case. The stuff on me is true. But anyway, there are federal warrants out for both our arrests.”
As annoying as that was, he couldn’t say he was entirely surprised. It was definitely AbaCo’s style. “I still need to contact my superiors. The only way we’re going to straighten this out is to talk to them.”
“Jagger, I can’t stand by and watch you go from one jail cell to another!” She sounded genuinely distraught at the prospect. He had to admit, he wasn’t crazy about the idea, either. But at least in an American jail he’d have decent food and some rights.
“Where’s the computer?” he asked determinedly.
When he made to stand up, Emily was there instantly, supporting his right elbow. Damn, he was weak. With her help, he managed to totter into the house. He sat down at the computer in the corner of the kitchen and typed out a short message from Lyle’s e-mail account to his headquarters in Quantico reporting that he was alive and would return to make a full report and clear his name as soon as he was strong enough to do so. There was no immediate response. He realized belatedly that if it was late afternoon here in the Pacific, it must be the middle of the night in Virginia.
He headed for the couch, inexplicably exhausted. Or maybe not so inexplicably. He caught a glance of a substantial shard of fiberglass on the kitchen counter. It did, indeed, remind him of a cross between a wicked knife and a small machete. And that thing had punctured him through? No wonder he’d almost croaked.
He lay down, grateful to rest, and it was morning the next time he awoke, with the sun streaming in from the other side of the room. Emily dozed in a chair beside him but roused the moment he shifted his weight.
She poked a thermometer in his ear. “Ninety-nine point nine,” she announced. “You’re almost back to human again.”
“Is that why I’m so hungry I could eat the arm of this sofa?”
She grinned. “What’s your pleasure? Pancakes? Eggs and bacon?”
“Do you know how to make French toast?” he asked.
“Coming right up.”
In short order, she carried in a big plate of French toast, swimming in butter and confectioners’ sugar and dribbled with syrup. She’d already cut it into neat little bite-sized pieces for him. Cripes. She was treating him like a four-year-old. But when he shifted to sit up, he froze as searing pain impaled him.
Emily winced along with him. “Lyle discontinued the morphine drip last night. He was worried about you getting hooked on it. He said you’d be a little sore this morning.”
Jagger snorted.
She grinned commiseratingly. “Actually, I believe his exact words were that you’d hurt like a son of a bitch today.”
“He wasn’t wrong,” Jagger managed to grit out.
He didn’t complain when she lifted a forkful of French toast to his mouth for him. But he did groan—in pleasure—when he tasted it.
“It’s the vanilla,” she murmured. “Makes all the difference.”
He didn’t care if the secret ingredient was arsenic. This stuff was to die for. He ate every bite and then slept again.
For the next three days, he
followed that pattern pretty much around the clock. Sleep. Eat. Soak up a little sun. Sleep again. And somewhere in there, he began to feel human. He was starting to gain a little weight if his face in the bathroom mirror was any indication. He didn’t look quite so gaunt anymore. Emily delighted in cooking for him and spent hours in the kitchen whipping up some new delicacy each day.
He was actually starting to believe that maybe, just maybe, this wasn’t some elaborate scheme by AbaCo to screw with his head.
And then Lyle hollered from the kitchen on the fourth morning, “You’ve got an e-mail, boy. You better come take a look at it.”
He pushed up off the couch and went to the kitchen to read it over Lyle’s shoulder. Emily was already there, frowning at the message.
Step outside at 10:16 a.m. Turn your face up to the sky.
“What’s that about?” Lyle inquired.
“Satellite must be flying overhead then. They want to get a visual on me to see if it’s really me.”
“Jeez. You’re telling me they can ID you from space?” the older man asked.
Jagger nodded. “Yup.”
“The military’s come a long way since my days in the service,” Lyle grumbled.
Emily was grim. “How do we know this isn’t from AbaCo? Maybe they’re going to fly a helicopter over at that exact moment and shoot you.”
“I thought I was supposed to be the paranoid one.”
She scowled. “I lost you once before. I’m not losing you again.”
Something clicked in his head. Those words. He’d heard her say something like that before. Sometime during that black hole in his memory. Bits and pieces of it were starting to come back. He remembered being chased by a black cigarette boat off the coast of Lokaina, now. He vaguely remembered the interior of a small business jet. And being unbearably thirsty.
He frowned, racking his brains for more to this new fragment of memory, but nothing came.
At 10:10 a.m. or so, he went outside. In bright daylight like this, he wasn’t likely to spot the spy satellite crossing overhead. But he walked down to the dirt airstrip, which was the most open spot on the island, and looked up, certain the satellite was out there.
He stayed on the field until 10:30 a.m., and then he made his way back inside and sat down at the computer. He didn’t have long to wait. The e-mail came through and he opened it immediately.
If you and your accomplice turn yourselves in immediately, the federal prosecutor will take that into account when he files his formal charges. A team is standing by at Quantico to conduct a full debrief and take your statement.
He groaned under his breath. He knew precisely what was entailed in a full debrief. Days of grueling interrogation, full-bore efforts to break down his story, sleep deprivation, emotional duress, whatever it took. But after AbaCo’s efforts to extract information from him, he highly doubted Uncle Sam could throw anything at him that would freak him out. But Emily—
The thought of her undergoing the same sort of browbeating made something growl way down deep in his gut. She was too innocent, too sweet, too damned soft to be put through something like that. As the gut feeling about her bubbled up into conscious thought, he froze. Was he falling for her again? Was home-cooking and a cool hand smoothing his brow all it took to make a complete sucker out of him?
Or was he a sucker at all? Was it possible that she was for real? Sometimes when he glanced over at her quickly, he caught pain in her big brown eyes. Pain for him. She bent over backward to make him comfortable, to anticipate his every need, to do little things constantly to show how much she cared for him. All of that went way above and beyond the call of acting concerned for him. It was hard to draw any other conclusion than the obvious one. She really did give a damn for him.
He turned his gaze back to that order, thinly veiled, for him to get his butt back to Quantico and face the charges against him. He’d bet they were interested in hearing from him, all right.
He typed back, Will return as soon as able to give complete statement and answer all questions. Am recuperating from serious injuries sustained in my escape from captors. There. Let them chew on that.
“Everything okay?” Emily murmured.
“Just ducky,” he replied, grinning.
She inhaled sharply and he looked up at her quickly. Her eyes were wide, and she was staring at him like a starstruck kid meeting a movie star. He raised an inquiring eyebrow.
She answered, “That’s the first time you’ve really looked like the old Jagger. The one I met and fell—” she broke off “—the one I met two years ago.”
She met and fell for? Was that how she was going to finish that sentence? Huh. It didn’t matter. He shouldn’t care. He didn’t care. That was not pleasure spreading like warm honey in his gut.
He slept through most of the afternoon, but as the sun began to set, he woke, restless. “Walk with me, Emily,” he murmured.
They headed down to the beach, where Mother Nature treated them to a spectacular sunset in shades of pink, peach, crimson, lavender and violet. He sat down in the warm sand as the last vestiges of the show faded from the sky.
Emily plopped down beside him.
Perhaps it was the prospect of returning to Virginia, or maybe he was just healing enough to face it now, but tonight his thoughts turned to his captivity and the grueling torture he’d endured.
He spoke quietly, without looking at her. “My captors told me you’d betrayed me. That you’d helped them set me up and had led me to them. They showed me pictures they had of the two of us at the party and surveillance pictures of us going into the hotel.”
She gasped.
“I didn’t believe them at first. I’d looked into your eyes. Held you in my arms. Hell, made love to you. There was no way you faked what I felt between us. But over time…” He took a steadying breath and continued. “You’ve got to understand. Being under that kind of physical and emotional pressure messes with your head. You start to believe stuff. Even crazy stuff. I believed them.”
She made a sound of protest, but he waved her to silence. He wanted to get this off his chest.
“Funny thing is, I think maybe that’s the one thing that kept me alive. I was so damned mad at you for playing me like that. There were times when my rage, my determination to find you and get even with you was the only thing that sustained me.”
He stared out at the black ocean for a moment, searching for words. “So it’s a little weird for me now, after hating you so passionately for two years, to suddenly find out that the one thing I was living for was all a lie.”
She opened her mouth to say something, thought better of it and closed her mouth.
“What?” he asked. “Talk to me.”
She smiled a sad little smile. “I feel a little stupid and a lot guilty about how mad I was at you for sneaking out the morning after like that. I swore never to speak to you again. To cut you completely out of my life, out of my thoughts—” her voice hitched “—out of my heart. I vowed to myself never to need you again. Never to ask anything of you.”
When she didn’t go on, he prompted, “And now?”
“And now it’s all I can do not to fling myself at you and beg you never to leave me again. But I have no right. I did, in fact, work for the very people who did this to you. For all I know, they did use me without my knowledge to set you up. You’ll never look at me and see anything other than a collaborator with your enemies.”
He peered at her in the dusk, trying to make out the expression in her eyes. But she’d averted her face until all he saw was a glistening track down her cheek.
After a moment, she continued, “If there’s anything I can do to help you catch the people who kidnapped you, I’ll do it. No questions asked. Anything at all. Just say the word.”
He turned over her words for a while. Finally he said gravely, “I do have one request of you.”
“Name it.”
“Kiss me.”
Chapter 10
Em
ily inhaled sharply, stunned. “Seriously?”
He made a sound that was half laugh and half something else that sounded like pain. “For better or worse, I’ve been thinking about you nonstop for two years. Is it any surprise that the first woman I want to kiss now is you?”
Memory of his bitter words against her during his delirium flashed into her head. Was this some ploy to get inside her guard so he could take his long-sought revenge? Or was it the innocent request he made it sound like? Was she the paranoid one now—and did it matter?
Truth was, she’d desperately wanted to kiss him almost from the first moment she’d seen him again. Even if he was setting her up for a one-night stand with the intent to leave her high and dry for real this time, she didn’t think she had it in her to say no to him. Her addiction to him ran too deep, too permanent, to deny. No matter what his motives were, she wasn’t going to say no to kissing him once more.
She surrendered to her heart. “I guess it’s not a surprise that you want to kiss me. I want to kiss you, too.”
He smiled, but it was too dark to see if the smile reached his eyes or not. She rose to her knees and moved closer to him. And then very carefully, very slowly, she leaned forward. Their breath mingled and she paused, startled by intense recognition of the spicy scent. A cold night, a candlelit suite, an evening of magical seduction were all tied to that masculine aroma. The taste of it was potent and familiar on her tongue, more complex and delicious than any fine wine. Just like the man.
His fingertips touched her cheeks. Slid down her jaw to rest on her throat. Her whole body pulsed with awareness of him, undulating toward him, drawn like a magnet.
She tilted her head. Their lips touched.
Oh, my. His mouth was as warm and resilient and restless as she remembered. But there was more to him this time. A depth of experience. Wisdom and a measure of sadness hard-earned. Less of the devil-may-care recklessness. He was more of a man and less of a playboy. And absolutely irresistible because of it. She arched into him, her arms looping around his neck as need exploded inside her.
