At that instant she knew he understood exactly why Dev had been so interested in his scent. Cord smelled of her, just as she smelled of him.
In his own way, Cord had knocked the stallion off-balance just as much as he had her.
“An edge!” Captain Jon snorted. “You had the whole bloody campaign in the palm of your hand and you knew it. That’s a rare gift, Elliot. Use it.” Then, as an afterthought, the captain said, “If the rest of your men are a tenth the horseman you are, they can be underfoot all you like. I’ll withdraw my complaints immediately.”
“Your men?” Raine asked, really looking at Cord for the first time.
He was dressed in blue jeans, work shirt, and a faded denim jacket. There was nothing to distinguish him from other stable hands except the aura of power that he wore as naturally as he wore the casual clothes and the gun that was no doubt concealed beneath his jacket.
“Sorry,” Captain Jon said to her. “I haven’t introduced you. Miss Raine Smith, Mr. Cord Elliot. Mr. Elliot is with Olympic security.”
Cord held out his hand. Years of ingrained politeness made her take it.
“Hello, Raine.” His voice was suddenly velvet and darkness again, beguiling.
“Don’t use that shaman’s voice on me,” she said coolly. But she couldn’t help the warmth that raced through her when his hand closed over hers. “I’m not as good-natured as my horse.”
“I know,” he said. His voice was flat now, emotionless. He turned back to Captain Jon, who was looking both puzzled and more than a little curious at the undercurrents flowing between the two of them. “I met Raine a few days ago, but we’ve never been properly introduced. In fact, she’s the reason I amended the security regulations to include taking a buddy along for any inspections of the endurance course.”
“Then you’re the chap who swept her off her feet,” Captain Jon said with a sly, sideways look at her.
“Is that what she said?” Cord’s voice was bland, but the center of his eyes expanded blackly against the pale blue irises.
“Not quite,” she retorted, looking at him. “Knocked me off my feet was how I put it. More accurate, don’t you think?”
He smiled crookedly. “You think I’m more truth than poetry, is that it?”
She started to agree, then remembered how it felt to be with him, how she had changed as he touched her . . . a new world opening before her.
And then the cold steel gun, the old world she had escaped coming back to claim her all over again.
“That’s the way life is.” Her voice was sad and bittersweet. “More truth than poetry.” She turned to talk to Captain Jon, only to discover that he had withdrawn.
“The guy who took your picture should be shot,” Cord said calmly.
“What?” she asked, off-balance again, turning toward him.
“Your picture.” He touched the laminated ID badge clipped to Raine’s collar. “Is that the best the photographer could do?”
She shrugged. The picture had been taken just after she’d arrived in California. She was jet-lagged and exhausted, having spent the previous forty-eight hours without sleep, her head in the toilet while food poisoning ravaged her until she devoutly wished to die. When she showed up for the required ID photo, her normally clear skin was thick and sallow, her eyes looked like a raccoon’s, and her hair hung in wet strings around her face. When the photographer said “Smile!” her lips had thinned into a pale, humorless line.
“I’d been sick,” she said.
“I believe it.” He shook his head. “I might not have jumped you if your ID had looked more like the real you.”
Her eyes narrowed.
“But then, it probably wouldn’t have mattered,” he admitted. “Photographs are dicey. You can get burned to the bone by depending on them. When you started to reach into your knapsack, I had no choice but to take you down.”
She opened her mouth to disagree hotly. Then she remembered last night, when he had taken the key out of her purse and opened the door to her room. To a man who spent his life knowing that every key turning in a lock could trigger a bomb, the idea that she might have a weapon in her rucksack would be inevitable, not incredible.
Her glance went to Cord’s badge. It had his name and the word “Security,” followed by a code number that assured access to every nook and cranny of any Olympic site.
Beneath the laminated plastic, the face in the picture was hard and unyielding, older than he looked now. The flash had highlighted the narrow sprinkling of gray that would one day become a solid forelock of silver, pure and vivid against the black thickness of his hair. In the picture, his eyes were as hard and transparent as glacier ice, almost no blue showing, and the line of his jaw was grim. He looked like what he was, a man who wore a gun and knew how to use it.
“Your picture looks more like you than you do,” she said without thinking.
Cord’s expression changed subtly, like a mask slipping into place. He looked more like his picture now. Cold. “I was angry when that picture was taken. I had just been pulled off a matter I’d been working on for a long time.”
“And reassigned to Olympic security?” she guessed.
He hesitated.
The pause was familiar to her. It was her father’s response when she asked questions and didn’t have enough security clearance to hear the answers.
But, unlike Chandler-Smith, Cord answered. “Yes.”
“Will you go back to the, er, matter when the Summer Games are over?” she asked quickly, knowing she shouldn’t. Nor should she be holding her breath to hear his answer.
For a timeless moment Cord looked at her, letting her see him, all barriers down. He had spent a lot of time thinking since he had left her and walked away. He wanted her. Even more, he needed her in a way so deep he couldn’t fight it, only explore it.
And resent it.
He really didn’t welcome the understanding of just how close he was to burning out. He hadn’t known how cold he had become until he felt her warmth reaching deep into him, touching him.
But he knew now. After that, the rest was just a matter of timing and luck. Of surviving long enough to use his new knowledge of himself.
“I don’t know if I’ll go back,” he said evenly. “The matter may be concluded by then. If it isn’t, I’ll see it through to conclusion.” He hesitated, then added, “I owe them that much.”
The blend of harshness and yearning in his voice sent emotions twisting through Raine—anger and sympathy, resentment and a yearning that was too much like his.
“You don’t owe me any explanations or answers,” she said tightly. “I know how the game is played.”
“Do you?”
“I grew up with it. Have you forgotten who I am?”
“Not for a second,” he said. Then his voice caressed her while he looked at her with eyes that remembered everything. “You’re the woman I kissed until you melted and ran over me like molten silk. So much heat . . . and all of it locked away from men like me. Who are you waiting for, Raine Chandler-Smith? A well-trained lapdog who always shows up for his meals on time?”
The cutting assessment made her furious. It was too close to the truth. “Yes. That’s exactly what I’m waiting for.”
“Bullshit.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” she snarled.
“Don’t I?” His voice was calm, relentless. “You’re surrounded by well-trained lapdogs. You have been since you were old enough to have a period. But not one of those polite, soothing men has touched the fire inside you.”
“How do you know? I might have had a string of lovers as long as Dev’s tail!”
“You might have, but you don’t.”
“You’ve read my file,” she said coldly, outraged at the invasion of her private life.
“No. I read you. And everything I see tells me I’m right. If you liked lapdogs, you would be riding a lapdog. You would be cool and regal on top of an impeccably mannered dressage h
orse. If you liked lapdogs, you sure as hell wouldn’t be riding a blood-bay stud as big and mean as a falling mountain.”
“Dev isn’t mean. Not with me, anyway.”
“No, not with you.” Cord’s voice changed, smoky velvet and yearning, bittersweet darkness. “You can reach inside the hardest creature and hold its heart beating in your hand.”
Raine felt herself falling again, off-balance, as unprepared as Dev for Cord’s ability to slide though defenses that had turned away every man. Except one.
She shook her head, unable to speak, refusing to believe his words. She couldn’t have touched him that deeply, that finally.
The way he had touched her.
Dev nudged her hard, all but knocking her off her feet. Automatically she reached for the stallion’s halter rope, which was hanging high on the wall nearby. She clipped the rope onto Dev’s halter.
“It’s time for his walk,” she said in a strained voice.
Cord looked at the loose halter. If the stallion decided to bolt, the halter wouldn’t give her enough leverage against the horse’s huge strength.
“That’s it?” he asked. “Just a regular halter?”
She looked at the halter, muttered under her breath, and went to the tack box. She came back with a different halter. It was almost a hackamore—a bridle without a bit. As long as Dev behaved, the special halter would remain loose around his muzzle. If he acted up, a pull on the lead rope would tighten the strap across his nose and cut off the flow of air. In terms of control, the halter was as effective as a big steel bit, but gave Dev greater freedom to eat and drink in the stall.
“Good enough?” she asked coolly.
Cord nodded. “Leave it on him all the time. That’s a request, but I can make it official.”
“Dev is a gentleman.”
“With you, yes. With the rest of the world, he’s hell on four black hooves.”
“Not with you,” she said almost resentfully as she led Dev out into the yard.
“That’s because I smelled like you,” he said, his voice deep, caressing. “I noticed it this morning, like the scent of spring on the wind. But it isn’t spring, is it? With you, it’s winter all year round.”
“That’s not—” she began.
“Fair?” he cut in sardonically. “Not much is, or haven’t you noticed? Open your eyes, Baby Raine. There’s a world out there you haven’t seen.”
“I’ve seen it.” Her hazel eyes were defiant as she turned on him, her voice was as cold as his. “It didn’t impress me as a good place to live in. A fine place for dying, though. Or hadn’t you noticed?”
“Is that what you’re afraid of? Dying?”
She tilted her head to one side and considered the question.
He waited, angry and impatient, but he couldn’t say with what or whom. He did know that he wanted to reach out and shake Raine’s perfect, safe world until everything shifted around enough to make room for him.
Patience, he told himself. You can’t divide your attention right now. You have one very deadly man to catch. Afterward there will be time.
If there is an afterward.
It wasn’t the first time Cord had confronted the dangerous nature of his work. But it was the first time the thought of dying had truly bothered him.
“No,” she said finally, “I’m not afraid of death. I’m afraid of living like my mother, waiting for the man she loves to be assassinated. Waiting alone, because he’s too busy saving the world to live with her. That’s what I’m afraid of, Mr. Cord Elliot. Loving the wrong man.”
“So you haven’t loved any man.”
“My choice.”
“A lonely choice. More lonely than your mother’s. She at least has someone to wait for.”
“The choice was forced on her. Dad was just a lawyer when they married.”
Cord’s patience frayed, slipped. Snapped. He moved closer in a single, predatory stride.
“If you ever find the tame gentleman of your dreams, Baby Raine, what will you do when he takes one look at you and your rogue stallion and runs like hell?”
She wanted to look away from Cord. She couldn’t. The intensity in him was like a net suddenly thrown over her, chaining her in place.
“What do you mean?” she managed finally.
“Look at yourself. Rich. Graceful. Pedigreed back to the Dark Ages. Smart and strong and elegant, a rapier turned on a master smith’s forge. A gentleman could probably get past all those fences, but what about the rest?”
“What do you mean?”
“What about the wildness burning inside you?” he asked softly, harshly. “The risk-taking part of you that saw seventeen hands of savage horse and said, ‘This is mine.’ ”
“What about it?” she retorted.
“Simple. There’s part of you that loves danger. Like your father. Like me.”
“That’s not true!”
Cord’s laugh was harsh and humorless. “Like bloody hell it isn’t.”
The words were as relentless as his icy blue eyes. His voice was a knife cutting away her certainties, her world, leaving her no place to hide. She wanted to run, but there was no place to go, no safe place where his words wouldn’t reach her, threatening years of hard-won certainties about herself and the world.
“You complain that my job or your father’s is risky,” Cord said sardonically. “What the hell do you call taking Dev over blind downhill jumps when he’s so tired you can hear the breath groaning through him?”
“All right,” she snapped. “The three-day event can be dangerous. It tests horse and rider to the breaking point. Some riders are attracted to the danger. I’m not. It’s a way of testing myself, of proving that I’m good at something more than being born rich.”
Her words pulled at something deep within Cord. He, too, was drawn more to the testing of himself than to the adrenaline of danger.
“Whatever you call it,” he said evenly, “the first time your tame dream gentleman sees you bruised and bloody after a three-day event, he’ll turn pale and go looking for a nice, safe, sedate dream gentlewoman to marry. It won’t be you, Baby Raine.”
Her nails dug into the lead rope she was holding. Unconsciously she shook her head, denying the truth in his words. “I’ll find what I want,” she said, her voice husky and certain. “When I do, I won’t need adrenaline and tests to give meaning to my life.”
Cord’s voice changed, velvet again as he bent over her, so close that he could sense the warmth of her, taste her very breath. “What do you want, Raine?”
Suddenly her eyes were brilliant with unshed tears, tears that would never be shed because she had learned that crying didn’t make any difference in the world her father inhabited. “I want a man who loves me enough to live with me.”
The loneliness and yearning beneath her words slid through Cord’s anger, making him hurt as much as she did. He closed his eyes at the twisting, unexpected pain. “You wouldn’t recognize your man if he stood in front of you. You’re afraid of loving.”
“And you’re an expert on love?” she challenged, her voice hard and dry.
“No. I’m an expert on dying. On not loving. On being lonely. On looking at castles from the outside. On finally finding a woman worth having and then watching her bar the gate against me because I’m just a soldier, not a king.”
Slowly Raine shook her head, defenseless against the emotions flowing beneath Cord’s words, a hunger as deep and painful as her own.
“That’s not why,” she said. “It has nothing to do with my background or yours.”
He didn’t answer. He simply watched her with eyes that didn’t believe her. He was no gentleman, and he knew it much better than she did.
Raine looked at the man who stood so close to her, quiet and yet dangerous, hungry and yet aloof, as powerful and yet as vulnerable as Dev had been the day she found him fallen, tangled helplessly in his own strength. If she hadn’t run to the stallion, helped him, healed him . . . Dev would have died.
The thought made her throat ache against a cry of pain and protest. Cord isn’t Dev, she told herself quickly, savagely. Dev had no choice about who owned him. Cord does. And he chooses to be owned by the dark side of humanity.
Yet he wanted her as no man ever had. She wanted him in the same agonizing way.
And there was nothing to be done for it.
So Raine did what she always had when she ran up against something that couldn’t be changed, couldn’t be healed, and hurt like hell on fire. She put it all out of her mind and concentrated on the one thing she could do.
“Come on, Dev. Let’s stretch those long legs.”
Chapter 9
Motionless, Cord watched Raine walk quickly away. It wasn’t the first time that had happened to him, or the only woman. He had looked over a lot of castle walls, shrugged, and gone on, caring only for the next mountain range, the next skirmish beyond the valley, the next battle in a war older than he was.
But somewhere between all those valleys, the mountains had become higher and the battles had become colder, chilling him so slowly, so deeply, that he hadn’t even noticed until a very special woman gave him a few moments next to her fire. She had showed him the possibilities of life and warmed him all the way to his cold soul.
Then she had talked of gentlemen and kings and turned away from him, leaving him with mountains all around, their icy reaches waiting as they always had waited for men like him.
Now, for the first time, Cord realized that he didn’t want the mountains anymore. He had heard all the variations of their siren call, height and distance, victory and exhilaration, loss and despair. He had taken mountain ranges and passes one by one, held or lost them until the battle moved on to a different range. Then he had walked down through green valleys on the way to the next mountain, the next pass, the next battle.
When he left, he hadn’t missed or mourned the soft, warm valleys. There were always more mountains and passes singing to him, rank upon rank of heights, eternity stretching before him, a battle without end. And he had walked forward eagerly.
Behind him lay a lifetime of skirmishes, of men who fought and men who died, memories and years sliding away into ice. He could barely remember what it felt like not to climb, not to be cold, not to fight. All the years were slowly congealing inside him, freezing him to his core.
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