Raine waited, hardly noticing the hours heaping silently around her. The darkness of night finally gave way to another perfect Southern California dawn.
The knock on her door sent her heart racing. When she heard her father’s voice, she opened it. The same two men came in first, searched the room, and then stood aside until Chandler-Smith entered. A single gesture sent the men outside, leaving Raine alone with her father and the dizzying feeling that minutes rather than hours had passed.
“Tell me about Cord Elliot,” her father said the instant the door closed behind his men.
Raine thought of the ways to explain—bodyguard and escort, horseman and companion—but there was only one truth that mattered. “He’s my lover.”
Chandler-Smith held out his hand to her. “Baby Raine, when did you grow up on me?”
“Years ago, Daddy. Long years.”
“I hope so,” he said beneath his breath. She would need every bit of her poise and nerve.
“Did you find him?” she asked tightly.
“The man you call Cord Elliot is one of my best men. One of the best, period, if that means anything to you. Officially he works for the Defense Intelligence Agency. He’s assigned to a part of the agency that has no name, no budget, and no forwarding address.”
“You didn’t find him?”
“I didn’t find a man called Cord Elliot.”
She noted the evasion and understood that was all she would get from her father. He had broken more rules for her in the past night than he had in a lifetime. He would break no more.
“I understand,” she said. Her voice was so controlled that it sounded like a stranger’s. “Thank you.” She held out her hand. “I’d like the good-luck piece back.”
Her father’s eyes narrowed into hazel slits. “I don’t have it. I gave it to Robert Johnstone. Didn’t Cord mention him?”
Numbly she shook her head. “He was like you, Daddy. No names, no facts, nothing . . .”
Her voice trailed off as the implication sank in: her father had been in touch with someone who knew not only who Cord really was, but where he was. The good-luck piece had been returned to Cord, but there was no message for her.
Or perhaps there was. Silence is more effective than good-bye, and less awkward.
Had those been the three syllables Cord had said? Not Good luck, Raine, or I love you, but Good-bye, Raine? And then had he faded back into the crowd, going on to another job, another challenge, another danger . . . another chance to die?
“Baby.” Chandler-Smith held his daughter and stroked her hair. “Don’t look like that. Sometimes things aren’t what they seem.”
She laughed, but there was nothing happy in the sound. “No, things aren’t always as bad as they seem. Sometimes they’re worse.” She gave her father a quick, hard hug and stepped away. “Forgive me. I wasn’t thinking very well. I never should have sent you chasing my former lover through Most Secret files.”
Chandler-Smith started to speak, but years of ingrained silence won out. If Johnstone had wanted her to know his true identity, he would have told her. Caught between duty and a father’s desire to ease his daughter’s pain, Chandler-Smith watched Raine begin throwing her few things into a suitcase.
“Where are you going?” he asked finally.
She shrugged. “I’m taking a vacation. I’ve earned one.”
“But where?”
“I’ll think of somewhere,” she said indifferently.
She swept up the contents of the bathroom shelf and dumped everything into her suitcase.
“Where will you be two weeks from now?” her father asked.
“Somewhere.”
“How about in three weeks, or four?”
“Somewhere else.” She shut the suitcase with a snap.
“Baby? Why don’t you come home?”
“No.” Her voice was soft, final. “I have a life to make for myself. It’s time I grew up and quit playing games.”
“What about Dev?”
With two quick motions she locked the suitcase. “Captain Jon will make arrangements to have him trailered home.”
“Who will take care of Dev if you’re not there?”
Her hands clenched. She didn’t want to go home again. She couldn’t. The past would reach up and smother her.
“Hire a groom,” she said curtly, then remembered that Dev’s temperament would make it impossible. “Damn it!”
“A man I know has a ranch in Arizona,” Chandler-Smith said. “He’s been overseas so much that he’s thinking of selling it. I could arrange for you to trailer Dev there. It’s a new place, Raine. All new. Up in the mountains. Clean water and grass and pine trees.”
She blinked back sudden tears. She had never cried when her father had let her down, so why did she want to cry simply because he understood her need to put something new between herself and the past?
“Thanks.” She hugged her father quickly. “And don’t worry. I will never ask you to break the rules again.”
Chapter 21
Raine stood in the doorway of the guest cabin and watched the granite peaks massed against Arizona’s cobalt sky. The air was cool, sweet with the scents of pine and water and grass bending gracefully beneath the wind.
In the five weeks she had stayed there, she had felt a sense of homecoming that blended strangely with the desolation of losing a man called Cord Elliot. Each day the loss was new, agonizing, for she woke up with his name on her lips and his dream-presence warm around her.
And each day she rose alone to put the past behind her as she stood in the cabin doorway and looked out over the huge fenced meadow where Devlin’s Waterloo reigned supreme.
After a last sip of coffee, she set the thick mug aside and walked down the short dusty path to the meadow. The cabin had come equipped with all the creature comforts, including a surprisingly modern kitchen and bathroom. It also had the one thing she required: privacy.
The main ranch house had the only phone on the ranch. The house was a half mile away, across the pasture. The retired couple who took care of the ranch in the owner’s absence were careful not to interrupt Raine’s solitude, though they had made it clear that she was welcome anytime she wanted to visit them.
The meadow’s split-rail fence was new enough not to have been bleached by summer heat. Though it was only a few hours after dawn, sunlight had already warmed the air and the land. Dry heat seeped through the short-sleeved cotton sweater she wore. The sweater’s deep jade color caught and held sunlight. Her riding pants were the same black as Dev’s mane. Her hair fell in soft disarray around her shoulders and tickled her where the pullover’s deep V revealed her neck and the gentle swell of her breasts.
Dev’s head came up as he scented Raine. He cantered toward the fence, nickering a welcome. She watched closely while he swept across the pasture, coat gleaming like fire, muscles rippling with power. He had come back from the three-day event stronger than ever. She would have to begin riding him soon, working him, jumping him. Not for any goal or competition, but simply because they both enjoyed it.
Like her, the stallion had settled into the mountains as though born there. Getting him to go back to stalls and barns would be a problem. But there was no rush. Her father had assured her that the ranch’s owner was engaged elsewhere. She and Dev could stay as long as they liked.
But the longer she stayed, the less she could bear to think about leaving.
A velvet muzzle pushed impatiently at her shoulder.
“You’re after a carrot, aren’t you?” she muttered, pushing back.
Dev snorted and waited, ears pricked, every inch of him vibrating with health.
“You win.” She reached into her back pocket. “You always do, you red beggar.”
While Dev ate the carrot, she stroked his neck and enjoyed the sleek, solid feel of him.
“Would you like to live here, Devlin’s Waterloo?” she asked. “I’ve never touched the money G’mom gave me when I turned twenty-three.
I could buy this lovely mountain meadow for you, and some lively, leggy mares to go with it. I could spend my life here, raising blood-bay hellions and training them to fly over fences and streams.”
Raine didn’t realize she was crying until she felt the tears sliding down her cheeks. It was Cord who had talked about putting Dev out to stud and raising red hellions. She had laughed then, not believing in tomorrow.
Tomorrow had come. It was here. Now.
And it was lonely.
She forced her grief back down beneath her consciousness. Tears had done no good. Getting on with life might. Just because tomorrow had come without Cord was no reason to abandon all of the dream. She could breed and train event horses in Arizona as well as in Virginia. Better. She would be more at peace here. With her reputation and Dev’s foals, people would come to the remote mountains to look and to buy.
Someday, maybe even Cord would come. Maybe he’ll remember summer as deeply as I do.
The thought made it all too fresh, too new, as if it had just happened. Silently she raged at the stubborn, merciless hope she couldn’t kill.
Each time she believed that she finally had accepted the fact that she loved a man who didn’t love her, her mind would turn on her with claws of hope and memory, ripping apart her fragile peace. Then she had to begin over again, rebuilding herself one second at a time, one minute, one hour.
Raine heard the helicopter long before she spotted it flying low, sunlight flashing off its white body. No numbers, no name. The kind of helicopter her father always used. With a fury of sound and wind, the machine landed.
She squinted against the sun. Though the helicopter was only a few hundred feet away, she couldn’t see the passenger through the blinding glare of sunlight. Trying not to think of all the bad news that her father could be bringing with him, she slipped between fence rails and ran toward the machine.
“Dad, what are you—” The words shattered into silence when she recognized the man silhouetted against the burning sun. “Cord.”
She stared, frozen, hardly able to believe that what she saw wasn’t one more cruel dream she would awaken from alone.
But this couldn’t be a dream. Cord was standing not twenty feet away from her, city slacks and no tie, white shirt open at the throat, his slate-gray suitcoat tossed carelessly over his shoulder. He looked thinner, drawn hard and tight, and the sprinkling of silver in his forelock had become a solid slash against his black hair.
The helicopter took off in a whirl of dust and noise. When it was gone, there was only silence and sunlight and Cord standing there, looking at Raine with eyes the color of ice.
Then he started walking toward her, and she saw the cane in his right hand.
She ran to him, forgetting her anger and pain and questions, forgetting everything except him. She threw her arms around him, unable to say anything more than his name. He held her with a strength that made her ache, his left arm a steel bar across her back, his right arm braced on the cane.
Then he kissed her as though she was fire and he was a man chilled all the way to his soul.
Before the kiss ended, she knew that it didn’t matter if he had hurt her by leaving her without warning, without even a word. It didn’t matter that he was a man perfectly suited for the dangerous life he had chosen. It didn’t matter that his world could include her for only a few days, a few hours, a single kiss. It didn’t matter that he was the wrong man for her.
She loved him. There could be no going back from that simple overwhelming fact.
“That answers one of my questions,” he said almost roughly.
“Which one?” Her fingers roved over his face and hair, reassuring herself that he was real.
“If you missed me as much as I missed you.” She laughed brokenly. Tears blurred her vision. Impatiently she wiped away the tears, not wanting to miss a single instant of looking at Cord.
“I missed you more,” she said.
“That isn’t possible.”
She looked at his ice-blue eyes, saw shadows of longing and pain. “Where were—”
Abruptly she remembered. She didn’t have the security clearance to know the details of his life. He’s here now. Let yesterday and tomorrow go. Love him now, while you can.
“Come to the cabin,” she said huskily, and with every word she kissed him, butterfly touches that were as breathless as her voice.
He wanted to stay there, holding her, kissing her, letting her sink all the way into his cold soul. But he couldn’t ignore the demands of his body any longer. Even with the cane, his damned leg was threatening to buckle under him. The doctor had been right; it was too soon for him to be wedged into airplanes, helicopters, or cars.
Cord didn’t care. He needed to see Raine.
Slowly, touching him lightly, she walked beside him. She could see that his leg bothered him. Words ached in her throat, all the questions she wanted to ask. She ignored them.
She opened the cabin door and waited for him to climb the few steps up onto the porch. She wanted to help him but knew that he wouldn’t want to be helped.
“You look like you’ve missed a few meals.” She kept her voice light, though it required an effort of will that made her nails bite into her palms.
“Food was lousy.”
Raine shut the door behind Cord and watched as he crossed the room. He settled on the bed by the fireplace, propping up his leg in obvious relief. Despite his injury, he still radiated the power and grace that had haunted her dreams.
Yet he watched her as though uncertain of what to say, what to do.
And he was. The need to see her had driven him from the hospital before they wanted him to go. But now that he was here, all he could remember was the fact that she hadn’t come to him. Not once in five long weeks. All he had had of her was the enigmatic gold coin and her words, equally enigmatic. Give it to him. He needs it more than I do.
“Are you hungry? Thirsty? Sleepy?” she asked. They were the only questions she would permit herself to say aloud. “I don’t know which time zone you’ve been in, so I don’t know what you need.”
“You.” He held out his hand to her. “I need you.”
In a few quick strides Raine crossed the room and lay down on the bed beside Cord. He held her gently at first, kissing away the tears that fell no matter how hard she willed them not to. Then his kiss changed, hungry and searching, possessing her with a power that drove every emotion out of her but the yearning for him that had made her nights a torment and her days a nightmare.
“I’ve dreamed of this for thirty-nine days,” he said. He tasted her with tiny bites and licks, his hunger tangible in the hard lines and deep tremors of his body. “Even when they knocked me out, I dreamed of you.”
Closing her eyes, she shivered beneath the sensual assault. Blindly she sought the warmth and hard male flesh beneath his shirt. The cloth kept getting in the way. With quick, almost savage motions she unbuttoned the shirt. She needed the naked resilience of his flesh against her palms the way a starving man needs food. Fingers spread wide, she rubbed her hands slowly across Cord’s chest, savoring the physical reality of the man she had never expected to see again outside her dreams.
As he watched her expression, his pale eyes narrowed with raw hunger. Her face was taut yet strangely languid. Her lips smiled even as they parted and lifted, wanting his kiss. His hands kneaded down her back, pushing her close to the hard ache of his arousal.
Her hips shifted. She fitted herself against him intimately, perfectly. Need clawed through him until he groaned. His hands pushed beneath her sweater. He pulled the soft jade knit off her in a swift motion. There was nothing underneath but the smooth, fragrant skin that had haunted him since the first time he had touched her.
“I’ve dreamed of this, too,” he said, his voice as hard as his need.
He bent over her breasts, feeding on them with violent restraint, nipping at their peaks until she trembled and cried out softly.
“Yes,” he said h
oarsely, hearing his name repeated again and again. “I dreamed of that, too. I’d wake up yelling for you and the doctors would knock me out again. But I could still hear you crying for me, and it nearly killed me because I couldn’t go to you, couldn’t do anything but listen to you cry.”
She thought his words were a lover’s sweet lies. Yet it reassured her to know that he hadn’t left her easily, that he had missed her to the point of pain. The way she had missed him, pain in her very soul.
He heard her moan, felt her body tremble in response, and he stopped thinking at all. He had to be inside her now, to know that she was his again. His arms tightened as he began to roll over onto her. Then he froze, chained for an instant by the white-hot agony in his leg. He hissed a curse through his clenched teeth.
“Let me,” she whispered.
Gently she pushed him onto his back. She got off the bed long enough to strip away her own clothes. The hungry, smoky blaze of his eyes watching her made her knees weak. She knelt on the bed and pulled his shirt free of his body. While her hands worked over his slacks, she slowly, neatly licked the midnight line of hair that descended to his lean waist and below.
His breath hissed again, but it was a lightning stroke of pleasure rather than pain. Her mouth was hot, possessive, and it promised him things he hadn’t dared to dream.
“I love the way you taste,” she said dreamily.
“Come here, sweet rider. Let me give you what you’ve been asking for.”
Smiling like a cat, she turned her back on him and went to work on his shoes.
His fingertips traced the elegant length of her spine from nape to buttocks.
She shivered and his shoes dropped to the floor.
His hand slid lower, tracing the smooth shadow cleft until he found the hidden fire.
She sipped at breath, made a broken sound as desire shook her. Her fingers clenched on his socks, but she didn’t even know it. His touch was sweet agony. She forgot what she was doing, forgot even to breathe; she lived only in the heated darkness where he touched her.
Cord made a sound deep in his throat as he felt the hot, silky rain of her response. “I dreamed of this, too. It was cold, everything was cold, winter coming down and fire calling to me, but I couldn’t move, couldn’t even scream. And I wanted to. I wanted to tear down all the castle walls, grind them to dust. But there were straps cinching me to a bed as white and cold as snow, winter freezing me. So I dreamed of you, of fire bathing me.”
Remember Summer Page 29
