Darkness Before Dawn

by Anne Stuart

  Randall wasn’t accustomed to wishful thinking. He’d managed to avoid that weakness all of his adult life, but when he’d returned to Caleb McAllister’s third-floor apartment, bloody but unbowed, he could have sworn that Maggie Bennett had greeted his arrival with heartfelt relief.

  Not even his news that he’d lost the intruder had put a shadow on the first real smile she’d given him in six years. The sight of that genuine, warm smile had been like a fist in his stomach. With that glowing look on her face, he had to admit that she was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen in his entire life. And his desire, his semipathological need to have her, to own her, grew to almost unmanageable proportions.

  He’d taken his drink calmly. None of his reactions had showed on his well-schooled face as he sat down beside her, grimacing at his scuffed shoes and rumpled suit. And she hadn’t moved away. Step one, he thought with wary relief.

  “You still have the videotapes?” he now repeated. “Where? And why, for that matter? Did you think someone might try to take them?”

  “I had no idea they were of any particular importance,” Caleb said. Randall wasn’t sure whether to believe him or not. “They’re in a box in the trunk of my car. I was going to take them to my sister’s in Evanston. She’s a sci-fi buff, and I thought maybe she could tell me if the movies are as lousy as I think they are. And maybe she could tell me what the difference is between the two versions—they look identical to me. Certainly not different enough to warrant the expense.”

  “And they’re still in the car?”

  “They were ten minutes ago, when I got here.”

  “Do you mind if we take them?” Randall made the request politely enough. It wouldn’t hurt to give McAllister the impression that he had a choice in the matter.

  Caleb’s ironic smile made it clear that he wasn’t fooled. “It wouldn’t do me much good to say no, would it?”

  “No.”

  “Then be my guest. You might consider telling me who the two of you are,” he said, pouring himself another, lighter drink and holding up the bottle in silent inquiry. Maggie nodded, and Randall could see her reserve creeping back in around the edges. She’d moved away from him on the sofa. That small piece of body language was inescapable. She was withdrawing, and at that moment he couldn’t spare the energy to pull her back. It would have to wait.

  “Maggie is Kate’s sister,” he said, shaking his head at the proferred drink. “There’s no mystery about that.”

  “And you?”

  Randall smiled, and he could feel Maggie pull away even further, which infuriated him. Next time he wouldn’t let her go. Not until he was ready to. “I’m Maggie’s lover.” He felt her tense and saw her open her mouth to deny it, then close it again. There was a mutinous look on her beautiful, open face.

  “And?”

  “And what?”

  “Why have the two of you decided to find out who killed Francis? Your … mistress”—the slight, ironic inflection made it clear that Caleb wasn’t swallowing the tale—“already explained that you were searching my place for clues. Do you have an Agatha Christie fetish, or is there some reason you’re out to best the police?”

  Randall shrugged. “Just idle curiosity.”

  “Don’t treat other people like fools, Randall,” Maggie snapped. “Caleb knows something is going on. Surely if he were part of it, no one would have trashed his office and ransacked his apartment. He wouldn’t offer us the videotapes if he were part of the espionage scheme.”

  “Espionage scheme?” Caleb echoed, shocked out of his usual polite complacency.

  Damn the woman, Randall thought. “Maybe I will have another drink.”

  “Maybe you’ll tell me what the hell is going on,” Caleb said.

  “You know, Maggie, you shouldn’t be so gullible,” Randall turned to her, ignoring Caleb’s pugnacious demand. “If McAllister were part of this whole thing, he probably has a partner. What better way to appear innocent than to have him look like a victim, have his office trashed and his apartment searched? And then he could helpfully offer us useless videotapes and keep us busy while he took care of the real dirty business of getting the information out of the country and covering up Francis’s murder.”

  “God, you’re suspicious,” Maggie breathed, awe and disgust clear on her face.

  “You’ll find, my dear Maggie, that it pays not to trust anyone. Anyone at all.” He watched her withdraw even more, and silently he cursed himself.

  “That’s fine. You live your life that way, if you can call it living,” she snapped. “I prefer to take my chances and trust my fellow man.”

  “You’ll only get your heart broken, and maybe lose your life in the process.”

  “I’d rather die trusting the wrong person than live trusting no one,” she said firmly. “And I think Caleb is worth trusting. We have to take a chance sooner or later.”

  “I don’t have a say in the matter?” Randall said idly.

  “You don’t have a say in the matter.”

  “I guess you are lovers after all,” Caleb broke in finally. “Strangers don’t fight that way.”

  “We are not lovers,” Maggie said icily, “and we never will be. Do you want to speculate about my personal life, Caleb, or do you want to know what’s going on?” Her tone was clipped and businesslike, different from anything Randall had heard from her before, and he knew there wasn’t any way of stopping her short of dragging her from the apartment, kicking and screaming all the way. And though he might be able to overpower her, six feet and four inches of Caleb McAllister along with six feet of Maggie Bennett might prove his undoing.

  He leaned back against the sofa, shrugging, and watched as she edged farther away from him. Another few inches, and she’d be on the floor. It would serve her right. His face ached from the blow their hardy assailant had managed to connect, his knuckles were swollen from his own seemingly useless attempts, and there was nothing he wanted to do more than crawl into a nice king-size bed with the woman beside him. The woman who hated him with a very satisfying passion. He only hoped she was that passionate when he finally convinced her of her fate.

  He shut his eyes as she spilled everything to Caleb. She held almost nothing back, damn her, from Francis’s body in her sister’s bathtub to her cross-town trek to hide it. The only thing she kept quiet about was his own reluctant semi-involvement with Bud Willis and the organization at Langley—she had that much discretion. He’d still have to be doubly careful from now on. He’d told her nothing but the simple truth: he didn’t trust anyone. Not even her. And now he had two people he had to watch. It was going to be exhausting.

  Never, never had he gone to so much trouble to acquire something as he was going through for Maggie Bennett. He’d spent three years tracking down a Renoir he’d fallen in love with; he’d spent a total of five years, off and on, pursuing the Cellini Venus he’d craved. He wanted Maggie Bennett with the same compulsive craving, and this time he wasn’t going to back off. She was the only woman who’d never bored him, and he wasn’t going to let her go until she did. It would happen sooner or later—it always did. But until he got her back, he wouldn’t be able to free his mind and soul from the insidious trap she’d sprung on him.

  She didn’t want him, he knew that. She hadn’t meant to infiltrate his every waking moment for the last six years and most of his sleeping ones, too. If it were up to her, there’d be at least one continent between them at all times.

  But it wasn’t up to her, not any longer. He’d waited through her stupid, doomed marriage to the young lawyer, waited through her affair with Peter Wallace, and had been just about to move in on her when she met Mack Pulaski. He’d spent a bad two years then, some of the worst of his life, facing the fact that she was totally out of reach. But Pulaski had died, and Maggie had mourned, and now she was free and less than a yard away from him. And he wasn’t going to wait much longer.

  He opened his eyes; a weary, cynical expression was on his face. “Are
you finished?” he inquired politely. “Are you sure you wouldn’t like to tell him your shoe size? Or how we made love on the table in that apartment in Gemansk?”

  He’d gotten through to her that time. Her face flushed, her hands curled into fists, and she opened her mouth to yell at him. God, he wanted to stop that mouth with his.

  But then she snapped it shut again and smiled a wintry smile that was uncannily like his own. “Can we get the tapes from you when we leave Sybil’s tonight?”

  “Sure, I’ll be glad to bring them. Anything else?” Caleb asked.

  “Could we borrow some extra tapes? Do you have any that look like the Potato People ones?”

  Randall sat up then. “What do you have in mind?”

  “I’d think it was obvious,” she said sweetly. “It’s time for a little action. If you’re going to sit there and take a nap, it’s up to me to be innovative. If I know Sybil, she’s invited half the people from Stoneham Studios for dinner. I wouldn’t be surprised if our mysterious intruder is among them. So it wouldn’t hurt to set a tiny trap.”

  “Personally,” Randall said, rising with grace that cost him a great deal to maintain, “I think I’ve seen more than enough action for today.” He considered wincing, to see if he could elicit that wonderful look of warmth she’d first shown him, then dismissed the idea. “But I know better than to try to talk you out of it. Will we have any trouble counting on your discretion, McAllister?”

  “Of course not.”

  Randall nodded wearily, unconvinced. “I don’t suppose we have a choice. Come along, Maggie. We’re due at your mother’s before long, and I have to stop off to change my clothes.”

  “What’s wrong with your clothes?” Maggie demanded. “If you just fix your tie and wipe some of the dust from your trousers, no one will notice.”

  “I will notice,” he said grandly. “Move it, Maggie. My temper is getting very short.”

  She did smile at him then, and if it didn’t hold the warmth it had earlier, at least it was full of mischievous good humor. “Tough,” she said sweetly. “See you at dinner, Caleb.”

  “You realize,” Randall said as they descended the three flights of stairs, “that you’re trespassing on your sister’s domain?”

  “What are you talking about?” She was keeping up with him, her long legs eating up the distance. Sybil was right—the black dress was abominable. And she looked absolutely breathtaking in it.

  “Caleb McAllister,” he said gruffly. “Your sister’s in love with him.”

  “What made you the expert on love, Randall?” she scoffed. “I didn’t think you even believed in its existence.”

  “Oh, it exists all right. For certain people, for a certain short period of time. I’ve been around your sister and McAllister at the Studios, seen them together. They fight all the time. Therefore, they’re in love.”

  “Simple equation,” she said. “You and I fight all the time. Are we in love?”

  He almost fell the rest of the way down the flight of stairs. He looked at her surreptitiously and found her face completely expressionless. “No,” he said, halting on the first-floor landing. “Real love, if it exists, is selfless, generous, warm, and tender. Isn’t it?”

  She was thinking of Pulaski. He could tell by that damnable little half-smile. “Yes,” she said.

  “And if I loved you, I would have wanted to do anything to save you pain. I would have ached for you when your husband was murdered. I would have done anything to spare you that. That’s what real love is all about.”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “You know what I felt when I heard Pulaski was killed?” he continued in a ruthless voice, knowing what it was going to do to her, unable to stop himself. “I thought of you, alone and free, and I wanted to celebrate.”

  Her face went very still and cold. There’d be no snuggling in a king-size bed tonight, or for many nights to come, and he wondered why he’d told her. She’d hated him enough already—why did he have to give her more ammunition?

  Maybe it was because he knew things couldn’t get any better until she knew the worst. And although he’d kept one tiny thing back, the one thing he knew that was cruel and horrible, at least she now knew the bulk of it. He waited, for the imprint of her strong hand on his face, for her to push him down the stairs.

  She’d caught hold of the banister, her hand strong and tanned; Pulaski’s damned wedding ring was still on her finger. Slowly, she pushed away, stood upright, and in her cold, still face her eyes were alive, furious, and slightly startled. That look of surprise mystified him. “Interesting,” she said in a cool drawl. “You are a very strange man, Randall. Let’s not keep my mother waiting.” And she continued down the stairs, dismissing him and his topic of conversation.

  He stared after her for a long moment. No, she didn’t bore him. She infuriated, astounded, confused, and aroused him. It would take a long time to understand her, a long time to grow tired of her. That time would come—it always had before. But it would be glorious until then. And he moved after her, feeling oddly lighthearted.

  * * *

  “You’re coming in.” Randall’s voice didn’t allow for disagreement. Maggie nodded. She had no desire to sit in the confines of his Jaguar and wait like a dutiful Moslem wife for her lord and master to return.

  “I hope you’re not going to spend hours primping,” she said, following him through the lobby of the elegant old hotel. “I hate to sit around waiting while someone gets compulsive. I’m not going to twiddle my thumbs while you try to match your socks and cufflinks. My sister Holly’s bad enough.”

  “Maggie, dear, everything always matches anyway,” he said, stepping into the elevator.

  “I’m sure it does.” She wished she could get rid of her feeling of uneasiness. Why did he even care, one way or the other, about her life these last six years? That’s the question she couldn’t answer. Randall Carter had never been one to give a damn about women, or any particular woman. She knew that because, whether she’d been interested or not, someone had always been eager to tell her the latest gossip about him. He’d divorced his wife sometime after he’d returned from Gemansk, with all the care someone would use to fire a trash collector. He’d gone through beautiful, intelligent women at a sedate, genteel rate, collecting and discarding them like works of art. Except that he didn’t discard his works of art, she reminded herself. It had actually surprised her that he even remembered her—there’d been no doubt in her mind that what to her was a devastating experience had been all in a day’s work for Randall.

  But apparently she’d made some sort of lasting impression. Maybe as the one who’d got away. Except that she hadn’t gotten away—he’d thrown her away. So why was he here again? What did he want from her? It couldn’t be sex—Randall wasn’t the sort who repeated himself. Maybe it was wounded pride? But it was her own pride that had been wounded, not his. Not to mention her heart, her soul—God, the very memory still tightened her nerves.

  Thank God she no longer cared. Thank God for Mack, who’d taught her what real love was all about, so that she would never again have to mistake obsessive craving for the real thing. Thank God that she could look at Randall’s tall, elegant body, his thin sexy mouth, and his dark, tormented eyes, and not feel a thing. Not a tiny little thing at all.

  “What are you looking at me like that for?” He’d stopped in front of his door and searched through his pockets with uncharacteristic abstraction before coming up with his room key. “Are you afraid I’ve lured you to my room to have my wicked way with you?”

  “Randall,” she said sweetly, “I’m not afraid of anything. Least of all you.”

  He opened the door and ushered her into his elegant hotel suite. The French doors were open to the bedroom beyond, and fresh flowers scented the air-conditioned air. Lilies, Maggie thought. The flower of death.

  She turned her back on him, strolling toward the windows. “Hurry up, will you? Mother hates to be kept waiting. She won’t m
ake her grand entrance until everyone is there.” There was no reply from him, and she turned. “Randall?”

  He was standing very still, staring at the flowers. There was a note propped against the crystal vase. He moved very slowly and picked it up in one long-fingered hand. “Go back to Washington,” he read aloud in an expressionless voice. He stopped reading, crumpling the paper in his hand. “A secret admirer, I suppose.”

  “Is that all it said?” There was more to it than that—her instincts were too well-honed not to notice his sudden hesitation.

  “That’s all.”

  “No threats? No ‘or else’? Pretty tame, if you ask me,” she scoffed, moving across to him. “Surely they don’t expect us just to slink away at the first sign of trouble.”

  “Maybe they thought it would be worth a try,” he said abstractedly.

  If he’d been expecting it, she never would have made it. But he was thinking of other things, and it was child’s play to grab his arm, bring it down over her knee, and force him to release the paper. Maggie was across the room and out of reach before he even realized what she’d done. The crumpled paper was spread out before her eyes.

  “Go back to Washington,” she read, “or it will be Gemansk all over again.” She raised her eyes to meet Randall’s angry, impassive ones. “All right, Randall,” she said. “What happened in Gemansk?”

  ten

  “You know as well as anyone what happened in Gemansk,” he said. “Mullen screwed up, I flew in to get you out, and we spent a week in a squalid little apartment before we split up to make our way home. Those are the essentials.”

  “But something’s missing,” Maggie said, determined not to back down this time. “You sent me out expecting me to whore for you and then you disappeared. Don’t you think you owe me an explanation after all these years?”

  “Why? You didn’t whore for me, as you so sweetly put it. Wadjowska gave you the visas without soiling your innocent body.”

  “How did you know that?”