by Kay Hooper
Raven, her reason brought back to mind, sighed. “Seriously, we are going to have to do something about Hagen, and soon. He’s been let run wild too long.” She shook off wistful thoughts. “First things first, though.”
“Meaning Sara Marsh.” Josh nodded. “I think you alerted the Corsair in time; they were sailing just off Trinidad, so their radar took in Kadeira.”
“That’s some boat you’ve got, friend,” a new voice interjected.
“Kelsey, did you find Derek?” Raven asked, frowning down at the map.
“I’ve been out of touch, you know,” Raven’s ex-partner said in a wounded tone as he approached them.
She looked up at him, one eyebrow rising sardonically.
Kelsey grinned. “As a matter of fact, I did find him. He has a hideout up near Canada, though he calls it a hunting lodge. He swore at me for ten minutes once I managed to raise him by radio. Said he’d retired and was about to dust off that boardroom chair just as soon as he got used to being a married man. I said he’d never get used to it, and wasn’t it nice? Anyway, I told him we were mobilizing the commando crew again and asked him if he wanted to play.”
“Well, does he?” Josh asked.
“He’s on his way. Shannon too. Do we have a plan, or will we charge blindly?”
“Charging Kadeira blindly,” Josh pointed out, “would probably not be the best way to do it.”
“Agreed.” Kelsey joined them in contemplating the map, which had a course marked out from Key West to Kadeira. “So Hagen transported her by sea, huh?”
Raven indicated the marked course. “This is the only thing to approach Kadeira in the last forty-eight hours—just a boat. Anybody want to bet Sara isn’t already there?”
After a moment Kelsey said soberly, “Are we sure she’s there against her will? Absolutely positive? Granted, Hagen’s ruthless enough to kidnap her, but would Sereno have done it this way?”
Josh looked at him intently. “You tell us.”
Kelsey glanced from Josh to Raven, then sighed.
“He’s a cagey one, Sereno. Awfully hard to get a firm handle on. Where his country is concerned, I sure as hell wouldn’t want to get in his way.”
“But,” Raven said, “you spent more time around him than any of the rest of us.”
Slowly Kelsey replied, “Where Sereno is concerned, Sara Marsh is the wild card in his deck. I just don’t know.”
“From instinct,” Raven urged. “What do you think?”
“Well, I think that in the past he’s gone to the extreme of making certain she was never forced in any way. Now … Dammit, it just doesn’t feel right! This sudden move after two years. It’s out of character. Unless …”
“Unless what?” Josh asked.
Behind mild eyes, Kelsey’s mind was working swiftly. “Unless,” he said softly, “she was in danger here. If Sereno believed she might be in danger, he’d move heaven and earth to get her under his wing where she’d be safe.”
They looked at one another in silence.
Sara requested a dinner tray in her suite rather than face Andres again that evening, and though Maria was clearly unhappy with the request, she nonetheless brought the tray upstairs without comment.
It was hardly something Sara could continue for the duration; four weeks was a long time to hide out in a few rooms. In any case, her own personality would not have allowed such an action. But tonight … tonight she couldn’t face him again. She felt raw. For two years she had managed to convince herself that leaving him was the best thing she had ever done, and now she wasn’t sure of anything at all.
She didn’t allow herself to think about it at first. She ate dinner, then set the tray outside her door. She listened to some of her tapes while absently pacing the room. She caught herself listening for a knock at the door and was so unsettled by this realization that she turned the music up louder and swore beneath her breath.
The evening dragged on. She took a leisurely bath, filling the suite with the scent of jasmine, and felt like crying when she discovered jasmine sachets in the drawer where her sleepwear had been kept. With a peculiar sense of defiance she put on a long silk nightgown and sheer negligee in emerald green, ignoring the fact that it was Andres’s favorite color on her.
Or had been.
She couldn’t avoid thinking any longer about the Andres she remembered so well: a handsome, charismatic man with a low laugh and a glow in his dark eyes that she’d never seen in the eyes of any other man. A man who had requested that she wear green often because she looked “so damned beautiful” in the color. A man who had ordered dozens of rosebushes because she loved them, and never mind the difficulties of growing roses in a tropical climate; the roses had been kept alive and well for two years. A man who, when caught by the international press nakedly wearing his supposedly cynical and ruthless heart on his sleeve, had reacted with rueful amusement.
He had told her he loved her less than an hour after their first meeting. He had proposed marriage an hour after that. And yet it had been nearly a week before he kissed her, a week filled with media attention that had unsettled her. Andres had been unfailingly courteous to the reporters, but blandly uncommunicative; she merely had been disturbed.
At the time she had seen his invitation to come with him to Kadeira as an offer of escape from the media, and because he fascinated and charmed her, she had accepted. Yet even then she had sensed something dark inside Andres, something that both attracted and repelled her. Common sense had told her that a man who had won his country’s leadership with his own hands had to be touched by a certain ruthlessness, yet she had not allowed that knowledge to prevent her from becoming involved with him. He intrigued her.
And here on Kadeira she had seen glimpses of that darkness, though never in relation to herself. He was, she had discovered, passionately devoted to his country, and quite definitely ruthless in seeing to its good. The revolution still attempting to depose him had had its beginnings more than a year before they’d met, and Sara had seen him deal with some of the problems it caused.
The rebels had infiltrated the one weekly newspaper of Kadeira; Andres had immediately shut it down and allowed only international newspapers, shipped in weekly, to be available to his people. The television station, picking up and broadcasting international programs by means of a satellite dish, had been captured and used for propaganda three times by the rebels before Andres, lacking the manpower to protect it around the clock, reluctantly closed it. The radio station was taken off the air for the same reason. He strictly curtailed trade with other countries because the danger to their ships was great, and he adopted a policy of politely but firmly warning off casual visitors to Kadeira.
The majority of the people of Kadeira, loyal to Andres, went about their daily lives as best they could. Unlike many other dictators, Andres taxed his people as little as possible, using every other means at his disposal to raise the necessary money to keep his country going.
Including …
The house was quiet, and it was long after midnight. Sara opened the French doors of her little balcony and stood out in the warm night, listening to the silence.
Finally facing herself, she silently agreed with at least one thing Andres had said in the gazebo. He was right in believing that she wanted the answers to be simple ones. Yes or no; black or white; right or wrong. But what she wanted was impossible in the real world. He said truth wasn’t simple, and she knew he was right about that.
If life were simple, Andres, who undeniably loved his country, would have looked at the havoc of revolution and quietly stepped down just to stop the destruction. But it wasn’t simple, and he couldn’t do that. Lucio had made it obvious that his own regime would be a merciless one. So Andres remained in power, struggling daily and sometimes ruthlessly just to keep his people fed, clothed—and alive.
Right or wrong?
Sara leaned on the balcony railing and sighed as she looked down onto the darkened terrace. Then she saw a glow
ing red ember and realized that Andres was there, smoking one of his thin cigars and watching her. Before she could draw back into her room, he spoke.
“Shall we play the balcony scene from Romeo and Juliet?” His quiet voice reached her clearly in the silence, not really amused, not really teasing.
After a moment she said steadily, “Let’s not.”
The red ember flared brightly as he drew on the cigar, and his face was revealed in a faint but hellish glow; in that instant he looked so implacably dangerous that she caught her breath.
“No. I suppose not. It doesn’t really suit us, does it?” He gave a low laugh, half sitting on the balustrade behind him to look up at her: he was almost directly below her, and only a few feet separated them. “For us, it’s Much Ado About Nothing.”
Sara swallowed, but the ache in her throat remained. “Which line?”
“A line for you? That’s easy. ‘I see, lady, the gentleman is not in your books.’ ” Andres laughed again, mockingly this time, and flicked his cigar out into the garden. “My line is easy as well.” He drew an audible breath and his voice lost its mockery, rasping over the simple words. “ ‘I do love nothing in the world so well as you; is not that strange?’ ”
Sara straightened and took a step back toward the doorway, conscious of her heart pounding and her eyes stinging. Damn him! How could he make her feel this way when—
“Sara.” He spoke quickly, still a little rough. “Walk with me in the garden?”
“No.” She fought to steady her voice. “I’m not dressed, Andres. I—”
“It’s dark. No lights, no moon. Come down, Sara, please.”
She wasn’t sure, even after she withdrew into her room and closed the French doors, if she would go out to him. She wasn’t even sure when she found sandals in the closet and put them on, or when she left her room and went out into the softly lit hallway. It wasn’t a conscious decision. And as she walked through the library to the open terrace doors, she knew why she had refused any and all contact with Andres after leaving Kadeira.
Because she had known that if he had once said “Come to me,” she would have gone, in spite of everything. Just the way she was going now. And she knew why. Yes or no; black or white; right or wrong—truth wasn’t simple. Not simple, and never to be avoided even if it hurt.
His verses from Shakespeare triggered something in her mind, something she had read here in this room and had not forgotten because the words had rung so utterly true. Lines written by Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
And a voice said in mastery while I strove,—
“Guess now who holds thee?”—“Death,” I said. But, there,
The silver answer rang,—“Not Death, but Love.”
The silver answer … And love, like death, couldn’t be avoided or denied. Ever. She could no more resist going to him when he called to her than she could resist the next beat of her heart. And nothing could change that stark, simple, painful truth. Whatever he was, whatever he had done or would do in the future, she loved him.
When she had left Kadeira and him, her numbing anguish had come less from the knowledge of what he had done than from the knowledge that she loved him—despite what he had done.
“Sara?”
Standing on the terrace, she watched him walk slowly toward her, and her mind screamed in silence, I can’t let him find out! She was afraid. That darkness in him, that implacable ruthlessness, would cause him to use the knowledge of her love against her, and she couldn’t let that happen. She couldn’t live with him as he wanted, marry him. She couldn’t be with him through the years, loving in this kind of pain. It wouldn’t destroy her love, but it would, in the end, destroy her.
She wasn’t strong enough to love him.
“What is it, Sara?” His voice was low, and his hand grasped hers gently as he reached her side. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing, Andres.” She heard her voice, light and mocking, and prayed that her control held. “Nothing at all.”
After a moment he led her down into the garden, walking slowly along the path that wound in a relaxed pattern through three acres of fenced and patrolled grounds. “Have you become so brittle because of me?” he asked abruptly.
“Brittle?” Very conscious of the warmth and strength of his hand, she tried to concentrate on something else. But it was difficult; someone’s hand was trembling, and she was very much afraid it was hers. “I’m two years older, and a hell of a lot wiser. What did you expect?”
Andres carried her hand to the crook of his arm and tucked it there, and she was a little relieved because at least now he wouldn’t be as likely to feel her shaking through the linen of his white shirt. Oddly enough, it occurred to her only then that she shouldn’t be touching him at all, that it wasn’t safe. But she didn’t retrieve her hand.
“Sara, in spite of everything, I don’t think we want to tear at each other for the weeks we have together. Do we?”
“No.” She sighed. “No, I don’t think we do. Sorry, I seem to be the one doing all the tearing.” In a voice containing all the calm she could muster, she added, “We made a bargain. It’s over between us.”
Andres didn’t respond for a few moments, merely walking slowly beside her. When he finally spoke, it was in a contemplative tone, faintly wry but deliberate. “I suppose I should follow the rules this time. Play the game. Agree with you—or allow you to think I do.”
“What are you talking about? It is over—”
“No, it isn’t. We both know that, Sara. It didn’t end when you ran away, it just stopped.”
“We made a deal!”
“Yes. That you would remain here willingly for a month. I’ll keep my part of that bargain. In a month, if you wish to leave, I won’t try to stop you. And if you leave, I won’t interfere in your life again. That was my bargain, Sara. I’ve never, at any point, agreed that it was over between us.”
Sara halted, jerked her hand away, and turned to face him. Her eyes had grown accustomed to the darkness, and she could see him fairly well. He had also turned to face her, his head a little bent, and the shine of his dark eyes was like the surface of bottomless twin lakes, mysterious and potentially dangerous.
As evenly as she could manage, Sara said, “I’m leaving Kadeira in four weeks, Andres.”
“Unless I convince you to stay.”
“You can’t. You won’t.”
He reached out suddenly and caught her in his arms, pulling her hard against him. “Can’t I?”
Sara caught her breath and then lost it, dizzyingly aware of strong muscles and the hard heat of his body pressed to her own. In the first shocked moment she couldn’t draw away, couldn’t even try. Two years ago Andres had not taken advantage of the strong physical attraction between them, had not used desire to sway her. Not then. But this time, she realized hollowly, this time he would.
“No! Andres—”
“You’ve given me no choice, Sara,” he said huskily. “I’m fighting for my life. And a soldier uses every weapon he can find.”
“Weapon,” she repeated bitterly, pushing against his powerful chest in an attempt she knew to be useless. “Is that how you see it, Andres? Sex is just another weapon to bend someone to your own will, to get what you want?”
“You’ve made it a fight,” he told her, his voice growing ragged, strained. “I didn’t want it this way, but if it has to be, I know how to fight.”
“You won’t win, not this time!” Sara didn’t try to wrench herself free, because she knew only too well that his strength would defeat her, but she kept her arms stiff and fought to hold on to the anger.
“Won’t I? Look at what you’re wearing, Sara.”
She went still, catching her breath and forcing her voice to remain steady. “I told you I wasn’t dressed. I didn’t expect to see you, to come out here—”
“You could have changed,” he said softly but insistently. “But you didn’t, did you, Sara?” One hand remained at the small of her back, holdin
g her easily in place, while the other slipped between them and toyed with the thin ribbon tie of her negligee. “A woman wouldn’t wear this to walk with a man she hated, would she? Not something like this, meant to be worn in a bedroom. And not his favorite color. It is green, Sara; I saw that while you stood on the balcony. My favorite color on you.”
She could feel his touch between her breasts, toying with the ribbon until the negligee fell open, and she could feel her arms weakening, the strength of them slipping away. She couldn’t move, couldn’t even breathe, and the warm night was suddenly hot, closing in on her. “No.” Her voice emerged in a whisper. “I just wasn’t thinking. I—”
He traced the vee neckline of her gown slowly with his knuckles, the soft caress trailing fire, and the hand at her waist held her lower body tightly against the hardness of his. She was melting in the heat, the heat of the night and of him. Melting, and she couldn’t seem to stop it. She tried to think, tried to remember why this was wrong, why she couldn’t let it go on, but her thoughts were fogged, sluggish.
“You never let me see you in something like this before,” he murmured. His hand brushed the full curve of her breast, separated from his flesh only by thin, sheer silk. “Why not then, Sara? And why now?”
She didn’t have an answer, at least not one she was willing to give him. “Don’t, Andres, please.” The last remaining strength in her arms gave out, and like a warlock, he knew the instant she could no longer resist him.
Even as both arms surrounded her, drawing her completely against him, his head bent and his mouth found hers. Before, Andres always had kept a tight rein on his desire, offering her only gentleness; now it seemed there was little gentleness left in him. His mouth was hot, hard, demanding. He kissed her with all the untamed force of his desire, and it was like a jarring blow that left Sara reeling.
She lost something then but didn’t know what it was. Then she felt it leaving her, torn away by his implacable demand. And even though an answering fire in her matched his demand, even though her senses were vividly alive, her emotions were numbed by the sheer, overwhelming power of his desire.
