by BJ James
Along with its raging clamor, the dissipated storm had taken every breath of wind with it, turning cool air sultry and dead calm. In it every soundless moment reverberated, drawing silence into itself, closing them in disparate cocoons within the cab of the truck. Devlin was relieved when he drove through the drenched and dripping tunnel of live oaks. An end signaling the beginning of the lush tropical causeway leading to the island.
Hobie in place and smiling was a positive sign. That the shell road still snaked among the dunes, heavily damaged and in need of serious repair but passable, was the second. And the last.
Devlin drove directly to Sea Watch. Drawing to a stop beneath the pillared structure, he intended to escort her into the house, but Kate was out of the truck and halfway up the stairs before he could reach her. At the door, his hand closed over hers, taking the key. As she relinquished it without a word, he found himself wishing she would resist, or argue. Insist she was a modern independent woman capable of unlocking her own door. Anything to draw her from the frame of mind that absorbed her.
Instead she’d waited while he dealt with the lock, then stepped past him through the open door. Without bothering to ask him in, or send him away, she moved to the middle of the room and stopped, as if she didn’t know where to go, or what to do next.
Though the storm had ended, with the sun sliding toward the back of the house away from the bank of windows, the room lay in shadow. Beyond the deck, sea and sky melded into one, with no beginning and no end. A stunning illusion. A gift of the storm.
But Kate didn’t notice even as she moved to the glass, her arms hugging her sides as if she were cold in the close, humid air. Caught between the glare of the windows and the twilight of the room, she was a stark shadow as black as her mood. What could he say? Devlin wondered. What could he do, when he didn’t understand?
This was not completely about Tessa. That much he knew instinctively, with a surety he couldn’t explain, and wouldn’t try. But, perhaps Tessa would be the place to start.
“Kate,” he began, then fell silent for an instant when she tensed as if her name from his tongue was a whip scoring her tender flesh. Forcing patience, he waited for something, some reaction. There was nothing. Beyond the single move, she was a still and silent specter. Devlin O’Hara, the cocksure and glib-of-tongue before Joy Bohannon and now Kate Gallagher, was at a loss for words.
The right words. For Kate he must have the right words, make the right decision. He’d failed once, he mustn’t again.
“Kate. Sweetheart.” In his own distress, he was not aware of an endearment he rarely used, or that the teasing lilt that accompanied them was absent. “She’s okay. Jericho’s comfortable with this, he trusts Mary Sanchez to have seen to her safekeeping.”
“He’s looking for her.” Kate didn’t turn or relax.
“That’s just Jericho. Thorough to the end. Seeking concrete proof for what he knows in his gut.” Pausing and remembering, Devlin drew a long breath. “Mary loved that child. Anyone could see that. Everyone did. I did, on a glance. I went into town today acting on a hunch Tessa needed someone. She did, but now I believe that wherever she is, she’s okay. A brave lady saw to that.”
“I know.” The words were a nuance more than a whisper.
But they stopped him abruptly. “You know.”
Raking her hands across her face, Kate pressed against her temples. “I hope he’ll keep looking for Tessa. But I know he’s right. I can’t imagine how she managed it, being so terribly ill.” Kate faltered and Devlin heard the note of melancholy, for a lost life and a lost child who touched her life for only a moment, but in that moment, irrevocably. Yet, still, there was something more.
Stepping forward, he halted by her side. “Kate, dear, kind Kate.” With her name a comforting murmur, his palm curled around her throat, his thumb rested at the base of her chin, his fingers caressed her nape. “I’m sorry.”
Exerting the little pressure needed to close the space between them, he brought her before him. Tossing away the cap she’d worn for the rain, he looked into the fathomless well of her gaze. A look that told him nothing. Sighing in defeat, he drew her forehead to his chest. Holding her unresponsive body close, offering his strength, he waited again for resistance that never came.
Aware of her own stamina warring against the fragility she would detest, he moved carefully. Stroking the taut muscles at the base of her neck, he found the knotted tension of worry, exhaustion, and secret sorrow. Sliding his fingers beneath the fall of her hair, he found the band that held her hair and slipped it away.
As the bright garland fell to the floor, keeping her body close to the support of his with one hand, with the other he combed the tumbling mass with his fingers. Letting each stroke glide from her nape to the burnished ends, he smoothed each strand into order.
Kate didn’t respond, but she didn’t resist when the hand at her waist glided over her back to her shoulders. Encouraged, folding both hands at the hollows beneath her earlobes, he let them drift to her temples. Stroking the pulsing blue-veined flesh, as he’d seen her do, he exerted the gentlest of circling pressure.
The breath she drew was a sigh, low, sweet, almost a purr. In that maddening moment, he felt the heat of her body curling into his, accepting his strength and the comfort he offered. And in that moment he wanted her as he’d never wanted a woman before.
Stunned by the power of his response, and by the fierce blaze of desire that had lain dormant for so long, his mind and body were in utter chaos. He wanted to sweep her into his arms, keeping her close, fitting soft curves to hard planes. He wanted to taste her mouth, to drink from her, taking her sweetness for his own. He wanted her heart and her soul, to have, to hold, to keep.
In all his life, he’d never wanted a woman so much. A woman he would want and need forever.
He didn’t understand this depth of need and caring. He didn’t know this Devlin O’Hara, this maddened man. All he knew was that it hurt when Kate shut herself away from him. Yet he understood that today, with disappointment and another loss heaped upon the morass of the past, a door that had opened a sliver shattered, leaving her raw and reeling with volatile emotions.
He’d learned from his own trials that in such times friends and enemies, and love and hate, wore strange faces. Trust was a scary proposition and a desperate need. A confusion, leaving one vulnerable. Devlin O’Hara, and even the madman he’d become, had been many things to many people, but never a seducer of vulnerable women. He wouldn’t begin now.
Taking her by the shoulders, he moved her a step away. Away from the heat that consumed him. Away from the need and desire that ran rampant within him. Fiercely, he reminded himself he’d come to help, not hurt. To heal, not wound.
Leaning forward, paying penance for almost-committed sins, he brushed his lips over her forehead. “You’ve had a tense and frustrating day, and it will be some time before the service crews get to our electricity or telephone.” Stroking a strand of hair from her shoulder, because he had to touch at least that part of her, he said, “With the surf up and the tide riding high, there’s little beach for walking, so why don’t you rest awhile?”
As if she were waking from a trance, Kate moved back another step. The golden gaze that had stared blankly back at him, blazed now with amber fire. “Who are you? What are you?”
Startled, he answered warily, each word drawn out carefully. “I’ve told you, I’m only Devlin O’Hara.”
“Only Devlin O’Hara.” A brow arched, her chin lifted a challenging notch. “And…”
From her stance and the angle of her head, he knew she would wait as long as she must for the answer. “And most recently, I was a bush pilot, of a sort.”
Shifting deliberately, letting the light at her back turn her again into no more than a darkened shadow, Kate parroted, “Most recently, of a sort. Which means?”
“Until five months ago, I was sole owner and pilot of a charter service in Alaska.” Devlin was surprised to hear
the words fall so calmly from his lips. He hadn’t thought he could speak of Alaska and flying so dispassionately again.
Kate paced before the windows in a measured step. Turning at the last to face him again, her solemn face still half in light, half in shadow, he could imagine her before a witness stand. Or arguing her case before the intractable head of a rogue Third World country. She would have been good at her job. Perhaps too good, as witnessed by an assassin’s bullet gone astray.
“A bush pilot.” Kate interpreted succinctly, assimilating every fact and nuance of its wording. He’d abandoned a daring profession and one coast for another. Unusual. “That covers a lot of territory, leaving a lot in between. Where in Alaska?” The exact location might not matter, but to Kate no detail was insignificant. “Why did you leave?”
“I lived in the town of Talkeetna, but the mountains, and especially Denali, were my livelihood.” There it was, Denali, the specter that haunted his nights more than three thousand miles away.
Kate waited, guessing by the stark look in his eyes that it was more than wanderlust that influenced the coastal trek. She would hear the story, at his own pace.
“My plane went down…on the mountain.” His voice was halting, remote. “After that, ferrying climbers and research teams to the summits and glaciers was never the same.”
Kate didn’t dismiss the emotion she heard, but filed it away for another time. “Now you’re here.”
Devlin nodded. This was the Ice Princess described in the dossiers of The Black Watch. In her fugue of remorse, she hadn’t lost her edge. She was still magnificent in action, still indomitable, still purposeful and unswerving. When it came to cross-examination, the ice in her veins was still frosty, if not frozen.
“Here.” She emphasized the word, giving it significance with tone and timbre. “Quite a long way from Alaska. Not as long from the Chesapeake, and your family.” The mediator became prosecutor, playing the trump card. “The eccentric, benevolent, and wealthy O’Haras. The spectacularly gifted siblings, two of whom include Kieran and Valentina O’Hara, of The Black Watch.”
Devlin stood mute, his surprise unrevealed. But, he wondered, was he really surprised? That the lady was sharp and intuitive was a forgone conclusion. Any fool who thought grief and guilt destroyed it was far worse than a fool.
“Who sent you, Devlin O’Hara? Was it Simon?” She took a step closer, keeping her face half hidden and half revealed, using the advantage that the target of her interrogation could never quite read her expression as she zeroed in for the coup de grâce. “Has he decided I’m a security risk? A loose cannon?”
A gesture toward shore encompassed the whole of the island. “Is that the reason a handsome and mysterious stranger arrived unexpectedly to share a deserted beach with the latest emotional casualty of The Black Watch?”
The Black Watch. She’d used the name deliberately. And, for proof, a second time. Devlin showed neither shock nor denial. Most telling of all, no curiosity. Few were privy to the name given a government organization so clandestine that officially it was nameless. Even among families, one member might understand that another worked for the government. But recognize the name? Never.
“Is that what today and yesterday, and all the days before were about?” Had the kindness been a lie? A ploy to gain her trust?
Kate didn’t want to admit how much the idea hurt. In her outburst she’d circled the room, arms crossed, containing the disappointment. Now she dropped them by her side. Fists clenched, forgetting ingrained tactics of her profession, she faced him, letting the revealing light fall on her face. “Are you my watchdog? Here to make sure I don’t commit some grave mistake in my…” She searched for words. “Shall we call it my delicate state?”
“Kate, no.” Taking an instinctive step toward her, he stopped abruptly when she recoiled. “I’m not part of The Watch. I’ve done a few small chores for Simon, because I was in the right part of the world at the right time, or knew a key figure. But not now. Simon cares, he’s concerned, but he didn’t send me.”
“Then why did you come?” She was rigid, flushed in her anger. The color in her cheeks offering an attractive contrast to the golden blaze of her eyes. “Surely you don’t think I believe any of this, or the meeting at Ravenel’s was coincidence.”
Devlin never turned his gaze from the dazzling spectacle of her fire. “I haven’t lied to you, Kate. I won’t now, or ever. The meeting in Ravenel’s was no accident. I was there to see you.”
“How? Why?” The demanding questions were bitter explosions in the sultry, shadowy room. “You didn’t know I existed before this, you couldn’t have. Yet you say Simon didn’t send you…” Breaking off, she realized it wasn’t that he might be Black Watch, or even Simon’s man, but the subterfuge and false pretenses that infuriated her. That he wasn’t who and what he pretended. That to Devlin, Kate Gallagher was no more than an assignment.
“To spy?” Devlin finished for her. “Never.”
“I’m supposed to believe you? Just like that?” Kate paced away, then swung back, eyes blazing through the shadows, pinning him in place. “Would you believe, Devlin?”
He’d caught glimpses of the woman Valentina insisted had made her mark within The Watch as few others. He hadn’t doubted Kate’s abilities or expertise. Being one of Simon McKinzie’s chosen was irrefutable proof. Even so, he’d taken his sister’s profuse claims with a grain of reservation, considering them the product of Valentina’s persuasive zeal.
Now he was witnessing the Ice Princess in no-holds-barred battle. She was astute, quick, intuitive, everything Valentina insisted. And wrong.
Wrong and magnificent. Counselor extraordinaire dressed in jeans, denim shirt, and no-nonsense hiking boots, with the discarded cap and sweatshirt lying on the sofa. Not the costume de rigueur for high court or the diplomatic round table, but more than effective in the soft light of a beach house.
That Simon might have sent a guardian was not the issue. Kate was angered by what she perceived as his deception.
He couldn’t let her think that of Simon, or of him. “If you asked that I believe, yes, Kate, I would.” He smiled his half smile as he held her gaze. “Just like that.”
Kate was startled by the frank admission. But if he’d misrepresented himself once, he would again. “I think you should leave, Devlin. I don’t want to hear any more of this.”
“I think you do.” Closing the distance between them, he faced her anger and the hurt of betrayal.
“No.” When she would have backed away from him, he caught her shoulders. Stiffening in icy rage, she demanded fiercely, quietly, “Let me go. Then leave, and don’t come back.”
“Not until you hear me out.”
“I said no.”
Flinging her hands against his imprisoning arms, she would have broken free had he not anticipated the move. Fearful he would hurt her if she struggled, he shook her gently. “Dammit, Kate, Valentina sent me. Not Simon.”
“Valentina?” Kate went still in disbelief. “She wouldn’t. If your sister is the woman I’ve been told she is, she would have no part of this subterfuge.”
Letting his hands slide down her arms, his fingers brushing over hers before slipping away, he willed her to listen, to believe. “There is no subterfuge. And it would be fairer to say Valentina asked me to come. As much for myself as for you. Hear me out, and you’ll understand.”
“This is ridiculous.” Then Kate remembered the beautiful half smile that left the extraordinary O’Hara eyes untouched. The wicked grin with a sense of hurt lying beneath. How many times had she been convinced there was devastating sorrow hidden deeply within him? When she looked at him, how many times had she sensed a kindred wounded soul?
Recognizing doubt, Devlin chose reason. “Is it? Can you not conceive of Valentina caring enough to help?”
“She wanted to help, so she sent you?”
Devlin nodded his answer, waiting beneath her narrowed stare. Beyond the windows a day begun in sto
rm progressed into clear, sunny late afternoon. Too bad life was never so simple, he thought. A quick fray, then done, leaving splendor in its wake.
“Why?” A puzzled note rang in the question. As with all agents, her problems were problems of The Black Watch. He wasn’t one of the sector. She believed that now. Were he one of Simon’s chosen, somehow, some way she would have known him, by name and reputation, if not in person. A man like Devlin would be larger than life, even among the clandestine. But believing didn’t supply the answers she needed. “This concerns The Watch. Given its choices, why you?”
Abandoning wishful reflections, he touched her face, briefly tracing the curve of her chin. She didn’t respond, but it was enough that she didn’t recoil again. “I was Valentina’s chosen,” he said in parody of another name given to Simon’s recruits. “In that great, compassionate heart of hers, the O’Hara family’s self-appointed mother hen believes I need you, Kate. As much, if not more than you need me.”
“Valentina.” Kate had no brothers or sisters, nor even any cousins, or aunts, or uncles. As a little girl, while she and her mother trekked from country to country with her father, sometimes barely staying long enough to unpack, Kate had dreamed of a family. Someone to be her playmate, to share secrets. To fight, to quarrel. To care and be concerned. Even to be nosy and interfere.
She’d met Valentina face-to-face only once, but had come away from the meeting wishing she knew this beautiful contradiction, the gentle assassin.
“You’ve met her,” Devlin reminded.
“Once.”
“But once was enough.” At any other time, Devlin would have smiled imagining the first meeting with Valentina, even for one only remotely familiar with her role in The Watch.
It was enough, for as Kate knew it would have been with Devlin, Valentina’s reputation preceded her. And not only Valentina’s. Simon’s O’Haras and their mates were legend within The Watch. Word and awe of their exploits transcended even the secrecy within the world’s most clandestine organization.
