by BJ James
At thirty-three and with her history, there was still an aura of innocence about her. As if the heartache that was an integral part of her was buried so deeply it never surfaced. He would almost have believed the theory, if he hadn’t looked into her eyes and held her through the night.
“I was admiring your home.”
“So I see. Thank you.”
“I find it interesting, and quite...unexpected.”
“I know. Not what one expects on the remote tributary. It belonged to one of my grandfathers. My father’s grandfather, to be exact.”
“A sportsman,” Rafe ventured.
“Hunting, fishing.” An eloquent lift of a shoulder drew taut a shirt grown as supple as silk with age. The hem, knotted at the waist, skimmed above the band of low riding jeans, revealing a ribbon of golden flesh and the narrow curve of her waist. “Collecting.”
Intent on the little revelation, wondering how it would feel beneath the span of his hands, Rafe barely grasped the last thread of her comment. “Collecting?”
“Trophies, people, influence.” Again the shrug, the caress of pliant broadcloth. The provocative glimpse. “And money.”
Resisting the impulse to clear his throat, as his breath seemed to clot at its base, he lifted his gaze from the slender and elegant lines of her body to the immense and elegant vault of the towering ceiling. Even in its day, the lodge would have been neither simple nor economical to construct. “If what I’ve seen is any indication, the elder Mr. O’Hara collected quite a lot of the last, I would assume.”
“Quite.”
“Added to by each successive O’Hara.” He returned his gaze carefully to her face. “With the exception of Keegan, who has made it his life’s work to enjoy the spoils of his robber baron ancestry, while giving back an even greater portion to those who needed it.”
“How do you know that?” So few people were aware of her father’s philanthropy, Valentina was startled that a virtual stranger should. Keegan O’Hara cultivated his image as spendthrift and rebel. It made the secrecy of his generosity possible and that much more rewarding. “Not even my father’s closest friends know. How could you?”
“Sources.” The enigmatic answer was all Rafe intended to supply.
“The same sources, or should I say source, that sent you here?”
“Maybe.”
Simon. There was a message on the answering machine in the kitchen. Only a name, given in response to a recital of the services of a business that did not exist. The code he sometimes used when there were matters to discuss that weren’t critical, yet of concern.
Had he called to offer an excuse for a first and unheard-of infraction of his own immutable rule? Ruefully, in the face of what was apparently Simon’s first default, she concluded Rafe Courtenay’s determination must be as powerful as his body; his argument as eloquent as the emerald gaze that trespassed into her memory, her nightmares and her dreams.
Who else had ever bested Simon? How had Rafe? Why? In the darkening of the day, as lights set by timers began to click on, a shiver of alarm skimmed over her. Yet was it truly alarm, she wondered with the unrelenting black-Irish honesty common to the O’Haras? Or was it premonition?
No! She wouldn’t do this. Why borrow trouble when there was enough already? Pushing away from the arch, she moved further into the room.
“The red-throated loon.” She spoke softly and curiously, unlike the woman who had challenged him not so long ago in a dusty camp in red rock country.
Rafe watched as she passed from dusky shadow into light. Rousing from his distraction as she approached, he heard himself muttering, “What the hell?”
“The carving.” Her nod indicated the miniature wood carving he didn’t remember picking up. Had forgotten he held. “A red-throated loon.”
“Of course, the carving.” He stared blindly down at the fragile form, thinking only that distance and sunlight had been kind to her. Proximity and electric light leeched false color from her skin and laid bare the bruising toll of her life and work. Yet even then she was incredible. “Most incredible.”
“He is handsome, isn’t he? They’re quite rare here. Occasionally a pair or a few will stop for a while on their winter migration to the Gulf. I heard one call from the salt marsh today. Look, this explains his name.” Touching the small form, she traced the red half circle that described its striking feature. Her fingers brushed Rafe’s, their warmth igniting a memory.
These hands had held her and soothed her and brought her comfort in the oblivion of her darkest hours. He’d told her this and she doubted him. But a part of her, the part that let him into her dreams, had always known. Her fingers curled over his with a will of their own as she found her gaze drawn to his face.
He was fire and ice as she looked up at him. The ice of control, the fire of something entirely different in his eyes. Tension returned; an awareness grew intense. Valentina was no stranger to desire. Once she’d known it, recognized it, shared it. Exulted in it. But for so long she’d kept herself aloof from the world, from people, from men, she was no longer sure. Appalled that she could make such wayward presumptions, when only a few weeks ago he had looked at her with distaste and contempt, she jerked her hand from him.
Unable to keep his gaze, she focused on the carving. A mistake, for all she could think was how capable were his fingers, how tender their touch.
“This is how he would look,” she babbled and stared down at the loon. “In mating season...the loon, that is.” She was only making it worse, yet couldn’t stop. “We would never see him like this. The red-throated loon.”
Somewhere behind her a scream began. Moving through the register of notes, it picked up steam.
“The teapot!” She wanted to run to the kitchen, but, with the greatest of effort, forced herself to walk.
Red-throated loon in hand, Rafe Courtenay stared after her, the fire in his eyes hotter still.
Certain she was only tired, determined she wouldn’t act a fool, Valentina arranged a tea tray. Setting mugs, pots of cream and sugar, and a salver of lemon slices on it, she paused to consider, then made one last trip to the pantry.
Less than ten minutes later she found him standing before a window facing the bay, hands in pockets, his profile stark against the backdrop of panes. He was a handsome man. Hard and handsome, with hidden strengths and kindnesses. And, in that moment apart, it seemed right that he be there, in a room that suited him. A room she had created.
“The wind has turned, we’re in for some weather.”
He did not move or turn from the window, and even as he spoke Valentina heard the whispered moan of a gust among the eaves “In that case, we’d best make quick work of our tea and get to the charts so you can be on your way.”
“In that case, yes,” he said simply, and strode to her, taking the tray from her. “The table by the window, or the fire?”
Attention riveted on Rafe, she hadn’t realized the fire blazed briskly, its circle of heat inviting. The first of the season, and early, though the lodge was always cooled by its insulating walls of stone. If the wind was any sign, he had a frigid and wet journey ahead. He might as well be warm while he could. “The fire.”
When they were seated across from each other, and he’d taken up a sandwich, he turned to her, intending a comment, the usual rejoinder common between them. Instead he found himself entranced, a teasing smile faltering before it formed. She stared into the fire, mesmerized by its dancing and ever-changing pattern. Her head was tilted, the spit-in-your-eye challenge gone from her. The red glow of the blaze was as kind as the sun had been, softening the pitiless edges of strain and melancholy, erasing the waxen cast lying beneath the blush of a day spent out-of-doors.
Here, now, in the gossamer illusion, in the flush of warming flames, she was as he’d never seen her. Lovelier than in the grace and mercy of remembrance, with eyes he once thought too dark to be blue, a thoughtful, impossible, improbable, wonderful sapphire. And lovelier still with her hair
escaping its binding, tumbling around her face and shoulders in charming disarray. Blue-black and gleaming, its darkness catching the flickering light, a length of velvet spangled with stars. Though she sat unmoving, wisps and curls stirred by the beat of her heart, the depth of her breath, drifted against her cheeks and her neck, caressing her.
God help him, yes, she was lovely.
Beguiling. Enchanting.
Touchable.
As he would have her, always.
Illusion.
It was only that. A gift of the fire.
But, perhaps, someday.
Drawing himself again to reality and circumstance, he banished the seductive fantasy to the back of his thoughts. Yet he knew it would lie there in wait. An image he could never forget, never truly dismiss, branding his mind and his memory. Biding its time, whispering, gliding through his subconscious until it surfaced once more.
If he never saw her again, she would live on in him. A wayfarer, a stranger, who touched his life and left it changed. The measure of all women to come.
A stranger.
Shaking himself from this flight of fancy, reminding himself he was the cool, pragmatic Rafe Courtenay, with only his voice he drew her back to him from her own thoughtful sojourn. “You took me at my word.” A nod and a gesture drew her attention and the thread of conversation to the safe, but not so mundane topic of food. “Almost, but not exactly.”
Her face altered, not in a smile, but better, a glimmer of mischief. A slight tilt of her head accompanied a nod. Wisps and curls shimmered and shone and caressed. “Almost. But not exactly.”
Verbatim repetition. Confession. Low and husky, amused. Enchanting him more.
“This from a woman who doesn’t cook?” The concoction of thick slices of home-baked bread, roast beef oozing with a piquant, creamy sauce, and curling leaves of spinach nearly dwarfed his hand. “A meal fit for a king, with dessert for good measure! You don’t expect me to believe any of this came from the local deli, do you?”
“Considering that there is none, hardly.” More as a needed diversion than from hunger or thirst, Valentina sipped her tea and nibbled at a small cake.
“Is this something you learned in your childhood odyssey?” Part of what Simon had told him was more of her history. The unconventional education with the world as her classroom, its citizens of unique talents her teachers. “A skill acquired, I presume, as the skills I see in evidence here were acquired.”
While his gesture encompassed the room, its scattering of tools and supplies, and the dish of small cakes, Valentina laughed. A charming note, and far too uncommon. “You can thank my mother’s Irish influence for the sandwich and the cakes.”
Valentina wondered what he would say if he knew the cakes he was admiring were an Irish favorite called petticoat tails, a corruption of petite galette—little cakes. “Credit her inborn belief that food needn’t be complicated, but must always be good, for my simple and adequate culinary education. But both my mother and father are responsible for the rest of what you see here. And yes, it was part of our odyssey. We took a great deal for our own from every country, but in each case we tried to leave more.”
“Building houses in depressed and rural areas of Appalachia, serving in soup kitchens in Chicago, tutoring and studying on reservations, initiating and funding a survival camp for problem children on a ranch in Montana. To name only a few.” The sandwich was set down with only one bite taken from it. Hunger aside, this wasn’t the time for food.
“Ahh,” Valentina breathed a sigh. “Simon was thorough as usual, I see.”
“Quite.”
“Only for so far as he was able. He might tell you the facts. He might even catalog my parents’ generosities, but none of us could begin to say, or explain, how much more was given to us. Freely and unstintingly.”
“No ‘even Steven’?”
“Some things are matchless.”
“Yet you tried. No doubt, down to the last O’Hara.”
Valentina set her cup on the table by the cake, which looked more as if a mouse had nibbled at it than a woman. “Of course.” Her answer was short, but the frown that marred her forehead disappeared as she found in his look none of the cynicism she read into his words. “As you said, down to the last and littlest O’Hara.”
“Quite a philosophy, giving back more than you take.” Rafe put his own cup down, considered the sandwich, then reconsidered. “Keegan’s or Mavis’s or both?”
“Both.” In a rapid change of mood, Valentina laughed again. The hearty trill only her family could draw from her. “But either will tell you it’s more than a philosophy. It’s the O’Haras immutable rule.”
“That’s twice.” Rafe mused thoughtfully as his heart settled slowly back to its steady, pounding rhythm. “Twice in a space of five minutes. A veritable miracle.”
“Twice?”
“You laughed. Something you do too seldom.” If the sandwich hadn’t been forgotten, it would be now. The sudden hunger that swept through him, then stayed to taunt and torment him, could never be sated by food. “I was right, you know, your mouth was made for smiling.” His gaze lingered on her lips. Driven by irresistible impulse he leaned forward, brushing a crumb from them. His thumb tarried longer than was needed. “For smiling.” His voice roughened, deepened. “And more.”
Leaning back, putting distance between them, Valentina wrapped both shaking hands around her heavy mug. Lifting it to her lips, she found the heated rim cold after his touch. Desperate to turn the subject to safer ground, she observed wryly, “Thanks to dossiers and Simon, you seem to know a great deal about me, while I know nothing of you.”
Mug in hand, taking his cue from her, Rafe leaned back, conceding the space she needed. “My life is an open book.”
Valentina smiled, a small motion hidden by the bulk of the mug. A sip of tea calmed her as she moved it away. “Somehow I doubt that anything about you is as simple and obvious as an open book.”
“For you it is. All you need do is ask. So,” he settled deeper, more comfortably into the soft leather of the sofa, sipping the hearty brew. “What would you like to know, Valentina?”
“Oh, I don’t know.” A grimace meant for a cool smile made mockery of her indifference. “What you do. How you became so skilled in so many areas, in and beyond the business.” Who you are. Why you’re here. What you want of me. As the real questions of concern nagged at her, she watched him blandly, her true thoughts no more evident than his.
“My personal life is simple. I love a challenge, and a change of pace from the daily routine is more restful than idleness.” Brief eye contact, a lifted brow, a nod, underscored a common bond. “Whatever skills I’ve acquired over the years are no more than a reflection of that. My job is as simple. I love the challenge, and I do whatever is needed by McCallum International.”
“A simple job description often means a complicated responsibility, and, in this case, a more than competent man.”
Rafe inclined his head, conceding one more point. “Another O’Hara philosophy?”
“An observation, Mr. CEO. My own.”
“Based on...?”
“Public knowledge that under the dual guidance of Patrick McCallum and Rafe Courtenay, McCallum Investments of Scotland has grown into McCallum American and then McCallum International. That your name is as well known in certain circles as Patrick’s. That half of the company would be yours, if you would accept it.”
“You’ve done your homework.”
“What I’ve said is common knowledge in business and trade journals,” Valentina demurred.
“It has been in the past, but there’s been nothing recently. So, you made the effort to search out information from back issues.” Rafe sipped his tea and returned the mug to the tray. “Not an easy task.”
“Not so difficult, either.”
“Why? Why did you care?”
Valentina dismissed the depth and importance of her interest. “I was simply curious about the sort
of man who would go to the limit, as you did, for the child of a friend.”
“Courtney is more than the child of a friend. She’s my goddaughter. A responsibility I take seriously.”
“More than that, you love her, as you love her parents and her brothers.”
“You learned all of this from journals?”
Valentina shook her head. “No journal could describe the lesson learned from the desert and the mountain.”
“But you took it a step further.”
“I suppose I did.”
“Again, why?”
“I was curious.” Scrubbing her palms over worn denim, she avoided meeting his look. “It shouldn’t surprise you that I would be, given the circumstances.”
Rafe wouldn’t let her off so easily. “What circumstances are we discussing?” When there was no response after a moment he insisted gently, “Look at me, O’Hara. Look at me and tell me what circumstances.”
Setting the tea aside, to forestall their betrayal of her agitation, Valentina laced her fingers and folded her hands about her knees. Drawing a long, slow, breath, she admitted only a partial truth. “I don’t know.”
“Did your research have anything to do with Courtney? Anything at all?”
Her folded hands clasped her knee closely, the bones hard against her palms. A lie would neither deceive nor deter him. “It had nothing to do with Courtney.”
“Then why?” The same song, same verse, the same challenge, but too vital to abandon. “Why do you care?”
Rafe waited, seeing the tension in her, feeling it hum between them.
There it was, Valentina knew she should have expected it from the moment he stepped on shore. He hadn’t become the person he was by skirting issues. Nor, she admitted, had she. Abandoning her blind study of her hands, she took up the gauntlet, giving back the same unrelenting challenge. “For the same reason you’re here, I imagine. So, why don’t you tell me.”
As Rafe watched her, pensively, from the distance guarded by the table, the wind moaned again in the eaves. A down draft sent a shower of sparks flying over the broad hearth. Light beyond the window darkened another subtle degree, before a barely perceptible smile flickered over his lips. “I would like to meet the man who taught you self-defense.”
