With his tongue, he traced the raised ridges of the reddened scars at her throat. She flinched at first, but when he held her fast, sighed and allowed his tender exploration. She was so brave, so resourceful.
And so vulnerable.
She leaned into him. Through her thin cotton blouse, her peaked nipples pressed into his chest. The world tilting and his head spinning, he thought of nothing but her intoxicating scent and the hot, sleek moistness of her lips and tongue, joining his with demand.
Chapter 11
LAURA LOVED THE primal smell of him, the heat and security of his arms around her. She loved his fierce pride and even the dangerous side, the mysterious side.
She’d loved the reckless boy. She couldn’t love the determined, controlled man. He tempted her with his sensuality and strength, with his gentle protectiveness, but danger and heartache lay ahead if she yielded.
As she stiffened and pulled back, he raised his head, eyes heavy-lidded. He held on to her hands and rubbed the backs with the pads of his thumbs. “Don’t be afraid of me. I won’t hurt you.”
Worse. We’ll hurt each other.
He released her, and she turned toward the lighthouse. “I think we’d better get back.”
When she held on to his waist for the return ride, the heat of him seemed to burn her hands. She couldn’t succumb. Every little bit of herself she revealed to him, recent or past, opened cracks in her defenses.
She didn’t want to hurt him. By protecting herself from loving him again, she protected her secret. She protected them both from new heartbreak.
Didn’t she?
***
When they returned from Owls Head, they found a pan of lasagna on Laura’s doorstep. “From Bea,” she said, as she carried it inside to the refrigerator.
Cole did a quick check of the cabin before returning to his to pack. After that searing kiss, both needed space.
In his more spacious guest cabin, he dragged his suitcase from the luggage stand and threw it onto the bed. Thinking they’d be on their way west, he hadn’t really unpacked.
He could kick himself for kissing her when she was so exposed. For starting something that they shouldn’t finish. That shouldn’t happen again.
After slamming a few items from the bureau into the bag, he headed to the bathroom. Hell. She’d suffered so much. Time and time again. More than she’d divulged so far. And her expertise with the ancient cultures astounded him. He had to scrap his princess image of her and replace it with the successful cultural anthropologist.
But he couldn’t quite scrap how he felt about her long-ago desertion. She’d believed that rat Valesko’s every word and threw Cole away like the trash she thought he was. She denied his background made any difference, but it did. He dragged those leg irons with every step. He saw his old man’s leering mug, haunting him. He relaxed his fist before he squeezed out the whole tube of toothpaste, closed top or not.
If he could only feel indifference toward her, the damn job of guarding her and catching killers would be tolerable. But around her, his control extended only so far. Either his hands ached to touch her, to hold her, or they itched to pound the wall. Nothing in between.
At a tap on the bedroom window, he gripped his 9mm. He moved to the wall beside the window and peered out. When he recognized one of his team, he unlocked the window and pushed up the screen. “Byrne, get in here.”
DARK Officer Simon Byrne hoisted himself up and through the opening. “You just had a hot beach date with the lovely lady, Stratton. That should’ve set you up. What the hell’s got you in a twist?” He pulled down the window sash.
“Not the lady’s fault. And not yours.” Cole dug fingers into his hair. “This gig’s not going down as planned. It’s all on the fly.”
“And up in the air. Hell, aren’t you spook types used to winging it? Changing on the fly with a subject that turns squirrely? Or phantom?” Grinning, Byrne helped himself to water in the kitchenette. He was about Cole’s height, six feet, with a cocky attitude, a ready smirk and a nose that had seen knuckles at close range. A diamond earring winked through his shaggy brown hair.
DARK united special talents from various intelligence agencies, but the old rivalries cropped up, usually in the form of good-natured kidding. In spite of his mood, one side of Cole’s mouth quirked up. The cocky nonconformist reminded him of his younger self. “I suppose you DEA humps always know who your subject is.”
“Affirmative. Not usually a phantom. This Janus is a real piece of work. No clue as to his real identity so far.” Byrne hiked a hip on the oak dining table and downed the glass in one swig. “The Feebs identified his MO in half a dozen hits from Tampa to L.A. Execution-style. Those guys never knew what hit them. Word has it he can be subtle too. Makes it harder to pin down an MO. People have mysterious accidents — falling down stairs or into traffic.”
“Or down a mountain with punctured brake lines.” Cole zipped up his toiletries. “Local police show today?”
“They flat-footed all over the place looking for stashed loot from the cabins, but struck out. They did grill the handyman. No surprise, since he has a juvie record. Small-town cops are no threat to Janus. I doubt they’ll be in our way.”
Cole had expected that. “Are we all set?”
“Ward has the inside covered. Furnished us with a map of the resort and who’s in each cabin. The others are in place. We start our new jobs this afternoon. No sweat.”
Cole zipped his bag and lifted it. He didn’t like to leave Laura alone for long, even with Isaacs on surveillance duty.
“Man, Ward may be the Confessor, but you’re Lockjaw.” Byrne tugged at his studded earlobe. “You wouldn’t spill what’s eating at you if the President himself asked. It’s the babe, isn’t it?”
Busted. Cole’s gut churned. He wanted to deck Byrne with his duffel. “What makes you such a damn expert?”
“Hope you don’t play much poker, Stratton.” The undercover officer unlocked the window and prepared to depart the same way he’d entered.
“Hell, Laura and I may have a history, but it won’t stop me from doing my job.”
“One reason the director picked you was because you do know her. Word in the agency says you’re cool, one of the best. You take care of her. The rest of us’ll have this place covered like fleas on a beagle. If Janus is here, we’ll get him.” He slipped out the window and into the trees.
Birds sang in the afternoon sun. Squirrels raced and argued in the pine branches overhead. No sign of anyone watching. And no more sign of Byrne.
Cole closed and locked the screen and window. His fellow officers might trust him. Laura seemed to trust him to keep her safe. But could he trust himself? He stowed his emotions like he stowed his luggage, but being close to her blew that all to hell. Could he control his confused feelings enough to do the job?
He’d proven himself over the years. With every new mission, he kept striving to prove himself. Who for? Only himself.
Until now.
It was her life on the line, but protecting her, stopping an assassin and nabbing Markos fit into his personal goal.
Hell, didn’t that make him the selfish bastard she’d accused him of being?
***
That evening, the stage crew completed the last of the scenery for Death at the Diner.
Laura hung the curtains Stan’s wife had sewed. Like the woven pattern in the yellow gingham, her feelings for Cole intertwined with her fear of Markos’s hit man. Cole’s arrival had ignited the flame of hope, that they’d catch the killer and Markos, and she could return home in safety.
But hope was her enemy as much as fear. Either could weaken her vigilance and send her screaming into Cole’s arms.
After the kiss on the beach, she’d intended to think of him only as her bodyguard, nothing more. But where he was concerned, she had about as much willpower as a child with a bag of Halloween candy. How could she maintain a vow of indifferenc
e when her awareness of him overrode her good intentions? She mustn’t leap into his arms as she did that afternoon.
She knew better than to try to persuade him to drop the hot-lover act. He intended to stay close. So emotional distance was the key. She’d fortify herself with a wall of indifference. She was strong. Hadn’t she overcome challenges greater than her attraction to Cole Stratton?
She hurried forward to help Bea and him shove the counter-and-stools unit into place. “Careful, Bea, the paint’s still a bit sticky.”
The older woman accepted her tactful out to avoid moving the heavy scenery. Bea painted and decorated with enthusiasm, but she was eighty or older. “I’m sure this dear man would rather have you beside him,” she replied with a wink.
“Put a little more hip into it, babe, and you’ll move me along with the scenery.” Cole grinned.
Laura rolled her eyes at his suggestive comment. “You do your part, and I’ll do mine.” Pushing together, they slid the unit onto its marks on stage left.
“The two booths and we’re done.” He strode into the wings.
“Ah, Stratton, you’re a lifesaver,” Rudy Damon said. Somewhere between forty and sixty, the director cultivated a bristling white moustache that forever fought gravity in an attempt to merge with his full head of white hair. “This bike is just what we need.”
Parked beside the completed booths was the Harley-Davidson Bad Boy. Burt, in a leather jacket dripping with zippers, stood beside it. Running a hand over the leather seat, he drooled over the black-and-silver machine.
Laura grinned, noting Cole’s compressed mouth.
“So this is the bike I use on stage? Way cool.” Burt smoothed a hand over the black leather seat.
Rudy adjusted his ever present red silk scarf, this one tied in an elaborate overhand knot. “Cole has offered the use of his motorcycle. I feared we’d have to use a cardboard one.”
Leaving the bike, Burt ambled over beside Laura. “I want the one with the CD player, fringes on the saddlebags, the works.”
Cole’s wolf eyes sharpened. “This is a Harley Softail. A cleaner look, not some poser garbage wagon.”
Laura picked up a box of props. “Maybe the bike’s too new to suit the play. We are back in the fifties, you know.”
“No, no, we need it,” the director said. “And I need to find my notes for the stage blocking. I’ll leave you folks to setting up the scenery.”
“Hey, I’ll help with that.” Burt rushed to Cole’s aid.
The two bent to tip one booth onto a dolly. Eyeing each other across avocado-green upholstery like wrestlers on the mat instead of crew members, they nearly heaved the booth off the stage. They had to drag it back into place.
The effort flexed powerful shoulder muscles beneath the black cotton of Cole’s T-shirt. It strained the sinews in his arms and stretched the cargo pants’ khaki fabric across his taut backside.
Laura forced her gaze away to the booth she and Vanessa were balancing.
Vanessa winked at her.
Busted.
***
When Cole and Laura left the theater, thin fog hovered just above the lake surface. The disembodied masts of the sailing dinghies levitated in midair. The air was sharp with wood smoke from a bonfire on the beach.
The idea of what or whom the ghostly, gray scrim might obscure jittered her pulse. Seeming to notice her anxiety, he curved an arm around her shoulders. She should object, but welcomed the added shield of his heat and strength. She breathed in his scent and relaxed.
“What’s the deal?” he asked as they drew near the fire.
“You remember my mentioning Jake Elwell?”
“The handyman.”
“He still can’t do any heavy work, but once a week he builds a bonfire for the guests. They roast marshmallows, and he tells stories.”
His eyebrows scissored together. “What kind of stories?”
“Ghost stories mostly. Jake spins wonderful old Maine tales too. You know, the kind of stories you tell around a campfire.” A suspicion, inchoate as the fog, invaded her consciousness.
She stopped, just beyond the congenial circle of adults and children, and faced him. “Have you ever done that? A bonfire, I mean, with tall tales and marshmallows?”
His eyes, midnight dark and brooding, focused on her warily. She had the impression of coiled energy, a wild creature that at any moment could either pounce or flee. “The stories Marines tell around campfires would singe your hair.”
Something flickered behind the intensity in his eyes. Hurt and envy. They curled around her heart. “But as a boy, you never did this, did you?”
His lack of a reply told her he hadn’t. He’d either had to work or deal with his father. If the old man wasn’t already dead, she’d like to choke him for denying his son a childhood. In spite of Cole’s achievements, he hadn’t banished the feeling of inadequacy engendered by missing small joys like fun around a campfire. The hostile biker facade had been a guise. He still felt unworthy, an outsider.
“Then let’s make up for lost time. I see room for us by the rock beyond the fire circle.” She took his hand and began tugging him toward the spot she’d selected, apart, yet near enough to hear Jake and roast a marshmallow or two. She might’ve tried to uproot a tree. He didn’t pull away from her. He simply didn’t budge.
His hard-hewn jaw was set. “You don’t have to do this.” He spoke in a low voice serrated by bitterness.
“No, but you do.” She laced her fingers with his long, callused ones. “You can’t undo injustices and fill in gaps, but you can move on by not denying yourself simple pleasures everyone should experience.”
She bestowed on him her best come-hither smile and pulled again. The thickening fog formed a gray nimbus around the outdoor lights and left jewels of mist on her hair.
He cleared his throat. “We ought to get to the cabin. I need—”
She clutched his arm and whispered. “There’s a strange man standing behind us. Look by the tree.”
Chapter 12
“LET’S SEE. AVERAGE build, brown hair, closing in on forty?”
“You already checked him out?” Laura asked.
His lips nuzzled her ear as he whispered back, rocketing her pulse. “You can relax. He’s DARK. Stan has hired two new groundskeepers. I thought you’d noticed him earlier in the theater. He’s assisting with lighting.”
She inhaled slowly and deeply, exhaled. “Stan knows?”
“Had to tell him. He wants to help you. Besides, the intrigue appealed to him like a three-act thriller.”
She relaxed against him, secure and trusting he was protecting her. Brushing hungry mosquitoes away, she let him nudge her away from the happy campfire scene and to her cabin.
“You would’ve enjoyed toasting marshmallows and listening to Jake’s stories,” she said as they entered her cabin. “It would’ve been one less thing to complain about never doing.”
He hung his windbreaker, wet with mist, on the back of a kitchen chair. “You can make a list and check off every item if you want — bonfire, sailing, horseback riding, a damned cotillion. It’s not the same.”
“Don’t you think I know that?” She poured water into the kettle for some herbal tea. “Simple joys like roasting marshmallows as a child don’t make a man who he is.”
He turned off the gas heater. “Dammit, I smell gas. This was loose again. The pilot light’s out.”
“I don’t understand. Stan told me at the theater that Burt fixed it today.” At least the thing worked. In a few minutes they could relight it. A little heat would nip the evening chill brought on by the fog. And the sudden chill between them. “So you had a rough beginning. You turned yourself around.”
“Bully for me.” He growled like an unfed wolf.
“Don’t you get all defensive on me, Cole Stratton.” Hands on her hips, she glared at him. The man was all hard lines and uncompromising angles. A hard surface that
one day would crack when the hidden fires beneath erupted.
He threw up his hands. “I know you mean well.”
“Whining about what you never did makes you a martyr to no one but yourself. Don’t tell me you didn’t get a kick out of sailing. We can even find horses to ride if you want. Maybe we can invite Janus to come along.” Horrified, she stopped.
The kettle shrieked, and she spun back to the stove.
He trailed after her as far as the refrigerator, where he’d stocked some root beer. “Speaking of Janus…”
“Ah, I was wondering when you’d get around to finishing our conversation of this afternoon. My story may rival some of Jake’s more hair-raising tales. It’s not for children.” Describing the attack would be easier than walking this minefield between them.
She took her tea to a stool beside the heater, restored to giving warmth. “The weather was hot, one of those humid D.C. October nights, when the murder … when everything happened, but telling it gives me chills.”
Cole worried about her emotional state for relating this violent incident. He’d witnessed the havoc wreaked on war-torn villagers as they’d detailed atrocities committed by radicals on both sides of conflict.
Fixing his gaze on her, he sat cross-legged on the floor beside her. In the villages, family members had held and soothed hysterical victims. Laura might not want his support, physical or otherwise, but he was ready. “Tell me about Kovar.”
She clasped her tea mug with both hands. “He’s not very tall, but wide as a house, with dark eyes like iron pellets. I think he enjoyed hurting me. Markos ordered him to kill me, to dispose of me where no one would find me. The beating and … creative knife work were Kovar’s idea.”
She spoke with the toneless and disjointed remoteness of a computer-generated voice. Or as if she were reading a newspaper account of an unimportant event, not even a crime. Maybe the impersonal approach prevented the horror from overwhelming her.
Dark Memories (The DARK Files Book 1) Page 9
