“And who can blame you?” someone asked. It was a man, and his voice was dripping with meaning. “I hope I’ll have the chance to do the same.”
“I’m sure you’ll have plenty of opportunities to dance with your wife, Mr. Monroe,” Mel shot at him.
He blinked in surprise, but Alex tugged her away, onto the floor. Only then did she regret it, because as he swept her into his arms, she realized she was going to make a complete fool of herself if she tried to waltz. So she did the only thing she could do. She twisted her arms around his neck, pressed her body against his and rested her head on his shoulder. Alex’s arms went around her waist immediately, and he bent his head to catch her whisper.
“I can’t waltz,” she told him.
“Thank God,” he muttered.
Lifting her head, she blinked up at him.
“I hate waltzing. I hate the fox-trot, too. I hate all those things they taught us in prep school so we’d grow up to be socially acceptable young men.”
She smiled slowly. “I never would have guessed there was anything you didn’t like about this posh, glittering world of yours.”
“Oh, there’s a lot. Trust me. But for now, relax, we’ve got this part covered.”
“Do we? Don’t you think anyone will wonder why we aren’t dancing?”
“We are dancing. We’re dancing like two people who would rather be at home making love.”
Her tummy twisted into a delicious little knot of longing when he said that. She thought she might have made a soft sound in her throat, as well, the way he looked at her.
“Which is exactly the kind of behavior that is expected of Thomas and Katerina Barde.” His hand slid up the nape of her neck, fingers in her hair, and he pressed gently until she rested her head on his shoulder again.
His words made her shiver. But not as much as his touch did. It was a real effort to keep her head on straight with this man. Especially when his fingers skimmed some sensitive place that had never been sensitive before. The nape of her neck. The hollow beneath her chin, the small of her back. Or when his breath whispered close to her ear. It was a constant effort to remember that most of what he did and said to her was an act, part of the performance they were giving. And the rest of it, the flirting, the looks, those kisses—those things were directed at the woman she was pretending to be, not the woman she really was.
All things considered, she must be a complete idiot to be wishing she could drag him into the nearest coat closet and tear his clothes off with her teeth.
They danced. She pretended for just a little while that it was she, Melusine Brand, he was holding so closely, so tenderly. She pretended that he meant it, even knowing that would only make it hurt more when she had to return to the reality where he didn’t.
When the music ended, their bodies were pressed together as closely as if they had melted into each other. He was nuzzling her hair, she realized, and she was running her fingers repeatedly through his.
Without the rhythm to lull her, she woke from her warm fantasy, lifted her head, felt as if she needed to blink in the sudden light of reality. He smiled a little awkwardly and took her to a small table, grabbing two glasses of champagne and some tiny chocolate confections from a passing waiter on the way. She reached for a chocolate, but he grabbed it first and held it up to her lips.
“Don’t you think this is overkill, Alex?” she asked softly from beyond her false smile.
He shrugged. “Too late now, everyone’s looking.”
Angry with him, she took the chocolate from his fingers, drawing her lips over them in the process. Alex closed his eyes. She thought he shivered, and she also thought it served him right. She chased the chocolate with a large gulp of champagne, made a face and set the glass down. “I would kill for a beer,” she said, maybe to remind him of who she really was.
He smiled at that. “I’ll see if I can find you one later on.”
“Pardon me?” a man said. It was the same man from earlier. Mr. Monroe. “May I have this dance?”
“I…” She shot Alex a look.
He smiled easily. “I’m sorry, Monroe. But she is all mine tonight.”
Monroe reacted with surprise, but he nodded and backed off.
Alex got up and walked around the table, took her hand and drew her to her feet. “It’ll blow our cover if you have to dance with someone else and they try to waltz. But the way you look tonight, the only way to keep them from asking is if I dance with you myself. All night.”
“Oh…uh…”
He pulled her close, and they went on, shuffling very slowly around the floor with their bodies touching, hip to hip, thigh to thigh and head to shoulder, like teenagers at a high school prom. There was no way they could have been closer. At least not with their clothes on. It was heaven and hell, and she was aching for him and thinking maybe it wouldn’t be so bad to indulge his fantasy for just one night.
She thought about that right up to the moment when the double doors at the far side of the room burst open and three men surged through them. A woman screamed, and a Secret Service agent yelled, “Gun!”
Alex reacted instinctively, pushing Mel to the floor, dropping to his knees, pulling his gun and covering her with his own body all at the same time, and all even before the first barrage of shots rang out.
“Crawl, baby. That way. Go!” He pushed her bodily, and she obeyed, crawling as fast as she could between the legs and feet of the now-panicked people who were running every which way. He pushed her underneath one of the tables that were draped with long cloths. Crouching, he held her tight to his chest, felt her shaking so hard he thought she would hurt herself while the shots rang out. Then the noise just stopped.
“I have to look,” he whispered.
Nodding in jerky motions, she let go of him. He turned just a little, peered out between one tablecloth and the next.
“Alex, what’s happening?”
He put a finger to his lips. One of the interlopers shouted for calm, for quiet, as the other two fanned out into the crowd, searching, he knew, for Thomas and Katerina.
Lowering the tablecloth, he crawled to the opposite side, lifted the cloth there, peered out. He saw French doors, four feet away. But if he opened them long enough to get out, the attackers would notice the open doors. Then he noticed the windows, with their long, velvet drapes. Most of the draperies were pulled open, but a few were closed. Fifty feet farther along the wall was the nearest one with closed drapes. There were tables lined up all the way there. He lowered the tablecloth.
The crowd was quieting now as the thug who appeared to be in charge told them that no one would get hurt, that they only wanted the little princess and her prince. And then they would go.
“Come on,” Alex whispered.
“To where?” she asked. “Alex, I’m scared. Those bastards have machine guns.”
He looked at her, saw that her eyes were damp and wide, and he knew it was a hellish thing for her to have to admit that she was afraid. He clamped a hand to the nape of her neck, pulled her face to his, pressed his forehead to hers. “Listen to me, baby, I know you can do this. You’re not Katerina Barde, you’re Melusine Brand. Now we’re gonna crawl, quietly and carefully, but as quickly as we can manage, underneath these tables, all the way to the other end of the room. When we get there, we’re gonna slip from beneath the tablecloth to behind the closed drapes at one of those big windows. Then we’re gonna open the window, climb outside and get the hell out of here, and those bastards with the machine guns are never even going to know we left. Okay?”
“I don’t know if I can do it.”
“I know you can do it. You’re tough, Mel.”
“Damn straight, I’m tough. I meant, I don’t know if I can do it in this getup.”
He glanced down at her feet, then reached for them, easing her shoes off. “You have your gun?”
She nodded, hiking up her dress to reveal the little thirty-eight, tucked into a pancake holster buckled around her thigh
like a garter. He heard a small voice telling him that this woman was like no woman he’d ever met in his life. He tried to ignore the other little voice telling him how much he liked that glimpse of her thigh. “You go first,” he told her. “I want you in front of me.”
She got on all fours and began to crawl. The dress was too long, though, and her knees couldn’t move far in it. After she stumbled for the third time, Mel stopped, sat back on her haunches and grabbed the dress at the top of the slit. Using both hands, she ripped, tearing several feet of length from the skirt. Alex grated his teeth, hoping to God the murmuring of the frightened people and the loud voice of the ringleader continuing to shout instructions as his men methodically searched through the crowd were enough to cover the sound of tearing fabric. Seconds later Mel was crawling again, in a drastically shortened skirt, with silky black panties underneath. He followed on his hands and knees, wondering just when he had become so unprofessional that he could think about a woman’s derriere at a time like this. The way it moved, the nearness of it.
When she reached the end of the first table, she stopped. The tablecloth hung to the floor on the end of the table. The two legs were braced by a crosspiece that ran between them, about six inches up from the floor. Crawling up beside her, Alex lifted the tablecloth, only to see another, the one from the next table. He lifted that, as well. The tables were pushed together tightly. The movement of the cloths shouldn’t be visible from outside. He held the cloths up as Mel carefully climbed over the crosspiece of one, then over the crosspiece of the next. She did it with painstaking care, knowing one wrong move could give them away by jarring the tables.
Once she was through, she held the cloths up for him to follow. And that was the way they continued, crawling, then maneuvering to the next table, until they’d journeyed the five table lengths.
“We should be just about there,” Alex whispered. He lifted the section of tablecloth facing the rear wall and saw he’d judged right. The window was right there. It was very tall, with red velvet drapes hanging closed all the way to the floor. They would have to creep across about a yard of open floor to the draperies, and then the risk would be in causing the heavy fabric to move as they maneuvered themselves behind it. A distraction would be good.
“Ahh, what do we have here?” the leader asked.
Alex turned, peering out the other side of the table into the crowded room in time to see the man striding toward the row of tables on the opposite end of the room—the side where they had begun. Then Alex saw why. The scrap of black fabric Mel had discarded was lying on the floor, just peeking out from beneath the pristine white tablecloth.
Everyone was turning in that direction.
“Go. Now,” Alex whispered.
The two of them scurried out from beneath the table to the window and behind the curtains. They knelt there between the drapes, the cool glass and the darkness outside, their hearts pounding, as Alex lifted his head to find the catch for the window. It was a handle in the center, four feet up, and the window would open outward. He reached up, opened the window, gripped Mel and jumped. It was five feet or so to the grassy ground, and they hit hard and rolled even as Alex was praying the thugs hadn’t posted any guards outside.
Then he heard a man yell, “The window!”
Alex closed his hand on Mel’s arm, drawing her to her feet and into a dead run. And somehow—God, he didn’t know how, but somehow—they made it through the darkness to the river that backed the palatial home without anyone seeing them or shooting at them. But they were coming. He could hear them talking, searching.
They had to get the hell out of there, and fast. He scanned the riverbank. There was a small wooden dock, and a canoe bobbed serenely in the river, a rope holding it to the dock. He held her arm, ran out onto the dock. “Get in the canoe and lie down. Get your gun in your hand, you may need it. Be quick!”
He held the boat steady, and she obeyed without question. Except for the part about lying down. Instead, she watched his back, her gun at the ready, while he untied the rope and climbed in, rocking the little boat dangerously in the process. She holstered her gun and tossed him a paddle, then she turned around in her seat. “I’m in the front, Alex. You’re power, I’m direction, got it?”
“Yeah.” He used his paddle to push off, then started paddling in earnest, going with the current. She was paddling, too, and within seconds they were surging down the river.
“We did it,” she said, breathless, maybe even a little giddy. “We really did it, Alex. We got away.”
He glanced behind them, saw forms gathering on the shore, looking after them. He hadn’t seen any other boats, but that didn’t mean there weren’t any. “We’re not in the clear yet, babe. Keep paddling.”
“We’ll be fine. They can’t catch us. We can ride this baby all the way to—”
“They know where the river goes as well as we do, Mel. The faster we ditch this canoe and find another mode of transportation, the better.”
She turned to stare at him, and she looked so profoundly disappointed that he wished he could take the words back. He expected her to argue. Instead she only nodded. “You’re right. They have cars, if not boats. They’re probably in them, racing downriver even now, hoping to intercept us.” She glanced at the far shore, pointed. “Over there, you think?”
“As good a place as any.”
They paddled hard for the far shore.
Chapter 8
I t was 11:00 p.m., and it had been a long, long day. Selene had slipped away from the family as soon as she could manage it, even though she’d loved every minute she had spent with them all, to take a quick nap, but she couldn’t sleep. Not even after all the others finally quieted and went to their own homes and their own beds. She crept down from the guest room she’d been sharing with Kara, tiptoed through the house and out the front door. Selene always went outside when she was troubled. Nature spoke to her, soothed her somehow, and always told her what she needed to know.
She sat on the Brands’ wide front porch, rocking slowly in the swing. It was beautiful there. The stars winked from a huge sky over rolling meadows. She felt as if she were sitting in the middle of a painting.
She heard the screen door creak, turned her head and saw Wes Brand stepping out onto the porch. He had a mug in each hand and offered her one.
She took it, smelled hot cocoa and smiled. “How’d you know I was out here?”
He shrugged, taking a seat in the rocking chair next to the swing. “Lucky guess. I couldn’t sleep a wink. You?”
She shook her head. “Not even a catnap.”
“You feel it, too, then. Don’t you? That something’s happened?”
She nodded. “Yes. I do. I think they’re in trouble. And I have to go back there.”
“Mmm-hmm. I know you do. Me, too.” He sipped his cocoa. “No one here is gonna like it.”
“I wasn’t planning to ask permission.”
“I like the way you think.”
She took a long drink, licked her lips. “This isn’t a mix, is it?”
“There’s a mix?”
Selene allowed herself a smile. “You know, you have a baby. A pretty wife, a family to take care of. You don’t have to go with me.”
“Course I do. You’re family. I think it’s best we get a good night’s sleep and an early start tomorrow. That’ll give us time to call your sister, check on things and book a flight.”
She shrugged. “I was thinking I might just slip away, not tell anyone.”
He shook his head. “You think no one would know where you’d gone?”
“Guess you’re right.” She shivered suddenly, wrapped her arms around herself. “God, something’s really bad, Wes. Maybe we shouldn’t wait for morning. Maybe we should go right now. If we drove all night…”
“Not yet.”
She sighed. “I just wish I knew what was going on.”
Inside the house, the jangling of a telephone shot through her like an electrical curr
ent. Wes didn’t look surprised at all. In fact, he looked as if he’d been expecting it. He pressed his lips tight, got to his feet. “I think we’re about to find out.”
“Alex? Um, the water’s moving faster.” Mel didn’t need to paddle anymore for speed, though she was trying like hell to paddle them toward the far shore. The little canoe was being swept along by the river at an ever-increasing pace. The water was dark and murky, and the tips of the little creases in the surface were starting to wear white frothy caps.
“I know. Just try to keep us from hitting anything and keep paddling.”
“We’re not going to make it.”
“We’ll make it. Keep paddling.”
She was paddling as hard as she could toward the shore, but the current was getting faster and faster, and it was tugging them southward, not shoreward. A rock loomed, large and shiny wet.
“Damn.” She thrust her paddle into the water on the same side as the rock, stroking fiercely, and, to her astonishment, she steered them around the boulder.
“Nice job!” Alex called.
It occurred to her that he’d had to raise his voice to be heard over the sound of the rushing water. Probably not a real good sign. And then another rock loomed, and she was too busy to think about anything else.
The nose of the canoe rose up and slammed down, water slapping them both in the face when it landed. It rocked and leaned. She worked by sheer instinct to keep the thing from flipping over and knew Alex was doing the same behind her. The far shore was no longer an option. The little boat was sucked into a vortex of foaming water and looming rocks, shooting and shuddering like a rocket in a meteor shower.
Her arms were too tired to keep fighting the water, and yet she kept on. The boat bounced so wildly she had to glance behind her once or twice just to be sure Alex hadn’t been thrown out. He was still there, water dripping from his hair and face, his jaw rigid as he struggled to do his part.
Then, suddenly after what seemed like hours, the river eased up on them. She sat back, only then realizing she’d been kneeling in the bow to get more leverage on her paddle. “Thank God,” she whispered. She was breathing fast, and her throat was dry, but every other part of her was soaked to the very skin.
Secrets and Lies Page 10
