Dangerous Waters

by Janice Kay Johnson

  "Would you do it?" she asked. "Instead of going to prison?"

  He glanced at her. "Hell, yes. But remember, I don't have any family. I'm used to going undercover. Being chatty isn't one of my problems."

  Troubled, Megan nodded and didn't say more. She could feel his gaze on her. Finally he asked, "Hungry? Shall I order you something?"

  "I guess," she said without much enthusiasm. "Maybe a turkey sandwich."

  Mac nodded and picked up the phone. With his voice as background, Megan grabbed her hairbrush and began tugging it through her uncooperative hair. Sitting on the edge of the bed, she could see herself in the vanity mirror. She was paler than she had been, despite the swimming at Lake Shasta. Her dark hair needed a trim, she decided, and a little makeup wouldn't hurt anything. Trying to distract herself, Megan wondered if she should stop at a department store on her way to the airport; with half her wardrobe and most of her toiletries and makeup blasted to smithereens, she needed to start from scratch. Or maybe she could spend the night in Portland before she caught the bus for Devil's Lake.

  Because she had no doubt she would be going home. After all, even if Mac felt anything substantial or lasting for her, what could he offer her now? He was probably already busy making up a new identity, deciding where to settle this time while he waited for something that might never happen.

  And wasn't home what she had wanted most?

  "I should make you a plane reservation," he said suddenly, harshly.

  Megan bit her lip, then nodded.

  His voice was rough. "Megan..." But a knock at the door interrupted him.

  By the time he'd tipped the bellboy and seen him out, Mac seemed to have thought better of whatever he had intended to say. He watched Megan finish braiding her hair, then said, "Come and eat."

  She still didn't have any appetite. And I should be relieved! she thought in despair. Her safe, orderly life had been given back to her. Now was too late to discover that it no longer mattered most.

  To keep Mac from noticing her withdrawal, she went over to the small table by the sliding-glass door where he had laid out the food. "What are you going to do this afternoon?" she asked, proud of how detached she sounded.

  "Right now, wait for the phone to ring," Mac said. "If Silva is back in Miami, he shouldn't be hard to find. He's a real professional, careful enough so he doesn't need to hide. No police department has ever had the evidence to arrest him, even though his name is well known."

  "Careful," Megan repeated. "That's one way to look at it."

  Mac's gray eyes were perceptive. "Yeah. Saldivar sent him because I'd have recognized most of his men. Silva's a free-lancer. He's done work for Saldivar before, but he keeps personal contact to a minimum. So I never had occasion to meet him when I was part of the organization."

  Megan nodded again. Curiously, she asked, "Was it hard, pretending to be...like them?"

  A flicker of some emotion crossed his face, but he answered dispassionately, "Not as hard as you'd think. It's a business, and they look at themselves as businessmen. They have a product, distributors, suppliers, accountants."

  "And murderers."

  "Yeah, but you have to understand. That's not how they look at themselves. That's the hard part. I'm the law; we're moralists. If you even let yourself think about moral judgments while you're under, you're dead."

  Megan knew exactly what the scar on his belly looked like. "Is that what happened to you?" she asked.

  His mouth twisted. "No. It was just bad luck."

  Megan felt as far from understanding him as she ever had. How could he not make moral judgments?

  He was familiar, and yet a stranger. Extraordinarily handsome, with strong cheekbones and patrician nose, a sexy mouth and hooded gray eyes. Yet he had never quite fit at Devil's Lake, never would, she thought. It wasn't the hair that was too long or his clothes or even the shoulder holster that he wore so casually. No, it was his guarded expression, his cynicism, his loneliness, that meant he would never be the kind of man she had always imagined she would marry someday.

  Maybe those very qualities were the reason she loved him. Maybe because she, too, had a core of loneliness that nobody else had ever touched.

  The strident ring of the telephone made her jump. Mac's eyes didn't leave hers as he answered the phone before it could ring again. "Yeah?" He made some noises of agreement, said he'd be there in an hour, and finally hung up.

  "He's in custody," Mac said.

  "Will he talk?"

  "Not so far. I plan to see if I can't change his mind."

  Megan felt like a puppet when she nodded again.

  "Aren't you going to eat?" he asked.

  "I'm...not really hungry," she admitted.

  Silence stretched too long between them. At last, sounding awkward, Mac said, "Will you wait for me?"

  Megan tried to smile. "Why not? I can leave in the morning just as well."

  Mac swore and shoved his chair back from the table. Almost roughly he pulled her up and into his arms. Unshed tears burned in her eyes as his mouth claimed hers with shattering thoroughness. Megan wanted to melt, to surrender whatever pride held her backbone straight, but Mac released her too quickly. "I'll be back," he said hoarsely, grabbed his jacket and was gone.

  Megan sat on the edge of the bed and cried. She cried because she had no choice but to get on that plane tomorrow, to go back to her beachfront cottage and her family and her class full of eager five-year-olds. She would have given anything, anything at all, to throw that all over and stay with Mac.

  She cried most of all because she knew he wouldn't ask her.

  *****

  It was six-thirty before Mac let himself into the hotel room. He found Megan packing. Sacks and sales slips lay all over the bed.

  "You went shopping."

  "I'd have gone crazy if I hadn't done something." She didn't seem to want to meet his eyes, but she picked up a bulging bag and handed it to him. "I bought you some stuff. I thought maybe you'd be too busy."

  He glanced in. Jeans. His size, she must have looked. Two sweatshirts, gray and dark green. On top was a black T-shirt that he lifted out.

  "Batman," he said, and laughed. "Appropriate, I guess. Although God knows I'm no superhero."

  "You're good enough for me," Megan said, finally meeting his gaze.

  The black depression that had hung over him all day returned full force and he let the T-shirt and bag fall back to the bed. "Yeah, well, this'd make a hell of a movie," he said. "The audience likes a resolution. This story seems to be running on and on."

  "He won't talk."

  "No surprise," he said wryly.

  Megan searched his face with those extraordinary blue eyes, and Mac felt as transparent as ice. As brittle, too.

  For the second time today the telephone rang, but this time he swore. "Now what?"

  Megan answered it before he could cross the room. "Hello? Oh, Mom."

  He had been forgotten. Mac sat in one of the armchairs and watched, unnoticed, as Megan talked to her mother.

  "Did Bill pick up Zachary? The poor baby. He didn't want us to leave him. Um hm. Yes, I have a reservation. My flight gets into Portland at twelve-fifteen. I figured I'd just catch the bus." Pause. "You don't have to do that. It won't kill me... Bad choice of words, huh?" He saw her struggle to hold back tears. "Are you sure? I love you, Mom."

  Mac tuned out when she started talking about clothes shopping. A moment later she hung up and reached for a tissue, firmly blowing her nose. Her eyes were still damp when she turned her head. Mac tried hard to look expressionless.

  "Is something wrong?" she asked.

  So much for his ability to dissemble. His mouth twisted into a painful smile. From somewhere words came that he'd never meant to say. "What if I asked you to leave with me, right this minute? Would you go?"

  "I... What do you mean?" she asked carefully.

  "I love you," he said. "God, I love you. I let myself imagine what it would be like to have you the
re every day. Which was pretty damn stupid. Because it wouldn't work, would it? You belong back home, safe and sound."

  Megan walked right up to him and gently touched his cheek. Mac turned his head to press a rough kiss in her palm.

  "I'm not a child, you know," she said steadily. "I left home a long time ago. I want to spend my life with the man I love, not my parents." Standing on tiptoe, Megan brushed her lips across his.

  For a moment Mac stood immobile beneath the caress, disbelief mingling with astonished hope. Could she possibly mean what he thought she did?

  "Megan," he said. Tried to say. Somehow it came out like a desperate gasp for air. But words no longer mattered, because he'd hauled her into his arms and was kissing her with the deep, hungry passion that burned in his belly all the time.

  He had to have her; physical possession seemed to be the only way he could feel sure of her. Part of him knew that this time lovemaking was a way of running away. They should talk. He should make himself rationally think about tomorrow, figure out whether there was any hope of making this work.

  The rest of him didn't want to listen. She was his right this second. That was what counted—it was all he could count on. Tomorrows had a way of letting you down.

  But he didn't want to go too fast. Those times after making love to her, when he lay with her head resting on his shoulder, his skin cooling as the heat inside subsided, was when he started to think. Right now, he didn't want to think.

  So he kissed her until she was weak in his arms, until her taste was his own. He laid her on the bed and stripped her just slowly enough to draw out the anticipation, and he didn't mind at all when she took her time undressing him. Nothing had ever been sweeter, he thought as he kissed her neck and then her breast, eased his fingers between her legs where she was slick and hot. For him. Mac's satisfaction at her response was as powerful this time as the first. When he entered her with one thrust and she cried out and held him tighter, that satisfaction became triumph. Only for him.

  Somehow he held himself back, took it slow, let the tenderness be stronger than the hunger. She didn't close her eyes, just watched him. He kissed her and she smiled dreamily. "I love you," she murmured. "Don't make me leave you."

  The knowledge that he'd have to do just that whispered at the edge of his consciousness. To drown it he kissed Megan again, harder, more desperately. She was his. Right this minute she was his. To hell with tomorrow.

  CHAPTER 11

  Megan awakened slowly, dreamily, a rare sense of physical well-being mixed with the memory of happiness that wasn't quite concrete. Mac, she thought, then remembered on a flood. He had said he loved her, asked if she would go with him. Anywhere, she thought joyously, and opened her eyes.

  But the other side of the bed was empty, the rumpled covers and indented pillow the only sign that he had been there. Apprehension grabbed at her throat and she sat up abruptly. Then she saw him.

  Already dressed, Mac stood by the window looking out. His back was to her, so that she couldn't see his face.

  "Mac?" she said uncertainly.

  The moment he turned and she saw his closed expression she knew that last night's dream was only that. Mac had no intention of taking her with him.

  "Mac?" she said again, hating the pleading note in her voice.

  "It wouldn't work," he answered her unspoken question gently. Implacably. "I should have kept my mouth shut."

  Megan was only vaguely conscious of her nakedness and tangled hair. All of her was focused on this man who had changed her life from the moment she wrapped her arms around him in the dark water of the lake. His hands were shoved into the pockets of his khaki trousers, where she could see that he had made fists. His neck was tanned and strong above the unbuttoned opening of a dark-green henley shirt. Hair damp, he gave the impression of being collected, shielded, any emotion contained so thoroughly that she could never touch it.

  "I love you," she said, desperation swallowing any pride.

  His jaw muscles knotted, but his level gaze didn't change. "I was a fool last night. I'm a hunted man. Until that changes, you don't belong with me. You're safe now. Go home. You and I, we were a pipe dream, anyway. I'm not the kind of man for you. Being thrown together in danger narrows your view of the world. Give yourself a few weeks and take another look."

  Some instinct made Megan pull the bedcovers over her bare breasts. As though modesty meant anything now. "And if my view of the world doesn't change?" she asked, her voice thick with unshed tears.

  "I might give you a call. When my troubles are finished."

  "If they ever are."

  "Yeah. If." He swung away, then, and stood again with his back to her, looking out the window at the courtyard and swimming pool below their balcony. "Your flight leaves in two hours." He spoke roughly. "Norm'll take you to the airport once you're packed. I took a chance coming through there once. I don't want to run into anybody I know."

  If last night had been a dream, this was a nightmare. Megan sat there cross-legged, knowing that nothing she could say or do would change his mind. Would she ever see him again? Find out how his "troubles" had ended?

  On a choked sound of despair she fled to the bathroom. There she turned on the shower as hot as she could stand it. She let the spray hit her face, and cried. It was nearly half an hour before she could collect herself enough to begin the mechanical routine of getting dressed and drying her hair. She wished she were so drained she couldn't feel at all, but wasn't that lucky. Agony welled so painfully in her chest, it was all she could do to make herself open the door and face Mac again.

  If Mac was still here.

  He was. He'd finished packing his own things and started in on hers. She stood in the bathroom doorway for a moment and watched him cutting tags off her purchases and clumsily folding them. She must have made a sound because he looked up.

  Neither moved for a painful instant. His gray eyes were dark, the lines of his face taut. She knew suddenly that he wasn't saying goodbye to her as casually as he wanted to pretend.

  "Norm will be here in a minute," he said, straightening. "I thought I'd help..."

  Megan nodded, biting her lip until it hurt. "I'll finish," she said abruptly.

  Mac retreated. "Megan..."

  But a knock on the door interrupted him. He swore under his breath, but went to answer it. "Who's there?"

  She couldn't hear the response, but Mac released the chain and opened the door. Megan closed her eyes and prayed for the strength to maintain her fragile composure, then turned to face the man who had held their lives in his hands.

  Rangy, graying, he was older than she had expected. He looked as if he'd been sick, paler than he ought to be in the Florida sunshine and a little too thin.

  "Megan Lovell." He smiled and held out a big hand, which she accepted. He squeezed and released her smaller hand. "It's a pleasure. I'd have recognized you anywhere, even though you've changed a little. What was it they always called you in the headlines?"

  "America's sweetheart," Mac contributed from behind his friend. He was distant again, somebody she barely knew.

  Her fingernails bit into her palms and she said, "That was a long time ago."

  Norm's smile faded. "But you can still swim. I'd be stuck with a new partner if it weren't for you."

  "That was my job. I've rescued a few eight-year-olds, too."

  "They didn't weigh two hundred pounds. Hell, I know how Mac feels about water. He was probably fighting you all the way."

  Megan's gaze collided with Mac's again. She said slowly, "No. No, he was...very cooperative."

  "You don't say. Well, you ready to go?"

  "Not quite." She nodded toward the open suitcase. "If you'll just give me a minute..."

  Megan finished packing in less than a minute. Behind her, she heard the two men talking.

  "You going to stay here?"

  "No," Mac said. "I'd better move around. Damn, I wish I could go home, but I don't dare."

  "You haven'
t gotten used to other pillows by now?" Norm asked genially.

  "Ah, it's not the pillow." When Megan turned around, her smallest bag in one hand, Mac looked past his partner, directly at her. His mouth curled into a half-smile that didn't reach his eyes. "After that sleeper couch of Megan's, anything feels like the Hilton."

  Matching his tone was one of the hardest things she'd ever done. "You should have said something. I have an extra layer of foam rolled up in the closet."

  "The hell you do."

  A little guiltily, she nodded. That first night she'd been too resentful of his presence to make any extra effort, and she'd just plain forgotten after that.

  "We'd better go," Norm said. He sounded so gentle, she had a feeling he was reading between the lines.

  "Yes." Megan blindly turned and picked up her purse, slinging it over her shoulder. "All right."

  "Megan." When she turned, tears hot in her eyes, Mac had crossed the room and stood just behind her. His wide shoulders blocked her from his partner's sight.

  She looked up at him mutely, and he said in a low voice, rapidly, "Megan, there's no other choice. Damn it, you know that."

  In her heart, she did know. But would a promise be asking too much? Was he not making one because he was afraid he wouldn't live to keep it? Or because he thought that in the end she would let him down? Did Mac really believe she would see him differently once she didn't need him to protect her?

  "Goodbye," she said. "Will you at least call me someday, so I know?"

  He groaned, bent his head and kissed her. For a moment she forgot where she was, surrendering to the sensations: his mouth hard on hers, the texture of his shirt under the hand she'd automatically raised, the warmth beneath the shirt, his breath on her wet cheeks when he lifted his head.

  "I'll call," he said roughly, and stepped away.

  Norm had her suitcase, so Megan picked up the smaller bag and went, without looking back.

  *****

  "No," Mac said, and stared down his boss on the other side of the desk.

  "Goddamn it, McClain..."