The words she'd been afraid of since Sylvie had appeared. She tried to repress the shock waves of anxiety. “Isn't that dangerous?”
“Not really.”
“It's dangerous,” she said, answering her own question. “You could be killed.”
“I won't be killed,” he said, his tone even.
“Or tortured.” Molly's voice was beginning to take on the intensity he wanted to avoid.
“Look, darling-”
“I'd appreciate it,” she said very softly, little daggers of anger underlying the gentleness, “if you didn't use that phony darling stuff with me. I'm not your ex-wife who responds to darling or bitch or apparently anything else you care to call her.”
The subject has veered off track, he thought, but he preferred her frustration be directed toward Sylvie rather than toward him. “Of course. Forgive me.”
“And don't be contrite just to avoid an argument. Dammit.” She exhaled in a great sigh, knowing how childish she sounded. But death and torture? How did she and Carey end up in this mess? “Why are we even having this conversation? I shouldn't know a man who knows terrorists-or whatever you call people who try kidnapping little girls. And don't give me any of that crap about Egon's pranks, because I wasn't born yesterday. This car has bulletproof glass; I heard Jess tell Carrie. Jesus, bulletproof glass! What the hell is happening to my life? Terrorists shouldn't be any closer than the damn newspaper headlines.”
“And they won't be,” he said in the heated silence. “You'll be safe at my father's.”
“Safe,” she breathed in almost a whisper, turning so her body was directly facing his. “What the hell does that mean?”
Carefully Carey answered, “I'd like you to stay up north until I find Egon.”
“This isn't a little jaunt to see a horse, is it?” She hadn't regained her voice, and her hands were clenched into fists.
“No.”
“What if they kill you?”
“They won't.”
“They could.”
“They can't.”
“You're not some invincible superhero.”
“I'll be careful.”
“Are you the only savior Egon has? Good God, with all their money, surely someone else can go after him. Carey, I'm not used to men trying to kill my daughter.” She took a deep, steadying breath.
He thought about lying and saying they wouldn't have killed Carrie, but he couldn't bring himself to mouth the lie. More likely than not Rifat would have killed both girls, once their usefulness was over. Sending them back could have jeopardized him in too many ways, and he'd never have taken the risk. An ex-general, Rifat dealt in abstract numbers and equations based on human lives: How many would it take to achieve his goal?
“She's safe now,” he said, avoiding all the lies and unpalatable truth.
“You keep saying that, but for how long and at what cost? And what about Lucy? Is she permanently a member of our household now, or can she ever return to her family? When will the danger be over?” Her anger cracked across the small distance separating them like a series of whiplashes.
When Rifat's dead, he thought, but said, “Soon.”
“Jesus Christ,” she exclaimed, “soon? What the hell does that mean. Soon in contrast with the current ice age in the arctic, or soon as in the life-span of a fruit fly? I have a business to run. My daughter has a life to live. I have a life to live. And maybe we don't want to live it in the fishbowl glare of publicity and terrorist threats. I hate fishbowls. I hate publicity. I don't even like to fill out anonymous questionnaires, for God's sake. I don't know if I can stand this, Carey, do you understand? I don't honestly know if I want to be the wife of a goddamn sex symbol who has people gunning for him!”
“Calm down, love.”
“I don't want to calm down. I want to scream the roof off this bloody bulletproof car. And that's another thing. Is your father set up for sudden guests arriving in bulletproof cars?”
“He knows you're coming to stay awhile, and is extremely pleased.”
“He knows we're coming to stay, but I didn't know. Awhile? How the hell long is that?”
“Jesus, Honeybear,” Carey said, exhaling softly. “Relax a minute.”
“I don't want to relax when my daughter and I are about to become hostages and my fiancй is about to go out and trade gunshots with some goddamn troop of terrorists. You know my life was peaceful before you came back into it. Prosaic and dull and peaceful!”
“I'm sorry. I wish I could explain what Egon means to me.” His relationship with Egon eluded simple explanation, though even that would be useless considering Molly's current frame of mind.
“Does he mean more than Carrie and me?” It wasn't a fair question. It was one of those bitchy questions, the kind lawyers asked in criminal trials when they wanted only one answer. But even while she logically understood, emotionally she required one, single do-or-die answer.
“No, he doesn't,” Carey said. His hands tightly clasped, he crossed his legs to ease the stiffness in his spine and leaned back against the dark leather seat. The planes of his sculptured face were vivid in the shadows. “But he's very alone in the world,” he added, his voice soft, trying to explain and appease at the same time. “And if I can help him elude Rifat, I have to. Rifat's… methods,” he omitted the word torture, “would create an uncomfortable situation.”
“Why don't you just say torture,” Molly rebuked. “That's what you mean, isn't it?”
Carey sighed and ran a hand over his brow. “I don't want to argue with you. If I could let Egon go down the tube and live with myself afterward, I would.” He'd kicked off his sandals and was barefoot, looking very young and wholesome in his khaki shorts and T-shirt. His pale hair was highlighted by the sunshine streaming in through the back window. “Could we work out some compromise on this so we don't have a knock-down-drag-out fight over something I don't have a lot of control over?”
“Why can't Sylvie hire someone to find her brother? She could sell her damn earrings and hire a battalion.”
“No one knows him as well as I do.”
“Surely she must.”
“Not really.”
“So you were his father confessor?”
“No,” Carey said very softly, “I was his friend.”
Retreating into the opposite corner of the large backseat, Molly pulled up her legs and wrapped her arms around her knees. “Dammit, Carey, you're disrupting our whole life,” she said. “Taking us away from my work and home, bringing us in contact with killers I thought only existed in books and movies.” Her voice wasn't angry anymore, but a tightly leashed tension imbued her low tone. “It isn't fair. I'm afraid for Carrie's future, and I don't want to feel sorry for Egon.”
“But you do.” Carey's dark eyes were as tender as the quiet resonance of his voice. She looked very small in the corner of the enormous backseat, and even in a strapless sundress that should have made her look sophisticated, she looked sixteen. Maybe it was the green papier-mвchй frog earrings dangling halfway down to her shoulders, or the silky blond hair draped across the curve of her collarbone, or maybe it was her beautiful, pouty bottom lip. He couldn't resist her. Leaning across the expanse of black leather separating them, he reached over and brushed her pink lips with his fingertip. “And I love you for it.”
“We could lose everything after only finding each other again,” Molly whispered, still not looking at him. “I guess I'm feeling sorry for myself, and angry that it's happening. But you can't let him die, can you?”
He stroked her shoulder, his hand drifting slowly down her arm to cover her interlocked fingers. “I think I know where he's headed, so I've an advantage over Rifat,” he said. “And if I'm lucky, I'll beat him there.” He smiled a little then, feeling a twinge of his old, familiar luck. “I could be back here in two days.”
“And safe?”
Guardedly he said, “And safe.”
“What would you say if I asked to come along?” She turne
d toward him suddenly and quickly added, “Just listen first.”
He swallowed the refusal he was about to utter.
“I know you want Carrie and me to stay at your father's while you go off to find Egon. I also know there's danger involved. But don't you see, it's infinitely worse waiting for you, not knowing where you are or what's going on. After all these years of not having you, at least if I'm with you, I'm with you. And if you know where Egon's going,” her face had brightened, “we might be back before the men after him even pick up his trail.”
If he revealed to her the danger in finding Egon, she'd freak. But if it wasn't dangerous, he had no excuse for leaving her behind. “You have to think of Carrie,” he said. “She and Lucy need you.”
“Not for only two days, certainly not after she sees her horse. Carrie's been horse-mad for years. She won't mind, really. She'll push me out the door, I know, because she's always telling me I'm too protective, and she knows I'll be biting my fingernails and saying, ‘Be careful,' the entire time she's riding.” Her rush of words came to a halt. With the tiniest lift of her chin, she added, “She's strong like you. She'll be fine, so I'm coming with you.”
“Egon doesn't frequent the same spots a church group would.”
“Pul-eese… it might be different vices, but after Bart, my eyeballs are not virgin, believe me.”
He wasn't going to touch that one. Bending close, his lips brushed her cheek. “I'll bring you a present.”
Her blue eyes took on a stormy cast. “Do I look like I'm ten?”
“Yes,” he said with a grin. He'd relaxed.
“Let me reword that. Do I look stupid?”
His smile was rueful now. “No,” he murmured, “but you can't come along.”
“Oh, well, it was worth a try,” she said, a shade too readily for comfort.
“I mean it,” he said, assessing her with mild distrust.
“Of course, dear, you're right,” Molly agreed with a smile, aware futher argument was useless. And yet, fully intent on accompanying him, she felt very brave, like Wonder Woman in full regalia. Maybe proximity to Carey Fersten promoted bravery. She'd jettisoned her prudence that summer she'd spent with him before her wedding, too. “I'm sure I'd only be in the way.” Unclasping her hands, she laced them on top of her head, immediately distracting Carey from his apprehension over her abrupt capitulation. Her breasts swelled in lush provocation above the bodice of the green flower print dress.
“I don't suppose,” he murmured, his eyes narrowing against an invisible wind, “we could close off the front with the girls up there. What would they think?”
“They might think we wanted some privacy. I don't suppose they'll die of shock.”
“In that case, some privacy would be real high on my list of priorities, Ms. Darian.” His gaze traveled slowly up her slender body, lingering gently on the rise of her breasts, then languorously lifting to meet her eyes.
“Let me take care of this, Mr. Fersten,” Molly said, delight in her voice. “How long do we have before we reach your father's?”
Glancing out the window, Carey replied with a heated glance, “Three and a half hours.”
“How nice, since I feel a sudden fatigue. I think I'll tell the girls to keep down the giggles; we're going to take a nap.”
And when she did, Carrie turned around, pressed her nose against the glass divider, and said, “Sure, Mom, I know what you guys are going to do. You're going to kiss.”
Under his tan, Carey flushed to the roots of his hair.
“You're blushing,” Molly whispered.
“She's my daughter,” he whispered back. “I'm embarrassed.”
“She's only teasing. Relax.”
“Sure?”
“I'm s-o-o-o tired,” she breathed, running her fingers down his muscled arm.
“See that we're not disturbed, Jess,” he said crisply. Shutting off the intercom, he pushed the control that slid solid divider panels over the glass partition. Turning back to Molly, he murmured, “Have I told you how sexy you look when you lift your arms in that dress?”
“Like this?”
With another swift gesture, he flipped the switch controlling the window tint, and they were shut off from the outside world behind black glass. “Exactly,” he whispered, touching the soft fullness rising above her strapless top. His bronzed fingers drifted over the satiny mounds, back and forth with a delicate languor she could feel warming her blood. His hands slid down the deep vee of her cleavage, and then further still until they slipped under her breasts and lifted them free of the constraining top. “I'm so glad you decided to take a nap.” His voice was velvet, like his touch.
“A three and a half hour nap,” Molly whispered. “I hope you don't mind.”
“Oh, I don't mind, Ms. Darian,” he murmured, bending low to caress the tip of her nipple with his tongue. “I've always found long naps fortifying.”
“Like Ovaltine,” she whispered, tremors of desire racing downward from his teasing mouth and lips and tongue.
“Not exactly,” he breathed, and gave her a small bite.
She trembled, shivers of pleasure fluttering down to her toes and stirring the first small flame of passion deep inside. She'd never last three hours; she responded to him too readily, too extravagantly. Her nerve endings would be flayed in an hour, charred beyond recognition.
“Slow down, Honeybear,” Carey whispered, unzipping her dress, replying to her as if he could read her mind.
“Yes sir,” she murmured back. His hands were like heated promise on her skin, teasing and stroking as he stripped her dress away and then her panties. Her desire soared recklessly, immune to words or censure.
But his own libido repudiated delay, and he quickened with scorching haste, responding to her fiery ardor. His own pleasure was intensified by the opulent readiness under his fingertips, as though he only need touch her lightly here and softly there and kiss her thus and she was open and wet and ready for him. She was the most passionate woman he'd ever known, he thought with a flaring excitement. “You're way ahead of me, sweetheart,” he murmured, sliding his finger over the dampness between her legs, stroking the slick entrance, slipping his fingers inside her heated wetness slowly at first, and then suddenly deeply so she cried out in pleasure.
“Good,” she whispered when she'd caught her breath, and he smiled.
“Greedy.”
“You betcha,” she said, leaning back into the seat corner, her smile the equivalent of a feline purr. And her husky words were followed by her hands, sliding down his chest lazily to the buttons at his waistline. She unbuttoned and unzipped with seductive slowness. With her he was always in love for the first time, his mind clearly operating in a dimension over which he had no control. He waited for her small hands to touch his arousal, quivering with the rare magic of anticipation. Her fingers stroked the thrusting, pulsing tip, and his erection grew. When she clasped him in a slow rhythm, his eyes shut with the tide of pleasure flowing through his senses.
“Now, now… now,” she breathily ordered moments later, lifting her hips to reach him, her hands clasping his shoulders.
He took her the first time with his clothes still on because he couldn't wait any more than she. But later, when she was straddling him and moving gently above him in mellow contentment, he found time to pull his shirt off. “Nice muscles,” she said, watching the ripple down his torso as he tugged the shirt over his head with both hands.
“I've been staying in shape for my Honeybear,” he replied, his smile pure happiness.
“You don't feel weak, then?”
“I don't know,” he said with a grin, “what do you think?” And he lifted her with his hips.
She didn't speak until the stabbing pleasure subsided. “Arrogant man,” she said, though her sultry voice tempered her rebuke.
“Not me, ma'am,” he drawled in western parody. “I follow your orders right ready. But, sweet missus, when you'all get tired of taking command, it's my turn.”
His grin was full of wickedness.
She lay in his arms the last half-hour, their clothes restored, the windows half-open to let the summer breezes alter the cool, air-conditioned scent of lovemaking and feverish bodies. His car was equipped with a small bar so they'd washed simply with lemon flavored Perrier-“like a camping trip”-Carey had said with a grin.
“I adore wealthy young men with soft leather backseats and discreet chauffeurs,” Molly murmured, flushed with pink touches of color on her cheeks, her blue eyes luminous with impish cheer.
“I adore sexy young moms who adore wealthy young men.” His golden hair blew a little in the window breeze, and his smile was lavish.
We agree on everything, then, she thought. And when I join you on your mission to find Egon, one slight disagreement shouldn't mar such unruffled compatibility.
Carey was humming a romantic fifties ballad from one of those technicolor spectaculars MGM used to make. Feeling very much in love, he realized he'd like to have Molly with him on his search for Egon, if it were only a matter of sleuthing down his hidey-hole. Unfortunately with Rifat in hot pursuit, the risks were considerable. And when the shooting started, he wanted to be able to react without worrying about Molly.
“Why does that sound familiar?”
“It was the theme from the late movie last night, and at the moment I wholeheartedly agree with the cloudless lyrics.”
“We have everything, don't we?”
“That's a fact.” His grin was wide and sunny. “I think my luck's changed.”
“How much do you believe in luck?”
“Not exclusively, but I won't turn it down, either. And your stopping at Ely Lake Park that Sunday was one hundred percent bona fide luck, as far as I'm concerned. I didn't even know where to begin looking for you.”
She felt the solid warmth of his shoulder beneath her head, the pleasant weight of his arm across her stomach, the pleasure in his wanting her. “Happy?”
“Damn right.” And he hugged her closer.
Hot Streak Page 24
