“Put a smile on that pretty mouth, babe, or no one will believe we’re a pair of lovebirds.”
“And why should they?” she snapped, as she sat opposite him. Exhaling, she stretched her lips into a facsimile of a smile. She hated being so bitchy, but she had little defense against her feelings. “I don’t see what this…arrangement has to do with catching Markos’s man. Won’t he just back off?”
Cole covered and held her hand as she clutched at the flimsy anchor of her linen napkin. His heat and scent invaded her senses.
The elderly Van Tassels gaped at them. Teacups clattered and tea sloshed onto saucers.
“Maybe, but that would give us time to check employees and guests’ identities,” he said. “A call last night gave me more info. An FBI informant reported seeing a man known only as Janus meeting with Markos in Boston. He’s a paid assassin the Bureau would like to nail.”
“Two for the price of one.” When he nodded, she said, “So do you have a description?”
He shrugged, the movement flexing shoulder muscles beneath his tight polo. “Not enough to go on. Average height, average build. That fits half of the men in America.”
“I see.” She busied herself with the menu as she noticed the waitress heading toward them with coffee.
Other diners entering glanced their way. Laura forced herself to smile and wave at Rudy Damon. The man’s bristly white eyebrows shot up into his hairline.
Apparently their appearing together at play rehearsals hadn’t cemented the relationship in people’s minds the way having breakfast together would. Drat Cole for being right.
Word of her liaison would spread like jam on the scones she planned to order.
After they’d placed their orders—his the blueberry pancakes, hers a crabmeat omelette—she searched for something impersonal to talk about. “What did Stan want?”
He smiled. The crinkling of the sensuous creases in his cheeks sent a surge of heat through her. “He wants to use my Bad Boy in the play.”
“Your motorcycle? You call it Bad Boy.” She grinned at the idea.
He shrugged, as if the irony of it hadn’t occurred to him before. “I didn’t name the damn thing. Bad Boy’s the Harley model.”
A sudden thought pleated her forehead. “Cole, were you planning to drive me to a safe house God knows where on your motorcycle?”
“I’d stow it in the truckbed. Figured we’d look more like tourists.”
“I don’t buy it. You just like having the motorcycle.” Drat, he was charming her in spite of her resolve. She retrieved her hand and held her coffee with both hands. “They must need the bike for Cliff Trigger.”
“Cliff Trigger? The part the kid plays?” A sneer quirked his hard mouth. “The playwright’s a fan of old Westerns, or the name’s a sexual reference. Either way, our young stud Burt isn’t up to the challenge.”
“I agree he’s not much of an actor. He wanted the role because of the motorcycle.” She narrowed her eyes, remembering the teenaged Cole. “The character is a disaffected biker, the ultimate outsider who wants no involvement. He’s a rogue, a—”
“Cowboy?” His sky-blue eyes mocked her, and he laughed, a deep rumble that flickered her pulse. “I get the feeling we’re no longer talking about a character in the play.”
“Sorry. The old resentments die hard.” The waitress arrived with their orders and saved her from further blunders.
Feeling the glow in her face, she attacked her omelette as if the crab in it had menaced her with its claws. She buttered the lightly toasted scone. If she couldn’t sleep, at least her precarious situation wasn’t affecting her appetite.
“Stan had some other news,” Cole said, pouring maple syrup on his pancakes. “Even our genial host can get angry. Guests have reported things missing from their cabins.”
“Missing? Like stolen? What kinds of things?”
“Cameras, binoculars, CDs, small electronics. Easy-to-hock items.” His cynical expression told her what he thought of the rural Maine custom of unlocked doors.
Distressed, Laura put down her fork. “How terrible. Has he called the police?”
Cole nodded. “I hope having the local boys in blue here won’t interfere with our operation.”
She wasn’t sure what to say to that although talking to him was easy, even after her embarrassing outburst.
Talking to him was always easy, as were shared silences. How safe she’d felt—how safe she still felt—in his arms, how different he was from everyone else. He was so complex, his subtle sense of humor, his quiet strength, his sensuality. Even that hint of danger, of controlled power excited her.
But recapturing past magic was impossible. Dangerous. They had no future because she had nothing to offer him but disappointment. She couldn’t let down her guard.
Later when they strolled out into the clear, sunny day, a sailing-class parent stopped Laura to chat.
Cole shook his head. She was doing it to him again. She knew how to make him crazy, certifiable. With her innuendos about contempt for commitment. With the total absorption in eating her omelette. Seeing her pink tongue lick the jam off the edge of her scone nearly had him climbing over the table.
Hell, she made him nuts just standing there in her Junior-League-snotty buttoned-up green shirt and flowered slacks that ended inches below the knee. He didn’t see the point of revealing only part of a shapely, athletic calf.
So delectable.
So out of reach.
That lone wolf and commitment bit was more about the differences between them than anything he’d done or not done. The truth was out.
Or was it?
After their long-ago weekend together, they’d made plans for him to meet her family. Now that was a laugh. As if her society parents would’ve admitted him to their house, him a no-account biker bum with overlong hair, the son of another bum embalmed in cheap booze.
You’re just like me, boy…no way outta the gutter.
His old man was right. Laura was right. Anything long-term between them made as much sense as sailing his Bad Boy on Passabec Lake. The old differences still separated them.
Or did they? She wouldn’t admit those differences, even kept trying to minimize them. Had even roped him into sailing yesterday morning. Sailing wasn’t so bad. Ah hell, it was the most fun he’d had in years. Whatever that signified.
When Laura joined him on the porch steps, he filed away his muddled thoughts.
“So what do you usually do on your day off?” he asked as they headed back to her cabin.
“Cole, you don’t have to—”
“Yes. I do—24/7.” He relaxed his fists and smiled at her. She was too pale, the apple blush leached from her cheeks. Fear of Markos or fear of him?
Dew glistened on the grass beside the gravel path. Birds chirped in the trees. In the peaceful morning’s freshness, the danger of an assassin seemed remote.
She sighed, apparently resigned. “I drive around. That is, I did when I had a car.”
“Sightseeing. Finest kind, as they say here in Maine.” He slapped on sunglasses. “I can put some miles on the bike before I have to give it up to Broadway on Passabec. There’s a lighthouse near Rockland I want to see.”
Alarm darkened her maple-syrup eyes. “But…but how is that safe? Markos’s agent—this Janus—could follow us.”
He nudged her toward the black-and-silver bike in the totaled Escort’s parking spot. “We’ll be out in public the entire time. You won’t see them, but we’ll have backup. Let Janus follow. If he does, he’s mine.”
“I have no helmet.”
She was stalling. “No problem.” He produced two helmets from his saddlebag and held up a gold-colored one. “Not exactly a crown, but it’ll do in a pinch.”
He slid one hand down the sleeve of her cotton shirt, along the cool, silken skin of her arm until he closed her fingers around the helmet’s strap. “And you’ll be warm enough in that fleece-lined windbreaker I saw hanging in your cabin.”
La
ura stood with the helmet in one hand and her house key in the other. He could see her brain spinning this one. Should she shut herself in the cabin or go with him? About when he was sure she’d run inside and lock him out, she said, “I’ll just get my jacket then.”
Tension drained from his shoulders, but he didn’t relax completely until she returned and mounted the bike behind him.
“Is that the same helmet? The stolen one?”
The memory slapped him hard enough to rattle his cage. He was a fool to think he could relegate their past and his simmering emotions to a back file until this was over. Every image from the past was a reminder that she still had secrets.
For now he needed her more recent secrets.
Ones without emotional pitfalls for him.
Digging out the details about Markos and the attack on her filled the bill.
Schooling his features, he replied mildly, “No. But this one’s custom-made, too. State-of-the-art. Ready?”
With his whole being, Cole felt Laura holding on as they roared to the coast, then via Route One through the center of Camden and on south. Her knees and inner thighs rode against his hips, and her hands rested lightly on his ribs. As he turned and accelerated along the coast road, he sensed every flexed muscle, the heat and scent of her against his back.
He glanced behind them from time to time. Vehicles came and went. No one but their backup was following them.
He checked on her as well, to reassure himself that she was really there. Wisps of her hair floated out from the edge of the helmet like licks of golden fire.
He slowed the bike through the busy streets of Rockland, then sped up again on Route 73 out of town. The narrow route skirted the harbor, dotted with both fishing and pleasure boats. Laura tapped his shoulder and pointed at a white ferry, its broad bow plowing up foaming waves as it motored in from the island of Vinal Haven.
Grinning behind his visor, he aimed the front tire at a shallow pothole. When the bike lurched, Laura emitted a squeak and wound her arms more tightly around his middle.
Where he wanted them.
They had no future together, but he couldn’t resist making the most of what time they had. He ached with wanting her. If all he could do was touch her occasionally, that would have to do. He squeezed her hands with his elbows and accelerated up the hill into Owls Head.
On a high point, the white lighthouse tower commanded a view of both the outer islands and the Rockland lighthouse at the end of its mile-long granite breakwater. A light breeze fluttered the laundry hanging on a clothesline behind the white clapboarded keeper’s house.
“Most of these lighthouses are automated now,” Laura said. “I wonder who lives in the keeper’s house.”
The steps were blocked off, so they climbed the steep hill to the tower. From there Cole had a clear view of the trails around the light and the beach. A pair of hand-holding teens meandered through the pines, and a family with a toddler and a baby picnicked on a blanket. No one suspicious.
No one who could be Janus.
He watched Laura with satisfaction when she practically purred at the view. She tried to remain so cool and collected, but her sensual nature betrayed her. He enjoyed her pleasure at such simple things as the sun on her face or the salt-tangy scent of the ocean. The way she’d gobbled up that omelette had turned him on. Then there was the memory of her lips brushing his, and the older one of her responsiveness in bed.
His body’s reaction made him glad he wore loose trousers.
He cleared his throat. “On a day like this, I bet you can see all the way to Mount Desert Island.” He covered her shoulder with one hand and pointed with the other. Her apple scent did nothing to subdue his loins. “You can follow some of the harbors and peninsulas, but I don’t know their names.”
“I read about the history of this coast.” Her voice was husky. “Before Europeans came to Maine in the 1600s, the Abenakis inhabited the area. They lived inland during the winters, but fished here during the summers. In some places, you can find middens, piles of shells they left behind.”
“Spoken like a true anthropologist. Anthropology, a practical application of history. It suits you. How did a major in anthropology lead to museum work?”
She eased from beneath his hand. “It seemed a natural after summer interning at the Smithsonian. The human side of history intrigues me, the culture and art of ancient peoples.”
He leaned against the stark white building to look at her instead of at the broad bay. He wasn’t certain what he wanted, but trust would be a start, would make protecting her easier.
“Come on. Let’s hit the beach down there.”
They picked their way down the hill along a dirt track. At one point it narrowed, and Cole placed his hand on the small of her back to guide her ahead of him, but she strode ahead out of reach.
They left the path for the sandy beach. He skipped stones in the receding tide, while she sank down against a log. She tossed her jacket down and tilted her face to the sun.
With her, he drank in the peace of the setting. The warmth of the sun and the slap of water on the shore intoxicated him nearly as much being with the woman he—
Waylaying the ambushing thought, he stretched out, one elbow propped beside her on the log. “I hate to disturb your nap, but I need to know how it went down with Markos.”
At his voice so close to her ear, Laura’s eyes flew open. Her gaze dropped to his mouth. She drew in a sharp breath. “Don’t you have a report on all that?”
“A report, yes, but I’d like to hear the details from you. In case they missed some little fact that would help us. Were you in love with him?”
Damn, why had he asked that?
Laura smiled wistfully, her gaze roaming his scars. With her finger, she traced the length of the two white scars, first at his temple, then on his chin. “It seems we both have scars. How did you get these?”
Her cool fingers stabbed hot desire down the center of his body. He covered her hand with his, trapping it against his chin. When she struggled, he dropped a kiss in her palm and released her. He sat up and edged away a foot. If he didn’t watch himself, he’d scare her off.
“Nothing as life-threatening as the way you got yours, I promise. This one—” he pointed to his temple “—was in the jungle. I swear every plant in South America has thorns, some as big as switchblades. And the other was in Afghanistan. We were behind some rocks—that country’s all rocks—and gunfire kicked up splinters. One caught me on the chin.”
Tenderness softened her eyes. “Both sound dangerous to me. Your sense of justice has set your life course. You put yourself in harm’s way regularly. You could have been killed.”
“I wasn’t.”
She levered up to sit on the log. “You were in the Marines then? Or that alphabet-soup agency?”
“We were talking about D.C. and Markos, remember?”
“I see. That’s all you can tell me.”
She turned to straddle the log so she faced him. The cropped pants rode up to her knees, giving him a better view of her smooth legs. Too bad he’d made that no-touch rule.
“Now I’ll answer your question,” she said. “I was not in love with Alexei Markos. I met him at an embassy cocktail party and saw him again at the museum where I worked. The Silk Road exhibit I’d just organized impressed him.”
“Silk Road?” A tidbit of history came back to him. “That was an ancient trade route.”
She nodded. A smile played on her lips. “‘From Istanbul to Beijing, from the second century BC through 1100 AD, trade on the Silk Road brought about the first international cross-pollination of goods, knowledge and cultures.’”
“Is that a quote from the museum guide?”
She grinned. “I’m only quoting myself.”
“I’m impressed.” He wasn’t kidding. “Go on. Markos?”
The grin flattened, and she looked away.
He started to take her hand, to offer a defense against the painful memo
ries. But better sense stopped him. Besides, what he’d said to her was true. She was tougher than him.
Behind them at the lighthouse, children shrieked and laughed as they raced up the hill.
“He asked me out,” she continued. “He was charming and took me to all the society parties. From the first I knew he coveted my expertise, not my body or my charm.”
Cole heaved a mental sigh of relief. Professional mode, he reminded himself. “What sort of stuff did he pay you to authenticate?”
“As you’d expect, a lot of Middle Eastern art and artifacts, some Chinese. Many were valuable antiques. He had me come to the office at his shop to examine them. Then I did my research and gave him a report.”
“Were they legit? Paperwork and all?”
“All of the pieces had provenance. I had doubts, but no proof of black-market dealings. Values ranged from a thousand dollars to more than a million. I remember a seventh-century Aegean amphora—very beautiful. And a carved Syrian chest. There was a 250-year-old cypress-wood altar from Anhui province in China. Priceless. There were several pieces from Iran, including a two-hundred-year-old brass vase.”
“And the Persian mummy that drove him to murder.”
“The mummy excited him more than any other item. If it had been authentic, an auction might have yielded millions.” Her eyes grew enormous. “Oh, thank God it wasn’t real.”
“Yes, the New Dawn Warriors would have had a bundle.”
“And Markos. But I doubt the man who brought it was with the terrorists. Markos would’ve shown more…restraint.”
“Only an unfortunate intermediary. And how did you know the mummy was a fake?”
Eyes bright with the excitement of knowledge, she scooted closer to him. “Although more than a few cultures attempted mummification in different ways, the ancient Persians were not among them. And the Egyptians were the only ones with such elaborate knowledge and rituals for mummification. This mummy purported to be Persian, a princess from the court of King Xerxes, more than two thousand years old. She was wearing a gold crown and mask in the Persian style, with an inscription on the breastplate that named her as the king’s daughter.”
Guarding Laura Page 8
