Mesmerizing Stranger

by Jennifer Greene

  By then the waiter had served dinner with a flourish of sterling and bone china. Cate hadn’t eaten two bites before she started in.

  “The chef wouldn’t know fresh cilantro if it knocked at his front door,” she murmured. “And the wine’s all right, although there are certainly better choices. So do you ever still see her? Zoe?”

  “No. We stayed in touch for a while. Then that disappeared except for an e-mail at Christmas. She’s been married for a while, on her third kid-I don’t believe her husband even knows there was a marriage before him.”

  She had several more comments to make about dinner, but he wasn’t deluded that she was finished grilling him. “Well, you might as well tell me about wife number two, since we started this. And I certainly hope that story is a lot more scandalous than the first one.”

  “Okay.” He’d devoured his dinner by then. “I went to school after that. Liked engineering, but didn’t like going to classes, that whole school environment. So I enlisted in the army. My dad thought that was crazy-I never owned a weapon, never wanted to, don’t like anything about wars-but I seriously believed that career army was going to work for me. I didn’t want to be an engineer who sat at a desk. I wanted to be one of those people who built bridges and roads and dams across the planet.”

  “And did you?”

  “Oh, yeah. For years. Now what’s wrong?” He saw the slight shake of her head.

  “Nothing. I was just inclined for a second to go back to the kitchen and give the chef some friendly advice.” She waved a fork. “Forget I said anything. You still haven’t gotten into wife number two. Hard to imagine how a woman could have fit into that life program.”

  “Well, this wasn’t exactly a typical marriage. In fact, what I’m about to tell you has a little tinge of not exactly kosher.”

  She shivered all over. “Good. Let’s hear it.” The dessert menu came and went. Some kind of fancy coffee was served, along with… Well, whatever it was tasted richer than Croesus.

  “Kayla was Muslim. I met her in a hospital where I was getting stitches-not for anything interesting, just a minor accident, long cut on my side. Anyway. She was eighteen. A baby. So beat-up the doctors weren’t sure she could survive it. I didn’t see her initially-being a Muslim woman, she was treated only by females, and only behind closed curtains. But after I heard the story…I couldn’t let it go. She was supposed to marry this man that she’d met, and strongly disliked. He was much older than she was. He told her up front what he expected in a wife. Her own father beat her when she claimed she couldn’t marry him.”

  “My heavens,” Cate murmured.

  “She was suicidal. It wasn’t just that she said it. I believed it. I think she would have killed herself if she had to go back to her family, to that ‘fiancé.’ So…”

  “So you married her?”

  “I know. That’s the part that wasn’t exactly kosher. Complicated as hell to pull off besides. There are too many people trying to immigrate to America, any way they can, so for a marriage to be ‘valid’, the pair has to stay together for a serious amount of time. She didn’t have anyone here, didn’t have any idea what to do with herself, her time, her life. All she wanted was to come to America, to get away from the situation she was in.”

  “How long did you stay married?”

  Harm frowned, trying to remember. “First off, I got her in school-she was smart, just not educated in a system like ours. Thankfully, my family took to her, helped get her set up in a job after that, close enough they could be part of her world. I was still army then, still working projects around the world, so I couldn’t be that close. But she thrived, almost from the start. It just took time to make it right, to make it work.”

  “Did you love her, Harm?”

  “From the moment I first met her, I liked her. I cared about her. So, sure, I loved her.”

  “I mean, did you love love her?”

  He answered the questions he figured she hadn’t gotten around to asking yet. “I wasn’t in love with anyone else. She was and is a terrific person. I honestly never regretted the marriage. I don’t believe she did, either.”

  “But you did divorce.”

  He nodded. “She finally fell in love. But not with me. And to be honest-it was a relief, because I think she would have stayed with me out of loyalty and respect, and yeah, out of love. But not the right kind of love. Anyway, I still see her. She still sees my family. If I get you out to the left coast one of these days, you’ll meet her, too. I guarantee you’ll like her.”

  “Harm.”

  “What?”

  “That was really a heroic thing to do!”

  He frowned. “No, it wasn’t. I wasn’t with anyone else. I couldn’t just walk away. I don’t think anyone could have. I’m not exaggerating her situation. She would have died, and she had no possible way to help herself. Not in that culture.” He cupped his chin in a hand. “You know, I was trying to treat you to a really nice dinner. You know. Like a date, even.”

  “This is a nice dinner! Thank you very much.” Her voice radiated sincerity, although she did plunk down her spoon with a little distracted thunk. “Anyone can have a problem with cream. I’ll bet he had an under chef handling the desserts, and he doesn’t realize it’s been overwhipped.”

  Harm shook his head. “Just so you know. If I ever want to seduce you or stage a romantic setting, I’m never taking you to a restaurant again. Maybe ever. It’s a little too much like taking a cop to a robbery on his off day.”

  “What’d I do? What’d I say?” she asked bewilderedly.

  “Nothing, Cookie. Now…you’ve got the story about my marriages out of me. Don’t you think it’s your turn to tell me about your guys?”

  She blotted the corners of her mouth with a white linen napkin. “There’ve been millions. I can’t remember them all.”

  “Ah. I believe that.”

  She glowered at him. “No, you don’t.”

  Since they were putting a few straight cards on the table, he ventured a few more. “My guess is that there’ve been very few men…and none who you really loved. None who you really trusted. And since casual friends don’t count, I’d guess the number is right around, well…one.”

  She blinked. “One?”

  “Yeah. One. Me. You trust me, Cate.”

  She sucked in a breath. As he could have expected, she got that fight-or-flight look in her eyes again. Given a puff of wind, the scent of roses, the wrong kind of smile, she’d have bolted for the exit so fast it’d make his head spin.

  But this time…she didn’t bolt. She only looked as if she wanted to. “Don’t flatter yourself, Connolly. But don’t feel insulted, either. I don’t trust anyone, not at a certain level. That’s the way it is for me and always will be. I’m not the girl you take home. Trust me.”

  He’d already managed to take her home, Harm thought.

  But not to win her. And for a man who had a full-scale trauma about to catch up with him, no time to even sleep, no way to keep her beyond a few more days…Harm was beginning to doubt there was any way he could force her to see what they were together.

  What they could be.

  Chapter 11

  As they left the restaurant, Cate pulled her patience together and forced herself to say calmly, “Harm, you seriously need rest. I slept on the flights. You didn’t. It just makes sense for you to get a few hours’ sleep before we go to the lab.”

  Harm dug in his pocket for the car key. “I think it’d be a good idea for me to drop you off at the house. You catch some z’s. I’ll go to the lab.”

  Cate didn’t kick him with one of her three-inch heels, but she was tempted. The man was more stubborn than a hound. He’d been cave-in tired by the time they’d finished dinner; she knew he couldn’t keep going. But then his cell phone rang when he was paying the restaurant bill. She didn’t know who called, only that he’d discovered Yale and Purdue had managed to catch an earlier flight.

  None of the others were sche
duled to arrive home before Sunday morning. Now, it appeared that two of them would be landing in Boston a full day earlier-as soon as fourteen hours from now.

  “But,” she reminded Harm, as he opened the passenger door for her, “they’ll be exhausted. I’m sure they’ll go to their own homes first, if only to drop off their gear and catch some rest. So we still likely have all day tomorrow before having to worry about them. And we’ll get much more out of the day if you had some sleep.”

  “No.”

  That was all he said before closing her door. She simmered while he crossed the front of the car, climbed in, and started the engine. The problem with Harm, Cate had long realized, was that everyone had kowtowed to him for so long that he’d forgotten how to listen to anyone else. More relevant, no one had put a foot on his head and made him behave.

  “Okay,” she said sweetly. “This is the new plan. You said the lab was only a few miles from here, so we’ll go there now. You can show me around, show me the whole setup. Then we’ll go home. You get four hours’ sleep. I’ll wake you, we’ll come back. In the meantime, you can call your security people and tell them no one’s allowed in the lab without you getting a call.”

  Harm hesitated, and then admitted, “That’s good thinking.”

  “But?”

  “But…I’m going straight to the lab.”

  So, she mused. Next time she needed him to see reason, she wouldn’t waste time talking to him. She’d just hit him on the head with a baseball bat.

  “I heard that,” Harm mentioned.

  “What?”

  “You were mumbling. Loud enough for me to hear. This is the issue, Cate…you’re safe while my men are still in the air. You’re not safe once they land in Boston. So there’s only one option here, and that’s to find out everything I possibly can before they arrive. After that…”

  “After that, what?”

  He shot her a warm, possessive glance before returning his attention to the road. “After that, I’ll figure out what I’m going to do about you.”

  “You might be strong, Harm, but it’ll take more than you and an entire spare army to make me do anything I don’t want to do.” Her voice failed to pump up the volume she wanted to. Darn, it was hard to fight with him, partly because making crazy love with him on his kitchen table before dinner was still on her mind…and partly because of the way he kept looking at her.

  She kept thinking about his ex-wives. She’d been so certain his divorce tales would be some version of today’s usual horror story…two people who couldn’t get along, who crucified each other in the divorce, who carried scars from the grief and the bitterness, who seemed to discover the worst of themselves and their chosen mates in the process.

  She’d sort of expected that one marriage had to be a really young one-but not how warmly or honestly Harm had talked about that first love.

  And she’d never imagined the scope of the second marriage, that he’d offer a ring to save a young woman’s life. For Pete’s sake, that was straight out of the archaic age of chivalry.

  He was so adorable and so rich-and so arrogant-that she’d just assumed he was a player. Now…well…Cate sucked it up and figured she was stuck being nicer to him. At least to a point. “Well, you’re not going to drive if you’re overtired.”

  “Right on that. In fact, soon as we get to the lab, I’ll give you the car keys. Then if you want to drive back to my place and crash, you can. Directions are easy.”

  True to his word, they were barely parked before he handed the keys to her. She climbed out of the car, nearly tripping on her three-inch heels because her attention was so riveted by the place. The small, subtle sign for Future, Inc. was barely visible from the road. Old maples and walnuts formed a canopy above the drive to the building, which was a sprawling redbrick with a couple of wings, a massive porch in front, landscaped grounds that wound around the place. It looked more like a gorgeous old home than a place of business-much less like a lab.

  “My uncle’s idea was for the place to fit in with the local historical look. Not to draw attention. A cold stone-and-glass type of building tends to make people think that the people and business are cold and stone-like, instead of caring. That was his theory, anyway. Of course, once you step inside…”

  From the front door on, it was all high-tech. They could barely walk through a hallway before Harm had to identify himself with a key code, then a fingerprint code, and security alarm buttons were visible in every hall.

  “We don’t have any live guards,” he said, “because the security system is so tight. Or we thought it was tight until the formula disappeared. Still, it’s almost impossible for an outsider to get into. You’ll see.”

  She did see. The first wing didn’t hold just one lab, but a half dozen of them, each requiring a different set of security key codes. To Cate, the rooms looked something like ultra-contemporary kitchens, with stainless-steel tables and work counters and sinks-except for all the strange-looking equipment that she had no way to identify. The floors were spotless, and the air actually smelled fresh, with no hint of chemical or solvent that she could detect.

  The last lab, at the end of one wing, had Yale and Purdue’s name on the door, and required both handprint and eye identification to enter. It was the only lab that Harm opened, specifically so she could see how it fit into their ongoing crisis. “This is where the formula disappeared from.” He motioned to a vault at the far end of the lab. “The computer work for it was on those two systems.” He motioned again. “Of course, the factual data was also backed up on Fiske’s system, and on mine. So whoever made it disappear had to sabotage everyone’s private codes.”

  “Not something a dummy could pull off,” she murmured.

  “But knowing that hasn’t helped. Everybody who works here has an IQ off the charts. It’s easy to protect anything from an average thief-or even an extraordinary thief. But not from someone brilliant enough to create something brilliant to start with.” He switched off the light and close-locked that door. “There’s no reason for us to be in that lab, though, Cate. There’s no point. It’s already been gone over by security and cops and anyone who knows anything about the work. There is nothing there. Not related to the formula, not related to identifying who the culprit is. I’m positive.”

  “Okay.” She trailed after him, feeling a building anxiety, not because of his lost formula, but because Harm’s face was increasingly looking gray. He didn’t yawn-God forbid he loosen up any of that army-general posture-but he was clearly stumbling tired.

  The labs were all in the long west wing. The central wing held primarily community rooms. The break room had a semikitchen set up, with microwave and refrigerator…beyond that, Harm opened doors to reveal a couple of meeting rooms. Each had long tables, oversize chairs, windows overlooking the landscaping. “We call those the ‘think tanks,’” he said, and then opened the last door in the central wing.

  She shook her head. “What, you’re running a motel on the side back here?”

  He chuckled. “I know. It kind of looks that way.” There were beds with different comforters, a huge flat-screen TV, couches. Unlike the pristine labs, this place looked mighty lived-in. Cate spotted a single shoe half under a bed, shirts and lab coats draped haphazardly on a coat tree, items strewn around-hairbrushes, open books, magazines, change, a belt.

  “Explain,” she said.

  “Sometimes an experiment or trial has to be watched around the clock, and then one or more of the staff’ll sleep over. Arthur always brought his dog, or so my uncle used to say.”

  Still, there was more. Harm showed her the supply rooms, where the side staff and apprentices worked, a massive general computer room. “So where’s your lair?” she asked finally.

  The far wing just held offices-Harm’s, Fiske’s and Arthur’s.

  His cell phone rang-which gave her a prize opportunity to nose around Harm’s office without interference. This whole wing was carpeted in a thick, quiet blue, so with a mig
hty sigh of relief, she slipped off her shoes and kicked them out of the way. Immediately, she felt more like herself.

  Harm’s office was obviously originally his uncle’s, and revealed a great deal about Dougal. Harm hadn’t had time, or maybe the inclination, to clean out all his uncle’s things. On the chestnut bookcases, Cate studied rows of framed photographs-many clearly of the wife Dougal had lost. Some shots were older, sixties by the look of the short skirts and hairstyles. There was a wedding picture, lots of flowers, a silky veil. In another, the two were riding horses. In another, they were hang gliding. In another, the pair wore climbing gear, both of them sweating and smiling.

  It was obvious to Cate that the couple had not just loved each other, but loved doing things together, and were devoted to each other. The photos revealed the kind of love a woman dreamed of. The way his uncle loved, she mused, Harm would love, too…and savored the shots she found of him. Dougal had a terrific collection for her to pry into. Graduating pictures, vacation and holiday shots, some kind of science prize thing they’d done together. There was one shot of Harm with a woman-Cate pounced on it, studied it hard. The second wife, she thought. A beautiful woman, golden-skinned, almond eyes, satin black hair. Harm stood behind her, stiff, protectively. He was smiling…but he wasn’t touching his bride.

  Momentarily, the picture saddened her. Harm was such a toucher, such a man who came alive when he was touched. The picture told her all she wanted to know and more, about what he’d yet to have in his life. He may have loved-or even still love-his second wife.

  But not like a man needed to love.

  Not like Harm needed to be loved.

  By the time he showed up back in the doorway, she’d touched and poked and opened and pried just about everywhere. The office had heaps of books, nests of papers. The desk chair was so old it should have been thrown out-but it was one of those kick-back, roll around, relax-in chairs. It was totally clear where and when Harm had taken over, because the credenza behind the desk was a total contrast-military-tidy, computer equipment lined up and spotless, files standing like soldiers.