by Rebecca York
She gave him the ghost of a smile. “It’s been a stressful couple of hours.”
He shifted on the bed, trying and failing to find a more comfortable position. “Starting with my crazy marriage proposal.”
“Do you need my help to save your daughter?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“Then you have it.”
“Why?”
Emotions flickered across her face—emotions that made his pulse race. Yet her answer had nothing specific to do with him. “I know what it’s like to be a frightened child with nowhere to turn. I also know what it means to have someone rescue you.”
He knew she’d been adopted, though she’d never talked about her life before that. He watched her swallow, knowing he’d stirred up memories.
“I was eight when I was lucky enough to land at the Egans’. Old enough to have had a lot of bad stuff happen.”
“I didn’t know.”
“I don’t advertise it,” she said.
He knew what that was like, to keep old anger and pain locked away.
“I mean, it doesn’t hurt me any more.”
He wondered if it was true, and wished he could say the same thing.
“Let’s talk about Sebastian Demos,” she said.
Zeke sighed. “Once he was my friend. We’ve been enemies for a long time.”
“Because he was in love with Sophia.”
His eyes widened. “What?”
“He was in love with her,” she said firmly. “When he told you she was dead, I know he was grieving for the woman he loved. And I know he considers you responsible.”
He nodded slowly, as the new pattern formed in his mind. All at once a lot of things made better sense. But he would never have thought about them on his own. It had taken an outsider-a woman.
“Demos sounds Greek,” Elizabeth said.
“Close enough. He’s from Mythos.”
“It’s in the Aegean?”
“Yes. Near Crete. The island was claimed by both Greece and Turkey. It’s nominally part of Greece now, but the local government has a lot of autonomy.”
“I know you’ve been on a number of archaeological expeditions there.”
He drew in a breath and let it out slowly. He hadn’t talked about Sophia or Sebastian in years-or even thought about them. He’d consigned them to his sordid past, until the letter from Irena had arrived and damn near blown him away. “Sebastian was her cousin. He never could have married her.”
“He’s the one who introduced you to her,” Elizabeth said suddenly. “That’s one of the reasons he’s so angry. He’s angry with himself, not just you.”
Zeke’s mouth dropped open. He eased his jaw back in place. “You got all that from overhearing a one-minute conversation?”
She shrugged. “It goes along with the rest of it.”
“I guess I’d better tell you about it, before you come up with something worse than what really happened,” he muttered, wondering as he said it what that would be. It helped when he felt her hand gently cover his.
He signed out a long breath. “I was, uh, on a dig with a team from Hopkins-translating inscriptions from an ancient library. Sebastian had trained with the university in Athens, and the government had insisted that he work with us. At first I was annoyed. But he turned out to be very knowledgeable in ancient Greek and the perfect liaison to the local population. We got to be friends. He took me into his household, and I betrayed his trust.”
He watched her, trying to gauge how she’d taken that. She softly stroked her fingers over the top of his hand and waited for him to elaborate.
He swallowed, then turned his hand up and knit his fingers with hers. When she clasped him more tightly, he felt a little of the constriction ease from his throat. Marshaling his words, he tried to make the rest of the story concise and coherent. “Sophia’s father was Sebastian’s uncle. There was still guerilla warfare between the Greeks and the Turks on Mythos when she was little. Her parents were killed in a terrorist attack, and her father’s people agreed to raise her.”
Elizabeth nodded tightly.
“Marrying her off was a way to end their obligation. But it was more than that. The marriage was supposed to cement relations between two important families. But she didn’t love Aristotle-her fiancé. He was much older than she was-a widower. I was an outsider, and she started talking to me about things that no one in the household wanted to hear. I didn’t plan to get involved. I knew it was a mistake. But we got close, too close. I wanted to talk to her uncle about us-see if he’d agree to let her marry me. She told me he’d never listen. I guess she thought we could run away together.”
He shifted uncomfortably again, his whole body tense once more. He was certain from the way Elizabeth’s hand had stiffened that she didn’t want to hear the intimate details of his relationship with Sophia.
He didn’t need to tell them to her, but there were other things he’d kept hidden, and he knew he’d reached a point where he either had to step over a line he’d never crossed or end the conversation.
Silence hung between them.
“My throat is kind of dry. Would you get me a glass of water?” he said, stalling for time.
She tipped her head to one side, and he knew she understood what he was doing. Still, she made no comment as she got off the chair and exited the room. After she’d left, he shut his eyes for a moment. Either he could trust her, or he couldn’t.
When she returned, she handed him the water without saying anything. No pressure.
He took several swallows and set down the glass before continuing. “I had to make a trip to Athens. That’s when they married Sophia to Aristotle. I couldn’t tell Sophia why I was leaving. I couldn’t tell anyone. And I can’t tell you about it either…without getting into things I swore I’d keep confidential.”
“Either you trust me, or you don’t.”
The observation was so startlingly close to his own recent thoughts that he was speechless for a moment. Then he found his voice again. “Over the years, I’ve made myself available to various government agencies. That time it was the CIA. They pulled some strings to put me on the archaeological expedition in Mythos. It was in the hill country where there was still trouble between the Greeks and the Turks. I was keeping tabs on some of the groups, and I found out that one of them was going to plant a bomb on a U.S. plane scheduled to leave the country. The plan was to make it look like the other side had done it. I had to get the information to my contact in Athens. There wasn’t anybody else who could deliver the message.”
Her eyes widened. “You were working as a spy?”
He shrugged.
“You’ve done it more than once.”
He gave a tiny nod.
“Is that how you got wounded before?”
“Yeah.”
There was a new look of respect in her eyes.
He hadn’t told her the story to make himself look good. He’d only been trying to make her understand that he hadn’t left Sophia to go on a sight-seeing trip to Athens, as Sebastian had put it.
“Don’t start thinking I’m some unsung hero.” He’d certainly never thought of himself in those terms. He’d simply been atoning for past sins. “I made my report as quickly as I could. But the weather turned bad, and I couldn’t get back for almost a week. When I showed up at Sophia’s family compound, I found out she was already married to Aristotle. And I was no longer welcome in the house. I couldn’t stand to stay in Mythos any longer, so I arranged for a replacement on the expedition. And the CIA got somebody else to do their spying.”
He was all wound up now. Maybe it was partly because Sebastian might have killed him a couple of hours agoand no one would have known the truth. So he kept speaking, aware that the need to bare his soul had won out over caution. “You heard me tell Sebastian I didn’t know Sophia’s child was mine. That’s true as far as it goes. I didn’t know for sure. But I kept track of Sophia for a while-through my government contacts. When she
gave birth eight months after her wedding, I had to wonder. Still, there was nothing I could do about it. I didn’t have any claims on her or Ariadne. And I knew that if I came back, I’d only make trouble for her. So I got on with my life.” He ran a shaky hand through his hair. “Then I got the letter from Sophia’s sister Irena, telling me Sophia was dead and Ariadne was in danger.”
“What happened to Sophia?” Elizabeth whispered.
“Irena told me that Sophia’s marriage was very unhappy. Aristotle was angry because she didn’t get pregnant again-that she didn’t give him the son he wanted. He kept-” He swallowed painfully and made himself say it in a rush of words. “He kept forcing himself on her and complaining to his friends that she’d become barren. Finally one of his associates got tired of hearing about it and told him that he might as well leave her alone because he’d never fathered a child. The baby was mine. So he killed her to save face,” he added in a flat voice.
“You can’t mean that!”
“Morality can be strange by our standards in a place like Mythos-at least in the back country where the people follow customs and traditions thousands of years old. It’s a society where a man’s honor is one of his most important possessions. It’s also a society where he can do almost anything he wants with his property-including his wife and daughters, as long as he’s careful. There was no murder investigation. Irena says Aristotle arranged for an accident in the mountains. Thank God, Sophia had sent Ariadne to her before it happened. She’s trying to keep her safe until I get there. But she says Aristotle is looking for them. He wants revenge. Not just on his wife. He wants to wipe the slate clean. He doesn’t want a child hanging around with his name, who isn’t his.”
Elizabeth closed her eyes for a moment. “It looks like he wants revenge on you, too. Do you think he sent Sebastian?”
“That occurred to me.”
“Can you legally take Ariadne out of the country?”
Once more, Elizabeth had cut right to the heart of the problem.
“Not by myself. I’ve done some quick research and found out that under Mythosian law, a single man can’t adopt a child. Only a married couple, and they’re pretty strict about the rules.”
“So that’s why you need a wife.”
“Yes. And I need someone who can take care of her on the trip home. I don’t have a clue about how to…do any of that.”
“And what about afterward?” she asked in a breathy voice.
“What do you mean?”
“When you get back to Baltimore, are you planning to raise Ariadne by yourself?”
His gaze turned inward. “I hadn’t thought about that. I hadn’t thought about anything past getting her out of Mythos. I’m not exactly cut out to be a family man.”
“Why do you say that?”
He felt his hands clench. He’d admitted a lot of things tonight, but he drew the line at opening up on that particular subject. The one time he’d broken his own rules and talked about his dysfunctional family was when Sophia had lulled him into sharing confidences-and it had turned out very badly. He wasn’t going to make the same mistake again.
Elizabeth’s eyes flashed. “What are you thinking—that once you’ve saved Ariadne’s life, you’ll give her away or something?”
“I don’t know how to be a father,” he said hotly. “I didn’t ask to be one.”
“Fatherhood is usually the last thing on a man’s mind when he takes a woman to bed.”
He flushed, because she had hit so close to the mark again.
The air between them felt charged with electricity, and he realized once again how quickly things could go wrong when a man and a woman got into an intimate conversation. Now he was sorry he’d let his guard down. “You don’t have any right to judge me,” he grated.
“Maybe not. But the conversation has stopped being productive.” She kept her gaze steady, apparently waiting for him to say something else. She was going to have a long wait.
When the silence stretched, she murmured, “If you don’t need anything else, I’m going to bed.”
“Fine.”
She didn’t say good-night, she simply turned on her heel and left the room.
Zeke watched her leave, relieved yet angry-with himself and with her, too. Yet now, at least, she was giving him some privacy. His emotions in turmoil, he slipped the gun under some of the clothes in the duffel bag and rummaged for a pair of sweatpants, which he pulled on gingerly, afraid he might dislodge the butterfly bandage from his wound. By the time he finished, his shoulder was throbbing. He was searching through the medical kit for aspirin when his fingers encountered a small jar. He’d gotten the stuff several months ago from Thorn Devereaux and forgotten all about it. Now he remembered his friend pressing it on him. It was a wound-healing salve being developed by Thorn and Mac McQuade, the director of Medizone Labs. Thorn had described it as a medical breakthrough, and asked Zeke if he wanted to be a test subject-on the proviso that he keep the product strictly confidential. He’d agreed. But he hadn’t had any occasion to use the stuff until tonight.
Lifting the bandage over the knife wound, he winced as he removed the butterfly tape he’d suspected wouldn’t be very effective. Then he smoothed a generous amount of the ointment along the length of the slash before replacing the bandage. Immediately his skin felt hot and tingly.
He was still in pain, so he also took a couple of aspirins before snapping off the light. As he lay in the dark, Elizabeth’s face floated in his mind, her soft lips pressed together, the color high in her cheeks. He’d touched a nerve, all right, when he’d admitted that he was scared spitless of being forced into the role of a father. Only now that he thought about it, he realized he’d felt too intimidated to put his feelings in those terms. Still, he didn’t have to explain himself to her. Damn, he wished he didn’t need her or anybody else. If he could have rescued the little girl on his own, he’d be on his way to Mythos already. But he had to bring along a woman. A wife. The authorities would check to make sure it wasn’t a sham before they’d let him take his daughter home. And he needed someone he could trust. Elizabeth. As his thoughts came back to her, he found it was impossible to hang on to his anger.
He’d wanted her in his bed. On his own terms. Yet she’d declined his unspoken invitation to what she’d rightly judged would be a dead-end affair. He’d walked away from other women who wouldn’t settle for pleasure over commitment. He’d stayed friends with Elizabeth-and stayed obsessed with her. He’d fed his obsession by digging into her background-using some of his old contacts and the considerable power of several data bases that were unavailable to the public. The more he’d learned, the more he’d liked her-and the closer he’d felt to her. And at the same time, the more he’d worried that he might lose control of his emotions and ask for more than he himself could give.
Elizabeth wasn’t typical in any way that he’d yet discovered. He’d met her at a party he’d almost skipped and been mesmerized by her face, which was interesting rather than beautiful. Her eyes were slightly slanted and her jaw was a little too strong for the feminine ideal. But her lips and nose were damn near perfect. It was what he’d seen in her blue eyes, though, that had touched his soul—a hidden past. A painful past.
If Zeke had to describe Elizabeth in a few words, they would probably be “too selfless for her own good.” Tonight she’d confirmed what he’d suspected, that the years before her adoption had been traumatic. Perhaps that explained why she’d taken care of her father at home in his declining years and why she worked for Birth Data, a charity that helped adoptees find their birth parents. She’d never used their services herself, but she was still working there and going to graduate school part time. “For the intellectual stimulation,” she’d told him.
He could spend the whole night thinking about her. He’d done it before. In his mind he changed the fierce expression on her face to a smile. Then he replayed the kiss she’d given him when he was too shaky to take off his own pants. Her lips had
hardly brushed his, yet the memory was enough to turn him on. Lazily, he began to imagine undressing her the way she’d undressed him. But he was too worn out to get farther than unbuttoning her shirt before he drifted off to sleep.
He woke hours later, glanced at the lighted dial of his watch and cursed. Almost five in the morning-so much for staying alert. Yet he couldn’t deny that he’d needed the sleep. Experimentally he moved his shoulder, and to his surprise, the throbbing pain was only a dull ache.
Sitting up, he threw back the covers, stood and cautiously stretched. The skin over the wound smarted, but nothing more. Tiptoeing down the hall to the bathroom, he closed the door and turned on the light. First he removed the bandage and inspected his shoulder. Astonishingly, it was almost healed. Thorn hadn’t been kidding about the power of this stuff, he thought, as he traced the dull red line where the cut had been. He could see why his friend had asked him to keep it confidential.
Elizabeth had hung his soggy pants over the radiator, and they were almost dry. The bloody shirt was stuffed into the trash can. He pulled it out and wrapped it around the bandage he no longer needed before stuffing the whole wad back into the trash. After using the facilities, he washed his face and peered at his reflection. His color was a lot better, he decided. Back in his room, he slathered on another application of the miracle ointment and pulled a knit shirt from the duffel bag.
After shrugging into it and donning a pair of sweat pants, he headed for the stairs, intent on having a look at the knife that Sebastian had used to carve him up. It was still in Elizabeth’s purse, which he remembered her setting down in the front hall. Hopefully, it was still there.
