by JoAnn Ross
He exhaled a long breath. “You’re not going to drop this, are you?”
“I’m sorry. I don’t think I can.”
He sighed again and rested his cheek atop her head. Utilizing more patience than she sensed was usual for her, she managed to remain quiet and not push while he battled what she suspected were his own inner demons.
“I suppose, if you really feel as if Natasha’s ghost is hovering somewhere between us, I owe you the truth. As grim as it is.”
Her rival had a name. Natasha. And, unless Roarke was speaking figuratively—which, from his bleak tone and even bleaker expression, she didn’t think he was—the woman was dead.
Knowing that people tended to dwell only on the positive attributes of those they’d loved, then lost, she wondered how she was supposed to live up to remembered perfection. His next words proved exactly how mistaken she could be.
“Natasha was the most self-serving, amoral woman I’ve ever met. And, although I know I should be sorry she’s dead, I really can’t be. Because if it hadn’t been her, it would have been me.” And if he’d been killed, he would never have met Daria. Never experienced how special sex between two people who felt strongly about one another could be.
“Was her death an accident?”
“Hardly.”
Please, Daria begged silently, don’t tell me you killed her.
“The only accident was that she died. Instead of me.” All the passionate fire she was accustomed to seeing in his dark blue eyes had vanished, like a candle snuffed out by an icy wind. “The irony is that she’d been the one to set up the assassination in the first place. Unfortunately, she made the mistake of trusting her own people. The same way I’d made the mistake of trusting her.”
Without even knowing the details, Daria understood the reason Roarke hadn’t been able to lift his guard with her. Except, of course, as he’d already pointed out, when they were making love. He might call it having sex, but impossible as it seemed on such short acquaintance, she, at least, had been making love.
“I don’t suppose it would do any good to tell you that you can trust me?”
The tension was strung like an electric wire between them. Her tone was soft and hesitant. And even as he found himself wanting to assure her that he would believe any story she told him, he forced himself to keep a cool head.
“No offense, baby.” The remote tone, along with the snort of derision, was planned. The stiletto-sharp edge of sarcasm was not. “But I’ve heard those pretty words before.”
He knew he’d hurt her. With his arms wrapped around her, he was aware when she flinched. He half expected feminine weeping. Or anger. Instead, she stood and met his mocking look levelly, her expression calm. Almost, he thought with surprise, serene.
“If your story’s true—”
“It is.”
“Then I can certainly understand how you’d be horribly disillusioned. But I’m not Natasha, whoever and whatever she was.” Now that she’d come this far, Daria decided to go for broke. “And what’s happening between us—whether we like it or not—does not resemble, in any way, what the two of you shared.”
Not willing to give her the upper hand, he twisted his lips in a parody of a smile, reached out and ran his hand up her thigh. “Want to bet?”
Daria had tried enough courtroom cases to have developed some acting ability. At least enough to be able to maintain her dignity under his mocking gaze.
“I already have.”
That stated, she turned and walked back into the cabin, leaving Roarke frustrated and unable to decide whether to curse or laugh at the impossibility of the situation he’d gotten himself into.
12
ROARKE REALIZED THAT there was an outside chance that whoever was after Daria might manage to catch up with him at the bait shop. And this time, he knew, they might actually kill him, just for pissing them off by getting away the first time.
Just as he hadn’t wanted to die without taking Daria to bed, neither did he want to go out with her believing that he compared her, in any way, to Natasha.
Pushing himself out of the chair, he went back into the cabin where Daria was mixing eggs with a fork in a white earthenware bowl.
“It’s me you’re mad at,” he said. “No point in taking it out on the eggs.”
She didn’t look up at him. Nor did she pause in her energetic beating. “I thought I’d make an omelet. Amazingly, your uncle Claude stocked the refrigerator with cheese and mushrooms and green onions, and, of course, Tabasco sauce.”
“Can’t leave out the hot pepper,” he agreed. Since she’d turned her back, she missed his conciliatory smile. “And it’s not that amazing he stocked the larder well. Among Cajuns, cooking tends to be considered men’s work. In fact, cooking your first gumbo while the other guys are playing bouré—that’s a card game—is kinda like a rite of passage.”
“How fascinating.” Her tone said otherwise. Still refusing to look at him, she put a pat of butter into an iron skillet.
He knew he deserved the silent treatment, but didn’t want to leave with things unsettled. “I never would have guessed you to be the type of female to hold a grudge.”
She sighed, put the bowl on the scarred wooden counter and turned around. “I don’t think I am.” She gave another sigh, more weary than the first. “In fact, I know I’m not. I couldn’t do my job if I wasn’t able to let go of things.”
“That’s work. This is different”
“Yes.” She was biting her bottom lip again in a way that he suspected she would never do in court, and that made him want to kiss away the pain caused by his unnecessarily cruel words.
The butter in the pan Roarke usually used to fry catfish in began to sizzle. Reaching around her, he pulled it off the burner and turned off the range.
“We can eat later. Right now we need to talk. About Moscow, and Natasha, and most of all, about us.”
At least he was willing to admit there was an us. Daria decided that was progress, of sorts.
Although she didn’t respond, neither did she resist when he took her hand, linked their fingers together and led her back out onto the porch.
Daria didn’t know what she’d expected him to say, but she hadn’t expected him to share his life story. When he began telling her about his childhood, growing up with Mike and Shayne and their mother, she suspected it was not a story he had told often. Since she’d already admitted to herself how much she cared for this man, Daria allowed hope to flutter fledgling wings in her heart
“Of course, Mom had a big family to fill in for our dad,” he told her. “But it really wasn’t the same.”
“No.” Daria sighed, thinking of all the years she’d. spent alone in private schools while her parents traveled the globe. “But at least you had your mother.”
“Yeah.” Roarke’s smile was quick, uncensored and warm. “She’s a cool lady. You’ll like her. And I know she’ll like you.”
Daria had to ask. “So I’m going to meet her?”
“If she wasn’t in New Iberia, visiting her sister, I doubt I could have kept her away this long. Especially since by now Mike will have told her that her middle son has himself a lady friend.”
“I have a hard time believing that’s so unusual,” she murmured. After all, a man didn’t reach the level of competition in lovemaking this man had without considerable practice.
“You’re different. Mike spotted that right off the bat.”
Again, hope flared. Still cautious, Daria managed to bank it. “I suppose that’s because he’s a detective.”
Roarke laughed at that, a rich, booming sound she knew would always have the power to warm her. “Got a point there,” he said easily. “Mike was a great cop. He’ll also make some woman a terrific husband.”
“So you’ve said. And it’s a good try, but you’re not going to pass me on to your brother when you’re done with me, Roarke. Because I won’t go along with the idea. And I suspect Michael wouldn’t, either.”
“I just wanted to warn you—”
“Consider me warned. And have you O’Malley brothers ever considered that perhaps your mother didn’t feel her life was such a loss? That the times she shared with your father were worth all those years he was away chasing his dream?”
“I never thought of it that way,” Roarke admitted. And he knew damn well Mike hadn’t. Of the three of them, Mike hated his father the most for having essentially deserted the family.
“That’s because you’re a man.”
“What about you?” he asked, genuinely curious. “Would you put up with a husband who only showed up unexpectedly, without warning, every few months? Or even years?”
“No.” This time she didn’t surprise him. Her answer was exactly what he’d suspected she would say. What he’d feared. “When I get married, it’s going to be to a man who’s willing to commit to an equal partnership. And I don’t see how he could do that if he wasn’t ever home.”
Neither could Roarke. Which was, he reminded himself, his dilemma. If he was considering a life with Daria. Which he wasn’t, he assured himself.
The hell he wasn’t.
“You could always travel with him.”
“I don’t like war. I don’t like reading about it in the newspaper, I don’t like seeing it on television and I don’t have to travel to a war zone to know that I wouldn’t like it in person.”
“No one does.”
She gave him a long look. “Yet you’ve built a career on exactly that.”
“True. And did you ever think that perhaps I’m getting a little tired of watching innocent people die because a few greedy people in the world can’t figure out a way to get along without bloodshed?”
“If that’s the case, perhaps you ought to rethink your career choice.” Her mild tone belied the sudden hammering of her heart.
“Now that you bring it up, that’s precisely what I returned home to do.” He saw the reluctant hope shining in her remarkable gold eyes, knew he’d been the one to put it there, and this time found himself unable to dash it. “I was ready to quit the network—”
“You were going to quit? Why?”
“I figured it was either that or get canned. After I got a little carried away and practically killed the guy responsible for the car bomb that killed Natasha. With my bare hands.”
The network brass had been right, Roarke realized reluctantly. He had gone over the edge. Obviously, spending all those years documenting the worst deeds that human beings were willing to do to one another had deadened some of his humane instincts.
She looked down at the hand that still held hers, tried to imagine it capable of such violence and couldn’t “That’s a little hard to picture.”
He shrugged. “You had to have been there, I guess.... Natasha was the mistress of one of Russia’s top mob bosses. I was sitting in the bar of my hotel one day when she came up to me and promised me the inside scoop on how the mob worked. She also said she was afraid her lover was trying to kill her.”
The significance of that meeting hit home. “No wonder you didn’t trust me,” Daria murmured.
“The circumstances were eerily similar.”
“It must be incredibly difficult playing the role of a knight in shining armor, rescuing damsels in distress.”
Personally, Roarke had always figured if he had lived back in the days when knights rode off to battle in armor, his would definitely have been more than a little tarnished.
“But you got involved with me anyway,” Daria said softly. “For the story.”
“No.” He shook his head and met her questioning gaze straight on. “I’ve been trying to tell myself that from the beginning. That all you meant to me was a story. But I was wrong. And as for that knight-inshining-armor stuff, it wasn’t because I felt any chivalrous instinct to protect a damsel in distress. Because believe me, sweetheart, after Moscow, that was the last thing on my mind.”
He cupped her cheek with his free hand. “Do you believe in fate? Or destiny?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Neither did L But I’ve spent the past two months trying to figure out what went wrong in Moscow. How I could have made such a fatal error in judgment when I’ve always prided myself on my instincts.
“Now I realize that everything that went wrong in Moscow was predestined to happen so I’d end up here, back home in New Orleans, at this time, with you.”
Daria was amazed by this direct assertion. And after that declaration, she decided it was time to be equally as honest.
“I suppose this is where I admit that I’ve had a crush on you for years.”
“You’re kidding.”
He’d heard that from other women before. But they tended to be news groupies, women who hung out in the bars at hotels where the press tended to gather, the same way other women gravitated toward sports bars hoping to meet—and sleep with—athletes. In his younger years, Roarke had enjoyed taking advantage of what they offered; these days, although still no candidate for sainthood, he was a great deal choosier.
“You don’t have to look so surprised.” A pretty shade of pink tinged her cheeks. “You’re very good at what you do. And, of course, you always looked so dashing in those shirts with the epaulets.”
“Any guy can buy them at Banana Republic.”
“Ah, but not every man can wear them with such panache.” Her grin was quick and bright. “I suppose, when I first saw you in the Blue Bayou, I confused your television image with the man.”
So had all those groupies who’d been so eager to go to bed with him. “And now?”
“I realize that the real man is even better than the TV newscaster.” All those other women could eat their hearts out, Daria decided. Because whether he realized it or not, she was going to keep Roarke.
“That’s exactly what you’re supposed to say, sweetheart.”
He kissed her again—another long, heartfelt kiss that spoke volumes and promised the future he was not yet fully prepared to offer. “Of course, I’m not certain you’ve proved a real good judge of men.”
She drew her head back. “We’re back to James, aren’t we?”
“The guy’s a jerk, Daria. He was the class bully as a kid and now that he’s gotten some power, he’s probably even worse. I can’t understand how an intelligent woman like you got mixed up with him in the first place.”
“He used to be a prosecutor.”
“So?”
“So it was nice to have someone to talk about my work with.”
“Hell, I like talking shop with female reporters, but I’ve never felt the urge to marry one of them.”
“I don’t know how I got engaged,” she admitted. “He was home one weekend about six months ago, we went out to dinner, and suddenly he produced a ring. Since I didn’t know what to say—”
“How about no?”
She sighed. “I did, at first. But James can be very persuasive. He put forth a very logical argument about why we’d make a perfect team.”
“I’m not certain that falling in love and getting married has much to do with logic.”
“You’re probably right.”
“Did you love him?”
Daria looked up at him curiously. “Why should you care?”
Roarke shrugged. He’d been asking himself the same question and hadn’t liked the answers he’d been coming up with. “I told you, the guy’s a jerk and a bully. I don’t like the idea of you being under his thumb.”
“Believe me, Roarke,” she said firmly, “I’ve no intention of being under any man’s thumb.”
Deciding the conversation had wandered too deeply into the personal again, Roarke turned it back to the little matter of their puzzle.
“I really should be going soon.” His lips returned to pluck at he
rs.
“You really should have breakfast,” she murmured, sinking into the kiss.
He was hungry. But not for any omelet “I’ve got a better idea.” He stood and scooped her into his arms and carried her back to the soft wide bed.
Their lovemaking was sweeter than ever. They seemed to have moved to a level in their relationship where they could enjoy each other with a lingering pleasure born of the commitment neither had yet spoken out loud.
There would be time for pretty speeches later, Roarke decided as he followed Daria into the mists. Because the one thing he was sure of was that nothing—and no one—was going to keep them from having a future together.
SHE WAS SO LOVELY. So sweet Roarke looked down at Daria, sleeping lightly, imagined spending the rest of his life waking up next to this woman and wondered how he’d gotten so damn lucky. He felt so good he almost laughed out loud. But as much as he wished he could keep her hidden away out here in the bayou forever, the fact remained that they couldn’t get on with their lives until her would-be assassins were safely behind bars. A random, highly impractical thought flashed through his mind: the idea of escaping with her now to some far-distant land, changing their names and living incognito among the natives. But, even if they could pull off such a ruse, he knew it wasn’t fair. Not to Daria, or to his family.
There might have been a time when that wouldn’t have seemed so important But since returning to Louisiana, Roarke had come to appreciate exactly how much family meant to him. Although the idea of getting any woman pregnant had always been anathema to Roarke, he grinned as he thought ahead to the distant day when he would be able to tell Mary O’Malley that he and Daria were about to make her a grandmother.
The idea continued to please him as he slipped silently out of bed, gathered up his clothes and dressed on the porch to avoid waking her. She needed her sleep. He would leave a note, he decided, not wanting to admit, even to himself, that he wasn’t willing to say goodbye. Even for such a brief time as it would take to go to the bait shop and see what messages Mike might have for him.
