by Jayne Castle
“And August?”
“We’ll give him a few days to pay his respects to Miss Chase and see what happens. It’s possible he won’t stay long. Their affair in Mexico was brief. A matter of days.”
Griffin frowned. “You said time was running out.”
Coyne nodded, unconcerned. “It is. Time is always running out. But we’re not at a crisis point yet.”
“What happens if we get to that point?” Shadwell demanded.
“I will take care of it. In the meantime you will do as you are told. Your failure to do so this afternoon has not resulted in any major problems, but I do not want to see such actions become a habit.”
Shadwell wisely swallowed his initial response. There was too much money riding on this to risk telling Coyne to go to hell. “You’re sure August will cooperate?”
“Eventually. One way or another. He cooperated magnificently last time,” Coyne reminded Shadwell.
“He didn’t exactly realize he was cooperating,” Shadwell pointed out.
“Poor bastard never knew what hit him,” Griffin muttered, turning back to the window. “It was incredible that he got out alive, let alone with five of his men.”
“Major August’s survival skills were far more developed than I’d expected,” Coyne admitted calmly. “Which is one of the reasons I want him on this project.”
“You also want him because Valdez trusts him and will work with him.” Shadwell, glancing at his partner’s back, wondered if Griffin was getting hungry. Neither of them had eaten yet this evening. Coyne tended to forget about details like food when he was working. The man had more sheer tenacity than just about anyone Shadwell had ever met.
“Ramon Valdez is a very cautious man,” Coyne agreed. “It is one of the reasons he has stayed alive this long.”
“August would never deliberately help you set him up,” Griffin warned from the window. “Even if you convinced him that it was in the U.S. interest to do so. August operates under his own code. He and Valdez respect each other.”
“A rather old-fashioned code in some ways. I’m depending on it.”
He was depending on more than just Matt August’s outdated code of honor, Coyne admitted silently. He was also staking a great deal on the belief that a man in August’s position would not be able to resist the chance to prove to himself that he could still handle the kind of job for which he had been trained.
Coyne considered himself something of a student of human nature. And his studies of Matt August indicated a man who would ultimately be compelled to accept the chance Coyne was offering: the chance to wipe out the memory of failure.
But just in case he had misjudged August’s sense of priorities, Coyne intended to have a little insurance lined up for emergencies. When August had dropped everything in Mexico to head for Texas, Coyne had toyed briefly with the notion of making Sabrina Chase the small rabbit he would pull out of the hat in the event that August became obstinate.
The boy represented a much more interesting and useful alternative.
Chapter Five
“So when do we go to Mexico?” Brad was sprawled on the bed, idly thumbing through one of his vast collections of men’s action magazines. Two of his three suitcases were filled with them. He didn’t look up as he asked the question but continued to study an ad for a black double-edged commando dagger.
Matt took his time answering as he knotted his tie carefully in front of the mirror. “I’m not sure, Brad. Maybe the first of next week.”
“Oh, geez!” His tone laced with disgust, Brad tossed aside the magazine he had been reading and picked up another. This one was titled Mercenary Male and the cover art featured a rather vicious-looking brute in battle gear. He had an Uzi machine gun casually cradled in his arm and was clearly ready to point it in someone’s direction: for a price. “You said we’d go to Acapulco as soon as you looked up the chick. Well, now you’ve seen her. Can’t we go?”
“We’ve got a whole summer ahead of us, Brad.” And maybe a lot longer than that, Matt added in grim silence. He thought of those few minutes of remote, austerely civil conversation with Ginny. “There’s no rush.”
“There is for me. I hate Texas.”
“You might not like Mexico any better,” Matt observed mildly as he tucked in the tails of the white long-sleeved shirt he’d just gotten back from an overnight laundry service. The service hadn’t done as good a job as his regular place in Acapulco, but Matt didn’t feel quite as concerned about it as he might have been. He was too busy thinking of the evening ahead with Sabrina.
“Anything’s better than Texas,” Brad grumbled. He stopped leafing through the magazine to study another ad. This one was for a handsome British-style military knife. “Have you got one like this, Dad?”
Matt glanced at the dagger in the photo. “Yeah, I’ve got one. It’s kind of a classic. Not very practical, though.”
“Why not?” Brad studied the picture more closely.
“It’s fragile. You can’t use it for skinning a rabbit, and if you tried to hack up some kindling for a fire, you’d probably snap off the blade.”
Brad glowered at him. “It’s not made for doing chores. It’s a commando knife.”
“Anyone who carries a knife in the field usually winds up using it for practical things like fixing a meal or a fire,” Matt explained mildly.
Brad shook his head very positively. “Not this baby,” he said reverently. “You’d only use this one on a real raid. See how it’s all painted black? Even the blade. It wouldn’t gleam in the dark. The ad says it’s good for the quick, clean kill.”
Matt buckled his belt, his eyes bleak with distant memory. “Uh huh. Well, let me tell you something, Brad. That same thin, good-looking blade I told you would probably snap if you used it on kindling wood will snap just as easily on bone. There is no such thing as a quick, clean kill. They’re all messy. Now put down that damn magazine and get dressed.”
“I am dressed.” Brad didn’t stir from the bed. He was watching his father intently in the mirror.
Matt saw the questions deep in his son’s eyes and moved to forestall them. “Don’t you have anything besides Army surplus to wear?” Matt knew he sounded irritated. He couldn’t help it. He was. Something about seeing his son poring over those stupid magazines aimed at men who fantasized about killing irritated him very much.
“No.” Brad shrugged in response to the question. “What do you care what I wear, anyhow? You’re going out with Sabrina.”
“You’re having dinner with us.”
“I’ll be glad to eat alone downstairs in the coffee shop,” Brad said in his best martyr’s tones.
Matt bit back his initial response. “You will have dinner with us and then we’ll drop you off at the theater,” he stated.
“Is that going to give you enough time?”
“Enough time for what?” Matt shoved his wallet into his pocket and checked for his keys.
“To get Sabrina into the sack. How much time does it take, anyway?”
Matt swung around in cold rage. “Get off that bed and go comb your hair,” he bit out with a controlled savagery that finally succeeded in eliciting a response from his son. He watched Brad disappear into the bathroom and wondered how it was that his own flesh and blood could provoke him so quickly.
His mouth tightened as he acknowledged that the reason Brad’s question had enraged him was because he had been asking himself the same thing Two hours wasn’t very long. If Sabrina proved reluctant, two hours wasn’t anywhere near enough time. Matt didn’t know whether to be ashamed or disgusted or just resigned. He only knew that tonight was vitally important. The prospect of the evening alone with Sabrina had been growing in significance all day until his whole body seemed to be vibrating with expectation.
It was crazy to assume she would go to bed with him after dinner. All she had said last night was that she might have had some second thoughts about turning him down in Acapulco a month ago. Having second thoughts wa
s hardly the same as changing her mind.
Even if she had changed her mind, what woman wanted to be rushed into a motel-room bed knowing she was expected to vacate the premises in two hours? Matt winced as he straightened the bedspread Brad had mussed. He’d really screwed up in Acapulco. There he could have had all night, every night, for a week if he’d kept his head.
Matt told himself for the hundredth time that day that the last thing he should be trying to do tonight was rush things with Sabrina. What was the matter with him? He knew better than to push a woman into bed. They needed to be charmed and coaxed and persuaded. He was furious with himself for being so impatient. He was nearly forty years old. There was no call for this simmering anticipation.
Matt knew how he should be feeling: casual, cool, sophisticated, politely hopeful, but blasé enough about the outcome of the evening not to care too much if it didn’t work.
Instead he felt raw and predatory, impatient and disquieted. If the circumstances had allowed it, he would have been pacing the motel room. He had known he was missing something important when Sabrina had left Mexico, but when he’d walked into her shop yesterday and seen her again he’d realized that it was more than a question of simply regretting his mishandling of her. He wanted her with an intensity that he couldn’t quite comprehend.
Matt emerged slowly from the bathroom, his hair haphazardly combed. “I’m ready.”
“You’d never know it.” Matt cursed under his breath, glancing into the bathroom as he led the way toward the door. “Christ, it looks like a war zone in there.” He reached out and closed the bathroom door. There wasn’t time to clean the place up now.
Sabrina was waiting for them when they arrived. She looked fresh and cool and casually sophisticated in a slim dress of yellow cotton that had huge puffy sleeves and a broad white belt. The only sign of garishness was the rodeo cowboy engraved on the belt buckle. The familiar tendrils of hair bounced free of the main knot at the back of her head, lightly brushing her bare shoulders. If Brad hadn’t been waiting with affected boredom, Matt knew he would have been unable to resist pulling Sabrina into his arms for a long, hard kiss. As it was he was all too vividly aware of the tautness in himself. The predatory hunger was pulsing deep in his body.
“There’s a good barbecue place a few blocks from here,” Sabrina said chattily as Matt assisted her into the front seat of the rented Ford.
“Barbecue? I was thinking more of a plain steak-and-lobster house,” Matt said. Dismaying images of endless miles of greasy ribs that had to be eaten with the fingers, messy barbecue-sauce-coated slabs of beef, and heavy biscuits slathered with sticky honey flashed into his head. It took a fair amount of washing up to get rid of the grease after a meal like that. And the bathroom back at the motel was a mess. “Fish would be nice,” he added quickly.
“Oh, but I’m sure Brad would prefer some good down-home barbecue-style food, wouldn’t you, Brad?” She turned in the front seat to smile engagingly at the boy.
“I don’t care what we have,” Brad mumbled, avoiding her eyes.
“In that case,” Matt began aggressively as he slid behind the wheel, “let’s find a steak-and-lobster joint. That should suit everyone’s taste.”
“On second thought, I guess barbecue sounds okay,” Brad offered thoughtfully.
“It’s settled, then,” Sabrina said brightly.
Matt swallowed his own comment and shoved the key into the Ford’s ignition.
The meal was everything he had feared: greasy, heavy, sticky. True Texas barbecue. The pile of used paper napkins beside each plate grew into a mountain and still there was evidence of the food on everyone’s mouth, hands, and clothes. Matt was afraid to look down at his tie. It occurred to him that Brad’s camouflage shirt had its uses. The smears of sauce didn’t show up quite so much as they did on white shirts and clean ties. Even Sabrina didn’t escape the ravages of the food. Toward the end of the meal Matt saw her dabbing delicately at a drop of grease that had spattered onto her yellow cotton dress.
She looked up with silent laughter in her eyes as she sensed him watching her. “Goes with the territory. I should have worn jeans. Anyone going back for thirds?”
Matt waited, praying Brad had finally had his fill. When the boy reluctantly shook his head and pushed aside his plate, Matt was relieved. “Just as well. The film starts in twenty minutes. We’d better get going.” He reached for the grease-stained check and got to his feet.
At the theater Brad took his time getting out of the car. It seemed to Matt that everything the boy did this evening was in slow motion.
“Enjoy the film, Brad,” Sabrina said as the boy slammed the car door.
Brad looked at her, his face set and unreadable. “Yeah. You be sure and have a good time, too. See you in a couple of hours.”
Matt heard the faint derision buried in his son’s voice and wanted to get out of the car and strangle him. The kid was walking on thin ice. “Two hours,” Matt agreed and pulled away from the curb.
Beside him Sabrina sat silently as he drove back toward the motel. He wondered suddenly just what she was thinking. All evening she’d been cheerful, chatty, and friendly, but damned if he could figure out what was going on inside her head. Matt saw the lights of the motel coming up in the distance and experienced an abrupt uncertainty.
This was going to be awfully unsubtle, he realized in self-disgust. As soon as he pulled into the parking lot Sabrina was bound to realize exactly what he had planned. He should be taking her to someplace cozy and expensive for a drink and perhaps some dancing first.
But there was no time for all the preliminaries. Two lousy hours was all he had.
“Matt?” she questioned very softly as he piloted the car into the lot.
He didn’t look at her as he parked and switched off the engine. Sitting very still in the seat, he rested his hands on the steering wheel and gazed at the door to number twenty-five. “I should take you somewhere first, shouldn’t I?” he asked grimly. “Buy you a drink. Dance. Talk.”
“The talking part is probably the most important,” she noted quietly.
“We can do that here.”
“In the car?”
He turned to look at her shadowed face. “In the room.”
“What do you want to talk about, Matt?”
“You. Me. Mexico.” He gazed at her steadily. “Will you come inside and talk to me, Sabrina?”
She didn’t move for a long moment. Then, “All right.”
Matt exhaled the breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. Pushing open the car door he climbed out before she could change her mind. She walked without a word to the door, waiting patiently while he fumbled a bit with the key.
Two hours. Two short hours and his hands were shaking enough to make the simple task of inserting the key into the lock a painstaking process. When he reached out to turn on the light, Matt realized he felt awkward and uncoordinated. His whole body seemed heavy with the weight of his need.
Sabrina headed straight for the bathroom.
“Wait!” he got out hurriedly.
She glanced back expectantly. “I just want to wash the grease off my hands.”
He grimaced. “It’s a mess. Brad used it last just before we left the room.”
“Oh.” She glanced inside and her mouth curved with a knowing smile. “So I see.” Gingerly she stepped over the dirty socks and the towels that had been left lying on the tile floor. “I’ll manage.” She shut the door behind her.
Matt groaned silently and waited for her to emerge. When she did he went inside and washed his own hands. A glance in the mirror showed him that there was, indeed, a small smear of grease on his tie. Annoyed, he yanked at the knot as he walked back into the main room.
Sabrina turned to look at him and he abruptly realized it looked as though he were already starting to undress. “Barbecue sauce,” he explained succinctly, jerking the tie off completely and tossing it down on the dresser.
“It gets
on everything, doesn’t it?”
He stood in the center of the room, watching her as she wandered over to stare out the sliding glass window. “Sabrina?” He heard the husky demand in his own voice and cursed silently.
“What shall we talk about first, Matt?”
“You.”
“What about me?”
“How about whether or not you’re going to give me another chance?”
“How badly do you want one?”
“Damn it, Sabrina, please don’t go coy on me!” He was behind her in two swift steps, close enough now to touch her. He raised a hand and fingered one of the trailing wisps of her hair. “I want you. I can’t remember wanting a woman so much. I know I haven’t set this up very romantically. Not nearly as well as you set it up that first night in Mexico. Sharing a barbecue dinner with a thirteen-year-old kid and then bringing you back to a sloppy motel room knowing we’ve only got a couple of hours is just about the most uninspired scenario I can imagine. But I couldn’t think of any other way to handle it.”
She turned in his arms, looking up at him with a deep, searching gaze that left him feeling poised on some invisible brink.
“You said you wanted to talk,” she whispered.
“I lied,” he muttered. “I can’t think clearly enough to talk about anything except how much I need you tonight.” His fingers tightened in her hair. “It’s just been getting worse all day. I know I’m rushing you. I know I’m behaving like a rutting fool. But something happened yesterday when I saw you again. Something important started to fall into place. I have to find out what it is. Does that make any sense?”
Sabrina heard the aching, frustrated need buried in his voice, and it pushed her over the precipice on which she had been standing. Slowly she wound her arms around his neck and urged his head down to hers.
