Lovelace, Merline

by Dark Side of Dawn

  "Captain West saved my life, Martin. I'm merely expressing my gratitude. Now, where did we leave off in our last session? The trip to Moscow, wasn't it?"

  "Let me see..."

  Russ thumbed through his handwritten notes. With a rigid exercise in self-restraint, Alex concealed his icy fury. Russ operated like some twelfth-century monk, his ink-stained fingers recording every conversation in his own arthritic shorthand. Alex would have pitied the clerical assistants who translated those notes into computerized text, except the salary his grandfather paid them more than made up for their excruciating work.

  Swallowing his biting impatience, he talked Russ through his memories of that headline-making trip, when his grandfather had met his Cold War rival on his home ground for the first time and Alex had recorded with an eight-year-old's eye that slice of history.

  Finally, the marble-and-gilt Bruge clock on the mantel chimed Alex's release. With a watery squint at the beautiful timepiece, Russ capped his pen and closed his leatherbound, three-ring notebook.

  "Next week, Alex?"

  "I'll have someone call to confirm the time."

  Busy gathering his notes, the historian nodded. The echo of the chimes had barely faded before the butler appeared in answer to a silent buzzer.

  "Please escort Dr. Russ out, Evans. Then I have another matter for you to attend to."

  "Yes, sir."

  While he waited, Alex splashed a generous measure of the smuggled cognac into a snifter. He'd downed only a single fiery swallow by the time Evans returned.

  "Mrs. Seager's services are no longer required," he informed the butler. "I want her out of this house tomorrow. You can tell her I'll arrange for her wages and two months severance pay to be sent to her bank."

  Evans unbent enough to show a flicker of surprise. He was relatively new, hired after Katherine's death to supervise the staff here in Georgetown while Alex spent most of his time at Chestnut Hill.

  "May I tell Mrs. Seager why she's being dismissed, sir?"

  "You may tell her and the rest of the staff. I won't allow any discussion of my affairs with anyone, including Dr. Russ."

  Evans dipped his head in acknowledgment. His contract, too, included a clause requiring absolute discretion and an iron-clad agreement not to publish any personal memoirs of his service. Neither Alex nor his attorneys had considered the gag order unreasonable in view of the exorbitant wages paid to his employees.

  "Is there anything else, sir?"

  Alex had one more task that needed doing, but this one he'd take care of himself.

  "No."

  For long moments after the butler retreated, Alex remained still, his only movement the small swirl of his cognac against crystal. With a deliberate effort, he blanked his mind to his residual anger with the employee who'd betrayed him. He needed to think clearly, to decide how to handle the photographer who'd become more than just a dangerous annoyance.

  Chapter Eight

  Looking back, Jo could never quite pinpoint the exact moment she realized Alex had launched an all-out campaign to seduce her. He stepped up the heat in such subtle increments, slowly at first, then with such consummate skill, that she never noticed the transition from one level to the next. But she soon realized that he'd meant what he said in the limo after they'd left the White House. He wanted her. She discovered just how much at Chestnut Hill. It was perfect, that day. Like a series of clippings from a glossy magazine. Each sequence held its own particular pleasure. Even the fact that the inquiry still hung over her like a dark cloud couldn't destroy her enjoyment of the impossibly blue sky, glorious sunshine, and late September chill.

  By prior agreement, she met Alex at the heliport in Georgetown where he hangared his chopper. Her heart thumped at the sight of the machine parked on the ramp, then thumped again when she spotted its owner.

  She'd seen him in cloud-soft cashmere and white tie and tails, but never in jeans and a cable knit Irish fisherman's sweater that dipped to a V at the neck and emphasized his lithe build. He carried off the casual look, as he did all others, with a combination of inbred elegance and heart-stopping masculinity.

  Not exactly sure what one wore for a day at a country house, Jo had opted for sand-colored linen slacks paired with a cranberry sweater shell and matching cardigan. A patterned silk scarf caught her hair back at the nape. When she joined Alex, he smiled a welcome that melted her bones.

  "You're right on time. I like that in a woman."

  She decided to let that bit of chauvinism pass. "For once, the beltway was wide open."

  "Ready to go?"

  Was he kidding? Jo couldn't wait to get an inside look at his newest toy.

  "She's beautiful," she breathed as they crossed to the waiting helo.

  "Yes, she is."

  Alex's low murmur swung her head around. He didn't pretend to refer to the Sikorsky. A flush of pleasure heated Jo's skin, but she laughed it off.

  "I hope you don't mind if I poke around the cockpit a bit before we launch."

  "I expected you to do more than poke. I figured you'd strap yourself in."

  She wanted to. God, she wanted to! The aviator in her quivered with a greedy desire to find out how this baby handled. But she was Alex's guest on this trip, and it would be unpardonably rude.

  "It's okay." Laughter gleamed in his dark-ringed blue eyes. "Anticipating just such an eventuality, I brought some reading materials for the trip down. But on the way back..." His forefinger traced the line of her jaw. "You're all mine."

  "It's a deal," she tossed off, utterly charmed by his grasp of what made her tick.

  After shaking hands with the pilot, who introduced himself as Doug Brakemen, a former Navy helo driver, she climbed into the cockpit and promptly began to salivate. The S-76 came equipped with the latest high-tech instrumentation and enough advanced digital video displays to thrill any pilot. Like a kid in a candy store, she practically had to sit on her hands to keep from sampling the delights.

  Since Brakemen and the ground crew had already completed their preflight, it took only a few minutes to bring the Sikorsky to full revolutions per minute and perform a hover check to confirm available power. Jo soaked in every detail as the pilot reconfigured the lights, transponder, and radio to tower frequency, then taxied from the parking spot to the launch pad.

  Moments later, they were airborne. As soon as they'd cleared the metro area and picked up helo Route 1 along the Cabin John Parkway, Brakeman shot her a smile.

  "Mr. Taylor tells me you carry a current FAA certification as a helicopter pilot in addition to your military qualifications."

  Was there anything about her Alex hadn't uncovered in that background check?

  "Yes, I do."

  "Want to take over the controls?"

  "Does a cat have a tail?"

  "Okay, Captain, she's all yours."

  The next forty minutes passed in sheer, unadulterated bliss. The Sikorsky responded to Jo's lightest touch. Used to the rattle and roar of the Hueys, she marveled at its whisper-quiet and had to forcibly resist the urge to hotdog a bit to test its instruments.

  Hills ablaze with fall color rolled by beneath the wraparound Plexiglas cockpit. In the distance, the purple-smudged Shenandoah mountains poked toward the sky. Even the intermittent glimpses Jo caught of sleek Thoroughbreds grazing in the pastures and paddocks below failed to prick her bubble of enjoyment. She didn't plan to start any stampedes on this flight.

  To her joy, Brakeman had her take them in on final approach to Chestnut Hill. Busy with the controls, she gained only a fleeting impression of the sprawling stone house and scattered outbuildings. It's muted glory hit her only after they'd run through the engine shut-down procedures and she accompanied Alex up the brick walk to the house.

  It really was a farmhouse, she saw on a beat of delight. She'd expected something more grand, perhaps in the style of the turn-of-the-century mansion John Tyree Taylor owned south of Richmond that was reputed to rival the great castles of Europe.
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  This place looked as though it had started out as a home for a working family, and grown over the centuries into an amalgamation of character and comfort. Twin chimneys bracketed the central two-story structure, which was flanked on either side by single-story wings. Judging from the irregular line of its casement windows and mellowed yellow stone, Jo guessed the original house must have been constructed in the late 1700s.

  "1791," Alex confirmed. "The roof had caved in and rot had eaten through the wall timbers when my grandfather bought it, but he managed to restore most of the original structure."

  J. T. Taylor had also added the tiered brick patio and glassed-in pool at the rear of the house, Alex informed her, as well as the stables and the observatory.

  "Observatory?"

  "There, on that hill."

  Leaning close, he pointed over her shoulder. Distracted by his subtle aftershave and the warm breath on her cheek, Jo searched the screen of orange- and red-flamed trees for the little white-domed building a half mile distant.

  "My grandfather was an..." He stopped, correcting himself with a brief flicker of what could only be pain. "Is an avid astronomer. Unfortunately, his illness doesn't allow him to enjoy his hobby as much as he'd like to these days."

  Pity rippled through Jo. As the youngest of the West brood, she'd come along late in her parents' life and lost her grandparents to age and infirmity when she was still a young girl. Yet their loss had been buffered by her large, lively family. She could only imagine how painful it would be to watch your only living relative die... particularly after you'd gone through the same agony with your wife only a few years before.

  Impulsively, she slipped her hand into his. "I'd love to see the observatory, if we have time."

  "We'll make the time." His fingers curled around hers, warm and strong. "I wish you didn't have to be back by seven this evening."

  She was tempted to tell him then that she was still grounded and, consequently, didn't have to go into crew rest tonight. Hard-learned caution kept her silent. That and the stutter of her pulse when he lifted her hand and feathered a kiss across her knuckles.

  "We'll just have to wring the most from the hours we have," he said.

  "Wringing's good," she got out on a fluttery laugh. "Very good."

  "So is dining. Are you hungry?"

  "I'm getting there."

  "Would you like to freshen up first? There's a powder room on the first floor," he told her as he escorted her into a wide foyer. "Or you can use my wife's dressing room upstairs."

  The fact that he still referred to the dressing room that way caught Jo's interest. So did the portrait she glimpsed above the sideboard in the dining room.

  "Is that your wife?"

  His gaze shifted to the life-size portrait. The raven-haired beauty sat wreathed in off-the-shoulder white velvet, her gloved hands folded in her lap, her smile demure yet so teasing that Jo couldn't help but wonder what the joke was.

  "Yes, that's Katherine."

  The answer came so softly that Jo's chest contracted. She hesitated, unsure how much to intrude.

  "She looks as though she enjoyed life."

  Those intense blue eyes shuttered. For long moments, Jo wasn't sure he'd respond.

  "She did," he said at last. "This portrait always reminds me just how much."

  Shaking off his memories with an obvious effort, he gestured to a room filled with bright sunlight and overstuffed furniture upholstered in cheery yellow and blue chintz.

  "I'll wait for you here."

  Not for the world would Jo admit that it was curiosity spiked with just a touch of envy that made her choose the upstairs dressing room instead of the downstairs powder room. She couldn't be jealous of a dead woman. Couldn't envy her the emotion she still inspired in Alex. All she wanted was a peek at the upstairs.

  Yet when she walked through the open doors of the suite at the end of the hall, the eerie sense that Katherine still held her husband in thrall intensified a hundredfold. Goose bumps marched up and down Jo's arms.

  If the rest of the house was filled with color and sunlight, this room formed a stark contrast. Everything was white or silver, from the plush carpet to the satin duvet that covered the four-poster bed. A platinum silk gown and robe lay draped across the bed. Silver-topped jars and brushes were scattered with careless abandon on the vanity. The perfume of roses drifted to every corner of the room.

  Jo stopped in her tracks, her throat closing at the familiar scent. Turning, she traced it to a crystal vase occupying a low table. Long-stemmed roses filled the vase, at least two dozen, she'd guess, each one as soft as snow, as pale as tears.

  Alex must have them brought in every few days, she thought. For this room and for the bud vases in his limousines. Although Jo couldn't recall seeing any roses during her brief visit to the Georgetown house, she'd bet she'd find arrangements of the same long-stemmed white beauties there, as well.

  Stifling the urge to back out and retreat, Jo crossed to the bath. The idea of disturbing anything in this snowy mausoleum was unsettling, to say the least. Only after she'd used the lavatory and swiped the sink dry with a wad of tissues did the total lack of masculine touches in either the bedroom or the bath strike her.

  Either Katherine and Alex hadn't shared this suite, or he'd moved out after her death and turned it into a living memorial. Confused by the odd sensation in her chest, Jo made her way back downstairs.

  Her confusion dissipated over a long, lingering brunch served outside on the terrace. As soon as Alex seated her at the glass-topped table, Jo discovered she was ravenous. And not just for the Cheddar cheese and sherry soup, Waldorf salad, and chicken divan crepes that melted like butter in her mouth. Basking in the dappled sunlight filtering through brightly colored leaves, she scarfed up every sensory detail. The sparkling Champagne in tall-stemmed crystal flutes. The chug-chug of a hay mower in the distance. The swirls of black hair that peeked above the V of Alex's cable-knit sweater.

  She stored up the conversation as well, hoarding it as one would a small treasure to be taken out and smiled over on a rainy afternoon. Just like ordinary people, they talked about favorite movies, least favorite foods, and places they'd visited. Alex had jetted to more spots, perhaps, but Jo's never-to-be-forgotten two-week tour of duty at a rescue station north of the Arctic Circle qualified as the most exotic.

  They lingered over brunch until well into the afternoon and Alex made good on his promise to show her the observatory.

  "It's just a quarter mile through the woods. We can walk or take a golf cart, if you prefer."

  "I'd rather walk."

  "I thought that's what you'd say. Hang on, I'll find you a jacket. It gets chilly out of the sunshine."

  After a brief foray into the house, he returned with a suede jacket. It was butter soft, man-sized, and lined with a rich hunter green plaid. Ridiculously relieved that he hadn't offered her something of Katherine's, Jo wrapped herself in his suede and his scent.

  Side by side, they followed a winding path through thick stands of white-barked birch and towering elms. Fallen leaves crunched like popcorn under their feet. Gloriously painted leaves rustled overhead. Her hands pushed in the jacket pockets, Jo matched her stride to Alex's and breathed in the earthy scent of a fall not yet tainted by the damp decay of coming winter.

  The observatory was a tiny, time-warped gem, lined with cases displaying an avid enthusiast's collection of astronomical instruments from different ages. Alex pointed out a fifteenth-century astrolobe used by early sailors to calculate their position from the stars and an ancient Egyptian papyrus in a climate-controlled glass display box. Rolled in a crumbling leather carrying case, the scroll purportedly aligned the heavens around their ancient sun god, Ra, with astounding accuracy.

  "These pieces should be in the Smithsonian," he admitted, his voice echoing hollowly in the high-domed room. "Perhaps someday."

  After J. T. Taylor's death, Jo guessed. Unless his grandson decided to keep the observator
y as a memorial to his grandfather, as he'd kept his wife's room dedicated to her.

  Shrugging off the morbid thought, she ambled over to the huge brass telescope dominating the center of the circular room. Mounted on a dais that also contained a fixed armchair, the whole apparatus moved by means of a hand crank, swiveling a complete 360 degrees. Another crank extended the telescope's lens almost to the roof. At the same time, a series of pulleys slid back two of the dome's panels to reveal a slice of blue.

  At Alex's urging, Jo took the seat and stuck her eye to scope. A bubble of laughter escaped as he tried to convince her the commercial jet liner painting a contrail across the sky was really an alien space ship.

  The laughter got trapped halfway down her throat when she dismounted and found herself wedged between the chair and Alex. He stood so close she could see her reflection in those darkly intense eyes, see as well the faint traces of a five o'clock shadow on his strong jaw. Giving in to the urge that had gripped her since she'd first stared down at his face with eyes smarting from smoke, she lifted a finger to trace the indentation in his chin.

  "I've been wanting to do this since the first moment I met you," she admitted. "How the heck do you shave without cutting yourself?"

  His cheeks creased in a grin. "Very carefully."

  "I can imagine."

  What she couldn't have imagined was the jolt that coursed through her when he slid his arms around her waist, as naturally as if they belonged there.

  "I've been wanting to do this since the first moment I met you."

  The gleam in his eyes should have prepared her, not to mention the sudden pounding in her veins. Even with those warnings, Jo wasn't ready for her shock of pleasure when he bent and nipped at her throat. Each tiny bite, each scrape of his teeth and chin and cheeks started little fires under her skin.

  In startling contrast to her heated flesh, the hand he slipped under her cranberry sweater was cool and smooth. Sliding his palm around to the small of her back, he arched her into him.

  With a small thrill, she discovered he was rock hard. Alex allowed her a second, only a second, to register the feel of him before he claimed her mouth. With a hungry growl, he swept her into a river of want.