“No one can promise that,” Kyle said. “It’s a mean world out there.”
Laura shuddered. “You’re preaching to the choir.”
Kyle felt a sudden kick of guilt. “Hey, you look fantastic and you’re supposed to be having a good time. Let’s find you some champagne and mingle.”
On the terrace, they found a table stocked with champagne and canapes. Kyle handed Laura a glass and was loading a plate with crab puffs when Governor Haskel stepped out of the crowd and approached them.
“Hello, Governor,” Laura said with an ease and grace that Kyle found admirable. “It’s good to see you again.”
She introduced Kyle, and he shook the governor’s hand, noting the man looked tired and distracted.
“You’re looking radiant,” Haskel said to Laura. “Marriage must agree with you. And you, Foster, you’re a lucky man.”
“Yes, sir.”
“How are you feeling, Governor?” Laura asked. “Have you recovered from your injuries?”
Haskel’s shoulders slumped, and he shook his head. “The body heals, but the spirit—I don’t like living in a world where innocent people suffer and die at the hands of fanatics.”
Kyle lifted his champagne glass. “I’ll drink to that.”
“Do you think Senator Weston’s the man who can stop the terrorists?” Laura asked.
“If he can’t,” the governor said, “God help us all.”
An older woman called to him, and the governor said goodbye and joined her.
“Poor man,” Laura said. “He feels terrible about what’s happened in his state.”
“He’s one of the few who know about the D-5 and anthrax. Like the rest of us, he’s probably waiting for the other shoe to drop.”
Kyle spotted a Secret Service agent standing on the threshold of the French doors and scanning the crowd, his expression grim. When he located Kyle and Laura, he strode toward them.
“Dr. Foster?” the agent asked.
“Yes.”
“Will you come with me, please?”
“Something wrong?”
“Just follow me, please, sir. I’ll explain later.”
With alarm bells screaming in his brain, Kyle took Laura’s arm and trailed in the wake of the agent who cut through the crowd like an armored tank through a canebrake. They passed quickly through the gallery and then a side door that led to a butler’s pantry. There the agent turned to face them.
“What’s up?” Kyle demanded.
“Senator Weston said you could help, sir. We’ve found a bomb in the kitchen. It could blow any minute.”
Chapter Eleven
“We’re evacuating the residence and adjoining houses in a four-block radius,” the agent said. “The bomb squad’s on the way.”
Emotions swarmed at Kyle like a cloud of killer bees.
Anger at the terrorists.
Concern for Weston’s guests.
Fear of his own inadequacy in disarming the bomb, a terror so deep it brought a cold sweat to his forehead.
Love for Molly.
Love for Laura.
Laura. Just the thought of her gave him strength. He drew on discipline and experience, and calm settled around him like a cloaking fog, steadying his hands, steeling his purpose. Looking at Laura, he snapped to the agent, “Get her out of here.”
“No.” Panic sparked in her magnificent eyes, and she grasped his sleeve. “The bomb squad’s coming. Let them handle this. Come with me.”
With a rueful smile, he gently pried her fingers from his arm. “Go. The squad may not get here in time. I have to do this.”
Without a further word, she flung her arms around his neck and kissed him hard on the lips with a violence that almost knocked him over. “I love you,” he heard her whisper before she broke free. She ran from the room without a backward look before he could respond.
“This way, sir.” The agent held open the swinging door to the kitchen, and Kyle preceded him into the now-deserted room. His attention was drawn immediately to the open cabinet doors beneath the sink. A massive box with ominous blinking lights was attached to the drainpipe.
Kyle stripped off his jacket and began rolling up his sleeves. “Get me a screwdriver, some wirecutters and a flashlight.”
The agent took off at a run.
Concentrating on the task at hand to maintain his composure, Kyle eased to a cross-legged position on the floor and studied the bomb. “This has Black Order written all over it,” he muttered. His voice echoed eerily in the empty room.
He leaned forward, and with precise and careful movements, slowly peeled back a piece of duct tape. Beneath the sticky residue the digits on the timer blinked like a countdown to eternity.
Six minutes and counting.
For an instant, his calm slipped and his hands trembled when he realized that so much tape covered the box, it might take him longer than six minutes to expose the detonator. His next discovery made his blood run cold. He shivered involuntarily and cursed in the silence.
The duct tape enveloped enough C-4 explosive to take down a city block.
Footsteps sounded behind him, and someone thrust tools into his hands. “I’ll hold the flashlight for you, sir,” the returning agent said.
Kyle turned to the agent with the young and eager face, just like Buzz Williams’s had been. In vivid flashback, Kyle’s mind replayed the horror of his former partner’s last moments when the bomb he’d been deactivating at the Hollywood Bowl exploded prematurely.
“No need,” Kyle said gruffly. “Just set the light on a chair so it illuminates the bomb and get the hell out of here.”
The agent squatted beside him and held the flashlight steady. “You may need help.”
“I can handle it. You didn’t sign on for this.”
“With all due respect, sir, neither did you.”
Kyle paused from carefully peeling away the duct tape and glanced at the young man at his side. His demeanor was calm, his hands steady, but Kyle could read the fear in his gray eyes.
Kyle nodded in grim acceptance. “Cut the sir crap. Call me Kyle.”
“Yes, si—, Kyle. I’m Jason.”
“Okay, Jason, keep the light steady.”
“You’ve done this before?”
“Not this particular kind of bomb—”
Jason groaned. “Please, tell me you can do this.”
“I’m trained in bomb disposal,” he assured the young agent with more confidence than he felt, and thrust the awful memories of Buzz’s final moments from his mind. “I know what I’m doing.”
Beside him, Jason grinned. “Good thing one of us does, anyway.”
With slow, deliberate movements that made the muscles in his shoulders scream with pain, Kyle continued to strip away tape. He had to expose the wires leading from the timer to the detonator and cut them before the C-4 blew.
Four minutes.
Sweat poured into his eyes and stuck his shirt to his skin. He wanted to hurry, but he had to proceed carefully. One false move, release the wrong strip of securing tape, and the bomb could drop from the drainpipe. That impact could short-circuit the timer and blow him, Jason and a sizable chunk of Georgetown to kingdom come.
He could hear Jason’s tortured breathing beside him, matching his own, but the beam of the flashlight never wavered.
Two minutes.
“I’m in,” Kyle said with a whoosh of relief. “Now all I have to do is clip the wire. Hand me the cutters.”
Jason passed him the tool. “How do you know which one to cut?”
“They’re color-coded.”
“That’s good.”
“Yeah,” Kyle said with a grimace. “Unless the bastards purposely switched the wires to throw us off.”
“What are you going to do?” The hitch of fear in Jason’s voice was impossible to miss.
One minute.
Kyle pointed to the innards of the bomb. “I’m going to cut that wire and pray. It’s been nice knowing you, Jason.”
For a fleeting instant, he conjured an image of Laura, blue eyes shining, black hair dancing in the wind, and an alluring smile upon her eminently kissable lips. Her parting declaration of love echoed in his mind.
Then with a steady hand and a sinking heart, Kyle snipped the lead to the detonator.
A FEW MILES AWAY and a half hour later, Laura paced the aisle of the church where the party-goers and Weston’s neighbors had gathered after the evacuation. The crowd had thinned as Weston’s guests had been picked up by their limousines, but the church was still packed, some people in evening clothes, others in pajamas and hastily donned robes and slippers.
In the narthex, surrounded by a shouting mob of reporters and the blinding glare of television cameras, Weston was issuing a statement to the media. Newsmen and -women elbowed one another for an opportunity to fling their questions at the senator, who answered with the cool aplomb of a politician accustomed to the media barrage.
Grouped on the pews in the sanctuary, evacuees talked softly among themselves, ashen and shaken at being rousted from their homes. Red Cross workers moved among them, dispensing coffee, soft drinks, doughnuts and consolation. Laura, however, couldn’t sit still. As she paced, she listened, constantly braced for the rumble of the explosion, the concussion of a blast that she recalled from her own horrible experience would be felt even this far away.
She had faith in Kyle’s expertise, but she also knew the Black Order’s treachery. Her father hadn’t survived their bomb. She could only pray fervently that Kyle would. Terrified as she had been of another explosion, she’d wanted to stay with him, even if remaining meant they’d die together. Weeks before, she’d lost her father, the only family she’d had. Then Kyle had entered her life, and, to her surprise, she’d learned to love again, despite her grief, despite the scars Curt had left on her heart and her ego.
She groaned inwardly, remembering how tightly she’d clung to Kyle at the senator’s place. She should never had told him she loved him before she raced from the house. Maybe he’d forget her brashness in the chaos that followed. Otherwise, living with him and pretending she’d never admitted her feelings was going to be awkward, uncomfortable. But, oh dear God, she hoped she’d have that chance.
He isn’t going to die, she promised herself.
But she was going to lose him anyway. Even if he outwitted the terrorist bomb, once the Black Order had been apprehended, Kyle would walk out of her life forever. And take Molly with him.
Molly! How could she ever explain to that adorable child if anything happened to her daddy?
That traumatic thought quickened her steps until her pacing became frenetic. A firm hand on her elbow dragged her to a halt.
“Mrs. Foster.”
She turned to find Senator Weston, his handsome face etched with concern, his eyes sympathetic, standing in the aisle.
“Have you heard something?” she begged. “Is Kyle all right?”
He shook his head sadly. “No news. The bomb squad arrived. They’re sweeping the house. It could be a long night. I’ve asked my driver to take you back to your hotel.”
“But—”
“You’ll be more comfortable there.” Ross Weston’s expression was kind but firm. “And I’m sure Dr. Foster will want to return there to rest as soon as this ordeal is over.”
She started to protest again, but realized the senator was right. She allowed him to steer her through the throng of reporters, still tossing questions at him, and into the luxurious limo. His cadre of Secret Service agents hovered in the background, alert and on guard.
“Don’t worry,” he assured her. “I’m sure everything will turn out fine.”
“Thank you.” Her eyes teared with emotion that the senator exhibited so much concern for her welfare, when he was the terrorists’ target.
She leaned back in the seat as the car pulled away from the church, away from the neighborhood where Kyle remained face-to-face with a Black Order bomb. The senator’s optimism had been kind but misguided. She had witnessed firsthand the thoroughness of the terrorists’ hatred, the devastation of their rage. She closed her eyes and prayed for a miracle.
HOURS LATER, on the sofa in the hotel suite, stripped of her party dress and wrapped in a warm robe, Laura sat glued to the local news channel. Television cameras had not been allowed near Senator Weston’s house, but with telephoto and night-vision lenses, they telecast fuzzy shots of the mansion surrounded by police cars, members of the bomb squad coming and going and the cumbersome bomb-disposal truck.
No sign of Kyle.
“The search continues for terrorist bombs in the Georgetown home of Senator Ross Weston,” the anchorwoman’s flawless voice droned over the live shots. “Apparently, with Senator Weston far ahead in the polls for next month’s presidential election, the terrorists are taking exception to his tough antiterrorism platform. Tonight’s bombing effort is seen as a direct strike against Weston’s stance, possibly even an attempt to kill the senator before the election. As a result, the entire capital is on a high state of alert….”
Laura scanned the blurred green images until her eyes ached. All she wanted was one glimpse of Kyle to assure her he was all right.
While she watched, she bargained with herself. If Kyle survived this bombing attempt, she would place herself on her best behavior. She’d play the part of Mrs. Kyle Foster as convincingly as she could, but she’d remember to hold her heart in check, her emotions in reserve. She wouldn’t embarrass him again as she had by flinging herself at him in the senator’s butler’s pantry with pronouncements of love. And she’d protect her own heart from being smashed to smithereens, so that when Kyle and Molly walked out of her life forever, she wouldn’t shed a tear.
Repeating her silent mantra, she stared at the television and prayed for a glimpse of Kyle. The next thing she knew, dim light filtered through the open draperies, the dawn sky above the Potomac had turned a soft pink and someone was shaking her shoulder.
Still groggy from sleep, she looked up into a pair of deep sea-green eyes smiling down at her. Joy and relief cascaded through her, scouring away every earlier promise of self-control and self-denial she had affirmed so vehemently before falling asleep. Nothing else mattered now. Not her pride, not visions of her lonely future. All that mattered was that Kyle was alive, whole and well.
And she loved him.
“Kyle!” She bolted upright, straight into his arms.
He pulled her against him and buried his face in her hair. “God, it’s been a hell of a night.”
She pulled back and scanned his face, etched with fine lines of fatigue. “You okay?”
“I am now.”
Recalling too late her recent vow to keep her distance, she started to pull away, but he hugged her tighter.
“I wasn’t afraid, Laura.” His lips moved against her ear. “I thought I would be, especially after what happened to Buzz. But the whole time I was disarming that damn contraption, all I could think of was you and Molly. I wasn’t going to let the Black Order’s bomb keep me from you.”
He was delirious, she told herself. Drunk with fatigue, strung out from tension. He couldn’t mean what he was saying. And if she gave in to her impulses now, she’d be sure to regret it. The prospect of leaving him was already hard enough, but if she caved in to his hallucinations and made love with him, their ultimate parting would be all the more painful.
She placed her hands against the broad expanse of his chest and pushed away. He released her slightly, enough to peer down into her eyes, but held her fast in his embrace.
“You’re exhausted,” she said. “You need a hot shower and a long rest.”
“Eventually.” His eyes were like green smoke. “But right now, what I need is you.”
Discouraging him was one of the hardest things she’d ever had to do. Her heart, every nerve in her body screamed in protest.
“It isn’t me you want,” she insisted with a casualness she didn’t feel. “Your body simply need
s a release from the stress you’ve been through.”
Her words must have shocked him, because he dropped his arms from around her, and she almost stumbled at his release. With a savage jerk, he stripped off his tuxedo jacket and tossed it across a chair.
“Is that what you really think?” His deep, rich voice was sharp-edged with anger. “That I’d use you as a quickie stress-buster?”
She swallowed hard. He was more handsome than ever when angry. She wanted him to love her. To make love to her. But when—if—that ever happened, she wanted it to be for real, not the result of battle fatigue.
“I think you’re an honorable man.” She damned the quiver of emotion in her voice and tried to steady her tone. “Right now you believe you want me, but you’ve been up all night, risking your life. How can you be certain your desire isn’t just post-traumatic stress, your body telling your head you need physical relief?”
He smiled, a slow and easy upturn of his lips that turned her knees to Jell-O. “Because I’ve wanted you since you walked into the bar last night looking like a knockout in that blue dress.”
She held her head high. “Wanting and loving are two different things. I don’t believe in casual sex.”
“Neither do I.”
With a sharp intake of breath, she tried to calm her whirling senses. “What are you saying?”
He moved toward her again and wrapped her in a gentle embrace. “That I love you, Mrs. Foster.” His eyebrows lifted with his wicked grin. “And, if I remember your words from last night correctly, you love me.”
His strong, capable hands, moving in mesmerizing circles on her back, made it hard for her to think, and his words had knocked what little air was left from her lungs.
“You love me?”
“More every day. I didn’t realize how much until I faced that bomb and the fact that I might never see you again.”
He lowered his lips and barely brushed hers, sending a shower of sparks along her nerves, detonating a tremor of need, making her long for more.
Threading his fingers through her hair, he tilted her face until their gazes locked. “Tell me you don’t love me, Laura. Tell me you don’t want me as much as I want you, and I’ll let you go. I’ll walk into that bathroom, take a shower and walk out as if nothing’s happened, and we’ll go back to our charade, our pretend marriage.”
Licensed to Marry Page 15
