by Nora Roberts
“You want me to tell you how his mind works? I can’t.” Fighting for the control to speak calmly, Luke turned away. On the table were three pewter cups and colored balls. He began to work the old routine as he continued. “I can offer an educated guess. If he turned you in, and you didn’t manage to beat the rap, all he’d have was the satisfaction of seeing you in prison. With the Nouvelle reputation and celebrity, you’d very likely get a lot of press, maybe a movie-of-the-week.” She snorted, but he didn’t even glance over. His hands were moving faster, faster. “What he wanted was to see you miserable. And me the most miserable of all. He’d known for a long time. Months at least.”
“How? We’ve never had a whiff of suspicion in our direction. How did some two-bit politician figure it all out?”
“Through me.” Luke’s hands faltered. He stepped back, flexed his fingers, then began again. “He set Cobb on me.”
“Who?”
“Cobb. The guy my mother was living with when I took off.” He looked at Roxanne then, his expression carefully blank. “The guy who got off beating me until I passed out. Or locking me up, or cuffing me to the pipes in the bathroom. The one who sold me for twenty bucks to a drunken pervert.”
Her face went white and stiff. What he was saying was horrid enough, but hearing it recited in that flat, empty voice froze her blood. “Luke.” She would have reached out, but the steel only rattled against the teeth of the vise. “Luke, let me go.”
“Not until you hear it. Hear all of it.” He picked up a cup again, vaguely surprised to see the faint outline of his fingers against the pewter where he’d squeezed. So the shame was still there, he realized. And it would always be there, like the slight distortion on the carved pewter. “That night—do you remember that night in the rain, Rox? You’d told me about that four-eyed son of a bitch manhandling you. I went crazy because I knew what it was like—to be forced. And I couldn’t stand the idea of you . . . of anyone hurting you that way. Then I was holding you. And I kissed you. I tried not to, but I wanted you so bad. I wanted everything about you. And for just a minute, one incredible minute, I thought maybe it would be all right.”
“It was all right,” she whispered. It felt as though the vise was around her heart, squeezing, squeezing. “It was wonderful.”
“Then I saw him.” Luke set the cups down again. There was a time for illusion, and a time for truth. “He walked right by us, and he looked at me. I knew it wasn’t all right. It might never be. So I sent you away, and went after him.”
“What—” She bit her lip, remembering how drunk Luke had been when he’d come home that night. “You didn’t . . .”
“Kill him?” He tossed his head up and the smile on his face chilled her. “It would have been simpler all around if I had. What was I, twenty-two, twenty-three? Christ, I might as well have been twelve again, that’s how much he scared me. He wanted money—so I gave him money.”
She felt a quick twist of relief. “You paid him? Why?”
“So he’d keep what he knew to himself. So he wouldn’t go to the press and tell them I’d sold myself.”
“But you didn’t—”
“What difference did it make what the truth was? I’d been sold. I’d been used. I was ashamed.” He looked over again, but his eyes were no longer blank. The swirl of emotion in them battered her heart. “I still am.”
“You did nothing.”
“I was a victim. Sometimes that’s enough.” He shrugged it away, but the gesture was jerky. “So I paid him. Whenever he’d send me a postcard, I sent back the amount he’d written on it. When you moved in with me, I always made sure I got the mail. Just in case.”
Sympathy dried up into shock. “Wait a minute. Just a minute. You’re saying he was still blackmailing you after we were together? All that time, and you didn’t tell me?” Pure reflex had her kicking out in his direction. “You didn’t trust me enough to share that with me?”
“Goddammit! I was ashamed, ashamed of what had happened to me, ashamed that I didn’t have the balls to tell him to get fucked. I was terrified he’d get tired of yanking my chain and make good on his threat to tell the press that Max had—” He broke off, swearing. He hadn’t meant to go quite that far.
Both the shame and the anger clenched in his gut as he waited.
31
Roxanne drew in a long, quiet breath. She was afraid she knew, very much afraid she knew what was coming next. But she had to be sure. “That Max had what, Luke?”
All right, he thought, he’d give her all. There’d be no more question of trust. “That Max had used me sexually.”
The angry flush died away until her face was pale as glass. But her eyes glittered, dark as a storm, and as dangerous. “He would have said that? He would have lied that way about you and Daddy?”
“I don’t know. I couldn’t take the chance, so I paid. And by paying I set myself up for worse.”
She closed her eyes. “What could be worse?”
“I said Wyatt set Cobb on me, and Wyatt was calling the shots. I didn’t know it, though I should have figured that Cobb wasn’t smart enough to pull off something as smooth as the blackmail scam. Whenever they raised the ante, I paid. No questions. That didn’t sit well with Wyatt. So he did a little more digging to figure out how I managed to pay upwards of a hundred thousand a year without whining.”
“A hundred—” Even the thought choked her.
“I’d have paid twice as much to keep you.” When she looked up at him again, he realized that was only half the answer. “And to keep you from seeing I’d been a coward. That someone had forged a chain I couldn’t wiggle free from.” He turned away and spoke slowly. “I’d been used. I never knew whether Cobb’s client got his money’s worth out of me, but I’d been used just the same.”
“I knew. I told you I’d always known.”
“You didn’t know what it did to me. Inside. The scars on my back.” He shrugged and turned back. “Hell, they’re like the tattoo, Roxy. Just a reminder of where I’d come from. But I didn’t want you to see past them. I wanted to be invincible for you—for me. It was pride, and Christ knows I paid for it.”
She sat quietly now. The cuffs on her wrists were a transient restraint, easily opened with a key. The chains on Luke’s pride were made of sterner stuff. “Do you really believe it would have changed anything I felt for you?”
“It changed what I felt about me. Wyatt understood that. He used it. And because he was studying every move I made, he saw the pattern. He had months to work out the setup. I guess that’s why it was so fucking smooth.”
She was no longer struggling, no longer angry. She was simply numb. “He knew you were coming that night.”
“He knew. He was waiting for me in his office. He had a gun. I figured he’d kill me and that would be that. Sam didn’t want that to be that. He offered me a brandy. The coldhearted bastard offered me a drink, and he told me what he knew. He painted some pictures of what it would be like if you and Max were sent to prison. He knew Max wasn’t so stable, and he taunted me about a lot of things.” His mouth grimmed. “I was feeling sick. I guess I thought it was the situation, but it was the brandy.”
“He’d drugged you? God.”
“While I was sitting there, trying to calculate the odds, Cobb came in. That’s when I learned about their partnership. Rox, he told Cobb to pour himself a drink. And then . . . then he killed him. He pointed the gun, he pulled the trigger and he killed him.”
“He—” She shut her eyes again, but her vision was clear. She’d begun to see perfectly. “He was going to let you take the fall for murder.”
“It was perfect. I passed out, and when I came to, he was holding a different gun.” Steadier than he’d expected to be, Luke sat on the bench and lit a cigar as he told her the rest.
“So, I left. I disappeared,” he finished. “And I spent five years trying to forget you. And failing miserably. I went all over the world, Rox. Asia, South America, Ireland. I tried drink
ing myself to death, but I never did like the aftermath of a good drunk. I tried work. I tried women.” He slanted her a look. “They worked some better than the bottle.”
“I bet.”
The chilly annoyance in her tone cheered him. “About six months ago, a couple of things happened. I found out about Max’s condition. You’d done a pretty good job of keeping that under wraps.”
“My personal life is mine. I don’t discuss it with the press.”
He studied the tip of his cigar. “I guess that’s why I never read anything about Nate.”
“I don’t share my child with the public.”
“Our child,” he corrected, looking back at her. He let that simmer while he continued. “The other thing I found out was that Wyatt was running for the Senate in the coming election. Maybe I got jaded over the last five years, Rox. Maybe I just got smart. But I started to think, and I started to wonder. And I started to plan. Running into Jake was handy. Up till then I’d been living on what I could make as the Phantom. I couldn’t touch my Swiss accounts because I didn’t have the numbers, and there was no way to get them.” He grinned. “Until Jake. He went to work on it, and life got easier. Money smooths the way, Rox. And it’s going to get me what I want.”
“Which is?”
“Besides you.” He tapped out his cigar. “Let’s call it justice. Our old friend is going to pay.”
“This isn’t just about the stone, is it?”
“No. I want it, for Max, but no. I’ve got a way to get him. It’s taken me a long time to work it out, and I need you to make it work. Are you still with me?”
“He stole five years from me. Took away my son’s father. And you have to ask?”
He grinned, leaning over to kiss her, but she turned her head away. “I want to ask you something, Callahan, so back off.”
He eased back an inch. “This far enough?”
“Are you here because I’m a necessary part of the plan?”
“What you are, Roxanne, is necessary.” He slipped off the table and turned to run his hands up her outer thighs. “Vital.” Because her head was still turned away, he contented himself with nibbling on her earlobe. “I told you there were other women.”
“I’m hardly surprised,” she said, her voice dry as the Sahara.
“But I didn’t tell you that they were poor, pale illusions. Smoke and mirrors, Rox. There was never one day when I didn’t want you.” He slid his hands to her waist, coaxing her face toward his by running kisses along her jaw. “I’ve loved you as long as I can remember.”
He could feel her softening, warming as he slipped his hands under the sweatshirt to skim fingers along her ribs. “When I left, it was for you. Coming back was for you. There’s nothing you can say, nothing you can do that would make me leave you again.”
His thumbs just brushed the undersides of her breasts. “I’ll kill you if you try this time, Callahan.” Desperate, she turned her mouth to his. “I swear it. I won’t let you make me love you again unless I’m sure you’re staying.”
“You never stopped loving me.” The excitement was building, unbearably. He cupped her breasts, using his thumbs to tease the nipples into aching points. “Say it.”
“I wanted to.” Her head fell back with a moan as he pressed his lips to her neck. “I wanted to stop.”
“Say the magic words,” he demanded again.
“I love you.” She would have wept, but the sob turned to a gasp. “Damn you, I’ve always loved you. I never stopped. Now unlock these stupid cuffs.”
“Maybe.” He tugged on her hair until her eyes opened and locked on his. The expression on his face had a thrill of panicked excitement ripping up her spine. “Maybe later.”
And his mouth came down on hers, smothering any protest and turning shock into churning arousal.
It had gone so quickly the first time, all flash and fire and need. He wanted to do more than savor now. He wanted to take her step by trembling step, inch by aching inch toward madness. And he wanted to shock her, stun her, so that this moment when all the secrets were revealed would be seared into her mind, never to be forgotten.
He skimmed his tongue up the long line of her throat while his hands traced over her, lazily possessive. “If you don’t like it, I’ll stop,” he murmured, nipping at her lips. “Should I stop?”
“I don’t know.” How could he expect her to think rationally when her head was reeling? “How much time do I have to make up my mind?”
“I’ll give you plenty of time.”
The marvelous truth was she had no mind, no will, no reason. If this was a matter of power, then she was totally in his. And glorying in it. She would never have believed that helplessness could be erotic. The knowledge that her body was his, utterly, touched off little fires in her blood that burned like a drug. She wanted to be taken, exploited for their mutual pleasure, and in this single private moment, conquered.
A long, throaty moan vibrated from her when he tore her shirt down the center. She braced for the onslaught, craved it, but his hands, his mouth, were torturously gentle.
Sensation crashed into emotion, each rising dangerously. Each time, every time she strained toward that final, airless peak, he pulled her back, leaving her gasping and crazed.
It was stunning to watch her, to see everything she felt reflected on her face, to feel every thrill that rocked her body, to hear her murmur his name again and again as the pleasure swamped her.
Her power was all the more potent because she was too dazed to realize she held it. Her surrender made him as much her prisoner as she was his—the completeness of it, and the fearlessness. That she would melt for him made him feel strong as a god, and humble as a beggar.
Slowly, he slid the loose pants down her hips, exploring each newly exposed inch of flesh, pleasuring her with teeth and tongue and clever fingertips until she shuddered violently over the first peak.
“I love you, Roxanne.” He pressed her back against the bench. “Always you,” he murmured as the hands he’d freed came tight around him. “Only you.”
He filled, she surrounded. And they took each other.
It annoyed him that she wouldn’t let him spend his nights with her, nor would she spend hers with him. He needed more than the intimacy of sex. He needed to be able to turn to her in the night, to watch her wake in the morning.
But she stood firm, and kept her reasons to herself.
She no longer put any restrictions on his visits to the house on Chartres. There were reasons for that as well. It hurt them all that Max had slipped away again, and each day he was hospitalized for tests was unbearably long. Roxanne knew that having Luke around boosted morale—her own included. And she wanted to give Nate a chance to know him as a man before the boy had to accept him as a father.
Rational or not, any decision she made on allowing Luke back into her life would be focused on her son. Their son.
They worked together. As one week passed into two the act they’d created between them grew slick and flashy. They crafted their job at the auction as meticulously. Roxanne had to admit Luke had entwined all the details as craftily as the Chinese Linking Rings. She was suitably impressed with the first of the forged pieces that arrived from the source he’d commissioned in Bogotá.
“Nice work,” she’d told him, deliberately downplaying the craftsmanship in the tiered diamond and ruby necklace. She’d stood at the mirror in his bedroom, draping it around her own neck. “A bit ornate for my taste, of course, but quite good. What did it cost us?”
She was naked, as was he. Luke had tucked his arms behind his head as he’d stretched on the bed and watched her in the glow of the lowering sun. “Five thousand.”
“Five.” Her brows rose as her practical nature absorbed that shock. “That’s very steep.”
“The man’s an artist.” He grinned as she frowned and toyed with the faux stones. “The real one’s worth upwards of a hundred and fifty, Rox. We’ll cover our overhead nicely.”
&nb
sp; “I suppose.” She had to admit, to herself anyway, that without testing equipment she would have been fooled. Not only did the stones look genuine but the setting was deceptively antique. “When can we expect the rest?”
“In time.”
In time, she thought now as she carried two bags of groceries into the kitchen. It was beginning to irk her that Luke continued to be vague. He was testing her, she decided and dumped the bags on the counter. She didn’t care for it.
“You got eggs in those bags?” LeClerc demanded, glowering.
She winced, grateful her back was to him, then shrugged. “So, make an omelette.”
“Make an omelette, make an omelette. Always the smart talk. Get—out of my kitchen.” He waved her off. “I got supper to make for an army.”
Which meant only one thing. “Luke’s here?”
“You surprised?” He snorted and began to take groceries out of the bag. “Everybody’s always here. You call this a ripe melon?” Accusation in every cell, LeClerc held out a cantaloupe.
“How the hell am I supposed to know if it’s ripe?” Marketing never put her in a sunny mood. “They all look the same.”
“How many times I tell you, smell, listen.” He tapped the melon, holding it close to his ear. “Still green.”
Roxanne planted her hands on her hips. “Why do you always send me out for fruits and vegetables then complain about what I bring home?”
“You got to learn, don’t you?”
Roxanne thought about that a moment. “No.” Turning on her heel, she marched out, muttering. The man was never satisfied. Here she’d gone straight from rehearsal to the market, and he didn’t even say thanks.
And she hated cantaloupe.
She would have stalked straight upstairs if she hadn’t heard the voices from the parlor. Luke’s voice. Nate’s belly giggles. Moving quietly, she walked to the door and looked in.
They were on the floor together, dark heads bent close, knees brushing. Toys were scattered on the rug, a testament to what her men had been doing while she slaved over melons. Now, Luke was patiently explaining some little pocket trick he’d brought along. The Vanishing Pen, if Roxanne wasn’t mistaken. Amused, she leaned against the doorway and watched father attempting to teach son.
