by Kay Hooper
“So. To what do I owe the honor of your presence on this sunny afternoon?” she asked.
Lucas sat down on the couch and looked at her, trying to see past those serene turquoise eyes. What was she thinking? Feeling? When he finally spoke, it wasn’t in answer to her question. “When did you take up hang gliding?”
“When I got tired of skydiving.”
He felt his teeth gritting again and fought to relax taut muscles. But his voice was nonetheless sharp. “And before that it was mountain climbing. And before that what? You were a stunt pilot, you raced cars in Europe, you went on some bloody dangerous safari in Africa and were nearly killed—”
One delicate brow rose, but there was no inflection of surprise in her casual voice. “You’ve been reading the supermarket rags.”
He ignored that, mostly because it was true. “What is it with you, Kyle? A death wish?”
“A life wish, more like.” She smiled a little.
Lucas felt another jolt. Her answer was just what he had replied years before when a friend asked why he risked his life as an undercover cop. But that was a long time ago. Now he was the chief investigator for a string of companies and corporations that spanned the globe. And there was a certain amount of danger in that from time to time. But he never risked his life recklessly. Kyle did.
She was still smiling. “You know, Luc, I’ve been wrong all these years. I thought when you walked out on me, you’d forget me in a week. But it seems you didn’t. You’ve been feeling guilty, haven’t you? Why? Did you think I’d developed some kind of complex, that I’ve been trying all these years to kill myself because of you?”
Lucas started to deny that but found he couldn’t. It had crossed his mind more than once, because she’d gotten even wilder after … But by leaving her he had stopped at least one of her insanely reckless games. All he could manage to say, though, was, “You were very young.”
She looked squarely at him, her serenely beautiful face unchanged by the passing of a decade. “Oh, I see. You were worried that you’d seduced an innocent kid.” Something flickered briefly in her eyes and then was gone. “Want me to ease your conscience?”
“Dammit, Kyle!”
Her mouth twisted wryly. “Sorry. Low blow. I think I was entitled to that, though, don’t you?”
After a taut pause he relaxed suddenly and smiled. It was over. Past. So play it her way, he thought. Play it light. Pretend it hadn’t mattered. “You’re entitled to more than that. What took you so long?”
“Ah. So you came up here expecting to be drawn and quartered? Not my style, I’m afraid. If I remember, I had a violent tantrum, cried for all of an hour, then called home and asked my father to have you killed.” Her voice was light, dryly mocking, as if she hadn’t cared.
“You’ve never had a tantrum in your life,” he murmured.
“No,” she agreed. “Mother wouldn’t allow them. So undignified.”
“I’m still alive,” he offered, wondering if an irate father had asked Josh Long, “Is that why I should send her to Europe?”
“Hit men are expensive, especially to gratify wounded vanity.”
Somewhat to his surprise Lucas found that old frustration could return as easily as all the other old feelings; beneath her flip response he could find nothing. What had she felt? “Kyle—”
“You don’t want the truth, Luc,” she said abruptly.
“Yes, I do.” He was firm.
“Punishing me or yourself?”
He was surprised, rattled. Did she know what he had done for her? No. No, he had made certain she wouldn’t know. There was only one thing she could know, and there was no hint of that knowledge in her face. “Why would I want to punish you?”
She didn’t answer. “Look, it was ten years ago. We were different people then. Now, I know you didn’t hike up the mountain just to rake up old memories after all this time. So why are you here?”
Given little choice in the matter, he reluctantly let it drop. For now. He pushed his own pain, his old feelings of confusion and uncertainty out of his mind and into the locked room where they had lived in darkness for ten years.
“I need your help, Kyle.”
She looked mildly surprised. “Oh? With what?”
“There’s a house—an estate, really—I need access to it socially. I need to be inside at least overnight, preferably for a weekend. It’s Martin Rome’s estate.”
After a moment and in a completely expressionless voice she said, “Ten years ago I got involved with a young man who was supposedly a student at my college. Storybook stuff. I was swept right off my feet. And then he was gone. Really gone. According to the records, he never attended that college, and I could never find out anything at all about him. Now, ten years later, he appears in my life again and asks that I get him into the home of one of the wealthiest people in the country.”
Lucas said nothing.
Kyle nodded, as though she’d expected silence. “So I have to wonder, Luc. I have to wonder why you want access to that home. And I have to wonder why in hell you think I’d help you to get it.”
Lucas studied her, weighing the thought, wondering himself. Remembering a seventeen-year-old college freshman with a reckless smile; remembering a twenty-seven-year-old woman with a ten-year history of wildness hanging from a glider.
He wasn’t reckless very often, but he decided then to take a chance. On her.
Lucas reached for his wallet and extracted a business card, handing it to her.
Kyle studied it for a moment, then looked at him. “Chief Investigator, Long Enterprises. Assuming I believe this, Luc, Joshua Long could get you into Rome’s house just as easily as I could. So why won’t he?”
He held her gaze steadily with his own. “He would. But it wouldn’t do me any good. Because Josh is known to have … interests in stopping criminal activities. Luckily, being an investigator keeps me out of the limelight; we’ve taken care that my name’s never been linked publicly with the company or Josh. If he or any friend or employee of his were to approach Rome, there wouldn’t be a scrap of evidence to be found.”
“Evidence of what?”
“Illegally acquired artwork. Artwork bought from criminals for the price of a shipment of guns, also illegally acquired. We believe he has the art hidden—probably in a vault—somewhere in his house.”
“We?”
Lucas hesitated.
Dryly she said, “I never knew who you were, Luc, and I certainly don’t know you ten years later. So if you want my help, you’ll have to tell me the whole story, or you might as well hike back down the mountain.”
After a moment he nodded. “All right. I’m working temporarily for a government agency.”
“Which one? FBI?” There was neither belief nor disbelief in her voice, only mild interest.
Lucas shook his head slightly. “No. This agency isn’t listed in the Yellow or the White Pages. For all I know, it doesn’t even have a name, official or otherwise. It’s headed by a man who calls himself Hagen; that’s probably not his real name. He spins webs like some damned poisonous spider—well, never mind. The point is, I’m working for him temporarily. I have to find that stolen art, or at least get enough evidence to indict Rome. And I have to go into his house socially; his estate employees are thoroughly screened.”
“Wouldn’t your background stand up to that?” she asked in an idle tone.
His blue gaze hardened, but he went on as if she hadn’t spoken. After all, he could hardly blame her. “Normally Hagen would have a pristine background and impeccable references manufactured for a case like this, but there hasn’t been time for it.”
“Who came up with my name?”
“Hagen. He managed somehow to get hold of a guest list for a weekend bash Rome’s throwing in two weeks. Your name was on it.”
“Did he know you and I had … had met before?”
Lucas hesitated, then nodded. “He knew. I don’t pretend to know how; Hagen doesn’t give u
p his secrets or his methods. In any case, he picked you because of our past association and because you are the only single woman on the list. He figures you could bring a date without raising eyebrows.”
“It would raise Martin’s eyebrows,” she said.
For an instant, a heartbeat, Lucas felt a dizzying sense of déjà vu. He was cold inside. It couldn’t be happening again; she couldn’t be involved in this.… He didn’t want to have to make that kind of choice. Not again. Then the hard-won self-control of years kicked in, and he was calm. “You don’t have an official connection with Rome,” he said coolly. “No engagement, no attention by the press. An affair the society-press watchdogs haven’t sniffed out?”
Kyle looked at him for a moment, expressionless, then said, “Nothing so definite. Let’s just say that Martin doesn’t give up easily, and has two strong beliefs. First, in the power of his own charms, and second in the reliability of erosion from water dropping on stone.”
Lucas felt relieved and hoped it didn’t show. “I see. So he’d be surprised if you showed up with another man. But not terribly surprised?”
“A defensive move on my part, you mean? It’s not my style, but he doesn’t know that. He’d buy it if I turned up for his party with a buffer, I suppose.”
They were silent for long moments, both sipping coffee, neither willing to ask or answer the flat question that had brought him up here to her mountain retreat.
Finally Kyle spoke. “It’s a nice little story, Luc. Is that your real name, by the way?”
“Yes.” He kept his voice even. “Lucas Kendrick.”
She lifted an eyebrow briefly. “It was Lucas Kendall before, wasn’t it? Well, never mind. A nice story. Lots of intrigue. Mysterious government agencies and agents, stolen art, wealthy criminals.”
He had earned that disbelief, he supposed. “Look, do you trust Josh Long’s word?”
“My father does. I’ve never met the man.”
“Josh will vouch for me. And Hagen and the agency. I didn’t want to involve him in this, but I don’t seem to have a choice. Get in touch with him, Kyle, before you make a decision.”
“I will.” Her voice was flat with certainty; obviously she wasn’t about to trust him blindly. Not this time.
Kyle stood by the window and stared out as moonlight painted the stark shapes of mountain scenery. It was dark in the loft, and she had moved with cat-footed softness to the window seat where she often sat. Lucas was sleeping on her couch and the cabin was silent.
She sat down on the cushioned seat and drew her legs up, hugging her knees as she looked out blindly.
Josh Long had vouched for Lucas instantly when she’d called, telling her with utter conviction that she could trust Luc and that he was indeed working for a man named Hagen who ran a secretive—and secret—government agency. He did have to get into Martin Rome’s house, because the man was suspected of possessing stolen artwork purchased from criminals and paid for with illegal guns.
Kyle didn’t doubt Long’s word, and his faith in Lucas had been expressed too firmly to be in doubt, which left her with a great many disturbing questions.
Josh Long was no fool, and she knew from her father that he rarely erred in his judgment of men. Lucas had worked for him for “a number of years,” and there was clear respect on both sides of that relationship. It was a vote of confidence that would instantly open doors in almost all social or business circles.
But it didn’t—it couldn’t—open Kyle’s door.
She had closed down, put her feelings in a deep freeze, almost the moment she had looked down from her soaring glider and seen the sunlight glinting off his silvery hair. Even at that distance, his features indistinguishable, she had known it was he. And in that first flashing instant she also had known that she had been waiting for him to come back.
It shocked her.
For the first time in her life Kyle had cause to be thankful for a cold, distant mother who had taught her, if nothing else, to keep her emotions buried beneath a serene surface. Her mother would have been proud of her, she thought now with a pang of bitterness. When her feet had touched solid earth and she’d turned to Lucas, she had obeyed neither of the conflicting emotional reactions battling inside her.
She hadn’t lashed out at him in bitterness, and she hadn’t thrown herself into his arms.
Kyle closed her eyes and leaned her head against cool glass, allowing herself to remember, trying to understand what she felt now and what she had felt then.
Ten years ago he hadn’t seemed much older than she, although he was supposed to have been a senior. She judged him to be in his mid to late thirties now, so she realized he had been older then than he’d pretended to be. Older and charming and heartbreakingly handsome with classical features and blue eyes that were more striking than any she’d ever seen …
She opened her eyes after a moment and caught the silver chain at her throat with one finger, drawing the plain oval locket from its resting place between her breasts. A flick of her thumbnail opened the locket, and inside was revealed only a single polished stone. It was an opal she’d found in Australia five years ago. An opal that was blue with tiny flecks of yellow.
Like his eyes.
The moonlight streaming through the window picked out only the yellow flecks in the stone, causing them to gleam brilliantly but with no color, and Kyle absently rubbed the stone with her thumb before closing the locket and allowing it to slip back inside her silk pajama top.
Darkness and moonlight obscured colors, she thought. Time was supposed to obscure memories.
Ten years had changed him. He was broader across the shoulders, physically more powerful. His face was leaner, something under the surface of those classical features harder now, tougher. His voice was still low and curiously compelling, but there was, she thought, a shade of remoteness in it that hadn’t been present a decade before.
Or maybe that was just when he talked to her.
What had he been then? she wondered now, as she had wondered since. And why had he pretended? Why had he masqueraded as a college student? And why, after a night of searing passion when she had given herself to him without reservation, had he vanished while she slept?
Without even leaving a note …
After the first agony had turned to numbness, Kyle had reached for any reason at all to excuse his behavior. He would have had a reason, she had decided, a good reason. And that had helped the hurt.
She wondered now, with the same shock as when she’d seen him this afternoon, if she had always really believed in the back of her mind and the deepest part of her heart that he would come back to her someday.
It was a strange shock, a frightening shock, and Kyle shook away the feeling for a second time. Ridiculous, of course.
She had been different then. Escaping to a large college from the cloying protection of her wealthy family, she had been wild with the reckless need to distance herself from the essentially cold, dignified, and unemotional aspects of her upbringing All her emotions had been dammed by a wall of forced reserve, and when that wall had burst, she had nearly drowned in the floodwaters of release.
Did a woman ever really forget her first lover? Kyle knew only that she would never forget hers—because he was Lucas, and because he had been a part of that glorious period of freedom. She had loved him the way only a woman-child could love a man, with a reckless abandon that scorned possible hurt.
All her caged romanticism had burst forth in that long-ago flood during her first year of college. She had loaded her schedule with poetry and literature and history, and had memorized every great love poem history boasted. Madly idealistic, she had adopted one cause after another, throwing herself into each with boundless enthusiasm.
And she had fallen in love.
Now, from a distance of ten years, Kyle realized that loving Lucas had been a part of that freedom but not caused by it. She had been ripe for love, but what she had felt for him had not been born of mindless rebell
ion. It had never occurred to her then or since that he might not have won the approval of her family. She had given him all the pent-up affection and passions of her life, and he had responded. He had loved her in return. She had believed that.
Then.
She hadn’t experienced that kind of freedom again. The skydiving, mountain climbing, hang gliding—none of it had been any more than a series of gestures. Outwardly reckless but with no burning fire of resentment and glorious release blazing behind it, she had been searching for something she could feel deeply about.
For the better part of ten years, she realized with a distant jolt, she had been going through the motions of rebellion and feeling … nothing. Except empty searching.
She could remember vividly the months of college and the weeks with Lucas. Remember feelings so vast, so powerful, that they had overwhelmed her.
And at the end the aching bewilderment of desertion that had, as the days turned into weeks, frozen her inside. With no explanation offered to her, she had made up various excuses for him, and that had kept a girl’s love safely stored intact somewhere inside her. But he was gone; he had vanished from her life without leaving a trace. So she had obeyed her father’s request a few weeks later and left college after a year, going to Europe and the finishing school her family thought proper. Years in limbo. And then a second rebellion, this one outward, while she’d remained frozen inside.
Kyle stared out at the peaceful mountains. Why? Why? If only she’d known what had been behind Lucas’s actions then, perhaps, she could put it all in the past where it belonged. But she had never known, and even then the scope of his deception had bewildered her. He pretended he attended the university; he had a room on campus; he participated in activities. Why? What had been behind all that?
She had wanted desperately to ask him outright. She needed to know what had been more important to him than their feelings for each other. But it had been ten years, and somehow she couldn’t bring herself to ask.
