Yeah, as if you’re gonna get that anytime soon, when she refuses to even recognize you. Face facts, McCall, she was slummin’ with you ten years ago, and she ain’t gonna contaminate herself or her precious son with any down boy again.
The garden outside the house filled the place with the scent of blood roses and ferns, touches of jasmine and gardenia, earth and work and woman. This was a modest, lovely home, with a hint of an untamed heart in the rolling hills surrounding the property. Even the old, moss-covered craters of long-dead tiny volcanoes that dotted the whole northern island seemed to fit the deep-hidden, slumbering fire of the woman who lived here.
The rustic beauty of her home suited the picture Delia had told him she wanted one long-ago night—“A pretty little cottage I can do up myself, with a rose garden. My own house I can take care of myself, away from all the people and servants and fuss.” Her eyes had glowed with a young girl’s simple dreams.
For her wants to be so meager had seemed strange to the point of alien to the half-wild gang-kid from the docks of L.A. Her upbringing, her homes, everything about her was as lofty as a high-ranking Brazilian diplomat’s daughter could be—and she deserved every care and luxury. Things he could never have given her back then, and still couldn’t now. He could give a woman comfort, but never first class. He’d never be rich.
But they were things she obviously still didn’t want. She’d made her simple dream come true.
A blip alerted him before he saw it. A vision passed by the window a moment later, ethereal, ghostlike in her simple white sheath nightgown, barefoot. Silhouetted by the soft light of the glowing coals in the open fireplace, her nightgown became translucent satin, and her golden body and small, high breasts were in sweet shadow…and he ached like hell, watching her. Like a siren, she was there one moment, taking his breath with her otherworldly loveliness, and gone the next.
He’d frozen in midcount, dragging in a breath. Incandescent loveliness in the tender moonlight pouring through the window. The quiet, unsmiling waif returned to her milieu. Delia.
Get a grip, McCall! He willed his hormones to subside, but he found himself watching, waiting for her to pass the window once more. Then, his body aching and pounding inside those fire-scorched chains of the wanting he couldn’t conquer after a decade, he left the perimeter. Blowing out a mist-heated breath of frustrated need, he headed to the doubtful comfort of his bedroll, damp from the rain leaking into his motorbike’s pack. The closest to a cold shower he’d get, but standing naked in a glacier wouldn’t do a thing to douse the fire burning him alive.
From behind that triple-locked door, behind the peephole, the woman who still felt like a ghost inside her own life after years of hiding sagged against the wall, and breathed again. Beth passed an unsteady hand across her forehead. Why, why had she looked? Why, when she knew she’d only lose herself in the sight of him?
Twice now, he’d done the impossible to her. Last time, she’d loved him in minutes; now, within a day, despite all she knew about him, McCall had gone from her deepest terror to her dark sentinel, fascinating her with all a child’s fear of the night—a night he walked in with ease and grace, as if he belonged to it, or the night belonged to him. Even a prosaic task, such as opening his bedroll, took on a life of its own.
For some reason a line of poetry danced through her mind, slightly corrupted: He walks in beauty like the night.
Fool. She sighed and returned to her bed. When it came to McCall, a fool was all she’d ever been.
And though the thicker wool of her cushioned bed enfolded her more closely than the thin pallet McCall had rolled himself into, she found no comfort, no rest or release from heated midnight dreams, lush as black silk and just as terrifying.
Her peaceful life here in New Zealand with her son was over. Out of the shadows and into the fire—a fire that would burn her baby alive. All her plots and strategies, all her sacrifices were worth nothing if Falcone got to Danny. And if he got to her—
She shuddered. McCall might suspect, or think he knew, but he couldn’t prove a thing. She held the only proofs, just as she held Falcone’s life in her hands. A dual-edged sword meaning death, and so Falcone had kept his search low-key, discreet. But if he got her, she knew exactly what Falcone would do—what he’d wanted to do for the past twelve years, since she’d reached the age of consent at sixteen. And he’d take back his son.
It wasn’t happening to Danny. Her little boy would live and grow and play in peace, become a man like his grandfather, and his honorary grandfathers, and if she had to sacrifice her life for that to occur, so be it.
Her sleepless eyes watched dawn break over the tiny harbor across the road, knowing that McCall was doing the same, laying aside his wildness like a folded cloak and slipping into the persona of humanity he shed with the fall of night.
She rubbed her eyes. She definitely needed more sleep if she was indulging in dawn fancies, turning McCall into a creature of the twilight. He wasn’t after her blood to keep himself alive. He was just a man, about to betray her and her little boy the same way he’d betrayed his country, and for the same reason.
Money. It was as cold and as crude as that.
McCall pushed open the door of her studio and walked in. He didn’t question it, didn’t wonder if he should keep watching from across the road, as he had all morning. It had nothing to do with the afternoon rain drenching him. The coolness soaking him through was refreshing after hours of his body aching from superheated dreams, waking and sleeping: dreams of slipping that wraithlike sheath from her pearlescent skin, and burning alive with her in the inferno their loving would create.
No, the ache had grown unbearable, and he accepted the simple fact. He needed to see her, talk to her to ease it. As simple and as damn complicated as that.
“Good afternoon, Elizabeth Silver.” He had to keep playing the game until she gave him a sign, let him into her world, and hand over the evidence he knew in his gut was here somewhere.
But she barely nodded at him. No politeness today, no sword-thrust to his verbal parries—and he could now see what watching her from across the road didn’t show. Her mouth drooped as she worked; her hands were barely steady enough to mold the clay. The defenses she’d erected against him yesterday had come crashing down—for now. “Did you get any sleep last night?”
Or had she stayed behind that window, as caught by him as he was by her? The young Delia hadn’t been able to keep her eyes…or hands…from him for long, and whispered between drugging kisses that thoughts of him kept her awake at night.
A no-sleep op was okay for him. Even if he hadn’t been SEAL trained, he could get by on two or three fifteen-minute snatches of shut-eye through the night, as he’d done for most of his life. But the stress on her pale face was delicately obvious. Her tiredness made her lovelier than ever, as wraithlike as that slip of silk she’d worn in the night and as haunting, even in her prosaic jeans and woolen jumper outfit.
“Did you sleep?” Her soft, cool voice was gravel in her sleepless state, hitting him hard and low and fast with a jolt of hot need. “A sleeping bag on the grass can’t be comfortable.” Her eyebrow lifted, the challenge seeming stronger for its quiet femininity. “You do realize that stalking me by day and watching me at night, sleeping outside my house, does nothing to reassure me that you’re a member of the teddy bear’s picnic?”
She had a point. He made himself shrug, thinking fast. “I’ve run out of money?”
Her
