to stay fit to keep my jobs.”
“And the jobs are so important to you?”
She gave him a look hard to interpret. “Verity West is my cover, like being a beach bum pilot was yours until you quit. I have to work hard at getting it right, but the life I lead for my cover is no less important to me than yours is to you.”
“Right. You lost the weight first. You were famous four years before you joined the Nighthawks, and you reveled in it!”
She didn’t blink at his knowledge of her life. “So you asked about me,” she said softly. “You found out about me after that day we passed each other in the hall at headquarters.”
He flushed. Had Anson told her about his attempted theft of her files, the suspensions he’d endured for refusing to drop what Anson called his obsession with her? Had she asked about him, or was the gnawing need for them to be together again only in his mind and heart? “Can you answer the question?”
“Fame was important once.” She swung her body around in another motion of unselfconscious confidence. So unlike the girl who hunched over to hide her breasts, walking with a shuffle, as if apologizing to the earth for being such an unwanted part of it. “I thought I’d feel better about myself, being accepted. But being chased and photographed by the press, or enduring endless speculations about my sex life—no, I don’t revel in it.” She shrugged. “I just wanted to be like everyone else.”
“Why?” To him, she’d always been a miracle, a true human in a world of wannabes. A girl who just loved him for what he was, in a town where everyone adored him in an awed manner as Cowinda’s sports star and valedictorian. In their anxious eyes, he was only as good as his next performance or exam result, his university entrance mark and the beautiful girl on his arm.
“Being normal has its merits, Tal.” She lunged down, her arms reaching out, fingers reaching to emptiness—but it didn’t seem to bother her, the emptiness. But she’d never had the emptiness inside, like him.
“Why are you here?” He had to end this farce, the pretense that they were still friends, soul mates—anything but the lovers he couldn’t stop aching for. “What does Anson want?”
“Are you sure you’re ready to hear it?”
He shrugged. “I know Anson. Always expect the unexpected.”
She scouted the area to be sure they were alone. Then she looked him in the eyes with her usual directness. “Here’s the deal. We have a whirlwind public courtship, then do a fake marriage ceremony in either Sydney or Cowinda within three days. Then we begin a European honeymoon where, under the cover of a happy couple, we investigate the activities of a black market arms dealer and an apparent houseguest wanted for murder.”
The world swung around him like her body in that Tai chi movement. Oh, man. Was this a twelve-year dream coming true or yet another king hit from life? Trying to reorient himself, he lifted his brows and sucked in a breath. “O-kay,” he said for the sake of saying something, vaguely proud of the fact that he hadn’t fallen over. Yet. “Why us?”
She gave him a resigned grin. “The tabloid stories Ginny sold. What else?”
He felt the flush creep up his neck. After he’d left her three years ago, Ginny had made a fortune by selling stories to TV, radio and the print media that her husband had taken the Iceberg’s virginity by a billabong. When the story grew cold, she’d added her belief that Mary-Anne was cold to all other men because she was still, and had always been, wildly, madly, deeply in love with Tal O’Rierdan—even when she was married to Gilbert West.
“But the stories are lies,” he argued.
“And no one knows that but you, me and Ginny,” she said quietly. “You and I won’t argue, and Ginny’s not likely to recant the story. Nick thinks we can use it to our advantage.”
He shook his head. “But it’s breaking all his you-can’t-know-your-fellow-operative rules—and it’s bloody dangerous for both of us. We know too much about each other—homes and families, our backgrounds, strengths and weaknesses. This is crazy. The mission had better be something right outside the box.”
“Um, you could say that.” She looked around the beach again, checked the path. When she spoke, it was low and urgent. “One of the Nighthawks is working with the arms dealer and his houseguest—an international criminal who’s out to destroy us. Operatives are dying or disappearing on the most basic missions. Some found alive were loaded with a chemical cocktail that left them with no memory of who they’ve been with or what they’d been doing. Top-secret information’s reaching the wrong people—stuff that could only come from a Nighthawk. It can’t be us, since you’ve been in hospital and here, and I was on the Blue Straits tour. Through a few loyalty tests, Nick’s narrowed the field down to three probabilities—Solomon, Angel and Jack.”
“I don’t know any of them,” he remarked, frowning.
“That’s why it has to be us. Neither of us has worked with them. They’re among the few who don’t know I’m a Nighthawk. If we go undercover to find the rogue, they won’t know who we are.”
Feeling as though she’d loaded him with some chemical cocktail that had robbed him of the ability to think, he rubbed his scar. “Why do we have to appear married? What’s the full deal?”
“Think about it. Verity West is the most famous iceberg since the one that sunk Titanic. ‘The woman so faithful to Gil West’s memory she lets no man touch her,’” she parroted, mimicking her press. “Taking a lover would bring on rumors and speculation that could blow my cover. But marrying my ‘first lover’ should be a reasonable marriage in the eyes of the world.”
“And?” he pressed, trying to focus on the mission rather than the old obsession with them finally becoming lovers—and the instinctive knowledge telling him they’d be lovers hotter and more eternal than the fires of hell, as infinitely beautiful and unforgettable as the gates of heaven.
“And anyone can check our supposed history. Ginny’s version of our hot little teenage affair is documented in a hundred places.” She shrugged, but the soft rose touching her cheek and throat told Tal that, if she didn’t want him now, she sure as hell had back then. Did she hate herself for loving him once or—yeah, right, O’Rierdan—was she hiding the fact that she wanted him still? “So we’re legitimate. Our marriage won’t be questioned, nor the fact that we’re hiding out for a honeymoon.”
“Bloody hell,” he muttered, just to fill the silence. For the sake of saying something because he could never say it, could never ask her… Will it be real, Mary-Anne? Will we be lovers, as we both wanted so badly to be, once? “I guess they’re right.”
She held herself tense for a moment before she relaxed. He could feel her palpable relief, but he didn’t know why. What had she been so afraid he’d ask her, or say? “The certificate looks so real it will pass any scrutiny. The registry will keep it on file for a month. The press won’t find the celebrant—Nick’s flying in some Nighthawk friend or relative. Not that we’ll ever know who she belongs to, or where she lives.” The ironic twist to her smile told him she found Anson’s never-know-your-fellow-operatives rule as frustrating as he always had.
“And after?” He watched her closely. “What happens after the mission? Taking a lover might destroy your cover—but so will the act of getting married again. Even if we make the breakup look realistic, it shoots your reputation to pieces.
