Sarah's Surprise Part 13

"Ready for anything. If you're involved." He kissed her with an intensity that bordered on desperation, and his sweet wildness ignited the heat that always simmered between them.

When he stopped she looked at him groggily, her mouth feeling deliclousty hot and swollen, her body flushed with expectation. "We better take care of the orchid treatment first," she whispered. "Otherwise I'm sure well forget."

He tilted his head toward the hearth rug. "Here, as usual?"

"Yes."

She hurried to the kitchen and blended the concoction. He had removed his sweater by the time she returned. Standing very still in front of the firelight, he was backlit in a way that made her think of an exquisite statuea"a visual feast designed to arouse women during some primitive dance of fertility. Without a word he sat down on the rug; she knelt, facing him, and set the bowl of liquid to one side.

Sara dipped her fingers into the mixture and gently touched his face, stroking the worry lines on his brow as well as the scars. He sat silently, his blue eyes watching her the whole time that she smoothed her hands over his face and torso.

Sara reveled in the restrained pa.s.sion they shared. She leaned forward and brushed her lips across his, then moved around behind him. His back muscles flexed and relaxed under her fingers, and she remembered how they had flexed at other times, when his whole body was moving and her hands were urging the motion.

Sara finished rubbing the orchid bath into his scars. Slowly she trailed her fingertips down his spine and languidly drew circles in the small of his back. "Done," she whispered. "Just sit still and let it dry for a minute."

He laughed hoa.r.s.ely. "You touch me until all I can think about is making love to you, and then you tell me not to move. This is torture."

She knelt beside him and deftly unfastened his jeans. The breath shuddered in his throat as she uncovered him. "I'll try to make your torture easier to bear," Sara murmured, and began by kissing the hot, smooth skin low on his belly.

"Sara," he said, filling her name with a s.h.i.+vering mixture of encouragement and control. Then, less than a minute later, "I can't take any more, sweetheart. Come here."

There was an anguished, starving sound in his voice that made her ache to soothe him, to sweetly fill him with love. Sara took his hands. "Come with me."

She led him to her suite and they undressed each other quickly. Once they were in the shower Sara caressed and held him while the warm water cascaded over them. She trembled at the raw need in his body and was caught in his strange torment.

He jerked her close under the spray, his hands parting her, sliding wet into her most feminine secrets, building her pleasure to such a fever that she sagged against him and held tightly to his shoulders.

"Believe, believe," he said against her mouth, before his tongue swept inside to command her.

"Whatever you want. I do believe you." She answered his anguish, not the puzzling words.

Kyle grasped the backs of her thighs and lifted her against his fiercely aroused body. Then he pressed her to the tiled wall and entered her in such a slow, wickedly gyrating way that she was pulsing inside before he had hardly begun to love her. The hot water coursed down their bodies, making her nipples slide through the patterns of his chest hair, being tickled and scrubbed.

Sara gasped and cried out, and as water skimmed her lips he sank his tongue inside again. She wrapped her arms around his neck and gloried in the powerful arching of his body, the fierce possession of his hands holding her legs around his hips, the tender care he gave her with his mouth.

But as he called her name she sensed again that urgency, the melancholy that she'd never heard before. Frightened, Sara held him tightly as his warmth filled her. He trembled violently with release and continued to hold her hard against the shower wall.

"What's wrong?" she begged.

"Shh." Gradually he set her down, feathering kisses across her face as he did. Sara flicked the shower controls, and the water stopped, leaving a silence punctuated by the savage rasps of her and Kyle's breath. She gazed up at him anxiously.

"Whatever it is, tell me. Are youa you aren't having second thoughts about us, are you? Just say so."

He cupped her face in both hands. "Sara, no, no. My G.o.d, how could you think that?"

"You've closed yourself off from me. I don't know what to think. And you're upset about something."

He nodded. "We need to talk." He glanced down at their flushed, naked bodies. "With fewer distractions." He didn't say anything else while they dried each other off and slipped into their robes. Then he swept her into his arms and carried her to bed, where he sat down, cross-legged, in the intimate circle of light from the small lamp on her nightstand. He held her on his lap and looked down at her with troubled eyes.

"I have to leave tomorrow, on business," he told her. "I shouldn't be gone for more than two or three days."

Sara gazed at him in amazement. "Is that all that's worrying you? Of course, I wish you didn't have to go, buta""

"I want you to know about my work." He paused, frowning. "For years I had to be so d.a.m.ned expert at telling lies, or half lies, or simply misleading people by leaving out considerable portions of the truth. Audubon encouraged his agents to have a certain dramatic flair. In other words, coming up with good disguises and good con jobs was part of my job."

She felt the blood leaving her face. "Since then you've been pretty bored running an import-export business, I suppose. I've been wondering how you could be happy in an ordinary business. But whata""

"Shh. I'm getting to the what," he told her. "Deception made my work so much easier. But then, somewhere along the way, I realized that it had taken over more than Just my work. That's what happened to Jeopard too. He created a character that had very little humanity. It scared the h.e.l.l out of the people he had to deal with, which was exactly what he wanted it to do. But eventually he became that character. Thank G.o.d, now he's fallen in love with a woman who sees the man he used to be. He's going to get married, maybe even have children. I don't know if she can change him completely, but she's made a good start."

"Have you lied to me about something?" Sara asked, her throat tight. "Is that what you're saying?"

He nodded. "And you don't know how much I regret the lie." He grasped her hand. "Jeopard and I don't have an import-export business down in Ft. Lauder-dale. I guess you'd call us private investigators."

"You guess? What kind of cases do you take?"

"Hmmm. Jeopard's fiancee, Tess Gallatin, was one of our cases. You remember what I told you about hera" that she's a princess?"

Sara nodded blankly. "Cherokee Indian on her father's side, and her mother was the queen of Kara. Scandinavian. How could I forget a strange story like that?"

"Tess didn't know that she had a royal background. She didn't know who her real mother was until Jeopard and I investigated her case. Actually, we were hired by someone in Kara to find out if Tess was hiding a rare blue diamond that had been stolen from the queen. Jeopard was supposed to get close to her and determine whether or not she had the diamond."

"And obviously he did."

"Yeah. But she was no thief. The diamond was a legacy from the mother she'd never met. We helped her discover her background and claim her t.i.tle as a princess."

Sara held his gaze angrily. "That sounds like honorable work. Why didn't you just tell me the truth about it?"

"Because I thought you'd trust me less if you knew that I was an investigator. That you'd think that I still had ties to Audubon's groupa"that he'd sent me to check up on you."

Sara couldn't deny his intuition. "You were right." she muttered. Then she searched his eyes and asked bluntly, "Do you still have ties to the group?"

Tension filled the silence. His gaze became hard, as if he were steeling himself for her reaction. "Yes." When she stiffened he put both arms around her, the embrace like a capture. He was astute, Sara thought, because at the moment she felt like moving away from him.

"What kind of ties?" she asked coolly.

"You don't just walk away from a career with Audubon. If one of your old cases is reopened, you can be called back to duty, at least temporarily. And that's what happened to me. I have to go to Virginia to meet with Audubon."

She hugged herself and tried to fight the knot of dread growing in her stomach. "Is it about me?"

"Yes."

Sara made a soft sound of horror and covered her face. He whispered her name sadly and tried to pull her head to his shoulder, but she began to struggle, furious. "You invaded my home and now you're going to inform on me!"

"There's nothing to tell about you! Don't you understand?" He grabbed her shoulders and shook her gently. "Audubon has found out that I'm with you, and he just wants to know whya"and what I've learned. All I'm going to tell him is the truth, that you're studying the medicinal uses of exotic plants."

"And that I have a baby daughter who was conceived in Surador!"

"Yes. I've told you already, no one is interested in Noelle!"

"Will you tell Audubon that you and I are lovers?"

"Yes."

Stunned, she stared at him. Then, between gritted teeth, she whispered, "Be sure to describe the details. How I moved, how my body felt, what I said in your eara""

"Stop it!" His eyes glittered with torment that matched her own. "Sure, I'll tell him that we're lovers. I'll tell him that we love each other. I'll tell him that I want to marry you and be a father to your daughter, and that all the three of us want is to be left alone!"

"The government will never leave me alone! They want something from me!"

"We're not talking about the government, Sara. We're talking about Audubon. He's free-lance. Don't be stubborn and foolish. You've got nothing to be afraid of. Not Audubon. Not me."

"You planned to get information on me right from the first."

"No. I came here as a friend, I swear. h.e.l.l, Sara, I came here because I couldn't get you out of my mind. I had to prove to myself that I ought to forget you, because you'd never want to get involved with me and my scars. I thought that once I knew that there was no hope, I could go on with my life. Thank G.o.d, I was wronga"you need me as much as I need you. I won't let anything ruin things for us now."

She glared at him through tear-filled eyes. "If your brother adopted a professional persona that was cold and cruel, what persona did you take?"

His jaw flexed; he eyed her with both despair and frustration. "I'm trying to be as honest with you as I can. I'll tell you more as time goes on. You can trust me."

"I don't even know you." She braced her hands against his chest and tried to push herself away. For a second his grip tightened on her arms, but when she began to struggle he let her go. She scooted away and crouched on the foot of the bed, feeling like an animal protecting its den.

"I think I understand your disguise," she said, her voice low and broken. "Jeopard tricks people by making them fear him; you trick people by making them trust you."

He inhaled softly. "Yes. I'm good at it too. When it's necessary, I can make friends with the deadliest s...o...b..s you've ever imagined. Then I use that friends.h.i.+p to put them away, to keep them from hurting innocent people. I'm a little ashamed of how good I am at the con jobs, but I'm not ashamed of what I've accomplished because of it. I've never tried to con the people I love."

"Don't go see Audubon. Tell him to take a flying leap."

"I can't, Sara. Despite what you think, his motivations are good. Inside your mind you're carrying the know-how to create a herbicide so powerful that a tea-spoonful would wipe out most of the greenery in this state. It's his job to keep track of you. And when one of his former agents is living with you, it's his job to ask for an explanation. Look, why would I tell you all of this if it weren't true? Why would I risk your distrust?"

"Because you're worried that I'd find out the truth about you anyway."

His shoulders slumped. "How much do you really want to trust me? There's something inside you that I don't understand, something that you seem to be holding back. I think this is a good excuse for you to put me at arm's length because you're hiding something else."

She trembled violently. She'd thought that she and Noelle were so safe. Sara reminded herself that Kyle hadn't deceived her more than she was still deceiving him. But you're doing it for his own good. Think how the truth would hurt not only Noelle, but him. Sara turned away from him and huddled on the end of the bed, staring fixedly at the floor. "You'll be leaving for Virginia in the morning, to see Audubon?"

"Yes. Sara, Ia""

"I think you ought to sleep in the guest room tonight."

His voice came back graveled with anger and sorrow. "I don't want to leave you alone with your morbid fears and suspicions."

"When you're gone I won't have anything to fear." The obscenity that came from his mouth had a wounded sound that tore at her. "There's one other thing to consider," she said desperately. "If you leave the keep, I'll make certain that you never get back in. So, don't leave."

She heard him stand up. Slowly she turned her head to look at him. His eyes were cold, his face an angry mask made cruel by the scars. "I'll get back in," he told her. "Count on it." He let his gaze flicker over her for a second. "I'll get back in."

He left the room, closing the door behind him with a slow, confident motion of his hand, and she felt as if he had just made her his prisoner.

Chapter Ten.

Confused and exhausted from a sleepless night, Sara dressed in a sweater and pink overalls, combed her hair neatly, and hid her emotions. She waited for Kyle in the kitchen at dawn, with a pot of coffee made. He walked in brusquely, dropped his big leather tote bag on the floor, gazed at her with troubled, searching eyes, and then said, "Well?" as if he were expecting her judgment, guilty or innocent.

"I keep thinking that Noelle trusted you at first sight."

"And?"

"Maybe I should have faith in her opinion. I don't know."

Sara noted that his eyes were ringed with shadows and he had nicked his chin shaving. His golden hair was rumpled. His jogging shoes were sloppily laced. He'd already put on his blue down jacket over his jeans and white sweater, and the jacket collar was haphazardly turned under on one side.

He didn't look like a sophisticated, conniving super-agent. He looked very human and very much in need of a hug. She groaned inwardly with frustration. Perhaps it was an act. Perhaps. No. She couldn't tell. Yes. Maybe.

Finally, her head felt as if it would burst with indecision. All she could do was stare at his jacket and luggage with a sinking heart. "You're leaving right now?"

"The sooner I go, the sooner I'll get it over with, the sooner I can come back here and try to convince you that I'm not your enemy."

"All right." From the kitchen table she got a plastic bag filled with orchid blossoms. "Would you like them? There's enough for two days. You really shouldn't miss a day using them. Even if you don't have a blender you can crush them up in a gla.s.s of milk."

A muscle Hexed in his jaw. His eyes softened, but only a little. "Thank you." She handed him the bag and stepped back. He laid it carefully on his tote.

"Would you like a cup of coffee before you go?"

"No."

"I know that my coffee tastes a little like a bad lab experiment, buta""

"I don't think we'll solve anything by drawing out the good-byes, Sara. Do you trust me any more than you did last night?"

Wretched, she looked at him. "I honestly don't know. I don't know what to believe."

"Honest." He made the word sound unsavory.

"Would you like to say good-bye to Noelle?"

"I already have. She was asleep. I even told Daisy good-bye." He grunted with dismay and almost sounded amused. "I don't think Daisy heard me. She was snoring too loud."

Sara stuck her hands in her side pockets and clenched them. "So you're all set. I'll walk you to the door."

"You'd better ride down to the gate with me." He dug the remote control from a jacket pocket. "Don't you want this back? Don't want me to have easy access, do you?"

"Why not? Do you enjoy using your Tarzan act to get over the garden walls? I thought I'd let you use the gate next time."

"I wanted to give you a sporting chance to make good on your threat to keep me out."