Part 34 (1/2)

There was no intoxicant in the world like Lyon Redmond.

He dropped her hand abruptly and bolted off, his heels kicking up little sprays of sand.

”Where are you-what are you-”

He pivoted and ran backward a few steps, eyes on the sky, and then stopped abruptly.

”Stay right where you are!” he commanded.

He stretched out his arm like a triumphant acrobat landing, and ceremoniously turned up his hand.

”Now look up, Liv. Look at my hand.”

She did.

And lo and behold, the bright orb of the moon was right there, nestled in his palm.

”Ohhh,” she breathed.

It was beautiful and perfect and magical.

And an illusion.

And then he wound his arm and pretended to bowl the moon to her, a la cricket.

She ducked, flinging her arms over her head.

He shook his head and sighed, gustily and funereally. ”We're going to have to work on your catching, Eversea, if you're ever going to be a decent wicket keeper.”

He dropped his arm, leaving the moon in the sky, and strode forward.

She laughed and scrambled to catch up to him, her bare feet sinking into the silken sand, and she found herself savoring every step, because every step brought her closer to him.

He remembered to stop to wait for her.

AH, CEILING, MY old friend, Lyon thought mordantly. We meet again.

He wondered if ceilings would always remind him of Olivia.

They'd silently gone their separate ways into separate chambers once in the house.

And he'd stripped out of his clothing and climbed into bed, and waited in vain for sleep, and it was just like old times.

He was a little older, perhaps a little wiser, infinitely more jaded. He'd been stabbed at and shot at, and he'd done a fair amount of stabbing and shooting. He'd ama.s.sed a fortune through a piquant blend of ruthless opportunism, lawlessness, and idealism, and he'd earned his sense of near invincibility, not to mention the calluses on his hands and on his heart.

And yet here he was, lying perfectly rigid, like a man attempting not to jar a grave wound. As uncertain and burning, burning, burning with untenable l.u.s.t as if he was a boy again who had just touched his first breast.

And all it had taken was a few moments in her arms.

He was darkly amused at himself, and at everything, really.

In some ways this suffering was truly operatic, the stuff of legends. Tragic, consuming, all the doomed and star-crossed lovers nonsense, etcetera. She was his Achilles' heel, his Chiron wound that would never heal.

On the other hand, surely nothing could be more mundane. For there would be no myths, no operas, no plays, no flash ballads, if men and women before the two of them hadn't performed this particular fruitless pas de deux over and over since the beginning of time.

He'd thought that he'd wanted to show her his house in Cadiz to prove to her how wrong she'd been. To show her what she could have had.

Now he knew it was because he simply wanted her to know that he was worthy of her. Which is all he'd ever wanted.

And she was right. He hadn't quite seen it before, but he had pushed her. He knew how precious her family was to her, especially since she could have lost her brothers in the war. She'd had enough uncertainty in her life. And yet he had demanded of her that they go forward into uncertainty, together.

He had simply thought love was enough.

He s.h.i.+fted restlessly in his bed.

He could have taken her tonight.

Her perhaps ought to have taken her tonight.

He could still take her tonight. She was lying only a few rooms away.

He knew how to use Olivia's own pa.s.sion and sensuality to get what he wanted.

But what then?

He had enough honor and breeding to not relish cuckolding a man like Landsdowne. Or to deflower a woman who was engaged to another man.

But when he peered beneath the veneer of that rationale he knew the truth: He might have survived being shot and stabbed.

But Olivia Eversea was still the razor who could slice his callused heart to ribbons.

She always had been.

He wondered if she always would be.

And G.o.d help him, he wasn't certain he was brave enough to live through that again.

So when he finally slept, he slept alone.

Chapter 19.

MORNING POURED THROUGH THE window, sea breeze scoured clean, the light so pure and brilliant everything in the room merged into a single soft glow, the walls, the windows, the curtains, the floors.

Everything apart from a gleaming jar of marmalade and the s.h.i.+ning handle of the knife protruding from it.

Lyon was sitting at the table, a small stack of fried bread on a plate next to him, steam rising from a cup next to his elbow.