Part 11 (2/2)

”I love it.” She turned to him and saw the antic.i.p.ation she felt mirrored in his eyes. It was the perfect romantic hideaway. They both knew it.

He touched her arm.

”Geoff, I can't,” she said, her voice throaty and low. Longing welled inside her as she shook her head. She couldn't, but she wanted to, she wanted to.

”Yes, I know.”

The whispered words were harsh with disappointment. They totally surprised her. Did he know? Did he finally understand her conflict? His touch was gone, with no more pressure than a breath of air. It could have been a warm breeze caressing her skin, except that a breeze would never have brought her such a keen sense of loss. Be my lover, she thought.

Unable to suppress the longing, she searched his face, perhaps for some kind of rea.s.surance that he might want more than a repeat of the past, more than just one night of s.e.x. She searched her own memory. What kind of man was he? she asked herself. She was as drawn to his harsh beauty now as she had been the night she met him, a mysterious drifter cruising through town.

She knew in her heart that Geoff Dias could never be part of her life. He was too wild and primitive to be the man of her dreams. She could never live the life he'd chosen, and she was sure he could never adjust to hers. What kind of husband could he possibly be, what kind of father? She knew nothing about him really, except that he could be perverse and pa.s.sionate and was addicted to fast motorcycles. So why was she standing here, gazing at him, longing for him?

”What is it?” he asked her. ”You're looking at me like a kid with her nose pressed to a store window.”

”I can't help myself ... I want to be with you.”

His reaction brought her a quiver of guilty pleasure. He looked confused, thunderstruck. His hand was unsteady as he touched her face.

”Randy?”

”It's true,” she said, closing her eyes for a second, nuzzling against the warmth of his fingers. ”I'm an engaged woman whose fiance is missing. I should be thinking about Hugh, nothing but Hugh. But I'm not doing that, Geoff. I'm thinking about other things, bad things, us ... together.”

He said her name again, softly.

She turned away from him and stared out the window, needing to get the rest of it out. ”The wanting is terrible. It's a knife inside me, cutting me to pieces. My willpower is gone, my sense of right and wrong. I hardly have anything left holding me together. It's ripping away at everything I thought was important.”

She hesitated, shuddering, and took a breath. ”It's killing me, this wanting. But I can't give in to it, Geoff, I can't.”

”Randy, for G.o.d's sake!” He turned her around, staring at her, disbelieving.

She swayed with the power he gave off, craving the strength of his hands on her shoulder, loving the firmness of his grip as he anch.o.r.ed her in place. She wanted to fall into his arms so badly. It would be so easy, so thrilling to give in to him.

”I can't do it,” she insisted, her voice grainy, aching. ”I'm engaged to another man. And even if I wasn't, you don't want the things I want. You don't even want me, except for just one night. I can't do that.”

”Why? Because you'd be betraying Hugh, a man you don't even love?”

”I'd be betraying myself. Don't you understand that? Don't you see how important this is to me? I want to be something more than I was. I have to be.”

”Why, Randy? What the h.e.l.l's wrong with who you are?”

Some sweet kind of pain she barely understood welled up inside her. ”This is not who I am,” she said, desperate to make him understand. ”I'm the illegitimate brat of a woman who had to work nights as a barmaid to pay the rent. The neighbors snickered and whispered behind our backs, they snubbed my mother to her face! All they cared about was that she had men over, men who gave her a little bit of pleasure, but robbed her of every ounce of self-respect.”

”Men who made her feel dirty?” he asked, releasing her.

”Yes”-she sighed the word-”that too.”

He stood back from her, silent, as if he didn't like what was going through his mind. ”I'm beginning to understand the attraction to Hugh,” he said at last.

Randy turned back to the window, struggling to find enough control to talk. The subject of her childhood was private, painful, but there was so much misery stored up inside her, so much that needed to come out.

”When you're a kid ... and you have a dream,” she told him, ”sometimes it becomes everything, a way to survive, to get from one day to the next. That's how it was for me. Cinderella and the prince. Ridiculous, huh?”

”Maybe not,” he said.

Randy felt a sharp tug at her heart. There was something near compa.s.sion in his voice, and she would never have expected that from him, not in her case. Was he acknowledging the things she'd told him? Was he beginning to understand? She turned back to him and wanted to cry, he looked so grave, so beautifully sad. She still wanted him. G.o.d, she did.

”We all have dreams, Randy.”

”It's just that I'm so close,” she told him pleadingly. ”So close to having mine. Don't ruin it, Geoff. Don't ruin me. You could ... so easily.”

He let out a sound that was too harsh to be laughter. ”Never let it be said that Geoff Dias stood between the lady and her dream.”

She could see the emotion he was fighting, and it nearly destroyed her. Rather than cry in front of him, she fled the room.

Geoff didn't try to stop her. He didn't trust himself to say anything, do anything at that moment. The muscles of his throat had drawn up like catgut, and it was all he could do to swallow. From somewhere in the house the silvery chimes of a clock rang out. The sound was ethereal, lonely. It sharpened the emptiness rather than filled it.

She wants the dream, Dias. Get used to it.

A collection of crystal decanters crowded a lacquered tray on the wet bar, and Geoff wasted no time pouring himself a generous amount of one-hundred-proof rum. He drank it straight and grimaced at the oily afterburn. Anything to fill the void, he thought. Anything to kill the pain. Whatever works. For her it was success, the American dream. That had stopped working for him a long time ago.

h.e.l.l, if he had a dream these days, it was simple survival-cheating death, staying alive long enough to draw his next breath. Nothing too complicated.

Not that he hadn't tried it all-s.e.x, booze, rock and roll. He and his two partners in recovery operations had been made heroes by the media for some of their exploits, and he'd been tagged the ”bad boy” of the bunch. The publicity had come in handy later when he was setting up Stealth International, but it had taken the challenge out of his love life. Women were willing to do just about anything for-and with-a national hero. Even the s.e.x got boring after awhile ... until her.

Survival, Dias. Don't think about her.

He splashed more rum into the tumbler, unheeding as some of it spilled over the side, and then he walked to the gla.s.s terrace doors. The panel slid open soundlessly, sultry warmth rus.h.i.+ng in. Raking his hair back off his forehead, Geoff let the steambath of a night envelop him. It felt good, it felt hot ... it felt like her.

Aw h.e.l.l, he thought, a shudder running through him.

Don't do this, man. Survival- He stared down at the bay, clutching the slippery gla.s.s in his hand, shaking his head back and forth slowly. Trouble, dammit. He was in trouble. He had a strange feeling s.h.i.+fting in the pit of his gut, and he felt cold suddenly, dampness filming his forehead. At first he thought there was something wrong with the rum.

And then he knew it wasn't rum making him sweat. It wasn't heat or a tropical bug or anything like that.

It was her. It was this d.a.m.ned mission they were on. He was about to find her fiance for her and then hand her over to the yuppie b.a.s.t.a.r.d! Best wishes, kids! Have a nice marriage and maybe a couple of precocious little brats with horn-rimmed gla.s.ses and b.u.t.ton-down collars like Hugh. Just the thought of it made him sweat. It made him sick.

He stared at the gla.s.s clenched in his hand, at the rigid tension in his bloodless fingers.

Aw h.e.l.l ... holy h.e.l.l, he was in trouble.

There's no surviving this one, Dias. You're dead, man. You're in love.

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