Kelsey hesitated, then cleared his throat a bit uncomfortably. “Well, the boss won’t expect me to check in for a while yet, and I’d rather not do so until I have to. If I use my clearance to get the information, he’ll know about it. And anyway, I haven’t got anything solid to report, so—”
“Kelsey.”
“What?”
“What is it you don’t want Hagen to know?”
He sighed. “Hell. If you must know, old friend, I don’t want him to find out he’s done it again. He’s gotten so paranoid about losing agents that he might just pull me if he finds out too soon. I can’t risk that.”
“What’s her name?” The amusement had returned to Raven’s voice, but it was warm now.
“Elizabeth Conner. I think Hagen’s a warlock. I also think I’m not ready for this, not one bit.”
“None of us ever is,” she observed.
“No, I suppose not. Well …”
“I’ll get the information for you, Kelsey. Do you object to Josh and the others knowing?”
“Hell, no. Turn Zach loose with his computers and see what he can uncover. Rafferty and Lucas might hear something from their intelligence contacts. And Lord knows Josh can move a mountain of bureaucratic red tape when he wants. I don’t mind at all. But I’m on a tight schedule. There’s a girl missing, and I have a very bad feeling about Meditron.” He briskly rattled off a phone number and added, “You can reach me here; it’s the number of Derek’s hotel room.”
“Outlaw Derek?” she murmured.
“The very same.”
“Um. Tell him hello from me, and that I haven’t forgotten England.”
“What happened in England?”
“Ask Derek. I’ll be in touch as soon as we have something.”
“Right. And, Raven—thanks.”
She made a rude sound and hung up.
Kelsey cradled the receiver and sat staring at Derek. “I didn’t know you’d worked with Raven.”
“Yes.”
“She said hello, and to tell you that she hasn’t forgotten England.”
“She wouldn’t have.”
Kelsey frowned at the blond man still lying lazily on the bed blowing smoke rings. “Well?”
Derek made a “tisk” sound when a smoke ring emerged imperfectly, then looked at his partner. “It was one of those cases where our dear, benevolent boss kept too damn much to himself. Raven’s contact, unknown to us, was a double agent. I tumbled to that just in time to get her out before he defected; he’d planned to take her with him as a nice prize for the other side.”
“Ah.” Kelsey reflected. “We should have let Josh strangle Hagen. I knew it at the time.”
“You’ll have to tell me that story one day.”
“I will. In the meantime …”
“Yes. Tomorrow will be a long day.”
When Elizabeth rose from bed early the next morning, she felt better, stronger, and half-convinced that at least part of the preceding day had been a dream. She showered and dressed, and as she was standing before the mirror in her bathroom putting up her hair, she tried to fully convince herself it had indeed been a dream.
Because things like that didn’t happen to people like her. Ordinary, rational, responsible people like her. Besides, women just weren’t swept off their feet by large masculine strangers these days; it was an age of caution between the sexes for one thing, what with the confusion in roles and various other puzzlements. And for another thing, men with the ability to sweep a rational woman mindlessly off her sensible feet were hardly found on every street corner—in this or any age.
Elizabeth glared at her reflection, only then realizing that she was wearing a pretty green silk blouse and white shorts that were short indeed. “Dammit,” she muttered.
She didn’t need his help, of course. She didn’t want his help. Even if he could help, which he couldn’t. Trusty sword notwithstanding. Heaven knew the man looked capable of slaying dragons or anything else that came along, but some dragons were just too damned dangerous to mess with, especially when a dear hostage was hidden in his cave.
Elizabeth shook away a tremor of fear and went downstairs, reminding herself that she was taking the only course of action available to her. She was waiting, as patiently as she knew how, for this whole thing to be over. Blaine had so much power locally that if he couldn’t resolve this quickly, no one else would be able to. And even if she could get an outsider in to help there was no way to move fast enough. With the guards and electronic security at Meditron, they would always have warning and time enough to … bury the evidence.
Oh, God, no, she prayed fervently.
She fixed a light breakfast for herself automatically, taking note of the signs that both her sisters had been before her. Ami would be at Susan’s now, since they were practicing for an upcoming horse show, and Meg—as usual—would be with her friends in town.
Cleaning up after herself, Elizabeth found her thoughts turning again to Kelsey, and swore softly. It was all just so complicated! Who was he? What was he? Riding into her life in his beat-up car and making noises like her knight in shining armor. Dammit. That was garbage, that’s what it was. Just garbage. Knights had died with Camelot.
The silence of the big house and her own muddled thoughts finally drove Elizabeth outside for fresh air and something to occupy her. She made her way to the barn and whistled for her horse, a big chestnut gelding the color of a vibrant sunset. Buddy willingly stuck his head into the light nylon bridle and stood patiently while she strapped a bareback pad on his broad back. She hardly needed the pad’s strap for balance, but used it mostly for the sake of her white shorts. She swung aboard the horse, then bent and removed her sandals, setting them on a handy fence post near the road as they passed.
Elizabeth had wondered from time to time what kind of woman she would have become without the responsibilities of raising her sisters and keeping the peach orchard in business. She was not, she knew only too well, a sedate person at heart. Her control had become ingrained over the years, but sometimes her emotions went winging away from her, wild and uncontrollable, as if some deeply buried part of her knew they had to fly occasionally or else forget how to do it.
It happened no more than once or twice a year, a brief period when she felt the abandoned singing of her emotions, her senses. She had to fly, had to, and the next best thing to wings of her own was a fleet horse with racing Arab blood in his veins and the willingness to fly for her.
They went over the wooden pasture gate in an easy leap, crossing the driveway in one stride as Buddy settled down happily to run. Barely guiding him with her knees, Elizabeth leaned forward to silently urge him on as they raced along one of the wide lanes between the blooming peach trees. She felt her hair snatched by the wind of their speed, aware that pins had scattered and that it flew out behind her like a banner.
She didn’t care. Faster and faster, pausing only momentarily to turn a corner from one lane to the next, they flew. Her heart was thundering, the wind whistling in her ears, and she laughed aloud with the glorious sense of freedom. Nothing troubled her for these brief, precious moments, no problems, no dangers to heart or family. She was not a woman who had been alone too long with her responsibilities, but a soaring spirit refusing to be caged long enough to forget how to fly.
Kelsey heard the hoofbeats before he saw her, and he stood by his car in the driveway scanning the orchard keenly. She was at first only a distant flash of fiery red and green and white, the horse’s big body moving so swiftly the colors were only a blur. But they were working their way back toward the drive, and Kelsey felt his heart stop when he could see her clearly.
Her spun-silver hair flowed out behind her, long and shining in the morning sunlight. Her lovely face was flushed from the wind, her long golden legs seemingly a part of the horse’s gleaming sides. Horse and woman emerged from the surrounding peach blossoms, the vital aliveness of summer after the hazy dream of spring.
Kelsey had moved into the lane as t
hey approached, and stood his ground while the horse stopped with a head-swinging, sliding motion that was curiously graceful. The big animal stood still, snorting softly, flanks moving quickly, and Elizabeth looked down at Kelsey with something wild in her eyes.
“One brief shining moment,” she murmured huskily.
Kelsey stepped closer, resting a hand on the horse’s shoulder as he looked up at her. “What?”
The wildness in her eyes refused to settle, like a falcon ignoring its handler’s commands. “There was a place called Camelot,” she said. “But it didn’t live long. Like all dreams, it died too soon.”
Kelsey reached up, his big hands encircling her waist easily as he drew her slowly from the horse. He kept his hands at her waist when she stood before him, and looked into the vivid, unhooded eyes of a soaring falcon. “The world remembers,” he told her quietly, almost hypnotized by those eyes, very conscious that he was looking into the iridescent depths of an unguarded soul. And aware that she would not have chosen to let him see, not a stranger, not a man she didn’t fully trust. But he saw, and was deeply grateful that he saw.
“Who are you?” she asked then.
“I’m the man who wants to help you,” he told her.
She tilted her head a bit, vivid eyes questioning. “Why?”
“Because … it’s important to me. Because I don’t ever want you hurt again.” He wondered, vaguely, what had happened to the bull about his job. Who cared? And he fiercely ignored another shudder from something inside him that was like an earthquake ripping through solid rock.
Her eyes were settling a bit now, finally but slowly. “But who are you?” she asked intensely. “What are you? I know your name, but I don’t know who you are. And I have to know who you are, because—”
“Because?”
She shook her head a little, and the last of the wildness vanished into guarded depths. She looked at him then, really looked at him, and anger stirred. She removed her hands from his forearms and stiffened. “I don’t know why you came back here. I can’t help you.”
Kelsey pondered for a moment, then said coolly, “I don’t need your help.”
She backed away from him warily. “No questions about Meditron or Blaine?”
“No. It isn’t necessary. I can get the information I need from another source.”
“Why did you come back here, then?”
“I wanted to see you.”
“Oh, right.” She laughed softly, scornfully. “One look at me and this great passion was born?”
He smiled a little. “Something like that.”
Elizabeth said something derisive, and it wasn’t “malarkey.” “I’ve heard that line too many times, pal; it had ivy growing on it when my grandmother was a girl. She didn’t believe it, and I don’t believe it. If you think I’m going to—”
“I think,” he interrupted mildly, “that I’ll be in your bed before the weekend’s over.” He caught her wrist easily before her hand could make contact with his face, holding it firmly. And holding her enraged eyes with his own, he added in the same blandly certain tone, “You know it as well as I do.”
She jerked her hand away, her face white. “Bastard.”
“I’ve been called worse.” He wondered then which Elizabeth he would find in that bed. This one, he thought, this angry woman who would fight him every inch of the way—with perhaps a bit of the falcon thrown in. He didn’t doubt that he would, sooner or later, end up in her bed; what was between them was just too damned explosive not to consume the both of them eventually. He only hoped that neither the falcon’s wings nor his own suddenly vulnerable heart got singed in the blast.
“Get off my land!”
He sighed. “We’ve been through this, Elizabeth. I’m not leaving.”
“I don’t want you here, can’t you get that through your head?”
Kelsey grinned suddenly, unable to help himself. “I think I got that, yeah. You made it very clear. It’s a good thing I don’t have a fragile ego.”
“You have a monumental ego!”
He rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “Possibly. It’s taken a few knocks, you understand, but I generally get what I want in the end.”
With a curious, smothered sound that might have been a reluctant laugh, Elizabeth turned away and grasped her patient horse’s reins. She snagged her sandals from the fence post as she passed, leading Buddy to the gate she hadn’t bothered to open earlier. The bareback pad was unbuckled and left on the fence along with the bridle, and Buddy trotted away through the pasture to join another horse grazing near a barn in the distance.
Elizabeth put her sandals back on, looking up as Kelsey joined her to ask irritably, “Are you still here?”
“Certainly I’m still here,” he said, wounded. “Faint heart never won fair lady, you know.”
She gave him a baffled look and headed toward the house, with Kelsey following along behind.
“Did you,” he wondered conversationally, “wear those shorts for you or for me?”
“Don’t be ridiculous!” she snapped over her shoulder.
“I was just going to say that if you wore them for me, I certainly appreciate them,” he explained apologetically.
Elizabeth bit her lip to contain her smile, glad he couldn’t see and suddenly very conscious of his presence behind her. Oh, damn the man, why did he keep changing on her? Didn’t he know she was so off balance now that anything— Know? Of course he knew!
Just inside the living room, she whirled and jabbed a finger into his chest. “It won’t work!”
He had been continuing to admire the shorts, and looked up hastily. “What?” Pulling on his most innocent expression, he waited for her to explain.
“Your little game, that’s what.” She stared up at his face, ignoring his guileless expression. “You think I’m such an idiot that I can’t figure it out? You could charm a snake, pal, but you aren’t going to charm me into telling you anything.”
“I’m not?”
She glared at him. “No, you’re not!”
Kelsey tilted his head to one side and asked hopefully, “Can I seduce you into telling me something?”
“No, dammit!” She was trying desperately not to laugh.
“Well, hell, you haven’t left me many options,” he told her indignantly. “We federal agents only have so many methods to work with, you know. I mean, if you take away charm and seduction, how am I supposed to do my job?”
Elizabeth was biting her lip and gazing up at him with an unconsciously fascinated expression. She cleared her throat carefully. “I couldn’t say.”
“You know, you should leave it down all the time.”
She blinked. “What?”
“Your hair. You should leave it down.”
With an effort, she ignored the non sequitur. Evenly, she said, “I’m telling you to get the hell out of my life, understand? Get into your car and drive off my land. Stay away from my family. We don’t need your help.”
Kelsey looked at her for a moment, then stepped over to a chair and sat down on the thickly padded arm. He took due note of the increasing anger in her expressive face, but headed off whatever she was about to say by speaking in a calm and thoughtful voice. “I can see we have several problems here that need very badly to be resolved.”
“Oh, you noticed that?”
“It was a little hard not to notice. First of all, you deny that anything is wrong here, despite the fact that your sister is missing.”
“Jo’s staying with an aunt,” Elizabeth said flatly.
“You don’t have an aunt.”
She stiffened and her eyes flashed. “What did you say?”
He sighed. “I said, you don’t have an aunt.”
There was more than anger in her vivid eyes now, something like fury. Her voice shook a little. “And just where did you get that information?”
“It’s amazing what information you can dig up if you know where to look. Pinnacle has a newspaper, Elizabeth, and
like all newspapers it keeps back issues on microfilm. I looked up the accounts of your parents’ deaths, and your court battle to keep what was left of your family together. According to those accounts, the judge was persuaded to let your sisters be put into your custody because there weren’t any other relations. No aunts, no uncles, no cousins.”
Elizabeth narrowed her eyes. “When did you look it up? Today’s Saturday; the newspaper office is closed.”
Kelsey rubbed his jaw, studying her. Then he sighed. “Place has a flimsy lock,” he offered.
“You broke in?”
He winced. “Let’s call it entry without the proper permission, shall we?”
She pressed her lips together, but said nothing.
Kelsey eyed her for a moment, then nodded, satisfied. “As I said, the first problem is that Mallory apparently has you convinced that if you just keep quiet, Jo will be fine. The third problem is that you trust me about as far as you can throw your horse. And the fourth problem is that you very obviously suspect I’d do just about anything—using you included—in order to get what I want.”
Elizabeth remembered that first kiss in the kitchen and the shocking interlude on the porch last night, and lifted her chin. “Suspect? I know you would!” she snapped.
For the first time in his professional career, Kelsey was torn. He knew the most important thing was to get Jo back safe and sound; there was no doubt of that. But as important to him as a young girl’s life was Elizabeth’s opinion of him. And in the back of his mind in that alert place born years ago out of necessity, a clock was ticking away vital moments.
He sighed. “Elizabeth, sit down, please. We need to talk.”
“We’ve already talked.”
“No.” Kelsey shook his head wryly. “We haven’t. And now we have to, because there isn’t much time.”
Unwillingly impressed by the gravity of his face and his sober gray-blue eyes, Elizabeth moved to the couch and sat down. “What do you mean—not much time?”
Kelsey remained where he was, looking at her and wishing everything were different. She suspected his motives, and he couldn’t blame her for that. Only time would teach her to trust him, and how much time did they have? And what would happen if the desire he could feel throbbing constantly throughout his body, a desire he knew she shared, caught them both before she learned to trust him? What would that do to them?