Dangerous Illusion

This wasn’t her Brendan McCall, the young, intense, wonderful navy poster-boy with whom she’d spent the five most magical, stolen months of her life. Escaping from the bodyguards Papa set on her when she could, paying them off when they’d found her with him. Doing anything she could to be with him.

Keep focused. One mistake and Danny won’t see his next birthday.

Right. Focus. She flicked a glance at him, and she could see the honed instincts of a professional beneath the veneer of intense male interest. The tourist patter didn’t fit the searing glances, the tense, unable-to-relax stance of his tall, super-muscular frame, the way he was taking everything in with mathematical precision, taking mental notes. If he was a tourist, she was a native resident of Antarctica.

So McCall had finally found her…but obviously he hadn’t come out of love—and whether he was on the side of the angels or the devils didn’t matter. If he’d found her, Danny’s father couldn’t be far behind. Just by showing up here, McCall could bring the force of eternal night down on her little boy.

She repressed a shudder. Danny’s father wanted his son, and if he knew who she really was…

He didn’t want me, Deedee—he wants Delia de Souza. Even after I bore him a son, he kept saying that I didn’t match up to his expectations of Delia. I got so mad I told him I was Ana—and I told him the real Delia is hiding in England. I didn’t know how obsessed he was with you, or that he’d come send his men after you. I thought he loved me, but as usual, it’s you he wants….

She jumped into speech. “That’s what I love about New Zealand—you get every weather and place, all in two islands. I love the beaches here, and I head down to the ski fields in winter. It’s always quiet here then, and I can close up shop for a week. I can’t ski, but jumping on a toboggan is fun.” That’s it, play the tour guide, the friendly businesswoman. Even if he knows who I am, he can’t get any confirmation unless I give it.

And she wouldn’t give him a thing, not even knowledge of the magnet-to-polar effect he was having on her.

He was even more incredible than he’d been when they first met. In his dress whites, he’d been sexy in an immaculate, awe-inspiring, bad-boy-in-hiding style. Now he was strong and weathered, taut and hot and intensely masculine. Dark as night, rugged and turbulent, like a living storm inside a cloud—a jagged-edged force about to unleash. He was discordant poetry, unchained symphony and all man.

He didn’t have a go-to-hell face—more like come-to-hell. He was already there, burning inside his own heat, the inferno beckoning her, irresistible, insatiable—and the moth’s wings were already on fire.

And I’m a fool. He’s not here for himself. Someone sent him.

She watched him smile and nod, but inside those deep forest eyes, he was adding up every word she’d said, and breaking it down. “You don’t ski? I thought most New Zealanders would.”

Delia had been an enthusiastic skier. There were hundreds of photos of her as the unsmiling snow queen. “Not after knee surgery. I don’t have the flexibility for it anymore.” Not bad, for a spur-of-the-moment story.

“Did you have an accident?”

He was on the hunt, and if he were in Falcone’s pay she was up that wild Renegade River outside, without a paddle.

Don’t think of him as Brendan…don’t…but he’d haunted her too long, his long-ago love for her was her only balm in a world gone insane—and she felt a piece of her, the innocent girl, dying with the need to pretend. To lie to him.

“I was a mad netballer as a kid. Dad and Mum—” she forced the New Zealand pronunciation through an aching throat “—took me all over the country. When I was fifteen I lost my cruciate ligament twisting to throw the ball. I took up pottery while I recuperated, and was hooked. I need my leg in good working order for the wheel pedal. I won’t risk another operation just for the sake of skiing. Toboggans are great fun.”

Doubts. Shadows. A web of confusion spun at a moment’s notice, born of fear and the scent of danger surrounding her—the danger emanating from him, this dark stranger with eyes like the Amazon rain forest, taut whipcord muscle beneath his snug jeans, and specters of fire and shadows stalking his heart. He made her hot and cold all at once, filling her with memories of tender starlit magic.

As if he was remembering, too, his eyes grew lush and hot. “Have dinner with me tonight, Elizabeth Silver.”

Well, that was a curve ball out of left field she should have expected, yet she felt her cheeks heating and her breath freeze in her lungs. Just as well, since she’d almost blurted, Your employer wouldn’t appreciate that, would he?

And damn it, he was already tempting her too much. Oh, to be a normal woman again, free to be with this forbidden fruit of a man….

The man who sold his country’s secrets to the highest bidder, and only got out of treason charges because he disappeared from America and never went back.

She reined in her thoughts. Control, control! The mantra had been her best friend over the past six years, and she grabbed at it with all the fevered intensity of a woman hit by a wallop of terror—and unwanted desire. “I prefer Beth.” Why did I say that? I’m talking too much. “Sorry, but I’m busy.” Much better.

He took a step closer. She could feel the heat inside him, the wildness he kept under tight leash. The hidden lightning in his soul called to her long-forgotten heart and spirit—the promise of a breaking storm on a deep summer’s night. And oh, the woman in her screamed to run into the uncontrolled tempest inside him, and get absolutely soaking wet…. “Tomorrow night…Beth.”

She managed to hold in the strange, delicious quiver of feminine need and met his eyes, willing a veneer of calm to cover the tangled emotions within. “You’re not my type.”

He didn’t flinch, didn’t even move. The only indication of his feelings at her lie registered in the slight hardening of his fine-chiseled mouth, the deep grooves of his dimples slashing downward. “Do you have a type, Elizabeth Silver?” he asked in his deep, rough voice—a creature of the night, a gypsy spirit hiding beneath the tourist’s mask.

“Teddy bears,” she said blandly. “I like the boy next door. A guy who takes his kids and wife to games and the movies.”

He took a step closer. “I think you’re lying.” His voice, dark and wild as the night, vibrated into her soul, stripping its layers of defense. “I think you’ve got a weakness for bad boys.”

Ana. Not me! Ana! Ana had been the one who liked bad boys, and she had made it known internationally.

Beth closed her eyes and dragged in a harsh breath, sucking air in till her lungs felt ready to explode. The gentle jasmine scent in the burner, meant to uplift her customers, felt obscene in her nostrils as she waited for the words to come. So it had come back again, the reap-what-she’d-sown consequences of one stupid decision—the reason she’d left her life behind. The foolish mistake she’d made when she was all of nineteen, yet it still dragged behind her like a chain gang’s weight. In tearing grief for her parents’ deaths, she’d allowed the cousin who’d been like a sister to her walk in her shoes for a month. Poor little Ana, with the near-identical face to hers, brought up by Delia’s parents after hers died—but with such a different life. So sheltered and cosseted and lonely, spending most of her childhood and teen years in hospitals or in grueling physical therapy for a bent back from severe scoliosis. Finally healed, she’d wanted to know how it felt to be Delia de Souza, supermodel, beautiful and admired and worldly—just for a little while, Deedee…a few weeks? It would be fun for me…and you’ll get a chance to rest for once….

She’d been paying the price for allowing the charade ever since. Years and years of running, paying for Ana’s innocent, foolish mistakes—and her penchant for dangerous men.

What was she saying? Ana was the one who’d paid. She’d lived with her mistakes—Ana had died for hers.

“You’re wrong,” she said now, with the conviction of utter truth. “Bad boys have bad hearts. I want a nice guy, the nice house, picket fence and all that.”

“And based on ten minutes’ acquaintance you know I don’t fit the mold?” His lifted eyebrow and a slow, knowing smile emanated an aura, a feeling of currents too deep and strong, and she was flailing in waters too uncharted for her to swim in safety.

Breathe, her mind whispered.

Smiling with would-be blandness, she lifted a tourist guide from the counter. “You quoted the guide verbatim. You’ve never been south of this part of New Zealand, have you?”

“No.” His mouth twitched into a full-bodied grin. With the rumbling chuckle, a lock of dark hair flopped over his forehead, as if to hide his eyes. “So one lie—a white one at that, meant to impress you with my wealth and ability to be idle for long periods of time, excludes me from the teddy bears’ picnic?”

It was so hard to keep a straight face with him moving closer, wearing that lazy grin. She’d almost forgotten how his rumbling, self-mocking humor always made her laugh. McCall had bad boy written all over him, yet he was good—too good. A man who made her want to smile, tease and flirt just as her life had exploded in her face was way too dangerous to play with. She had neither the experience nor the ammunition for it.

She moved back to gain perspective, which she couldn’t do with his taut, jaguarlike body leaning close to her, just close enough to be screaming male interest. “Afraid so.”

His eyebrows lifted. “You can tell I’m not a boy next door?”

“I’m sure the mamas next door were warning their daughters to bolt rather than trusting them to your care,” she retorted.

He burst out laughing, warm and musical and fascinating as the sea on a deep summer’s night. “I’m sure you’re right…as sure as I am about the fact that teddy bears aren’t really your thing. Some instinct tells me you’re a ‘bad boy’ kind of girl.”

No. Not anymore. She’d been cured of that girlish fantasy forever, thanks to Ana. “My instinct says that your instincts don’t always work to your good.” She held out the bag containing his vase. “Have a nice stay in the Bay, Mr. McCall.”

“What if I don’t give up?” he muttered, low and urgent, moving closer as she backed off, his eyes shifting from calm forest to stormy crystalline. “What if I come here every day until you change your mind?”

He’ll keep coming anyway, if Danny’s father sent him here. And that was the only real option—it wasn’t as if Interpol would send a man who’d already betrayed his country for cash.

The truth of it tore at her wistful wish that he could have come here for her, and ripped it into bloodied shreds. “I’d say, don’t annoy my customers.”

He rocked back on his feet, the deep intensity lightening as he chuckled again. His smile lit his whole face, including the fascinating cleft chin and left dimple, with male strength and beauty. “Lady, you don’t give much away, do you?”

Not when my son’s life depends on it. She smiled, hoping to look bland, uninterested, but her needs and fears were already submerged beneath the long-dormant woman, leaving her in hopeless, needing confusion. Within ten minutes of meeting McCall again, her emotions were so skewed she barely knew what she said or did. Her heart had been iced over so long she’d thought it in permafrost to anyone but Danny; now it was melting so fast she felt as if McCall had jet-streamed it to the equator by one of the Hornet planes he’d once loved so much. “What did you expect on ten minutes’ acquaintance?” Her voice sounded husky, deeper and huskier than her practiced, gentle New Zealand accent.

She watched those amazing rain-forest eyes of his register the sound of her voice, and take the information in. Click. Lock. Another piece in place. Another bullet in the barrel of the gun of exposure—and she was facing it down in hopeless defiance.

“Well, a guy can always hope.” He shrugged and picked up his bag. “I’ll be back.”