Dangerous Illusion

“Ex-Lieutenant Brendan McCall of the U.S. Navy SEALs, at your service, ma’am.” He made a tiny, self-mocking bow.

Silence for a moment. “Why ex?”

Oh, man, she knew where to hit…and he had to tread carefully here. If she was Delia, she might know why he was “ex” Lieutenant McCall. Her father would’ve had him investigated for sure.

And the utter truth of that left him speechless and his head spinning. Why hadn’t he thought of that? The proverbial had hit the fan a decade ago, and it was only now that he finally got it. Her father had me investigated. That’s why she never called me. That’s why she’s been looking at me as if I’m a monster. She thinks I’m a traitor to my country, in Falcone’s pay now.

Ghost would have his hide for this, and strip him of his commander’s rank, but he had no choice. He couldn’t wait for clearance now. If he put her off now, she’d slam the emotional door and never open it again. “I was dismissed.” A bald, blunt statement that in no way hid the lingering shame. Even though it was a top-brass decision for the greater good, and he’d agreed to it for international security, the sting still whipped him with merciless taunts—always your father’s son, McCall—especially if he’d lost Delia because of it.

There was no going back: his reputation as a SEAL, one of the white knights of national security, had shattered years ago. He couldn’t go back to the States without dismantling a decade of lies, and blowing apart assignments that hinged on his being able to infiltrate illegal rings that accepted him as one of their own. He had to remain a seeming criminal for the sake of international peace and security. He couldn’t go home, could never see anyone he knew or cared for again—

Yeah, a little voice jeered. There’re so many of them. That was why he’d taken the job with the Nighthawks, and accepted the cover that ruined his reputation. He had nobody to hurt. Besides his old SEAL buddies, there was no one to give a toss that he’d apparently sold secrets to the enemy just before a war.

Ten years later, he wondered if the price he’d paid was higher than he knew. The whispers that someone in the SEALs had sold out had been nudging around before he took the op; Ghost had used the story to give his disappearance credence.

Had Eduardo de Souza put two and two together and made an equation that spelled disaster for his heart, and Delia’s?

He couldn’t tell her. It would clear him in her eyes, yeah, but it would condemn her beloved father as a snob who’d torn his daughter’s life apart for the sake of bloodlines. For Eduardo de Souza had been Brazilian ambassador to the U.S.A., with the resources to find the truth. He could’ve easily verified the stories, discovered that Lieutenant McCall was a man with full military honors and an open offer from his admiral to return to the SEALs anytime he tired of playing international spy.

To clear his name in her eyes, to restore her trust in him, he’d have to destroy her beloved father’s memory.

“Touchy subject, I think?” Her soft voice broke through his inner blackness like a half rainbow in a storm cloud. “You don’t want me to ask you why you were dismissed.”

The unexpected understanding made his hands tighten on her shoulders. “No, I don’t. Thank you,” he said quietly. Few people in his life had respected his need for privacy and silence.

“So then, are you going to tell me why you were in my garden at two in the morning, terrifying me?” Far from belligerent, her voice was low, musical with feminine huskiness, a siren’s song.

He took the final step, putting his body within an inch of hers. “Did I terrify you? Do I terrify you?” His heart pounded out a different, insistent rhythm. Trust me, Beth. And it gave him a tiny start of surprise that her chosen name sprang to his mind, rather than her real name. Maybe it was because Beth, with its gentle, quiet loveliness, suited her so well.

She looked at him, then away, leaving a flash of incandescent blue behind that burned in his memory. “Yes, you terrify me…”

But it hadn’t been terror in her eyes then. Temptation slammed him in the guts, leaving him under its command. Her face—that unforgettable face, those amazing eyes, filled with desire and need—need for his touch…

She wanted it as bad as he did. Wanted him.

It would shoot all the Nighthawk rules to hell, rules he’d followed with the fanaticism of a zealot since joining the spy group ten years ago. If Anson knew, he’d strip him of his rank, turf him out of the Nighthawks, but right now he didn’t give a damn. With a low growl he reached for her—

“No.” A quiet word, weak and shaking, but combined with muddy hands that trembled and eyes filled with sudden, doe-like terror, it held all the force of a Mack truck.

He dropped his arms as if she’d used the baton on them. “Don’t be scared of me, Beth,” he said softly. “You know I’d never do anything to hurt you.”

She turned away, concentrating on her sodden, shapeless lump of clay as if it held all the secrets of life. “I don’t know anything about you, McCall. Don’t tell me anything. I don’t want to know. I just want you to leave. Get out of my life.”

He took the blow in silence, still and cold. Well, what had he expected—that she’d actually give a damn if a guy like him lived or died?

Oh, he had friends, the guys on his old SEAL team had never believed the rumors about his treason. To a man, they’d still eat a bullet for him. His navy seniors would return his rank to him, and give him a new team any day he asked. His fellow Nighthawks would jump out of a plane, chopper or ship to save him, but because of the necessity of absolute anonymity in the job, when he went home, he was alone.

Nothing new. It had been that way since he was eight years old. He’d been alone his whole life. Just the way it was.

He thought he’d learned to live with it. Obviously not since he’d returned to Delia’s—Beth Silver’s—life, and the strange thing was, it didn’t matter to him right now if she was Delia or not. He needed her with the same gut-burning intensity he’d felt ten years before, and hadn’t known since.

“Yeah, sure. I’ll go.” His voice grated a little, so what? It wouldn’t happen again. This wasn’t anything he wasn’t used to. He’d get over it. Get over her.

There was no other choice.

He turned at the door, hoping to God his face didn’t mirror the torture inside him. “But I’ll be back.” He walked out, willing his gut to untwist enough so he could breathe again.

Chapter 4

Come to hell, baby…

Even knowing she was playing with the destructive conflagration of a volcanic eruption, it had taken everything she had to hold out against the pull. The need.

Despite the orders she knew he was under, he’d given her the truth, trusting her with a painful piece of his past, and she heard his soul’s call in return. Beth was his unspoken cry in the perimeter of the shadow-world they both inhabited—and it was the name she heard inside him, the acceptance of who she said she was, that all but undid her.

Almost as much as the man himself.

Oh, the man. Even when he’d had the tourist’s mask in place, all she saw was the dark-hearted barbarian, the savage heathen pulling her out of her ordered, controlled, hemmed-in life. She heard it, heard all he wanted to say to her in just the air he breathed. The wild singing, like pagan night revels, bursting to life from deep within the tight-leashed male strength of McCall, commanded the long-dormant woman in her soul. Come to hell…

Drawing her there irresistibly. A mirror image to the mystery inside herself. McCall had scorch marks on his soul, a deep core of loneliness waiting to be unleashed, and a young boy’s dreams lying in scattered shards at his feet.

Yet like a mad, vulnerable boy playing a game beyond his ken, he picked them up and tried again, facing danger down with a grin and a challenge thrown like a gauntlet on a jagged cliff in a lightning storm, daring it to kill him. Come and get me, baby.

Temptation flooded her, almost beyond control. Her no had been a flickering defiance, all but whispered. He knew—he had to know the desire inside her, even as she tried to deny it—but he’d respected it. Respected her will, her wishes. He’d walked out when she’d asked. The sight of him leaving, his voice guttural and his eyes holding the very soul of darkness and self-hate, had gutted her. If she could have made herself speak, she’d have called him back.

Like a sudden slam in her ribs, she remembered five years ago, and the midnight call that had sent her and Danny on a life-or-death bolt across the world. Falcone’s men shot Dan through the forehead. He’s dead, love. Leave the country now, follow the procedure Dan set up for you, or they’ll find you within hours.

She shuddered. Even if she didn’t believe McCall was one of Falcone’s men, she couldn’t tell him. She couldn’t give in to the temptation to touch him. She had to get rid of him somehow, before they killed him just for knowing her.

I’ll be back.

For his sake, she had to pray he wouldn’t.

She started when the bell tinkled, announcing a customer. Looking at the sodden mass beneath her fingers, she groaned to herself. Oh, boy, she was losing it. Sitting here destroying her work, wasting time thinking about McCall when she should be making her plans for escape….

“Here. You need this.”

Starting with the rough, gravel-over-velvet voice from in front of her, she glared up at the dark, mysterious and so-very-sexy reason for her turmoil. Well, he said he’d he back…she just didn’t expect it so soon, nor had she expected him to be soaking wet and wearing an ankle-length dark leather coat, wrapped around him like the storm outside. “W-what’s this?”

His gaze on her was lush heat locked inside savage concern. “A sweet roll, fresh fruit and coffee. You need it.”

Unable to face him after he’d met her cruelty with rough kindness and care, she lowered her eyes. The fretful nap she’d fallen into after dawn left her too distracted to think of eating while getting Danny ready for school, and she’d forgotten lunch.

How he knew, she didn’t question. She lifted her clay-coated hands. “Can you mind the store while I wash?”

He shrugged off the coat, hanging it on the door hook. Beneath the damp, close-fitting deep green knit sweater, his muscles flexed and rippled with the movement. Danger honed inside dark masculine beauty. “Are you sure you trust me in your precious store? I could have a moving truck around the bend.”

She threw him a wry glance. “Somehow I don’t think it’s my pottery you’re after.” Even if he looked throughout the store, even broke into the house and ransacked it, he’d find nothing.