Dangerous Illusion

Even when Delia had whispered words of love to him a decade ago, he’d known it wouldn’t last. He’d always known the truth—he wasn’t classy enough for the ambassador’s daughter turned jet-set model. He’d forced himself to finish high school and even got a football scholarship to UCLA, but he’d still ended up working on a fishing boat to pay the bills—just like dear ol’ Dad. He’d left that, too—the heavy drinking day and night had reminded him too much of his father. The booze and the fighting was the reason his mother had left. To this day, the smell of gin or beer made him want to heave his guts.

For the life he had now, he’d always bless old Burt Miner, ex-USAF. Burt had caught the nineteen-year-old Brendan hiding out in a corner of a hangar watching a weekend air show. Gruff, foul-mouthed old Burt had correctly interpreted the furious scowl on Brendan’s face as frustrated longing, and had given him a friendly chat about how it felt to really fly.

He’d come to the airstrip on all his days off after that, watching in ill-contained anguish as the guys with money took off for the skies, until Burt either got sick of him or took pity on him and finally taught him to fly.

When Burt found out about his talent in the ocean through a newspaper article about his impromptu rescue of a little kid drowning off Long Beach one weekend, Burt pulled in some favors and arranged for a navy officer to see his protégé’s skill in the air. After rigorous water skills tests and IQ exams, the navy recruitment officer talked to Brendan about the navy taking over his endangered college scholarship, and joining NROTC—the Navy Rescue Officers Training Corps. Two years later he’d come out an ensign, with the respect of all who knew him in his new world. Then, as the recruitment officer had prophesied, McCall—Ensign McCall—did the Basic Underwater Demolition Training course, survived Hell Week with ease, took the weapons and foreign language courses, learned to work in a team and joined the SEALs.

From there, he hadn’t looked back. Raw guts, a willingness to learn, do anything, anywhere, anytime, and 24/7 availability had got him to SEAL lieutenant by age twenty-six, and where he was now, at the ripe old age of thirty-seven—commander of Nighthawk Team One, one of three trusted seconds-in-command in Nighthawk Area 4, South Pacific region. He now ran every op that Pacific Region commander Anson, code name Ghost, or the medical/field Team Two commander, Irish, or Special Infiltration Team Three commander, Nightshift, wasn’t personally in on. He was up there with the big guys, on track to running his own Nighthawk region one day.

But none of that would have impressed Delia’s socially impeccable, class-conscious parents. If they were still alive they’d look at him and see the snot-nosed punk who played hide-the-booze with his dad’s empty beer cans and gin bottles, an ex-gang member of low-class origins.

That was all her incensed papa had seen, when he’d found them together that final night. Without a word Eduardo de Souza, Brazilian Ambassador to the USA, called in his security men. He got kicked out of his own car, landing right on his bad-boy ass. Humiliating punishment for daring to look in Delia’s eyes, let alone for touching her, loving her as if she was a normal girl.

What would Mama and Papa have thought of the man who’d become their posthumous son-in-law? Nobody knew who Falcone really was, or how old he really was, not even the CIA. The entry in the Register of Births, Deaths and Marriages in England was dead fake—as dead as the man who’d been paid to enter it for Falcone more than thirty years after he was born God knows where. According to that certificate he was forty-four, but nobody believed that; the guy was fifty at least. But the anonymity of name and age and even nationality let Falcone slide in and out of two worlds, a smooth-spoken phantom menace the authorities couldn’t seem to hold on to.

And without hard evidence against him, they were helpless. If they couldn’t get him in custody fast, and keep him there this time, Beth’s life wasn’t worth squat. And her kid—

Time to get back to work. And keep his mind there until Beth and her kid—his subjects—were safe. Permanently.

Another night on the grassy hill across the road, taking fifteen-minute catnaps on his bedroll. Hourly reports to Anson proved he was still on the job.

Watching.

Chapter 5

The next morning, McCall woke up before six.

Judging by yesterday’s routine, he had ten minutes before she got up. With precise method, he packed up his bedroll and poncho tent, then washed himself as best he could in the near-stinging coolness of the river down the road from her house. Then he snatched a standing breakfast of two high-protein bars, beef jerky, a tetra-brick of juice and a tepid thermos of coffee, keeping an eye on his paraphernalia of gadgetry that gave him fifteen-second updates on Beth and the kid.

He followed at a discreet distance as Beth drove the kid to school, then walked him in, her arm draped around the boy in a gesture of loving, possessive motherhood. Lucky Danny Silver.

At nine-thirty, he pushed open the door of her studio.

“Mr. McCall. Back so soon?”

Her cool, soft voice held only a hint of the exasperation he sensed she was feeling. He knew she’d seen him across the road, seen him follow her to the school and back on the motorbike again. She’d known he’d come in as soon as she opened the door. But she wasn’t giving him even polite acceptance of his presence.

This dance of words was intricate, two introverted loners both trying to win at Twenty Questions, outrunning their pasts and memories of love like civilians behind enemy lines. Winning her trust without giving any in return was the hardest assignment Anson had ever given him.

Thirty-six hours left to get a positive ID and get her out of the country.

“I’ll always come back,” he said quietly. “I’ll keep coming back. I’ll keep watching. And you know why.”

She frowned for a brief second, her eyes shadowed. Then the look vanished. “I won’t change my mind, McCall. I don’t date complete strangers who wander into my studio one day and—”

He tried to do it gently, but still he threw his bomb. He had to get through to her somehow, and soon. “It’s time to stop playing games. You’re not the kind of woman to let me feed you without knowing me.”

She held her color, and her composure. “All single mothers need help occasionally. I thank you for that, but it doesn’t mean I’m going to tell you my life story. I’ve made mistakes in my life, but I won’t take chances with my son’s well-being.”

“You have made mistakes in the past, haven’t you?” he asked, dark and compelling. “But compared to Robbie’s father, I’m small potatoes.” He used the name of Falcone’s son with gentle care.

“Do you have trouble hearing? My son’s name is Danny, and mine’s Beth. You don’t know anything about my life, or about Danny’s father.” She was pale now, but her defiance flamed still. “And nobody in their right mind would discount you, McCall, or think you’re small compared to anyone.” The whites of her knuckles showed, she was gripping her workbench so hard. “I keep telling you, whoever you think I am, you have the wrong person.”

Thirty-five hours fifty-six minutes. This felt more like fencing in darkness, rapier-sharp and buttons off. Shadowboxing with the faceless enemy of suspicion between.

“Have I?” Testing, he touched her cheek with a finger, and he saw the wave of warmth fill her face and throat. No matter what came from that ripe, luscious mouth of hers, her body betrayed her will, telling him this obsession was far from one-sided. She wanted him, maybe even almost as bad as he wanted her. “I don’t think so,” he murmured. “And your son—Robbie?”

She jerked her face away, as if realizing her mistake too late. “Stop it. I told you his name is Danny. Don’t touch me.”

He dropped his hand, yet stayed so close that her scent of drenched roses filled his head and curled itself around his libido like a purring kitten, begging to be stroked, caressed. “You tell me when you’re ready—to talk, or touch. Your call.”

She shivered, her lashes dropping over eyes suddenly cold. “Keep your distance, McCall.”

“My name’s Brendan,” he growled, his hands curled into impotent fists at his sides. If he could be one hundred percent honest with her, it would bring out her natural honesty in return. But with Nighthawk security at risk from the faceless assassin in the ranks, he couldn’t do a thing about it. One wrong word, one indiscretion and she’d have the ammo to hit the media rounds. If the Nighthawks were destroyed, more innocents would die in unsanctioned wars that couldn’t go into full swing without Falcone’s guns and mines and dirty bombs.

He had to keep silent. His career might survive the indiscretion, but others would pay with their lives.

As if she’d read his mind she put her hand out, with a bright smile as fake as her words. “Hello. My name’s Beth Silver.”

She’d put up another roadblock between them—and it was big as a boulder. It half killed him to laugh as he took her hand, but he did it—and touching her in any form was no hardship, even just the small, work-hardened hand lying in his rough palm.

Then, as he held her hand in his, a haunting sense of undone déjà vu came to him. Doubts. Shadows. Uncertainty. Something fundamental had changed from ten years before….

“It can’t be,” he muttered beneath his breath. Not Ana. He’d never met the cousin Delia claimed to be almost her double, but…no. A strong similarity in looks could only do so much for a man. This woman, and this woman alone drove him to the edge of sanity’s cliff with slamming, scorching-hot waves below—and he wanted to drown in it, bathe in the liquid fire torching a searing path between them.

She couldn’t be Ana. Obsession with a woman to the point of exclusion—being lost inside and consumed by Delia was his fact of life. Saving her was his mission, whether it was on the Nighthawks’ agenda or not. Wanting, needing to lose himself in her was his private hell, the torture he showed no one. If he could have her just once—

“Things must be bad if you’ve started to talk to yourself.”

Roused from the furnace burning his soul, he looked at her. She’d tilted her head, with a little, inquiring smile. A simple thing, sure, but a massive leap forward from the go-back-to-the-hellhole-you-crawled-out-of tone she’d kept with him since he’d tried to connect with her yesterday.

A step up in getting her and the kid out of here?

He laughed, going for common ground. “Lady, I’m from L.A.—the home base of actors, directors, plastic surgeons, walking, talking Barbie dolls and therapists. We’re all nuts, and believe me, talking to ourselves is the least of our problems.”

A little grin peeped out from behind her barriers—a genuine, honest-to-God smile that reached her eyes. Her cheeks flushed a delicate rose, and he ached, seeing the transformation. The star-queen vanished, and another being sat at her potter’s wheel. A woman of gentle, big-eyed loveliness, and her sweet shyness socked him in the guts with masculine awareness. She’d become a normal woman he could smile at, talk to, and maybe, God help him, touch…not just feed her, but explore the combusting sensuality he knew wasn’t one-sided. To have her mouth, her lush body beneath his—

“And which of the above are you?”

Keep going, just keep chipping at her barriers. Thirty-five hours and forty minutes… “Not guilty,” he returned with a wink. “I never had designs on Hollywood after living near it half my life. I can’t manage the overinflated sense of self-importance.”

Her head tilted a little more, her eyes twinkling. “You don’t want a hundred-foot trailer on set, imported water and French-milled soap to keep your manly beauty intact?”

He backed off a step, folding his arms as if she’d called his masculinity into question. “Twenty feet’s ample, and water from the tap and good old Dial soap will do me just fine. Chlorine and fluoride can’t do me any more damage than living in that crazy city did.”

She laughed. Oh, man, she laughed as if she meant it, as if she’d spent years needing to laugh again. The husky sweet music of it sucker-punched him, and sent a king hit right to his heart…because if it wasn’t quite Delia’s laugh, it was close enough. A woman’s version of the girl’s husky giggle that IDed her with ninety percent accuracy. The knowledge speared him with guilt, pity and the ruthlessness of duty.

It all added up. The food, the coffee; her reaction to hearing Danny’s real name; the fear, the security system—her laugh. Her response to him, as white-hot as his was to her. This woman was Delia de Souza, ID virtually positive, unless by some crazy quirk of fate Ana de Souza also had the same laugh, the same tastes in food…and in men.