The Bride And The Mercenary

Pain suddenly screamed through his head like an express train, and he squeezed his eyes shut, riding with it. He could feel sweat popping out on his temples, and a wave of nausea washed over him.

It hadn’t been this bad for a long time, but for the past week it had been getting steadily worse. He could pinpoint the exact moment it had started escalating. He’d been going through a discarded Boston Globe page by page—wherever he was living, he made it a point to scan a major newspaper every single day. He’d never been sure what he was looking for, but he had the feeling that if he found it he’d know—and out of the blue it had suddenly felt as if his brain was exploding.

The nausea passed. Hoping she hadn’t noticed anything, he opened his eyes and found himself staring into hers, only a few inches away.

“You’re hurt, aren’t you? What’s the matter, did a piece of the door hit you when they shot in the gas canister, Malone?” Her voice was edged with worry, but at it his headache intensified.

She had to stop calling him Malone.

“That’s not my name. Why can’t you understand that?” It cost him to speak, but he continued. “In…in the pocket of my coat are some papers. Get them out.”

Ignoring him, she leaned closer. The heavy perfume she’d been wearing seemed to have dissipated, and he was grateful for that. “We have to get you to a doctor, for God’s sake. There’s a pay phone by the stairs over there. I’m going to call an ambulance.”

“No! No hospitals, no doctors.” He gritted his teeth. “Just…just give me the papers. I want to show you something.”

She hesitated for a moment and then reached inside the coat pocket, her gaze never leaving his face.

Her delusion was powerful. He’d hadn’t wanted to force the truth on her, but obviously nothing else would jolt her back to reality. Briefly he wondered what kind of man the mysterious Malone was and just how he’d disappeared from her life.

He hadn’t deserved her. The thought flashed into his mind with cold certainty. Whoever he was, he hadn’t deserved a woman like this, and her actions today, as crazily impulsive as they’d been, proved that.

In the alleyway she’d said something about believing he was dead. The son of a bitch hadn’t even had the guts to say goodbye to her.

But if Malone hadn’t deserved her, the man she’d been about to marry today didn’t, either. If he had, she wouldn’t have had to look to the past to find the love of her life.

“Here.”

She thrust the papers into his hand, and for the first time he noticed the slight callousing on her knuckles. When he’d held her by the arm earlier, under the overblown frills of her sleeve he’d felt incongruously hard muscle. Even though it was a wedding dress, like the perfume, it was all wrong for her, he thought. She wasn’t flounces and fussiness. She had the kind of beauty that could stand alone.

He pulled the rubber band off the small package of papers and cards, and shuffled through them, the left side of his head throbbing. That was where the scar was, hidden somewhere under his hair. It always hurt more in that area.

“My driver’s license.” He handed it to her. “A letter of reference from a garage owner I worked for in Idaho last year.” He unfolded it and passed it over. “My photo ID and dock pass. I was a deckhand on a salvage vessel in Florida a couple of winters ago. Check out the name on all of them.”

Watching her carefully as she looked at each item, he continued. “I’ve hit a run of bad luck lately, but I haven’t always lived on the streets, lady. I’ve got a history. I’ve got an identity. I’m not the man you’re looking for.”

“John Smith?” There was a thread of incredulity in her tone. Holding up the license again, she peered at it almost fearfully. Her glance darted to him and then back to the ID, as if she suspected some trick. “John Smith? What kind of a name is that? That could be anyone’s name!”

Time was running out. His usual practice after such a close call was to put as much distance between himself and them as possible, and he knew he had to get moving. But he couldn’t leave—not yet.

With every minute that passed, the danger was lessening for her. They knew he traveled alone, and they knew he would never reveal his destination to anyone, so any interest they had in her would fade within hours. Still, he’d feel easier knowing that she was—how had she put it?—back in her own world, before he left.

And he needed to break through the barrier of denial she was putting up. This Malone bastard had run out on her once before. He wasn’t going to leave her believing that the man she loved had abandoned her a second time.

“It’s not anyone’s name, it’s my name.” He tried to smooth out the hoarseness in his voice, suddenly wanting only to make the glaze of her tears disappear, to erase the shadow of grief that haunted her features.

“Maybe I look a little like him. It’s been so long since I’ve seen myself without this—” he gestured toward his moustache and beard “—that I hardly remember what I look like clean-shaven. But a chance resemblance is all it is. I’m not him. You’ve got to believe me.”

“But your eyes—they’re exactly the same!” She sounded desperate, as if she was holding on to something that was slipping away. “And…and you were whistling ‘Danny Boy,’ just the way he used to!”

“I don’t know much about my background, but I think there’s more than a touch of Irish in it.” The pain flared behind his eyes, sharper than before. “From his name, I’d guess your Malone and I have that in common. But that doesn’t mean much.”

“You called me Lee.” Her gaze was brilliantly intense. She knew, he thought. She knew now, but her heart hadn’t caught up to her head. “How did you know my name?”

“I didn’t. I think you heard what you wanted to hear,” he said heavily. “I’m not him, and he’s not worth it, Lee. If he ran out on you, you’re better off without him.”

“John Smith.”

She glanced down at the papers in her hand once more. He saw her shoulders slump, and the small movement of defeat came close to tearing him apart. She wasn’t a tall woman. In the grease-smeared white gown and the now-filthy satin slippers she was wearing, she looked like a little girl at her own birthday party, watching the guests leave early.

Except she wasn’t a little girl, he told himself as he saw her shoulders straighten. She was a woman. She had courage, she had the strength of her convictions, as misplaced as those convictions might be, and her only vulnerability was that she’d loved too well. Again a flicker of anger at the mysterious Malone flared in him. At her next words, it was snuffed out completely.

“I went to his funeral. I put red roses on his casket. You really aren’t him, are you?”

The express train inside his skull screamed down the tracks, its rushing metal wheels throwing off sparks of unbearable pain. The nausea had come back in full force. She’d gone to his funeral. She’d stood by his grave and watched him being lowered into the ground. The man was dead. He hadn’t run out on her, he’d died.

Instead of anger, the emotion now flickering just beneath the blanket of pain in his head was envy.

What would it be like to be loved so completely? The man was dead, yes—but even in death he had the love of the woman sitting here in front of him, her cheeks now wet with tears, her slight figure held ramrod-straight.

“No, I’m not him.” Unsteadily he got to his feet, one arm braced against the concrete pillar for support. He reached down to help her up, but she stood unaided, her face averted from his. Slowly she slipped her arms out of his coat. She looked up at him with a shaky smile.

“I thought you were crazy. Now you must think I am.”

“Not crazy.” He shook his head. Thankfully, the pain seemed to be receding. “But you’re going to have to let him go one day. This is no way for you to live.”

“This is no way for you to live, either.” Her smile faltered. “You really don’t know who they are or why they’re trying to kill you?”

“All I know is that they’ll never give up until they do.” He shrugged. “All I know is that the one time I went to the authorities, I nearly didn’t get away alive.”

“My brother runs an investigation and security firm. Sully might be able to help you,” she began, but he cut her off.

“Trust me, it wouldn’t work.” Pain flared again in the area of his scar. “But contacting your brother is probably a good idea, Ainslie. I can’t stay here much longer, but I won’t leave until I know you’re safe.”

“Why doesn’t that surprise me?”

She took the quarter he held out to her, and handed him his coat with a wry smile. He watched her cover the hundred feet or so to the phone cubicle, watched her punch in a number, saw the strained expression on her face as she briefly spoke into the receiver. Then she hung up and came back to him, a slight upward tilt to her chin.

“I got him on his cell phone. He’s only a couple of minutes away, and I got the distinct impression he intended to break every speed limit getting here.” She took a deep breath. “The hotel. Apparently the fire department’s there right now, trying to bring the blaze under control. It was fire-bombed, Sully said. He saw the motorcycle I borrowed in the alley beside it, and he…he thought I was still in there.”

Her chin dipped to her chest, and then lifted again. “I would have been killed if it hadn’t been for you. I wish there was some way I could repay you.”

There was one more reason to envy the man she’d mistaken him for. When Malone had walked away from her that last time, he’d probably had no idea it was the last time he’d see her. He shrugged into his coat, carefully replacing the package of ID in an inner pocket. He had only a few seconds more with her. She would remember him for a while, but one day her memory of these hours they’d spent together would fade, and that was how it should be.

He would remember her for the rest of his life, however much time was left to him. He would remember those eyes, remember the way her hair looked like midnight silk, remember the way she’d smiled even when she’d been forced to face the truth about him.

He wanted one more thing to remember.

“There is. You can let me do this.”

Holding her gaze, he took a step toward her, obliterating the distance between them. She had to tip her head to keep her eyes on his, and slowly he slipped his hand around the back of her neck, feeling that silky hair slide coolly against his skin. He lowered his mouth to hers.

Her lips were soft, and slightly parted under his. He could taste a faint saltiness from the tears she’d shed earlier, but beneath that was sweetness—a sweetness so intense that for a moment he felt his heart turn over in pure ecstasy. He’d never tasted crystallized flowers, but this had to be what they would be like, he told himself dizzily. Sweet. So sweet…

From somewhere on another level of the parking garage came the squeal of tires taking a corner too fast. He lifted his mouth from hers, but for a moment his hand remained cupped around the back of her neck.

“That’s got to be the brother.”

She nodded, her eyes wide. “That sounds like Sully, all right.” Her voice was uneven.

“I’d better leave.” Reluctantly he let his hand slip away, and even more reluctantly he turned toward the nearby stairwell. He took half a dozen steps away from her and then turned. “I wish you’d been right.”

She hadn’t moved. She was still staring at him with that dark violet-blue gaze. He knew what he must look like to her—too big, too unshaven, a derelict dressed in ragged cast-offs. She was right. They did belong to different worlds.

But if they hadn’t…

“I wish I could have been the man you hoped I was, sweetheart,” he said softly. “Because if I’d been Malone, I would have come back to you. Not even death would have been enough to stop me.”

He drank in the sight of her for one last time. Then he melted into the shadows as the green Jaguar came peeling around the corner.

HER HAIR WAS STILL WET from the shower she’d taken, but she hadn’t wanted to waste time in blow-drying it. Instead she’d simply slicked it back off her forehead and secured it in a stumpy ponytail. She’d pulled an ancient black turtleneck over her head, dislodging the ponytail in the process, had found a passably clean pair of black jeans, and had shoved her bare feet into sneakers.

The ruined wedding dress, wadded up in a corner of her bedroom, had been a mutely reproachful reminder of what lay ahead of her. Sully, as he’d driven her back to her apartment, had been anything but mute.

“You could have been killed, goddammit! I thought you had been!” He’d still been wearing the dove-gray morning suit he’d donned for the ceremony, and under his tan his skin had been nearly the same color. “What the hell were you thinking?”

“You know what I was thinking, Sully.” Her reply had been toneless. “I know it doesn’t make any sense.”

“Damn right it doesn’t make sense. Neither does that insane yarn he spun you.” Sully had taken his eyes from the road and glared at her. “The man was involved, Lee! Surely you must have realized that? Only drug wars get that violent and use the kind of weaponry you described!”

“He saved my life. A scumbag dealer wouldn’t have bothered, Sullivan.” She’d folded her arms and stared out of the window of the Jag. “He’s a man in terrible trouble, and I’ll never know how it turns out for him.”

“Well, you’ve got Bailey to thank for the fact that your trouble isn’t any more terrible than it is,” Sully had grunted. “She saved your reputation today. When Tara told us what you’d done, Bailey went into labor. Not really,” he added quickly at Ainslie’s gasp. “But as far as the wedding guests know, that’s why the ceremony was postponed. Pearson went along with it.”

“Was he very angry, Sully?” Her question had been barely audible, and Sully had raised an eyebrow at her.

“If it was me, I’d be furious, but with McNeil, who can tell? He did seem a little more chilly than usual when I broke the news to him.”

That would be Pearson’s way, Ainslie thought now as she raised the burnished brass knocker on the front door of her fiancé’s—ex-fiancé’s? she wondered hollowly, jilted fiancé’s?—carefully preserved Beacon Hill home. It was opened immediately, and by the last person besides Pearson that she wanted to see.

“I don’t believe your nerve.”

Brian, Pearson’s brother, was still attired for a wedding, as Sully had been, but he’d stripped off his jacket. In one well-manicured hand was a squat crystal tumbler of some amber liquid.

“Believe me, Brian, my nerve is hanging on by a thread,” she said tightly, stepping past him and dropping her shoulder bag on a nearby table. “Is Pearson available?”

“Pearson’s in the library getting ready to leave. He’s going to Greystones for a few days.”

Younger than his brother and more raffishly good-looking, Ainslie knew Brian had never really warmed to the notion of acquiring her as a sister-in-law. But up until now he’d always hid his slight antagonism behind the charm he seemed to be able to switch on and off at will. It was a talent that would be useful to him when he ran for office, but it was obvious he no longer felt the need to trot it out for her benefit.

“Then I’m glad I caught him before he goes.”

Of course Pearson would want to get out of the city for a while, she thought, averting her gaze as she passed the open French doors of the dining room. The antique dining table, a massive mahogany piece that could seat a dozen guests, was piled high with exquisitely wrapped wedding gifts. The McNeil’s country house would have no such reminders.

“How the hell could you have humiliated him so publicly?” Brian had followed her down the hallway, and his voice at her shoulder was low with suppressed anger. “Whatever excuse you came here to give, it’s not going to—”

“I wasn’t humiliated, Brian. And if Ainslie feels she owes anyone an explanation, I don’t believe it would be to you.”

Pearson McNeil, his tall, spare figure seemingly relaxed, appeared in the open doorway of the library at the end of the hall. He was wearing what he would call casual clothes, although Ainslie had teased him in the past that he didn’t know the meaning of the word. Charcoal flannel trousers were belted at the waist with a dark tan leather belt. His shirt, open just one button at the neck, was plain white cotton—but it was Egyptian cotton, Ainslie guessed.

“Ainslie, my dear.” Crossing swiftly to her, he took one of her hands in both of his. “I’m glad you came.”

Drawing her closer, he pressed a brief kiss onto her forehead and then steered her courteously toward the library, but not before she caught the flash of emotion that crossed Brian’s handsome features as he turned on his heel and headed back down the hall. But Brian’s feelings in this matter weren’t her priority, Ainslie thought, turning her attention to Pearson.

“I was choosing some reading material to take with me to Greystones.” Looking vaguely around the room, he frowned. Then he smiled ruefully, reaching for the pair of reading glasses on the top of his head. “I’m a little distracted today,” he said, folding the glasses up carefully and putting them on top of the small pile of books sitting on the oak table beside Ainslie.

“It’s been a distracting day,” Ainslie said, not looking at him. She ran her fingers over the buttery-soft calfskin binding of one of the books, and then lifted her head to meet his gaze. “I came to apologize to you, Pearson. Now that I’m here I realize just how inadequate that sounds. What I did today was…was unforgivable.”

“Oh, surely not that.” He lifted an eyebrow. “Let’s save that word for the really horrific deeds the human race commits every day. You simply changed your mind. That was always your prerogative, I believe—although I must admit I wish you’d exercised it a week or two earlier.”

One of the books in this room was his own History of Twentieth-Century Conflict, Ainslie thought. But even though he was attempting to take a scholar’s view of today’s events, she knew he couldn’t be as detached as he was pretending to be.

“But that’s just it, Pearson. I didn’t change my mind,” she said unhappily.

Sully had told her that he’d said nothing to Pearson about her real reason for tearing out of the church, but she owed the man in front of her the truth. She should have told him about Malone a long time ago, she thought regretfully. Maybe if she had, her confession now would have been easier.

“In the crowd outside the church today I thought I saw a man…a man I was very much in love with once,” she said softly, holding his gaze as steadily as she could. “Except I knew it couldn’t be him, because he—”

“Because he was dead.” Pearson finished her sentence for her in the same quiet tone. “You thought you saw Seamus Malone, Ainslie? Is that who the man in the crowd reminded you of?”

Taken aback, Ainslie could only stare at him in confusion. Bridging the distance between them, he put his hands lightly on her shoulders.

“I was talking with Father Flynn in his office when you arrived. I couldn’t help hearing the name you called out.”

“But…but how did you know he was dead? How did you know I’d once been involved with him?” She stared up at him uncomprehendingly.

“I’ve known for a long time—almost from the first, in fact.” He sighed. “I wasn’t prying, Ainslie. But beneath that toughly competent exterior you show to the world, I saw a deep sadness. I think I already knew I cared for you more than I’d ever cared for anyone. I wanted to know if there was anything I could do to lessen that sadness for you. So I made some inquiries, and when I learned about Malone I realized just how truly strong you were. A tragedy like that might have destroyed another woman.”

“It almost did, Pearson.” She closed her eyes, remembering. “I’m not as strong as you think I am. Today must have proved that to you.”

Touching only on the essentials, she haltingly described her encounter with John Smith, saying nothing about his hunted lifestyle or the fact that his pursuers had nearly caught up with him while she’d been with him. That wasn’t her story to tell, she thought uneasily. True, she’d shared some of it with Sullivan, but Sully’s life hadn’t always been as conventional as it was now. She’d hoped for more understanding from her ex-mercenary half brother, she admitted to herself.

Of course, even to Sully she’d said nothing about the kiss.

If she’d needed one last scrap of proof to convince herself that the man she’d been with today wasn’t Malone, that kiss in the parking garage would have been it. Malone’s lovemaking had always held a touch of teasing wickedness. Even during their most passionate moments, it had never been hard to detect the bad-boy glint in his eye, the delinquent one-sided smile he wore as they urged each other on to more dizzying heights together.

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