Dangerous Illusion

Innocuous babble of an American tourist, lifted straight from a tour guide. He’d flown straight into the Bay last night, his security clearance absolute and unquestioned.

This wasn’t working. His hatred of the lies he told wouldn’t show, he was too good to let it slip—but the people he lied to were the pond scum of the earth, and lying to this pristine princess made him feel as if he’d joined their ranks.

If he kept up the act, she’d bolt. He had to tell her the truth, or the mission would blow up in his face. The consequences to him were immaterial compared to those before the whole Nighthawk team, and especially to this woman and her child.

Because if he didn’t get her out of here fast, no matter what her name was, Elizabeth Silver would be a dead woman within days.

Chapter 2

Brendan?

It took every scrap of self-control not to cry out his name, but she’d done it. She’d waited in silence for him to show a sign, to show her that he knew her, for him to tell her why he was here, and she’d received—nothing.

Nothing but lies.

McCall—she couldn’t think of this big, dark half stranger as Brendan, not her Brendan—was lying through his teeth; but Beth nodded at his tourist patter. Seeming to accept him at face value was the only way she could buy time to think—think about why he was really here, what he wanted from her. It was obvious, from his nonidentification, that he didn’t have positive ID on her, and he wasn’t going to recognize her.

He should have known better.

She’d been on the alert since the whispered phone call this morning, warning her that a man was casing all the potters’ studios, buying nothing but asking lots of questions.

But she’d never expected this. Not him.

Even after ten years she’d known him. Leaner, tougher, with deep scars hiding inside his forest-green eyes, and his black hair long and gypsy-wild instead of military-short—but it was still him. Her heart hit her throat and hammered, making her quiver with one look at him. No longer in the immaculate dress whites in which she’d met him, or the self-conscious suits he’d bought for their dates—no, he was dark as the storm clouds gathering outside in jeans the shade of night, boots and an ankle-length black leather coat over a thick deep gray woolen sweater.

He didn’t say her name. He didn’t show any recognition, and he didn’t say a word to reassure her about why he was here. He’d treated her as a stranger, asking odd questions, watching her, handing her his damn credit card.

A word kept floating around in her head, keeping her cool and in control under the words straining to fly from her lips.

Orders.

She’d stake her business on the fact that McCall was under orders to keep her under surveillance, to stay close and not spook her. But she wouldn’t risk her life—or that of her son.

Betrayal.

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.”

He meant it. He’d be back. She closed her eyes for a moment; then she fixed her gaze on him. “Why? Why me?”

His deep, compelling eyes on hers, he closed the gap between them. With infinite gentleness, he tipped up her chin with a finger. “Why do you think?” It was a whisper of heated sound, coffee-warm breath tiptoeing over her face, his touch tender. His masterful strength leashed…for now, at least. McCall would never hand control to anyone else for long.

Yet, no matter how she fought it, the slow blush filled her cheeks at his touch—a wave of half-shy sensuality, a woman-to-man acknowledgment of his effect on her.

No, no! Any act she put on now would be useless. She’d given it all away with a moment of involuntary feminine need. Her lashes fluttered down; she looked at her trembling fingers in disgust. Yet, how many long, cold years had it been since she’d known the sweet drowning, the yearning for a man’s touch?

Not since Brendan.

“If I knew, I wouldn’t need to ask,” she whispered back.

“Does there have to be a why?” His finger moved over her skin in a slow, subtle caress. She felt the quiver touch her soul, the heat streak straight from her heart to her most feminine core.

Without knowing it, she nodded.

Still holding her chin with a finger, he flicked his other hand toward the large pewter mirror hanging over the counter, designed as much for warning against strangers as it was for beauty and security. “Look in that.” He walked to the door, opened it. Then he turned to look in her eyes—a moment’s truth flickered in their hidden depths, lush and hot with untold secrets. “Watch out for strangers, Elizabeth Silver.”

As the door swung back to close after he’d gone, she felt his veiled warning touch her heart with icy, chilled fingers.

Chapter 3

“Cameras in place, Ghost,” he reported into the cell phone to his commander in Canberra. “Covering the entire perimeter every two yards, fences and in the garden. Two on each roof corner, with immediate heat-detector relay to me. Sentinel alarmed so they can’t be disabled. A three-second relay to home base, and to me within fifteen. She can’t get away.”

“Good work, Flipper.” Anson used the code name McCall hated with all his usual curtness. It referred to McCall’s SEAL background but he always felt like he should make dolphin noises when Anson called him. “Don’t leave the subject—24/7 watch. Wildman’s stationed two miles south, Braveheart two miles north, Panther the other side of Russell. Heidi’s west of the Bay, in the market village. Each has a ten-minute deadline to reach you.”

Perimeter covered as always, even in a one-man op—every contingency covered, including his death. The watch over his radial pulse sent satellite updates every ten minutes back to base. If he went down, the team moved in to protect the subject.

“Roger that, boss. I’m good to go.”

“Subject update?”

“Sleeping.” The heat detectors in the roof cameras flashed two unmoving objects—three if you counted the puppy her kid had sneaked in after his mother went to bed.

McCall grinned. Yeah, he could relate to that. He’d always done the same with the neighborhood stray after his old man fell into a drunken stupor or went out on the boat for night fishing, leaving him alone. Funny how that sour-tempered old mongrel’s presence had been so reassuring to his eight-year-old mind, after his mom and Meg disappeared. He’d even grown to love the unwashed stink of the dog. The smell of the docks was familiar, and the pungent odor was a reminder, even in sleep, that he wasn’t alone.

So Beth’s son was a lonely kid, too, even though his mom had stuck around, and obviously loved him.

Yeah, Beth Silver seemed the original earth mother. Through the silvery radiance of moonlight pouring through her windows, he could see a house filled with mellow redwood furniture, bare flooring and fireplaces, loads of scatter rugs and comfy sofas. Homemade touches like cross-stitch pictures and paintings, scattered pieces of pottery. Pictures of her with her son, the boy now named Danny. The boy who looked enough like Robert Falcone to be his missing son, Robbie.

He sensed Beth Silver would be a tigress when it came to protecting her son. She’d lie, cheat, steal—maybe even kill—to stop anyone taking him from her. He’d probably get the kid only over her dead body.

A good thing he wasn’t after the kid. What he did want was that lithe, lissome, feminine body warm and alive—and filled with him. Hearing her cry his name when she—

Yeah, as if you’re gonna get that anytime soon, when she refuses to even recognize you. Face facts, McCall, she was slummin’ with you ten years ago, and she ain’t gonna contaminate herself or her precious son with any down boy again.

The garden outside the house filled the place with the scent of blood roses and ferns, touches of jasmine and gardenia, earth and work and woman. This was a modest, lovely home, with a hint of an untamed heart in the rolling hills surrounding the property. Even the old, moss-covered craters of long-dead tiny volcanoes that dotted the whole northern island seemed to fit the deep-hidden, slumbering fire of the woman who lived here.

The rustic beauty of her home suited the picture Delia had told him she wanted one long-ago night—“A pretty little cottage I can do up myself, with a rose garden. My own house I can take care of myself, away from all the people and servants and fuss.” Her eyes had glowed with a young girl’s simple dreams.

For her wants to be so meager had seemed strange to the point of alien to the half-wild gang-kid from the docks of L.A. Her upbringing, her homes, everything about her was as lofty as a high-ranking Brazilian diplomat’s daughter could be—and she deserved every care and luxury. Things he could never have given her back then, and still couldn’t now. He could give a woman comfort, but never first class. He’d never be rich.

But they were things she obviously still didn’t want. She’d made her simple dream come true.

A blip alerted him before he saw it. A vision passed by the window a moment later, ethereal, ghostlike in her simple white sheath nightgown, barefoot. Silhouetted by the soft light of the glowing coals in the open fireplace, her nightgown became translucent satin, and her golden body and small, high breasts were in sweet shadow…and he ached like hell, watching her. Like a siren, she was there one moment, taking his breath with her otherworldly loveliness, and gone the next.

He’d frozen in midcount, dragging in a breath. Incandescent loveliness in the tender moonlight pouring through the window. The quiet, unsmiling waif returned to her milieu. Delia.

Get a grip, McCall! He willed his hormones to subside, but he found himself watching, waiting for her to pass the window once more. Then, his body aching and pounding inside those fire-scorched chains of the wanting he couldn’t conquer after a decade, he left the perimeter. Blowing out a mist-heated breath of frustrated need, he headed to the doubtful comfort of his bedroll, damp from the rain leaking into his motorbike’s pack. The closest to a cold shower he’d get, but standing naked in a glacier wouldn’t do a thing to douse the fire burning him alive.

From behind that triple-locked door, behind the peephole, the woman who still felt like a ghost inside her own life after years of hiding sagged against the wall, and breathed again. Beth passed an unsteady hand across her forehead. Why, why had she looked? Why, when she knew she’d only lose herself in the sight of him?

Twice now, he’d done the impossible to her. Last time, she’d loved him in minutes; now, within a day, despite all she knew about him, McCall had gone from her deepest terror to her dark sentinel, fascinating her with all a child’s fear of the night—a night he walked in with ease and grace, as if he belonged to it, or the night belonged to him. Even a prosaic task, such as opening his bedroll, took on a life of its own.

For some reason a line of poetry danced through her mind, slightly corrupted: He walks in beauty like the night.

Fool. She sighed and returned to her bed. When it came to McCall, a fool was all she’d ever been.

And though the thicker wool of her cushioned bed enfolded her more closely than the thin pallet McCall had rolled himself into, she found no comfort, no rest or release from heated midnight dreams, lush as black silk and just as terrifying.

Her peaceful life here in New Zealand with her son was over. Out of the shadows and into the fire—a fire that would burn her baby alive. All her plots and strategies, all her sacrifices were worth nothing if Falcone got to Danny. And if he got to her—

She shuddered. McCall might suspect, or think he knew, but he couldn’t prove a thing. She held the only proofs, just as she held Falcone’s life in her hands. A dual-edged sword meaning death, and so Falcone had kept his search low-key, discreet. But if he got her, she knew exactly what Falcone would do—what he’d wanted to do for the past twelve years, since she’d reached the age of consent at sixteen. And he’d take back his son.

It wasn’t happening to Danny. Her little boy would live and grow and play in peace, become a man like his grandfather, and his honorary grandfathers, and if she had to sacrifice her life for that to occur, so be it.