Dangerous Illusion

Her sleepless eyes watched dawn break over the tiny harbor across the road, knowing that McCall was doing the same, laying aside his wildness like a folded cloak and slipping into the persona of humanity he shed with the fall of night.

She rubbed her eyes. She definitely needed more sleep if she was indulging in dawn fancies, turning McCall into a creature of the twilight. He wasn’t after her blood to keep himself alive. He was just a man, about to betray her and her little boy the same way he’d betrayed his country, and for the same reason.

Money. It was as cold and as crude as that.

McCall pushed open the door of her studio and walked in. He didn’t question it, didn’t wonder if he should keep watching from across the road, as he had all morning. It had nothing to do with the afternoon rain drenching him. The coolness soaking him through was refreshing after hours of his body aching from superheated dreams, waking and sleeping: dreams of slipping that wraithlike sheath from her pearlescent skin, and burning alive with her in the inferno their loving would create.

No, the ache had grown unbearable, and he accepted the simple fact. He needed to see her, talk to her to ease it. As simple and as damn complicated as that.

“Good afternoon, Elizabeth Silver.” He had to keep playing the game until she gave him a sign, let him into her world, and hand over the evidence he knew in his gut was here somewhere.

But she barely nodded at him. No politeness today, no sword-thrust to his verbal parries—and he could now see what watching her from across the road didn’t show. Her mouth drooped as she worked; her hands were barely steady enough to mold the clay. The defenses she’d erected against him yesterday had come crashing down—for now. “Did you get any sleep last night?”

Or had she stayed behind that window, as caught by him as he was by her? The young Delia hadn’t been able to keep her eyes…or hands…from him for long, and whispered between drugging kisses that thoughts of him kept her awake at night.

A no-sleep op was okay for him. Even if he hadn’t been SEAL trained, he could get by on two or three fifteen-minute snatches of shut-eye through the night, as he’d done for most of his life. But the stress on her pale face was delicately obvious. Her tiredness made her lovelier than ever, as wraithlike as that slip of silk she’d worn in the night and as haunting, even in her prosaic jeans and woolen jumper outfit.

“Did you sleep?” Her soft, cool voice was gravel in her sleepless state, hitting him hard and low and fast with a jolt of hot need. “A sleeping bag on the grass can’t be comfortable.” Her eyebrow lifted, the challenge seeming stronger for its quiet femininity. “You do realize that stalking me by day and watching me at night, sleeping outside my house, does nothing to reassure me that you’re a member of the teddy bear’s picnic?”

She had a point. He made himself shrug, thinking fast. “I’ve run out of money?”

Her chin lifted. Her barriers were coming up, and clicking into place. “I don’t think so.”

Aiming to charm her, his mouth quirked up. “Um, I really want that teapot for my mom?”

“If she exists.” She sighed. “Can we stop this, please? If I see you outside my house at night again, I’ll call the police.”

“And say what?” he growled. “A man’s asleep on public ground across the road? That’s not a felony in New Zealand.”

“I saw you in my yard last night. Touching my house. Trespass with intent, I think that particular felony is called, isn’t it? And since you’re so well versed in New Zealand law, Mr. Tourist-just-here-for-two-weeks, maybe you can tell me what bylaw it’s part of, so I can tell the police when they get here.”

McCall swore beneath his breath. He’d well and truly blown his tourist cover by his knowledge of international law, and she was no longer a delicate, hollow-eyed china doll, she was tense and tight-stanced, ready to fight. “Are the police coming now?” he asked in a dark growl. Not that it mattered. With a call from Ghost or a high-ranking police commander, they’d back down fast. But Falcone had paid off people in authority before, and his men were already in the South Pacific. He didn’t want to tangle with more authorities than he had to because it put her at risk.

“Not yet.” A hand came up from behind the counter: wiped clean of the wet clay, it held a cell phone. “I’ve punched in the number. You have ten seconds to convince me not to complete the call.”

Damn, didn’t she know better than that? “You shouldn’t give intruders warning of your intentions. Ever. They could disarm you in seconds.” It would take him four, tops.

“I wouldn’t try it. Your fertility would be in question in seconds.” Her other hand lifted, holding a heavy baton. “I also know two different types of martial arts.”

He didn’t doubt her. It explained her tight, controlled stance, her legs splayed and arms tense, ready to attack. She wasn’t a fool, then, just too angry to care—or maybe, beneath her projected fear and mistrust, part of her knew he was here to protect her, so she was giving him a chance to explain himself.

“And if I don’t punch a security code into my alarm system every half hour, the police will be here within two minutes, and the security cameras installed into the ceiling have already relayed your image to the firm,” she went on, her eyes hard.

“Why would you be telling me all this if you thought I was going to attack you?” he asked softly. “You wouldn’t. Not unless you believe in your gut that I’m not here to hurt you. So this whole farce is unnecessary.”

She glanced at her watch. “Nine. Eight. Seven.”

Damn it! His mission was top secret—

“Six. Five.”

He couldn’t tell her everything, but he could play one ace. “You already know why I’m here,” he murmured, low with masculine tension. “You’ve known since the moment you saw me, no matter how well you hid it. Even though I had to let you go with them that night, you knew I’d come back for you one day.”

A moment’s silence. “It’s time for your medication, McCall. Unless you were brought up in Dunedin, or have been here in the past couple of years, I don’t know you.” When he didn’t answer, she shrugged. “Perhaps you should just tell me what it is you really want from me.”

“You know what I want, Delia.” He used the name deliberately. “Just like you knew my name before you saw it on my credit card.”

Folding his arms across his chest, he stood silent, waiting.

Was it a trick of the half light of the storm outside, or did her cheeks warm? “I thought that was what it was,” she said in a would-be casual voice. Shaking beneath.

He moved closer, all man now, the Nighthawk in him shot to hell at the gentle floral scent of her fresh-washed hair, the glowing golden skin, free of makeup, the aura of woman beneath the coolness she projected. “What?” he whispered. “What is it?”

She moved her face, as if in denial. Denying his question, or the raw male need straining from his every pore, screaming at him to take her, to find release from this unbearable need, this half-crazed tension inside her warm, golden loveliness?

Her answer, when it came, was unsteady. “I’m afraid you’ve crossed the world on a wild-goose chase, Mr. McCall. I’m not who you’re after. I’m Beth Silver.” She put down the baton and phone, and moved to her potter’s wheel, switching it on and reaching for her clay, kept wet in the double-thickness plastic bag. Finding steadiness inside familiarity? Was she so scared of him?

Not you, fool—you represent her losing her anonymity and freedom, he thought with a flash of insight. She doesn’t know if I’m working here alone, or if Falcone’s close behind. And damn it, he couldn’t tell her the truth until he got clearance, or verification of her identity. Lives hinged on his obedience to the Nighthawk mandates. “My mistake,” he said slowly, testing her. “You look so much like a girl I once knew.”

But the time was coming—and soon—when he’d have to force her out of the shadows. Already the credit-card slip she’d given him was being fingerprint tested for any criminal records; the photo he’d taken of her face matched against all recorded shots of Delia. She had hours to hide in her cloak of anonymity.

“So long as you don’t believe it.” As she kneaded her clay, added water, her face grew calmer; she spoke with that otherworldly calm. “Don’t tell me—the model, right? The one who died a few years back in a car crash? People used to mistake me for her all the time. I was even photographed a few times, and put in trash magazines. You know, the ‘Elvis is still alive and in South America’ stuff, except substitute Delia, and New Zealand.” She looked up at McCall, her face filled with cool pity. “If you cared about her, I don’t blame you for hoping I’m her—but the body was there, Mr. McCall. Accept facts. Delia de Souza is dead. There won’t be a resurrection.”

The quiet finality in her words sent a creeping shiver down his spine. What was she telling him—that she was Ana de Souza or that, in her eyes, Delia had died long ago? “I know, but she meant a lot to me, and you’re so much like her.”

Testing her. Would she react?

She merely shrugged. “I’m sorry, Mr. McCall. Much as I’d like to earn what she did, I’m just Beth Silver, an average single woman bringing up her son alone.”

“Never average. You’ve never known what average is,” he murmured huskily. Taking another step, he felt her body respond, and not in fear. Deny it as she would, the current of desire moved back and forth between them from him to her, her to him, with a life of its own, warm and aching and needy.

She gulped. The movement was quiet, intrinsically ladylike, yet her throat still convulsed, as if his words hurt her. “Maybe I want to know. What average is, I mean,” she added. As if she’d been thinking of something else she wanted to know.

What they both wanted to know. What they wanted, ached for.

Keep your mind on the assignment, or she’ll be gone by nightfall. “Average women don’t have a security system to rival Fort Knox,” he suggested. Probing.

She kept her face averted, not enough to be interpreted as fearful. More like she was looking over his shoulder. “I have my reasons. None of which should concern a complete stranger.”

He couldn’t think, couldn’t act like a Nighthawk, standing in the warm intimacy of her studio with the woman who drove him out of his rational mind with blood-pounding want. “Am I a stranger, Beth?” His voice grew huskier as he gave her the dignity of her chosen name. He couldn’t care less what her real name was right now. His body was hard and tight with the flaming brand of aching need that being within three feet of her engendered in him. “Can you look me in the face and tell me I’m a stranger?”

A little shrug. “What’s hard about that? We met yesterday. You are a stranger.”

Yet she didn’t look at him, and her voice held a telltale quiver. As if her heart rebelled against the half lie she told. As if she was fighting for her very life…and if she was Delia or even Ana de Souza, that’s exactly what she was doing. He knew, understood, even appreciated her spirit and fire and guts, fighting alone to save herself, and her child.

But everything in him, heart and gut and man, rose up in equally dark, hot rebellion. Like a tiger crouched in the dry grass ready to pounce on its prey, he took the final steps to her and put his hands on her shoulders. He felt her start, ready to bolt that moment. “Look at me, Beth.” He heard his voice, stark and graveled, filled with unbridled need and lust and untold secrets, and he felt her lovely body quiver in response. “Look at me—look in my eyes and tell me you don’t know me.”

Her fists clenched so hard he could feel her arms shaking beneath his hands. She didn’t turn her head.

“We were never strangers,” he muttered, rough and hard, yet keeping his hold gentle. Thrilling to the touch of her, even beneath a baggy sweatshirt, to that quiet, feminine scent filling his head, because it came from her. “From the moment we met—no matter when we met—it was there.”

She finally turned her face, and her eyes locked on his. She was nothing like that star-being now, just a woman in a desperate quest for truth. “Who are you?” she whispered.

“You know who I am,” he growled, wishing, willing her to hear his heart, his gut-deep need.

She shook her head—a tiny movement, yet with plenty of power. Fighting still, but she lay passive beneath his hands, allowing him to touch her. She may not trust me, but she wants me. I can use that to Nighthawk advantage, to save lives….

What a crock. He’d never heard such pathetic crap in his life. He almost heard the universe laugh at his self-delusional thought.

“Tell me. Please.” Her voice cracked, turned husky, a warm, lingering echo of the throaty alto he’d hungered to hear again for years. “What are you? Why are you here?”

“You tell me,” he commanded, using the magnetic pull he knew she felt, to make her answer him. “Tell me who you think I am.”

“It’s not your name—it’s—” Her lovely eyes filled with desire and distress, and a heart-deep terror that made him want to touch her, hold and comfort her. “Why are you here? Who do you work for? Who paid you to find me and to watch over me? Why are they doing this to me? What did I do?”

“Maybe I’m here for me.” He moved another half inch, and the current of heat hitched up another notch. Dangerous power, a firestorm waiting to unleash. “I waited for you to call, for you to come to me,” he said huskily. “I gave you my private cell number. I didn’t change it for six years. I kept the phone for that long, until I gave up on waiting for you to call. Didn’t you know I’d have helped you leave him if you needed it?”

“You don’t know Danny’s father—how could you help me?” Yet her voice held no strength. Her face was pale, her nostrils flared, like a doe about to bolt—the fight-or-flight response he suspected she’d lived on for years. “I don’t know you. I don’t want to know you. I don’t believe in anything or anyone. I don’t trust anyone.” Yet, as though she lay helpless in a trap, she didn’t, or couldn’t, move away from under his touch. “Especially not a man who tells me nothing about himself, yet expects my private confidences in return.”

A flickering, fading defiance that still slammed him in the guts. Someone with her life history couldn’t afford to let a man into her world who didn’t tell her anything, or give her any reason to take him on, let alone tell her the whole truth.

So give her what you can.

“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?”