Dangerous Illusion

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.

Good reminder. The world righted itself again. That big, muscular bronzed body of his was unkickable…and that was as far as she’d trust him, no matter how often he fed her.

She got to her feet, and the world took a sharp turn right—uh, right or left? She blinked to reorient herself, but even half a dozen did nothing to reduce the sudden vertigo.

The low growl shivered into her nerve endings; his arms came around her, keeping her upright. “Come here.” A moment later she was in the big, padded wing chair she kept for customers. He crouched down right beside her, putting a morsel of warm sweet roll between her lips. Its rich flavor burst onto her tongue with lush stickiness. “How long has it been since you ate?”

She welcomed the taste of the honey, nuts and fruit inside the roll, like a fruity baklava, with a soft moan of delight. “I haven’t been hungry.”

He fed her another piece. “Get hungry. You can’t get away with erratic eating habits anymore. You’re a mother.”

His blunt words made her stiffen, but he was right. She couldn’t function properly if she allowed the stress of McCall’s eruption into her life to disrupt her eating habits. She couldn’t escape if she was too weak to run.

How ironic that the one person who should want her weak and needing and afraid was feeding her, taking care of her, keeping her strong.

He’s just trying to make me trust him. But she couldn’t stop eating the wonderful food, couldn’t hold back from looking into his eyes…eyes so tense and filled with commanding, compelling desire, she gave a hot shiver. His taut, muscular frame, masking burning heat and hiding a leashed savagery, made her feel alive and strong—and like a woman for the first time in a decade.

“C’mon, Beth, I know you like it. Open your mouth.” The low, sensual growl didn’t startle her; it had long ago become part of her, waking or sleeping, an internal “on” switch only he knew how to find in her. She opened her mouth for him without even making the conscious decision.

Frozen. She’d been frozen since Papa told her that the man she adored was a traitor to his country. Her emotions encased in a delicate layer of ice, afraid to trust her own judgment. Now the ice was melting. With one look from his forest eyes, fire slammed into ice and kept on burning, hard and bright and remorseless as the sun. Within a day he’d brought her back to life. The ice that had been her protection for a decade was a puddle of warm, slushy water at his feet.

She automatically opened her mouth for more food when he urged her, finishing the roll and fruit salad with yogurt.

“Good girl,” he whispered in her ear, making her shiver, warm and sensual. Fear and distrust, sweetness and pain, defiance and trust and need…McCall left her in a perpetual state of confusion. A man absolutely and utterly wrong for her, yet so right….

Yes, a hit man in the employ of an arms and drugs dealer would be just right for a woman on the run.

Yet when he held the polystyrene cup to her mouth, she drank, as trusting as a baby, and another taste explosion filled her. Oh, joy—her favorite South American blend of mocha coffee! She moaned as the exotic sweetness ran riot on her tongue. With cream and sugar, just as she liked it. Just as he’d brought it for her years ago, complete with hamburger and fries. Nobody else dared give her food that could make her put on a single ounce. But Brendan had known how much she loved rich food and drink; it was her personal ambrosia and nectar, and by the time she’d met him she’d no longer cared if she was super-thin or not, a supermodel or not. And he’d known that, too.

He knew too much…oh, dear God, what had she done? He’d set her the simplest of tests, and she’d failed!

She didn’t dare let her gaze fly to his, or let herself stiffen. Danny, think of Danny! “Oh, this coffee’s good….” Her purr was alive with sensual discovery. “Would you mind telling me what blend it is? I’ll have to put it on my shopping list.”

“Games can only last so long.” He tipped up her chin, making her look at him. “I didn’t buy the coffee to trip you up.”

Maybe he hadn’t, but she had tripped up, and they both knew it. “I’m feeling better now.” She got to her feet. “Thank you,” she said simply. “I hadn’t realized how long I’d gone without.”

He shrugged. “It’s been a while, but I’m kind of used to doing it.” For you.

The unspoken words shimmered in the warm, fragrant air inside the studio, the dangerous half light of the storm outside, and she wanted to scream. For years her cover had been impenetrable. Now, within a day, she was giving herself away with every word and act. Even to allowing him to feed her foods he knew his Delia would have loved. Dizzy as she was, her strict upbringing would never have allowed her to trust a real stranger so completely, the stranger she’d claimed McCall to be…and no man would know that fact better than he, who had seen her freeze when any other man even tried to make the slightest move on her.

She’d never allowed any man to touch her but her beloved SEAL, her Brendan, whom she’d brought to life as he had her.

From that first brooding look, she’d been intrigued; but when he didn’t try to touch her apart from the demands of the photographer, she’d felt drawn. Then, when he actually made her smile and even laugh amidst the crowd of bodyguards, hangers-on and wanna-bes she’d so hated, she’d tumbled, head over feet, straight into first love. She’d given Brendan her heart and soul, her hopes and dreams. So he’d learned what she couldn’t resist, and gave it to her with the smile that made her want to do anything to please him.

Damn it, she’d just revealed another chink in her armor—her unconscious acceptance of the rights she’d once given him to touch her, feed her, care for her. The past she’d tried so hard to lock away in darkness had been brought to light with a stupid cup of coffee and sweet food.

Pull yourself together! Danny’s innocence and freedom—and your life—depends upon this. McCall’s knowledge of you is stronger than anyone alive. You can’t let him see inside, just like he won’t let you see inside him.

Denial was not only superfluous at this point; it was ridiculous, beneath her intelligence and his. So she chose to take refuge in deflection. “I need my wheel now, Mr. McCall.”

His eyes turned as dark as the crashing clouds outside as he got to his feet. He stood before her with feet splayed and arms folded, aggressively male. “Playing the fiddle while Rome burns? It’s too late, too dangerous, to continue to deny what I already know is the truth. We have to talk.”

Meeting fire with fire, she lifted her chin in cool challenge, daring him to keep trying to get inside her mind. “We do? We do—does that mean you’ll give me something beyond your tourist prattle and your former rank and serial number?”

The walls slammed into place before her eyes, bricks and mortar rendered in granite. “I thought not.” She nodded toward the door. “Mr. McCall, this is still my property. Watch from across the street. I may not have any customers until after the storm, but you’d scare any off that dared to come out in this weather.”

He took a step toward her, two. “That’s the intention.”

Her eyebrows lifted. “Well, we’ve come forward—some honesty at last. Maybe soon you’ll even tell me what you want from me.”

Taking the final step, he touched that high-held chin. His gaze, burning hot and dark as starless midnight, settled on her mouth, and she shuddered in raw desire and hopeless confusion. “Take out the ‘what’ and ‘from,’ and you get the picture. I want you, no matter what your name is.”

Aching, she lifted a hand, and the dry clay on her fingers and palm cracked and fell to the floor at the same time as thunder split the sky outside—and his last words penetrated her consciousness. Her hand fell. “More honesty. That’s impressive. A shame it all seems to revolve around your delusions of who I am.”

He gave a low growl of frustration and cupped his hand around her arm, his touch as tender as his words were uncompromising. “You don’t have much time left. They’re on the move. He’ll come himself this time. And he’s not coming to reclaim his wife. You humiliated him in front of his people, his world. He’s coming to kill you personally.”

On some deeper level she felt the gentle motions of his hand supporting her, but over and above it was the whitening of her cheek, like a gunshot to a vein leeching out her life force. Control, control… It took all she had, drawing on strength she didn’t know was still inside her after so many years on the run, but she didn’t sway into him, or lean on him. “Let go of me.”

His hand dropped. He took a step back. Watching her.

Her eyes held his, shattered, pleading. “Let me go. Please. I can make life safe for my son again, if you leave for an hour.”

Fingers curled into palms, making tight fists, as his eyes squeezed shut. A breath came from him as if it had been forced, a warm, coffee-scented zephyr from the heart of a man in torture. “I can’t. God help us both, Beth, even if you and your son weren’t in more danger than you can handle, I can’t.”

She dragged in air. His scent came inside her like a beloved enemy, and she knew that scent, heat and coffee and rain, ancient pain and pagan need, would haunt her for the rest of her days. “Don’t do this to me. Don’t destroy my life.”

Eyes bleak as midwinter opened. “I don’t have a choice. You have a day, two at most. You’ll need me when it all goes down.”

You don’t have much time. They’re on the move. The echo of his voice kept resonating back to her, each time more urgent, more imperative. You humiliated him…he’ll kill you personally.

Given what Ana had told her about Falcone, every word made perfect sense. Did he know from personal experience?

“There’s an umbrella in the stand behind the door,” she said quietly. It wasn’t an inference; it was a command. Go.

Without a word he tossed the coat over his shoulder and strode out into the rain. Half-wild storm winds swirled around him, soaking him. And from the hill across the road he watched still, tense and strong and with an overwhelmingly masculine beauty. Yet he’d never looked more alone.

She turned from the sight, aching with regret for what couldn’t be. Whether he was a good guy or in Falcone’s pay, no matter how she felt about him, she didn’t have a choice.

You have a day. Two at most.

She’d been responsible for enough deaths. She had to get away—from here, and from McCall—before she killed him, too.

McCall stood across the road, watching her close the store. Though the rain worsened with the close of day, his coat stayed slung over his shoulder; he barely noticed the lashing bite of the hard-hitting needles of water. All his life, from fishing boats to the navy and SEALs, and now with the Nighthawks, he was used to extremes of weather, especially water. He was used to being alone and cold; it didn’t bother him.

What got to him was Beth dismissing him. Take the umbrella and go. Watch me from outside, out in the rain where you belong.

Even when she’d said she loved him a decade ago, he’d always felt on the outside looking in with her, a guttersnipe daring to look at a duchess. Nothing had changed in ten years, except her address and marital status. The freezing tone of her voice—the dismissal bordering on contempt—left a slightly acrid taste in his mouth, as if he’d inhaled the cordite from a smoking gun.

Yeah, and the gun was from his own pocket. Being near her was a constant game of Russian roulette, yet like a fool he just kept on turning that barrel….

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.”