“I meant what I said earlier, Beth. Come hell or Falcone’s hitmen, I’m with you for as long as you need me. Or want me.”

Beth clenched her fists even as her body swayed toward Brendan. Oh, how she ached to take what he so freely offered, but though he didn’t know it, she was fighting for his very life. The life he’d all but laid at her feet just now. And she wouldn’t—couldn’t—risk his life. “Just get out, McCall.”

As if her words hadn’t affected him, he strolled to the door. “Lock it after me, babe. I’ll be watching from outside—got to keep the princess safe.”

She’d done what she could to save him. Now he had a chance of staying safe and alive…and she couldn’t allow herself to want any more than that.

Dear Reader,

Welcome to another month of excitement and romance. Start your reading by letting Ruth Langan be your guide to DEVIL’S COVE in Cover-Up, the first title in her new miniseries set in a small town where secrets, scandal and seduction go hand in hand. The next three books will be coming out back to back, so be sure to catch every one of them.

Virginia Kantra tells a tale of Guilty Secrets as opposites Joe Reilly, a cynical reporter, and Nell Dolan, a softhearted do-gooder, can’t help but attract each other—with wonderfully romantic results. Jenna Mills will send Shock Waves through you as psychic Brenna Scott tries to convince federal prosecutor Ethan Carrington that he’s in danger. If she can’t get him to listen to her, his life—and her heart—will be lost.

Finish the month with a trip to the lands down under, Australia and New Zealand, as three of your favorite writers mix romance and suspense in equal—and irresistible—portions. Melissa James features another of her tough (and wonderful!) Nighthawk heroes in Dangerous Illusion, while Frances Housden’s heroine has to face down the Shadows of the Past in order to find her happily-ever-after. Finally, get set for high-seas adventure as Sienna Rivers meets Her Passionate Protector in Laurey Bright’s latest.

Don’t miss a single one—and be sure to come back next month for more of the best and most exciting romantic reading around, right here in Silhouette Intimate Moments.

Yours,

Leslie J. Wainger

Executive Editor

Dangerous Illusion
Melissa James

www.millsandboon.co.uk

MELISSA JAMES

is a mother of three living in a beach suburb in county New South Wales. A former nurse, waitress, store assistant, perfume and chocolate (yum!) demonstrator among other things, she believes in taking on new jobs for the fun experience. She’ll try almost anything at least once to see what it feels like—a fact that scares her family on regular occasions. She fell into writing by accident when her husband brought home an article stating how much a famous romance author earned, and she thought, “I can do that!” Years later, she found her niche at Silhouette Intimate Moments. Currently writing a pilot/spy series set in the South Pacific, she can be found most mornings walking and swimming at her local beach with her husband, or every afternoon running around to her kids’ sporting hobbies, while dreaming of flying, scuba diving, belaying down a cave or over a cliff—anywhere her characters are at the time!

For my dad, who loved James Bond and spy books and movies. He would have loved to be tall, dark and dangerous, like McCall—well, you were dark, anyway.

You would have liked this book, Dad.

My deepest thanks goes to Marg Riseley, who stepped into the breach to read this one for me, and reminded me of points I’d forgotten; and to Olga Mitsialos, thanks once again for being reader and suggestion person extraordinaire.

To both ladies, your constant support was invaluable—especially when I needed help cutting this book down.

And my undying gratitude goes to my editor, Susan Litman, for helping make this book what it is now, by fabulous revision suggestions and always being there to plotstorm with me. These Nighthawks wouldn’t be the people they are without you!

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 1

Renegade River, Bay of Islands, New Zealand

It was her.

Oh, yeah, it had to be. No other woman had ever roused that knife-edged core, gut-gnawing hunger, scraped with a burning need to hold and protect. Scraped, not mixed. It never blended, like something meek or tame. Nothing about his reaction to her was tame. One look and his veneer of social graces shed like molted skin to reveal the raw male animal beneath, hungry and hot, savage and needing.

Instant obsession.

McCall stood five feet from the round, cross-beamed window beneath an intricate and beautiful sign like something straight out of Middle Earth, proclaiming her to be:

Elizabeth Silver, Potter of Excellence.

He watched her working at her wheel, her face—that unforgettable blend of lush South American exotic and haunting English-rose beauty—filled with gentle concentration.

He’d loved her trademark auburn curls, but the new, almost boyish style, a cropped mop of raven hair, only intensified her surreal loveliness. The haunting star-queen—everything else faded away, submerged beneath the power of the dark azure eyes in that amazing face.

Even in quiet repose without a trace of makeup, it was definitely her face. The unique light and dark, serenity and turbulence, so-intense-it-slammed-you-in-the-guts beauty that had launched a million magazines and spawned male fantasies beyond count from the time she was fourteen. The unsmiling waif.

She’d smiled for him.

They’d met while shooting promo pics for a navy recruitment drive, and he’d immediately seen the wistful, shy girl inside the haughty model. And within hours, he was in so deep he’d never really found his way out.

He could still see her lying beneath him, drugged by his kisses, her swollen mouth smiling with innocent desire…driving him, the guy his SEAL team called The Untouchable, to his knees. All he knew was, he had to have her—but he couldn’t make love to her while they met in secret. She’d asked him to wait until they revealed their relationship to her wealthy parents. Touching and kissing, making promises during stolen meetings. I can’t tell my parents about us yet, Brendan…but I will soon, I promise…I promise.

That damn word still yanked his chain. Yeah, she’d gone slumming with him all right. She’d wanted a holiday from the jet set, and he’d made it clear he was happy to be her slave for as long as she wanted him.

But within six months she’d returned to her uptown life, hit the high-class party circuit—and then more dubious gatherings. Hanging on the arms of the rich and infamous with men of evil reputation. Yet she’d still seemed so damn innocent, above it, or beyond it all. Always, she seemed apart from the angst and lusts of life, as if she’d fallen from a star.

Until the day she’d married arms and drugs dealer Robert Falcone, she’d still been his. Though his world was her exact opposite—a world peopled by pimps, black-market traders of weapons and human flesh, while he infiltrated and busted their filthy deals with his trained undercover teams—he’d been fool enough to believe she’d come back to him.

But he couldn’t forget her. She was Helen of Troy, Cleopatra, Aphrodite—but she was his. He’d staked his claim, and one day he’d mark her, brand her to the world. McCall’s woman.

That objective hadn’t changed in ten years. He wanted her even more now that the big-eyed elfin-child had become golden, lissome woman. The flames of desire still licked at his soul. They were always there, burning alive all they touched in sudden conflagration.

McCall dragged in a breath that felt like the center of a firestorm—blasting hot, scorching him from the inside out. Yet it was April in New Zealand, mid-autumn, and the lush, green coolness of the air couldn’t be milder. She sat at her potter’s wheel in a quiet house amid the emerald hills, a long-lost dream of wistful beauty, and he felt like a caveman wanting to drag her off by the hair. My woman.

Hold it in, or she’ll run again.

If the boss knew of their past, he’d take him off this assignment for sure. But Delia de Souza Falcone was his one lapse in a perfect career, his own private ghost—the haunting immortal who walked with him by day, her sweet whisper in his ears by night—but when he awoke, she was never there.

Yet here she was in the Bay of Islands, in quiet, semirural New Zealand, of all places. The country right next door, yet it was the one place he hadn’t thought of looking.

He thought he’d known her better than anyone living; but he’d been forced to reassess that half-assed belief when Anson, his superior in the information-and-rescue group known to the upper brass only as the Nighthawks, had told him there was a strong probable hiding out in northern New Zealand.

So she made a fool of you again. What’s new about that?

Yet he couldn’t help but admire her guts. Damn smart of her, coming here, setting up a business like a bona fide ordinary citizen. If he hadn’t thought of it, neither would Robert Falcone—and it appeared to be so. Falcone had seemingly forgotten his wife and spent five years chasing another woman, Verity West, a fellow Nighthawk, code name Songbird. Her cover as an international singer nicknamed “The Iceberg” had made her irresistible bait for a man like Falcone, who saw women only as trophies to show off, or for breeding children for him. Songbird played her part in bringing Falcone’s networks down, until he escaped from custody with the help of corrupt police on his payroll.

But a week ago the Nighthawks received positive confirmation that Falcone’s hunt for his supposedly dead wife and son had intensified after five years on the back burner, and he was concentrating on the South Pacific. Anson had again gone through all the Delia possibles, coming up with this woman, and only by sheer luck had he, McCall, beaten Falcone’s men here. He had about two days to get her out of here, though how the hell he could do that with the orders he’d been given was beyond him.

Keep all information pertaining to who you represent or what we want from her confidential until you get a positive ID, and proof that she has the tape of Falcone ordering a hit on Senator Colsten. If she goes to the press, she’d prejudice the case in court and he’d go free…and more innocent people will die. This woman is either Delia de Souza or her cousin, Ana. We have positive confirmation that Ana de Souza flew in to Amalza five days before the accident that killed one of them—and the other had to have taken the child, and the tapes. Getting the proof we suspect Delia holds, and taking down the rogue Nighthawk in league with Falcone, are our number-one priorities.

Damn it! He knew Anson was right, but how the hell was he supposed to gain her trust without giving her the truth?

It’s what you’ve done the past ten years with every other mission. Just get on with it.

He pushed open the rounded door beside the round, cross-beamed window—a savvy move on her behalf, making the half-hidden house vaguely resemble a hobbit hole—and the bell above tinkled. He stood in the doorway, framed by the glow of early morning, and waited. Look at me, Delia.

“I’ll be with you in a moment. Please feel free to look around.” Her voice, with a perfect New Zealand soft burr, was cool as spring water, gentle as the pitter-pat of new rainfall, and though it was miles from the husky Rio accent he remembered, it still hit him with a fission-blast of heat. He didn’t move, didn’t speak. Her beauty was gently mellowed in the simple jeans and soft lavender woolen sweater she wore, covered with a clay-smeared smock. Her once perfect, soft, long-fingered hands were grubby from her work, with chipped, short nails and cracked, rough skin. But it was her. He knew it.

Look at me, Delia….

Finally she looked up, her dark blue eyes fixed on his face, half smiling in professional inquiry. “May I help you?”

No start, no shock, not even a hint of recognition. She sat as serene as Raphael’s Madonna, calm and lovely as Botticelli’s Venus. One look at her, and she’d knocked him off his feet; she looked at him and obviously felt—nothing.

Could she have forgotten? Was she the actress of the century, or could Elizabeth Silver be her real name? Was this a simple case of a freak coincidence of looks and age?

And in being an illegal immigrant? an inner voice jeered.

Jerked back to reality, he ran his gaze over her again, watching more than her face. Read her body language.

Hell no! She knew him all right. Her eyes and face remained calm, but her fingers were scrambling in a hasty attempt to cover the sudden hole in the wet clay she’d made with a jabbing finger.

He wanted to get her out of here and fast, before Falcone’s hit men found her. And he would, even if it killed him. Even if he weren’t committed body and soul to taking her filth of a husband down as part of his Nighthawk mission, he’d do it—for her.

“Sir? Are you all right?”

He shook himself. “Yes. Sorry. I was expecting—” you to recognize me “—someone older.”

She didn’t smile. “Elizabeth Silver does sound like someone’s maiden aunt.” She remained as far off as Delia had always been, until a magical summer day when a young SEAL lieutenant’s outrageous comments had made her giggle, getting them both in trouble with the irate photographer… “I guess I could change it by deed poll if I wanted to.”

Not in this lifetime, baby. The only living woman who could legally change her name from Elizabeth Silver in New Zealand was fifty-four years old, a mother and grandmother who lived five hundred miles away on the South Island, near Christ-church.

“Yeah,” he agreed with an easy returned smile, leaning on the doorpost. “But it suits you.”

She lifted her eyebrows. “I’m nobody’s aunt that I know of.”

You’re no maiden either, you’re Mrs. Falcone. His jaw tightened. Get that through your head, McCall; she’s another man’s wife. She hasn’t been yours for years. He forced words from his half-frozen lips. “I beg your pardon. I don’t know you, do I? Your face reminds me of someone I used to know…”

Not a twitch or start, no telltale flush or paling of her golden oval cheek. But—her fingers…were they shaking? “I seem to remind a lot of people of someone. People always ask me that.” She lifted clay-smeared hands in inquiry. “May I help you, or are you just browsing? You’re welcome to look around all you like.”

“Just looking. I saw your house and sign, and I couldn’t resist having a look in here.”

“That was its design.” She smiled, this time with a little genuine feeling. “Please feel free.”

Slammed in the solar plexus. Just one smile and he was winded, scrambled, foolish and fooled. Part of him wanting like hell to believe she was Delia, the other half so bloody naive it was laughable, all wishing and wistful. A dumb-ass jerk wanting her to be genuine—just Elizabeth Silver, Potter of Excellence. A legal identity to smile at, think about, take dancing or to dinner and make love with, like any other woman…as if she weren’t the runaway wife of a billionaire black-market arms and drugs dealer whose men were reported to be hot on his tail right this minute, bent on kidnap and revenge of said runaway wife.

Both halves of him so fierce in their driving male need, so finely balanced on a hot knifepoint he felt as if he walked an electric tightrope, and he was nobody’s gymnast. This mission could all fall apart because he couldn’t change the way he felt any more than he could stop the sun rising tomorrow.

Tomorrow. One day closer to Falcone getting her. Yet he stood here like a teenager in his first burst of lust. Lost in the same old need, its ache undiluted. He had two days max to gain her trust, while from half a world away Falcone sat smack between them, pulling his strings and smiling like an obscene demigod, holding a high-caliber automatic to her head.

She’s in danger. Just do your job.

She was watching him. Checking him out…and not in a sexual manner. Beneath her ultrafeminine, gentle exterior, her eyes acted like a computer, seeking out his secrets. Finding what he wanted to hide. Working out his agenda.

He made himself nod, still watching her. “Thanks. I’ll look around. Did you paint that sign yourself?”

“Yes.” Her words were cool and distant, a step back, a mile above. The star-being, the haughty Brazilian princess. She’d retreated behind barriers he couldn’t navigate, jamming his prelim-data radar like an EA 6B Prowler at night.

He couldn’t blame her. The intensity of his briefest gaze on her almost blistered his own skin.

Get a grip on yourself!

He wandered around the studio. The bell above the door’s connected by wire to an intercom system too high-tech for a business this small. Window onto the main road looks double-glazed—bulletproof. Both the doors to the outside, and the door leading into the private house, look at least two inches thick, with a one-sided quadruple locking system protecting the house.

She’s watching every move I make. Her eyes are calm, but she just dented the pot on the wheel again, her fingers are gripping its base so hard. It’s already twisted out of shape with her foot jerking the wheel pedal.

Yeah. Way too tense for a woman with nothing to hide.

At random he picked up a vase. It was flute-shaped, thin as the most delicate glass, of a blue so clear he could almost see through it, like a wash of oceanic beauty. A woman’s face superimposed, like a hologram for its fineness, its sweet lost-soul effect. “This is amazing.”

She nodded with regal carelessness. “Thank you.”

“How much?” Nothing in the whole studio had a price on it that he could see.

She told him, her cool, clear voice almost a shrug. As if she’d picked a price off the top of her head.

His mental alarm started shrieking. Everything she said and did was way too casual for the levels of tension he felt radiating from her. Oh, yeah, she knew him, remembered him. Was she fighting the same grinning demons he was? Wanting, aching for a touch, playing the fiddle of imperative danger while they burned with need….

She apparently misinterpreted his silence. “That’s in New Zealand dollars, not American.” He guessed she was speaking in reference to his California accent, still strong after living for a decade in Canberra, Australia’s capital.

“Very reasonable.” With almost two NZ dollars to each American dollar, the vase was almost indecently cheap. “I’ll take it.” And he wanted it. Even if it hadn’t been a piece of such clear-water, haunting beauty, he’d want it. He wanted a permanent part of her to stay with him even after she’d gone.

Yeah, he’d hit the jackpot at last. No other woman had ever set his body on fire with such white-hot, furious need. Only Delia. She’d scorched him with every smile, every laugh at his jokes, every secret she’d told him—and she’d drugged his very soul with kisses so sweet, shy and desperate, his lips still burned with their imprint ten years later. In five months, she’d dragged his heart from its place of deep, dark hiding…and she’d slipped some intrinsic part of his self inside that incredible aura of hers, and taking it back had never been an option.

Gut, heart, body and soul, all screaming, I’ve found her.

Yet if she was Delia, she was another man’s wife, even if that man was a slime-bucket criminal who got rid of his enemies with his army of contract killers.

And still McCall wanted her, his desire raging and unstoppable.

Had he ever really known her? The Falcone case had long ago forced him to reassess everything he thought he knew. She’d been an eighteen-year-old girl when they’d met in secret for five beautiful months—then she was gone. Within a year she’d married Robert Falcone, a smiling demon who left the hearts of brave men slamming against their ribs and their guts knotted. What had life with Falcone done to the woman-child who’d been so pure, so protected and innocent to McCall’s world-weary eyes?

Seeming oblivious to his turmoil, Elizabeth Silver, Potter of Excellence, wrapped the vase in tissue paper and placed it in a bag with her amazing design on its silvery folds. “Here you are, sir.” Her hands trembled slightly as she handed the package to him.

On instinct, he zeroed in on her eyes, and saw unmasked terror…and haunting recognition. Then it was gone, so swift it felt like the passing of an F/A-18. He had to force himself not to blink. Was this an Oscar-winning performance, or was he wishing, hoping so damn hard for her to be Delia he’d gone catatonic?

Right. You can do this. He handed her a credit card with his real name, watching her as she took it. Would she react? Not likely, if she didn’t react to my face or voice. But it was a risk he had to take, with only two days to gain her trust.

Her eyes flicked over the name with detached professionalism as she made up the bill, then she handed him the slip to sign. “Thank you, Mr. McCall. Please come back.” Not a single sign of recognition, just a courteous dismissal.

He didn’t believe it—didn’t believe her. She’d had a decade to perfect her act. He wasn’t going anywhere. Not when every screaming instinct told him he’d found her at last. “My mom has a set of pottery at home in a similar blue to this vase, but she broke her teapot. A tall one, in a classic design. Do you think you could make a replacement? I’d love to surprise her with a new one.” Since his mom had run off when he was eight, taking his sister, Meg, and leaving him alone with his drunken dad, she sure as hell would be surprised—surprised he’d bothered to find her. But it made him sound like an all-round nice guy, and women liked that kind of man. He had to gain her trust fast—it meant her life—and his long-absent mom may as well be useful to him for once.

It worked. He got another smile, a fluttering of her fingers. “Of course I can. Does the piece have any particular design on it?”

“Daisies.” A spur-of-the-moment decision. “You know, like that old china pattern? Flannel daisy, wasn’t it?”

Her cheeks flushed, her eyes glowed from within, like far-off stars warmed by sunlight. He didn’t know what, but he’d said something to bring her to life, one way or another. “I can make something similar, but please bear in mind that the design and china are classic. I can never hope to create anything that perfect.” She went on, neither needing nor wanting his reassurance on her talent. “I could have it finished in twelve days. Perhaps I can send it on to wherever you’re going?”

“I’ve got two more weeks here.” He watched her in what he hoped was a strong-male-interest-without-interrogation manner. Hell, the best he could hope right now was that he didn’t look like a psychotic stalker. When it came to Delia, his feelings were so screwed he didn’t know what he looked like or what he felt.

One of her eyebrows lifted. “Two weeks in the Bay, in autumn? You’re not touring the whole North Island?”

Okay, that was weird. It was fixable. “I’m on long service leave. I’ve been here a month, with Auckland as my base, doing the beaches and wilderness. I’ve seen from the Harbors to the volcanoes around Rotorua and the ski fields, not that there’s snow yet. I checked out the South Island, too. It’s a gorgeous place, isn’t it? Just like it looks in Lord of the Rings.”

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.

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?”

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.”

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

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

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

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

McCall was no stranger to duty. He had only two choices now—to find solid evidence of her identity, or call Anson and tell him of his past with Delia, and his certainty that Beth Silver and Delia de Souza were one and the same.

The latter would be enough for Anson to move the equipment in tonight. The full show—mikes, cameras—a full regalia of watchers, as much to protect her as to keep her from running. This woman was the only one who could give him the irrefutable proof the Nighthawks needed to give the World Court, the only ones left who might be able to extradite Falcone from Minca bel Sol, his luxurious little bolt-hole in the Pacific—

And because Anson doesn’t know her, he’ll take me off point. And if she doesn’t trust me, how much chance have any of the other Nighthawks got, apart from forcibly abducting her and the kid? Then we’d never get the evidence—and we’ve got a snowball’s chance in a volcano of finding it. She’s too smart not to have stashed it where we’d never find it without her cooperation.

God help him, he had to keep silent, both to Beth and to Anson. He had to find physical evidence of her identity by the end of this day, or they could all go down in a hail of bullets.

The bell above the door gave a violent jangle as the door flew inward. McCall wheeled around, reaching for his weapon, training his eye on the target—but his gaze fell by two feet to find the culprit…a kid erupting into the room, a kid with a shock of thick dark hair, a thin build and intense, soulful eyes.

Danny. Maybe—almost definitely—Robbie Falcone. The resemblance to his father was uncanny.

The boy tore in, straight past McCall without noticing him, traipsing mud through the showroom, a football under his thin arm and his dark-eyed face alight with joy. “Mr. Branson says if I practice hard I might get off the reserves bench next week!”

“Oh, sweetie, that’s wonderful.”

Stuffing his Glock back in his jacket, McCall turned around to see Beth’s face, stricken pale—she’d seen the gun, all right—but she infused her voice with a happiness as strong as the boy’s, her eyes bright as the Pacific sky. “Do you want to practice again this afternoon? I can close the store early.”

The boy’s eyes fell, his thick dark lashes covering them. “Mummy, you play like a girl. Mr. Richards said I can go over now and play with him and Ethan.”

McCall smothered a grin; but any urge to smile faded when he saw the flash of panic that came and went in Beth’s eyes, so fast an untrained eye couldn’t have seen it. “Sweetie, you know I think Mr. Richards is very nice, but—”

“But we don’t know him well enough. We don’t know what he might do,” Danny said with an adult-sounding weariness that told McCall he’d said this too many times before. Was the poor kid only six? He sounded forty; and suddenly, he wasn’t “the kid” anymore. As in smuggling the dog in at night, in this, Danny Silver was a brother in arms, a little kid whose life necessitated that innocence must be shattered for survival.

Poor kid. Poor Danny.

Beth gave a swift, unreadable glance at McCall then turned away. “Exactly. Good boy.”

The boy’s face turned earnest, pleading. “But, Mummy, we know them. Mrs. Richards is your friend. And Mr. Richards, he’s not like the other guys’ dads…he goes to church.”

“Danny, I’d rather play with you myself. You know, just you and me.” Beth’s face had a haunted, hunted look to it now.

“No! I don’t wanna!” The boy stamped his foot, red-faced with fury, lapsing into childish speech. “I wanna play with Mr. Richards and Ethan! I want someone who can really play!”

Beth gave another swift glance McCall’s way. “Danny, we have a customer here. Can we wait until he’s left the showroom to continue the conversation?” Please leave, her eyes begged.

What was he doing here? He had no right to listen, not even for their protection. He turned to leave the showroom.

“But, Mummy, they’re playing now, and you always talk and talk until it’s all over and I can’t go!” Danny’s face was blazing with indignation and pleading combined. “I don’t wanna talk ’bout it again—we talk all the time. I wanna go!”

Beth closed her eyes, but not before McCall, looking over his shoulder, saw a warrior-size guilt spear through the indigo depths, acknowledgment of a six-year-old’s unwanted perception. “I said now, Daniel.” With a swift movement, Beth twitched the curtain to the washstand and drying room.

“But I gotta go to the park right now or they’ll be gone—and Mr. Richards says he’s gonna show me and Ethan how to do a catch an’ a pass, and I could get into the team next week—”

“I said now, Daniel Silver!”

Oh, boy, Beth was pulling rank on Danny. A decision made in fear, if he knew anything at all—and though she didn’t know it, she’d regret this later, with bitter tears. McCall pulled open the door, but couldn’t resist another glance, and his heart twisted. Danny’s shoulders had slumped; his mouth trembled in silent mutiny, but he went ahead of his mother into the storage space. Obedient, maybe, but McCall would bet his eyes glittered with all the fire of resentment he felt. He knew; he’d been there.

“Mr. McCall.”

About to close the door behind him, McCall turned to her.

Her words were innocuous, but somehow filled with meaning when combined with the blazing message in her eyes. “Thank you.”

She’d thanked him for leaving? Refusing to show her how much she’d shocked him with that unexpected leap forward in her trust, he nodded. “Sure. But, Beth?”

One eyebrow lifted, but her eyes were softer. Open. She was listening to him.

He dragged in a quick breath, and said what he had to—for Danny’s sake. “I understand what you want—better than you know. But Danny will remember today, and whether he thanks you or hates you for it is up to you.” He gazed into her eyes and went on, knowing he risked shattering the trust he’d felt from her moments ago. “I was only eight when my mom left, and I still remember her last words to me, the look on her face as she said them.”

“And?” she asked, her gaze intent on his face. “Besides the fact that I don’t need to keep making that teapot for her.”

“No. You don’t.” He gave her a brief, self-mocking smile of acknowledgment. “What I’m saying is, Danny’s trying to find his way in life, and friends and sport are vital to a child’s self-esteem. Being called a mama’s boy is fatal. He’ll be bullied about it all his life, no matter where you go.”

Her face closed off. “What do you know about it?”

He shrugged. “Maybe not much. I’m not a father. But I was a boy once, and most boys believe the same credo. If you keep overprotecting him he may make it to twenty-five, but if all he remembers is you stopping him from living the life he wants for himself, he won’t thank you, Beth—and you should know that better than anyone. Your parents turned you into a model, their pride all centered on your looks and fame, and you resented them for making you live the life they wanted for you.”

She whitened, her eyes dark and shattered. “Thank you for your honesty.” She wheeled about, heading for the curtain where heavy tapping sounds indicated Danny’s obedience was wearing thin. “I’ll be right back,” she said, her voice filled with quiet bitterness. “You seem to think you know all about me.”

Yeah, that precious moment of trust between them had been just that—a moment; but what choice did he have but to do it? He couldn’t gain her confidence at the cost of Danny’s happiness. He might be a lowlife, but he hadn’t gone that far down yet.

McCall let the door fall to behind him, trying not to listen in as the woman on the run fought with the loving mom, faced with a vivid, passionate boy who just wanted to play—a child’s birthright that had become a rare privilege to him.

“It’s just practice, Mummy. I need to practice so’s I can make the team! An’ you know Mr. Richards is nice!”

Beth said something to Danny, low and pleading. McCall squelched the temptation to use his earpiece to hear better.

“Why can’t you be like the other mums?”

Silence for a few moments, then Beth asked something. Even muffled by the curtain, McCall could hear the bewildered hurt in her voice, and he ached for her.

“The kids all make fun of me ’cause of you. I just wanna play football, Mummy. I just wanna play with my friends!”

The throb and lilt of anguished passion came so clearly through in Danny’s voice, McCall ached for him, too. He’d never realized how hard life must be for them both….

Beth’s next words were again muffled and indistinct; but Danny’s were not. “Why?” he cried, kicking something, and it thudded with the impact. “I never go anywhere without you but at school. All the other kids get to play, and their mums don’t watch them all the time. It’s not fair. It’s not fair!”

Beth’s voice, discernible now, throbbed with anguish. “I’m sorry, sweetie,” she muttered in a thick tone, obviously fighting tears. “But that’s the way it is.”

The halting words touched McCall’s soul. Why hadn’t he ever realized what she’d been through, what she’d sacrificed to have this strange half life of fear? What price had she paid for her son to live untainted by Falcone’s corruption?

“I’m almost seven, Mummy! I’m big. I wanna play football! An’ I’m goin’ to play with Ethan an’ Mr. Richards!” Danny pulled the curtains open, storming out.

Reacting on instinct, he reached out, snaking an arm around the boy’s waist, lifting him off his feet and whirling him around in a playful motion. “Hey, there, big guy. Where are you off to in such a hurry?”

Taken off guard, Danny giggled and squirmed.

“Let him go. Put my son down!”

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