Читать книгу The Heart of a Renegade - Лорет Энн Уайт, Loreth White Anne - Страница 7

Luke steered the inflatable into the choppy shipping lanes of Burrard Inlet. They had no lights and their small craft was dangerously invisible to bigger ships.

Jessica drew the black plastic sheet Luke had placed over her shoulders tightly around her neck in an attempt to shut out the insidious cold. “Wh-what happened to Giles?” She was shivering so badly she was stuttering.

“Shh, not now,” he whispered. “Sound carries over the water.”

A tanker loomed suddenly out of the mist and a foghorn blared. A monster hull sliced through the darkness in front of them, causing a surge of waves that broadsided their little boat, sending them bobbing like a cork.

But Luke held the Zodiac steady as he calmly negotiated the churning white water of the big ship’s wake. Nothing seemed to knock this man’s steely control.

As they neared the North Shore the sea turned glassy and the air grew quiet. All Jessica could hear as they neared the lights of Lonsdale Quay was the low drone of their small engine and the soft slap of water under their hull. It was around midnight, no movement on the pier, the Lonsdale market long closed.

Luke guided their craft past a row of tugboats as he maneuvered into a small working harbor and bumped up against a dock. He tossed out a rope, secured the craft and reached for her hand. “Leave the plastic in the boat,” he whispered.

“It’s freezing,” she protested.

“You can have my jacket.”

“It stinks.”

He laughed softly. “I don’t mean this one,” he said as he shrugged out of the booze-drenched tweed. He reached under the dock, fiddled with some knots and rope, pulled a garbage bag free and opened it. “This one,” he said, withdrawing a black leather jacket and draping it over her shoulders.

He removed his tattered gloves, palmed the wool hat off his head and ruffled his hair before dropping to his haunches and floating the old jacket out into the dockyard water along with the hat and gloves. Bemused, Jessica watched as he dipped a handkerchief into the sea and wiped the black camouflage grease from his face. He stuffed the handkerchief back into his pant pocket, stood to his full height, and slung her camera bag across his massive chest.

There was enough light coming from the SeaBus terminal for Jessica to see his hair was sandy blond, short and rumpled. His features craggy, strong, and tanned against his startlingly pale gray eyes. He was now clad in black jeans, black boots and a black turtleneck sweater which emphasized the breadth of his shoulders and the muscle in his arms. Not the slightest hint of the broken homeless character she’d seen shuffling behind the shopping cart lingered in his physique.

A chameleon, she thought. One who shifted shape at will. And he’d clearly planned every step of their escape. A cool whisper of warning ruffled through her and with it came the renewed bite of fear.

He checked his watch, and hooked his arm casually through hers. “You’re my date, okay? Let’s go.”

“I’m…what?”

“The last SeaBus is coming over from the city now. We’re going to blend with the commuters as they disembark and drift toward the car park and bus loop. Then we’re going to walk up to a nightclub on Esplanade, grab a hot dog at the late-night stand outside the club and I’m going to hail a cab to take us to a false address. No talking in the cab, not one word, understand?”

“Luke, please—” she tried to draw him to a halt. “I need to know what happened to—”

“Later. All the cab driver must recall is an ordinary couple coming out of the club. Nothing else, got it?”

She pulled her arm free. “No,” she whispered angrily. “I don’t get it. There is nothing ordinary about us. I have no idea who you are or where you’re taking me. Do you think I’m nuts? You think I’m just going to along with—” she wagged her hand at him “—whatever some lethal cross between James Bond and Crocodile Dundee orders me to do? You just assaulted two cops back there. You killed two men. I—”

He seized her arm, pulled her close, his eyes narrowing to sharp steel slivers. “Dammit, Jessica, keep it down. I saved your life back there.”

“And I’m grateful. But I don’t trust anyone, especially foreign men with guns who want what’s in my camera.”

He studied her in silence for a long beat. “I know why you don’t trust anyone,” he said quietly. “It’s because no one trusts you.” He tilted her chin up. “Not since your abduction and torture in China. Am I right?”

She swallowed a ballooning hurt in her throat.

Luke was right. The incident had cost her everything, most importantly her career, her pride and her hard-won respect. As the unacknowledged, illegitimate daughter of a British diplomat and his Chinese mistress Jessica had felt driven all her life to prove her worth in this world, to dig herself out of her impoverished London background. To make something of herself.

She’d done it for her mother.

She’d done it to show she didn’t need the acknowledgment or support of her wealthy father. She’d done it for her own sense of self-worth, and she’d succeeded. She’d become a rising star with the BBC, one of their top foreign correspondents. There was even talk of hosting her own news show.

But it had all vanished three years ago, the day she’d been kidnapped from Shanghai’s business district and taken to a remote factory warehouse in Hubei province where members of the Dragon Heads and an official from the Chinese government had accused her of being a spy for the United States.

She’d been tortured for information and injected with mind-altering hallucinogenic “truth drugs,” designed and administered by the man she called The Chemist. A man she believed was a top level biochemical assassin for a covert arm of the ruling Chinese Communist Party which was using the Dragon Heads to further its political agenda worldwide.

Jessica had managed a harrowing escape, but the drugs had permanently damaged her brain, leaving her with horrific flashbacks and hallucinations. The hallucinations were so real that she could no longer be certain of her ability to discern reality from fiction. The Chinese government denied any involvement and she had no proof of a government cover-up. In the end, she’d been swept under the bureaucratic carpet. She’d lost her job, and she’d been left to languish in a British mental institution with severe depression, paranoia, hallucinations, labeled a schizophrenic.

But Jessica had fought back.

She knew what she’d endured in China was true, even if her own memories of the ordeal were sketchy. And now she finally had some proof. The film in her camera was going to show The Chemist really did exist and that he was here, right now, in North America, with Dragon Heads boss Xiang-Li.

“Not even the RCMP took your word that what you just saw in Chinatown wasn’t another of your well-documented hallucinations. That’s why they told you to come back with the prints, once you’d developed them. Am I right, Jess?”

She looked away.

But Luke drew her firmly against his torso as a bus passed on the road above them. His body was so incredibly solid, so warm. Big. He felt so confoundingly safe and dangerous at the same time.

A terrified and very lonely part of Jessica ached to lean into him, to have him hold her, have anyone hold her. To have someone care.

“Let me tell you something, Jess,” he said quietly. “I believe you. Those guys shooting at you in Gastown were real. That tells me that what you saw in Chinatown was real, too. And someone is prepared to kill to keep it quiet. They want the evidence in your camera and they want you dead. And now they want me, too.” He paused, watching her face intently. “That puts you and me pretty much on the same side, wouldn’t you say?”

She closed her eyes. The idea of an ally, someone who actually believed she wasn’t a total nut job, was so heady and alluring it hurt. After being alone and confused for so many years she’d come to a point where she’d actually believed she was crazy, where she honestly didn’t know whether she could trust her own mind. The doubt still whispered, even now.

Tears burned under her lids as she struggled to hold back the painful surge of emotion. “Why are you doing this for me, Luke?”

The question punched at him in a way Luke couldn’t explain. This woman got to him. He’d seen her file. He knew her background. He knew what she’d endured and he understood her kind of solitude. And while she was afraid and vulnerable, she was also brave. Never mind utterly physically compelling.

He exhaled heavily.

He didn’t want anything to get to him. He didn’t want to understand her. Hell, he didn’t even want to like her.

He didn’t want to like anybody.

“I’m not doing it for you, Jess.” His voice was suddenly blunt and he knew it but couldn’t help it. “It’s my job. I work for the Force du Sablé, a private military company that offers close protection to politically sensitive targets, among other things.” He paused, angry again that this mission had been thrust on him by FDS boss Jacques Sauvage.

“Politically sensitive targets?” she whispered.

“The FDS was contracted by the CIA to find you and to bring you in. I’m your bodyguard until I hand you and the film over.” Which he hoped to hell would happen within the next few hours.

Panic sparked in her eyes. “How does the CIA know about my film? How do you know about it? How do you even know about Giles?”

“Later, Jess. Right now I need to get you someplace you can sleep for the night.” He took her arm and guided her up the narrow gangplank. He’d wasted enough time. It wasn’t his job to explain anything. This mission had come on such short notice Luke wasn’t the hell sure what he could tell her.

The only reason he was on this dock right now was because Jacques Sauvage had informed him that Jessica Chan would die tonight without his immediate intervention.

The FDS had stationed Luke in Vancouver to gather intelligence on Asian organized crime syndicates that operated out of the Pacific Northwest, particularly gangs rumored to be colluding with known terrorist organizations—like the Dragon Heads.

The FDS was finding increased client demand for this sort of intelligence and Luke’s brief had been to establish a small intelligence office in the city.

This had positioned him as the only operative the FDS could dispatch to Jessica in time. In spite of his contract.

Now he was saddled with a job he could neither refuse nor fully embrace. He cursed silently. Jacques was going to pay for this.

“Where?” she asked.

“Where what?”

“You said you were going to take me someplace I could sleep for the night.”

“Right. I guess that would be…my place.” Luke swore to himself again.

Yeah, Jacques was going to pay big-time, especially if he didn’t get this woman off his hands within the next few hours.

The cab was warm and it relaxed his principal—which was how Luke was determined to think of Jessica Chan from this point on. He put his arm around her in an effort to appear a casual couple, while he clamped down on his emotions. She was exhausted and within minutes she’d fallen asleep nestled right into the crook of his arm. Reluctantly he realized she fit perfectly.

Too perfectly.

She felt too damn good.

Old protective instincts began to rustle uncomfortably. Being a bodyguard had come as naturally to him as beating up the bully who’d picked on the smaller kids in the schoolyard. And it had brought him just as much trouble.

Luke had simply been born to protect, especially when he perceived injustice. But for the last four years, he’d managed to hold those instincts at bay, for his own survival. Now, holding Jessica in his arms, he could feel the echo whispering through him again, pulsing louder and stronger with every beat of his heart. Luke swallowed against the sudden dryness in his throat.

The taxi bumped over a speed hump and the soft weight of Jessica’s—his principal’s—breast pressed into his chest, awakening something in quite another part of Luke’s body.

He closed his eyes, grudgingly unable to stop savoring the sweet sexual sensation stirring low in his gut. Luke realized with mild shock that he didn’t actually want to block it out. It felt good to have a woman in his arms again, to feel his blood and body roused again. His pulse quickened and his throat turned even drier.

The cab pulled up in front of the West Vancouver address Luke had given the driver, and not a moment too soon. “Wake up,” he said, gently nudging her.

Her almond-shaped eyes fluttered open, sultry with sleep, then widened in shock at the sudden realization of where she was.

“It’s okay, we’re here.”

Luke settled the fare, helped her from the car and, without a word, pulled her against his body and covered her mouth with his own as he watched the red brake lights of the cab retreat down the hill from the corner of his eye.

Jessica stiffened, trying to pull away, but Luke tightened his hold. “Easy, Jess,” he murmured over her lips as he watched the taxi round a corner. “A loving couple is the only thing that driver must remember.”

She stilled in his arms, but he could feel her heartbeat increasing rapidly against his chest. To his shock, she opened her mouth tentatively under his.

Heat rocketed through Luke, exciting something savage and hard in him. Before he could stop, knowing full well the taxi had long gone, he deepened his kiss and his tongue met hers. He felt her welcoming him, her body softening against his as she angled her mouth, allowing him to taste her own hot, sweet need.

Luke couldn’t breathe. He closed his eyes, allowing his iron grip on control to ease for the first time in years, simply giving himself over to sensation, tasting her deep, hungrily, not bothering to fight the mounting pressure of his arousal against her belly, which he knew she had to feel.

At the same time his brain was screaming that this was so wrong, for more reasons than he cared to count. She was his principal. And vulnerable. And she was opening to him for all the wrong reasons.

Luke managed to pull back, breathing hard. They locked gazes for a moment, words defying them. And he could see just as much dark turbulence and confusion in those exquisite amber eyes of hers as he felt in his heart.

He wanted to explain why he’d done this. But he didn’t know the answer himself.

Instead he cleared his throat and said, “We should go.”

She simply nodded.

Luke escorted her to his innocuous dark blue SUV parked along the curb, taking exaggerated care not to touch her again as he beeped the alarm, opened the passenger door and let her in.

But letting Jessica Chan in was the last thing in this world Luke was ready to do.

He had a sinking feeling the more he opened the door to this woman, the harder it would become to get her back out of his life.

Tasting her had been intoxicating, like the first heady sip of elixir for an alcoholic. Just as addictive and potentially just as lethal to him.

Hot damn, he was in trouble. Serious trouble.

Luke slammed the door shut and wiped his mouth roughly with the back of his hand. Jacques better have that pickup ready because he wanted to be rid of this woman before sunrise.

Luke drove over the Lions Gate Bridge, back toward the heart of downtown Vancouver, car heater cranked high, soft classical music playing, snowflakes swirling at them like asteroids in the headlights. For the first time in days Jessica felt safe—on one level.

But on another, she wasn’t so sure.

She studied him surreptitiously as orange-hued streetlights pulsed over his rugged profile, throwing a small scar that fanned from the corner of his right eye into relief.

He had another fine scar across his chin and another that ran down his neck.

He looked ruggedly handsome, scarred, dangerous.

“Are you going to tell me about Giles now?” she asked.

He hesitated. “I need to check in with my people before I can explain. This was…sort of a rush job,” he said, turning off the bridge and heading toward Granville Island, where he pulled into a parking lot near the marina and killed the engine.

“You sound pissed to be saddled with me. Are you?”

He wouldn’t look at her.

“Why don’t you just say it like it is, Luke? It’s not like I haven’t endured worse.”

His eyes flashed to hers, a hint of guilt in them. “It’s nothing personal,” he said flatly. “I’d moved out of the close-protection business.”

“Why?”

“Not my thing.”

“Great,” she muttered to herself. A reluctant bodyguard. She’d almost made the mistake of thinking he cared. Just a little. A part of her actually wanted him to care. The loneliness in Jess wanted to attach meaning to his incredible soul-searing kiss.

A dark sense of depression descended on her. She was a fool to be so needy. It made her angry.

He got out, came round to the passenger side, her camera bag in his hand, and he opened the door. “Coming?”

She closed her eyes for a moment and sucked in a deep breath of cold ocean air mixed with brine. “Yeah. I guess I’m flat out of choices.”

He jutted his chin toward a row of houseboats interspersed with yachts. “My place is down there, on the water.”

The snow was dumping heavily now, big fat flakes waltzing on the wind and shimmying in the halos of lights that lined the wooden boardwalk to the boathouses. It was settling fast on the yachts and the stacked rows of kayaks, but the flakes melted into blackness as they hit the glistening dark water of False Creek.

He took her arm. “Careful. The boardwalk gets slippery.”

A quiver of heat shot through Jessica as her body connected with his again. She cursed to herself, wondering if his attentiveness was chivalry or chauvinism.

Or just another aspect of a job he didn’t want.