Читать книгу Shannon McKenna Bundle: Ultimate Weapon, Extreme Danger, Behind Closed Doors, Hot Night, & Return to Me - Shannon McKenna - Страница 37

Cray’s Cove, five weeks later…

Val pulled his motorcycle to a stop at the road that led to Tamar’s house. It was different than the last time he had seen it. It was now a road, not a camouflaged deer track. The driveway was freshly asphalted. A plain whitewashed post boasted a large, shiny silver mailbox with STEELE stenciled on in in bold black letters. There was a plastic box for the Washingtonian and another box for the local paper.

It disoriented him. For a moment, he doubted his own bulletproof, iron-riveted memory, but just for a moment. He’d been intensely aware of the exact latitudinal and longitudinal coordinates of Tamar’s physical presence on earth since he learned of her existence. He could not be mistaken about this. He gunned the motor again with a muttered curse.

He was just afraid, after these endless weeks of enigmatic silence. Afraid to speculate what the silence meant. So fucking afraid, he could barely eat. Or breathe, for that matter.

It was Tamar’s way to let a man sweat, but it seemed particularly cruel to him now, after lingering for weeks near death, to be left alone to doubt, to wonder. Should he reach out to her? Was it better to wait?

But he could not wait forever. It was killing him. He had to know.

And besides, he knew Tamar. She liked strength. Needed it. He had to be strong. Fear was weakening him, so he had to be fearless.

Hah. A stiff challenge. But he would try with everything he had.

Doubts nagged and stung him. She had never actually said that she loved him, except for that time that he remembered like a dream after she’d cuffed and drugged him at the agriturismo. And that may have been just a chemical fantasy. Questionable at every level.

He’d hoped that trying to save her and Rachel would have been a point in his favor but evidently not. She had ignored his very existence ever since.

He jerked to a stop at the electronic gate. There was a vidcam mounted above it. He buzzed the button and waited for a response.

This simple gate was nothing like the high-tech camouflaged facsimile of the falling-down barn that had stood here before. She’d ripped out all of her space age security, and put the plain, simple basics in their place. In other words, she’d lowered her defenses.

He wondered what that meant about her change in mood. He hoped it was good news for him. He was afraid to speculate.

No one was responding to his buzz, but he was going in anyway.

He was ready to face anything, even a loaded gun. Nothing could be worse than this blank emptiness. The boredom and pain of convalescence, then the intensive debriefing and subsequent negotiations with PSS. Then the quiet, endless days, one after the other, alone and dazed in his apartment in Rome. Slumped in a chair, staring at shadows moving on the wall for hours. Unable to eat, sleep, move.

Everything he tried to do felt like useless playacting, empty of all significance. No connection to anything that counted. How could there be? What counted had been ripped out of him.

What counted was walking around, living and breathing a half a world away from him. His heart, walking around outside his body. Ignoring him.

The intercom finally beeped. “Who is it?”

It was a female voice, but not Tamar’s. “Is this the home of Tamar Steele?” he asked.

A cautious pause, and someone said, “Who wants to know?”

“Valery Janos. Is she home?” He stepped up to the camera, stared into it, and let whoever was looking at the monitor inside get a good, long look.

The gate clicked and hummed open. He accelerated on through, and headed up the long, winding road that led up to the crest of a mountain that plunged steeply down to the Pacific Ocean. The hillside was dark with towering conifers and draped with a ragged mantle of mist. The broad, shining beach was lashed with surges of white foam. Dramatically beautiful, as befitted the home of a woman like Tamar.

The closer he got to her, the more his chest ached.

Had it just been his wishful fantasy projected onto her, that dawn interlude in the hotel room in San Vito? He had seen something in her eyes that had changed the nature of his existence. His soul had awakened, and so had his heart, his brain, and other parts he didn’t even know how to name. They had risen from a deathlike sleep, and now they would give him no peace.

Had it been real, that half-remembered ‘I love you’?

The garage was open when he pulled up. A young woman with a mop of curly red hair stood in the opening, holding a squirming baby in her arms. Margot McCloud. The name floated back to him. Davy’s wife. She was not smiling.

Val could politely initiate a conversation in ten different languages, but he just stood there, swallowing over the dry lump in his throat. “Is she here?” he asked when he could finally speak.

Margot jiggled her baby, studying him solemnly. “Yes. She’s working. In her studio.”

His stomach sank. “So she doesn’t know that I’m here yet?”

Margot shook her head. Her red curls floated and swirled in the air. “Not yet. She blasts music into her headphones when she works. Come on in.”

He followed her through a security room filled with cutting edge surveillance equipment and noticed that most of it was deactivated. Snarls of disconnected electrical wire were everywhere.

At the top of the stairs, he looked around, fascinated. Tamar’s living space was exactly as he would have expected. Minimalist, severe, and yet subtly opulent. The lines were clean, the grain in the blond wood paneling swirled voluptuously. There were incredible vistas outside each of the huge triangular windows. He had never seen it, but he felt as if he recognized it. Like her, it was uncompromising, stark, and beautiful.

He passed a room crowded with an uncharacteristic clutter of color: toys, books, mobiles, pictures. A small form hurled itself out the door and smacked into his legs.

“Val! Val!” Rachel crowed, clutching at his thigh.

He was gratified at the warmth of her welcome, and the sudden upwelling of tenderness he felt for the little girl took him by surprise. He picked her up and hid his face against her curly head for a few seconds, until the shaky, misty feeling passed. “Hello, little sweet,” he whispered.

A stocky older woman with a black and white bun stopped at the threshold, staring at him with wide-eyed curiosity. Had to be Rosalia.

“Rachel and I are old friends, Senhora,” he explained in Portuguese, kissing the top of Rachel’s head.

Rosalia was charmed. “Ah! So you are this Val that they tell me about, eh?” She shot Margot a delighted look and winked broadly. “Good, then! Go up and talk to her. She is too sad. She needs cheering up from a handsome young man like you.”

That remained to be seen, he reflected bleakly. He passed Rachel to Rosalia, soothing her protests with a promise to come back and play later. A promise he desperately hoped he would be able to keep.

“Come on. I’ll show you the way,” Margot said.

He followed Margot down the hallway, leaving Rachel’s loud squawks of disapproval behind. They climbed up a spiral staircase. The cells in his body were shaking apart in fear and dread, and he spoke just to distract himself from the feeling. “How has she been?”

Margo glanced back over her shoulder. “Hmm. Not great, in my book. You’d better ask her yourself. We’ve been taking turns, parking our butts here to keep an eye on her, and she hasn’t had the energy to kick us out yet. I think she’s working up to it, though.” Margot stopped in front of a carved wooden door, and gave him a speculative look over the flame-colored curls on her daughter’s head.

“Don’t startle her if you can help it,” she advised. “She’s jumpy these days. Not sleeping much.”

“You mean, she might kill me by mistake?”

She smiled as she pulled open the door. “You said it, not me.”

Tamar was wearing headphones and bending over a jeweler’s bench, her back to them. She wore drawstring pants of undyed linen that hung low over her hips and a shrunken black T-shirt that did not cover her navel or conceal the deep, feminine curve of her hips. Her feet were bare. Her hair hung in a thick, loose mahogany braid.

She was lost in her work, swaying sinuously to music only she could hear. So thin. Her arms, so narrow. There were livid surgical scars on her right arm. The McClouds had told him about the surgeries to repair torn, mangled tissues, ripped tendons.

He stared at the scars, tight-lipped. His throat ached.

Margot cleared her throat. “I guess I’ll just leave you, then. You’ll want to talk to her in private, I’m sure.”

“Yes, it’s best,” he said. “That way, we don’t both have to die.”

Margot choked on a short burst of laughter. “Good luck.”

The door clicked shut behind her.

Val just stared. After weeks, his eyes were starved for the sight of her. Every perfect detail. The upright straightness of her back, the creamy texture of her skin, the perfect lines of her cheekbone, the way her plain work clothes draped and clung to her graceful curves.

He felt helpless, lost. He had no plan of action, just hunger, and incoherent longing. He could think of no way to get her attention without giving her an unpleasant adrenaline jolt, so he elected to wait. She had a sixth sense, just as he did. She would feel his gaze soon enough and turn around.

And he would know if life held any hope of happiness for him.

No. It was not a matter of hope, he told himself, resolute. It was a battle of wills. She could accept his love, or she could kill him. Killing him was the only way she would be able to get him out of her hair. Those were her options. It was very simple.

He was not leaving this place unsatisfied.

How could a man declare love for a thing like yourself? Men don’t love women like you. They use them and discard them, like the trash that they are.

Tam tuned the insidious ghostly voice out with effort. Fuck off, Novak, she whispered silently. You’re dead. You lost the game.

Evil old bastard. At it again. Chipping away at her, from the inside. None of it is true, she reminded herself. Don’t be fooled. Don’t fall for it. Don’t let him win. He would not drag her down with him now, when she was home free.

On the outside, anyway. On the inside, she was a ragged mess.

She dragged her attention back to the music blasting into her headphones and focused on the bracelet she was working on. The evil, whispering voice was backing off with time, but oh, so slightly and oh, so slowly. Every time she spaced out and stared blankly into space, which was often, Novak’s raspy voice was there to fill the gap, whispering his constant stream of cruelty and filth.

Damn. She had to get over this. Rachel was traumatized, too, and Tam had to be strong for her. She could not afford to whine and mope.

But oh, God, it was hard. She weighed two tons. She felt so tired, so sad and empty. The fucked-up arm and the near-lethal dose of poison on top of it all had wiped her out. So did pining for Val. Not twenty seconds passed that she was not thinking of him, dreaming of him. Lusting for him, too, now that the worst of the poison had worked itself out of her system. She was starting to feel almost human again, even a little bit female, which meant that erotic dreams of him had begun to torment her, along with the hideous nightmares. She’d be hard put to say which type of dream was the most upsetting.

He had not called or texted or e-mailed. Granted, neither had she. She’d grabbed Rachel and run, over oceans and continents, as soon as she’d been capable of standing. Well before the doctors had wanted to let her go.

She could not bear to see him. She’d been in overload. Poisoned, polluted, sickened by everything, herself included. It had overcome her. The poison she’d swallowed, being slimed by Georg, having Rachel taken, threatened. The mental poison that Novak had force-fed her. Those videos, playing and playing in her head.

And that last awful conversation she’d had with Val. He, spitting with rage and betrayal, handcuffed to the bed. She, spraying a drug into his face so she could run off and murder someone.

All things considered, they had issues.

She couldn’t bear the thought of him looking at her the way she felt. She flinched from being seen by anyone. It hurt, it burned. The only reason she permitted it at all was for Rachel’s sake.

That was why she allowed the McCloud contingent to hang out here, always underfoot and driving her slowly but surely bugfuck. So that Rachel would have one more healthy, sane point of reference, besides the long-suffering Rosalia. She could not trust herself to be one. On the contrary.

She’d thought about contacting Val by e-mail, with the electronic distance giving her a little emotional protection. Had even gone so far as to pull up the Capriccio Consulting Web site contact page on her computer screen, even typing a few words.

Something had always laid a heavy, smothering hand over each attempt. The same something that kept playing the erotic footage of San Vito and the Huxley hotel over and over in her head, the images cheapened by the camera’s cold, unfriendly eye into porn.

She saw glowing, malevolent green eyes watching her in the dark when she lay in bed not sleeping. When she did get to sleep, she dreamed of herself, skim milk pale and covered with goosebumps, cold, wearing soiled, limp, red silk lingerie. Alone, shivering in the snow. All the many monsters of her life circling round, licking their lips.

And that voice, whispering. That evil voice. Men don’t love women like you. They use them and discard them, like the trash that they are.

This wasn’t her usual horror of being made a fool of. This was worse. The stakes were so much higher. If she called it wrong, if she opened herself up, offered herself to Val, and proved to be mistaken, she wouldn’t just feel like a fool. Not this time.

She would be dead. Destroyed. It would be the end. She didn’t have the courage to risk it. Her reserves of courage were all used up.

Hah. Now who was being melodramatic? She slid her hand up under the goggles to wipe the tears away. What would she say to him if she got him on e-mail anyway? Hi, what’s up? How do you feel?

God help her. Did she really want to know?

Even now, she imagined that she could feel his presence. Her skin prickled with warmth. If she turned, there he’d be, gazing at her out of those dark, smoldering eyes filled with speechless longing.

But she would not give in to the urge to turn. The blankness she felt when she saw the empty space where he wasn’t was too fucking depressing. She had to stop doing that to herself.

But her neck itched madly, hairs prickling. She took off the headphones, and hesitated for a moment. Her heart thudded.

Ah, what the hell. Why not compound her misery?

She turned, looked…and gasped.

The world shifted on its axis. Her blush started from the very soles of her feet, or even deeper. From some other lost dimension of her being: the molten core of her soul, the bottom of the ocean of her heart.

She felt naked. Inside out. Sweet, shivering chills chased themselves across her skin. Part terror, part astonished joy.

He said nothing, just gazed at her. His hair was longer, too long for the cool style he had before. It dangled over his eyes and ears in unkempt waves, streaked with threads of stark white.

He was thinner, more compact than before. His eyes shadowed, his skin paler, his jaw sharp. His cheekbones jutted out like they’d been carved with a dull knife. But it was him.

God, how he filled the space he occupied. How he dominated it. He took the place he inhabited and claimed it utterly, made it his own.

The way he had claimed her. By some freak miracle.

She cleared her throat. “Aren’t you going to say something?” The words burst past the aching block in her throat.

His mouth twitched. “I was waiting for you to start.”

She snorted out of sheer force of habit. “Typical. Men always shrug off the responsibility.”

“No, Tamar. It is you who are being typical,” he said calmly. “Hiding behind your sarcasm the way a child hides behind her mother’s legs. Traveling across the world to you is a statement in itself. I am awaiting a response to it.”

Her blush got hotter. She didn’t know what to look at, what to do with her hands, with her mouth. She felt…fluttery. A speechless ditz.

“My response,” she repeated. “What am I supposed to respond?”

His lips twitched, a wicked ghost of a smile hinting at how much he was enjoying her flustered state. She wanted to smack him for it, the uppity bastard. Condescending to her.

“Anything you like,” he said blandly. “But if you need suggestions, I will gladly give them to you.”

She clenched her jaw, forbidding herself to weep. “No one tells me what to say or think,” she said inanely. Gah. As if it needed to be said.

His deep-grooved, blindingly beautiful grin rocked her back, gasping for breath. “Certainly not,” he said. “The very idea.”

“What do you want from me, Janos?” she demanded.

“Everything,” he said simply. “And call me Val. I have earned that much from you, by now.”

She squeezed her eyes shut. “Back off. Too much, too soon.”

He was silent for a moment. “If you wish. I am in no hurry. I am not going anywhere. We can go as slowly as you like.”

“This is my place,” she flared. “I say who stays and who goes.”

“Of course, of course,” he soothed. “Let us talk of things that do not make you anxious. Neutral topics.”

She was irritated afresh. Condescending to her again. “We have no neutral topics,” she snapped.

He sighed. “You are a difficult woman,” he said plaintively.

She gave him a tight, falsely sweet smile. “Oh? Do ya think?”

He flicked his gaze upward, praying for patience, no doubt. “How about the weather?” he suggested, his voice even.

She waved her hand toward the window. “Take a look,” she said. “It’s gray. There’s fog. It’s the Washington coast. End of conversation. Nice try. No dice.”

“All right, moving on,” he murmured. “How is Rachel?”

That was far from a neutral subject. “She’s better,” Tam said cautiously. “She still has screaming nightmares every night. But she’s started to talk again, and she’s eating a little more and going outside the house, at least when I’m with her.”

He nodded. “Good, then. I am glad. And your health?”

She shrugged. “Fine.”

He let his waiting silence speak for him, insisting.

Tam made a rude, impatient sound. “Really. I’m not lying to you. The last time I had liver function tests, there was definite improvement. The tissue is regenerating. There’s some organ damage, of course, but nothing that’ll kill me any time soon. I’m not going to climb Everest or run any marathons for a while, that’s all. It was just the month-long mother of all hangovers.”

“And the arm?” he persisted. “The McClouds told me you had surgeries.”

“The McClouds talk way too much,” Tam muttered. “And one in particular takes quite a lot upon herself to open my door to uninvited guests. That McCloud is going to hear from me about it.”

His mouth tightened. “Ah. That’s all I am to you, Tamar? An uninvited guest?”

She crossed her arms over her chest. “Do not guilt trip me, Janos.”

“Why not?” he said. “I have nothing to lose. I might as well see if guilt will work with you, since nothing else does. I saw what that poison did to Georg. I thought you were dying. Why did you not tell me that you had taken the antidote?”

She gave him a sideways look. “I had a lot on my mind.”

His mouth hardened. “You really are a bitch, Tamar.”

“And that’s a surprise to you? That’s not liable to change, Janos. If it puts you off—”

“It does not put me off,” he said. “On the contrary.”

She floundered for a moment. “I—I—what do you—”

“I know you now, Tamar,” he said. “The more acid you are, the more tender the place you are trying to protect. The crueler you are to me, the more I have cause to hope.”

Cause to hope. His words made her heart shake in her chest.

“I told you once before not to pin a softer side onto me,” she said, but her unsteady voice betrayed her.

He let his silence speak for him once again—for such a long time, she began to twitch. “You are lying because you are afraid,” he said finally. “But you need not be afraid of me.”

“Um.” She decided to ignore that loaded statement, and groped for a neutral topic to replace it with. “So how’s your health, Janos?”

The bastard had the nerve to look as if he was trying not to smile. “What about it?” he said lightly. “What do you care? I am no one to you. I am just an uninvited guest, no? You do not even call me by my name.”

“Cut the crap and answer the question,” she snapped.

He shrugged. “There were many holes to mend,” he said matter-of-factly. “I lost a great deal of blood. My convalescence would have gone more quickly if you had been near me.”

“I’m glad to see it went just fine anyway,” she said crisply.

The silence lengthened. Tam was on the verge of flinging herself at him when he looked around her studio with a rueful smile.

“I almost didn’t recognize the road to your house,” he said.

She sniffed. “Ah, yes. That. I changed the look of everything in the interests of getting the hell over my own paranoid bullshit. It was just overcompensation, anyway. I started feeling embarrassed by it.”

“You have less to be afraid of now,” Val said. “With Georg and Novak dead. And PSS is working on making you disappear from all the Most Wanted databases of the world.”

“They are?” She was startled. “Why on earth would they do that?”

He shrugged. “Because I told them to.”

The edge in his voice made her look at him more closely. “I didn’t know you had that kind of clout with them,” she said.

He waved his hand dismissively. “They were embarrassed about Hegel and Berne’s involvement in a mafiya turf war,” he said. “Bad for the company’s image. I told them I would be pleased to keep my mouth shut—if they did what they could for you.”

She blinked. “Ah. So you’re bullying them now? I’m surprised they didn’t just kill you.”

“Let them try,” he said.

She swallowed. “No,” she said quietly. “I would rather they didn’t.”

“Would you? How kind,” he said, his voice laced with irony. “In any case, you should not have much trouble now from anyone.”

“That is my hope,” she said stiffly. “I’ve lost my taste for trouble.”

“I have not,” he said, his eyes gleaming. “There is some trouble that I still would welcome.”

She broke eye contact quickly and stared down at the jewelry that she’d been working on. She couldn’t bear to look at him. Feelings vibrated inside her at a screamingly high frequency.

His footsteps sounded soft and deliberate, moving closer to her. “What are you working on now?” he asked quietly.

She invited him with her hand to take a look at what was on the bench. “See for yourself.”

He looked at the items she’d been working on, and carefully picked up a ring. It was a streamlined blend of white and colored gold knotwork, with a blazing sun as the centerpiece, a yellow diamond glittering in its core.

“Very beautiful,” he said. “This looks too big for a woman’s hand.”

“It’s not for a woman’s hand,” she said.

He slanted her a startled glance and then reexamined the ring in his hand. “No? Did you not tell me that you only design jewelry for women? Was that not part of your philosophy?”

“I did, and it was,” she admitted. “But this ring is not for a woman.”

He slid it onto his left hand, and admired the effect. “It fits.”

She shrugged. “It’s part of a matched set.”

“Ah, sì? Show me the other pieces.”

She picked up the other ring, a smaller one. “For the woman,” she said. She put it in his outstretched hand. This one was white gold knotwork, with tiny accents of yellow gold, with a crescent moon curled around a small white diamond.

He stared down at the pieces, a frown of concentration on his face. “They are perfect,” he said. “What are their defense applications?”

Her blush began to rise again. “There are none.”

He swiveled his head toward her, taken aback. “None?”

She shook her head.

Val closed his hand over the woman’s ring. “I want them.” His voice rang fiercely. “These rings are mine.”

She bit her lip, still unable to look into his face. “They’ll cost you.”

“I’ll give you everything I have,” he said promptly.

She lifted an eyebrow. “You’re not a very shrewd bargainer, Janos.”

“Do not play with me. Do not be flip. Not about something so important,” he said roughly. “Be silent if you cannot control yourself.”

He grabbed her left hand and slid the woman’s ring onto her ring finger. It fit, of course. He put her hand up to his lips, and kissed it. “Beauty for beauty’s sake alone?”

She covered her shaking mouth, embarrassed. “I suppose so.”

“No more deadly secrets?”

She started to shake with silent, helpless laughter. “I don’t have any secrets from you,” she said at last. “I’ve tried to keep them, but it just never seems to work out. I’m giving up the effort. Go ahead, Val. Know all my nasty, deadly, dangerous secrets if you feel like it. Knock yourself out.”

He kissed her hand again. “I am honored to know them.”

“Nice, nice,” she scoffed. “You’re good at putting a pretty spin on things, Janos. Did they teach you that in gigolo school?”

He winced. “Ouch. Must you always deflate me?”

“Always,” she warned. “I’m hardwired that way. Don’t delude yourself into thinking that love will change me.”

His grin went suddenly incandescent. “I could weep for joy to hear you say the word love for the first time. But for the fact that it would frighten you into fits if I did.”

“Frightened? Me? Hah.” She glared at him, but could not maintain the expression when he touched her face with his fingertip that way, as if she were a flower. Rare, precious, and delicate.

He leaned his forehead against hers, and the hot point of contact was so sweet, as intimate as a kiss but more oblique, more secret. She did not flinch away from it. She melted into it, softening.

He slid his hands down, over her shoulders, over her ribs, to the warm, bare skin of her waist, and then skimmed them upward, pulling the black T-shirt with them. Tam raised her arms, let him tug it over her head, pulling wisps of hair loose and dangling around her face.

She gazed at him, naked to the waist. “It’s not the first time,” she said. “I said the word once before.”

He froze. A muscle in his jaw pulsed. “After you drugged me? So it wasn’t just a dream?”

“No. It wasn’t a dream. I said it.” She shivered, feeling exposed. The pants hung low on her hips. He drew the drawstring bow loose, with a slow, deliberate pull. The soft, crumpled linen garment puddled around her feet, leaving her entirely naked. “And I meant it,” she finished in a whisper.

“Ah, Tamar,” he whispered back.

She flinched violently at the gentle touch of his hands spanning her waist. For a moment, it was just as she had feared it would be.

She cringed, her body going hard and tight with self-loathing at his touch. Still hearing that low, rasping voice, droning endlessly. Men don’t love women like you. They use them and discard them like the trash that they are.

But she closed her eyes and breathed. Covered his hands with her own, holding them motionless at her waist, and waited for a miracle.

Val himself was the miracle, a living, breathing miracle. His gentleness, his tender patience, melted her, healed her instantly.

The feeling bloomed from deep inside her, soft and sweet and intensely alive. Surprised, moved. Every moment a deeper revelation, a new level of tenderness, of longing. Her body was soft, hot, intensely sensitive. His every tiny touch burst like fireworks, tingling through her nerves. When he put his arms around her and pulled her against himself, an earthquake of accumulated tension shuddered through her.

He felt thinner, harder, his arms as tight and taut as piano wire. He vibrated with emotion, desire. He was rigid with the tension of holding back. Waiting for as long as she needed him to wait.

Amazingly, she felt safe in the circle of his arms. She pressed her face against him, breathed in his delicious scent. Listening to his heart, pounding strong and fast.

Safe. The feeling was so unfamiliar, it frightened her. To think that she could feel safe with him after all that had happened between them. All the ugliness, all the violence and betrayal.

“Why did you do that to me?” she blurted out and hid her face against his chest again. Afraid to hear the answer.

He stroked her hair, gripping her thick braid to tug her head back so she would look into his eyes again. “The video, you mean?”

She waited, eyes locked with his.

A long, careful sigh escaped him. “It was the deal I made with Novak,” he said. “Or rather, the deal he made with me. I was to deliver those videos to him every three days, and in return, he would refrain from carving a piece off of Imre while I watched on the videophone.”

She winced. “Oh, God.”

“I was desperate,” he said. “I hated myself for it, every time. I would never have chosen to do such a thing to anyone, let alone you. I am sorry. It’s over. Can we leave it behind? Can you forgive me?”

She nodded.

Val closed his eyes, sagging with evident relief. “He wanted me motivated,” he said. “He did not expect me to fall in love with you. Nor did I, though it happened before we even met.”

She glanced up, startled. “How could you—”

“I watched you and Rachel for ten days. That was enough for me,” he said forcefully. “You were so gentle with her, so patient. You were so strong. And bella maladetta. My wildest fantasy in flesh and blood. I did not even know that I had a fantasy woman. But you were—are her.”

He cupped her bottom and lifted her up onto the table. “My turn, now, Tamar. How could you do what you did to me?”

Her fingers tightened on his shoulders, then she remembered his wound and let go as if she’d been burned. “What are you referring to?”

“Ah, but where do I begin. The handcuffs, the drugs?” Anger hardened in his voice. “Running away while I was practically comatose? As if you did not care, as if there was nothing between us?”

The impulse to shove his accusation away from herself in anger was almost automatic, but she short-circuited it. She breathed, deep and slow, and swallowed the sharp words back.

They were no longer true, in any case, and she did not truly want to say them. It was just a reflex. A tic.

What she really wanted was for him to understand. She concentrated on the buttons of his black shirt, unbuttoning them one by one as she spoke to give her hands something to do, her eyes some place to rest.

“You know why,” she said fiercely. “I had to settle accounts with Stengl. He murdered my family, destroyed my village, my home. He killed my childhood, raped me, turned me into something that I was never meant to be. I’d been waiting my whole life for payback.”

His eyes narrowed. “Than why did you not kill him? I know that you did not. Santarini would have sent the Camorra for me by now if you had, and I was in no condition to defend myself from them. Did you fail to get close enough to him? Or did Ana—”

“No. I…changed my mind,” she said, her voice halting. She undid the last button, spread the shirt out over his chest.

He frowned. “Changed your mind?” he repeated. “When?”

“When I got into his room,” she said. “When I looked into his eyes. That was when I realized—”

“What?” he prompted impatiently.

“That you were right,” she admitted. “He wasn’t worth it. He was nothing compared to what I had to lose. Even though I thought that I had already lost it after what I’d done to you. I thought you’d never want to see me again.”

Val lifted her right arm, bent low, and pressed a gentle kiss against the scar. Then another and another.

She took courage from that. “I was running out of the clinic to find you when András got me.” She closed her eyes tightly, feeling every warm, soft butterfly kiss so intensely against her flesh. “You must think I am so stupid.”

“Not at all,” he said. “But explain this to me. Why did you change your mind about us and leave me all alone? Did living in bliss with me in a tropical paradise no longer appeal to you?”

She shook her head. She couldn’t bear to talk about it. The core of the problem. Her secret shame, the weakness in herself that she despised so violently. She was not made of gemstones or metal. She could not wash away the stains. Not anymore.

He took her face in both his hands. “Answer me, Tamar.”

She swallowed, tasting the bitterness of the poison. A bitterness she still tasted faintly every moment of every day. “I couldn’t,” she whispered.

“Why not?” he demanded, unrelenting.

She squeezed her eyes shut, and searched herself for the courage she needed to say it. “I felt…soiled,” she whispered. “Poisoned, damaged. I felt like a black hole. Like I didn’t deserve—oh, God. I thought it was better to get away, stay away. I didn’t want to inflict myself on anyone. Certainly not you.”

His face was blank with astonishment. “Oh, God, Tamar,” he said helplessly.

“I’m sorry.” Her voice was fogging up with tears, to her distress. “I couldn’t get past it. I’m not as strong as you think I am.”

He gave her a short, hard shake. “What bullshit,” he said roughly. “You should have known better.”

“Well, I didn’t,” she flung back. “And maybe I never will.”

“Oh, you will. You should have come to me, Tamar. I would have convinced you. You are a queen. A goddess. Shining and perfect.”

She snorted. “Oh, please. Don’t overdo it, Janos,” she said tartly.

“I cannot help it,” he said. “It is my nature. And you inspire me to flowery excess.”

“Oh, God,” she muttered. “I am so in for it. I can’t stand flowery excess.”

“You will learn,” he promised solemnly.

“Will I?” She yanked the shirt down over his shoulders, his arms, and stopped to stare at the angry scars.

She stopped to kiss each one. Then she moved on to the older scars. There were many of them, and by the time she had kissed her way through everything she could see, he was fully aroused. She wrenched his belt open, shoved down his jeans. Took him in hand, squeezing with a shuddering sigh of delighted satisfaction. Ah, yes.

“So, did this interview with me work out to your satisfaction?” she asked breathlessly.

He kissed her throat as he pushed her thighs wide, then teased her clit tenderly, circling it with his fingertip. “Oh, yes. But there was never any question of you refusing me,” he said.

She blinked at him. “Really?”

He nuzzled her ear. “I had decided. You agreed to love me, or you would have had to kill me to get rid of me. Either way, I won.”

“Oh?” She suppressed a crack of laughter. “How do you figure, loverboy?”

“Killing me would be a long, difficult process,” he informed her solemnly. “I am very hard to kill. It could take your whole lifetime. And in the meantime, while you plotted and schemed and made attempt after attempt, I would at least be with you, no? So I win.”

She snorted with laughter and pressed a hot kiss against his chest. “Melodramatic idiot.”

“Admit it,” he said. “You love that about me.”

“I love everything about you,” she said rashly. “But it’s been so long. Remind me why, Val. Go ahead, blow my mind. Bowl me over. Show me exactly why I love you so much.”

He gave her that radiant grin that made her heart jump with unbelieving joy, and got right down to it.