The Colonel's Widow? Page 9

  “Fine. I’ll sleep on the sofa.” He sent her a look. “The sofa’s still there, right? I mean—have you changed the bedroom?”

  “Of course not.” Unable to look at him, she headed out the door and down the hall to the east wing. Rook’s shoes echoed on the hardwood floors behind her.

  He was her husband, and he was back from the dead. So why did she feel like she was on her way to the guillotine?

  BY THE TIME IRINA had finished her shower and come out of her dressing room, Rook had fallen asleep on the sofa that sat opposite the king-size bed.

  She studied him closely. Was he pretending, in order to avoid the questions he knew she was going to ask?

  No. He really was asleep. A glow of sunlight creeping around the edges of the drapes illuminated his face. His strong, even features were soft and relaxed, something that never happened while he was awake. Still, even in sleep, the lines she’d noticed earlier were still there, scoring the corners of his mouth. Lines that hadn’t been there two years before.

  She wanted to trace them with her fingertips. Wipe them away. Why were they there? Pain? Fatigue? Worry?

  All of the above?

  She was surprised and a little hurt that he could sleep.

  She hadn’t slept for two years. Every time she closed her eyes, she dreamed that dream. He was with her, in her, loving her, and then he was gone, sinking into the dark waters of the Mediterranean.

  Her feelings were in turmoil. A part of her felt comforted by his presence, but at the same time, her limbs were rigid with trepidation, as if she were alone in a room with a sinister stranger.

  Not surprising. In a way, that’s exactly what he was. A stranger.

  She wrapped the terry-cloth robe more tightly around her and lay down on her side, still watching him sleep.

  After a few moments, her vision blurred and her eyelids prickled. She touched the corner of her eye and was surprised to feel a warm wetness.

  She was crying. She who never cried. Hadn’t for years. She blinked rapidly. There was nothing to cry about now. Rook was back. He was alive.

  Nothing in her life could measure up to the joy of discovering that the man whom she’d loved from the first moment she’d laid eyes on him was alive.

  However, nothing could measure up to the enormity of his betrayal, either. He’d let her believe he was dead.

  She pressed her lips together as a sob gathered in her throat. It was too much to bear. To lose him only to find out that he’d lied to her—lied to everyone. He’d left her alone.

  And he’d done it deliberately.

  She thought back on the days, the weeks, prior to his death. He said he’d been planning it for months. When had he changed? Was there a moment that she could pinpoint as different?

  She didn’t know. All she knew was that the strong, dependable protector who had rescued her father and her from the wrath of the former Soviet Union, and the sweet, attentive lover who’d wooed her during the following months, then asked her to marry him, had somehow slipped away without her noticing.

  By the time her father died, a year later, Rook was well on his way to becoming the soldier who’d appeared before her in the cabin, his olive-green eyes cold and opaque as jade, his demeanor more like a newly extracted deep-op than a returning lover.

  She tried to think about her first glimpse of him in the cabin, his body lit by firelight and obscured by shadow. It had been several moments before she saw his face. He’d had plenty of time to mask his feelings.

  What had he thought when he’d seen her for the first time in two years? Had his gaze turned soft as emerald velvet like it had when they’d first become lovers? Or had it been distorted by the raw pain she’d glimpsed when she’d accused him of wiping her out of his mind?

  He stirred, startling her. His brows twitched and lowered, his chest rose and fell rapidly. He tossed his head and arched his back, as if gulping for air.

  Irina sat up quietly. Rook had never had nightmares. She could only remember being awakened by him one time. It was a few months after he’d returned from rescuing Travis Ronson.

  He’d cried out in his sleep but had quieted immediately when she touched his forehead. The next morning he hadn’t remembered anything about it.

  She glided over the hardwood floor without making a sound and crouched beside the couch. This close, she could see sweat glistening on his forehead and neck.

  Maybe he was sick. Hesitantly, she reached out a hand. Her fingertips brushed his forehead.

  His eyes flew open, and in one motion he threw back the blanket and pointed a big gun directly at her forehead.

  She scrambled away but lost her balance and ended up on her butt. Horrified, she scooted backward across the floor.

  The next few seconds stretched out in slow motion. Rook’s eyes went from glazed with sleep to sharp and clear as green bottle glass. His knuckles turned white around his gun. His finger tightened on the trigger.

  A subsonic rhythmic roar filled her ears.

  Finally, he lowered the weapon. He stared at her, blinked, stared again and then looked down at his hands.

  Once he broke eye contact, time returned to normal. But that was the only thing that did. Her heart still pounded like a jackhammer, stealing her breath. Her arms and legs were rigid with tension. And her brain was spinning too fast to settle on a single coherent thought.

  Her husband’s shocked face filled her vision.

  “What are you doing?” he gasped.

  She held up shaking hands, palms out. “H-hoping you are not going to shoot me.”

  He eyed the gun as if it were a rat or a spider. Then he set it down on the arm of the sofa and sat up, pushing his fingers through his hair. “Go back to bed.”

  “Rook—”

  “Just go. I won’t bother you anymore. I’ll sleep across the hall.”

  “No.”

  His head jerked up.

  “This cannot continue, Rook. You told me you needed me to listen. Well, I am here. I am listening. I deserve explanations, answers.” It was a struggle to speak evenly. Her throat closed up.

  He lowered his forearms to his knees and leaned forward, his head down. “Yes, you do.”

  Her scalp tingled with relief. She picked herself up off the floor and sat on the edge of a slipper chair across from the sofa.

  For a few seconds, Rook sat there, his head in his hands. Then he rubbed his eyes and his chin and stood.

  For the first time, she noticed that he was dressed in nothing but dark dress pants. The belt was undone and the too-big pants hung low on his hips.

  He’d always been lean, with long straps of muscles that rippled under his golden skin. But he’d lost at least twenty pounds in the past two years, so his body, which had always been buff and muscular, was now wiry.

  Her gaze came to rest on a vaguely circular scar on his upper right chest. “Oh,” she whispered.

  Rook knew what she was looking at. His hand twitched to cover the scar—the place where Deke’s bullet had entered his chest.

  He still remembered the hot rush of panic as the slug impacted him. The instant of horror and regret. In all his planning, he’d never once thought about how the bullet would feel. He’d given Deke specific instructions to aim for his right upper chest. But until the instant of impact, he hadn’t seriously considered that the shot might be fatal.

  The self-consciousness he suddenly felt about his body heightened his awareness of hers.

  She had on a white terry-cloth robe belted at the waist. It gaped open at the top and the bottom, revealing the curves and cleavage of her delicately rounded breasts and a glimpse of her thighs. She was decently covered, but her perfect body made the robe seem X-rated.

  She’d lost weight during the two years he’d been gone, which meant she wasn’t quite as curvy as she had been. Her hips didn’t swell out from her slender waist like they once had. Her breasts weren’t as full and plump. But she was as beautiful and desirable as she’d ever been.

/>   More so. After all, he’d been alone for two years.

  And so had she.

  He forced his gaze away from her beautiful breasts. When he met her eyes, the awareness he felt flared like a flame. But too soon, her gaze wavered, reminding him that he had no right. Not anymore.

  “What do you want to know?” he asked flatly.

  Chapter Eight

  Irina stared at Rook as his question echoed in her ears. What do you want to know?

  He looked back at her, his face carefully wiped clean of any emotion, his body still—unnaturally so, even for him. He’d always radiated a calm command that put people at ease.

  This was different. He looked as though he were facing a firing squad.

  She shook her head, resenting the fact that he was turning it back onto her. He’d said he wanted her to listen. Now he was demanding that she figure out what questions to ask.

  “I want to know everything,” she said, spreading her hands, palms out. “Where have you been? What have you been doing? How did you plan this for months and never once let anything slip?”

  His gaze didn’t waver, but his chin lifted a fraction and he swallowed. He wasn’t as calm as she’d thought.

  “How—how could you leave me?”

  Then his gaze did waver.

  “I thought I had everything planned,” he said. “I didn’t realize how hard it was going to be, to be shot. To swim. To survive.”

  Irina didn’t speak.

  “I attached a wetsuit, diving gear and two air tanks to the bottom of the boat before we set out. But when I hit the water after Deke shot me, it knocked me unconscious for a few seconds. I thought I was dead. When I realized I wasn’t—” he shook his head “—I was disappointed.”

  “You wanted to die?” she burst out.

  He shrugged. “I thought it was the only way I could keep you safe.”

  The words from her nightmare. She shook her head. “No. I don’t believe you.”

  “I managed to wake up before I drowned. I found the air tanks and gear, but I couldn’t get the wetsuit on. The Mediterranean is damned cold. I swam for probably two miles, floating with the currents as much as possible. By the time I got out of the water I was hypothermic and I’d lost a lot of blood.” His voice sounded strained. He sat down on the couch.

  “I’d stashed local currency with the diving gear, so I ditched the gear, found an isolated farmhouse and pretended I had amnesia. I gave the farmer a lot of money to keep quiet about helping me.”

  Irina hunched her shoulders and crossed her arms. Who was he? This man who’d planned such an intricate deception? And how pathetic was she that she’d never suspected a thing?

  “Where were you all this time?” She had to fight to keep her tone even.

  “For six months I was with the family. I set up a trust for them through the Cayman account. Then I made my way across Europe and Asia to Mahjidastan. I’d been there about three months when Deke called.”

  “You were there, in the same place as Matt, for three months?”

  “Mahjidastan is a tiny province, but I was doing my best not to be noticed. I’m sure Matt was, too. I had no idea you were searching for me until I got that message from Deke.”

  “If you wanted that terrorist to think you were dead, why did you go there? Is that not where the U.S. thinks he is?”

  “That’s one of the reasons I did it—to find him. To try and stop him.”

  “Was it worth it?”

  Rook blinked. She’d gotten to him with that question. He opened his mouth, then closed it again. Then he lay back down on the sofa and threw an arm over his eyes.

  “I don’t know, Irina,” he muttered. “I really don’t know.

  ROOK GASPED and clutched at his chest. It was wet. He checked his hand. No blood. Sweat, but no blood. Relief stung his eyes.

  It was a dream. The dream. He wasn’t bleeding—or drowning. He sat up and put his bare feet on the floor, and froze. The floor wasn’t grimy, cracked vinyl with sand in all the crevices. It was warm, smooth wood. Polished, new, expensive.

  He lifted his head and took a deep breath. The scent of gardenias filled his senses, a far cry from the smell of dust and sweat and heat.

  He wasn’t in Mahjidastan. He rubbed his eyes and looked around. The pale pink night-light played tricks on his eyes, just as the after-effects of his dream played tricks on his brain.

  Irina. He was in Irina’s bedroom. They’d argued and he’d fallen asleep on the sofa. Squinting at the king-size bed, he made out her gently curved form. She was lying on her side, with her back to him. She was still asleep—so far.

  He made his way carefully into the dressing room and slid the pocket doors closed before he turned on the light.

  He turned on the hot water and ran his hands under the flow. He’d forgotten the feel of clean, fresh, hot water. The best he’d gotten in Mahjidastan was a trickle of lukewarm brownish liquid. He splashed his face again and again, until the water got too hot to bear. Then he turned it off and started on the cold water.

  After dousing his face with a few double handfuls, he cupped his hands and rinsed his mouth with the cold, delicious liquid. Then he leaned his forearms on the edge of the ceramic sink and waited for the nausea and panic to pass. A couple of deep breaths slowed his racing pulse.

  He’d hoped he was done with the dream, now that he was back home—back from the dead. It was always the same—the sharp blow to his upper chest, the spasm of fear and regret as his arms and legs collapsed.

  Irina’s anguished screams—her fingers grasping at his arm, his shirt, his hair. But inevitably she couldn’t hold on and he tumbled overboard into the dark waters of the Mediterranean.

  The last thing he saw was her face distorted by water and the sun’s brilliant glare.

  He grabbed a towel and swiped it over his neck and chest, and then his face. The soft Egyptian cotton soaked up the water but didn’t wipe away the dream.

  He peered in the mirror—and stared. He still wasn’t used to seeing his bare face. He still expected unkempt, untrimmed hair and beard—a simple disguise in a barren East Asian mountain village. Although he’d long ago accepted the bearded face. This clean-shaven face and neatly trimmed hair seemed more like a mask. Was not recognizing one’s own face the measure of a good disguise?

  With a nearly silent groan, he arched his sore shoulders and neck. The day before had been a long one. And today would probably be longer.

  He ran his damp fingers through his hair and straightened, arching his aching neck.

  He took a deep breath, wiped a dribble of water from his cheek and hiked up his pants from where they’d ridden down over the waistband of his briefs.

  Instinctively, he reached around to the small of his back to check his paddle holster. But it wasn’t there. The holster and his Sig Sauer were lying on the sofa.

  He winced. He should have been more careful. Her terror-filled eyes had pierced his heart. He wished he could explain why he felt he had to sleep with a weapon, even here, even in her room. But she wouldn’t understand.

  He didn’t want her to understand. She’d always hated guns. Her childhood had been permeated with guns and bombs. She’d grown up in the collapsing former Soviet Union, with its chaos and civil wars.

  When he’d rescued her and her father, when he’d fallen in love with her, he’d promised her she’d never have to live in fear again. And he’d broken that promise. That one and many others.

  A quiet knock at the pocket doors startled him. He opened them. Irina was standing there, in a sleek nightgown the color of candlelight. It was sleeveless and long. The material was opaque and draped across her breasts and waist and hips like wavelets in a shallow pool.

  Her blond hair shimmered brightly against her pale shoulders, and her blue eyes were dark with worry.

  “Rook? Are you all right?”

  “Yeah, sorry. I didn’t mean to wake you.” He tried not to look at her, but his eyes refused to obey his brain.r />
  “You—called out my name.”

  “It was just a dream,” he said, rubbing the back of his neck nervously. “It’s over now.” He pushed past her, and his bare arm brushed against her breast.

  She uttered a tiny gasp.

  He clenched his jaw, determined to walk on by her, back to the sofa. But try as he might, he couldn’t take another step.

  He turned toward her, willing her to do what he couldn’t. All she had to do was take one step backward. One small step, and he’d know she was rejecting him.

  But she didn’t move, unless leaning forward was considered moving.

  He lowered his head. She raised hers. Their lips touched for the first time in two years.

  Both of them jerked away, startled by the electricity that sparked between them.

  Her gaze flickered, and he was sure she would stop, but then her eyelids drifted shut and she raised her head a fraction more.

  He kissed her, deeply, fully, drinking in the feel of her mouth beneath his. Those full lips soft and trembling, her small sweet tongue, her breath.

  Time swirled around them, meaningless. It had been two years, but it could have been yesterday.

  Irina couldn’t breathe, but she didn’t care. Rook was breathing for her. He was feeding her life and breath through his kisses. Without his mouth on hers, she knew she would die.

  He lifted his hands and cradled her face, as he deepened the kiss even more. She had a vague impression that his hands were rougher, more callused than she remembered them. As soon as that thought hit her brain, it was gone, lost in sensation.

  He slid his hands down to her shoulders, her back, her waist. She leaned into him, pressing her breasts against his bare chest. Her nipples were tight and distended, almost painfully sensitized. When they brushed against his skin, a deep, erotic thrill surged through her, weakening her knees and stealing her breath.

  She was sure nothing could surpass the feeling of his mouth on hers, his chest against her breasts, the heat of his hands caressing her body. But he slid his hand further, from her waist to her rounded bottom, and pressed her to him, until the searing heat of his erection branded her skin.