Melissa James - Dangerous Illusion

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.

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.”