The Phoenix Encounter. Linda Castillo
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thousand words tangled inside Robert, but he choked on every one of them as if they were shards of glass. Emotions snapped through him like thunderbolts, shocking his body with their awesome power. He stared at the woman standing in the doorway, aware of his heart raging in his chest, the dull roar of blood rushing through his veins.
He couldn’t believe Lily was alive. But it was her; he knew it as surely as he saw the flash of recognition in her hazel eyes. There was no other woman like her. No other who could affect him like this. He would know her anywhere and under any circumstance. He would know her in the dark, just by the feel of her, the scent of her. The energy surrounding her.
Robert stared, speechless and shocked to his bones. Her hair was longer, but still as radiant as burnished copper. She had the same flawless skin, as fragile as fine German porcelain. Only now there was a tiny scar that ran from her left eyebrow to the hairline at her temple.
“Lily,” he whispered after an infinite moment.
“Robert. My God. I didn’t…” She blinked, as if trying to wake herself from a dream. “How did you…”
Neither of them seemed capable of completing a sentence. Slowly, he once again became aware of his surroundings. The ping of rain against the tin roof. The crackle of a fire in the hearth. The smell of bread and wood smoke and woman. His leg ached dully, the way it always did when he overexerted himself, but he barely noticed the pain. And for the first time since receiving the injury, he was glad for the distraction.
“C-come in,” she said.
When he only continued to stare at her, she stepped back. “You’re getting wet.”
“I’m already wet.” But Robert knew the weather no longer rated on his list of concerns.
His heart raced with his pulse as he stepped into the cottage. Warmth and a startling sense of comfort he didn’t quite trust embraced him. He looked around, seeing immediately that whomever lived here had somehow managed to turn a ramshackle hovel into a home.
“What are you doing here?” she asked.
Robert watched as she crossed to the fire and tossed another log into the flames. Before he even realized he was watching her, his eyes swept over her, taking in every detail. She’d lost weight, but the curves he’d once known intimately still defined her shape. Even through the thick cotton sweater she wore, he could see the outline of her full breasts. Her jeans were snug enough so that he could see the gentle roundness of her hips. And in those fleeting seconds her beauty made him remember all the things he’d tried so desperately to forget in the twenty-one months since he’d last seen her.
Robert cut the thought short with practiced precision. He wasn’t exactly sure what was going on but knew he couldn’t dwell on it. He couldn’t let himself think of her in those terms. Not when he’d worked so hard to get her out of his system.
“I could ask you the same question,” he said.
“I—I live here.” She glanced at him over her shoulder as she walked into a small kitchen area. “Were you looking for me?”
“No,” he said quickly and held his ground at the door. “I was supposed to meet someone here.”
He watched her pour Rebelian black tea into two mismatched cups. She looked cool on the outside, maybe even a little tough, but her hands were shaking, and for the first time he realized she was merely hiding her shock better than he was.
She carried both cups to the wooden chairs in front of the hearth. “Your contact?”
That she knew about his contact shocked him all over again. Lily didn’t know he was an ARIES operative. No one did, aside from his counterparts and other ARIES personnel. There was no way in hell he would ever tell her. The less she knew about him, the safer she would be.
Because he wasn’t quite sure how to respond, he didn’t answer. Instead, he followed her to the hearth, keenly aware of her scent, that her essence filled not only the room, but the entire house. “I’m doing some missionary work for the French government.”
She looked at him oddly, a student perplexed by a particularly difficult math equation. “I was supposed to meet someone here tonight, as well.”
A sinking sensation swamped his gut. And suddenly he knew this was no coincidence. “Jacques brought me here.”
Her knowing eyes met his. “Jacques is…with me. He’s part of the movement.”
With me. Of all the words that stuck in his brain, he hated it that it was those two. He stared at her, torn between turning around and walking out and forgetting this had ever happened, and shaking her until she told him how it was that she was alive and he’d spent the last twenty-one months dying a slow death because he’d thought her gone.
“There’s got to be some kind of mistake,” he said.
“There’s no mistake.” She handed him one of the cups. “I don’t have any sugar. That’s one of the many things we no longer have in Rebelia.”
Amazed that she could be thinking about sugar when his world had just been rocked off its foundation, he took the cup and sipped the strong, dark tea, trying desperately to rally his brain into a functioning mode.
“I just can’t believe it’s you,” she said, sipping her tea. “This has been planned for months. We need your help.”
“I’m here for information,” he said. “Not to help you.”
Holding her cup between her slender hands, she looked at him through the rising steam. “I’m your contact. And if you want information from me, you’re going to have to earn it.”
Chapter 2
Having spent the last two years in a country decimated by civil war, hunger and indiscriminate violence, Lily thought she had endured every kind of shock a human being could endure. She’d seen things she couldn’t fathom. Things she refused to think of once the lights were out and she was alone in her bed. A few minutes earlier, she’d thought she could handle just about anything fate saw fit to throw her way.
She’d been wrong.
Not even the horrors of war had prepared her for seeing Robert again. She simply couldn’t believe he was standing in her living room, as warm and alive as the last time she’d seen him. The night she’d hurt him terribly and then watched as he’d been cut down by shrapnel.
God in heaven, how was she going to handle this? How was she going to tell him everything that had happened since he’d left? Things that would change both their lives forever. The questions gnawed at her like voracious little beasts. Questions that terrified her more than the threat of any bomb or soldier’s bayonet or stray bullet. Questions she had absolutely no idea how to answer.
Standing next to the hearth, Robert regarded her with hard, suspicious eyes. He may look the same, she mused, but the last months had changed him. Made him hard. Maybe even bitter. She considered the bitterness in her own heart and wondered if the last months had been as hard for him as they had been for her. She didn’t see how.
Still, the steely gaze that swept the length of her remained starkly familiar. The pull was still there, too, she realized, and a shiver rippled through her hard enough to make her hands shake. She endured his scrutiny with stoic silence, hoping he couldn’t hear the deafening rush of blood through her veins or see her shake.
Refusing to be cowed, Lily stared at him, trying to keep her thoughts on the business at hand and failing miserably. He offered a commanding presence that unnerved her as much as the sight of any enemy soldier. Broad shoulders. Lean hips. Legs slightly bowed with muscle. He seemed taller than she remembered even though she knew that was an impossibility. He had the most fascinating face of any man she’d ever seen. Intelligence and a subtle cunning burned bright and hot behind piercing blue eyes. Laugh lines cupped a mouth that was much more harsh than it had been when she’d known him. A five-o’clock shadow darkened a square