Dangerous Illusion. Melissa James
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any customers until after the storm, but you’d scare any off that dared to come out in this weather.”
He took a step toward her, two. “That’s the intention.”
Her eyebrows lifted. “Well, we’ve come forward—some honesty at last. Maybe soon you’ll even tell me what you want from me.”
Taking the final step, he touched that high-held chin. His gaze, burning hot and dark as starless midnight, settled on her mouth, and she shuddered in raw desire and hopeless confusion. “Take out the ‘what’ and ‘from,’ and you get the picture. I want you, no matter what your name is.”
Aching, she lifted a hand, and the dry clay on her fingers and palm cracked and fell to the floor at the same time as thunder split the sky outside—and his last words penetrated her consciousness. Her hand fell. “More honesty. That’s impressive. A shame it all seems to revolve around your delusions of who I am.”
He gave a low growl of frustration and cupped his hand around her arm, his touch as tender as his words were uncompromising. “You don’t have much time left. They’re on the move. He’ll come himself this time. And he’s not coming to reclaim his wife. You humiliated him in front of his people, his world. He’s coming to kill you personally.”
On some deeper level she felt the gentle motions of his hand supporting her, but over and above it was the whitening of her cheek, like a gunshot to a vein leeching out her life force. Control, control… It took all she had, drawing on strength she didn’t know was still inside her after so many years on the run, but she didn’t sway into him, or lean on him. “Let go of me.”
His hand dropped. He took a step back. Watching her.
Her eyes held his, shattered, pleading. “Let me go. Please. I can make life safe for my son again, if you leave for an hour.”
Fingers curled into palms, making tight fists, as his eyes squeezed shut. A breath came from him as if it had been forced, a warm, coffee-scented zephyr from the heart of a man in torture. “I can’t. God help us both, Beth, even if you and your son weren’t in more danger than you can handle, I can’t.”
She dragged in air. His scent came inside her like a beloved enemy, and she knew that scent, heat and coffee and rain, ancient pain and pagan need, would haunt her for the rest of her days. “Don’t do this to me. Don’t destroy my life.”
Eyes bleak as midwinter opened. “I don’t have a choice. You have a day, two at most. You’ll need me when it all goes down.”
You don’t have much time. They’re on the move. The echo of his voice kept resonating back to her, each time more urgent, more imperative. You humiliated him…he’ll kill you personally.
Given what Ana had told her about Falcone, every word made perfect sense. Did he know from personal experience?
“There’s an umbrella in the stand behind the door,” she said quietly. It wasn’t an inference; it was a command. Go.
Without a word he tossed the coat over his shoulder and strode out into the rain. Half-wild storm winds swirled around him, soaking him. And from the hill across the road he watched still, tense and strong and with an overwhelmingly masculine beauty. Yet he’d never looked more alone.
She turned from the sight, aching with regret for what couldn’t be. Whether he was a good guy or in Falcone’s pay, no matter how she felt about him, she didn’t have a choice.
You have a day. Two at most.
She’d been responsible for enough deaths. She had to get away—from here, and from McCall—before she killed him, too.
McCall stood across the road, watching her close the store. Though the rain worsened with the close of day, his coat stayed slung over his shoulder; he barely noticed the lashing bite of the hard-hitting needles of water. All his life, from fishing boats to the navy and SEALs, and now with the Nighthawks, he was used to extremes of weather, especially water. He was used to being alone and cold; it didn’t bother him.
What got to him was Beth dismissing him. Take the umbrella and go. Watch me from outside, out in the rain where you belong.
Even when she’d said she loved him a decade ago, he’d always felt on the outside looking in with her, a guttersnipe daring to look at a duchess. Nothing had changed in ten years, except her address and marital status. The freezing tone of her voice—the dismissal bordering on contempt—left a slightly acrid taste in his mouth, as if he’d inhaled the cordite from a smoking gun.
Yeah, and the gun was from his own pocket. Being near her was a constant game of Russian roulette, yet like a fool he just kept on turning that barrel….
Even when Delia had whispered words of love to him a decade ago, he’d known it wouldn’t last. He’d always known the truth—he wasn’t classy enough for the ambassador’s daughter turned jet-set model. He’d forced himself to finish high school and even got a football scholarship to UCLA, but he’d still ended up working on a fishing boat to pay the bills—just like dear ol’ Dad. He’d left that, too—the heavy drinking day and night had reminded him too much of his father. The booze and the fighting was the reason his mother had left. To this day, the smell of gin or beer made him want to heave his guts.
For the life he had now, he’d always bless old Burt Miner, ex-USAF. Burt had caught the nineteen-year-old Brendan hiding out in a corner of a hangar watching a weekend air show. Gruff, foul-mouthed old Burt had correctly interpreted the furious scowl on Brendan’s face as frustrated longing, and had given him a friendly chat about how it felt to really fly.
He’d come to the airstrip on all his days off after that, watching in ill-contained anguish as the guys with money took off for the skies, until Burt either got sick of him or took pity on him and finally taught him to fly.
When Burt found out about his talent in the ocean through a newspaper article about his impromptu rescue of a little kid drowning off Long Beach one weekend, Burt pulled in some favors and arranged for a navy officer to see his protégé’s skill in the air. After rigorous water skills tests and IQ exams, the navy recruitment officer talked to Brendan about the navy taking over his endangered college scholarship, and joining NROTC—the Navy Rescue Officers Training Corps. Two years later he’d come out an ensign, with the respect of all who knew him in his new world. Then, as the recruitment officer had prophesied, McCall—Ensign McCall—did the Basic Underwater Demolition Training course, survived Hell Week with ease, took the weapons and foreign language courses, learned to work in a team and joined the SEALs.
From there, he hadn’t looked back. Raw guts, a willingness to learn, do anything, anywhere, anytime, and 24/7 availability had got him to SEAL lieutenant by age twenty-six, and where he was now, at the ripe old age of thirty-seven—commander of Nighthawk Team One, one of three trusted seconds-in-command in Nighthawk Area 4, South Pacific region. He now ran every op that Pacific Region commander Anson, code name Ghost, or the medical/field Team Two commander, Irish, or Special Infiltration Team Three commander, Nightshift, wasn’t personally in on. He was up there with the big guys, on track to running his own Nighthawk region one day.
But none of that would have impressed Delia’s socially impeccable, class-conscious parents. If they were still alive they’d look at him and see the snot-nosed punk who played hide-the-booze with his dad’s empty beer cans and gin bottles, an ex-gang member of low-class origins.
That was all her incensed papa had seen, when he’d found them together that final night. Without a word Eduardo de Souza, Brazilian Ambassador to the USA, called in his security men. He got kicked out of his own car, landing right on his bad-boy ass. Humiliating punishment for daring to look in Delia’s eyes, let alone for touching her, loving her as if she was a normal girl.
What would Mama and Papa have thought of the man who’d become their posthumous son-in-law? Nobody knew who Falcone really was, or how old he really was, not even the CIA. The entry in the Register of Births, Deaths and Marriages in England was dead fake—as dead as the man who’d been paid to enter it for Falcone more than thirty years after