Dangerous Illusion. Melissa James
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was coming—and soon—when he’d have to force her out of the shadows. Already the credit-card slip she’d given him was being fingerprint tested for any criminal records; the photo he’d taken of her face matched against all recorded shots of Delia. She had hours to hide in her cloak of anonymity.
“So long as you don’t believe it.” As she kneaded her clay, added water, her face grew calmer; she spoke with that otherworldly calm. “Don’t tell me—the model, right? The one who died a few years back in a car crash? People used to mistake me for her all the time. I was even photographed a few times, and put in trash magazines. You know, the ‘Elvis is still alive and in South America’ stuff, except substitute Delia, and New Zealand.” She looked up at McCall, her face filled with cool pity. “If you cared about her, I don’t blame you for hoping I’m her—but the body was there, Mr. McCall. Accept facts. Delia de Souza is dead. There won’t be a resurrection.”
The quiet finality in her words sent a creeping shiver down his spine. What was she telling him—that she was Ana de Souza or that, in her eyes, Delia had died long ago? “I know, but she meant a lot to me, and you’re so much like her.”
Testing her. Would she react?
She merely shrugged. “I’m sorry, Mr. McCall. Much as I’d like to earn what she did, I’m just Beth Silver, an average single woman bringing up her son alone.”
“Never average. You’ve never known what average is,” he murmured huskily. Taking another step, he felt her body respond, and not in fear. Deny it as she would, the current of desire moved back and forth between them from him to her, her to him, with a life of its own, warm and aching and needy.
She gulped. The movement was quiet, intrinsically ladylike, yet her throat still convulsed, as if his words hurt her. “Maybe I want to know. What average is, I mean,” she added. As if she’d been thinking of something else she wanted to know.
What they both wanted to know. What they wanted, ached for.
Keep your mind on the assignment, or she’ll be gone by nightfall. “Average women don’t have a security system to rival Fort Knox,” he suggested. Probing.
She kept her face averted, not enough to be interpreted as fearful. More like she was looking over his shoulder. “I have my reasons. None of which should concern a complete stranger.”
He couldn’t think, couldn’t act like a Nighthawk, standing in the warm intimacy of her studio with the woman who drove him out of his rational mind with blood-pounding want. “Am I a stranger, Beth?” His voice grew huskier as he gave her the dignity of her chosen name. He couldn’t care less what her real name was right now. His body was hard and tight with the flaming brand of aching need that being within three feet of her engendered in him. “Can you look me in the face and tell me I’m a stranger?”
A little shrug. “What’s hard about that? We met yesterday. You are a stranger.”
Yet she didn’t look at him, and her voice held a telltale quiver. As if her heart rebelled against the half lie she told. As if she was fighting for her very life…and if she was Delia or even Ana de Souza, that’s exactly what she was doing. He knew, understood, even appreciated her spirit and fire and guts, fighting alone to save herself, and her child.
But everything in him, heart and gut and man, rose up in equally dark, hot rebellion. Like a tiger crouched in the dry grass ready to pounce on its prey, he took the final steps to her and put his hands on her shoulders. He felt her start, ready to bolt that moment. “Look at me, Beth.” He heard his voice, stark and graveled, filled with unbridled need and lust and untold secrets, and he felt her lovely body quiver in response. “Look at me—look in my eyes and tell me you don’t know me.”
Her fists clenched so hard he could feel her arms shaking beneath his hands. She didn’t turn her head.
“We were never strangers,” he muttered, rough and hard, yet keeping his hold gentle. Thrilling to the touch of her, even beneath a baggy sweatshirt, to that quiet, feminine scent filling his head, because it came from her. “From the moment we met—no matter when we met—it was there.”
She finally turned her face, and her eyes locked on his. She was nothing like that star-being now, just a woman in a desperate quest for truth. “Who are you?” she whispered.
“You know who I am,” he growled, wishing, willing her to hear his heart, his gut-deep need.
She shook her head—a tiny movement, yet with plenty of power. Fighting still, but she lay passive beneath his hands, allowing him to touch her. She may not trust me, but she wants me. I can use that to Nighthawk advantage, to save lives….
What a crock. He’d never heard such pathetic crap in his life. He almost heard the universe laugh at his self-delusional thought.
“Tell me. Please.” Her voice cracked, turned husky, a warm, lingering echo of the throaty alto he’d hungered to hear again for years. “What are you? Why are you here?”
“You tell me,” he commanded, using the magnetic pull he knew she felt, to make her answer him. “Tell me who you think I am.”
“It’s not your name—it’s—” Her lovely eyes filled with desire and distress, and a heart-deep terror that made him want to touch her, hold and comfort her. “Why are you here? Who do you work for? Who paid you to find me and to watch over me? Why are they doing this to me? What did I do?”
“Maybe I’m here for me.” He moved another half inch, and the current of heat hitched up another notch. Dangerous power, a firestorm waiting to unleash. “I waited for you to call, for you to come to me,” he said huskily. “I gave you my private cell number. I didn’t change it for six years. I kept the phone for that long, until I gave up on waiting for you to call. Didn’t you know I’d have helped you leave him if you needed it?”
“You don’t know Danny’s father—how could you help me?” Yet her voice held no strength. Her face was pale, her nostrils flared, like a doe about to bolt—the fight-or-flight response he suspected she’d lived on for years. “I don’t know you. I don’t want to know you. I don’t believe in anything or anyone. I don’t trust anyone.” Yet, as though she lay helpless in a trap, she didn’t, or couldn’t, move away from under his touch. “Especially not a man who tells me nothing about himself, yet expects my private confidences in return.”
A flickering, fading defiance that still slammed him in the guts. Someone with her life history couldn’t afford to let a man into her world who didn’t tell her anything, or give her any reason to take him on, let alone tell her the whole truth.
So give her what you can.
“Ex-Lieutenant Brendan McCall of the U.S. Navy SEALs, at your service, ma’am.” He made a tiny, self-mocking bow.
Silence for a moment. “Why ex?”
Oh, man, she knew where to hit…and he had to tread carefully here. If she was Delia, she might know why he was “ex” Lieutenant McCall. Her father would’ve had him investigated for sure.
And the utter truth of that left him speechless and his head spinning. Why hadn’t he thought of that? The proverbial had hit the fan a decade ago, and it was only now that he finally got it. Her father had me investigated. That’s why she never called me. That’s why she’s been looking at me as if I’m a monster. She thinks I’m a traitor to my country, in Falcone’s pay now.
Ghost would have his hide for this, and strip him of his commander’s rank, but he had no choice. He couldn’t wait for clearance now. If he put her off now, she’d slam the emotional door and never open it again. “I was dismissed.” A bald, blunt statement that in no way hid the lingering shame. Even though it was a top-brass decision for the greater good, and he’d agreed to it for international security, the sting still whipped him with merciless taunts—always your father’s son, McCall—especially if he’d lost Delia because of it.
There was no going back: his reputation as a SEAL, one of the white knights