Authors: Kay Hooper
“I slept on it. Answer the question.”
“All right. I shot a man once. By mistake. I meant to frighten him. I didn’t want it to happen again, so I learned to use guns. Now I hit what I aim at.”
“I see.” She looked at him searchingly. “Did the man die?”
“No. He’s serving a life sentence. For murder.”
“One of the bad guys.”
Rafferty grinned, able to look back on that past episode now with rueful humor. “I’ll say. He nearly shot me right out from under my white hat.”
Sarah smiled at him. “Then you don’t regret it. Good. You should never regret things.”
“Like challenges issued during a storm?”
“Just like that. You don’t, do you?”
“No. Oh, no. In fact, I’m looking forward to the game. I even managed to get a good night’s sleep in preparation.”
She lifted an eyebrow at him. “That doesn’t say much for my powers of seduction.”
Rafferty was tempted, but decided not to tell her that she’d nearly awakened in his arms—and would have if he hadn’t gotten up first. “That would have been blatant,” he told her, injured. “Against the rules.”
Sarah suddenly came closer, looking up at him with an innocent air belied by gleaming eyes. “But I have to try to seduce you,” she reminded him.
He gazed down at her, thinking that what she was wearing—white slacks and a print blouse—wasn’t meant to be seductive, but somehow … it seemed to be. “Just tell me something honestly,” he said. “Is this an act? Or a part of you even
you’ve
never seen before?”
“The latter,” she murmured, reaching out to fasten a button of his shirt that had come undone. Her hand remained on his chest. “I really don’t know where she came from, but I like this Sarah. I think she … woke up out on the beach.”
Rafferty caught her hand firmly and removed
it from his chest. “No seduction before breakfast.”
“Another rule?”
“We’ll call it that.” He sighed, trying to slow his increased pulse and having little luck. “Room service, or d’you want to go out for breakfast?”
“Well, if you’re going to be a spoilsport—”
“Out,” he decided.
Although that day and the next tried his self-control, Rafferty admitted to himself that he enjoyed the experience. The most drastic change in Sarah had occurred when she’d accepted his challenge; she made no overt effort to seduce him during those first two days. And although her sleepwear continued to be decidedly enticing, and he woke to find her in his arms in the morning, she dressed casually and did nothing so obvious as to walk around their suite half-dressed or ask him to wash her back in the shower.
Yet Rafferty very soon realized that this time he really had fashioned a hell for himself. He knew only too well that this new Sarah was a tenuous emergence, vulnerable even if she didn’t realize it. A too rapid resolution of their “game” would send her out of his reach forever; he knew that, knew it with every instinct he could lay claim to. She seemed eager to try her new wings, but any threat of real danger before she got used to those wings would undoubtedly send her flying back to the emotional sanctuary of her caution.
His own desire grew with every hour that passed, and only the fascination of getting to know Sarah even as she got to know herself helped to keep him reasonably in control of his baser urges.
But on Monday, when they stood at the marina gazing out at the yacht
Thespian
, he began to wonder if he should have taken advantage of the privacy behind them. It was obvious they’d have little privacy on the luxurious and expensive yacht. And there was the captain, Siran, a lean, dark man in his thirties with
an enigmatic gaze and a strangely dangerous smile. He could have been any nationality, and had a very gentle, polite voice that was like a velvet scabbard hiding a steel blade.
The two men who “assisted” Siran—as
he
put it—were both large, strong men with faces that looked as though they’d encountered unfriendly fists from time to time. They were as alike as bookends, and their names, said Siran with his quick smile, were Tom and Dick. Harry proved to be the cabin “boy.” He was all of sixty, with grizzled hair and bright blue eyes, and he assured both Rafferty and Sarah that he was a fine cook, and that they had only to ask for anything they wanted. Anything at all.
Left alone at last in their cabin, they looked around, and both, at the same moment, sighed.
“Did somebody say something about separate berths being unlikely?” Rafferty asked dryly. They stood in the middle of a cabin that was every bit as large as the sitting room in their hotel and the bed they could see in the adjoining cabin was full-size. Sarah looked at him
with a smile. “Well, there is only one berth, so to speak. Shall we unpack now, or go up on deck to wave good-bye to Trinidad?”
They heard the muffled sound of engines then, and Rafferty said, “On deck is my choice.” As they were making their way topside, he added in a low voice, “Does this yacht belong to the agency? And what about the crew?”
“I have no idea. Want to ask Siran?”
Rafferty glanced in the captain’s direction as they moved forward. “Not really.”
“It isn’t good procedure,” she agreed, sitting on a padded bench on the starboard side. “If he
isn’t
Hagen’s man, we could give the show away. And if he is—Oh, he has to be. We may have to leave Kadeira in a hurry; surely Hagen wouldn’t trust a hired captain and crew with this assignment.”
“I hope you’re right.” Rafferty sat beside her as they both gazed out on the colorful marina. “Judging by what Zach found out, we’ll be lucky if we escape Kadeira with our skins, let alone the information.”
He had explained all of it to her after he
had called Zach back as promised, and Sarah chewed her bottom lip absently as she thought about their situation. She felt Rafferty’s gaze on her, but wasn’t quite able to straighten out her expression fast enough.
“What is it?” He took her hand, looking at her steadily and smiling a little. “What is it that you weren’t supposed to tell me?”
The
Thespian
gathered speed as they left the clutter of boats behind, and Sarah drew a deep breath. “I don’t think you’re going to like it. And I
wanted
to tell you … Hagen told me not to until we reached Kadeira.”
“But you’re going to tell me now.” He knew then that his forebodings about this assignment had been on target. True to character, Hagen had once again decided not to tell everyone everything.
Sarah drew a deep breath. “Actually, it isn’t bad. Not really. You see, we probably won’t have too much trouble staying in Kadeira as long as we need to. We don’t have an invitation, but we do have a kind of special pass.”
“Which is?”
“Me.”
“Hey!” Lucas Kendrick made a wild grab for something solid to hold on to, only just managing to keep his balance. “Keep both eyes on the road, will you?”
Zachary Steele, whose gaze had not left the clear blue waters of the Caribbean, swung the wheel a bit further to starboard, his own feet planted as solidly as the roots of a great oak. “It isn’t my fault you have lousy sea legs,” he observed mildly.
Lucas glared at him. “I’m half asleep and suffering jet lag,
not
seasickness,” he stated. “If you weren’t made of granite, you’d be dead yourself. You’ve come three thousand miles farther than I have.”
“I slept on the plane,” Zach said, glancing down to check his heading, then looking back at the water.
Lucas found a reasonably comfortable seat near the wheel, his mind turning to the reasons
they were there. “You didn’t tell Rafferty we were coming?”
“No.”
Gloomily, Lucas said, “The boss is going to murder us. You and I are AWOL, you know.”
“Well, no, not really.” A faint smile softened Zach’s hard face and his gray eyes showed his amusement. “I called Josh. When he’d finished casting aspersions on my ancestors and damning me six ways from Sunday for interrupting his honeymoon, he gave us grudging permission to stick our noses in this.”
In a plaintive tone, Lucas asked, “Then why on earth didn’t we borrow the yacht instead of renting this damned fishing boat? At least we could have been comfortable.”
“And a target,” Zach pointed out dryly. “Look, even though no one could trace the registry of the
Corsair
back to Josh, it still reeks of money, and evidence suggests that the government of Kadeira seems to have a fondness for arresting wealthy visitors. Rafferty’s already a target in the
Thespian
, but that seems to be Hagen’s plan.”
Lucas frowned, his strikingly handsome face troubled. “Insane plan, if you ask me. Any idea what’s going on?”
“Rafferty didn’t say, but I can hazard a few guesses. According to the harbormaster in Trinidad, whom I spoke to before you arrived, the
Thespian
pulled out with its crew and two passengers—Rafferty and a young woman.” Zach glanced at Lucas, adding blandly, “His wife, I understand.”
“His—?” Lucas mused about that for a moment, then sighed. “Part of the cover?”
“I assume so.”
“She’s an agent?”
“Again, I assume so. Their destination is Kadeira, which, I discovered, is a political nightmare and believed to be the base for a pretty nasty terrorist organization.”
“And Rafferty wanted a gun,” Lucas murmured. He was looking grimmer by the moment. “Are we going to storm the place, or hover outside the three-mile limit in case we’re needed?”
“Play it by ear. The fishing’s supposed to be
good near Kadeira, so we’ll anchor and keep an eye on the
Thespian
.” Zach was frowning, the long scar on his left cheek whitening as always in response to tension. “I’m betting they’ll go into port with heaven only knows what kind of plan.”
“We need to talk to Rafferty.”
“And we will, if we get the chance. But we can’t risk blowing his cover. Get your clever mind on that, will you?”
Lucas, who had an inborn talent for stealth and a genuine enjoyment of tactics, grimaced and nodded. But he made a despairing observation, one that both men felt keenly.
“I’m not as devious as Hagen. Who in hell can guess what
he
has in mind?”
“You’re going to
what
?” Rafferty asked carefully.
Sarah, who had never in her life been assertive, lifted her chin and met his incredulous gaze calmly. “You heard me. I’ve seen her, Rafferty, and we could be twins. We even have the same
first name. And Andrés Sereno was wild about her; he would have married her in a wedding to rival British royalty, if she hadn’t run away.”
“Did it ever occur to you that she might have had good reason to run away from President Sereno?”
“He wasn’t cruel to her, or anything like that. Rafferty, he
worshiped
her; he would have given her anything—except her freedom. She had to run away to get that.”
“If Hagen told you—”
Sarah smiled. “No. She did. I talked to Sara Marsh two weeks ago. She’s hiding because he’s got people scattered all over the world looking for her.”
Rafferty felt more and more like he was in the middle of a nightmare, and morning was too many long hours away. “And so you’re going to take advantage of his obsession with this woman because you could be her twin? Sarah, that man sounds unbalanced. At the very least, he’s a
dictator
and used to getting his own way. What if he transfers his obsession to you?”
Softly, she said, “It isn’t likely. Still, he’ll probably be interested enough to want to spend time with me. We’re counting on that.”
“Sarah—”
“It’s our pass into Kadeira, Rafferty. While I … occupy the president, you’ll meet with our undercover agent and get the information.”
Tightly, Rafferty said, “We’re supposed to be married,
newly
married at that. Do I just cheerfully hand over my wife to some obsessed tin-pot dictator? Turn my head while he has his hands all over you?”
She reached out to touch his hand, unsurprised when his only response was a deepening of his stony stare. “Our cover is that we’re a newly married couple, with a few problems. We’re supposed to stage a public fight or something. And as for his hands being all over me, President Sereno was very gentle with his Sara, Rafferty; he never tried to do anything against her will. In fact, they—they were never lovers.”
“Maybe he’ll decide to grab what he can this time around,” Rafferty suggested. “What
then, Sarah? Just how far are you prepared to go in
occupying
him? Did Hagen wave the flag at you and explain that a good agent uses every tool available? Did he suggest a little bit of good old-fashioned whoring to get the job done?”
The question quivered in the air between them.
Sarah drew her hand back as though he’d burned her. She had never looked more poignantly lovely, her green eyes darkened to jade with the hurt.
“Sarah, I didn’t mean—”
She got up and moved forward, her slender back stiff. Within minutes she was gone from his sight.
Rafferty stared out over the water, his muscles taut until his body ached. Unforgivable. What he’d said was unforgivable, and not something either of them could forget. And the worst of it was that Rafferty knew it was purely and simply impossible for Sarah to do what he’d suggested. Such a thing was alien to
her nature. But he hadn’t stopped to
think
at all, he’d just blurted out a hollow accusation born in fear for her and the jealous vision of another man who would be desperate for her love.
And if Andrés Sereno had truly been “wild” about his Sara, then it would probably be inevitable that the man would transfer that emotion to her look-alike. And Sarah would have to cope with that. Sarah, who was so damned vulnerable, so newly awakened that she was like a butterfly fresh from its cocoon, desperately fragile and susceptible to untold damage.
It scared the hell out of Rafferty.
What frightened him most, he asked himself? That Sarah would be hurt somehow while “occupying” the Kadeira president? Or that the charismatic Sereno would fire her awakened senses and capture her heart for his own?
Rafferty knew only too well that his own hold on Sarah was a tentative one. She was attracted to him, perhaps even something more. But she was also aware of the dangers of “shipboard” romances, and Rafferty himself had
compounded the problem by proposing to make a game of seduction.