Alarmed Taylor got out of the car and approached Amanda, who was staring at nothing while the phone dangled, useless, before her. He touched her shoulder and she spun around abruptly. He recoiled at the violence of her movement. “Hey. Is everything all right?”
She half laughed, a desperate sound. “No, my dear Taylor, everything is not all right. I am cursed. Everything and everyone I touch turns into something ugly and malignant. I am a bringer of death.”
He put his arms around her and dragged her close, offering her shelter. Fine tremors rippled through her. She didn’t fight the embrace and her very lack of resistance was alarming. Something was terribly wrong. He held her close, rocking her and murmuring sounds of comfort and support in her hair while her agony raged around them. After a time, by slow degrees, it began to diminish.
When the firestorm had passed, only they remained. He was almost surprised to see they’d sustained no physical injury. He reached down behind her for the telephone and hung it up. The sound of the receiver settling into its holder seemed to shake Amanda from her nightmare. It was as if the noise signified a door closing in some secret corner of her heart. Her spine straightened and he released her, watching her carefully gather the pieces of her soul and lock them away. Hopefully, her intent was to reassemble them and nurse them back to health, but he feared that was not the case. He followed her to the car and got in silently.
As he turned on the ignition, he glanced over at her. For an instant, her eyes were haunted, and then the mask of her iron self-control fell into place. The act of brutal self-discipline made him shiver. At what cost to her sanity did she maintain that mask? In a moment of insight, he realized he was afraid for her. Afraid to know how much that mask cost her.
Amanda stared out the window in silence. Maybe when the smoking ruins of her soul had cooled she’d tell him of her own volition what that phone call had been about. Until then, he had faith she’d implode completely before she’d let him pry out of her what had brought on that crisis.
He drove them back to his motel room and carried in her suitcases while she followed silently. He observed without comment as she unpacked enough items with careful precision to shower and change. He stifled an urge to offer her any further comfort. She’d reject it out of hand. Clearly, she wasn’t ready to confront her feelings about whatever had happened. When or if she talked about it, then she’d be able to accept comfort. And whether or not she’d accept it from him—that was another question entirely.
He sat on the edge of the bed and stared at the bathroom door while she showered. He felt so damned helpless not being able to do anything for her. What in the hell was Devereaux thinking, sending someone in her condition out into the field? He knew Devereaux psych-tested operatives like Amanda regularly. In fact, that was what he’d supposedly been hired to do.
When they’d put him into covert-operations training, they’d said it was so he could better understand Devereaux’s private army of operators. Which made no sense. They’d hired him precisely because he already understood the minds of shadow operators. He lurched as the obvious truth slammed into him. It had all been a lie. He’d been put through twelve weeks of boot camp from hell because he was being turned into a Devereaux operative! Holy shit.
Why would Devereaux recruit, train and deploy an operative without that person knowing what or who he or she was? What was so freaking important about this case that they’d dupe him like this? Anger surged in his gut. Who cared what the damned mission was? Nobody used him like that and got away with it. He was outta here. Furious, he surged to his feet—just as the bathroom door opened and Amanda stepped out. She looked up at him, startled.
And another truth broadsided him. That was what was so damned important about this case. Not a what. A who. She was the reason Devereaux had baldly manipulated him. He was here to keep her safe. But God knew, his training wasn’t nearly enough to do the job. Unless…
The last piece fell into place. He was here to save her from herself. He sat down heavily on the side of the bed. Son of a bitch. Devereaux had figured that once he met Amanda, he wouldn’t be able to turn his back on her. And damned if Devereaux wasn’t right. He cursed long and hard under his breath. The bastard had used him.
“Ready to go?” Amanda asked briskly, all business. She wore a red dress, a clingy little thing perfect for a party at a country estate. Reluctantly, he looked up and met her gaze. Her eyes were clear, her face still. Her moment of weakness was gone, her grief ruthlessly suppressed. He admired her inner strength, even if it was terribly destructive to her.
He answered slowly, “Yeah. As ready as I’m ever gonna be. Let’s do this.”
She slung the strap of her overnight bag over her shoulder. “Remember, no more late-night antics alone. You make sure I’m with you next time.”
He grinned. “Can I quote you on that?”
She rolled her eyes and a brief spark of humor lit her face. They checked out of the motel without incident and got in the car. Taylor drove. He glanced over at her and asked casually, “Want to talk about the phone call?”
Her reply was sharp. “No.”
What had Trumpman said to her? Whatever it was, she’d bottled it up pretty tightly. Taylor frowned. It was one thing to think about getting inside Amanda’s head. But it was another thing altogether to get there. Especially since he wasn’t entirely sure he wanted to know what was floating around in this woman’s tortured mind.
In the gloaming twilight, they pulled up in front of the brightly lit Fortesque estate, which blazed into the encroaching night. A woman in a black-and-white uniform greeted them. Amanda recoiled as a pair of rottweilers charged the newcomers. A sharp command by the housekeeper called them off, but she could imagine the sort of encounter Taylor must have had with these brutes last night. A grin tugged at the corners of her mouth.
The housekeeper showed them to a spectacularly appointed suite decorated like a medieval Scottish castle. The green-and-blue Campbell tartan and fanned array of swords on the wall reminded her of home. They dropped off their luggage and headed for the pool party, which was already in full swing, to look for Marina Subova. They strolled toward a group of people lounging casually by the large swimming pool, and as they drew near a loud female scream erupted. Out of the corner of her eye, Amanda saw Taylor’s hands jerk up. Good. His self-defense mechanisms were sharp. A brunette in an almost nonexistent minidress leaped to her feet and ran toward them. Marina.
“Mashka McClintock! What are you doing here?” the Russian squealed. “Gilles told me he had a surprise for me, but I’d have never guessed this! God, you look good. I heard about your father going mad and all. I tried to call you, but you just disappeared. Is that any way to treat a friend? Really? Well, come sit down and catch me up.”
Marina looped an arm around her waist and led her toward the lounge chairs. She spoke in Taylor’s general direction, “Would you be a dear and get us—” she turned to complete her sentence and finally looked squarely at Taylor. She broke off midsentence and stopped to stare. “My God, Amanda. Where did you find him? Why do you let him out of bed?”
Amanda laughed, finally getting a word in edgewise. “Oh, him. I found Taylor in New York. Didn’t you always tell me how convenient it was to have a man around? Well, you were right. Speaking of which, Taylor, could you scrounge up a pitcher of gin and tonic for us?”
He raised a sardonic eyebrow at Amanda but turned and left without comment.
Marina giggled. “Since when did you get assertive with men? Don’t tell me you actually keep him! Do you pay him?”
Amanda shrugged. “He’s sort of attached right now. He’ll drift off when a better offer comes along. At any rate, he’s nice to look at and makes a wicked gin and tonic. You’d like him if you got to know him.”
Marina scoped out Taylor’s retreating backside. “I’m sure I would,” she purred.
Taylor returned shortly with drinks, and Marina complained her ear off about the amount of taxes she owed, the lack of good-looking, disease-free heterosexual men in the world and the troll the Russian government had sent to replace her recently deceased bodyguard, who’d died of a heart attack. A dull headache formed behind Amanda’s eyes.
The party grew wilder and alcohol flowed freely. A group of people on the far side of the pool took turns snorting lines of cocaine. Taylor shouted in her ear, “Why don’t you leave Marina to me for a few minutes and go for a swim? You look like you could use it.”
“I don’t feel like it,” she shouted back over the blaring music.
“Why not? It’s a gorgeous evening and the water’s warm.”
She turned an exasperated gaze at Taylor. “I don’t like swimming, all right?”
“Do you know how?”
She glared at him. “Yes, I know how. But that doesn’t mean I have to like it.”
She didn’t like the way he frowned thoughtfully at her. Psychologist that he was, he’d turn her weakness into some multisyllabic Latin diagnosis for sure. Thankfully, he turned his observant gaze on the crowd surging around them. He leaned close and asked, “Is it just me, or am I about to experience my first orgy?”
In the pool, bodies writhed and swayed in a mass of disembodied limbs, pale against the blackness of the water. She put her mouth practically on his ear and replied, “Very possibly. Meanwhile, you’re too conspicuous standing there gawking at all the naked people in the pool. Why don’t you join them? Oh, and keep an eye on me. I’m going to go talk to Fortesque, and I don’t trust this guy.”
Taylor shot her a surprised look but stripped down to his bathing trunks and gamely dived into the inky pool. Still in the grip of the first shock of immersion in cold water, he was further shocked when flowing female bodies immediately entangled his, like boa constrictors wrapping around their prey. He wriggled free, only to be entrapped again moments later. He searched for Amanda in the dry-land crowd and caught a glimpse of her red dress retreating from the pool. Fortesque was with her. He appeared to be plying her with a drink of some kind.
A few minutes later he caught sight of her again, laughing freely with their host. Either she ought to get an Academy Award, or Fortesque had some sort of magic touch with women.
Taylor suppressed a sharp reaction to seeing the Canadian hang all over his partner like that.
A pair of hands reaching around his waist from behind to untie his bathing trunks abruptly diverted Taylor’s attention. A warm, moist tongue insinuated itself into his ear. He grabbed the hands and turned around. Marina. She stared at him wordlessly.
A slow, aggressively sensual smile grew on her face, moving from her slanted eyes to her lips. She reminded him of a tigress stalking. The intensity and personal magnetism revealed in Marina’s music were even stronger up close. She freed her hands from his and pressed herself against him. He started as he realized she was nude. The warmth of her flesh was electric in the cool water. Her small, firm breasts rubbed against his naked chest. Marina’s cat eyes glowed as she drew his head down toward her. He was intensely, and not particularly pleasantly, aware of her body.
Her lips paused inches from his. “Take me.” It was a command, not a request. She kissed him wildly, almost painfully. Somewhere deep in his consciousness, a warning sounded. This woman was not a tigress at all. She was a boa constrictor. She’d wrap herself around him and squeeze for all she was worth, suffocating the breath, and eventually the life, right out of him.
He concentrated on his instinct and emerged from the searing kiss, gasping for air. He said lightly, “You, mademoiselle, are dangerous. You’ll drown us both.”
“Then let us leave the pool.”
With a quick flex of powerful muscles, Taylor popped out on the side of the pool and turned down to speak to Marina, who was still in the water. “Until later, then.” He strode away and left her gaping. There was no sign of Amanda or Fortesque anywhere on the pool deck.
He strode through the mansion’s semidarkness in search of her while a lurid scene played around him. His nerves jangled. Something was wrong. He could feel it. He made another circuit of the pool and then headed toward the stables, the only place he hadn’t checked yet. As he neared the tennis court, he heard a voice coming from the enclosed gazebo beside it. Amanda. Pleading with Fortesque.
He frowned. He didn’t doubt that Fortesque was as strong as his bulldog physique suggested, but Amanda should have no trouble taking the Canadian down. The only question was whether or not she could fend off the jerk without doing real damage to him. Taylor stepped into the shadows of the gazebo. Fortesque had Amanda cornered, and Taylor was just in time to see the jerk make a grab for her. She pulled away and cloth ripped as her dress tore down the front. The red fabric gaped open, barely covering her creamy breasts.
Taylor’s reflexive fury was accompanied by confusion. Why hadn’t she killed the bastard for that? Lord knew she was capable of it. She fended off another lunge, and he wasted no more time pondering the question. He stepped briskly in front of her, facing Fortesque. “Sorry, old chap. I’m afraid undressing this lady is my department.”
He turned rapidly, whisked Amanda off her feet and strode away from a dumbfounded Fortesque. Fortunately, their host was fuddled enough by whatever substances he’d been abusing that he could only stand and bluster. Taylor glanced down at Amanda in the moonlight as he strode back to the house.
“Thank God you came,” she mumbled. “I couldn’t have held off the drugs much longer.” And with that, she passed out. She must’ve been hanging on to consciousness by sheer willpower alone. The woman’s self-discipline was phenomenal if she’d successfully overcome the chemical effects of any of the date-rape drugs Fortesque must have slipped in her drink.
As she fell into unconsciousness, he carried her to their room and laid her on the bed. He removed the remains of her dress and stopped cold, staring at the scraps of black silk and lace that passed for her underwear. Lust pounded through him like a rushing freight train. Stop leering at your partner. He ripped his gaze away from the sight of her reclining against the crisp white sheets and pulled the blankets over her, not that it did a damn thing to erase the picture of her half-naked from his mind.
He tried to sleep in one of the medieval wooden chairs, but they were hardly made for sitting in, let alone sleeping in. After an hour, he gave up. He crawled in beside Amanda, who was dead to the world, and crashed.
A noise woke him in the wee hours of the morning. The house was finally silent and dark. Amanda mumbled and tossed beside him, trapped in the throes of a nightmare. He touched her shoulder. She didn’t wake up, so he propped himself on an elbow and leaned over to shake her. She rolled against him, and for the second time that night, he was confronted with the acute awareness of an unclothed female form pressed intimately against him. He was intensely, pleasantly conscious this time of her soft curves molding to his tense body. “The things I don’t do for Devereaux,” he groaned under his breath.
When she finally settled back into quiet sleep, he disentangled himself and eased her back onto her side of the bed. He stared at the canopy overhead for a very long time.
Amanda gradually gained awareness of her surroundings as layers of unconsciousness peeled away one by one. She blinked against the weak light of dawn, glimpsing the canopy of an ancient bed over her head. How had she gotten back to Scotland? She turned her head and her eyes widened in shock. Taylor was asleep less than a foot from her, so close she could see individual whiskers in the dark stubble that covered his jaw. She eased away from him and his eyes opened, opalescent gray in the pale morning light.
“G’morning,” he murmured, his voice rough.
She frowned, groping for speech. “When…where…what happened?”
“We’re outside of Toronto at Gilles Fortesque’s estate. He spiked your drink last night.”
She assimilated that information and tried unsuccessfully to remember the previous evening. She basked for a few moments in the comfort of the warm bed, but one in which she was emphatically not alone. “Did you…did we…?” She stopped in embarrassment.
Taylor smiled. “No, we didn’t do anything. I hope you wouldn’t forget it if we did.”
She smiled back sleepily. But moments later, horror swamped her. “Good Lord, I don’t have any clothes on!”
“Whatever,” Taylor grumbled unconcernedly. “It’s barely 6:00 a.m. Why don’t you go back to sleep for a couple more hours? No one will be up around here until at least noon.”
Thank God he seemed so uninterested in her state of dress. “I don’t remember much about last night. Was it wild?”
He opened one eye and mumbled, “I’m no judge of a wild orgy versus a tame orgy.”
She cringed. “I didn’t do anything embarrassing, did I?”
He didn’t bother to open his eyes. “No. You were shockingly restrained. Should’ve knocked Fortesque’s block off, but you didn’t. Remind me to do that when we get up.”
Her last thought before she drifted off again was that Taylor could take a number. She’d give Fortesque what he had coming herself.
Later, she regained consciousness abruptly, fully alert, in the manner she usually woke. This time there was no groggy swim toward reality, no vague disorientation. The events of the previous evening were clear in her mind. She ought to kill Gilles Fortesque. Better yet, she should wait until he was surrounded by a big group of his guests and then make a production of forgiving him for his inability to perform sexually last night. She grinned up at the ceiling.
Ouch. Moving her facial muscles sent daggers of pain through her head. Throbbing pain threatened to split her skull in two. She flinched, silently cursing their host. She ought to sympathize with Fortesque’s shortcomings in the male-endowment department, too, and suggest in front of everyone that he consider penis-enhancement surgery.
She turned her head with the greatest of caution and saw that the bed’s other occupant had departed. Recalling her cozy dawn awakening, she frowned. The remembered sense of security and comfort was completely foreign to her. She didn’t need the protection of some man. More to the point, she dared not accept Taylor’s protection. As soon as she began to relinquish control of her world, the whole house of cards would tumble down around her. She’d always been on her own, and regardless of whether or not she liked it, with her career she needed it that way. No strings, no commitments. Clean and simple, no emotional baggage.
She didn’t need Taylor running around rescuing her like some patronizing knight in shining armor, nor did she need him draining her of knowledge like some blood-sucking vampire so she could be discarded by Devereaux when her usefulness was ended.
God, she hated men.