IT WASN’T WORKING. The plan, which had seemed logical enough when Hunter had finally abandoned the warm comfort of the bed he’d shared with Gillian two days ago was turning out to be a bust.
He’d never thought of himself as a particularly greedy man. Granted, the wealth that came from his work was a nice perk, and if the government wanted to write him an obscenely large check to stake a claim to his research, he certainly wasn’t about to turn it down. But everything else—including the house he’d designed down to the last nail—was just gravy.
So long as he had enough funds to keep his work going, he wouldn’t care if he woke up tomorrow to find it all gone.
As for relationships with the opposite sex, even prior to the bombing, he’d preferred brief, uncomplicated affairs with women who were no more interested than he was in any kind of permanent relationship. These past years on the island with Toni had been more convenience than emotion, friendly lust that scratched an itch for them both.
He liked Toni. A lot. He liked her mind, her body, her penchant for sexual adventure. He also liked the fact that he could get caught up in his work for days or weeks at a time and she wouldn’t get her feelings hurt or feel abandoned. After all, she felt the same way. They were comfortably compatible, neither believing in, nor wanting, any happily-ever-after type of commitment.
Still, he couldn’t help being relieved that she’d left the island for a research trip to the National Institutes of Health in Atlanta. He knew she’d understand why it would be awkward to sleep with her while he had another woman living in his house. But Toni was a highly intuitive woman and he didn’t want anyone realizing that his feelings for Gillian had unexpectedly become more complex than merely sexual.
Hell. Only two weeks ago things had been going along well. Better than well. After years of compiling data, he’d been crunching the numbers and had felt as if he’d been close to a breakthrough when Toni had shown up at his house with that damn tape.
Ever since that evening, his mind had been dominated by thoughts about Gillian Cassidy.
He’d hoped that if he got away from the house—from her—he’d be able to concentrate and focus on his work. But as the computer hummed away, Hunter stood by the window of his laboratory, staring out at the swirling snow and thinking of Gillian on the other side of the woods.
He wondered if she was still lying in bed, still tangled in the sheets that had finally begun to cool when he’d left before dawn that morning. Wondered if she was taking a bath in the Jacuzzi tub. Wondered if she was thinking of him.
Was she regretting giving up her virginity to a man who hadn’t particularly welcomed it and had treated her with less tenderness than the situation had called for? But how the hell had he been supposed to know the woman was far more innocent than her sensual music had led him to believe?
He jammed his hands into the pockets of his jeans and reminded himself that Gillian was a grown woman. She’d known before coming to the island what would be expected of her, and even if she hadn’t totally believed he was serious, he’d certainly made himself perfectly clear since her arrival.
So why the hell was he experiencing this unexpected guilt? And another, even more unsettling feeling he couldn’t quite put a name to?
“Damn,” he muttered as he glared out at the swirling white snow.
“Numbers not crunching well?” a masculine voice behind him asked as Dylan strolled into the office.
“The work’s going well enough.” He shrugged with more casualness than he felt. “Actually, it’s turning out better than expected.”
“Then it must be a woman who’s got you looking like a ticked-off lion with a thorn in your paw.”
“You couldn’t begin to imagine,” Hunter said dryly.
Dylan laughed with obvious delight. “If I didn’t know that you weren’t a man given to entanglements, I’d suspect that the tables had been turned and the lovely red-haired songstress has snared the hunter.”
At first Hunter was a bit surprised that Dylan knew it was Gillian that Ben had brought to his house. Then realized he should have expected it. Any visitor to Castle Mountain was bound to be noticed right away, especially once tourist season had passed. Especially a high-profile visitor like Gillian Cassidy.
“It’s complicated,” he muttered, jamming his hands deeper into his pockets as he glared back out the window.
“It usually is, when a female’s concerned,” Dylan said with the blithe attitude of a happily married man. “I take it your visitor has you dancing to her tune?”
Hunter frowned. He wasn’t prepared to talk about Gillian. Not even with Dylan. Not when he hadn’t yet figured out what he was feeling.
“Did you drop by to play Dear Abby?”
“No.” The smile faded from Dylan’s eyes. “You have a visitor.”
“Oh?” He wondered if Gillian had actually managed to talk Ben into driving her here and wondered, if she had, why he didn’t feel any irritation at her invading his sanctuary.
“It’s the general,” Dylan said. “He’s currently cooling his heels in the reception area.”
Hunter shook his head. Just what he needed to top off a less-than-perfect day. He wondered how the man had made his way here from the mainland in such lousy weather, then, remembering the many tales he’d heard over the years about his covert activities going all the way back to the final days of Vietnam, he realized that General Alexander Stonewall Lee wasn’t going to allow snow—even a near blizzard—to interfere with a mission.
He cursed, then sighed with resignation. Lee was, after all, the man who signed his checks.
“Send him in.”
The general possessed the bearing of a man for whom military service was a birthright. As he entered the office on a strong, confident stride that brought to mind a conquering army, Hunter could almost imagine him standing at full parade attention in his mother’s womb.
“I wasn’t expecting you.” Hunter opened a maple cabinet and took out the bottle of Wild Turkey he kept on hand for the general’s visits.
“I wasn’t expecting to be here.” Snow glistened in his silver hair as General Lee took off his overcoat, boasting four gold stars on the shoulder epaulets, and hung it on the brass rack. “I try to make it a policy not to travel north of the Mason-Dixon line after Thanksgiving.”
“That must make it difficult to wage war in the northern regions,” Hunter suggested dryly.
“Which is why I got myself a transfer to the Pentagon,” the general said as he took the crystal glass Hunter held out to him. “Granted, one would never move to D.C. for the weather, but at least it’s not as inhospitable as this place.”
He glared out at the sleet hammering against the window. “If you have to live on a damn island, why couldn’t you have chosen one in the Caribbean?”
Since the debacle with George Cassidy, Hunter always thoroughly investigated everyone with whom he worked. His research on the general had revealed the man was a miserable sailor. Which made it all the more surprising that he’d risk coming out here on Ben Adams’s mail packet on a day that the sea was rough enough to make even the most hardy seasick.
“The island suits me.” Hunter sat down in one of the black swivel chairs. “You didn’t come all this way to give me a weather report. What’s so important to have you braving a stormy Atlantic to come to our little back of beyond?”
“The Pentagon has received intelligence regarding recent rumors of outside interests in your project from various terrorist groups.”
“Isn’t military intelligence an oxymoron?” When the general’s granite face didn’t so much as crack a faint smile, Hunter shrugged and glanced down at the hook that had taken the place of his left hand. “So why don’t you tell me something I don’t know? Besides, you’re running a little behind. Van Horn’s already passed on the news that I’ve made the latest hit list.”
The general scowled at the mention of the State Department bureaucrat. “Those guys at State wouldn’t know a terrorist if he showed up at their offices and bit them on their collective asses….
“There are also rumors that you’re close to completion.”
He might not have any use for Van Horn, but the two men shared the same motivation in making the trip from the mainland out to the middle of nowhere.
“Closer than I was last year,” Hunter agreed, not eager to volunteer information even to this man, who possessed the highest level of military clearance. “But I still have some work to do,” he said, giving the general the same line he’d told the emissary from State.
“Needless to say, we’re concerned about security.”
“Short of moving this lab to some other galaxy, I doubt if I could find a more remote research location,” Hunter pointed out.
“I won’t argue with that. But the Joint Chiefs decided that we should take another check of your security measures.”
“Never hurts to check,” Hunter said agreeably even as he ground his teeth. So much for getting any work done, he considered, conveniently overlooking the fact that he’d already blown most of the day with thoughts of Gillian.
Five long hours later, the general announced himself satisfied with the security measures at the brain factory. He was, however, less than pleased when Hunter, pointing out that he’d been keeping the committee informed with quarterly reports, refused to give him a hands-on demonstration of the secret project. With a last warning for Hunter to watch his back, he left.
“Surely he’s not actually going to try to get back to the mainland tonight?” Dylan asked as the two men watched the SUV the general had somehow managed to round up drive away.
“He’s spending the night at the Gray Gull in town,” Hunter said. “Then, if the weather lets up, I suppose he’ll take Ben Adams’s mail boat back to the mainland tomorrow.”
Hunter knew that the polite thing to do would have been to invite the man to stay at the house and save him the trip into town. He didn’t for two reasons, the first being that Gillian’s presence at the house might raise questions he had no intention of answering. The second reason was that he didn’t like the general any more than he liked Van Horn. Having never been known for his manners, he put the general out of his mind.
Night came early to this part of the country in winter, and as the gray sky darkened, Hunter considered spending another night right here on the leather office sofa. It crossed his mind that he’d rather face an entire band of terrorists armed with hand grenades and automatic weapons than try to make casual conversation with Gillian.
After obsessing over it a helluva lot more than he liked, Hunter realized he couldn’t hide from her forever. Besides, if past behavior was any example, she might actually try to track him down here. Not wanting to take the chance on her risking her life just because he’d turned into a coward overnight, he came to the reluctant conclusion that he might as well go home.
TWO DAYS AFTER her glorious night with Hunter, Gillian was in the library, trying to keep her mind on composing the piece that had been humming through her head since she’d woken up to find him gone and the world draped in white.
Proving that the Weather Service could, indeed, be wrong, the storm had not blown over. Indeed, the snow had continued to fall from the slate sky. At times the sleet driven against the wall of windows sounded as though the house were being pelted with stones. Other times, the wind would die down and flakes would float from the slate-gray sky like fluffy goose down, almost as if the gods were engaged in a pillow fight over the world.
The weather had finally turned fierce enough to keep Mrs. Adams away. Just before the phones had gone out, the housekeeper had called to inform Gillian that she’d slipped on her icy front steps. Overriding Gillian’s concern, she’d briskly informed her that the doctor said her ankle wasn’t broken but badly sprained, and he had instructed her to stay off it for several days. Since the freezer was stocked with food, neither she nor Dr. St. John need worry about going hungry.
“If Dr. St. John decides to return anytime soon from the brain factory,” she’d tacked on, making it sound as if Gillian shouldn’t hold her breath.
And she wasn’t, dammit, Gillian told herself now. Her fingers played over the keys as images of falling snow over frozen rivers and storm-tossed seas swirled in her mind.
At least the winter wonderland she could view from every room in the house was providing inspiration. The only problem was, whenever the music began to flow, her emotions would go spinning straight to the man responsible for her being here on this remote island in the first place.
“It’s not enough that he’s taken over my dreams,” she muttered as she banged out a series of frustrated, crashing chords. “Now he’s messing up my work.”
She sighed, gave up for now and went over to stand by the glass wall. The feathery snow had turned back into stone pellets, and the wind wailing like a lost ghost down the chimney had the effect on her tangled nerves of fingernails scraping down a chalkboard. She was about to turn on the CD player to try to drown it out when another sound caught her attention. A wail that sounded more like a human than any unearthly spirit.
“No, not a person,” she corrected herself, straining to listen closer. The faint wail was ragged and plaintive. Like a cat. Her cat.
Her heartbeat picked up. She leaned forward, her nose literally pressed against the window as she peered out into the driving snow. There it went again! Though she couldn’t see him, Gillian knew that it had to be the cat both Hunter and Mrs. Adams had assured her was feral.
“Wild or not, he’s in trouble.”
Unable to resist the wretched cries of despair, she ran to the kitchen, pulled on the outerwear Hunter had bought for her and, heedless of her own safety, went rushing out into the storm.
HUNTER HAD DRIVEN about a mile through the white swirls when he came across a fallen tree limb across the road. It wasn’t that big, and normally he would have merely driven around it, but the blinding snow obscured the edge of the cliff. Cursing, he abandoned the warm interior of the Suburban, swearing again when the cold wind slapped his face.
He’d nearly managed to drag the tree out of the way when he was aware of something—or someone—behind him. He turned, and before he could straighten, he saw something metal. His parka ripped. There was a burning sensation in his upper arm.
Since high school Hunter had studied aikido, a form of martial arts that taught defense without weapons. He enjoyed honing the discipline of mind and body. Banking his self-disgust at having fallen for such an obvious trap, he turned his attention to staying alive.
He and his black-ski-masked opponent were fairly evenly matched. On some distant level, Hunter almost admired the man’s strength and his moves, which were, he admitted, a stage above his own, but his own rigid emotional discipline seemed marginally superior.
They battled in eerie silence in the swirling white world, their movements rhythmic, almost balletic. Years of self-discipline kept Hunter’s mind cool and focused. Unlike the letter bomb, which he’d always thought a cowardly way to try to kill someone, this attempt on his life seemed, in some abstract way, little more than a training session.
Then, as he dodged another lunge, the tautly held reins of mental control slipped. Just a little, but enough to allow his thoughts to go to Gillian. Obviously, if this man had known Hunter was at the brain factory, he’d also have known that she was alone in the house. Alone and, despite all his security measures, ultimately defenseless.
Hunter had no doubt that he could handle his attacker. But what if there were more? What if there were others, even now, at his house terrifying her? Harming her?
An ugly blend of terror and fury twisted in his gut and ripped at his scattering control. Hunter abandoned finesse. With a roar that echoed through the Maine woods, he hurled his body at his attacker.
HAVING FOLLOWED THE CAT’S cries to the clam flats below the cliff, Gillian was seriously rethinking her decision when she spotted it, just a few feet away. The tide was coming in, the whitecaps riding atop the roiling waves looking like ice floes. The thunder of the incoming sea provided a deep bass accompaniment to the shriek of the wind and the yowls of the cat she’d now come to think of as hers. Sleet stung her face like needles.
Lowering her head, Gillian doggedly made her way over the kelp, struggling over driftwood and flotsam that had been washed ashore, slipping on rocks, once losing her balance and falling to her knees.
It was while she was kneeling on the wet gray sand that she watched the cat disappear into a narrow cave, more fissure than cavern, carved into the side of the cliff by eons of wind and water.
Muttering a curse, she pushed herself back to her feet and stumbled over to the cave, where inside, lying on a bed of seaweed, she found three wet balls of fur.
“Kittens.” Gillian shook her head and looked over at the cat who was standing over her offspring with obvious maternal pride. “So, I guess this means you’re not a he after all.”
The cat’s response was short and sharp and suggested that they not waste time discussing the obvious. As water lapped dangerously close to the kittens, Gillian realized that time was definitely running out.
She scooped the kittens up, sticking one in her left parka pocket and two in the right, which left them a little crowded, but since she didn’t have either the time or the energy to make two trips, Gillian decided that after months jostling around together in the cat’s womb, they should be accustomed to close quarters.
Another wave washed over her boots. “Dammit, you’re going to owe me,” she warned the cat, who’d already turned and was headed out of the cave, tail raised like a tricolored banner. “Big time.”
AFTER HE’D SENT his attacker flying silently, fatally off the edge of the cliff, Hunter made his way home, his head filled with unpalatable images of Gillian in danger. When he ran into the house, the note he found on the kitchen table did nothing to ease his mind.
It was written in a neat, disciplined convent schoolgirl script that was so opposite to her passionate nature it almost made him smile.
Dear Hunter,
In case you return while I’m gone, I’m out with the cat. He’s in trouble and I couldn’t leave him to the elements.
Gillian
P.S. I hope your work at the brain factory went well.
As he skimmed the brief note, Hunter’s blood turned even icier than the weather outside. Wondering which of them was crazier, he or Gillian, he waded back out into the storm.
The woman was too damn softhearted for her own good. Hunter couldn’t think of a single person he knew who’d behave in such an asinine, potentially fatal manner.
He followed her footprints, which were rapidly disappearing, for what seemed an eternity. A dreadful wet, cold eternity. The snow thickened, decreasing visibility. The sea crashed onto the shore, turning the usually wide stretch of beach into a sliver of flotsam-strewn sand.
When he caught sight of the cardinal-red parka, a single vivid color in a vast gray-and-white world, he let out a breath he’d been unaware of holding. Along with a string of pungent curses.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” He grasped her shoulders, and because he couldn’t decide whether to crush her to him and never let go, or to shake some sense into her, he did neither. “Don’t you realize you could be washed out to sea?”
His words were whipped away by the wind, but Gillian had no problem understanding his meaning. She could feel the hook digging into her shoulder, even through the thick parka; his breath was like puffs of white ghosts between them.
“You don’t understand—” she began to explain, having to shout to be heard over the rumble of surf.
“I understand that you’re a damn idiot!” Hunter realized he’d have to apologize for the harsh words. Later. When they were safely back at the house. And after she apologized for scaring the hell out of him with her cockamamie behavior. “Now, let’s get out of here before you end up getting us both killed.”
Seeming to understand that he was in no mood for an argument, Gillian simply nodded, then let him half drag her back up the rocky path to the top of the cliff, then to the house.
Compared to the near-arctic temperatures outdoors, the heat of the kitchen hit Gillian like a blast furnace. Before Hunter could slam the door, the cat sprinted into the room and began doing figure eights between her legs, its yowls seeming to increase in volume.
“What, exactly, did you think you were doing?” he demanded again.
“I’m sorry I wasn’t here when you got back, Hunter, but it really was an emergency.”
“A cat emergency?”
Now that the adventure was behind her, the seriousness of the risk she’d taken came crashing down on Gillian. White dots resembling the falling snow began to swirl in front of her eyes. Holding on to the edge of the table for balance, she sank down onto a chair.
As her vision cleared, she looked up at Hunter, who was standing over her, his glare as hard as the granite cliffs.
But there was something else in his dark eyes. Something she’d have to think about once her blood warmed and her teeth stopped chattering.
“Kittens,” she corrected him, forcing the word past frozen lips.
She retrieved them from the deep coat pockets, one at a time, placing them on the floor at her feet. Even with their eyes tightly closed, they managed to make their way on wobbly legs to their mother, who, now that the crisis was over, had gone back to ignoring Gillian.
Hunter’s incredulous look went from Gillian, to the kittens, who were being tongue-bathed by their mother, then back to Gillian.
Then he did something more surprising than anything he’d done thus far. He threw back his head and roared with laughter.
Later, when she would look back on things and wonder how they’d gone so terribly wrong, Gillian would realize that this was the moment she’d truly fallen in love with Hunter St. John.
“I missed you,” she murmured, pushing herself out of the chair on legs nearly as unstable as the kittens’ to touch a hand to his cheek. “Terribly.”
Hunter didn’t respond as she’d hoped. Didn’t assure her that he’d missed her, too. “You’re cold,” he said instead.
She couldn’t help herself. She’d begun to shiver. And not from passion.
“Why don’t you warm me up?”
He gave her another of those long, searching looks. Gillian could tell he was tempted. “Later,” he decided. “First I’m going to run you a bath.”
“That sounds wonderful.”
She wasn’t expecting the way he undressed her almost as if she were a child, with a heartaching tenderness, and was even more surprised when, after she’d slipped beneath the froth of bubbles, he turned to leave the bathroom.
“Aren’t you joining me?”
He glanced back at her, his face granite hard, his eyes now unreadable. “I have some calls to make.”
“The phones went out earlier.”
“I have a shortwave radio in the lab.”
“Oh.” She thought about that for a moment. “It’s that important?”
His jaw firmed. Despite the warmth of the water, the flash of iced fury that moved across his face chilled her blood all over again. “Yes.”
With that less-than-satisfying explanation, he was gone.