Edge of Danger (24 page)

 
Living here fatherless, Gabriel and his brothers had watched their beautiful mother fade away, day by day, as she waited in vain.

 
“She’ll do the right thing,” MacBain said, standing beside Gabriel’s chair. Both men watched Eden’s long strides on the unfamiliar landscape, yet she didn’t look down. She looked ahead at possibilities, Gabriel realized, almost hearing her mind racing with each pensive step.

 
A large part of him admired her for her vision. And the mind and talent she possessed to bring that vision to reality. But the cold, hard truth was, from everything he’d gleaned, she’d perfected something that could get millions of people killed. Today.

 
It didn’t matter how brilliant her invention was. It didn’t matter a jot
what
altruistic functions her Rex bot was capable of. As valuable as it was for good, its value for just the opposite would have many more far-reaching and devastating consequences.

 
T-FLAC operatives all over the world were on high alert for any lead on who had stolen the prototype, and what it was going to be used for.

 
Gabriel’s job, his only job here, was to retrieve the necessary data to duplicate the robot. T-FLAC had scientists on staff, a superior think tank with some of the best minds in the world, but none of them could do what he could do. Build a fully functioning robot, within minutes, from Eden’s thoughts alone.

 
When—not if—the original was located, it had to be destroyed.

 
Like against like.

 
How long did he have before she either relented and allowed him in, or he had to use a form of coercion? There was a lot to be said for self-discipline, he thought, stretching his legs out beneath the table. He was proud of his ability to control his raging appetite for her. Proud of his iron will, and downright fucking thrilled by his restraint. “I won’t touch her.”

 
“And I see the strain that’s putting on yer face, lad. Yer options are running out.”

 
Gabriel shot the old man a fulsome look. “Do you think I’m not
aware
of it? She’ll give more freely if no force is used.”

 
He thought about what he’d learned of her life: the string of degrees before she was even sixteen; the early marriage; the rapid divorce after the son of a bitch husband had stolen her life’s work. She was still singularly unused to the kind of deceit Gabriel was familiar with. Despite all she’d gone through, Eden Cahill was straightforward, honest, and honorable.

 
He could overwhelm her doubts and objections to extracting the data from her mind, but that would take time, and a finesse he didn’t feel when he was anywhere near her.

 
“All of us give more freely if no force is used,” MacBain said quietly beside him. “That curse of yers is a form of coercion, is it no’?”

 
“It is what it is.” Gabriel watched Eden pause near the rose garden. If she walked around the low wall behind her, she’d find a small stone bench tucked into a shady corner. It was where his mother had sat, for hours, talking to his father on the phone. Montana to Scotland. More than fifteen hours of air travel had separated his parents.

 
Five hundred years of Edge men had tried to break the curse.

 
It could not be done.

 
It didn’t matter, he told himself, watching Eden cup a pale yellow rose in her hand. It didn’t matter because unlike his father before him, he wasn’t stupid enough to buck the inevitable. Gabriel had learned by experience.

 
Had he ever seen his father smile? Had he ever heard his mother laugh?

 
Hell no.

 
Because they’d foolishly believed that what they had was strong enough,
powerful enough,
for God’s sake, to turn five hundred years of cold hard fact into fiction.

 
Eden bent to smell his mother’s Peace rose. Her green T-shirt pulled out of the back of her jeans as she leaned over, exposing a smile of pale skin, and the indentation of her spine on the small of her back.

 
Gabriel wanted to put his mouth there.

 
He wanted her. So much so that it scared him in ways bullets and bombs never had. “She’s a smart lass,” MacBain rested a gnarled hand on Gabriel’s shoulder. “I’m guessing she’s almost as stubborn as ye are. Note I said
almost.
She’ll work through her conscience and do what needs doing. But ye, my fine lad, are playing with fire, keeping her here, and ye know it. I see the way she watches ye, with a hunger that should be singeing yer hair follicles.” His fingers tightened warningly. “Use caution with the lass. It is already beginning.”

 
“Where would she be safer, old man?” Gabriel glanced up at MacBain. “Tell me that?”

 
“Where could she be in more peril? Tell
me
that?”

 
The answer, Gabriel thought grimly, to both questions was: Here. Here at Edridge Castle. With him.

 
God help them both.

 
“She’s no match for ye, lad. She’s led a sheltered, sterile kind of life there in her insular scientific world. Yer offering her danger and excitement. To a lass like Dr. Cahill that could be seductive indeed. ’Tis fortunate Nairne’s Curse prevents ye from playing with her, my lad. There’s a lass who’ll believe herself in love with one kind word.”

 
Gabriel gave a snort of disbelief. “Don’t fool yourself, old man. Eden Cahill is nobody’s fool. She dislikes me intensely. As she should. She wouldn’t trust a kind word from me if I had it notarized, believe me.”

 
“She’s a wilted flower with her face turned up for a drop of rain. Ye better watch yerself, ye hear me? The wee lass has had precious little love in her life from what I can gather, so don’t ye be doing any more with that sweet girl than is absolutely necessary.”

 
“You’re flogging a dead horse, MacBain. She’s just a means to an end.”

 
“Keep reminding yerself of that.”

 
Gabriel didn’t even pretend to himself that he wasn’t observing every graceful move she made. He watched her hips move beneath those baggy jeans, and tried to imagine her heavy. Instead he conjured up an image of her even more lush, more desirable, if possible. He pictured a younger Eden, self-conscious as any teenage girl would be at that age, overweight, out of her depth trying to relate to students years ahead of her in age and experience.

 
A light breeze teased her hair, causing the glossy curls to shine chocolate in the brilliant sunlight. He gripped the metal arms of his chair to hold himself back from charging outside and pulling her to him. The more he was around her, the stronger the hungry yearning to touch and be touched by her. Hell, he thought, just observing how the wind lifted her hair from her slender neck made him harden uncomfortably. The depth of his response to the stimuli that was Dr. Eden Cahill scared the hell out of him. It was too strong. Too tempting. Too dangerous.

 
Idiot.

 
He was like a dog chasing a car. He couldn’t catch her, and even if he did, there was absolutely nothing he could do with her once he did. Yet the hunger inside him was building and building like a gathering storm, tearing at him, driving him insane, blinding him to reason.

 
Get a grip, dickhead.
A man in his line of work who wasn’t in control of himself made mistakes. Fatal mistakes. Wanting and taking are vastly different things, he reminded himself.
Acknowledge the want, then deal with abstinence and move on.
“She’s wearing a ditch in the fucking path.”

 
MacBain smacked Gabriel on the back of the head. It was no light tap. “Mind that mouth, my lad.”

 
The Edge boys hadn’t grown up without a father figure, Gabriel thought, wryly watching as Eden, deep in thought, started on her fourth lap.

 
He frowned.

 
Years ago, while on assignment in Johannesburg, Gabriel had reason to be at the zoo. He’d watched a polar bear circle the too-small confines of its cage. Clockwise. Then counterclockwise.

 
The animal had kept up this ritual for hours. He’d gone back the next day, and the next, compelled to see if the animal had eventually resigned itself to its fate. Each day was exactly the same. A continuous loop. When he’d sought out the keeper, he’d been told that eventually the magnificent animal would die, because she wouldn’t stop looking for a way out of the confined space.

 
Gabriel had offered to buy the animal. What the fuck he’d thought he’d do with a six-hundred-pound polar bear he had no idea. Bring it back to the States on the T-FLAC jet? But by God, if they’d let him, he would have figured out that minor detail in a heartbeat.

 
“Hot out there on that pretty fair skin. She needs a hat,” MacBain moved away to straighten a fold in the pristine tablecloth.

 
“She’s a big girl. If she’s too hot she’ll come in.”

 
“Aye, but then maybe she thinks it’s hotter in here.”

 
“It
is
hotter in here,” Gabriel told him. Which was a ridiculous lie, since the old castle walls were a foot thick and kept out both heat and cold. He stood. “I’ll be in the library if you need me.”

 
In the library doing my job, not thinking about a caged polar bear walking herself to death.
Gabriel considered asking Sebastian to come back when he talked to him next. He’d really like to get out the claymores and do an intense round of swordplay. Maybe it would get rid of some of this pent-up sexual tension.

 
And maybe not.

 
MacBain had a way with those white eyebrows that said it all. He verbalized the brow wiggle. “And why would I be needing ye?”

 
“If
anyone
needs me,” Gabriel told him tightly. He strode out of the solarium, shoulders stiff, temper hanging on by a thread.

 
“Ah.”

 
“Ah?” Eden asked, walking back into the sunroom, blinking to adjust her eyes from brilliant sunlight to the dimness inside. She knew instantly that Gabriel wasn’t there anymore. The disappointment she felt was disproportionate. But there she was. She’d just made the hardest decision she’d ever made in her life. And that decision was based on nothing more concrete than a gut reaction to a man she didn’t know, and probably shouldn’t trust.

 
The other day upon the stair, I saw a man who wasn’t there.

 
She smiled as MacBain handed her a frosted glass of orange juice, partially wrapped in one of the pale green napkins.

 
“Thanks.” She took a sip of freshly squeezed juice; it was tart and sweet, the flavor bursting on her tongue. “Are you talking to yourself?”

 
“It would appear so. He said to tell ye he’s in the library.”

 
Eden raised her eyebrows. “He did?”

 
“He’d surely enjoy a cold glass of fruit juice,” MacBain poured a second glass, expertly folded a napkin around the lower half, and handed it to her. “He mentioned he was overly warm.”

 
Yeah. She could understand the sentiment. But perhaps not in quite the same way. “It is a hot day.”

 
“And getting hotter by the moment,” he told her. With that parting salvo, he turned, back erect in his natty black suit, and shuffled off at the speed of snail.