Patricia Potter (35 page)

There was still daylight, but the atmosphere was hazy, the sky gradually turning cinnamon as the sun neared its home beyond the horizon. Everything seemed lazy, almost in slow motion, even the birds that now swooped in slow, long, languid circles for one last meal, even the ocean, which lapped softly against the sand as the water crept higher in fingerlike movements.

A small hint of pink glowed in the west, and a breeze cooled some of the hot summer sun. He looked down at his clothes; slacks and a lightweight cotton shirt, casual enough yet very formal for a beach. Hell, what does a dead man wear when he returns to life? It was a morbidly humorous question, he knew, but he felt morbid, like a man going to his execution, as he left the haven of the porch and started down the beach.

She was walking north toward the campgrounds where the oaks grew close to the beach. Her shoulders were slumped and she looked, even at a distance, defeated. His heart hurt for her, feared for her, ached for her. She had apparently suffered deeply in the past weeks; she would suffer again in the next few hours.

Chris dragged his feet, reluctance and dread weighing him. How would she react? Would she believe him? Why would she? Yet she must. They had passed the last of the houses, and the untouched wildness of this part of the beach brought back the old mood of the island, the one that had been with him during the past years.

The few people on the beach disappeared, and there was no one but him and the two figures, the woman and the dog, moving slowly ahead of him. Relief mingled with apprehension. He needed her alone.

He found a secluded cranny carved out of the dunes by the water, and he went over to it, leaning against one of the sides. He would wait here until she turned back this way and then draw her into its privacy.

With bemusement, Meara watched Andy mosey along.
Mosey
was the only word for it. Andy had to investigate every piece of flotsam that washed up on the beach, every recently deceased denizen of the sea: a partial jellyfish, a piece of seaweed, a partially inhabited shell. No matter how many times he investigated the beach, he always seemed to find it intriguing although he thankfully no longer chased seabirds into the sea, emerging from the ocean wringing wet and spraying water and sand all over her.

It would be nice, she thought absently, to worry about nothing more than the next fascinating item to be sniffed.

No matter how hard she tried, she hadn’t been able to dismiss this morning’s distinguished-looking German visitor from her mind. New worry clouded the grief and loss she felt, would always feel. That loss seemed even more profound now, for there was no one to turn to, no one who would understand her strong, hostile reaction to the man.

Her senses, she feared, were overactive. Why else would she fear a seemingly pleasant stranger? Certainly, Lisa was lovely enough to attract him; with her soft coloring and ebullient nature, she had always attracted men. Meara had missed that quality in the past few weeks.

Andy was wandering off again, and she started to call him when she saw the man. She would have said he was lounging against a bank except his stance was…tense. As if he were waiting for someone.

She couldn’t see his face. The last of the sun directly hit it, and partially blinded her. Yet there was something hauntingly familiar about him.

So many times, she told herself. You’ve thought you’ve seen him so many times. Mirages? Wistful thinking? Certainly not that. How could she ever wish to see Fielding again? Especially now that Sanders had been gone such a very short time. Once again, as she often had during their marriage, Meara felt unworthy, disloyal.

She heard a whistle, low pitched and seductive, and she saw Andy turn toward the man and bound toward him. That in itself was unusual. Andy usually stayed away from men.

Meara called, but Andy didn’t return. Instead, he had reached the figure, and the man had kneeled, his hand stroking Andy’s too large head as a tail wagged in frantic approval. Stunned at the uncharacteristic behavior, Meara looked around the beach. She saw no one else, and she felt a sudden apprehension. Too much had happened lately. Nothing was ordinary anymore, nothing was safe.

The sky resembled a candy rock mountain, layers of enticing pastel colors, pink cotton candy upon cinnamon upon lemon. She looked at the man caught in the flash of sun, and something tugged at her, something unknown and fearful and aching. She suddenly wanted to run.

Instead, she walked toward the two figures in the sand. The man’s head was bent, his blond hair glinting in the sun like pieces of gold, like hair she remembered. His head lifted, and she saw his face. She stumbled, and shook her head to clear it. She was going mad.

The man stood, deep blue eyes unfathomable, lines etched deeply around them, the mouth firm and somber, a muscle straining against the tight bronze skin of his cheek. Twenty years peeled away, and she stood on the beach as she once had, bound to a man she didn’t know at all.

She reached out a hand as if to see whether it was an apparition, a ghost brought on by recent events. But her hand touched skin, and she jerked it away as if burned, stumbling backward, falling like a lifeless rag clown, until his arms caught her and lowered her gently to the ground. She remembered that touch. She had never been able to forget that irresistible combination of strength and gentleness.

She looked up, back into eyes so deep and blue that they seemed to swallow her.

“Meara,” he said, his voice low and musical, as it had been the first time he said her name.

She struggled loose from his hold, his touch. “Who
are
you?” She hated the catch in her voice. She’d never been a physical coward. Whatever else she had been, she hadn’t been that.

She felt a warm body huddle next to her, and part of her mind became aware of a shaggy head looking anxiously from her to the man now kneeling next to her. An excuse. An excuse to look away. She petted the dog, thinking that when she looked back there would be just another human being, a stranger, a man who resembled a dead man. A dead spy.

Meara felt emotions raging within her, like an ocean in the midst of a hurricane, deadly violent waves growing with ever increasing fury. They battered at her, hot waves, freezing ones, each intermingling until she felt herself drowning in them, extinguished by them. She heard herself whimper, and once more she felt his hands, and she knew beyond a doubt that it was he. The same fire branded her skin, the same electricity. Mother of God, how could she remember it so well, so easily, as if it were yesterday?

She twisted away from his touch, looking up at him with stark hatred born of desperation. “Don’t touch me. Don’t ever touch me.”

He stepped back as if given a body blow by the words. His eyes fleetingly revealed something like stark agony, but it disappeared quickly into those damned deep depths she’d never really been able to penetrate. His mouth tightened, however, and he ran his fingers through his hair in a gesture that was hauntingly familiar.

She sat there in the sand, her hands on the dog as if frantic to find something to do with them, and stared at him as if he’d ascended from hell. She was curled in a tight knot, protective and hostile and afraid. And bewildered.

She didn’t know how long she stayed like that. She felt herself shaking. “You’re dead,” she finally accused flatly, not looking at him. Empty, for a few blessed seconds, of emotion. Shock had replaced the first violent reactions.

“No.” The answer came softly, gently, with a wry, almost apologetic tone.

“I saw—” She stopped, trying to remember what she had seen.

“You saw an explosion. I left the boat before it happened.”

The shaking of her body increased and she saw his hand start to reach for her again, and she flinched away from it, just as Andy had cowered at times when he thought a blow might be coming. It never did, not at her house, but she’d known that he’d experienced brutality.

Immediately, the hand retreated.

“Why…” She finally managed the word, but it was cracked and high, as if it had come from someone else.

“Why didn’t I die?” His voice was raw.

Meara knew she was staring. She felt the mist gather in back of her eyes. From sorrow? From horror? She didn’t know. She was numb, disbelieving. Nothing registered as being real. Another dream. Another nightmare.

She tried again. “Why…are you here?”

He was on one knee in front of her, inches away. No ghost. A ghost didn’t age. And he had aged. Less than most people, she thought. Lines had deepened in his face, but they had only made a stronger whole. His body was just as lean; but she could see muscles in his shoulders that hadn’t been there before. His eyes, if anything, were even bluer, but perhaps it was only time that had clouded their image in her mind. She had tried, dear God, how she had tried to blot them from her memory. He had smiled easily once, but now his lips were grim and his face rigidly set.

She could feel tension radiating from him, even fear, but that didn’t make sense.

All of a sudden, all her emotions exploded. In almost an identical gesture as on that night in the power house, her hand went back and she slapped him, as hard and as violently as her body allowed, even harder than her ordinary strength would permit. He took it without trying to stop her, without moving, and she saw the red impact on his cheek and blood trickling from his mouth where her engagement ring had opened it.

She sat back, limp again, shaking again. He was like a statue, inhuman. But his steady gaze never left her; his hand never moved upward. It was as if he had expected it, expected it and accepted.

“Damn you,” she whispered.

His eyes closed briefly, and she watched one of his hands tighten in a fist.

When he opened them again, their dark blue depths hid his feelings, just as they had so many times before. “Rest assured,” he said slowly, “I’ve paid. I’ve paid and paid and paid.”

She looked at his casually expensive clothes, his still lean muscled body. “Have you?” she asked bitterly. “Have you?”

“More than you’ll ever know,” he said, and now his voice was harsh.

“But not enough,” she whispered. “Never enough.”

“No,” he agreed. “Not for the pain I’ve given you. There isn’t, hasn’t been, a day I haven’t remembered the way your face looked that night.”

Her hand clawed into the sand, seeking substance, but there was none. “What do you want now? Who or what do you want me to betray now?”

The control slipped from his face, and Meara saw naked anguish in it. She was glad, even while the feeling sickened her. She had never before enjoyed someone else’s pain. She didn’t like herself for doing it now.

“You…might be in danger,” he said carefully.

“Danger?” Meara laughed sarcastically. “You were worried about that? My God…Michael…or is it Michael? Isn’t it late for you to worry about that?”

“I never thought…”

She turned away from him, from any explanation. She didn’t want to hear it. How many times had she relived that night? How many times had she awakened in that power house, sick from the drug and sick from fear, both for herself and the children lying still? How many times had she heard the other German’s voice taunting her, threatening to steal the children, to take the Connors, to take her and use her? How many times had she known the cold terror and despair when he’d told her of Michael’s role? How many times had she recoiled when she remembered the gunshot and saw the German sink down, his body covered with red.

And dear God how many times had she relived the explosion, the fire that had destroyed the last embers of her heart as well as the flaming remnants of what she thought was Michael Fielding?

“When did you arrive here?” she asked in a flat, lifeless tone.

“On Jekyll Island? Two days ago.”

“And to this country?”

“I never left,” he admitted slowly.

“Oh, there were other missions then,” she said bitterly. “Were you more successful with those?”

“That night ended the war for me,” he said slowly. Soft words. Lying words.

“I don’t believe you.”

“There’s no reason you should,” he admitted dryly.

“You lied and lied and lied.” The pain glowed through the words, as new now as it had been then. As new and as deep and as hurtful.

“Yes.”

“Damn you,” she whispered again and turned away from him. It was too agonizing.

“Meara, you must listen.” His voice was compelling, but then it always had been.

“Why? Liar. Spy. Enemy. Oh, God, why did you come back?”

“I had to,” he said simply.

“Why?”

He hesitated. He didn’t think she would believe anything he had to say. Not now. Not yet.

“Why?” The question was stronger now, her gaze filled with anger.

“A man visited you today.”

“Still a spy,” she observed bitterly. “You must have been keeping in practice. What does a spy do in peacetime? You were so very good at it. You had everyone believing in you.”

A muscle twitched in his cheek. “Listen to me, Meara. Please.”

“Why?” She thought with sudden, absurd sick humor that she must sound like a broken record. Why? Why? Why? Dear God, why?