Reckless Night (2 page)

“Okay,” he said and heard her exhale.

She led him through a couple of rooms and stopped on what he knew was the threshold of the dining room.

There was, as always throughout the house, a delightful scent of living plants, fresh flowers, lemons, and in this room, delicious food.

“Open your eyes, my love,” Grace said.

His eyes popped open and he stared.

A fairyland. She’d turned the room into a fairyland, touched by magic. The room glowed with candles, candles everywhere, on every surface. Last year she’d learned how to make candles from a book and instead of producing lopsided messes as anyone else would, she produced a series of gorgeous candles that looked like flowers, candles with bits of seashell or flowers pressed into them, or twisting, sinuous,, very modern elegant shapes that caught the eye.

Four huge candle-pillars were in the four corners, looking like alabaster, glowing from within. He had no idea how she’d made candles that big.

Their dining table was long. Down the center she’d cut supple branches and braided them all the length of the table, tall slender columns of wax placed in the interstices of the candles.

The centerpiece was a huge green Christmas tree candle with red hanging decorations.

The napkins were arranged in some amazingly complex way to look like flowers in the middle of the plates.

There was an incredibly fresh smell to the air as well, coming mainly from the open sliding doors leading out onto a patio and the swimming pool.

He had nearly lost his calm when she explained what she wanted in their new home. Open doors? Insane.

He’d spent his entire adult life behind the strongest walls and doors science could devise. An open door? So enemies could just walk in?

Drake was hard-wired by this point to give Grace what she wanted but this went against everything he knew about the world.

In the end, of course, he caved, but not before secretly creating a force field of security around the sprawling home on a bluff overlooking the ocean. He had 400 motion sensors and an array of IR

cameras everywhere. If a fly shat on his property, or in a buffer zone of 100 meters around his property, he knew about it.

Still.

He looked out the open window, looked longingly at the sliders against the wall, his hands itching to close them…

“Relax,” his love murmured, rubbing his back, and he did.

“Old habits, dusch—” She lay a finger against his mouth, a slight frown between her eyebrows and she shook her head slightly.

“People are coming,” she said quietly.

Of course. Manuel Rabat, a Maltese businessman who’d spent time in America, would never say the Russian term of endearment duschka.

“Darling,” he finished and she smiled and kissed him.

Just a brush of her lips and all those unsettled… things inside him that baffled him and kept him off balance suddenly settled and focused and burned brightly with the desire he felt for his wife.

He didn’t know what to do with the other emotions—and even acknowledging that he had emotions felt odd and jangled—but, by God, he knew what to do with this.

He fisted his hand in her soft, thick hair and deepened the kiss, everything roiling inside him suddenly still, focused like a diamond point on her, her mouth…

Drake was taking her down to the floor when a bell rang faintly.

One of their guests, otherwise he’d have been notified by his security staff.

Grace pulled away smiling, leaned her forehead against his. “Our guests are arriving.”

“Yes.” Kissing her was the only thing that could possibly make him forget that strangers—and the whole world was full of strangers as far as he was concerned—

were coming to his door. Invited by him. Greeted as guests, allowed free rein of his home.

It still felt so foreign to him.

And then Drake watched Grace’s face and saw something, something she forgot to hide from him. She wanted this evening. She wanted company and conversation.

He knew she hid her real feelings about the way they had to live, while reassuring him over and over that he was enough for her. That the world didn’t matter.

But it did.

Sivuatu was paradise on earth in terms of weather and nature, but there was no cultural life, none. He knew that back in New York, she’d gone to almost every single concert in Lincoln Center, buying tickets that cost $25 and were up in the nosebleed sections because she had little money, but she was there. She went to all the plays in Central Park and to all the off-Broadway plays she could afford.

There was absolutely nothing like that here.

They lived in isolation, because of his paranoia.

Absolutely justified paranoia, true, but limiting nonetheless.

Grace filled her life well. She spent her days painting and had thrown herself into gardening.

Plants were one thing Sivuatu excelled at. She looked and acted happy.

But then she loved him and would never, ever complain. He knew her well enough to know that.

Right now, she was really looking forward to having guests. She’d enjoyed decorating the dining room. It was clear in the loving care she’d taken. She found pleasure in this evening.

So whatever it cost him in terms of peace of mind, it was worth it. His wife needed the world, or at least the tiny corner of it he felt safe to give her.

That was when the plan sprang full blown in his head.

The perfect gift for Grace. And he could arrange it tonight!

The mayor and his wife were entering, smiling, looking around in awe. Smiling at Grace. Smiling at him.

Drake walked forward to greet them, wondering if this was going to become a new style of life.

Wondering whether he’d pay for it with his life.

“W
ell.” Grace—now Victoria—laid her hand on her husband’s shoulder after their guests had gone. Even now that she’d touched him a million times, it still thrilled her to feel him under her fingers.

The first time she’d touched him it had been like laying her fingers against a powerful engine, an extraordinary feeling of sheer power under her fingertips, and it was still that way.

Her husband swung his face to hers, placing his huge hand over hers. “Well.” Grace studied his face. A s usual, it gave little away.

Her husband had learned to school his expressions in very harsh places. “Your first birthday party. What did you think? It wasn’t so bad, was it?”

“No.” He gave out a little half puff of surprise, frowning. “No, it wasn’t.”

“And you actually enjoyed yourself, didn’t you? I saw a couple of smiles break out. Surprised the hell out of me.” Her husband had a bleak and dark view of life and she was making it her life’s work to slowly ease some joy and light into it.

His eyes widened, “I smiled?” She understood his surprise. Smiles were rare for him.

“Oh yeah.” She kissed him. “Real, actual smiles. Lips upturned and everything. They made you very handsome. I saw the mayor’s wife do a double take.”

“Now, that’s not possible, dusch—” He stopped, shook his head, corrected himself. “Darling. I’m as ugly as sin now. You saw to that.”

She hadn’t seen to it so much as overseen it. A brilliant plastic surgeon had altered the major points on his face to avoid being detected by facial recognition software. He had a flatter nose now, a slightly different chin, his stark features a little more ordinary.

“Absolutely not. You could never be ugly.” The smile that had been lurking broke free. “I’m so glad you had a good time, though you were so very vigilant, always.

Were you expecting someone to pull out a gun and start shooting between the sea bream and the lemon sherbet?” It wouldn’t have surprised her husband if someone had. That much she knew. He was ready for anything. A hint of unexpected violence and her husband would react instantly.

He shrugged. “Actually, the dinner party was delightfully gunshot-free. And everyone had a good time.”

He still seemed a little surprised at that. Grace knew that there had been almost no social events in his previous life. A ny dinners with other people had been business, mainly with criminals and outlaws, and then only when his business partners insisted. Drake said he hated negotiating at the table.

He’d had dinner with his lovers, but that was different.

He’d been extremely open with her about his copious sex life before meeting her, just as he’d made it abundantly clear that that part of his life was forever over.

“Of course they had a good time. You’re a fascinating man and—”

“No, darling.” He kissed her forehead, looking much more sure of himself now. “They had a good time because you created such an elegant setting, the food was fabulous, and you are a charming hostess. You put everyone at ease. A wild boar would relax at a dinner party you’d organized.” Grace smiled. It was true—to her astonishment. Being able to put people at ease was this strange new ability that had just… materialized.

She’d spent her entire life feeling completely estranged from everyone—an alien in human skin.

A struggling artist in a world that cares nothing for art, incapable of playing the games other New Yorkers found so integral to their lives.

Somehow, Drake had changed all that. He loved her as a woman and an artist, loved her exactly as she was, and it was as if his love had shattered iron shackles, setting her free. She found it easy to relate to people now, even though she and Drake led very private lives.

“We didn’t have wild boars,” she chided gently.

Though judging by his wariness that first hour, there might as well have been. Drake had been stiff and formal, and the whites of his eyes had shown. He’d all but rolled them in his head like a pony’s sighting a rattlesnake. Then he’d settled down. Had actually disappeared with his chief pilot for half an hour. She’d suspected them of smoking a cigar but they passed the sniff test.

She stroked his shoulder. “We had perfectly nice people over for dinner with no agenda other than to have a good time. And—” she dropped the little bomblet casually, “become friends with us.

With you.” Her husband was the most controlled of men. If she hadn’t had her hands actually on his shoulder, she wouldn’t have noticed the little jolt at the word friends.

The notion of having friends was still something that rocked his world.

She nuzzled his neck, never tiring of the feel of him.

They’d met in violence and tragedy. He’d killed four men under her eyes before she knew his name. But from the first moment, he’d thrown a mantle of protection over her. Though he looked frightening and was frightening, he’d never frightened her. Not for a second.

She would never tell him and was ashamed to admit it, even to herself, but she’d fallen in love with him the instant she’d seen him. She’d been taken at gunpoint to the alleyway outside a gallery showing her paintings and had seen a powerful man, not tall but immensely broad.

He was facing three armed thugs and he hadn’t looked frightened at all.

He’d looked dangerous.

And she’d fallen.

But that was another time and another continent and another life. She shivered, as if to shake the memories off.

Her husband was uncannily perceptive. “What’s the matter, my love?” he asked gently.

Grace didn’t answer, but turned the question around.

“What were you and Mike doing when you were gone so long? Were you smoking cigars? That’s what I suspected but you didn’t smell of cigar smoke. Were you smoking?” She fisted her hands on her hips and tried to look ferocious.

Her amazing husband, the strongest man she’d ever seen, a man who could never be bested in combat, a man who could outshoot any sniper, threw up his hands in mock terror.

“Never!” He gave an exaggerated shiver. “Would I risk your wrath? I tremble at your feet. You barely let me eat meat. God only knows what the punishment would be for smoking a cigar!” Grace narrowed her eyes. “If I caught you smoking a cigar, my revenge would be swift and merciless.”

“Voilà!” he cried. His dark eyes gleamed. “Behold an obedient, completely smoke-free husband!” She laughed. Getting him to eat a healthy diet was an ongoing struggle. In New York he’d lived like the Sun King and had eaten like the Sun King, too. He’d had a rotating staff of top chefs on the floor below his penthouse and they sent up elaborate four-star meals three times a day that were the equivalent of mainlining cholesterol.

Now she fed him fish and fruits and vegetables and he grumbled about having to obey the food police, but she knew he was feeling better.

“So, don’t change the subject. Where did you two go off to?” This time the smile was sly. “A h, my darling. I went off to arrange… your Christmas present.” Grace’s eyes rolled as she stifled a sigh. The eternal question. What could he give her? He asked her that a thousand times a day, and at each birthday, Valentine’s Day, Christmas, he visibly suffered.

What could he give her?

Nothing.

She had everything she could possibly desire. A husband who loved her and whose love was made visible and tangible every second of every day. A beautiful home on a tropical island. Time and space to paint.

What else could she possibly want or need?

Certainly not the expensive baubles he kept trying to give her.

“Not another diamond?” she asked suspiciously. The last one was so big it weighed down her hand and nearly blinded her whenever they were in sunshine, which was every day in Sivuatu. After a week, it went back into its box and into a wall safe that held about a hundred of its kin.

He laughed. “You are perhaps the only woman in the world who doesn’t want diamonds, my beloved. Actively dislikes them.”

“I don’t dislike them,” Grace murmured.

Diamonds were rocks. Big, shiny rocks whose only purpose was to attract a huge amount of attention. A woman draped in expensive jewelry was the object of envy, sometimes hatred. The opposite of what they needed. To save their lives, they needed to fly under everyone’s radar.

Drake realized in theory but not in practice that ordinariness was a protective cloak around them, one she tried to pull over them at every opportunity.