Authors: Anne Stuart
"So there're the cliffs and the town," he said instead. "I'm not sure I'm ready for souvenir shopping. What are our other options?"
"I think we've already had enough of the bay," she said, a small, wistful smile curving her mouth. "But we could drive to the dunes on the west end of the island. Or we could do all of the above, ending with lunch in town."
Where there was a town, there would be public telephones. He needed to check in with Cardiff, much as he disliked the notion, and he certainly wasn't going to trust either the phones at Belle Reste or anything as easily compromised as Cecil's cellular phone. "Sounds perfect," he said, flashing his practiced smile.
He was unprepared for her reaction. She stared at him, her mouth open slightly in amazement, then swerved just as she was about to go sailing into a ditch.
"Stupid," she muttered under her breath.
He was inclined to agree, not in the mood for another car accident, but he didn't say so. "What's wrong?"
She kept her face averted, eyes staring at the cement roadway in front of them. "You look different when you smile," she said flatly, surprising him.
He knew he did. It was one of his stocks in trade, a boyish, engaging grin that could seduce the most hardhearted of females. And despite his initial, logical suspicions, he was coming to realize that Frances Neeley was one of the most softhearted creatures he'd seen in a long time. Did that mean he wanted to seduce her?
"Yes, well, I'm not always so grumpy," he said easily, brushing past the awkward moment. "I can really be quite charming when I set my mind to it."
"I'll just bet you can," she murmured, mostly to herself.
He glanced at her again, at the slender wrists, the narrow ankles, the clean, smooth lines of her beneath the sundress. She even had nice breasts, fuller than her slender body would suggest. He could spend a pleasant time between those long, shapely legs and have ample justification for it. Women liked to talk after they made love, and they babbled on without paying any attention to discretion or common sense.
He might, he thought, feeling his body react as he went with the fantasy. There was only one problem. What if he was wrong? What if she were everything he'd first suspected? What if he had sex with her. And then had to kill her?
He didn't have much of a soul left, after some fifteen years in the business. But no matter who and what she was, no matter how evil she turned out to be, he didn't think what little kernel of decency still resided inside his burned-out hull of a body would survive. And then he might as well be dead himself.
Very deliberately he toned down the wattage of his smile, keeping it distant, friendly, deliberately asexual. She wasn't looking at him now; her attention on the roadway, and he had the notion that she was almost afraid of him. Wiser than she realized, he thought. She
should
be afraid of him.
He pushed his sunglasses up on his forehead, surveying the lush countryside around them as she sped forward. "Give me a tour of the island," he said, "and I promise to be the perfect tourist."
She did glance at him then. At his innocent smile, guileless blue eyes. And it was with chill despair that he realized she didn't believe him. But did that distrust come from a fanatic's belief in evil? Or an innocent victim's fear?
But she covered up her doubt as easily as he covered up his duplicity, and if her smile wasn't as unguarded as it should have been, most people wouldn't notice.
But he wasn't most people.
"You botched it." The voice on the other end of the line was flat, cold, the Irish lilt a chilling counterpoint.
"We could have taken her out anytime during the past month or so and been gone before anyone realized it," the man protested, clutching the telephone in one meaty fist. "When you do two at once you run greater risks."
"Don't second-guess me, Seamus. I'd be there myself if I could, and you know it. I send my most trusted men, and what happens?"
"We'll get them. Both of them. It'll just take time…"
"It's taken too much time already!"
"You didn't give the word until two days ago. The accident caused too much suspicion. We'd best wait a week or so before we try again."
"Are you a coward, Seamus? Afraid you boys will be caught?"
His fist tightened on the black telephone. "No one calls me a coward. They'll be dead in a week. You have my word on it."
"I hope that's good enough, Seamus. For your sake." And the connection was severed.
Seamus stared at the phone for a moment, then began to curse. There weren't many people he was afraid of, in this life or the next. But the chill, disembodied voice half a world away terrified him as no one else's could. Francey Neeley was going to go up in a blaze so huge they'd see it over in Ireland.
And her buddy, the Cougar, was going with her. Or his own life wouldn't be worth living.
Seven days later, Francey could feel Michael's eyes on her from behind his mirrored sunglasses as she sipped from her second glass of wine. She didn't know whether he was passing judgment or not. She didn't care. She'd tried tranquilizers the first few weeks after Patrick's bloody death, then given them up when they made her too sleepy. An occasional extra glass of wine tended to take the edge off when she was feeling nervous, paranoid, worried.
There was a gentle trade wind blowing off the Caribbean as she sat outside Marky's Cafe, and she lifted her face slightly, reveling in the breeze. She ought to be getting used to him by now. He'd been on St. Anne's for more than a week, and this was the fourth time they'd come to Marky's for lunch. But instead of getting more comfortable with him, she found her uneasiness growing.
Maybe it was as simple as the fact that she was attracted to him. Overwhelmingly so, when she'd thought she would never be interested in men or sex again. She'd realized it early on, with the feel of his surprisingly muscular arm beneath the loose white suit, with his dazzling smile that had an almost nuclear meltdown capacity. She'd realized it even more during the quiet moments, during their long drives in the absurd red sports car, with their companionable silences and easy talk about nothing whatsoever.
She didn't want to be attracted to him. She preferred safe friendship to the hot spice of desire that trickled through her when she least expected it. She tried to concentrate on her paranoia. Every time they went out driving she had the absolute certainty they were being followed. There was nothing to base that fear on. It was never the same car, nor the same driver, they were never bothered, never tailed too closely. When she was being reasonable she told herself it was simply that the tourist season was heating up. More strangers on the road. She wasn't often reasonable.
When she didn't think about who was watching them, she tried to think about whether or not she should trust him. She had absolutely no reason not to. But something kept her holding back, even as she smiled and laughed with him.
For instance, the photograph. Marky hired a down-on-his-luck artist to take photos of the tourists. It was a lucrative sideline, and Andre was very subtle about it. So subtle, in fact, that Michael never even noticed his picture was being taken, and Michael was the sort of man who noticed things.
She'd stopped Andre from offering it to him. On a deceptive trip to the ladies' room she'd taken him aside and asked for the photo herself. Andre was French and worldly-wise. He'd simply nodded, and Michael never knew of the photo's existence.
There was no reason why he should mind. Why he wouldn't want his picture taken. He was exactly who he seemed to be, a weary, wounded man, recovering slowly in the bright Caribbean sunlight, a man with charm and sensitivity, a harmless, gentle man who probably didn't view her in a sexual light at all. Who probably never lay awake at night listening to the sound of the waves outside, to the wind through the trees, to the heat and longing that swept through the house like a mistral, making her dream of skin and sweat and muscle and…
"Penny for your thoughts," he said, watching her. "I do believe you're blushing, Francey. They must be highly erotic thoughts. Is there someone here…?" He glanced around them, at the locals clustered inside at the bar, at the middle-aged couples near the door.
"Not erotic," she said firmly, looking at his hands on the green bottle of Dutch beer. Long-fingered, deft hands. Narrow palms. With scars. "I was thinking about what's on our agenda for this afternoon."
He raised a questioning eyebrow behind the mirrored sunglasses. "Don't you want to go swimming? You've promised me the water is absolutely tepid. If you'd rather not…"
"It's not the water, it's my bathing suit," she said flatly.
He waited patiently for an explanation, his hand still on the beer. That was one of the things she liked most about him. And found the most irritating. His seemingly inexhaustible patience. It always ended up with her saying more than she needed or wanted to.
"I didn't expect to enjoy myself when I came down here," she continued. "So I didn't pack a bathing suit. I bought one once I realized…well, once I realized how nice the water was." She was going to say once she realized she wanted to live after all, but she'd stopped herself in time. After all, Michael Dowd was a virtual stranger. A sympathetic, kindly, attractive stranger, but not one who needed to be privy to the darkest days of her life.
"Then what's the problem?" It was a reasonable enough question, one that required a reasonable answer.
"The only bathing suits they sell on St. Anne are French," she said flatly.
He was sharp; she had to admit it. He didn't ask for an explanation. He simply said, "Oh."
"Oh," she echoed.
He leaned back, taking off his sunglasses and letting them swing lazily in one hand. The sickly pallor of his skin had faded somewhat during his days under the bright sun, and she'd even noticed a dusting of freckles across his strong nose. "I tell you what," he said. "You don't look at my skinny, white, scarred body in baggy drawers, and I won't look at you in your skimpy bikini."
"You've got yourself a deal." She believed him, of course. He'd never done anything to give her the impression that he was as aware of her as she was of him. He probably had a wife and five kids tucked away back in Somerset.
Except that she knew he didn't. He hadn't told her much about his personal life, except to say he'd never been married, though he'd come close a number of times. He figured he was married to his job. And he certainly had enough fathering to do, with the hordes of schoolboys who passed through his care at Willingborough. Everything normal, upper middle class Brit, including his two years in military service when he was younger. He hadn't been stationed in Ireland—she'd made sure of that.
She knew he was thirty-seven, that the car accident hadn't been his fault, that he was expected back in England sometime soon to pick up the pieces of his safe, comfortable life. If he knew what she'd gone through, he would draw back in well-bred horror.
But he didn't know, and there was no reason why he should. As far as he was concerned, she was a motherly, friendly American with few responsibilities and ties, someone spending a few idle months in the Caribbean. And she preferred to leave it that way. Her attraction to him was an aberration, a brief moment of madness in reaction to her earlier foolishness in believing in Patrick Dugan. Michael Dowd was the antithesis of Patrick, safe and sane and harmless. It was no wonder she was drawn to him.
And that attraction would safely wither and disappear the moment he left for home. In the meantime, it did her no harm to let her mind drift into vague, erotic fantasies. Knowing she had absolutely no intention of following up on them.
She smiled at Michael, reaching out and putting her hand over his in a friendly gesture. His skin was cool, smooth beneath her innocent touch, and if she felt prickles of awareness between their flesh, his expression was completely bland and unmoved.
Harmless, sweet and definitely undersexed, she thought with dismay and relief. She couldn't be safer.
"You slept with her yet?" Ross Cardiff demanded. He had a high-pitched, nasally whine of a voice, with a trace of Northern England thrown in. Michael was originally from the North himself, and he'd always liked the sound of Yorkshire in a man's voice. But not since he'd been working with Ross Cardiff.
"None of your bloody business."
"The hell it's not. You talked me into this, against my better judgment. We need to keep on Daniel Travers's good side, and we need to move very carefully in this issue. Patrick Dugan wasn't the only one involved in the attack on the Queen. There's no guarantee that he was the head of the Cadre…"
"I thought we'd already agreed that he wasn't," Michael said sharply, glancing through the smoked glass of the phone booth to Francey. She was sitting back in the white mesh chair, staring out at the sea, waiting while he put in a call to his dear old Mum. His mother had been dead in a drunken car accident since the early sixties, and no great shakes as a mother anyway. He smiled sourly, turning away from her.
"You decided," Ross corrected. "I'm not convinced. However, there's no denying that the Cadre's been active recently. Gearing up for something. Any more attempts?"
"Not as far as we can tell. Cecil's been clinging like a burr, and I upgraded the security system while she was sleeping. James Bond couldn't get through it."
"I rather thought you fancied
you
were James Bond," Ross said nastily.
"Hell, no, Ross," he said pleasantly. "You're the one with fantasies."
The dead silence that greeted that remark reminded Michael that there was a limit as to how far he could push Ross. Cardiff's sexual proclivities were not a topic of conversation, even if Michael's were.
"How long are you going to be there?" Cardiff demanded finally. "Why don't you just boff her, find out what she knows and get the hell out of there?"
"Not that simple. She seems fairly traumatized by her run-in with Dugan."
"And you believe that? You're getting soft."