Authors: Kay Hooper
Raven Long was a tall, striking brunette with violet eyes and a warm voice. She was naturally graceful, instinctively charming, and completely spontaneous. Within ten minutes of their coming aboard, she had sworn at all three of her husband’s friends for disturbing their honeymoon, instantly followed with a demand
to be told what had happened on Kadeira, and finished up by cheerfully damning Hagen and asking Rafferty when the wedding would occur.
Interrupted honeymoon or no, both Josh and Raven were obviously in no need of cementing the first critical stage of a marriage. Their shared glances held the warm glow of a deep and abiding love, and their plain gold wedding bands were worn with the ineffable look of permanence and certainty.
Basking in the glow of her own love, Sarah listened as Rafferty responded to Josh’s statement.
“Well, you could have helped us out a little more, you know. That cryptic remark about ‘shades of gray’ wasn’t very much to go on.”
“I was almost completely going on instinct,” Josh told him. “And I met him several years ago, after all. An afternoon’s conversation. He was ruthless then, and I knew damned well
that
hadn’t changed. Still, there was just something about the man.” He looked at Sarah
and smiled. “He turned his back and let you walk away.”
She nodded. “I had a feeling he might. And I think I’ll call his Sara when we get back. She might like to know that.”
“I think you’re right,” Josh told her, smiling at this delicate lady who had captured Rafferty’s heart.
Rafferty looked steadily at his friend and boss. “Hagen had no right to ask you to do what you did. And, dammit, you had no business at all agreeing to it! Josh, when Sereno calls in that favor—”
Joshua Long lifted a cool eyebrow at him, at that moment every inch the tough businessman, and said calmly, “He won’t ask for more than I’m willing to give.”
“How can you be sure of that?”
“Fifteen years spent in boardrooms.”
“Josh, he’s a
dictator
.”
“He’s a businessman.”
Interrupting what promised to be a standoff between Josh and Rafferty, Raven said in a cheerful voice, “I think we should celebrate.”
“Our survival?” Zach asked.
Raven made a rude noise. “You guys are like cats—you always land on your feet. No, we’ll celebrate Sarah and Rafferty’s forthcoming marriage.”
So they broke out the champagne.
A considerable time later, in the cabin allotted to them, Sarah blissfully allowed Rafferty to undress her. She couldn’t help, mainly because she had celebrated with a future bride’s happy enthusiasm and was, therefore, wonderfully limp and unconcerned.
Another word for it would have been “drunk.”
“You have no head for champagne,” Rafferty observed, sliding Raven’s borrowed jeans down Sarah’s lovely legs with difficulty, while those legs moved to some imaginary music.
She sat up abruptly on the bed and made a grab for him, looking puzzled when she missed. “Where did you go?”
“Right here, darling,” he muttered, unbuttoning her blouse and trying not to laugh. This side of his Sarah was definitely endearing and somewhat fascinating. He didn’t think he’d ever forget the image of her standing before Zach, so tiny next to his bulk, while she solemnly reproved him for having deceived Rafferty years before.
It was mean, she’d said.
Zach had looked rather sheepish, which was astonishing in itself.
Sarah peered at him owlishly. “You weren’t there a minute ago, dammit.”
“Sorry about that.”
She blinked, then squinted. “Which one
are
you?” she asked, apparently afflicted with a distressing case of double—or triple—vision.
“The one in the middle,” he told her gently.
She let him remove her blouse, then aimed carefully with both hands and managed to find his face. “There you are. Hello.”
“Hi.” Stoically, he removed her bra and then pulled a borrowed nightgown over her head.
“You’re dressing me,” she realized.
“Uh-huh.”
“But that isn’t right. Don’t you want to ravish a drunken wanton?” she asked, then repeated the question to herself as if it didn’t make sense.
“I want you to take a little nap.”
“But I’m not sleepy.”
“Lie back and close your eyes, and I promise you’ll be sleepy. Trust me.”
“But it isn’t even dark yet.”
“This too shall pass. Go to sleep, darling.”
Drifting away, Sarah said sleepily, “It doesn’t work when you say it, does it? Only when I say it.”
“Only when you say it, darling,” he agreed tenderly.
“Trinidad looks different,” she said, “when you aren’t here pretending to be something you’re not.”
Rafferty joined her on the balcony, slipping his arms around her and pulling her back against
him. “I’ve noticed,” he agreed. “So, Mrs. Lewis, you’re enjoying your honeymoon?”
“If you have to ask, Harvard produced a dud.”
“A little reassurance never hurts,” he murmured, nuzzling her neck.
“Then be reassured. I’ve never been happier.” She smiled and covered the hands lying on her stomach with her own. “And your idea of honeymooning here was just perfect. We couldn’t have found a better place.”
He hugged her. A little curious, he said, “I never asked, but what did Hagen say when you asked for the time off?”
“That I’d earned it. He seemed relieved when I told him I wasn’t quitting, just transferring to the New York office. He said, by the way, and very reprovingly, that he really didn’t think he—meaning the agency—should have to pay for a fishing boat.”
“To which you replied?”
“I told him to take it up with Zach.”
“I don’t imagine he will.”
“Hardly. He signed a voucher on the spot.”
“Ummm. I don’t suppose you asked him—?”
Sarah turned to gaze up at him, smiling. “No. I guess I was afraid he’d deny it.”
Rafferty touched her cheek lightly. “You really did care about Sereno, didn’t you? You don’t want him to be a dyed-in-the-wool villain.”
Not for the first time during the last few weeks, Sarah tried to get it clear in her own mind. “It’s just that what I believe makes so much
sense
. I’m not saying he would have let us escape if it hadn’t benefited him in some way, but I have to believe he was glad that’s how it worked out.
“Just think about it. He arrested Kelsey just before the terrorists would have gotten him and killed him, even though Kelsey hadn’t done anything at all to justify the charge of spying on Sereno’s government. Kelsey was treated more like a guest than a prisoner. Sereno refused to turn him over to the terrorists, even though he supposedly wanted and needed their goodwill.
“And then there are the keys. Who but Sereno could have not only gotten them, but
also
got them to Hagen?
I don’t think we had a second agent in Kadeira. I think Sereno himself was in touch with Hagen, and more or less told him to get his agent the hell out of the country before Kelsey got himself killed and Sereno was blamed for it.”
“It makes sense,” Rafferty admitted. “Especially if he wanted to get Kelsey’s information out of the country as well as his dangerous hide.”
“I really believe that he hates terrorists. Remember what I told you about that last day, and what he said to me? That’s when it all started to make sense to me. Shades of gray. He’d allow terrorists to have a base in his country and take money from them for the privilege, pour the money into his economy, and then help get information about the organization out to people who intend to stop them.
“And all the while, he had perfectly logical explanations to hand the terrorists. Kelsey was in jail on a legitimate charge. We were there because Sereno was eager to do a very powerful man a simple favor. A very believable attack by
the rebels drew his soldiers away from the prison, which allowed us to break Kelsey out. And at the end …”
“At the end,” Rafferty finished, “he simply couldn’t allow the image of the woman he loved to come to any harm. Something his men very obviously knew, judging by their faces. So he turned his back and walked away.”
Sarah nodded. “So he comes out on top. The terrorists are angry but unsuspicious. Joshua Long owes him a favor.
Hagen
owes him a favor. And, best of all, America isn’t up in arms against him.”
Thinking of the terrorists, Rafferty said, “He’s still in bed with the devil, though.”
Smiling, she said, “I’m not trying to paint him
all
white, you know. I just don’t think he’s a monster anymore.”
“You were smiling at him that last day,” Rafferty remembered. “As if you finally understood him, and weren’t worried about it anymore.”
“That’s about the way it was.”
“I wanted to deck him.”
Surprised, she said, “It didn’t show.”
“I’m a great poker player.”
“Darling, you know—”
“Oh, lord,” he muttered, bending his head to capture her lips. And when he carried her into their bedroom, it was caveman style, over one shoulder.
“You said that deliberately,” Rafferty decided sometime later in a drained voice.
Sarah raised herself on an elbow to smile down at him, mischief sparkling in her sea-green eyes. “Don’t be ridiculous.”
“You did. I was well on my way to developing an inferiority complex regarding Sereno, and you set out to cure me of it. And very nicely, too.”
“Well,” she said innocently, “when a woman knows which button to push, it’s a little hard to resist pushing.”
He opened one eye and stared at her. “Yeah.”
She giggled. “You remember when we were
celebrating on the
Corsair
? I almost said it then.”
“I know you did. That’s why I kissed you and then managed to get you to our cabin so fast.” He sighed. “I can just see what’s going to happen. Every time we have a fight, you’ll look at me with those lovely eyes and call me darling, and I’ll forget my name.”
“I could call you at the office—”
“Don’t you dare! At least, don’t call me darling over the phone. I’d kill myself getting home to you.”
“Or show up in court—”
“I won’t tell you when I’m going to be in court. Besides, I don’t have to be there often these days.”
“Boardrooms instead?”
He looked at her warily.
Sarah giggled. “I won’t, I promise. Besides, if you push a button too often, it’ll wear out. I wouldn’t want that, now would I?”
Rafferty pulled her over on top of him, smiling. “I hope not.” His eyes narrowed slightly. “And I wonder if you have a button.”
“Of course not,” she denied stoutly.
“No?”
“Absolutely not.”
After a few moments, she added breathlessly, “Well, not a verbal one, at any rate.”
Rafferty smiled.
“Y
OU’VE LOST ANOTHER
agent,” Kelsey said cheerfully. “A field agent, that is. You won’t be able to get Sarah out of an office again. And since Rafferty has your number now, boss, you sure as hell won’t be able to con him again.”
“Most unfortunate.” Hagen frowned at the clear blue water of the Caribbean, his mind, as always, refusing to allow him to relax and enjoy the vacation. “I would have said such an
eventuality was highly improbable given the information—”
“The lies,” Kelsey translated dryly, “you told them.”
He was splendidly ignored.
“It appears I underestimated Rafferty Lewis’s intuitive abilities,” Hagen decided. “He discovered far sooner than anticipated that I had—misled him about Miss Cavell’s past.”
“Tragic past,” Kelsey reminded politely, thoroughly enjoying his boss’s unusual lapse from godlike omniscience.
Again, he was ignored.
“The human element.” Hagen muttered the phrase several times, clearly searching for a way around this annoying stumbling block in the path of his greatness.
Kelsey leaned his head back, taking advantage of the warm sunlight. “Let me know,” he advised, “when you find a way around that one.”
Long moments passed, and then Hagen said dreamily, “My boy, there is nothing that cannot
be surmounted with enough forethought and planning.”
Kelsey turned his head and opened one eye to peer at his boss. “Uh-huh. Who’s next?”
“Zachary Steele.”