Rafferty's Wife (8 page)

Pretense surrounded them, and pretense was an insidious danger. What would Sarah choose as her reality? Emotions sparked on a moonlit beach with a virtual stranger? Or the adoration of a charming island president? Unusually sheltered and innately shy, would Sarah prefer the golden cage of an extraordinarily powerful and wealthy man’s possessiveness to the more normal life that Rafferty could offer?

He was, Rafferty realized, conjuring up horrors. Sarah was here to do a job, to complete an assignment, and he believed that alone would motivate her. Surely she wouldn’t be so swept away that she’d forget the ruthless ambition of Sereno
and
his apparent welcome, if not approval, of terrorists in his country. She wouldn’t forget that.

Would she?

Slowly, worried and uncertain, Rafferty went in search of her. He passed both Tom and Dick, who were industriously polishing chrome
that was already gleaming, and passed Captain Siran, who looked at him for an unreadable instant before smiling briefly and meaninglessly.

Sarah wasn’t topside, so Rafferty went below. He found her in their cabin, in the bedroom, where she was busy unpacking. He could read nothing in her delicate face, and it occurred to him then that there was indeed a depth to Sarah even she hadn’t plumbed.

“Sarah?”

“Captain Siran says we’ll be just outside Kadeira by Wednesday morning,” she said, not looking at him. “We won’t go in until Thursday, though. Hagen was definite about that.”

“Sarah, I’m sorry.”

She moved past him to hang several garments in the roomy closet, saying impersonally, “All right.”

Rafferty caught her wrist as she tried to pass him again. “Sarah! I didn’t mean what I said. I know you’d never—Sarah, it just shook me up, that’s all. Sereno could hurt you.”

“I’m supposed to be married, remember?”
She gazed steadfastly at the third button of his shirt.

“You think he’ll care about that? If he wants you, Sarah, a piece of paper and a husband won’t stand in his way.”

H
ER FACE SEEMED
to quiver for just an instant. Tonelessly, she said, “I’m not going to seduce him, Rafferty. I’m just going to distract him long enough for us to get that information. That’s my job.”

Rafferty realized then that she was scared, that sheer bravado had carried her this far and that precious little of her fragile courage was left now. He reached out, suddenly hating himself for badgering her, but she pulled away stiffly.

“I have to finish unpacking.”

He refused to let go of her wrist. “I know I hurt you,” he said steadily. “I can never take back what I said, but I didn’t mean it. I’m afraid Sereno will hurt you, and I’m afraid of losing you.”

Sarah pulled her wrist from his grasp, and this time he didn’t try to stop her. She went over to lift a pile of folded lingerie from the suitcase lying open on the bed, then paused to gaze at him with bewildered eyes. “I don’t understand you,” she said softly. “You talk as if you expect me to be attracted to him. This is a
job
, Rafferty. I don’t like anything about it, least of all him. If only half of what’s suspected about him is true, the man’s a charming monster. Are you so willing to believe I’d crawl into bed with
that
?”

Rafferty went to her quickly, his hands finding her shoulders. “
No
. No, Sarah.”

“Then why? Why do you keep talking as if you do believe it?”

He hesitated for only a moment. “Because … you said it yourself, Sarah. You’re in an unfamiliar situation, playing an unfamiliar
role, and under those circumstances it’s hard to hold on to reality. Because if you’re really the image of the woman he loved so obsessively, he’ll love you the same way—and he
is
a charming man, they say. And because a new Sarah was born on a moonlit beach. I can’t help wondering if maybe it
was
the beach, and not me.”

Sarah jerked away from him and went to place the armful of silk and lace in a drawer. Then she turned back toward him. “I was afraid of Andrés Sereno until now,” she said in a small, still voice. “But I’ve no need to be afraid of him. He can’t hurt me, Rafferty. Not the way you just did.”

“Oh, hell, Sarah—”

Her face was white, and her green eyes blazed in a surging tangle of emotions. “It’s nice to know what you really think. At least now I know where I stand with you. So
something
started an itch on that beach, and I don’t care who the hell scratches it? It was the right time and place, I suppose, and you just happened to be there? Or maybe I got drunk on moonlight, and I’m still a little mad? And
anything male with a charming smile is going to sweep me right off my feet?”

“I didn’t mean—”

“You did. And you were right when you said we didn’t know each other well. We don’t know each other at
all
.”

Rafferty stared at the spot where she had stood, listening to the outer door close with deadly softness. Then he listened to the silence, and his own confused thoughts. He had been so concerned about Sereno taking advantage of Sarah’s fragility that he hadn’t even considered the fact that he himself could hurt her for exactly the same reason.

“Dammit,” he said very quietly.

Sarah stood at the bow, letting the warm wind dry her cheeks and clear her mind. She felt shaken, drained by emotion. The old Sarah, cautious and tentative, suggested that she might have wronged Rafferty, might have read unintended meanings into his words. But this new
Sarah, suffering an imperfect control over her emotions, was only too sure she had been right.

He actually
believed
that Sereno, reputed to be charming and charismatic, could—and would—sweep her right off her feet and into his bed. And if not that, then he was half-convinced she had been sent on this assignment under orders to sell herself for the price of stolen information.

Half-convinced she would
take
such orders …

Sarah had never in her life felt so wildly furious, so bitterly hurt, and so utterly bewildered. Unaccustomed to extreme highs and lows of emotion, she felt overwhelmed. The battering was too much, just suddenly too much. For the first time in her life, she had taken a chance and risked being hurt, and Rafferty had hurt her deeply. Like a child burned by the heedless touch of a flame, she shied violently from a second experiment.

Using the only defense mechanism left in the confusion of her thoughts, she simply turned everything off.

By the following morning, Rafferty had realized that more than apologies were needed. Sarah had avoided him, and when they were more or less forced to be together—dinner, for instance—she had been utterly silent. And she wasn’t giving him the silent treatment, he realized. She simply wasn’t
there
.

And when, some hours later, he had left the deck to go to their cabin, Sarah had been in bed and asleep, so far over on her side of the bed she was in danger of falling off.

He hadn’t awakened to find her in his arms this time.

Rafferty himself was silent during breakfast, aware that Harry looked at them both anxiously while he served another of his truly excellent meals. But the cabin boy said nothing.

Sarah went up on deck after the meal, and Rafferty followed. He almost forgot the stone wall between them as he watched her discard her caftan for the astonishingly brief bikini she wore underneath and lie down on a padded
lounge. It was a good five minutes—during which he drank in the sight of her curved body—before he reminded himself that Sarah was slipping rapidly beyond his reach.

“We have to talk.” He sat down on a matching lounge, forcing his mind away from vivid mental images.

She looked at him, her pale green eyes as enigmatic as seawater, her face immobile. “Do we?”

Rafferty was silent for a moment, not weighing what he was about to say but questioning the timing of it. Not that it mattered; he had no choice. “I read something once—couldn’t tell you where, but I believe Virgil wrote it—about falling in love. He remembered the sensation vividly, remembered being swept away by the madness of it. Madness. There’s nothing rational about love, Sarah. Nothing predictable. There’s just a madness, filled with hopes and fears, literally impossible to control.”

Sarah frowned a little. “Just because I look like his Sara doesn’t mean Sereno—”

Softly, Rafferty said, “I wasn’t talking about him.”

For the first time since she had retreated into herself, Sarah began to feel again. “We don’t know each other,” she said in a curiously suspended voice.

“Do you think that matters? Do you think it matters that this is the wrong time and place, and Lord knows the wrong circumstances for anything as fragile and unpredictable as love?”

“I don’t—”

“Sarah, what I’m trying to tell you is that it doesn’t help me to
know
you’d never sleep with Sereno to get that information. It doesn’t help to
know
he’d be the last man in the world you could feel an attraction for. It’s because love isn’t logical or rational that I said what I did yesterday,” he finished simply, “because I love you, and I was scared.”

She chewed on her lower lip unconsciously, staring at him. And feeling again was painful because the ascent from despair and anger to a giddy, half-frightened happiness was just as abrupt and unsettling as it had been the other
way around. And somewhere in that earlier journey, some of the old Sarah had come creeping back in, cautious and wary.

“Rafferty, in a few days, we’re both going to be playing parts. A couple on the verge of ending a brief marriage. And I have to try and fascinate a man who’ll likely make my skin crawl. You have to meet with an undercover agent and get that information from him.” She swallowed hard, wondering what he was thinking behind the glow of his tawny eyes. “In spite of what happened in Trinidad, we can’t let our personal feelings control us in this. We can’t afford the luxury.”

He smiled suddenly. “What am I seeing now? A fusing of two Sarahs? Enough of the new to contemplate vamping an island dictator, and enough of the old to warn me off?”

She managed a faint smile of her own. “That’s stating it too simply and you know it.”

“Maybe. But it’s essentially the truth. And it won’t work, Sarah.”

“It has to.”

He shook his head. “The human element,
remember? The scenario you and Hagen have apparently concocted just won’t work. I might be able to fake an argument with you; I might even be able to act furious and uncaring for a while. Maybe a day. And then what? If I come within twenty feet of you and Sereno sees me, he’ll know I love you. How will he react to that if you’ve been busy fascinating him?”

Sarah felt a sudden chill. There were, she realized belatedly, many holes in Hagen’s scenario. Although, to be fair, he hadn’t planned on “the human element” interfering this time.

Dryly, Rafferty said, “Now you see it. At best Sereno might try to talk you into divorcing me. At worst, he could decide to eliminate one bothersome husband.”

The thought of something happening to Rafferty brought her heart up into her throat, and Sarah swallowed hard. “No. No, I won’t let that happen. I’ll make certain he knows that—that I love my husband. I won’t try to fascinate him, I’ll just sympathize because he lost
his
Sara. I’ll cry on his shoulder. If he knows I love you, he won’t hurt you. He won’t.”

Rafferty was watching her, curiously still. After a tiny pause, he said, “No. Perhaps he won’t. I think any man would act against his own nature for you, Sarah.”

“I’m ordinary.” She looked out over the water, very conscious of what still hung in the air between them. He had said he loved her, and she had said nothing. She couldn’t think, and what she felt was too new and violent to be channeled sanely.

He moved suddenly, sitting on her lounge with a hand on either side of her hips. “Ordinary? If you were ordinary, Sarah, you wouldn’t be here. And I wouldn’t be here asking if it matters at all that I love you.”

She looked at him finally, trying desperately to cope with the wild recklessness of what she felt. “Don’t. We can’t—I can’t let myself—”

Rafferty swore softly and his eyes glittered. “I can’t be kind, Sarah. I can’t promise to give you time. I can’t afford
that
luxury. If I know you care, know there’s a chance for us, then maybe I can play my part in all this. But I have to know that.”

Sarah didn’t know what she would have said then, and was grateful they were interrupted.

“Excuse me,” Captain Siran murmured silkily.

Rafferty looked at him, a hard look that didn’t invite him to linger. “What is it?”

“We are ahead of schedule,” Siran said in a precise tone. “I therefore took the liberty of changing course slightly. There is a small uninhabited island just ahead. Perhaps you would care to go ashore for a few hours? The lagoon is perfectly safe for swimming, and it is a lovely island.”

“All right,” Rafferty told him. He looked down at Sarah as the captain left them alone again. “I’ll go down and have Harry fix us a lunch while I’m changing.” His gaze skimmed her bikini. “You’re … just fine as you are.”