He’d been burgled twice in the past ten months.
Not that he had anything worth stealing.
“I don’t think they really believe that Jules is gay,” Gina continued now, coming back toward him. “Or maybe they’re afraid I’m so irresistible, I’ll turn him straight.” She rolled her eyes and laughed. “Vic isn’t exactly Mr. Politically Correct—I don’t even think he knows anyone who’s gay. Jules and I have a bet going—I give Vic twelve hours, tops, before he makes up some excuse and runs back home. Jules thinks he’ll stay longer.” She stopped at the end of his bed. “The nurse said you just had a massage, but you don’t look very relaxed.”
Man, she was beautiful. There was a Van Morrison song, “Brown-Eyed Girl.” It played in Max’s head whenever Gina smiled at him the way she was smiling now.
“You know what you need?” she asked. He braced himself because he knew that the words about to come out of her mouth could be damn near anything.
“I need a lot of things,” he said evenly. “World peace. A nonviolent society. The extinction of religious fanaticism—”
“A happy ending. You should have asked for one,” Gina cut him off, mischief and laughter in her eyes.
For about a half a second he didn’t get it. And then he did. And he laughed, too. “Yeah, I don’t think that’s on the massage menu here. Besides, the masseur—big guy, name of Pete?—not my type.”
“I’m your type,” she pointed out, and he stopped laughing.
Oh, hell.
And okay. Yeah. Max had had his share of healthy sexual fantasies, starting when he was around ten years old and saw Ann-Margret for the first time, when
Viva Las Vegas
played on channel eleven’s Million Dollar Movie. Then, as now, his fantasy usually involved a well-endowed, unbelievably gorgeous young woman locking the door to the—fill in the blank. Office, classroom, bathroom, conference room, bedroom—and approaching him with a knowing smile, as she stripped down to her unbelievably sexy underwear.
“Hey,” he said as Gina’s skirt hit the floor, but he sounded decidedly less than enthusiastic in his attempt to make her stop. “This isn’t—”
“Shhh,” she admonished, finger to her lips. “Don’t talk.”
Gina, apparently, still shopped at Victoria’s Secret. Today, as it turned out, she was wearing an extremely attractive sheer black bra and panties that were remarkably miniscule and . . . Thong. Yes. God. The late afternoon sunlight streaming in through the window made her belly-button ring sparkle and her bare skin glow.
She had such beautiful skin. Max knew for a fact just how soft she would feel beneath his hands, his mouth . . .
“Gina,” he said, but it came out sounding like a sigh.
She smiled as she joined him on the bed, on her knees this time, and she leaned toward him again. This time, however, she didn’t stop.
This time, she kissed him.
First on the mouth, as she worked the bed controls, lowering him down into more of a prone position, as all that skin slid beneath his fingers.
“Gina,” he tried again, but she silenced him with another deep, searingly sweet kiss.
As she kept on kissing him, she pulled back the blankets, unfastened his pajamas, and then . . . She kissed him yet again.
Hoh yeah.
This was where—since his mouth was now free—he was supposed to tell her to stop, to put her clothes back on. They were friends.
Remember how they’d had that discussion—all two sentences of it—while he was in the hospital? He’d said, “I don’t want to mislead you. What happened between us that night—” and she’d cut him off, saying, “I’m here as a friend.”
But his “friend” was now . . .
Oh, man.
“Gina,” he managed again, but couldn’t quite find the air needed to tell her that he loved her dearly, he truly did, but this wasn’t the kind of relationship he wanted from her.
Liar.
In truth he wanted her to live beneath his desk, so she could do exactly what she was doing, six, seven times a day and . . . Gohhhd . . .
Her underwear joined her other clothes on the floor. She’d covered him with a condom that she’d conjured out of nowhere and she straddled him now, the most beautiful, vibrant, magnificent, courageous, smart, funny, exciting woman he’d ever known—naked and gasping with pleasure because he was inside of her.
It was an unbelievable turn on.
She moved slowly on top of him, her eyes closed, face upturned, hair tumbled down around her shoulders, and Max felt himself start to sweat as he tried to hang on, as he watched her, memorized her, burning an indelible picture of this moment, this woman, into his brain. This woman that he lusted after with every cell in his body, with every single breath he took . . .
Her mouth, slightly open, lips soft and moist. Her throat, so elegantly, gracefully long. Her eyelashes dark against the smoothness of her cheeks. Her breasts so full, her body taut with desire, smooth and soft and welcoming. And his.
All his.
He came with a rush that caught him off-guard, ripping through him with an intensity and power that made him shout nonsense.
Yes.
Yes?
Yes, what? Yes, he was coming. Yes, it felt unbelievably great.
No fucking kidding.
He felt her release, too, and he opened his eyes and made himself focus as his heart tried to pound its way out of his chest. He wanted to watch her, wanted to take the most from this stupidly bad mistake that he possibly could.
It was a mistake he couldn’t let happen again.
After she finished, she didn’t collapse against him, still considerately careful of the new scars on his chest, of the tenderness from his barely healed collarbone. She just sat atop him, arms wrapped around herself, clasping him tightly with her thighs, eyes still closed, face still upturned, as she struggled to regain her breath.
With the sunlight streaming in behind her, she looked like some pagan celebrant at worship.
And then she opened her eyes and looked down at him, frowning slightly. “Is that Spy Museum exhibit still open? I bet Vic would really like to go there.”
What?
“No, I think it closed,” she answered herself. “It was only a limited run exhibition. Right?”
“I don’t, um . . .” Max shook his head. “Remember.” One part of him was amazed that they were just continuing their conversation about her brother’s visit, as if they hadn’t just had sex, as if he wasn’t still inside of her. Another part of him—the part that always waited with amused excitement to see just what she’d say or do next, was already starting to get turned on again.
Naked women did that to him, and Gina was one of those women who managed to be naked with a capital N.
She was unbelievably beautiful.
“You mind if I use your laptop to Google it?” she asked.
As long as you don’t put on your clothes first.
Max clenched his teeth over the words. Lighthearted banter would turn what they’d just done from a crazy mistake into the beginning of a real relationship.
Happy ending, his ass. Gina wasn’t looking for an end to anything.
And he opened his mouth to tell her that he couldn’t do this, that he wasn’t ready yet—that he might never be ready for what she wanted, when someone knocked loudly on his door.
“Blood pressure check!” The doorknob rattled, as if the nurse were intending just to walk in, but the lock held, thank God. The nurse knocked again.
“Oh, shit,” Gina breathed, laughing as she scrambled off of him. She reached to remove the condom they’d just used, encountered . . . him, and met his eyes. But then she scooped her clothes off the floor and ran into the bathroom.
“Mr. Bhagat?” The nurse knocked on the door again. Even louder this time. “Are you all right?”
Oh, shit, indeed. “Come in,” Max called as he pulled up the blanket and leaned on the button that put his bed back up into a sitting position. The same control device had a “call nurse” button as well as the clearly marked one that would unlock the door.
“It’s locked,” the nurse called back, as well he knew.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” he said, as he wiped off his face with the edge of the sheet. Sweat much in bed, all alone, Mr. Bhagat? “I must’ve . . . Here, let me figure out how to . . .” He took an extra second to smooth his hair, his pajama top, and then, praying that the nurse had a cold and couldn’t smell the scent of sex that lingered in the air, he hit the release.
“Please don’t lock your door during the day,” the woman scolded him as she came into the room, around to the side of his bed. It was Debra Forsythe, a woman around his age, whom Max had met briefly at his check-in. She had been on her way home to deal with some crisis with her kids, and hadn’t been happy then, either. “And not at night either,” she added, “until you’ve been here a few days.”
“Sorry.” He gave her an apologetic smile, hanging on to it as the woman gazed at him through narrowed eyes.
She didn’t say anything, she just wrapped the blood pressure cuff around his arm, and pumped it a little too full of air—ow—as Gina opened the bathroom door. “Did I hear someone at the door?” she asked brightly. “Oh, hi. Debbie, right?”
“Debra.” She glanced at Gina, and then back, her disgust for Max apparent in the tightness of her lips. But then she focused on the gauge, stethoscope to his arm.
Gina came out into the room, crossing around behind the nurse, making a face at him that meant . . . ?
Max sent her a questioning look, and she flashed him. She just lifted her skirt and gave him a quick but total eyeful. Which meant . . . Ah, Christ.
The nurse turned to glare at Gina, who quickly straightened up from searching the floor.
What was it with him and missing underwear?
Gina smiled sweetly. “His blood pressure should be nice and low. He’s very relaxed—he just had a massage.”
“You know, I didn’t peg you for a troublemaker when you checked in yesterday,” Debra said to Max, as she wrote his numbers on the chart.
Gina was back to scanning the floor, but again, she straightened up innocently when the nurse turned toward her.
“I think you’re probably looking for this.” Debra leaned over and . . .
Gina’s panties dangled off the edge of her pen. They’d been on the floor, right at the woman’s sensibly clad feet.
“Oops,” Gina said. Max could tell that she was mortified, but only because he knew her so well. She forced an even sunnier smile, and attempted to explain. “It was just . . . he was in the hospital for so long and . . .”
“And men have needs,” Debra droned, clearly unmoved. “Believe me, I’ve heard it all before.”
“No, actually,” Gina said, still trying to turn this into something they could all laugh about, “
I
have needs.”
But it was obvious that this nurse hadn’t laughed since 1985. “Then maybe you should find someone your own age to play with. A professional hockey player just arrived. He’s in the east wing. Second floor.” She lowered her voice conspiratorially. “Lots of money. Just your type, I’m sure.”
“Ex
cuse
me?” Gina wasn’t going to let that one go past. She may not have been wearing any panties, but her Long Island attitude now waved around her like a superhero’s cape. She even assumed the battle position, hands on her hips.
Debra pointed her pursed lips in Max’s direction. “Overnight guests are forbidden. No exceptions.”
“Did you just have the audacity to judge me?” Gina blocked the nurse’s route to the door. “Without knowing the least little thing about me?”
Debra lifted an eyebrow. “Well, I
have
seen your underwear, dear.”
“Exactly,” Gina said. “You’ve seen my underwear—not my personality profile, or my resume, or my college transcript, or—”
“If you think for one second,” the nurse countered, “that anything about this situation is even remotely unique—”
“That’s enough,” Max said.
Gina, of course, ignored him. “I don’t just think it, I know it,” she said. “It’s unique because I’m unique, because Max is unique, because—”
Debra finally laughed. “Oh, honey, you are so . . .
young.
Here’s a tip I don’t usually bother to tell girls like you: If I find one pair of panties on the floor, it’s only a matter of time before I find another. And I hate to break it to you, hon, but the girl who comes out of the bathroom next time, well . . . She isn’t going to be you.”
“First of all,” Gina said grimly, “I’m a woman, not a girl. And second,
Grandma . . .
You want to bet it’s not going to be me?”
“I said,
that’s enough,
” Max repeated, and they both turned to look at him. About time. He was used to clearing his throat and having an entire room jump to full attention. “Ms. Forsythe, you took my blood pressure—you have the information you needed, good day to you, ma’am. Gina . . .” He wanted to tell her to untwist her panties and put them back on, but he didn’t dare. “Sit,” he ordered instead, motioning to the desk chair that could be pulled beside the bed. “Please,” he added when Nurse Evil smirked on her way out the door.
“I can’t stay. Vic’s flight comes in just after seven. If I don’t leave now, I’ll be late.” Gina swooped in to kiss him, full on the mouth. “Mmmm,” she said, and kissed him again, longer this time, lingering, now that they were once again alone. She smoothed back his hair. “Thank you for a lovely afternoon.”
Yeah. About that . . . “We need to—,” Max started.
But she grabbed her camera and waved as she sailed out the door.
Leaving him holding . . .
Yes, she’d tucked them into his hand during that last kiss.
Her panties.
Of course.
Her intention was obvious. She wanted him to spend the next few hours thinking about her walking around the Baltimore-Washington Airport terminal without them.
Yeah.
So much for his nap.
C
HAPTER
F
OUR
K
ENYA
, A
FRICA
F
EBRUARY
22, 2005
F
OUR
M
ONTHS
A
GO
Forty-eight grueling hours after poor Narari breathed her last breath, it finally became apparent to Molly that the three other girls were going to survive.
For now, anyway. Women who’d been cut like this often struggled with recurring infections. Serious ones. Childbirth would be difficult, if not flat-out dangerous. And if the men that they married—the men to whom their parents all but sold them—were HIV positive, they, too had a far greater risk of becoming infected.
Risk? For most of them, it was practically a guarantee.
Molly made sure she was in the shower when Narari’s family came to claim her body, because Sister Double-M forbade her to speak to them. She stood there for much longer than she should have, letting the water pound on her head as she cried. Trying, with her tears, to release her anger at Narari’s parents, at the nun, at herself.
For not taking the time to get to know those girls better. For not sensing that they were in danger and urging them to run away.
For not protecting them.
It was a long time before Molly finally turned off the water. Exhausted, she then just stood and let herself drip, not wanting to move, but knowing that eventually she must.
The truth was, there just wasn’t anywhere that she wanted to go right now.
Gina was asleep in their tent. Having a roommate had its pros and cons.
But at least she didn’t have
two
roommates. They’d reclaimed their quarters from their English guest just this morning, when the busload of priests had retreated to Nairobi.
Molly was sorry she’d missed meeting them. A conversation with someone new would have been nice. But some of the visitors were still quite ill and the hospital facility here couldn’t continue to handle their care.
Gina had told her of the vomit-between-her-toes incident, which had made Molly think of Dave Jones, which was, of course, not the man’s real name.
She’d learned to speak of him only as Jones, even though his real name was Grady Morant, because too many nasty people wanted Morant dead. And although Molly doubted that they would travel all the way from the jungles of South Asia to the gorgeous desolation of this part of Kenya, she’d learned the hard way that evil could have a very long reach.
Because of that, she was training herself to
think
of him only as Jones, too—during those rare times she actually let herself think about him, of course.
Such as right now.
And, considering that one of her very first interactions with Jones had included his barfing on her running shoes, there was a solid reason why she was thinking about him now.
Unlike Gina’s episode with Father Dieter, the shoes hadn’t been on Molly’s feet at the time of the barfing, thank goodness. Both they and Jones had been in her tent, in a camp much like this one—except for the fact that it was on the other side of the world, on a small, lush, green island in Indonesia.
The American expat and entrepreneur—which was the polite word for black market smuggler—had been sick, and Molly had been a Good Samaritan and taken care of him. With the same exact amount of kindness that she would have shown him even if she hadn’t found him unbelievably attractive.
The flu-related event was the start of what had eventually become a torrid love affair. And, as most torrid love affairs tended to do, it had ended badly.
Still, there had been a time when Molly had looked for Jones wherever she went. She’d expected to turn around one day and see him standing there.
She’d honestly thought he’d find her, that he wouldn’t be able to stay away. He’d loved her. And wherever he was, he loved her still. She believed that with all of her heart.
But, after nearly three long years, she was no longer waiting and watching for him.
And she really only obsessed about him at those moments when a good romantic obsession could be used to blot out the day’s real-life pain.
Such as when a thirteen-year-old child died as the result of misogynistic ignorance.
Molly finished brushing out her hair and stashed her shower supplies back in her locker. She hung her towel out on the line, contemplating which she needed most—food or sleep.
Food won, and she headed for the mess tent.
At this time of early afternoon, it was deserted. Even Sister Helen, the self-anointed queen of the kitchen—terribly sweet but extremely talkative—was nowhere to be found. The solitude was just what Molly needed, and she knew that, despite the fact that their vastly different personalities often clashed, Sister Double-M was responsible for Helen’s disappearing act.
Molly took a tray from the stack and poured herself a glass of tea, then helped herself to bread and some of a divine-smelling vegetable dish that Helen had kept warm for the hospital staff.
It more than made up for the serious lack of chocolate.
She turned to carry her tray to a table and . . .
The Englishman, Leslie Whoosis, was leaning heavily on his cane just inside the door. Odd, she hadn’t heard it open. It was almost as if he’d materialized there.
She’d only seen him from the distance since he’d arrived in camp. This was their first face-to-face.
And he was exactly as Gina had described him—almost painfully thin, with terrible posture. He was, indeed as Gina said, the poster-child for tragically bad haircuts, with enough sunblock on his face to protect him should he decide to take wing and do a tight orbit around the sun. Glasses with twenty-year-old frames combined with his slightly dazed silence completed the time-traveling anthropology professor look.
Molly wasn’t close enough to tell if Gina’s rather unkind guess was on target—that he had bad breath, too—but she wouldn’t have been at all surprised if she were correct. At the very least, he looked as if he reeked of emotional neglect.
“It’s Leslie, right?” she said, finding a smile for him, because it wasn’t his fault that he’d wandered in here during her alone time, an Englishman in perpetual search of tea. “I’m Molly Anderson.”
He didn’t move an inch, and there was something about the way he was clutching his cane that made her notice his hands. They were big and not as pale as she’d expected them to be, not by a long shot. He had long, sturdy fingers that he used to grip that cane so tightly his knuckles were nearly white.
His hands were . . .
Dear Heavenly Father. She looked hard at his eyes, hidden behind those glasses and . . .
He lunged toward her, but he was too late. Her tray hit the wooden floor with a smash and a clatter of metal utensils, loud enough to wake the dead.
He swore sharply, David Jones’s still-so-familiar voice coming out of that stranger’s body. “Do you have any idea how unbelievably hard it’s been to get you alone?”
Had she finally started hallucinating?
But he took off his glasses, and she could see his eyes more clearly and . . . “It’s you,” she breathed, tears welling. “It’s really you.” She reached for him, but he stepped back.
Sisters Helen and Grace were hurrying across the compound, coming to see what the ruckus was, shading their eyes and peering so they could see in through the screens.
“You can’t let on that you know me,” Jones told Molly quickly, his voice low, rough. “You can’t tell anyone—not even your friend the priest during confession, do you understand?”
“Are you in some kind of danger?” she asked him. Dear God, he was so thin. And was the cane necessary or just a prop? “Stand still, will you, so I can—”
“No. Don’t. We can’t . . .” He backed away again. “If you say anything, Mol, I swear, I’ll vanish, and I will not come back. Unless . . . if you don’t want me here—and I don’t blame you if you don’t—”
“No!” was all she managed to say before Sister Helen opened the door and looked from the mess on the floor to Molly’s stricken expression.
“Oh, dear.”
“I’m afraid it’s my fault,” Jones said in a British accent, in a voice that was completely different from his own, as Helen rushed to Molly’s side. “My fault entirely. I brought Miss Anderson some bad news. I didn’t realize just how devastating it would be.”
Molly started crying. It was more than just a good way to hide her laughter at that accent—those were real tears streaming down her face and she couldn’t stop them. Helen led her to one of the tables, helped her sit down.
“Oh, my dear,” the nun said, kneeling in front of her, concern on her round face, holding her hand. “What happened?”
“We have a mutual friend,” Jones answered for her. “Bill Bolten. He found out I was heading to Kenya, and he thought if I happened to run into Miss Anderson that she would want to know that a friend of theirs recently . . . well, passed. Cat’s out of the bag, right? Fellow name of Grady Morant, who went by the alias of Jones.”
“Oh, dear,” Helen said again, hand to her mouth in genuine sympathy.
Jones leaned closer to the nun, his voice low, but not low enough for Molly to miss hearing. “His plane went down—burned—gas tank exploded . . . Ghastly mess. Not a prayer that he survived.”
Molly buried her face in her hands, hardly able to think.
“Bill was worried that she might’ve heard it first from someone else,” he said. “But apparently she hadn’t.”
Molly shook her head, no. News
did
travel fast via the grapevine. Relief workers tended to know other relief workers and . . . She could well have heard about Jones’s death
without
him standing right in front of her.
Wouldn’t
that
have been awful?
“I’m very glad,” Jones continued fervently, sounding like a card-carrying Colin Firth impersonator. “So very glad. You can’t know how glad . . .” He cleared his throat. “I hate to be the bearer of more bad tidings, but your . . . friend was something of a criminal, the way I heard it. He had a price on his head—millions—from some druglord who wanted him dead. Chased him mercilessly, for years. I guess this Jones fellow used to work for him—it’s all very sordid, I’m afraid. And dangerous. He had to be on the move constantly. It was risky just to have a drink with Jones—you might’ve gotten killed in the crossfire. Of course, the big irony here is that the druglord died two weeks before Jones. He never knew it, but he was finally free.”
As he looked at her with those eyes that she’d dreamed about for so many months, Molly understood. Jones was here, now, only because the druglord known as Chai, a dangerous and sadistic bastard who’d spent years hunting him, was finally dead.
“It’s entirely possible that whoever’s taken over business for this druglord,” he continued, “would’ve gone after this Jones, too. Of course, he probably wouldn’t have searched to the ends of the earth for him . . . Although, when dealing with such dangerous types, it pays to be cautious, I suppose.”
Message received.
“Not that that’s anything Jones needs to worry about,” he added. “Considering he’s left his earthly cares behind. Still, I suspect it’s rather hot where he’s gone.”
Yes, it certainly was hot in Kenya right now. Molly covered her mouth, pretending to sob instead of laugh.
“Shhh,” Helen admonished him, thinking, of course, that he was referring to an unearthly heat. “Don’t say such a thing. She loved him.” She turned back to Molly. “This Jones
is
the man that you spoke of so many times?”
Molly could see from the expression on Jones’s face that Helen had given her away. She might as well go big with the truth.
She wiped her eyes with a handkerchief that Helen had at the ready, then met his gaze.
“I loved him very much. I’ll always love him,” she told this man who’d traveled halfway around the world for her, who apparently had waited years for it to be safe enough for him to join her, who had actually thought that, once he arrived, she might send him away.
If you don’t want me here—and I don’t blame you if you don’t—just say the word . . .
“He was a good man,” Molly said, “with a good heart.” Her voice shook, because, dear Lord, there were now tears in his eyes, too. “He deserved forgiveness—I’m positive he’s in heaven.”
“I don’t think it’s going to be that easy for him,” he whispered. “It shouldn’t be . . .” He cleared his throat, put his glasses back on. “I’m so sorry to have distressed you, Miss Anderson. And I haven’t even properly introduced myself. Where are my manners?” He held out his hand to her. “Leslie Pollard.”
Even with his glasses on, she could see quite clearly that he’d far rather be kissing her.
But that would have to wait for later, when he came to her tent . . . No, wait, Gina would be there. Molly would have to go to his.
Later,
she told him with her eyes, as she reached out and, for the first time in years, touched the hand of the man that she loved.
She didn’t have to work at all to make her tears appear convincing, and Helen helped her to her feet. “Come, dear, let’s get you to your tent. I’ll bring a tray with something for you to eat.”
As Molly left the mess tent, she looked back at Leslie Pollard, who was already helping Sister Grace clean up the mess she’d made.
Gina was wrong. He didn’t have bad breath at all.
S
HEFFIELD
P
HYSICAL
R
EHAB
C
ENTER
, M
C
L
EAN
, V
IRGINIA
N
OVEMBER
13, 2003
N
INETEEN
M
ONTHS
A
GO
Gina found Max in the recreation room.
Sitting at a table by the window, with a cup of coffee, engrossed in a book.
A steamy romance novel, perhaps?
She smiled at the ridiculous idea of Max reading anything that wasn’t directly related to his job as she stopped just outside the door, in the shadows, where he’d have trouble seeing her if he glanced up. She was waiting for her brother to finish up in the men’s room—she didn’t want to disappear on him. And she also didn’t want to walk in there alone, giving Max the opportunity to tell her that the sex they’d shared had been a huge mistake.