After Midnight (26 page)

She studied his broad, leonine face, reading the sorrows and joys of a lifetime there. Her hand
lifted to touch it, to trace its hard contours. She did love him so.

“Marry me, Nikki,” he said softly.

“All right.”

He smiled, holding her hand to his cheek. “My father will cry, you know,” he said.

“He can always find another headline.” She nuzzled her face into his chest. “Perhaps Haralson's arrest will make a good one.”

“Oh, no,” he told her, glancing at Clayton, who was just coming into the room with a tray of coffee and milk. “Haralson's going to be top secret until the Justice Department is through with him. I understand that their chief prosecutor is taking a special interest in the case.”

“He could plead insanity and get out of it,” Clayton remarked as he set out cups of steaming coffee for Kane and himself and a cold glass of milk for Nikki.

“I told you, I hate milk,” she muttered at her brother.

“And I told you, it's good for the baby,” he replied with a knowing look.

Kane didn't even look embarrassed. He was beaming.

“You needn't look so smug, either of you,” she told them, sitting up to drink her milk. “I haven't had any tests. It's too early to tell, anyway.”

Clayton leaned forward. “Nikki, how about some scrambled eggs?”

She paled and began to swallow noticeably.

“She loves them,” Clayton told Kane. “But just lately, the mention of them makes her sick. Interesting, isn't it?”

“It was potatoes when my mother was carrying my youngest brother,” Kane told Clayton. “She couldn't eat them until he was born.”

“How many of you are there?” Clayton asked curiously.

“Four. Three boys and one girl. Our sister is married and lives in France. My mother is dead now, but my father already thinks there's nobody like Nikki. He knows the Blairs, too,” he added, chuckling. “Claude has been singing your praises to my father ever since he realized that we knew each other.” He hesitated. “He's also arranging a wedding present.”

“A cat,” Nikki said without pause.

“How did you guess?” he chuckled.

“She's missed Puff,” Clayton remarked. “It will be nice for her to have another cat.” He studied Kane. “You knew that Haralson had been arrested. How?”

“Haralson's so-called friend Cortez came to see me,” he replied. “That gentleman would make one bad enemy, so I'm glad he's on my side.”

“Mosby thought he was helping me by sending
Haralson down here,” Clayton said heavily. “Neither of us knew that he was playing right into Haralson's hands. And none of us had any inkling that the Justice Department was already watching Haralson for another reason entirely.”

“Who is Cortez?” Nikki asked curiously.

They both looked at her. “FBI,” Clayton said. At the same time, Kane said, “DEA.” They both stared at each other.

“Which?” she persisted.

They laughed sheepishly. “It seems that he has some uncoordinated credentials. Perhaps he's a stray KGB agent looking for work,” Clayton replied.

Kane put down his cup. “Whoever he is, he's saved my neck. I'll have to pay a fine to help with the cleanup, but they found toxic waste from a number of other companies in that dump. Burke is in trouble up to his neck and faces a jail sentence, along with my errant employee.”

“I won't be getting any more mileage out of your situation, either,” Clayton promised the older man. “However,” he added meaningfully, “if you were still polluting, and doing it deliberately, the fact that you're going to be my brother-in-law wouldn't help you.”

Kane chuckled. “I'm glad to hear it. Integrity is a rare asset these days. Nice to know it runs in the family.”

Clayton nodded, acknowledging the compliment, and sipped his coffee.

 

The small café in downtown Charleston was busy. Phoebe didn't really understand why she'd bothered to go back there every day, sitting and waiting for someone who was surely already back at his job in Washington, D.C., and out of the state. It must be some mental aberration resulting from too much time spent digging up old pieces of pottery, she told herself.

She was halfway through her second cup of coffee and it was time to leave. She had shopping to do. She started to get up, just as a tall man in sunglasses came in the door.

His hair was loose, hanging down his back in clean black strands. He was wearing jeans and boots and a denim shirt with pearl snaps. A couple of people gave him a frankly curious stare. He ignored them, making a beeline for Phoebe. He took off the sunglasses and hooked the earpiece into the pocket of his denim shirt. He held out his hand.

She took it, ignoring the covert looks of other customers, and let him lead her out the door.

He put her into the rental car without a word, climbed in beside her, hooked his sunglasses back on his nose and drove off.

Neither of them spoke. He drove to the coast and parked on a dirt road overlooking the ocean,
in a spot lined with live oaks. He got out and so did she. They walked down to the deserted beach.

The wind blew his hair as he looked out over the ocean, and her blue eyes studied the bronzed smoothness of his face, its straight-nosed, high-cheekboned profile adding to the subtle mystery of him.

“You're leaving,” she said perceptibly.

He nodded. “I have a backlog of work waiting. Two new cases will be coming up pretty soon, too, from here—a discrimination suit and a drug trafficking charge.”

“You'll have to testify, you mean,” she said.

He took off the sunglasses and turned. His dark eyes slid over her face quietly. “To try the cases,” he said. “I'm a federal prosecutor—an attorney for the U.S. Department of Justice.”

She was impressed, and it showed. “You said you were FBI.”

“Oh, I was,” he agreed readily. “And I worked for the Drug Enforcement Administration and the CIA just briefly, too. But law was always my first love. It still is.” He smiled slowly. “I was a fairly decent lawman. But I'm a hell of a prosecutor.”

She didn't doubt it for a minute. He had the look of a man who could intimidate anyone on a witness stand.

“You must like your work.”

“For now,” he agreed. “I was offered a job as
a defense attorney for a Native American rights group. I almost took it, too. Maybe someday. The best way to fight for any group is in the courts, Phoebe. Fighting in the streets only gets you arrested.”

“I suppose so.” She searched his dark face. “I'm sorry I didn't get to know you,” she said. “You're not like anyone I've ever met—and not just because you're Comanche.”

He smiled sadly. “The years are wrong,” he said gently. “You're barely twenty-two. I'll be thirty-six my next birthday. I grew up in rural Oklahoma in a town populated by Comanche people. I practice my native religion, I live according to my cultural heritage. If you've ever heard of cultural pluralism—and being an anthropology student, you should have—I'm a prime example of it.”

“I know what it is—living in the mainstream while clinging to one's own ethnic identity.”

He nodded. His lean hand touched her soft face and his thumb drew very lightly over her mouth. “But I'd like to keep in touch with you, just the same,” he said. “I don't have so many friends that I can turn down the chance of adding one to my life.”

She smiled back. “You can come to my graduation in the spring.”

“Send me an invitation.”

She pursed her lips. “Don't come in a loincloth carrying a rattle and a feather,” she murmured with a feeble attempt at humor.

He didn't take offense. He smiled quizzically. “Medicine men carry feathers and rattles. Why would you connect them with me, I wonder, instead of a bow and arrow?”

Her pale brows drew together briefly. “Why…I don't know,” she said with a self-conscious laugh.

“My people have been medicine men for five generations,” he said surprisingly. “The old people still go to my father for charms and cures.”

Her face brightened. “But, you never mentioned that.”

“I know.” He smiled. “Uncanny, isn't it?”

She nodded. Her eyes slid over his long hair with curiosity and pleasure. He had wonderful hair, thick and silky and long. She wanted to bury her hands in it.

“Go ahead,” he said with a long-suffering sigh. She looked puzzled. He shrugged, answering the question she didn't ask. “You aren't going to rest until you know how it feels, so go ahead. I'll pretend not to notice.”

Her eyebrows lifted. “What?”

“You can't stand it, can you?” He caught her hands and lifted them to his hair. The action brought her very close. She felt weak-kneed at the
proximity, and tried to disguise the uneasy breathing that he was sure to notice.

His hair was as silky as it looked, cool and thick and very sexy. She was fascinated with it.

He endured her exploring hands with stoic pleasure, enjoying the expressions that passed over her face as she looked at him close-up.

“I feel like a museum exhibit,” he remarked.

She looked up into his eyes, thrilling at the expression in them. “Why?”

“I can see the wheels turning in your mind,” he replied. “You're equating my bone structure with what you know of Mongolian physiology and you're dying for a look at my dentition to see those shovel-shaped incisors.”

“Actually,” she corrected, searching his eyes, “I was thinking how sexy your hair is to touch.”

“You shouldn't think of me in those terms,” he said, his voice deep and very slow.

“Because you're Comanche and I'm white?” she queried breathlessly.

He nodded. “And because I'm more than a decade older than you.”

“You said that we could be friends,” she reminded him.

“We can. But you can't notice that I'm sexy.”

“Oh. All right.”

Her hands went to his face, to trace its elegant lines. His eyes closed, so that she could touch the
ridge where his thick eyebrows lay, and the long, thick lashes of his closed eyelids.

His nose was broad and straight, and below it, he had a wide, chiseled, very sexy mouth. His teeth were white and straight. She'd read somewhere that Native Americans had very few cavities compared to white people.

While she was exploring him, his body was reacting to the closeness of hers. He moved back a few inches and his eyes opened. His lips were parted, and his breath came too quickly through them.

His lean hands caught her waist and lingered there, without pulling or pushing, while they looked at each other.

“You smell of spring flowers,” he said.

“And you of wind and fir and open land.”

His dark eyes wandered slowly over her face, capturing expressions, texture of skin, eye color, hair texture. “Take your hair down.”

She only hesitated for a minute. “Why?” she asked as her hands went to the bun. “Do you want to compare length?”

“Perhaps.”

She took the pins out and shook her head, letting waves of platinum blond hair fall around her shoulders. His hands lifted to it, testing its baby softness, its fine silky texture.

“It isn't quite as long as mine,” he remarked.

“Or as thick,” she added. Shyly, her hands slid back up and into the cool strands of his own hair, clutching handfuls of it as she moved imperceptibly closer. Dimly aware that she was being provocative, but unable to stop herself, she tilted her face up to his.

His eyes fell to her parted lips and lingered there while he touched and lifted the silky strands of her hair and fought to maintain his reason.

“The only thing I ever really liked about white culture,” he said huskily, and his head dipped closer, “is the way you kiss each other.”

Her lips parted in breathless anticipation, and she felt his hand contract in her hair. “Careful,” she whispered unsteadily. “I may be addictive.”

“So may I.”

His hand tilted her face at a closer angle and his mouth brushed in tender, brief strokes across her lips. The touch was arousing, especially when it was complicated by the gentle nip of his teeth on her lower lip and the nuzzling contact of his face with hers.

Her nails bit into his upper arm as he tormented her mouth. “That isn't fair,” she managed shakily. “You didn't say…you were going to do that.”

“Now you know.” He nudged her lips a little roughly. “Open your mouth for me,” he whispered. “And I'll show you how hot a kiss can get.”

She felt the sun on her face through the trees as she complied, felt his arms suddenly swallow her up and lift her against the length of his powerful body. Then she felt his mouth grinding down into hers, his tongue penetrating the soft darkness behind her lips. She heard a high-pitched gasp echoing in the madness of the passion he was kindling, and realized with wonder that it had been torn from her own throat.