Angel of Desire (7 page)

"If it proves necessary, yes." Jittery all over again at the gravity of her mission, Rachel vowed not to fail. "I must do this, Joshua."

"I understand your concerns, but—"

"You must go back and try to win me a little more time," she interrupted earnestly. "Please, Joshua?"

The older man let out a breath on a soft sound. "I'll try, little one." Then he did something he'd never done before. He brushed his knuckles affectionately, lovingly, down her cheek. "Take care, Rachel. I fear that this time your dedication and enthusiasm may have gotten you in over your head."

He lowered his hand. '"Embraceable You,'" he said, raising his voice to a purposefully public volume. "An excellent choice,
mademoiselle
. One of Gershwin's most memorable works. And a personal favorite of mine, as well."

Giving her one last fond yet warning look, he returned to the Steinway.

Leaning her elbows on the table, she linked her fingers together, braced her chin on her joined hands, watched Joshua settle himself theatrically at the piano and willed herself to relax. But the jumpiness in her refused to dissipate.

Her nerves were not helped by Shade's return. He was crossing the room toward her, looking once again, she considered, like a great dark cat.

"Did you choose our wine?" he inquired blandly.

Rachel glanced cautiously up and found herself looking straight into the pagan iridescence of Shade's green eyes. A ripple of fear and something else, something dark and dangerous she could not identify, skimmed up her spine.

"I thought I would prefer to leave that to you." It was only a whisper, forced past the tattered heartbeat lodged in her throat. Rachel took a breath and tried again. "Did you get your business taken care of?" Her smile was frail and false.

"For now."

Shade slid into the booth, cynically enjoying the slight tremor she tried to hide but couldn't when his leg brushed against hers beneath the table.

He hadn't missed the intimate little tête-à-tête between Rachel and the pianist. It only confirmed his suspicions that she was not as innocent as she appeared to be.

Whoever Rachel Parrish was, he wasn't about to let her interfere with his mission. He'd get into Yaznovia, rescue Conlan, kill the general—nice and neat and clean, not the lengthy, drawn-out, messy way the coldblooded bastard did away with his innocent victims—and most importantly, return Conlan to his pregnant wife.

And if Sister Rachel thought she was going to stop him, Shade thought savagely, the wide-eyed little nun was in for the surprise of her life.

She was good. Better than good, Shade decided more than two hours later. Contrary to her innocent butter-would-melt-in-that-soft-mouth appearance, the woman was proving to be a world-class equivocator.

Along with a sixth sense that allowed him—at least most of the time—to know when people were lying to him, Shade had always prided himself on his ability to cut through the tangle of prevarication and get to the truth.

But Rachel Parrish was putting that well-honed talent to the test. As the meal dragged on, he had grown increasingly frustrated.

Diners at tables all around them finished their meals and left the restaurant; others took their place, then after a time, left, as well. Finally, only Rachel and Shade remained.

"Let's try this one more time," Shade said, after the waiter had taken away their plates, refilled their coffee cups, delivered the two Napoleon brandies Shade had ordered, then discreetly left them alone again. "Why the hell would you—or anyone else for that matter-want to go to Yaznovia?"

Rachel sighed. The strain of her uncustomary physicality and the unrelenting pull of gravity on her body was tiring enough, without Shade having grilled her for hours.

"I've told you—"

"I know." His hand sliced the air. "It's personal."

Rachel nodded. "I'm sorry. But I can't reveal the details. All I can say is that—"

"It's a matter of life or death," he interrupted her again, his deep voice raspy with sarcasm.

"That's right."

"Do you have any idea what's going on over in that hellhole?"

Only too well
, she could have answered, remembering how she'd been forced to stand by as Shade had been so brutally tortured. "I know that the country has fallen under the thumb of a ruthless dictator. I know that hundreds, thousands, of Yaznovians have been killed. And many more will die if the general remains in power."

She could have gotten that information from any news broadcast or weekly news magazine. Yet the pain that shadowed those strangely familiar gray eyes suggested that her knowledge of the general's crimes came from a much more personal source.

It crossed his mind that he undoubtedly wasn't the only person in the world who might want to knock off Rutskoya. This woman sure as hell didn't look like an assassin. But, Shade reminded himself, he had the scars to prove that appearances were often deceiving.

"Have you ever even been to Yaznovia?"

"In a way." Attempting to answer his questions without actually lying was getting extremely tiresome for someone who'd spent the past three hundred plus years telling nothing but the truth.

"In a way," he muttered. These half answers were driving him crazy. "What the hell does that mean?"

How could she explain that her spirit had remained with him during those long months of imprisonment? Just as it had all of his life?

What would Shade say, Rachel wondered, if he knew that wherever he'd gone, from the moment he'd drawn his first breath, during all his travels to those dangerous places, she had, in her own way, remained unceasingly by his side.

"I've been to Yaznovia," she said. It was, in a way, the truth.

"Not as a tourist."

"Not exactly."

There she went again. "Not exactly," he repeated. He closed his eyes and prayed for strength. When he opened them again, he gave her a long, hard, uncomfortably probing look.

"I never forget a face," he murmured thoughtfully. "And despite all that New Age garbage about reincarnation or doubles, I know damn well that I've seen yours before."

He was suddenly very close to her. Too close. His eyes, which had reminded her of emeralds earlier, now reminded her of a stormy sea. There was steel beneath his quiet tone, and Rachel could feel the energy radiating from his unnervingly masculine body. Even more disconcerting was the distinctly feminine force she felt awakening deep inside herself.

"Was it in Yaznovia?"

"No."

She was telling the truth, Shade decided. But like everything else about this woman, it wasn't the entire story.

"You say you're not with the CIA," he began again.

"Nor Interpol, or the Mossad, or KGB or any other espionage agency," she confirmed. On this she was definitely on solid ground. "I am not a spy, a counterspy, a double agent or anything else like that."

"If you were a double agent," Shade pointed out, "you'd hardly announce the fact."

"True," she allowed. "I suppose you'll just have to take my word for that."

"Nothing personal, sweetheart, but I'm not in the habit of taking anyone's word for anything. And I damn well wouldn't believe you even if you were to tell me the sky was blue, or the sun rose in the east every morning," Shade snarled.

He felt her flinch. Despite the fact that she'd held up amazingly well during his interrogation, she was looking exhausted, tense and nervous, all at the same time. Shade experienced another momentary pang of guilt and ignored it.

"I'm sorry if I've made you angry."

Her gaze was directed downward at the tablecloth. Her hands, wrapped around the brandy snifter, were unconsciously stroking the crystal sides in a way that created an unexpected surge of heat down his spine.

"Sorry enough to tell me the real reason you want to go to Yaznovia?"

She didn't immediately answer. But the flush of color in her cheeks proclaimed her guilt as surely as if it had been written across her face in bold black script.

She glanced over at the piano, seeking solace from Joshua, but he was not there. She was on her own.

"I can't."

"Can't? Or won't?"

"Please try to understand," she said in a voice just barely above a whisper.

"That's precisely what I'm trying to do, sweetheart." From his gritty tone, Rachel knew he did not mean the term as an endearment. "But you're not exactly a font of information."

Realizing that he wasn't going to relent until she'd given him some excuse, Rachel opted for yet another half-truth. "It's a man."

"A man." That came as a surprise. If there was ever a woman who seemed untouched by a male, it was this one.

"He's in terrible danger."

"So is everyone foolish or unlucky enough to still be living in Yaznovia."

"This is different."

Shade took another long, probing look at her face, his own expression shadowed and unfathomable. "By 'different,' you mean personal."

"Yes." In a purely instinctive feminine gesture, she placed her hand on Shade's arm and looked up at him with earnest eyes. "I must save him."

Her fingers were long and slender, her nails neat and short and unpainted. For some insane reason, Shade couldn't help wondering what her hands would feel like on his bare flesh.

The unwilling desire her innocent touch inspired annoyed the hell out of Shade. He plucked her hand from his sleeve.

Not bothering to conceal his irritation, he tossed down the brandy and signaled the waiter for another.

Feeling as if she were standing on the edge of the smoldering crater of a volcano about to erupt, Rachel decided not to suggest that he'd already had enough to drink for one day. Unaccustomed to alcohol, her own head was beginning to spin from the single glass of wine she'd nursed during the interminably long dinner.

"This man," Shade said after another long swallow, "is he your husband?"

She wasn't wearing a ring, but that didn't necessarily mean she wasn't married. From her ultraconservative clothing, it was possible she belonged to some religious cult that didn't believe in worldly behavior, like wearing jewelry.

"No. I'm not married."

"Divorced?"

"I've never been married." Engaged, perhaps. But that grim little tale had nothing to do with her mission here today. And even if it had, Rachel was not prepared to share one of the more depressing aspects of her too-short life.

Shade's brooding eyes studied her thoughtfully over the rim of his glass. "
Your
lover?"

She blushed at that one. An intriguing flood of pink colored her cheeks appealingly and once again reminded him of one of Raphael's angels.

"No."

"Your father?"

"No."

"You know," he drawled, "we could keep this up all night until we'd worked our way down to your fifteenth cousin on your uncle Merle's side."

"I don't have an uncle Merle."

"Well, that's one down," he said with a wry twist of his mouth. "Which leaves us with innumerable unnamed relatives yet to go."

"I'm sorry. I cannot be more specific."

If he hadn't been so frustrated, Shade knew he would have found it fascinating that such a soft, acquiescent-looking female could possess such an iron will.

He decided to put the question aside, for now. Once Liz came up with Rachel Parrish's bio, he'd know her entire family tree. Along with, as the agent had pointed out, any lovers, past or present.

"Well, whoever the hell the guy is, you must love him a lot."

"I do," she answered without hesitation.

"Enough to risk your own life?"

"In order to save his? Of course. I would do anything for him," Rachel said with renewed fervor. "Anything at all."

Shade wondered what it would be like to be the recipient of the type of unqualified devotion usually—and in his experience, falsely—attributed to dogs.

He'd had a dog once, for a brief time when he lived in Colombia, posing as an unscrupulous former American Airlines pilot eager for some fast bucks. While Shade was busy infiltrating the infamous cocaine cartel, a huge black-and-brown canine of indistinct parentage attached itself to him.

Against his better judgment, Shade had saved the damn whining beast from a fierce monsoon storm, fed it, bathed it, and even managed to round up some tick dip at the local
farmacia
. Six weeks after that, the ungrateful animal ran away. Later, Shade heard his faithless dog had taken up with a BBC reporter.

Something stirred in Shade's gut. Something that felt uncomfortably like envy.

"If I am on my way to Yaznovia, which I'm not saying I am," he qualified brusquely, "what makes you think I'd agree to drag along some helpless, clinging-vine of a female who'd undoubtedly end up getting us both killed?"

Shade wasn't the only one losing patience. Rachel's own temper was beginning to fray. "That's not a very complimentary description."

"In case you hadn't noticed, sweetheart, I'm not in a very complimentary mood."

"Oh, I noticed all right." She was also noticing, to her dismay, how small and delicate the brandy snifter looked in his strong dark hands. A tingle of something both forbidden and exciting danced across her nerve endings. "And I do wish you'd quit referring to me as sweetheart."

Anger turned her eyes a bright and gleaming silver. Shade found such emotion, simmering so very near her proper little exterior, more than a little intriguing. He wondered idly if Sister Rachel might display such passion in bed. "What would you like me to call you?"

She did her best to glare at him. "I'd like you to call me a taxi."

He surprised her by laughing at that. A deep robust laugh that tugged innumerable and horribly dangerous emotional chords within Rachel.

She'd thought she knew everything about Shade Blackstone. Everything, that is, except the unsettling fact that something about this man compelled her on a deep, primitive level.

"I don't know what the hell you're up to, Sister." Unable to resist the way her pale complexion gleamed like pearls in the candlelight, he ran his knuckles in a slow, sensual sweep up the slanted line of her cheekbone. "But I'm beginning to think I'm going to enjoy figuring out your little scheme."