Hope's Folly (43 page)

IMPERIAL SECURITY BULLETIN 76934-X2M:

Encryption Level Aldan 1/Top Secret

Immediate Action Required:

Guthrie's ship was confirmed entering the C-6 gate at Seth. He must be apprehended at gate exit. Failure is not an option. This bulletin self-destructs in thirty seconds.

Philip was still holding her hand. The door closed as Welford left, muttering something about checking on Martoni, and Philip was still holding her hand. Rya couldn't look at him, hadn't looked at him for most of the brief ceremony. Only when she'd said, “I do,” and then she had to look quickly away because she felt her face heating, her heart racing, and her mouth going dry.

She was married to Philip Guthrie, her long-lost always-forever dream hero—because he needed someone to accept transfer of his financial accounts. If it wasn't so damned sensible, so very Philip Guthrie, she would have thought it was a joke. Or that he had some bizarre ulterior motive.

But it was sensible. Her parents—her last ties to the Empire—were dead. She was an Alliance citizen, unquestionably. But Philip was a Guthrie—they were an old Imperial family with lots of old Imperial money. Money that, upon Philip's death, would go back to his family in the Empire.

The only way to ensure those funds stayed in the Alliance was to establish an Alliance family. A legal tie.

Her. Mrs. Rya Guthrie.

Holy slagging mother of God. She was married.

The room suddenly seemed a little too bright. She swayed, her head spinning.

“Rya?” He released her hand and grabbed her shoulders, concern written in the downward angle of his brows.

“It's okay. It's just, I just … ” She sucked in a long breath, then another.
Breathe, idiot. It's just a stress reaction.

He murmured something unintelligible and leaned back against his desk, pulling her into his arms, tucking her head under his chin.

No, no, this is not where she wanted this to go, this is not what she wanted to do right now. She had to get those security consoles working. Then she had to trank him and take the Norlack back. And that plasma star while she was at it. That would come in handy, if she could figure out how to use it. Maybe there was time for him to teach her …

“Better now?” His mouth brushed her ear.

She closed her eyes with a sigh, letting his warmth envelop her. He smelled good. He felt good. He was her—

No. Don't think that. Don't think the H-word.

He was her commanding officer. She was doing her duty. Part of a mission to stop Tage. That's all.

She angled back as far as his embrace let her. “Yes, sir. Fine, sir. I need to get back to work.” She chanced a glance at him, panicked, and chose to stare over his shoulder at his deskscreen. A text transcript of the ship's record filled the screen, delineating a marriage ceremony, Acting Captain Constantine Welford pre siding.

He put his fingers under her chin, lifting her face back to his. “It's that damned impending doom,” he whispered. His mouth closed over hers, his kiss gentle, searching, but he was not going to give up and—
damn him, damn him
—she didn't want him to.

She returned his kiss, the hands she'd fisted against his chest opening, moving to his shoulders. Then her arms encircled his neck, because she wanted the decadent luxury of kissing him, tasting him, opening herself to him, now.

He was insane. She was insane. But for the next few minutes, she didn't want to care about that. She didn't want to think about anything other than the sensations that erupted in her body because Philip was kissing her, touching her.

His deskscreen pinged.

He broke their kiss with a low growl. She stepped back, chilled, but with reality coming in hard at the same time. That she and Philip could have any kind of functional romantic relationship was pure fantasy. That they'd even live beyond the next full shipday was questionable.

He slid into his seat, the fingers of his left hand loosely threaded through hers as he tapped on the screen. He gave an absent tug, pulling her closer, but she took her hand out of his. This wasn't the time. And there wasn't time. She felt more awkward than she had since she was a small child, and just as confused.

He glanced over his shoulder. She was already backing up. “You have work to do. So do I.”

“Rya—”

“Send whatever account numbers, whatever I need to know, to my cabin deskscreen. A copy to Welford might be a good idea too.” She was almost to the door. “He can encrypt them.”

She hit the palm pad, then fled into the corridor before her body—insane traitor that it was—let her change her mind.

The pinging on Philip's deskscreen was a summons to engineering. Sparks wanted to show him an idea he had about reconfiguring the lasers. So Philip took the lift down to Deck 5, still tasting Rya's kisses on his lips and knowing that if he hadn't lost his sanity, he had seriously misplaced it. There were, obviously, other legal ways to ensure the security of funds in transit to him in the Alliance other than by marrying Rya Bennton and designating her as his legal heir. But none of those ways was so immediately available—or so eminently desirable. Or seemed so right, such an easy way to do something for someone who'd lost so much. Because of Philip.

Setting up a complex trust structure—which admittedly he should have done weeks ago, when he worked with Sullivan and Chaz on the financial issues—could have been another option, but there wasn't a barrister on board now. Of course, he probably could ask Rya's boyfriend … what was his name—

Rya's boyfriend. Her sudden panic, her obvious discomfort, replayed before his eyes.

Having sex with her commanding officer was one thing. Marrying him was another. Especially when she'd been living with Matthew whatever-his-name-was for almost two years.

Damn, he'd forgotten about that.

You really are a galactic-class ass, Guthrie.

But she crawled into your bed easily enough.

Impending doom. A shipboard fling. Happens all the time.
Well, he didn't have them, but he knew lots of officers and crew who did.
She could lie about sleeping with her CO. She can't lie to Boyfriend the Barrister when she's accepting funds in the name of her late husband.

He stepped through the doors of engineering, feeling very much the fool. And angry at himself for hurting Rya. Again.

“Skipper! Take a look.” Sparks waved him over to a far console in engineering.

Philip pushed harder against his cane as he crossed the gray decking, but the exertion did little to dampen his growing foul mood. He nodded to Vange, one of Sparks's top techs, but others working at consoles or tapping data into the large hologrid boards suspended in front of the sublight drives were familiar faces with unknown names. There hadn't been time to get to know his crew as he should have. As he wanted to.

He already knew Rya far too well.

“Think I can get us a little more range and a little more power,” Sparks said.

Philip leaned on the edge of the console, pushed the problem of Rya Bennton from his mind, and studied the data. He owed Sparks his full attention.

“Only the portside laser banks,” Sparks was saying, “but that's good, in a way. We fire on 'em first with the starboard banks, showing how short our range is. So then they're not afraid to move in closer. And, bang, we hit 'em when they're not even expecting it.”

“If they don't ram a torpedo down our throat first,” Philip said, but the data was encouraging. “We're only going to get one good chance. After that, they'll retreat and return fire.”

“We have to try, Skipper.” Sparks lowered his voice. “I'm not letting you get in that pod. Chaz would kill me.”

Philip patted the shorter man on the shoulder. “You're a good man, Commander Sparkington. Let's hope it won't come to that.”

“It won't come to that,” Sparks repeated. “But, look, maybe if we adjust this amplification factor a little more … ”

An hour later, once again amazed at the miracles Sparks could work—even if he didn't think this one could save them—Philip trudged down the corridor to the lifts. He stopped, seeing the stairwell in the distance and knowing beyond that was the machine shop where Mather and Rya had fought. But no cat came running this time, a familiar dark-blue beret in its mouth.

And there was no Rya who needed rescuing.

Truth was, Rya didn't need him at all.

But, selfishly, he needed her. There were others on board he knew better than he knew Rya, and there were others on board he'd known longer. But there wasn't anyone on board he
connected
with as he connected with Rya.

He exited the lift on Deck 3. It was main-shift dinnertime. She might be in her cabin or she might be in the mess. Either way, he thought a wedding-night dinner was in order. He might be able to find out more about Barrister Boyfriend. Allay any fears she had that he meant in any way to upset her life.

Truth was, he just needed to be with her right now. Tomorrow was coming up much too quickly. And life seemed colder than the frosty temperatures that haunted this deck as if space itself leaked in through unseen fissures in the bulkhead.

Her cabin number was 8, another gray door in a series of gray doors. He tapped the palm pad, then once again, but there was no answer. Crew passed him by, saluting, some adding, “Sir.” He thought of Rya. When she said “sir” was when the trouble started.

He headed for the mess hall and, when he didn't see her beret or brown curls, sought out a deskscreen. It wasn't a crew-locator system, but it was something. He tapped in a message—
Come find me for dinner … PG
—then amended it to add
I'm buying,
because it seemed less an order, more friendly. He sent it to her cabin screen and her security console on the bridge. She did say she had work to do.

But she wasn't on the bridge or in divisionals. She never came to his office.

And he wasn't going to chase her down any further. There was work to be done.

He just would have preferred to do some of it with her by his side.

He ended up pulling a bowl of soup from the processor in his quarters’ small galley and sharing it with the cat.

Helluva last meal.

He realized it quite likely was.

It wasn't any specific sound that woke Philip hours later. If anything, it was the absence of sound where it should have been. There was the slightest movement of air, which should have been the result of something that caused a sound.

There was no sound.

Suddenly he knew why.

He grabbed the wrist coming toward him. No hesitation, no thought. Just instinct. Survival. A hand at his throat meant death. He could return the favor.

He yanked, twisting, using his weight and the weight of his attacker. Knee up, one leg kicking out. A body tumbled over his, landing hard in the middle of the bed with the first sound he heard: a pained exhalation. A heartbeat later Philip had the attacker's arms up and pinned at the wrists. A knee in the gut made sure escape was not an option.

“Lights on,” he barked, narrowing his eyes because the initial flare could be painful.

But not half as painful as the anger now blazing at him from a pair of hazel eyes. Her breathing was rapid and harsh, her face was flushed. He could see her jaw clenching. He'd made stronger, larger men gasp in pain from his counterattacks.

She just glared at him, brown curls in disarray against his light-gray blanket.

He moved his knee quickly off her abdomen, straddling her. He didn't release her wrists. There was a hypo in her fingers. Conflicting emotions surged through him.

“You're late, Mrs. Guthrie,” he told her, noticing how her breasts strained against the front of her uniform shirt and her lips thinned. God, he wanted to kiss her even now. Even if she was trying to kill him. “You missed dinner.”

She glared at him a moment longer, then her gaze flicked down his naked body and up again. “The mess hall has a dress code.” Her voice was breathy, but he doubted it was his undressed state that caused that.

He chuckled harshly. “I was thinking of eating in. With you as dessert.” He raked her with the same thorough appraisal she'd used on him. Then he jerked his chin up toward the cylinder in her right hand. “I take it that's not whipped cream?”

The defiant look left her face and she closed her eyes briefly. “I was positive you were asleep—”

“I was.”

“Then how did you hear me?”

“Rya.” His voice was a low growl of frustration. “I wrote the damned training manual.”

She frowned slightly. “Where did I screw up?”

“Tell me what's in the hypo. Then I'll be glad to critique your technique.”

“Oh, that. Same thing I shot you full of in the shuttle. Generic trank. Just enough to make you sleep through the jumpgate.”

So that Imperial agents could take over this ship? She'd have to trank out more than just him. Or so that he couldn't use his personal surrender as a diversion? He leaned harder against her wrists. “Why should I believe you?”

“You shouldn't. If I were your security chief, I'd insist you have it tested.”

“You are my security chief.”

“Only until you transfer me to the
Nowicki.”

Her transfer. Maybe nothing to do with the Imperials at all. “How did you—”

“ Folly-cat was missing. I had to find him before Mather did.” She arched her back slightly as she spoke. It was clear she didn't like being pinned, arms over her head. He liked it just fine, but her wriggling was causing a reaction in his anatomy. “Your office was one of the first places I looked. My transfer was on your deskscreen.”

“Puncturing me is your revenge?”

She snorted softly. “That would really convince you to rescind the transfer.” She lowered the pitch of her voice. “Thanks for knocking me out cold, Subbie. Please stay.”

“Your impersonation skills are severely lacking.” But her other skills weren't. She was wriggling again and his body was responding again. He tightened his grip on her wrists, very aware of her Carver at his knee. And God only knew what else in various places on her body.