The Fall of Lucas Kendrick (11 page)

“Is he?” Lucas asked in a steady voice.

“No.” For the first time she reached out to him consciously, resting her hand over the
strong one resting on his knee. “He could never be that. No one could ever be that.”

He looked down at her slender hand, a muscle in his jaw flexing, then met her darkened eyes again. “Kyle, don’t say anything you don’t mean.”

She smiled a little. “I won’t. I don’t know where we’ll end up, Luc, I really don’t. But I think I’m falling in love with you. I think I’m falling in love for the first time.”

He went deathly pale suddenly, so suddenly that she was frightened. But before she could speak, Lucas lifted her hand to his cheek and cradled it there.

“I never knew what it meant before now,” he said almost inaudibly.

“What?” she whispered.

“A reprieve from hell.”

Kyle’s throat was aching. She went into his arms and held him as he held her, in a fierce but passionless embrace. He hadn’t let her see it, she realized. He hadn’t let her see how much it meant to him until now.

Raven had been right, she thought, filled with pain. Fallen idols didn’t always shatter. And sometimes they were much taller standing on solid ground.

Kyle watched him across the room, barely hearing the conversations all around her. He looked almost unnervingly formal in the black tuxedo, but the slip of red cummerbund showing just above the button of his jacket looked piratical. His silvery hair gleamed in the bright light of the huge salon, where most of the guests had gathered after dinner. His handsome face was inclined politely as he listened to the woman clutching his arm.

“That woman,” Raven murmured suddenly in Kyle’s ear, “is a piranha with a full set of teeth!”

Kyle sipped her drink, then said, “Uh-huh. I saw Her Highness make a dead set at Josh, What’d you say to her? The venom in the look
she sent you later would have killed ten cobras.”

“What I said—”

“What she said,” Josh said, interrupting smoothly as he appeared beside them, “was in Spanish, thank heaven. Since Rome looked blank, I gather he doesn’t understand the language.”

Kyle shook her head. “He’s tone-deaf and says that makes it impossible for him to speak or understand anything but English. What
did
Raven say to her?”

“You’re too young to hear it.” Josh looked reflective. “I’m too young, in fact.”

“You speak Spanish?” Kyle asked him curiously.

“He speaks it like a native,” Raven told her. “So do I. Her Highness, however, does not.”

Mildly Josh said, “She claims to be a reincarnated member of the Aztec race, remember? Not necessarily Spanish in this life or familiar with the conquistadores in her previous one.”

“But she understood you?” Kyle asked.

“Oh, she understood,” Raven smiled gently. “It was very basic, gutter Spanish. And she responded in kind, but her retort was halting, mispronounced, and entirely too formally constructed. She’s had lessons—and recently.”

Josh looked up to see Lucas and Princess Zamara approaching and murmured, “Darling, please restrain yourself, all right? We don’t want to get thrown out of here.”

Raven slipped her arm through his and said softly, “Of course, darling. But if she starts stroking your lapel again, I’m going to draw blood.”

Kyle nearly laughed, but her humor fled when she looked into malicious black eyes.

“Princess” Zamara was a woman in her early thirties—perhaps. And there seemed little question that Latin blood of some kind ran in her veins. Apart from those reasonable assumptions, any certainty about her background and intentions was pretty much a matter for speculation.

She was five-foot-nothing and teetering on
six-inch spike heels to make up for the lack of height, which gave her a dandy excuse to cling to the arm of any man she could latch on to—if she needed an excuse, which quite obviously she did not. Rome’s guests were dressed formally, and Zamara was showing off her best, which tonight was a glittering silver sheath with a neckline that plunged all the way to her navel and a slit up the front of the tight skirt that nearly met the neckline. Her black hair was dressed in a Gypsy-wild mass of long curls; she wore huge teardrop emeralds in her earlobes, while a third dangled between her voluptuous breasts; and silver bangles dressed each wrist in noisy profusion.

There was an earthy sexuality about the woman, an aura of animal passion that was easily noticed even by the women in the room. While the men generally seemed to be attracted in varying degrees to Zamara, every one of the women was suspicious of an accent that came and went, and a nasty feline habit of stroking male lapels.

Kyle, watching the supposed royal personage advancing toward her on Lucas’s arm, examined her own feelings and found no jealousy there. And she didn’t feel threatened by the other woman, except in a very basic way. She had the notion that Zamara was more dangerous to life and limb than to matters of the heart.

She hadn’t had the doubtful pleasure of being introduced to the princess yet, and Kyle could see that Zamara was bent on just that. It seemed a favorite tactic of hers, clinging to a man’s arm while that man introduced her to his wife or lover or friend.

Kyle winked slowly at Lucas, and the faint look of anxiety on his face eased somewhat. She was increasingly fascinated by this new version of the man, both moved and astonished to find that he was so unsure of himself right now. Whether it was the new delicacy of the bonds being forged between them or his memory of what lay behind them, Lucas was clearly concerned that no more misunderstandings or deceptions would exist between them.

But he didn’t have to worry about Zamara, Kyle thought, making a mental note to tell him so as soon as possible. She felt no more threatened by the woman than Raven did, but she was aware of sensitive hairs rising on the nape of her neck. And whatever else her heritage had given her, it had also provided the blood of generations of aristocratic noblemen and women who had perfected the social art of dealing with phonies.

Lucas introduced Kyle to the princess, reaching out to take her hand and acting as if the red-tipped grasp on his other arm didn’t exist. Subtlety was lost on Zamara, however. She continued to hold Lucas possessively with one hand while the other gently stroked his lapel.

“I remember you!” she told Kyle throatily, her accent no more than a faint overlay of rhythm that came and went. “You were a handmaiden at my court.”

Kyle smiled, her gaze drifting to those red-tipped fingers curled over Lucas’s arm. She studied the possessive hand for a fleeting moment,
then looked back at Zamara’s face without losing her smile. “Was I really?” she said politely. “I hope I didn’t spill anything on you.”

Loftily Zamara said, “Oh, no, my dear, but you were terribly clumsy. Sacrificed, of course, and such a pity. No woman should have to die a virgin.”

In a very soft voice Kyle murmured something in a language that Lucas, Josh, and Raven didn’t understand. But Zamara’s eyes flickered. Without losing her own smile, she glanced across the room, found Martin Rome, and excused herself regally to totter off in his direction.

“What did you say to her?” Raven asked curiously.

Kyle’s smile had faded as she watched the other woman move away. “Hmmm? Oh, I just said that what you miss in one life you tend to find in another.”

“What language was that?” Josh asked. “It sounded familiar.”

“Know any Greek tycoons?” she asked him dryly.

Lucas was gazing down at Kyle, frowning a little. “She’s Greek, then?”

“I’d say so. I saw a ring like the one she was wearing in Greece, and I wanted to find out if she knew the language. She does, definitely.” Kyle shook her head suddenly. “Dammit, I bet I’ve put her on guard.”

“Maybe not,” Raven said thoughtfully. “That woman would bring out the cat in a saint, and for all she knows, Greek is just your second language. She may not know she gave herself away.”

Lucas looked at Josh, who shrugged and said, “I don’t know, but I think they’re ahead of us somehow.”

“Clue us in?” Lucas requested of Kyle.

“She’s just too bad to be real, Luc,” Kyle told him.

“So? We figured she was a phony going in.”

“I know, and we pretty much discounted her because of it. Maybe she just means to become
Mrs. Martin Rome and all this overblown, mystical drama is part of it, but I think we’d better keep an eye on Her Highness. She’s dangerous.”

“Definitely,” Raven agreed.

“All right,” Josh said. “Since we planned to split up, anyway, Raven and I will keep Rome and the princess busy. You two circulate for a while, then ease out and case the joint.”

“My husband, the professional thug,” Raven murmured. “Darling, your language is deteriorating fast.”

“I got the point across, didn’t I?”

Chuckling, Lucas watched them stroll away, then looked down at Kyle. “I’ve gotten some very speculative looks,” he offered. “Nobody’s asked, but I gather they’re surprised that you turned up with a man.”

She stood on tiptoe to kiss him lightly, then said, “I never have before. They’ll stop being surprised, though, if we—um—pull out the stops and chew the scenery.”

Lucas tried to ignore his pulse’s leaping response
to the meaning behind her words. Carefully he said, “There’s nothing I’d rather do than give in to that suggestion. I’m sure it would put any suspicions about us to rest, but I’m
not
sure it’s at all wise right now.”

Kyle placed her glass on the tray of a passing maid, then slid her arms around his waist and stepped closer. “Afraid of moving too fast?” she murmured, smiling.

His hands came to rest on her upper back, and the bare warmth of her flesh woke up slumbering desires with a vengeance. She was wearing a black evening gown that was strapless and practically backless, apparently held in place by her own will since it defied every law of gravity. She wore no jewelry and needed none; her hair was piled atop her head in a loose style that made her appear amazingly fragile; and her enigmatic turquoise eyes looked even deeper and more mysterious than usual.

Lucas found that his fingers were moving just a little against the silky texture of her skin, and he knew that his willpower was a breath away
from disappearing completely. “Kyle, I won’t have to act to make it obvious how much I want you.” He kept his voice low, searching the riddle of her eyes with what had become an obsessive need. “Hell, I couldn’t hide it if I had to. I just don’t know how much more I can stand—and I don’t want to ruin things by rushing you.”

“I don’t feel rushed,” she said softly. “And I don’t know how much more I can stand, either.”

He groaned. “I wish we were somewhere else.”

“We’re not, though.” Her smile was suddenly a whimsical expression, a fleeting bit of magic. “But it doesn’t really matter, does it? Now come on. I want to introduce you to a few of these people so they’ll know you aren’t just something handsome I’m wearing on my arm.”

His work for Long Enterprises was behind the scenes, and since much of his value to the company lay in his anonymity, Lucas wasn’t accustomed to mixing socially with the wealthy,
powerful circles into which both Josh and Kyle had been born. But he was as adaptable as a chameleon, and he had no difficulty in holding his own with this crowd. Instinctively he found the right responses, the correct smiles, the perfect blend of relaxed courtesy.

Only vaguely aware of his own easy charm, and almost wholly occupied with his feelings for Kyle, Lucas wasn’t even conscious that he was making a good impression, and, if he had been, he wouldn’t have cared. He had eyes only for Kyle, and so he missed the guardedly approving glances from many of the other guests.

For her part, and in some subtle manner that fascinated Lucas even as it inflamed him, Kyle behaved like a woman in love. There was nothing overt, no feline stroking or sultry looks such as Princess Zamara employed. Her hand rested lightly in the crook of his arm in a manner that was curiously unpossessive.

And yet, when she spoke to him, her voice was elusively lower and slightly husky. The turquoise color of her eyes looked darker, deeper.
Her glances were intimate without in any way being suggestive. And though she didn’t brush up against him physically, touching only his arm, she managed to make him vividly aware of her body with no more than the fluid grace of its movements.

Lucas didn’t have to pretend that he was utterly beguiled and wanted her desperately. When they had circulated around the room for some minutes, he didn’t have to exaggerate his intentions when he guided her smoothly out of the salon.

Kyle took the lead as soon as they were out in the hallway, moving with some haste toward the back of the house.

“Where are you taking me?” he murmured, hoping for a room with a lock on the door. Any room.

“The library,” she answered, sounding a bit distracted. “There’s something I want to look for. And I think Martin’s safe is in that room.”

Lucas thought about that as they turned off one corridor and onto another. Then he said, “What makes you think I can open a safe?”

“Can’t you?”

“Yes. But what made you think I could?”

“A hunch. Maybe I’ve read too many books about private investigators.”

“I hope this house isn’t bugged,” he mused.

Kyle smothered a laugh. “No, I don’t think so. But all the paintings are wired with security devices, the trophy room and library are locked tight every night, and four guards with dogs patrol outside after the house is shut up.”

Lucas winced, even as he wondered how he had managed to divide his mind between his job and the powerful urge to yank Kyle into the nearest room and barricade the door. “Dogs? I hope Kelsey knows about that.”

“If the house has been under surveillance, he knows. Martin doesn’t make a secret of the guards.”

In Lucas’s divided thoughts, business suddenly
took a backseat. “You look lovely tonight,” he said. “Always, but especially tonight.”

Kyle looked up at him as she guided him into a dark room. “Thank you,” she murmured. The door closed behind them, and she heard the click of the lock. “Um … Luc? Shouldn’t we be looking for something to help us?”