The Fall of Lucas Kendrick (3 page)

“It would raise Martin’s eyebrows,” she said.

For an instant, a heartbeat, Lucas felt a dizzying
sense of déjà vu. He was cold inside. It couldn’t be happening again; she couldn’t be involved in this.… He didn’t want to have to make that kind of choice. Not again. Then the hard-won self-control of years kicked in, and he was calm. “You don’t have an official connection with Rome,” he said coolly. “No engagement, no attention by the press. An affair the society-press watchdogs haven’t sniffed out?”

Kyle looked at him for a moment, expressionless, then said, “Nothing so definite. Let’s just say that Martin doesn’t give up easily, and has two strong beliefs. First, in the power of his own charms, and second in the reliability of erosion from water dropping on stone.”

Lucas felt relieved and hoped it didn’t show. “I see. So he’d be surprised if you showed up with another man. But not terribly surprised?”

“A defensive move on my part, you mean? It’s not my style, but he doesn’t know that. He’d buy it if I turned up for his party with a buffer, I suppose.”

They were silent for long moments, both sipping coffee, neither willing to ask or answer the flat question that had brought him up here to her mountain retreat.

Finally Kyle spoke. “It’s a nice little story, Luc. Is that your real name, by the way?”

“Yes.” He kept his voice even. “Lucas Kendrick.”

She lifted an eyebrow briefly. “It was Lucas Kendall before, wasn’t it? Well, never mind. A nice story. Lots of intrigue. Mysterious government agencies and agents, stolen art, wealthy criminals.”

He had earned that disbelief, he supposed. “Look, do you trust Josh Long’s word?”

“My father does. I’ve never met the man.”

“Josh will vouch for me. And Hagen and the agency. I didn’t want to involve him in this, but I don’t seem to have a choice. Get in touch with him, Kyle, before you make a decision.”

“I will.” Her voice was flat with certainty; obviously she wasn’t about to trust him blindly. Not this time.

Kyle stood by the window and stared out as moonlight painted the stark shapes of mountain scenery. It was dark in the loft, and she had moved with cat-footed softness to the window seat where she often sat. Lucas was sleeping on her couch and the cabin was silent.

She sat down on the cushioned seat and drew her legs up, hugging her knees as she looked out blindly.

Josh Long had vouched for Lucas instantly when she’d called, telling her with utter conviction that she could trust Luc and that he was indeed working for a man named Hagen who ran a secretive—and secret—government agency. He did have to get into Martin Rome’s house, because the man was suspected of possessing stolen artwork purchased from criminals and paid for with illegal guns.

Kyle didn’t doubt Long’s word, and his faith in Lucas had been expressed too firmly to be in
doubt, which left her with a great many disturbing questions.

Josh Long was no fool, and she knew from her father that he rarely erred in his judgment of men. Lucas had worked for him for “a number of years,” and there was clear respect on both sides of that relationship. It was a vote of confidence that would instantly open doors in almost all social or business circles.

But it didn’t—it couldn’t—open Kyle’s door.

She had closed down, put her feelings in a deep freeze, almost the moment she had looked down from her soaring glider and seen the sunlight glinting off his silvery hair. Even at that distance, his features indistinguishable, she had known it was he. And in that first flashing instant she also had known that she had been waiting for him to come back.

It shocked her.

For the first time in her life Kyle had cause to be thankful for a cold, distant mother who had taught her, if nothing else, to keep her emotions buried beneath a serene surface. Her mother
would have been proud of her, she thought now with a pang of bitterness. When her feet had touched solid earth and she’d turned to Lucas, she had obeyed neither of the conflicting emotional reactions battling inside her.

She hadn’t lashed out at him in bitterness, and she hadn’t thrown herself into his arms.

Kyle closed her eyes and leaned her head against cool glass, allowing herself to remember, trying to understand what she felt now and what she had felt then.

Ten years ago he hadn’t seemed much older than she, although he was supposed to have been a senior. She judged him to be in his mid to late thirties now, so she realized he had been older then than he’d pretended to be. Older and charming and heartbreakingly handsome with classical features and blue eyes that were more striking than any she’d ever seen …

She opened her eyes after a moment and caught the silver chain at her throat with one finger, drawing the plain oval locket from its resting place between her breasts. A flick of
her thumbnail opened the locket, and inside was revealed only a single polished stone. It was an opal she’d found in Australia five years ago. An opal that was blue with tiny flecks of yellow.

Like his eyes.

The moonlight streaming through the window picked out only the yellow flecks in the stone, causing them to gleam brilliantly but with no color, and Kyle absently rubbed the stone with her thumb before closing the locket and allowing it to slip back inside her silk pajama top.

Darkness and moonlight obscured colors, she thought. Time was supposed to obscure memories.

Ten years had changed him. He was broader across the shoulders, physically more powerful. His face was leaner, something under the surface of those classical features harder now, tougher. His voice was still low and curiously compelling, but there was, she thought, a shade
of remoteness in it that hadn’t been present a decade before.

Or maybe that was just when he talked to her.

What had he been then? she wondered now, as she had wondered since. And why had he pretended? Why had he masqueraded as a college student? And why, after a night of searing passion when she had given herself to him without reservation, had he vanished while she slept?

Without even leaving a note …

After the first agony had turned to numbness, Kyle had reached for any reason at all to excuse his behavior. He would have had a
reason
, she had decided, a good reason. And that had helped the hurt.

She wondered now, with the same shock as when she’d seen him this afternoon, if she had always really believed in the back of her mind and the deepest part of her heart that he would come back to her someday.

It was a strange shock, a frightening shock,
and Kyle shook away the feeling for a second time. Ridiculous, of course.

She had been different then. Escaping to a large college from the cloying protection of her wealthy family, she had been wild with the reckless need to distance herself from the essentially cold, dignified, and unemotional aspects of her upbringing All her emotions had been dammed by a wall of forced reserve, and when that wall had burst, she had nearly drowned in the floodwaters of release.

Did a woman ever really forget her first lover? Kyle knew only that she would never forget hers—because he was Lucas, and because he had been a part of that glorious period of freedom. She had loved him the way only a woman-child could love a man, with a reckless abandon that scorned possible hurt.

All her caged romanticism had burst forth in that long-ago flood during her first year of college. She had loaded her schedule with poetry and literature and history, and had memorized
every great love poem history boasted. Madly idealistic, she had adopted one cause after another, throwing herself into each with boundless enthusiasm.

And she had fallen in love.

Now, from a distance of ten years, Kyle realized that loving Lucas had been a part of that freedom but not caused by it. She had been ripe for love, but what she had felt for him had not been born of mindless rebellion. It had never occurred to her then or since that he might not have won the approval of her family. She had given him all the pent-up affection and passions of her life, and he had responded. He had loved her in return. She had believed that.

Then.

She hadn’t experienced that kind of freedom again. The skydiving, mountain climbing, hang gliding—none of it had been any more than a series of gestures. Outwardly reckless but with no burning fire of resentment and glorious release blazing behind it, she had been searching for something she could feel deeply about.

For the better part of ten years, she realized with a distant jolt, she had been going through the motions of rebellion and feeling … nothing. Except empty searching.

She could remember vividly the months of college and the weeks with Lucas. Remember feelings so vast, so powerful, that they had overwhelmed her.

And at the end the aching bewilderment of desertion that had, as the days turned into weeks, frozen her inside. With no explanation offered to her, she had made up various excuses for him, and that had kept a girl’s love safely stored intact somewhere inside her. But he was gone; he had vanished from her life without leaving a trace. So she had obeyed her father’s request a few weeks later and left college after a year, going to Europe and the finishing school her family thought proper. Years in limbo. And then a second rebellion, this one outward, while she’d remained frozen inside.

Kyle stared out at the peaceful mountains. Why?
Why?
If only she’d known what had
been behind Lucas’s actions then, perhaps, she could put it all in the past where it belonged. But she had never known, and even then the scope of his deception had bewildered her. He pretended he attended the university; he had a room on campus; he participated in activities. Why? What had been behind all that?

She had wanted desperately to ask him outright. She needed to know what had been more important to him than their feelings for each other. But it had been ten years, and somehow she couldn’t bring herself to ask.

And now, knowing that he was working for a secret government agency, the questions became even more disturbing. Had he been doing something similar then? Both Lucas and Josh Long had made it clear that Lucas was working for Hagen only temporarily; this wasn’t, apparently, the usual sort of job he undertook for Long Enterprises.

She had instinctively trusted Lucas ten years ago, and the results of that betrayal of trust had been devastating. Now he was back in her life,
however briefly, asking for her trust again. Kyle felt more alive and aware than she had in too many years. But she was terribly afraid of trusting him. Afraid of allowing him back into her life. And that had nothing to do with Martin Rome and his alleged criminal activities.

She was afraid Luc would turn her life upside down again and then leave her, with no warning, to pick up the pieces alone. Again.

After she had talked to Josh Long, Lucas had asked for her decision, and she had stalled—there was no other word for it. The party was two weeks away, she’d said, and she wanted to think about it for a day or so. It had not been spelled out that he would remain here in her home until then, but both of them knew he would.

Feeling chilled, Kyle crept back to her bed. She knew why she had stalled. Because she needed time to work up the courage to face him with what had happened ten years ago. It wasn’t possible to pretend to herself it didn’t
matter. She had to understand the series of events that had haunted her since then.

He had said he loved her, and in the morning he had been gone. She had to know why.

The faint sound of the shower woke her, and Kyle listened until she heard Lucas moving about downstairs in the kitchen. Then she rose and dressed, feeling edgy and tense. There was no conscious decision to confront him now, this morning, but when she went downstairs and into the kitchen, finding him leaning against the counter drinking coffee, the words emerged unbidden.

“Why did you leave me?”

And it seemed that he, too, was ready to talk, because he answered immediately.

“You know why.”

“No. I don’t. I’ve never known.”

Lucas gave her a look of disbelief, something hard in his eyes, his jaw tense. “All right, maybe
you didn’t know why. Not completely. But you had to have a damned good idea when you found the suitcase missing. You had to know my leaving was connected to that.”

Kyle shook her head slowly, confused. “Suitcase? What suitcase?”

“Oh, hell, Kyle—the heroin!”

T
HE SUPPRESSED VIOLENCE
of his rough outburst went through Kyle’s body like an icy knife, leaving her numb. And his words made no sense at all.

“Heroin? Luc, what are you talking about?”

His eyes were hard, glittering, his face so wiped of feeling, it was like a mask. And when he answered, his voice was no longer violent but something far worse, because it was as empty as his face. “I’m talking about the suitcase
stuffed full of white powder I found in your closet, Kyle.”

Her mind was anesthetized; she could think of nothing but trivialities. “What were you doing in my closet?”

“Looking. Searching.” His tone became clipped. “Trying to find evidence to clear you.” He lifted his coffee cup in a jerky, mocking toast. “That’s not what I found.”

The gesture focused her scattered thoughts, and she moved automatically to find a cup. Coffee, of course. This would all make sense when she’d had some coffee. She always needed coffee to wake up. She poured some and sipped, barely feeling the pain when she burned her tongue. Then she looked at Lucas and found that coffee didn’t help at all.

She heard a stranger’s voice emerge shakily. “Clear me of what?”

“Selling heroin to other students. Pushing.”

“I didn’t.” Her denial sounded strangely weak and unemphatic to her own ears, just the way an innocent’s denial always sounded when
the accusation was one too wild and horrible even to contemplate.

“I
saw
you, Kyle.” His voice was roughening, the words coming more rapidly. “I had photographs. A dozen times I watched while you met a supplier and exchanged money for drugs. I never saw you pushing, just buying, but you didn’t use the stuff yourself and you were buying it weekly; you had to be pushing. Obviously for kicks, since you didn’t need the money. And I saw you get the suitcase. I
saw
you. A week before. And that night, I had to know. So I looked for it while you were sleeping. And I found it.”