THE PERFECT TARGET (12 page)

"You're not like the others," she told him.

"What others?"

"The other men my father has sent to shadow me. The other agents. They always treated me like a disobedient child."

A distorted sound broke from his throat. Frowning, he broke eye contact and quite openly surveyed the length of her body.

"You're not a child,
bella.
I'd have to be deaf, dumb, and blind not to notice that."

And she'd have to be made of cold hard stone not to feel the heat of his gaze.

"I'm not sure my father realizes that," she said, ignoring her reaction to him. Soon they would part. Maybe in only a matter of hours. They were as different as shadow and light, she longing to try out her own wings, he content to take orders from others. No matter how tempting it was to ignore caution and explore the attraction between them, she had only to think of her sister Elizabeth, and of Hawk, to drive home how devastating that kind of carelessness could be.

She winced at the memory of Hawk going down, refused to think of it quite yet. She'd have to tell Elizabeth…

"I'm twenty-eight years old," she said, looking over the ocean. The blue stretched on forever, fading in color as it melted into the horizon. "Many women are married and raising a couple of kids by my age. But I feel like my life has just begun. I've gone to college, gotten a couple of degrees, worked for the Carrington Foundation, but…"

"But what?"

It was difficult to put into words. "When I was a little girl, my mother had matching outfits made for me and my sisters. Mom took us everywhere like that, in velvets and lace and silk. She thought it was the image people wanted to see of the Carrington family, nice and tidy, pristine." Her mother had commissioned countless photographs and even a painting of her girls dressed in everything from matching red velvet to frilly pink.

After Kristina's death, those pictures had brought both smiles and tears.

"But Mom never understood playing dress-up didn't change who we were inside." Kris had been the best and the brightest, Ellie the peacekeeper, Miranda the free spirit. "We could be made to dress alike, but we weren't alike. All the clothes in the world can't change who someone is, deep inside. That's the way I feel about my life, so far. I've done the so-called right things, but none of them have rung true for me. None of them have felt right."

"And that's why you became Astrid Van Dyke?" Sandro asked quietly.

The observation pierced deep, bringing with it an ancient ache. Whereas many of her friends had dreamed of big fancy weddings and sprawling houses in the country, Miranda had always dreamed of one thing, and one thing only. Freedom.

Longing for a normal life, she'd lifted her chin and pasted on a smile, protecting the thirst to live that fluttered inside her like a butterfly trying to escape a mason jar.

"I love my family with all my heart," she said, looking at Sandro. Once, she'd been bitter. With time, acceptance had set in. "But growing up a Carrington was complicated, especially after my sister Kristina died. There were expectations. Requirements. Restrictions. People would say my family had the world at our fingertips, but it's a world I knew nothing about. That's why I became Astrid. To experience the world outside the Carrington safety net. To see new places and meet new people, to taste different foods and hear new music."

"And have you?"

"These past few months have been the best of my life, everything I ever dreamed, and more. That's why I started taking pictures along the way." To record and capture, to share with others upon her return. To make a difference, in her own way. "The world's an incredibly big place, beautiful in so many ways, but horrible in others. I think it's important to see beyond our own boundaries, our blinders."

Sandro frowned. "Sometimes,
bella,
boundaries and blinders are in place for a reason."

The words were gentle, but they pummeled like stones. "Now you sound like my father."

"And that disappoints you?"

"He means well, I know that. He loves me, but he's never understood me. Just because I don't want to go into law or politics like everyone else in my family doesn't mean I'm a failure. I have goals just like everyone else. Dreams."

Sandro's eyes darkened. He stepped closer, his body blocking the wind blowing off the ocean. "What does a woman like you dream of, Miranda? What do you see when you lie in the dark and close your eyes?"

Her throat closed up on her. Her dreams had always been simple, tame. Until last night. Sleep had eluded her there in the dark hotel room, forcing her to watch Sandro pace the small room, gun in hand. But when she'd finally dropped off, he'd been waiting for her in that darkness, too.

But he hadn't been pacing.

"Miranda?" he asked now, his voice barely registering above the roar of the ocean. His hands were on her shoulders. "What is it? What's wrong?"

Swallowing hard, she looked up and met eyes as dark and mercurial as midnight. And then she stepped over the edge.

"Last night I dreamed of you."

Chapter 6

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A
cool wind whipped off the ocean and tangled Miranda's hair. There was color to her cheeks, fire to her eyes. She had her chin tilted, her shoulders squared. Behind her, the incoming tide turned the waves crashing against the cliff increasingly violent.

Sandro had never seen a more provocative sight.

Or one more dangerous.

Everything about her screamed defiance, that tough facade she tacked up so effectively, and yet, for the first time, vulnerability seeped through.

It was the vulnerability that alarmed him.

"You dreamed of me?" he asked, clearing his throat. The hoarse rasp had nothing to do with the explosion that had permanently damaged his vocal chords five years before. His imagination held that right, the immediate images of what kind of role he might have in Miranda Carrington's dreams.

She pushed the hair from her face, just as he'd done a few minutes before. "Nightmare might be a better description."

He swore softly, instinctively turning to scan the rocky area behind them. Few cars traveled the road, and Sandro knew even if
someone did see them, his loud Hawaiian shirt and her blue smock-top would label them as nothing more than tourists. But caution demanded they keep moving.

"I'm not going to let anything happen to you," he said, returning his attention to her.

She looked at the gun in his hand. "I believe you."

"Then why the nightmare?"

"Not all nightmares have to do with violence," she said, and her eyes met his. "There are other things that scare people."

"Yes," he agreed slowly, "there are." Fate and destiny and inevitability, men like General Zhukov and the minions who carried out his dirty work. Small hotel rooms and squeaky beds and noisy showers, soft skin and luminous green eyes capable of drowning a man. Smiles and laughter and promises. Tears.

Choices.

"Come on," he almost growled, "we should head back." He turned to leave, but she put a hand to his forearm.

"What happens next, Sandro? Where do we go from here?"

The question stopped him cold. There were many places he wanted to go, only a few he could. "We've got another few hours of driving ahead of us."

"That's all?" she asked softly.

If he was lucky. "That's enough."

* * *

The road wound away from the beach and up a mountain, curving, climbing, narrowing. Every now and then a tour bus teetered past them at an alarming speed on the way to some unknown destination. There was more vegetation here, the trees taller, the undergrowth thicker. Semi-tropical flowers in vibrant shades of yellow and orange and red added splashes of color.

Sandro drove relentlessly, hour after hour, stopping only once to allow Miranda a breath of fresh air. He took her on a short walk through the woods, where what looked to be a crumbling stone turret rose from the middle of a small pond, guarded by two black swans. The second Miranda rounded the corner, she understood why he'd suggested she take her camera.

"It's beautiful," she whispered, then broke from him and hurried to the side of the murky water. Tangled vines fought their way up the crumbling, moss-covered stones and clung to the sides of the round structure. Not much sun cut through the dense vegetation, but the few rays that seeped through created a haunting study of shadow and light.

"What is it?" she asked, raising her camera.

Sandro joined her. "The locals say it's magical."

She adjusted her aperture setting. "It looks lost."

"Lost?"

"Lonely," she clarified, going down on a knee and trying to find the angle that best captured the play of shadow and light. "Like someone plucked it from the side of a castle and dropped it here in the middle of nowhere."

The theory made no sense, but she could think of no other reason for the structure to be in the middle of the small pond.

"Maybe someone built it right there," Sandro said. His voice was quiet, thoughtful. "Maybe it was a prison of some sorts."

"Or maybe an escape," Miranda mused. The structure had what looked to be a door and several rectangular holes that could have been windows toward the top. The romantic in her imagined some lovely maiden, escaping an oppressive castle and coming down to her reflecting pond, where she could be alone with herself.

Or a lover.

Smiling at the thought, Miranda snapped several shots, then stood and held her breath, waiting for the two graceful swans to converge in front of the crumbling stone.

She'd never seen a black swan before.

The air was cooler here beneath the thick canopy of trees, quieter. No sounds permeated from the road, only the occasional rustle of the wind or wail of a bird.

At her side Sandro stood with one hand in his pocket, the other holding his semiautomatic. Whereas she'd managed to find a swath of sunlight in which to stand, only a few inches away, he stood in the shadows he seemed to favor. His gaze was distant, focused on some point across the small body of water.

Miranda's breath caught. Her heart started to thrum low and deep. Slowly, she turned her camera toward him, not wanting to disturb the stillness.

"What the hell are you doing?" He had the camera out of her hands and into his own before she realized he'd even moved.

She stared at him, felt herself step backward. "I was just taking your picture," she told him, unnerved by his swift and near-violent reaction. From the fierce glitter in his eyes, if she hadn't known better, she would have thought she'd pulled a gun on him. "A picture, Sandro, that's all."

"I don't do pictures." He turned and headed back toward the road. "Come on, let's go. Sightseeing's over."

The hurt came swift and unexpected. She watched him stride away, didn't understand how or why the calm had shattered.

"Are you coming?" he barked over his shoulder.

"I don't do commands," she bit out, mimicking his curt words of moments before. It was all she could do not to put her hands on her hips.

He stopped abruptly, but didn't turn. He looked up toward the sky in what appeared to be silent prayer, then down at his feet. Only then did he turn to face her. "I don't do pictures and you don't do commands. Considering you're a photographer and I'm a soldier, I'm not sure where that leaves us."

For some insane reason, she smiled. "Stuck in the middle of nowhere, it looks like."

The mouth that had been a forbidding line only moments before slowly cracked into a grin. He hooked the strap of her camera over his shoulder, then extended his hand. "Please, then. Please come back to the car with me."

Miranda looked at him standing there, that kooky Hawaiian shirt covering his chest and the lethal weapon in his hand, with the smile of a little boy and the midnight eyes of a fully grown man, and realized the danger facing her stemmed from far more than just a demented general with a thirst for revenge.

Sandro, the man sent to protect her, might well be the one to do her in.

* * *

"Wow."

Miranda stepped into the semidarkened building, where seemingly endless rows of huge oak barrels lay on their sides, lining the walls. The air was cooler here, slightly moist. Musty. Almost forgotten. Stonework covered the floor, thick wooden beams stretched the length of the ceiling.

"What is this place?" she asked, but when she turned, Sandro had moved away from her. Gun in hand, he kept his back to the wall and moved without making sound, weaving between the massive casks. He turned toward her with a finger to his mouth, clearly commanding her to be quiet.

She could do that. Had, in fact, been doing that ever since they left the pond with the swans. Sandro had barely spoken to her, becoming more and more like one of her father's men with each mile they drove.

Hours had passed, the curving mountain road giving way to a verdant valley, where late-afternoon sun shimmered down on gnarled olive trees and endless rows of grapes. There they turned off the two-lane road and onto what could scarcely be called more than a dirt path.

Quinta de Madeira,
the sign had read, and Miranda's mouth had instantly started to water. The Madeira label boasted the finest
vhinos
in all of Portugal.
Tinto,
just as she preferred.

"We're buying wine?" she'd asked, confused, to which Sandro had barely cut her a glance.

"No, we're spending the night."

After about five minutes they'd reached a fork in the road, one path leading toward an ancient but well-preserved stone farmhouse, the other toward what looked to be storage buildings.

"Friends of yours?" she'd asked.

But acting more like Hawk by the second, Sandro had answered with only a few barked words. "Close enough."

The path leading from the house brought them to a gravel parking lot where, just beyond, a whitewashed stone building with no windows and only one door awaited. The wraparound porch seemed like an afterthought, the rocking chairs like window dressing.