Aces High Part 5

"You want me," he stated bluntly. "And it's real, Trina."

"Yes." Her voice was soft. "But is pa.s.sion all? Is it all we're both feeling? If you want only that-"

"What?" His eyes were glittering with a hard light. "You'll spread your legs willingly, sweet? Throw the dog a bone so he'll stop yapping in your ears?"

She stepped back jerkily.

Immediately Skye said, "Dammit, I didn't mean-" He broke off, flus.h.i.+ng.

Katrina was so angry she couldn't speak for a moment, and when she forced the words out, her voice was deceptively mild. "If you want to search this house with all the lights on, the switch is over there on the wall. I'll go check out the big Ferris wheel." She turned and walked out the door.

Dane was up unusually early, and he was already wearing his gambler's costume as he wandered through the park. He knew his restlessness was due partly to Skye; despite his casual att.i.tude the previous night, Dane hadn't been deceived into believing that his brother's troubles were all behind him. The wounds men and women inflict on each other rarely heal quickly, and Skye's own impatience when it came to getting what he wanted was apt to make him act before thinking.

Because those insights were much on his mind as he walked, Dane's first glimpse of the beautiful woman sitting near the Ferris wheel was accompanied by an almost instinctive recognition.

Katrina.

Skye had said little about her since the tragedy of Germany, but Dane remembered his brother's letter announcing his marriage more than six years before. And he had no doubt, as he walked toward her, that this woman with the long, wild red curls and amber cat's eyes was Skye's ex-wife.

She was mad as h.e.l.l, too, he realized, noting the sparks in those yellow eyes and the firm set of her lips. He wondered what she would make of him, and curiosity as well as the desire to help his brother if he could made up his mind to meet her now.

She looked up as he neared, her eyes widening and then narrowing swiftly, both startled and speculative. And when she spoke, her faintly husky, surprisingly gentle voice was at odds with the lingering temper in her gaze. "You're Dane."

He smiled, stopping before her. "Yes. And you're Katrina."

She looked him up and down with a total lack of self-consciousness. "Identical," she said wryly. "I couldn't believe it when he told me."

"I'm told it's a bit hard to get used to," he offered.

It had taken Katrina almost an hour to check the structure and all the cars of the Ferris wheel, and she was still furious when she had finally sat down on a bench near the ride. Now, looking up at the almost mirror-image of Skye- there was a mustache, but it didn't make Dane look very different-she tried to control her still boiling anger. "He's told you about me, I see."

"Oh, yes," Dane answered mildly. His smile held a softer charm than Skye's, and his voice was lazier.

She studied him curiously, surprised to feel Instantly comfortable with him. There was none of the p.r.i.c.kling awareness she felt around Skye, and something told her that this brother had a great deal more patience and perhaps more kindness in him. "You and Skye are very different, aren't you?"

"Very," he agreed, still smiling but with a serious gleam in his eye. Then, sympathetically, he added, "My brother can be a difficult man at times. I don't mean to be nosy, but since you're obviously mad as h.e.l.l, I gather you two have had a fight?"

It wasn't in Katrina's nature to confide easily, but she was so angry that didn't seem to matter. Remembering Skye's crude words, she winced. "You could say that."

"He has a touchy temper," Dane said in a judicious tone, "and he doesn't always stop to think before he speaks." Then, quietly, he said, "Especially when his heart is involved."

Katrina looked away from those forceful eyes. It was another difference between the brothers, she realized. In Dane, that amazingly strong life force was confined in his eyes, but in Skye it was diffused throughout his entire powerful body. She tried a laugh that didn't quite come off. "He obviously hasn't told you everything if you believe his heart's involved."

"He didn't have to tell me," Dane said simply.

Torn between the need for rea.s.surance and her wariness of the strong emotions Skye could awaken in her, she looked back at Dane's grave face uncertainly.

After a moment Dane said, "Skye's spent a lot of time in the dark these last years-in more ways than one. He hasn't let himself feel very much since Germany, but I believe seeing you again has made splinters of the protective wall he'd built around his emotions. It must feel like being caught in a sudden storm without warning. So if he seems impatient or even rough, maybe you should remember that you can hurt him every bit as much as he can hurt you."

Katrina shook her head slightly and fixed her gaze on the ground, unwilling to believe that.

Dane sighed, and his voice was rueful. "I can see you're as stubborn as he is. I shouldn't be surprised, I suppose. It'll take a hardheaded woman to manage my brother."

Her hard head came up hastily, and she stared at him.

"He needs it, you see," Dane told her solemnly. "It's been my job off and on for the better part of thirty-five years, but I have a wife now, and she's keeping me too busy to give me much time to cope with Skye's recklessness." A bit more seriously he added, "He needs a balance, a center. He needs someone to care about him, so he'll stop and think before risking his neck."

She refused to be moved by the words, ignoring a sudden pang near her heart. "I don't think he needs anything or anyone," she said flatly. "He's too strong to need."

One of Dane's eyebrows lifted and his eyes hardened. "Is he? Even strong men can be shattered if the blow's hard enough and the aim is good. He isn't made of iron, Katrina."

She felt absurdly in the wrong. "I know."

"Good. Convince him, will you?" Dane smiled suddenly, the flinty look gone from his eyes. Before she could respond, he added a light "See you," and moved gracefully away.

Katrina stared after him for a few moments, then fixed her eyes on the pavement again and tried to get her thoughts and emotions under control. She found it hard to accept that Skye felt something other than desire for her, though she had felt that desire and knew only too well how powerful it was.

Vaguely aware of faint sounds and movements as the park was readied for the day's visitors, she struggled to come to terms with her own feelings. Could she accept the pa.s.sion between her and Skye without looking farther? No. She knew herself too well. It wasn't In her to give her body without giving her heart as well, and she was afraid of the very idea of giving her heart to Skye.

And she didn't know what he wanted. Another chance? What did that mean? Because I've never been able to forget you. Even when I wanted to.

She was beginning to realize, partly due to Dane, that she had never really known Skye. She hadn't looked deeply enough six years earlier. He wasn't a tender man, or even a gentle man; he was too forceful to be either for very long, and she no doubt would have discovered that years before if they'd had more time together. He was hard in many ways, and he could be cruel. His life had taught him to be suspicious, and probably to expect the worst. His temper was as quick as the remorse he felt afterward, both expressed hastily and in blunt words.

But she hadn't seen that six years earlier.

Startling herself by speaking wryly aloud, Katrina murmured, "You fell in love with a beautiful face." She shook her head, no longer surprised that Skye had gotten her totally off balance this time, because now she was looking underneath that beautiful face, and the unexpected force of him was shocking in its intensity.

How could she have been so blind all those years before? So shallow that she had never even tried to understand him? Even though they'd had little time, she should have seen.

And now... Now she was older, and wiser, and always strove to see beneath the surface. She was a woman, and the instincts that had never stirred at twenty-two were torturing her.

He was complex and often rough, and his impulsive temper had already cut her more than once. But the strength and force in him tugged at her like nothing she'd ever felt before, and the sheer primitive pa.s.sion he aroused in her left her weak and shaking in his arms.

She didn't hear him then, but looked up anyway as Skye approached her rapidly. His expression was stony, and there was so much leashed violence in his pantherlike stride that for a moment she felt a thrill of fear. But then he yanked her up from the bench and into his arms, and his muttered words chased the fear away.

"I'm sorry. I didn't mean it, Trina, I swear I didn't." His head was bowed, and he rubbed his cheek against her hair. "G.o.d, I keep saying that to you, don't I?"

She lifted her face from his shoulder and smiled, wondering dimly what had happened to her anger. "It's probably good for you," she said.

His eyes moved restlessly over her face and his mouth twisted in self-contempt. "I don't know what I'm saying half the time around you. You make me feel like some h.o.r.n.y teenager with sweaty hands. I keep hurting you."

"I'll keep your temper in mind from now on," she said a bit ruefully. "But what you said didn't hurt me, it made me mad." Her chin came up. "You had no right to say that."

"I know." He hesitated, then asked, "Will you tell me something honestly, Trina?"

She felt wary, but nodded.

"Has there been anyone since me?"

Katrina couldn't look away, and she couldn't lie to him. Not about this. "No."

"Once burned?" he suggested in an obviously false light voice.

She wasn't ready to be that honest. "I've been very busy," she said evasively, stepping back and feeling both relief and disappointment when he instantly released her.

His eyes gleamed. "So I shouldn't imagine you've been eating your heart out for me all these years, huh?"

"I wouldn't if I were you," she returned dryly, grateful that he was treating this casually. Then he shook her up again by refusing to let the matter drop.

"Still," he said, watching her Intently. "Six years is a long time for a beautiful woman to be alone."

"Five," she snapped. "You forgot prison."

His faint smile died. "I keep trying to forget it, but I can't. Did they hurt you, Trina?"

"Not a mark," she said flippantly, back on balance.

He caught her hand when she would have turned away. "I have to know," he said in a harsh voice.

She looked at him for a moment, then said, "Interrogation techniques are more subtle these days, you know that. Drugs, sensory deprivation. And there wasn't much I could tell them, after all. They didn't really suspect me of being a double agent, they just wanted to know about you. I came through it."

"You should hate me," he said slowly.

"Because of them? I knew the risks. I never blamed you for that, Skye, because it wasn't your fault." She held her voice steady with an effort. "Is that why you want another chance? Because you feel guilty?"

"No. No, that isn't why."

"Then there's nothing more to say about it. Did you find anything in the Haunted Mansion?"

"Back to business?"

"I think we'd better." She could hear the strain in her voice and wasn't surprised by it. She felt buffeted by the storm of emotions that had swept over her during the last twenty-four hours, and didn't know how much more she could take.

Skye must have heard the strain as well, because his expression softened abruptly and he carried her hand to his lips before releasing it. "All right," he said gently. "I'll try to stop pus.h.i.+ng." She nodded, wis.h.i.+ng she didn't feel like crying when he showed her a rare glimpse of his softer side. "Did you find anything?" she repeated.

"No. How about you?"

"Nothing. The park will open in an hour; we don't have time to go over the pirate s.h.i.+p or the circus tent today."

"There's no hurry. But since you've got the day off, why don't you show me around the park?"

"You've seen it," she objected somewhat weakly.

"Not with you." He smiled. "I promise to be good." Katrina wasn't sure she trusted his smile, but she wanted to be with him and couldn't deny it even to herself.

For the next three days Skye kept his promise, and Katrina's wariness soon eased. He didn't bring up the past or push her in any way, and since he was an extremely charming man when he put his mind to it, she was quickly disarmed-and was aware of the ease with which he'd accomplished it.

She had refused to abandon her duties for more than one day, though, and Skye hadn't protested. Instead, he turned up often during the day, joining her for meals and spending a few minutes talking to her in her office. Some of the talk was of business, but for the most part the conversations were casual and friendly. He took her to dinner each night, danced with her, and left her at her door with a light kiss.

"Biding his time, isn't he?" Gigi, amused, asked as she pa.s.sed Katrina in the lobby one morning just after Skye had been talking to her.

Katrina had to smile, because Skye's determined patience was so obvious it was almost funny. But she felt no impulse to laugh; she was grateful to him for giving her time, especially when she could sense the strain lurking just under his composure.

And that it was a strain on him she didn't doubt; it was In his voice sometimes, and in his face there was a finely honed look. He was an impatient man by nature, so the fact that he was forcing himself to be undemanding said a great deal about his determination to develop a new relations.h.i.+p with her.

She appreciated that deeply, but it was a strain on her, too, because she was no closer to sorting out her own feelings, and the pull of physical attraction was growing stronger with every pa.s.sing day. She was afraid that desire was clouding her judgment, and she didn't know how to cope with it.

She could feel his presence the instant he entered a room, even If her back was to him, and when he was with her she found it almost impossible to look at anything but him.

On the third day It occurred to her with devastating simplicity that she was falling in love with him.

She was sitting at her desk, conscious of the faint smile that Skye had left her with just minutes before, and when the realization dropped into her mind It did so with the clarity of total certainty.

I'm beginning to love him.

She put her pen down with unnatural care and folded her hands on her neat desk blotter, conscious of her heart beating like a drum in her ears. She felt both hot and cold, eager and fearful, delighted and hurting. She hadn't meant to love him. He had crept Into her heart with charm and patience.

And she couldn't let him know, because she was still afraid of giving him her heart.

Despite his careful patience these last days, Katrina knew only too well that the power of his desire for her was an all-consuming thing, stark and possessive. Whatever his feelings for her now, he wouldn't be content with only a "loving and pa.s.sionate" woman in his bed. He would demand a total surrender this time, driven by his own doubts about the depths of her feelings before to be certain of them now.

Beginning to understand him, Katrina knew that his harsh demands on that first night had not been uttered only with the desire to exact revenge for what he had gone through after Germany. There had been a certain amount of truth in his avowed intention to purge himself of her.

She wondered if he realized himself what he was after this time.

He had gone through h.e.l.l after Germany; she didn't doubt that. In all truth, he had been more deeply hurt than she had, because the shallowness of her own emotions had protected her somewhat, and because she had known there had been no betrayal. For six years Skye had remembered her, his own feelings eating at him. Then they had met again, against all odds, and he was bent on a "second chance."

Katrina couldn't help but believe that whether or not Skye knew it himself, what he wanted was to get her out of his system once and for all. So she couldn't very well tell him she loved him.

She couldn't.

Four.

Teddy Steele began to push herself into a sitting position on the bed, but then turned somewhat green and hastily fell back onto the pillows. The very powerful arm of her husband reached out with perfect timing, and a cracker was placed between her lips. Teddy didn't waste time with thanks, but munched the cracker with her eyes closed, willing her stomach to settle.

Zach raised himself on an elbow and looked down at his wife's pale face with a worried frown. "Better, honey?"

One of her big brown eyes opened cautiously, then the other, and she sighed in relief as her stomach behaved. Blinking away the morning dryness of her contact lenses, she answered, "Yes, but it's the pits."