Kiss Me While I sleep (28 page)

But if Nervi and his goons were the ones who showed up and he lost Lily, he swore to God the bastard would pay. Big time.

Swain turned in his Megane and, at Lily’s insistence, got a little blue four-cylinder Fiat from a different rental company. “No!” he moaned in horror when she told him what she wanted him to get. “Let’s get a Mercedes instead. There are a lot of Mercedes around.” He brightened. “I know. Let’s get a Porsche. We might need the horses. Or a BMW. Both of those sound good.”

“Fiat,” she said.

“Gesundheit.”

Her lips twitched, but she managed not to laugh. “You don’t want anything noticeable.”

“Yes, I do,” he said stubbornly. “It doesn’t matter who notices me because no one knows who I am. If I were looking for someone, I’d look at people who were driving Fiats, because that’s what you get if you don’t want to be noticed.”

Using that same theory, she had put on a bright red wig as a disguise, so he actually made sense. But by now the amusement value was so great she wanted to see him drive one of the smaller Fiats for at least a day, just to hear how creative he could get with his complaining.

“You started out driving a Jaguar, then today you picked me up in a Megane-if anyone saw us-so anyone looking for you would already know you like fast cars. A Fiat would be the last thing anyone would look for.”

“No joke,” he grumbled.

“A Fiat’s a good car. We can get a Stilo three-door; it’s fairly sporty-”

“Meaning, I can pedal it at ten miles an hour instead of five?”

She had to bite the inside of her cheek to keep from laughing, so ridiculous was the mental picture she had of him on a tricycle, his long legs folded up around his ears while he pedaled like mad.

He was sulking so much he wouldn’t even approach the rental counter until she turned around and hissed, “Do you want me to put it on
my
credit card? Rodrigo would know about it before the hour’s up.”

“My
credit card might expire from embarrassment at having something like this charged to it,” he snapped, but then he squared his shoulders and stepped up like a man. He didn’t flinch even when the car was brought around and the features pointed out. The Fiat Stilo was a quick little car, with nice acceleration, but she could tell he judged it woefully short on horsepower.

He put her bags in the back while Lily got in the passenger seat and buckled the seat belt. Swain slid the driver’s seat back before he got in, making room for his legs.

He turned the key and started the engine. “It has a navigation system,” Lily pointed out.

“I don’t need a navigation system. I can read a map.” He put the car in gear, then made a high-pitched whining noise through his nose as he accelerated. Unfortunately, the noise exactly matched the pitch of the engine noise, and Lily lost her battle not to laugh. She tried to hide it, pinching her nose and turning her head to look out the window, but he saw her heaving shoulders and said sourly, “I’m glad
someone
thinks this is funny. I’m staying at the Bristol; don’t you think someone there might think it’s odd that I’m driving a Fiat instead of something flashier?”

“You’re such a car snob. A lot of people rent cars that have good gas mileage. It’s a smart thing to do.”

“Unless they might have to make a quick getaway and they’re being chased by cars with bigger engines.” His expression was grim. “I think I’ve been emasculated. I probably won’t be able to get a hard-on while I’m driving this.”

“Don’t worry,” she soothed. “If you can’t, I’ll let you get whatever kind of car you want tomorrow.”

Like magic his expression lightened and he started to grin, only to have the grin morph into a grimace of acute pain as he realized the choice she’d just given him. “Ah, shit,” he groaned. “That’s diabolical. You’re going to hell for thinking of something that evil.”

She gave him an innocent look and lifted one shoulder in a gesture that said, “So?” He was the one who had taken the issue down the sexual path; if he didn’t like where he’d ended up, it was his own fault.

She was amazed that she could be so entertained, considering what they were up against, but it was as if by tacit agreement they had decided to have today just for themselves, because today might be all they had. She had known some contract agents who, because of the nature of their work, lived totally in the moment. She never had, but today she saw the appeal of not worrying about tomorrow. There was a poignancy that hit home as she watched his expressions, an acknowledgment of what could be between them if she had the chance to let it grow. He made her feel soft inside, and warm with an affection that held so much promise it was almost frightening. She could love him, she thought. She might already, just a little bit, for his sense of humor and sheer
joie de vivreihat
lifted her own spirits from the depths. She had needed to laugh, and he’d given her that. “Let’s renegotiate,” he said. “If I can get it up, as a reward I get to pick out a different car tomorrow.”
“And if you can’t, you have to drive this one for the duration?”

He snorted and said smugly, “Yeah, like that’s gonna happen.”

“Then where’s the negotiation?” She stroked the seat. “I like this car. I’m becoming very fond of it. Unlike you, my sexuality isn’t linked to a machine.”

“Guys can’t help it. We’re born with a stick shift, and it’s our favorite toy from the time our arms are long enough to reach it.”

“This car has a stick shift,” she pointed out.

“Don’t get technical. There’s no testosterone here.” He made the high-pitched whining sound again. “See? It’s a soprano. A four-cylinder soprano.”

“It’s a great car for city driving. It’s highly maneuverable, economical, reliable.”

He gave up. “All right. You win. I’ll drive it, but I’ll need therapy afterwards for the emotional damage you’re inflicting on me.”

She stared straight ahead through the windshield. “Massage therapy?”

“H’mmm.” He considered it “Yeah, that’ll do it. But I’ll need a lot of it.”

“I think I can handle that.”

He grinned and winked at her, and abruptly she wondered if she hadn’t outsmarted herself and let him talk her into something she hadn’t one hundred percent decided to do. Ninety-eight percent, yes, but not a hundred percent. That old sense of caution still nagged at her.

In that uncanny way he had of picking up on her wavelength, he turned totally serious. “Don’t let me pressure you into anything you don’t want to do,” he said quietly. “If you don’t want to sleep with me, all you have to do is say no.”

She looked out the window. “Have you ever wanted anything and been afraid of it at the same time?”

“You mean like getting on a roller coaster, when you really want the ride but your stomach’s already in your throat thinking about that first big drop?”

Even his anxieties were fun-related, she thought, and smiled a little. “The last time I was involved with someone, he tried to kill me.” She said it casually, but the sorrow and tension that still gripped her to this day were anything but casual.

He whistled between his teeth. “That would ruin your day, all right. Was he crazy jealous or something?”

“No, he’d been hired to do it.”

“Ah, honey,” he said, with real sadness in his tone, as if he grieved for her. “I’m sorry. I can see where that would make you cautious.”

“That’s an understatement,” she muttered.

“Gun-shy?”

“In a big way.”

He hesitated, as if he wasn’t certain he wanted to know. “How big?”

She shrugged and said, “That was six years ago.”

The steering wheel jerked in his hands and the car swerved, prompting the driver beside them to blow his horn in warning. “Six-years?” He sounded incredulous. “You haven’t been involved with anyone for
six years?
Holy shit. That’s-that’s taking caution to the extreme.”

He might think so, but then he hadn’t almost been killed by someone he loved. She hadn’t thought anything could hurt worse than Dimitri’s betrayal, until Zia’s death.

He thought about it another minute, then said, “I’m honored.”

“Don’t be. I wouldn’t be this involved with you if circumstance hadn’t thrown us together,” she pointed out. “If we’d met socially, I’d have blown you off like yesterday’s news.”

He scratched the side of his nose. “You wouldn’t have been tempted by my charm?”

She made a rude sound. “You wouldn’t have got close enough for me to know you were charming.”

“This may sound callous, but if that’s the case, I’m glad you were getting shot at the other day. If you believe in fate, then it was meant to be that I’d be sitting there, at loose ends, just when you were on the losing side of a gun battle.”

“Or it was sheer chance. It remains to be seen whether that was good luck or bad luck-for you, I mean.” And perhaps for her, as well, though she thought she should count her blessings, that even if events went drastically sour, at least she’d had laughter in her life again for a short while.

“I can tell you that,” he said lazily. “It was the best luck I’ve had in a long time.”

She watched his face and wondered what it was like to live inside his skin, to be so optimistic and at peace with one’s self. She couldn’t remember feeling that way since she was a teenager, though she’d been happy while she had Zia.

After Zia’s death, peace and happiness had been totally alien. She had been so focused; all she’d thought about was vengeance for her friends, for Zia. Now Swain was in her life, and her goal had been transformed from something personal to something so hugely important that she had to struggle to grasp the scope of it. Her personal feelings had been made insignificant, and reality had swept her to a different perspective. She knew that although a person never stopped grieving for lost loved ones, the quality of grief changed from gut-gnawing agony to dull pain, to acceptance, to remembering the good times-and sometimes all of those things were felt within a very short time, in no particular order. Her focus had been shifted from herself, her loss, to something outside herself, and with that shift the pain had changed, become less immediate and all-consuming.

She didn’t know how long the surcease would endure, but she was grateful for every moment of it. Swain was responsible, she knew, for a lot of her shift in mood just by being his brash, very American self. Of course, he could lift a woman’s mood just by walking down the street with that lazy, loose-hipped gait of his. She knew because she had seen women watching him, and she knew the effect he had on
her.

He reached for her hand and squeezed it. “Stop worrying so much. Everything will be okay.”

She gave a rueful laugh. “You mean: my mystery caller will turn out
not to
be Rodrigo; he can tell us everything we need to know about the lab’s security; we get in without any trouble, totally destroy the virus, kill Dr. Giordano so he can’t do this again, and get away without anyone the wiser?”

He thought about it. “Maybe not everything; that’s a big laundry list But you have to have faith things will work out for the better one way or the other. We can’t fail, therefore we won’t.”

“The power of positive thinking?”

“Don’t knock it. It’s worked for me so far. For instance, I was positive I’d get in your pants from the minute I saw you, and look at us now.”

They were once more at a standstill, with a thousand things that needed doing and nothing they could do that day. Swain’s security system expert didn’t get in touch, but now that they knew what they were up against, they both thought the security measures in place would be far more complex than any the run-of-the-mill expert would ever see.

Just to see what they could find, they went to an Internet cafe to research influenza, before they went to the hotel. There was so much to read that in the interest of saving time, they each paid for computer time and divided the hits between them.

At one point during the afternoon, Swain checked his wrist-watch, then took out his cell phone and punched in a long series of numbers. From where she was Lily couldn’t hear what he was saying, but his expression was serious. His conversation was brief, and when it was over, he rubbed his forehead as if he had a headache.

While the computer was loading a large file, she went over to him. “Is something wrong?”

“A friend was in a car accident in the States. I called to check his condition.”

“How is he?”

“Unchanged. The doctors say that’s actually good. He lived through the first twenty-four hours, so they’re a little more optimistic than they were before.” He rocked his hand. “He could still go either way.”

“Do you need to go there?” she asked. She didn’t know what she would do without him, but if this was a really close friend-

“I can’t,” he said briefly.

She took that to mean he literally couldn’t, that he was persona non grata in the States and wouldn’t be allowed in. She touched his shoulder in sympathy, because she knew how he felt. She probably wouldn’t ever be able to go home again, either.

He was scrolling through the CDC Web site. The first time he’d pulled it up, he hadn’t found anything really interesting, but he’d kept clicking on related sites that had links to the CDC, and he gave a satisfied grunt as a long list popped on the screen. “Finally.” He clicked on
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