Moving Target (42 page)

“Yes.”

Garrison made a show of going out the hall door, walking down forty feet to the left, and knocking on the door of the room next to Cleary’s. The door opened quickly. Paul looked surprisingly fit and youthful in sweatshirt and jeans.

“Is something wrong?” he asked Garrison.

“Cleary is upset. She wants you.”

Impatience flitted across Paul’s face. Then he went back into his room, picked up his key card, and stepped into the hall.

Cleary was waiting by the door. She opened it before Paul could knock. “You’ve got to do something! Daddy can’t take much more of this waiting and the negotiations with the other houses have stalled and we’re going to lose everything unless we get going but they’re not back in their rooms and our man in the lobby hasn’t seen them and—”

As soon as Paul stepped into the suite, the hall door shut abruptly in Garrison’s face. He looked from the blank door to his empty highball glass and decided that another drink was just what the doctor ordered. In his own room. There weren’t any women in the lobby bar that were worth the effort to screw.

As far as he was concerned, the only good news of the day was that his dear sweet granddaddy had refused to leave Palm Desert. For that, Garrison was very grateful; if he had been forced to put up with Warrick on top of flying out from Manhattan to be at his mother’s beck and call, he would have undoubtedly killed someone.

As he stalked down the hall, Garrison wondered how much Serena Charters was going to cost the House of Warrick before she got what she wanted.

Or better yet, what she deserved.

T
he Retreat’s ventilation system was so efficient that only a trace of fresh-paint smell made it into the two-bedroom suite Erik and Serena shared. They didn’t get a chance to enjoy the privacy. No sooner did they walk over the threshold into the room than Lapstrake stepped out from behind the door and shut it.

“Hello, Ian,” Erik said. “Have you met Serena?”

“No.” Lapstrake smiled down at the tousled redhead who had the kind of sultry eyes that set a man to dreaming. “Hi, Serena. I’m Ian.”

“Good-bye,” Erik said to Lapstrake, opening the door before Serena could say anything. “Niall wants to talk to you.”

“You sure?” Lapstrake asked, looking over his shoulder at Serena.

“Yeah.” With an ungentle nudge, Erik got Lapstrake out the door, shut it, and threw the dead bolt.

She raked hair back from her face. “That was remarkably rude.”

“He’s too handsome by half.”

“Is he?” She yawned. “I didn’t notice.”

“Yeah? What color were his eyes?”

“Hmmm. Let’s see. I’ve got a fifty-fifty chance on this one. Light?”

“Dark.” Erik looked at her oddly. “You really didn’t notice, did you?”

“One handsome blond is all I can handle at a time.”

“Ian is dark-haired.”

“Gosh, you know him so well. Maybe I’m the one who should be jealous.”

Erik laughed out loud in surprise. Then he tugged her into his arms and simply held her. “You’re good for me,” he said softly. “After tonight, I wasn’t sure I’d be really laughing anytime soon.”

Her arms tightened and her heart turned over as she remembered him running back toward Bert’s kitchen while fire rained down all around.

“You could have been killed,” she said huskily, kissing his warm, bare skin beneath Niall’s jacket. “Are you sure you’re all right?”

His breath hesitated, thickened. He pulled her closer and buried his face against her neck. The soft scarf caressed his lips before he nosed it aside to taste the tantalizing skin beneath. “Getting better every second.”

She pulled away and looked at him. “I meant the fire. Are you burned anywhere?”

“Yeah. It’s terrible. Wanna see?”

She laughed at his rakish expression. Then she forgot to breathe as his mouth closed over hers. He tasted of hunger and time, darkness and need. Despite the unanswered questions between them, everything female in her responded. Whatever happened in the future, at the moment it was enough that they both were together now, both alive.

“Serena?”

“Yes,” she whispered. “Oh, yes.”

It was the last coherent word either one of them said for a long time as they rediscovered how well they fit together, how deep, how right. The fire they found together was the fire of the phoenix, healing rather than murderous, generous rather than deadly.

When she finally lay more asleep than awake, smiling, her lips against the slow beat of his pulse, he gently eased his wrist free of the clinging scarf. Slowly, trying not to wake her, he slipped from her and went to the heavily draped window. His laptop computer on the bedside table gave enough light for him to avoid furniture.

One of Serena’s pages took up the whole screen. The background of gold foil on the page shimmered. The colors applied to the complexly intertwined initials shone like intricate gems.

None of the beautiful light was enough to soften the curve of his lips as he stood naked by the bedroom window and nudged the drape aside just enough to allow him a one-eyed view of the world.

“That’s not a very nice smile,” she said lazily from the bed. Under the sheet she was as naked as he was, except for the scarf, which had ended up wound around one of her wrists. And his, too, now that she thought about it.

He let the curtain fall back the bare half inch he had opened it. Turning, he came back to the bed. The hard line of his mouth shifted into a true smile as he caught the red-gold shimmer of Serena’s hair against the pale wood of the headboard. He lifted the covers, inhaled the heady scent of Serena and intimacy, and slid in beside her.

“It just started to rain,” he said quietly. “Heller is going to be cold, damp, and pissed off sleeping outside in his baby pickup. I, on the other hand, am going to be warm, comfortable, and very satisfied in here with you.”

She wasn’t nearly as amused as he was. The idea of being followed just wasn’t something she could smile over, even a smile as nasty as his had been. “Where do you suppose Wallace is?”

“Nursing a headache.” And, if God was kind, some broken bones in his hand.

But Erik didn’t say anything aloud about his hope. Despite Serena’s willingness to use his gun when they were threatened, she had a softer heart than he did. It must have been her mother’s contribution to the genetic mix. From everything he had found out, it sure hadn’t been her grandmother’s.

He cuddled Serena against him, savoring the feel of her body while it fitted to him as easily as though they had always been lovers. “You have any more flashes about designs or gold covers set with gems or anything else about the Book of the Learned?” he asked.

She put her arms around him, enjoying the strength and resilience of his shoulders. Then she sighed. Flashes were a good description of what those memories were like . . . sudden lightning against the dark backdrop of forgotten years.

“It was so long ago.” Hearing her own words, she almost smiled. “In kid terms, anyway. For me, the years between one and five are a lifetime lived by someone else, someone I don’t really know. Five to ten isn’t much better. Ten to fifteen is a blur, sixteen to twenty is somewhat better, and I’m prepared to discuss intelligently the years between twenty-one and today.”

“When did you move out of the cabin?”

“On my eighteenth birthday. G’mom encouraged me. She said I never would amount to anything if I hung around the cabin waiting for her to die.”

He whistled silently. “Not your average loving granny.”

“She was a realist who didn’t have much patience with people who couldn’t pull up their socks and get on with life. She might have been short on hugs, but she didn’t abuse me. Never so much as raised her voice. She did her duty. Always.”

He kissed the subdued fire of Serena’s hair as he said, “And it was always a duty, never a pleasure.”

“Her only pleasure was in weaving and . . .” Serena’s voice died as a ghostly lightning flickered against the lost years of childhood.

“And?” Erik asked quietly.

“Reading, I think.”

“Did she have a lot of books?”

“No. None.”

“Yet you remember her reading?”

“Yes.”

Erik waited. He knew memory could be elusive and yet as solid as the San Jacinto Mountains rising out of the desert. When Serena didn’t say anything more, he nuzzled her hair and said quietly, “Can you describe the memory?”

She let out a long, sighing breath. “I woke up and saw her face lit by lantern light. She was looking down at the table and smiling. That’s why I thought I was dreaming. She never smiled in daylight, except sometimes when she was weaving. But she wasn’t weaving. She was just sitting. That was odd, too. Her hands were never still. Weaving, sewing, drawing water from the well, tanning rabbit skins for a downscale trading post in Palm Springs that sold junk to tourists . . . she was always busy at some task or another, even at night.”

He made a low sound of surprise. With every word Serena portrayed a lifestyle that could have existed one hundred years before, or two hundred, or a thousand; lifetimes when night was relieved only by fire.

“What was she looking at when she smiled?” he asked. “What was on the table in front of her?”

“Something beautiful. Something that was like a ripple of light whenever she . . .” Serena’s voice died.

“Turned a page?” he suggested.

She closed her eyes. It didn’t help. Memories of clots of fire exploding and Bert screaming poured through her like molten glass. “I don’t know. I can’t see it.” She drew a steadying breath. “But that must be it. Or am I simply manufacturing something to fill a gap in memory and none of it is true?”

“You didn’t manufacture that design of intertwined initials. Or the cover you sketched for Dana just before I told her you’d had enough and dragged you out from under her velvet-sheathed steel claws.”

“Did I thank you for that?”

He grinned and kissed the corner of her mouth, licked lightly, remembering. “Oh yeah.”

Her smile came and went swiftly. “How much of my memory do you think is real?”

“My name is North, not Proust.”

“Where’s a philosopher when you need one?” she retorted.

“Drinking hemlock tea.”

She smiled in spite of the restlessness that swept through her like an autumn wind. She could almost see the memory/dream/image of her grandmother in lantern light, smiling.

Almost. But not enough to look through her grandmother’s eyes and see what had made her smile.

If there was anything to see.

Damn!

“Let it go,” Erik said.

“What?”

“Whatever is making you tighten up and frown. Let it go and enjoy the last of the wine Dana sent as an apology.”

“Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow you’ll—“ Serena stopped abruptly.

Erik’s hand closed over hers. “You’ll be fine.”

“That’s not how the saying goes.”

“It is now.”

He lifted her hand to his lips. Under the cover of a kiss, he slid his tongue between her fingers. The noise of rain bursting against the window covered her gasp, but the sudden speeding of her heartbeat was quite apparent at her wrist. Delicately he probed the telltale pulse with the tip of his tongue.

“Are you trying to distract me?” she asked.

“Yeah.”

“You’re succeeding very well.”

“Want to see what else I’m good at?”

Desire swept through her, softening her in a scented rush. “I can’t wait.”

His fingers stroked, probed, found her ready, and his own breath broke on a surge of hunger. “You don’t have to wait.”

In one long motion he locked himself inside her.

Beside the bed, the intertwined initials shimmered and burned as though they were alive.

S
creens around the clean room showed each of the seventeen sheets taken from the Book of the Learned. At the bottom of each screen was the earliest known provenance of the pictured page. At the moment, no one was paying any attention to the displays.

Paul Carson and Cleary Warrick Montclair were isolated behind a one-way mirror with Niall. Both men were watching Cleary closely. She had the fractured eyes and vibrating body of a woman running too close to the edge of her control.

Beyond the one-way mirror, Garrison Montclair sat on one side of the clean room’s steel conference table. Serena and Erik sat opposite Garrison. Dana sat at the head of the table. Various refreshments lay ignored in the center.

“Thank you for agreeing to this meeting, Serena,” Dana said, her voice as creamy as her eyes were cold. She was furious at having been forced into the confrontation. But the choice had been clear: if she wanted the House of Warrick’s cooperation tracing the illuminated pages, she would have to keep Cleary informed of everything that occurred in the search, no matter how minor the detail. “Ms. Warrick Montclair is intensely worried about her father.”

Erik, who was facing the one-way mirror, didn’t bother to hide his sardonic expression. If Dana’s arm-twisting could be called agreement, Serena had agreed. To be precise, she had literally thrown her hands in the air and said, Fine. I’ll talk to Garrison. And then I’m leaving!

“Garrison, I believe you are acting as spokesman?” Dana said, looking at him with no favor at all.

Erik made a disgusted sound. Talk about an understatement. Paul had all but carried Cleary screaming into the spy room. Cleary had wanted to convince Serena face-to-face of the importance of selling the pages—and the Book of the Learned itself—to the House of Warrick. Dana had vetoed that idea. Serena had repeated that refusal to Paul Carson in a word of one syllable.

Garrison smiled engagingly. He looked quite fresh in his slate-colored flannel slacks and open-necked, long-sleeved white shirt. If his eyes showed the effects of too little sleep and one too many martinis, he wasn’t worried about it. Anyone with Cleary for a mother was bound to look frayed from time to time.

“I second Dana’s thanks,” Garrison said, giving Serena a look of frank understanding and sympathy. “I also apologize for my mother. She’s an excellent businesswoman, but when it comes to family she loses all perspective.”