Diamond Bay (18 page)

"No, I move around a lot," he said, responding to her
direct attention by flashing his smile once again. "I never know when I'll
be reassigned."

"Is this sort of a special assignment?"

"It's more of a wild-goose chase. We've been wasting our
time. Still, if we hadn't been searching the beach I never would have met
you."

He'd been throwing out lines like that since he'd picked her up,
and Rachel had been determinedly skirting them. He evidently thought he was a
modern day Don Juan, and probably a lot of women found him attractive and
charming, but, then, they didn't know what Rachel did about him.

"Oh, I'm certain you aren't hurting for casual dates,"
she said in an offhand manner.

He reached across the table and put his hand on hers. "Maybe
I don't consider this a casual date."

Rachel smiled and removed her hand to pick up her wineglass.
"I don't see how you could consider it anything else, considering you may
be reassigned at any time.
Even
if you aren't, I'll be leaving on vacation
soon and probably won't be back for the rest of the summer."

He didn't like that; it put a small dent in his ego that she
wasn't willing to hang around for as long as he was there. "Where are you
going?"

"The Keys. I'm going to stay with a friend and do some
research in the area. I was planning to stay there until I have to come back to
teach a night course in Gainesville when the fall quarter starts."

Anyone else would have asked her about the course she was
teaching; Ellis scowled at her and said, "Is your friend male or
female?"

Just for a moment she entertained the appealing idea of telling
him to take a long walk off a short pier, but it wasn't her plan to antagonize
him, not yet. She still wanted to get some information out of him if she could.
So instead she gave him a cool look that told him he'd gone too far and said
calmly, "A woman, an old college friend."

He wasn't stupid. Arrogant and conceited, but not stupid. He
grimaced in a way that was meant to be charming, but left her cold.
"Sorry. I overstepped myself, didn't I? It's just that – well, from the
moment I saw you, I was really attracted, and I want to get to know you
better."

"There doesn't seem to be much point in it," Rachel
pointed out. "You would be leaving soon, anyway, even if I hadn't planned
my vacation."

He looked as if he'd like to refute that, but he'd told her
himself that he moved around a lot. "We may be around for another couple
of weeks," he said sulkily.

"Tying up loose ends?"

"Yeah, you know how it is. Paperwork."

"Is it just you and Agent Lowell?"

He hesitated, habit too deeply ingrained in him to make it easy
for him to talk in any detail about his work.
Rachel
held her breath, wondering if his ego would prompt him to try to make up
for the ground he had lost by being too personal.
After all, it was inherently flattering when someone asked about
your work. It was a way of getting better acquainted, of asking innocent
questions that still denoted interest. She was interested, all right, but not
in Ellis.

"There are nine of us actively investigating," he
finally said. "We were all chosen especially for this job."

Because they were unscrupulous? She gave him a wide-eyed,
ego-stroking look. "It must be really big to have that many men working on
it."

"As I said, we're the active investigators. We can call on
about twenty other men for backup if necessary."

She looked suitably impressed. "But you think it's a dead
end?"

"We haven't turned up anything, but the top man isn't
satisfied yet. You know how it is. People behind a desk think they know more
than the men in the field."

She sympathized with him and even made up a few tales to
reciprocate, edging the conversation away from his work. If she probed too
directly and too often it could rouse his suspicions. Talking to him made her
feel unclean and anxious to get away from him, as far away as she could. The
knowledge that he would try to kiss her, probably even try to talk her into
bed, filled her with sick horror. There was no way she could tolerate his mouth
on hers even for a moment. Even if he wasn't a total snake, which he was, she
couldn't have kissed him; she was Kell Sabin's woman, a fact that had nothing
to do with will or determination. It simply
was.

She forced herself to chat for another hour, smiling at the
appropriate moments and forcing down the increasing urge to gag. He was almost
more than she could tolerate.
Only the thought that Kell could use any information she
got out of Ellis gave her the will to stay.
When their dishes had finally been cleared away and they were
taking their time over coffee, she put out another feeler. "Where are you
staying? This isn't a tourist area, and motel rooms can be hard to find."

"We're actually spread out down the coast," he
explained. "Lowell and I are sharing a room at this dinky little motel,
Harran's."

"I know where it is," she said, nodding.

"We've been living off fast food since we got here. It's a
relief to get a decent meal for a change."

"I imagine so." She pushed her coffee cup back and
looked around the restaurant, hoping he'd get the message that she was ready to
go. The sketchy details she'd gotten would have to be enough; she simply
couldn't sit there with him any longer and pretend that she liked him. She
wanted to go home and lock the door behind her, closing Tod Ellis and his
cohorts out of her life. Kell was there, waiting for her, and she wanted to be
with him, even though she was uneasy about his mood. He had been coldly silent
when she left, his rage barely controlled. He had wanted her to play it safe
and let all the risk fall on him, but Rachel could quit breathing more easily
than she could stand by without doing anything while he was in danger. He wasn't
used to his commands being ignored, and he didn't like it one little bit.

For his own reasons Ellis wasn't loath to leave a little early.
Rachel imagined that he thought the remainder of the evening would be spent in
a more physical manner. He would be disappointed.

She didn't talk much on the way home, both reluctant to have any
more to do with Ellis than necessary and because her thoughts were increasingly
taken with Kell, though he'd never been far from her mind all evening.
Her heartbeat
suddenly lurched and her blood skittered through her veins, making her
feel flushed and dizzy.
The fierce
lovemaking they'd shared that afternoon should have clarified their
relationship, even if only on that basic level, but it hadn't. Kell had looked
at her so oddly afterward, as if she wasn't what he'd expected. Despite his
anger with her when she refused to do what he told her, on some deep level he
had seemed even more self-contained than ever. He was a difficult, unusual man,
but she was so acutely sensitive to him that every faint nuance of his
expression, which most people wouldn't notice at all, seemed to shout at her.
Why had he looked at her like that, then withdrawn? Why did she feel farther
from him now than she had before they had lain locked together in writhing
heat?

Ellis turned onto the private road that ended at her house and a
few minutes later pulled the car to a stop in front. The house was dark, but
she hadn't really expected it to be any other way. Kell wouldn't advertise his
presence by turning on lights.

They got out of the car, and as Ellis came around to her side they
heard that low snarl. Joe, bless him, didn't miss anything.

Ellis visibly jerked, the sudden alarm starkly etched on his face
in the ghastly light from the car's open door. He stopped in his tracks.
"Where is he?" he muttered.

Rachel looked around but couldn't see the dog. He was black and
tan, with the classic markings of a German shepherd, so his darkness made it
difficult to see him. The snarls placed him slightly to her left, close to
Ellis, but she still couldn't make him out.

Quickly she seized the opportunity. "Look, you stand still
while I walk into the yard. He's behind you, so don't move any closer to him.
When I'm out of the way, get in the car on this side and he probably won't
bother you."

"That dog's vicious. You should have him chained," Ellis
snapped, but he didn't argue with her instructions. He stood absolutely still
while Rachel walked up into the yard, then sidled toward the open door on the
passenger side of the car.

"I'm sorry," she apologized, hoping he couldn't hear the
insincerity in her voice. "I didn't think. Still, he's good protection.
He's never yet let a stranger walk into the yard."

Joe moved then, the movement betraying his position. Snarling
steadily, he planted himself between Rachel and Ellis.

She wanted to laugh. There was no chance of even a good night kiss
now, and from the look on Ellis's face he wanted nothing more than to be inside
the car, with solid steel between him and the dog. Hastily he slid inside and
slammed the door, then rolled the window down partway.

"I'll call you, okay?"

She made herself hesitate, rather than shouting out the
"No!" she wanted to voice. "I'll be busy getting ready for my
vacation. I have some work I have to finish before I leave. I really won't have
much free time."

Now that he was safe from the dog his cockiness was returning.
"You have to eat, don't you? I'll call you for lunch or something."

She planned on being busy, but she could handle him over the
telephone. She didn't want him showing up here unannounced, but that wasn't
likely as long as Joe was in residence.

She stood in the yard, watching the taillights as he drove off,
then said, "Good boy," to Joe with obvious approval in her voice.
Turning toward the house, she wondered why Kell didn't turn on a light for her
now that Ellis was out of sight.
She started to walk up to the porch but hadn't
taken a full step, when a hard arm passed around her waist and jerked
her backward.

"Have fun?" a low, angry voice whispered in her ear.

"Kell." She relaxed against him, pleasure flooding
warmly through her at even this touch, despite his anger.

"Did he touch you? Kiss you?"

She had expected questioning, but not primarily about that. Kell's
voice was rough, almost savage.

"You know he didn't," she replied steadily. "After
all, you were out here watching."

"What about before?"

"No. Not at all. I couldn't stand the thought."

A great shudder passed through his body, an extraordinary response
in a man as controlled as he normally was, but when he spoke his voice was
level again. "Let's go inside."

He locked up while she went into the bedroom to put away her purse
and slip out of her shoes; then he joined her in the bedroom. His black eyes
were expressionless as he watched her slip the earrings out of her pierced
lobes and put the jewelry away in a velvet-lined box. He'd been right; she
slipped into stylish sophistication as easily as she puttered barefoot in the
garden, and she was gut-wrenchingly sexy in either case.

His silent, unwavering stare was making her uneasy. "I did
get some information," she finally offered, taking a nightgown from the
dresser and darting a quick look at him. He looked… furious, somehow, though
his face was rock hard and his eyes expressionless. His arms were folded across
his bare chest; he wore only his jeans and running shoes, and he looked
formidable.

He didn't ask, but she condensed it for him, anyway.
"There are nine of them
actively searching for you, but Ellis let it slip that they have a backup of
about twenty
more if needed.
They're scattered, looking up and down the coast. Ellis and Lowell
are staying at Harran's Motel. He thinks you're dead and that they're wasting
his time, but the head man on the operation won't give up."

That would be the mysterious "Charles." Sabin had known
who had to be behind things from the moment he had recognized the red-haired
woman, Noelle, on the boat. He had known it would be only a matter of time
until they locked horns again. Charles was the head of an international
terrorist organization that had been growing bolder and more challenging, while
at the same time Charles himself had kept at a safe distance, protected by a
web of technicalities and politics. Now he had come out into the open, to get
Sabin. But he'd made one big mistake: his first attempt hadn't succeeded, and
now Sabin knew that his own organization had been infiltrated. Charles couldn't
afford to stop the search until Sabin was found, dead or alive.

When Kell didn't ask any questions Rachel shrugged and went into
the bathroom to take off her makeup and change into her nightgown. His silence
was unnerving; he probably used it as a weapon, to shake people off-balance and
put them on the defensive. Well, she wasn't one of his minions; she was a woman
who loved him.

Five minutes later she left the bathroom, her clothing draped over
her arm. Sabin was sitting on the side of the bed, taking off his shoes. He
kept his eyes on her while she hung her things in the closet, not looking away
even when he stood to unzip his jeans.