Entranced (14 page)

“Better?” He tucked her under his arm again. “If I had more time—God knows, if I had you naked—I’d work all the kinks out.” He grinned down into her astonished face. “It seems only fair to let you in on some of my thoughts from time to time. And I have been thinking about getting you naked quite a bit.”

Flustered, mortally afraid she might blush, she looked straight ahead. “Well, think about something else.”

“It’s hard. Particularly when you look so fetching in my shirt.”

“I don’t like flirtations,” she said under her breath.

“My dear Mary Ellen, there’s a world of difference between a flirtation and a direct statement of desire. Now, if I were to tell you what lovely eyes you have, how they remind me of the hills in my homeland—that would be flirting. Or if I mentioned that your hair is like the gold in a Botticelli painting, or that your skin is as soft as the clouds that drift over my mountain some evenings—that could be construed as flirting.”

There was an odd, distinctly uncomfortable fluttering in her stomach. She wanted it to stop.

“If you said any of those things I’d think you’d lost your mind.”

“Which is exactly why I opted for the direct approach. I want you in bed. My bed.” Under one of the
spreading oaks, he stopped, turning her into his arms before she could so much as sputter. “I want to undress you. Touch you. I want to watch you come alive when I’m inside you.” He leaned down to catch her lower lip between his teeth. “And then I want to do it all over again.” He felt her shudder and turned the nip into a long, searching kiss. “Direct enough?”

Her hands were against his chest, fingers spread. She had no idea how they’d gotten there. Her mouth felt swollen and stung and hungry. “I think …” But, of course, she couldn’t think at all, and that was the problem. Her blood was pounding so hard that she wondered people didn’t come out of their houses to see what the racket was about. “You’re crazy.”

“For wanting you, or for saying it?”

“For … for thinking I’d be interested in a quick tumble with you. I hardly know you.”

He caught her chin with his fingers. “You know me.” He kissed her again. “And I didn’t say anything about quick.”

Before she could speak again, he tensed. “They’re coming out,” he said, without turning around. Over his shoulder she could see the door open and the brunette pushing out a stroller. “Let’s cross the street. You can get a good look as they walk by.”

She’d tensed up again. Sebastian kept an arm around her shoulders, as much in warning as in support. She could hear the man and woman talking to each other. It was the light, happy conversation of two young parents with a healthy baby. Their words were nothing but a blur. Without thinking, she slipped an arm around Sebastian’s waist and held on.

Oh, he’d grown! She felt tears rush stinging to her eyes and willed them back. He was moving quickly beyond baby to toddler. There were little red high-tops on his feet, scuffed, as if he might have been walking already. His hair was longer, curling around his round, rosy face.

And his eyes … She stopped, had to bite back his name. He was looking at her as he rolled along in the bright blue stroller. Looking right at her, and there was a smile, a smile of recognition, in his eyes. He squealed, held out his arms.

“My boy likes pretty women,” the man said with a proud grin as they rolled David past.

Rooted to the spot, Mel watched David crane his neck around the stroller, saw his lips move into a pout. He let out a wail of protest that had the woman crooning to him.

“He knew me,” Mel whispered. “He remembered me.”

“Yes, he did. It’s difficult to forget love.” He caught her as she took a stumbling step forward. “Not now, Mel. We’ll go call Devereaux.”

“He knew me.” She found her voice muffled against a cool linen shirt. “I’m all right,” she insisted, but she didn’t try to break away.

“I know you are.” He pressed his lips to her temple, stroked a hand over her hair, and waited for her tremors to pass.

*  *  *

It was one of the most difficult things she’d ever done, standing on the sidewalk in front of the house with the blue shutters and the big tree in the yard. Devereaux and a female agent were inside. She’d watched them go in, through the door opened by the young brunette. She’d still been in her robe, Mel remembered, and there had been a flicker of fear, or perhaps knowledge, in her eyes as she bent to retrieve the morning paper.

She could hear weeping now, deep, grieving tears. Her heart wanted to hold rock hard against it, but it couldn’t.

When would they come out? Stuffing her hands in her pockets, she paced the sidewalk. It had already been too long. Devereaux had still insisted that they wait until morning, and she’d had hardly a wink of sleep at the hotel. It was well over an hour since they’d gone inside.

“Why don’t you sit in the car?” Sebastian suggested.

“I couldn’t sit.”

“They won’t let us take him yet. Devereaux explained the procedure. It’ll take hours to do the blood test
and the print checks.”

“They’ll let me stay with him. They’ll damn well let me stay with him. He’s not going to be with strangers.” She pressed her lips together. “Tell me about them,” she blurted out. “Please.”

He’d expected her to ask, and he turned away from the house to look into Mel’s eyes as he told her. “She was a teacher. She resigned when David came to them. It was important to her to spend as much time with him as possible. Her husband is an engineer. They’ve been married eight years, and have been trying to have a child almost since the start. They’re good people, very loving to each other, and with room in their hearts for a family. They were easy prey, Mel.”

He could see in her face the war between compassion and fury, between right and wrong. “I’m sorry for them,” she whispered. “I’m sorry to know that anyone would exploit that kind of love, that kind of need. I hate what’s been done to everyone involved.”

“Life isn’t always fair.”

“Life isn’t usually fair,” she corrected.

She paced some more, casting dark, desperate looks at the bay window. When the door opened, she shifted to her toes, ready to dash. Devereaux strode toward her.

“The boy knows you?”

“Yes. I told you he recognized me when he saw me yesterday.”

He nodded. “He’s upset, wailing pretty good, making himself half-sick, what with Mr. and Mrs. Frost carrying on. We’ve got the woman calming down. Like I told you, we’ll have to take the boy in until we can check the matches and clear up the paperwork. Might be easier for him if you went in for him, drove along with Agent Barker.”

“Sure.” Her heart began to pound in her throat. “Donovan?”

“I’ll follow you.”

She went inside, lighting to shield her heart and mind from the hopeless weeping beyond a bedroom door. She walked down a hallway, stepping over a plastic rocking horse and into the nursery.

Where the walls were pale blue and painted with sailboats. Where the crib by the window held a circus mobile.

Just as he’d said, she thought as her mouth went dry. Exactly as he’d said.

Then she tossed all that aside and reached down for the crying David.

“Oh, baby.” She pressed her face to his, drying his cheeks with her own. “David, sweet little David.” She soothed him, brushing his damp hair back from his face, grateful the agent’s back was to her so that he couldn’t see her own eyes fill.

“Hey, big guy.” She kissed his trembling lips. He hiccuped, rubbed his eyes with his fists, then let out a tired sigh as his head dropped to her shoulder. “That’s my boy. Let’s go home, huh? Let’s go home and see Mom and Dad.”

“I’ll never be able to thank you. Never.” Rose stood looking out her kitchen window. In the courtyard beyond, her husband and son sat in a patch of sunlight, rolling a bright orange ball around. “Just looking at them makes me …”

“I know.” Mel slipped an arm around her shoulders. As they watched in silence, listening to David laugh, Rose brought her hand up to Mel’s and squeezed tight. “They look real good out there, don’t they?”

“Perfect.” Rose dabbed her eyes with a tissue and sighed. “Just perfect. When I think how afraid I was that I’d never see David again—”

“Then don’t think. David’s back where he belongs.”

“Thanks to you and Mr. Donovan.” Rose moved away from the window, but her gaze kept going back to it again and again. Mel wondered how long it would be before Rose would feel comfortable with David out of her sight. “Can you tell me anything about the people who had him, Mel? The FBI were very sympathetic and kind, but …”

“Tight-lipped,” Mel finished. “They were good people, Rose. Good people who wanted a family. They made a mistake, trusted someone they shouldn’t have trusted. But they took good care of David.”

“He’s grown so. And he’s been trying to take a few steps.” There was a bitterness, a sharp tang of bitterness in the back of her throat, at having missed those three precious months of her son’s life. But with it was a sorrow for another mother in another city with an empty crib to face. “I know they loved him. And I know how hurt and afraid she must be now. But it’s worse for her than it was for me. She knows she’ll never have him back.” She laid her fisted hands on the counter. “Who did this to us, Mel? Who did this to all of us?”

“I don’t know. But I’m working on it.”

“Will you work with Mr. Donovan? I know how concerned he is.”

“Sebastian?”

“We talked about it a little when he stopped by.”

“Oh?” Mel thought she did nonchalance very well. “He came by?”

Rose’s face softened. She looked almost as she had in those carefree days before David’s abduction. “He brought David his teddy bear, and this cute little blue sailboat.”

A sailboat, Mel mused. Yes, he would have thought of that. “That was nice of him.”

“He just seemed to understand both sides of it, you know? What Stan and I went through, what those people in Atlanta are going through right now. All because there’s someone out there who doesn’t care about people at all. Not about babies or mothers or families. He only wants to make money from them.” Her lips trembled then firmed. “I guess that’s why Mr. Donovan wouldn’t let me and Stan pay him anything.”

“He didn’t take a fee?” Mel asked, struggling to sound disinterested.

“No, he wouldn’t take a dime.” Recalling other duties, Rose opened the oven to check on her meat loaf. “He said Stan and I should send what we thought we could afford to one of the homeless shelters.”

“I see.”

“And he said he was going to think about following up on the case.”

“The case?”

“He said … something like it wasn’t right for babies to be stolen out of cribs and sold off like puppies. That there were some lines you couldn’t cross.”

“Yes, there are.” Mel snatched up her bag. “I have to go, Rose.”

Surprised, Rose shut the oven door. “Can’t you stay for dinner?”

“I really can’t.” She hesitated, then did something she rarely did, something she wished she could do with more ease. She kissed Rose’s cheek. “There’s something I have to take care of.”

*  *  *

She supposed she should have done it before. But they’d been back in Monterey for only a couple of days. Mel skimmed through a low-lying cloud on her way up the mountain. It wasn’t as if he’d gone out of his way to come and see her, she thought. He’d gone by Rose’s apartment, but he hadn’t driven a few more blocks to hers.

Obviously he hadn’t meant any of that nonsense he’d been spouting about finding her attractive, about wanting her. All that stuff about her eyes and her hair and her skin. Mel drummed her fingers on the gearshift. If he’d meant any of it, he’d have made a move by now. She wished he had. How could she decide if she would block it or not if he didn’t bother to make a move?

So she’d beard the wolf in his den. There were obligations to fulfill, statements to be made, and questions to be answered.

Certain she was ready for all of that, Mel turned into Sebastian’s bumpy lane. Halfway up she hit the brakes as a horse and rider leapt in front of her. The black stallion and the dark man on his back bounded across the gravel track in a flash of muscle and speed. At the sight of the gleaming horse and the golden-skinned man with his ebony hair flying in the wind, she was tossed back centuries to when there were dragons to be slain and magic sung in the air.

Mel sat openmouthed as they thundered up the rocky slope, through a pocket of mist and back into the stream of sun. No centaur had ever looked more magnificent.

As the echoes of hoofbeats died away, she nudged her car up the lane. This was reality, she reminded herself. The engine groaned and complained at the incline, coughed, sputtered, then finally crept its way up to the house.

As she expected, Sebastian was in the paddock, rubbing Eros down. Dismounted, he looked no less magnificent, no less mystical. Energy and life vibrated from him. The excitement of the ride was still on his face, in his eyes. The strength of it was in the rippling muscles of his back and forearms as he cooled down his mount.

Mel thought that if she touched him now her fingers would burn.

“Nice day for a ride, I guess.”

Sebastian looked over Eros’s withers and smiled. “Most are. I’m sorry I didn’t greet you, but I hate to stop Eros when he has his head.”

“It’s all right.” She was glad he hadn’t. Mel was dead certain she wouldn’t have managed more than a stutter if he’d spoken to her astride that horse. “I just stopped by to see if you had a few minutes to clear things up.”

“I think I could find some time for you.” He patted the stallion’s left flank, and then, resting the horse’s knee on his thigh, began to clean the hoof. “You’ve seen Rose?”

“Yes, I’ve just come from there. She said you’d been by. You brought David a sailboat.”

Sebastian glanced up, then moved to the next hoof. “I thought it might help ease some of his confusion to have something familiar from those weeks he was away.”

“It was very … kind.”

He straightened, then moved on to the front leg. “I have my moments.”

On more solid ground now, Mel braced a boot on the lowest rung of the fence. “Rose said you wouldn’t take a fee.”