Night Moves (26 page)

"Bryn...you don't find me...brutal?"

Bryn smiled and laid her head against his chest, puzzled at his words, but determined to ease him.

"Torrid, tempestuous, passionate, intense, strong and forceful.A whirlwind, yes.But brutal, never. You are fire and wind and gentle breezes, and I love them all." He was silent, stroking her hair as he pulled her close and rested his chin upon her head. Bryn waited a moment, knowing that for once, it was he who leaned on her for the strength. Then she spoke softly to him.

"Please tell me about your wife, Lee."

"She died," he said tonelessly.

"I know that, Lee. But please, please let me try to understand what hurts you so badly."

"I will, Bryn, I promise.Soon."

She had to let it go at that; she couldn't give him everything yet; maybe it was the same with him. His fears seemed to be as deep as hers.

Suddenly he lifted her above him; his fingers locked about her nape and he pulled her down to touch his lips against hers with reverence. He rolled her to her side and smiled as he faced her, tugging at the rumpled gown that was still tangled around her. "Could we dispense with this?" he asked. "I need to sleep--holding you, not material."

Bryn silently pulled the gown over her head and tossed it from the bed. She settled down beside him.

There were a million things that could have been said but they didn't say any of them. They lay there, and in time, Bryn drifted off to sleep.

She awakened later--she didn't know how much later--to find she was alone.Startled, she half rose and looked around.

Then she saw him by the doors to the balcony, silently staring out into the night. The moon caught his profile and it was strong and proud...but his features, caught by shadow, were haunted.

"Lee!" she cried softly.

He came back to her, slipping beside her in the bed, and holding her close. "I woke you. I'm sorry."

"Lee, it doesn't matter. I just wish I could help. You've given me everything--"

"No," he corrected. "You've given me everything." His arms closed around her, and then he was above her, staring down into her eyes.

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I'm shaking, Lee thought. I've come to know more each day just how much I need her, and I almost ruined it all....]

"I loved you like a savage once tonight," he told her. "Let me love you tenderly, softly...."

He did love her tenderly, caressing her, loving her with appreciative eyes as his hands touched her. She was stunning, clad only in the moonlight. His fingers grazed her breasts, adoring them. His lips found their rough crests, taunting them to wonderful peaks. He suckled and nipped at each, laved them with his tongue, sheltered the luscious ripeness of the full mounds in the firm massage of his hands.

And again he looked at the length of her.The rose and creamy beauty of her breasts as they rose and fell with her quickened breathing.The curve of her slender midriff and waist. Sleek. She was sleek and long...her hips were a beautiful curve all over again. She was a dancer, he reminded himself. And she brought him with her, to dance in the clouds.

He started to touch her again, all that his eyes had cherished and devoured. His hands swept over her with hot promise; his lips tasted and caressed her flesh; his tongue traced brands of fire across her belly, down the shadow of her belly. He turned her over gently, feathering kisses down her spine, to the small of her back.

And he turned her to face him again and loved her with the greatest intimacy, losing himself to reckless passion as she writhed with a dancer's fluid grace beneath his tender touch, whispering his name, crying out his name, entangling her fingers in his hair and begging that he come to her....

He did, only to find that she could be as passionate, as demanding as he.

She rose over him in the moonlight, a sculpture in proud and naked beauty as she stared down at him with moistened lips, her wealth of copper hair curling about the swollen beauty of her breasts.

She smiled at him, her lips curling whimsically.

"Now let me love you--" she told him, leaning low to grace his chest with her nipples and sending waves of erotic heat rippling through him all over again "--like a savage...."

He smiled, enveloping her with his arms. "My love, do with me what you will...."

Much later he reminded her that they needed to sleep, that tomorrow was the day when they would get Adam back.

They needed to be rested--and alert.

Bryn smiled to herself, grateful for the abandon of the night. He hadn't given her much time to worry.

He had given her something--though she just wasn't sure yet what. But whatever did happen, he had been with her now, through the greatest trial of her life.

She was very, very grateful for Lee Condor.

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Bryn awoke elated; she should have been tired, but she wasn't tired at all. It was Sunday, and she was going to get Adam back.

It occurred to her that it was absurd to relish the thought of talking to a kidnapper but once she heard his voice again, she would be so grateful that she would readily crawl on her knees, if he asked her to.

The kidnapper had played her perfectly--right from the beginning. The tension had almost destroyed her--would have, if it hadn't been for Lee.

She tried not to believe that it could all have been a lie; that the kidnapper could still hold onto Adam.

She didn't dare entertain such thoughts--she would crack.

Marie, who had proved to be a lovely woman in her mid-fifties, big bosomed with a deep warm smile and no nonsense manner, was glad to stay with the two older boys for a few hours again that morning when Bryn and Lee left. Brian and Keith would probably sleep until at least nine, and knowing that the morning would be tense with waiting, Bryn was glad that they could arrive after that part was over. She had tried to conceal the truth from them, but as children do, they had sensed that something was wrong.

Marie would drop them off at the town house about eleven--in time to greet their brother andherself , Bryn prayed.

Bryn believed that Marie, too, knew that something was very wrong, but she didn't ask questions and showed herself willing to help in any way that she could.

When she had first met Marie, Bryn had been a little bit embarrassed by the relationship she was obviously sharing with Lee, but she had been gratified to see that the older woman seemed to like her on first sight. And Marie apparently adored her employer, so it seemed that the two of them together could do no wrong.

Bryn was up and dressed by7:00 a.m.on Sunday morning-- ready to leave before Lee was out of the shower. But early as it was, Marie had coffee ready downstairs. She tried to get Bryn to eat but Bryn knew she couldn't swallow a mouthful of food. When Lee did appear downstairs, Bryn barely allowed him to sip a cup of coffee, she was so anxious to get to the town house.

Lee didn't try to talk to her on the way over. They were both extremely tense.

Bryn almost burst through the front door; she remembered though--that even though it was her home, Andrew and Barbarawere probably together. And they deserved a certain respect for their privacy, especially since they were staying there, courting danger, to keep an eye on things for her so that she and the boys could be safe at Lee's.

Impatiently, she rang the bell. It was only eight. The call wasn't due for an hour. Lee gazed at her, and she flushed.

"Bryn--you're going to work yourself into knots before anything happens," he warned her.

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Her throat tightened. "I can't help it, Lee. You don't know what it's been like."

"I have a pretty good idea," he said dryly. "And I still think we should have called the police at the very beginning." "No! Something might have happened to Adam!"

"And you also might have had him back four days ago," Lee said flatly.

"He's fine, I'm telling you, he's fine!" Bryn said irritably. Her voice was rising, getting hysterical.

The door swung open while she was still in mid-yell. Barbara, clad in a housecoat, looked from one to the other, backing up so that they could enter. Lee's hard features and Bryn's flushed ones warned her that the tension was already mounting. "I've got coffee on," she murmured, glancing at her wrist-watch.

"This is going to be a long hour. Very long," she muttered.

Bryn was already inside, pacing. "Lee, when he calls this time, I'll do the talking. You have a habit of irritating him."

"Forgive me for not wanting to get both you and Adam killed," Lee retorted, his jaw hardening still further. Barbara could feel the sparks flying and she quickly grasped Bryn's arm. "Come on, honey, let's go into the kitchen and get the coffee."

It was a long hour. Andrew appeared downstairs, and Bryn heard him talking quietly to Lee. She ran out and faced both of them. "Please, please! Don't do anything to mess this up! There won't be any trouble.

I'll give the prints back; Adam will be home. Don't the two of you do anything! Promise me that! Swear it--"

"Bryn," Barbara warned.

Then Andrew andBarbara who were nervous themselves, were left with the task of keeping Bryn and Lee apart. Personally, Barbara agreed with Lee that Bryn was wrong. The police should have been called. But then she couldn't blame Bryn for being terrified for her little nephew.

And it was said, Barbara decided. She sincerely believed that Lee and Bryn were just right for each other, that the love was there that should have helped them--had helped them-- now, as in the days that had passed.

But both of them, it seemed, were afraid of the depths of that emotion, and so now, with torment and tension mounting, they were at the snapping point.

At exactlynine o'clockthe phone rang. Bryn cried out and raced for it, leaving no time for a second ring.

"Ah, good, Miss Keller. You're there. All ready?" "Yes, yes! I've got your negatives and the proofs and I haven't touched a thing. Please, when can I have Adam?" A husky chuckle answered her."Put Condor on." "No!" Bryn protested. "Please, you're dealing with me; I want Adam now. Oh, please--" "Put him on."

The command was unnecessary. Lee had grabbed the phone from her.' 'We want the child.Now. Or we will do something with these pictures," Lee snapped.

"You'll have him. As soon as I send the kid, you call that lobby and tell Miss Keller. She drops the stuff and leaves. Don't you dare let there be anyone suspicious around, youhear ? I don't think you're that stupid, but I just wanted to talk to you again, Condor, to remind you I don't want any tricks." "No
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tricks," Lee agreed, glancing at Bryn. "But so help me God, if anything goes wrong..." "Not on my end.

Tell her to go." Lee hung up the phone.

"Well?" Bryn demanded, gripping his arm, unconsciously digging her nails into it like talons. "You can go now," he said unhappily. "Oh, thankGod, thankGod," she murmured. Then she caught his eyes with her own."No tricks, Lee, really. You have to be here."

"No tricks," he told her grimly. "I'll be right here." He glanced over his shoulder at Andrew. "Call Information for me, will you? Verify that number of that pay phone in the hotel's lobby."

Andrew nodded, gave Bryn an encouraging grin, and stepped over to the phone. Lee turned back to Bryn. "Have the valet park your car. And as soon as you've dropped those pictures, you walk out the front door, give the valet your ticket and get into your car as soon as he drives it up. I mean it, Bryn.

Don't take any chances. Don't be anyplace where there isn't a group of people around, okay?"

She nodded numbly. It was going to work out, it was going to work out,it had to work out.

Andrew hung up the phone and handed Lee a piece of scrap paper.

Lee accepted the paper, glancing at it,then stuffing it into the pocket of his knit shirt. He nodded to Andrew. Bryn thought that the two men exchanged a strange glance, but she was too distracted to really know or care. "I'm going," Bryn murmured. "Aren't you forgetting something?" he asked. "What?"

"The pictures," he said quietly, handing her the packet that he had set on the counter. She paled. She hadn't even remembered to bring them from his house; he had been the one to do so.

"Thanks," she said swallowing nervously. "Bryn, I mean it. Calm down or you'll get into an accident before you get there." His soft tone negated the tension between them and the anger that had sparked. It gave her a sense of security, of his caring, of his strength. "I'll be calm," she promised.

He touched her lips with a light kiss. It was warm and giving and reassuring. Again, it was as if he filtered his own strength into her with his touch, with his subtle male scent. More than ever she wanted to cry, but she also felt as if now she could go on with her mission competently. "See you soon," she murmured and stepped out the door.

It didn't seem to take twenty minutes to reach the lush new Mountain View Resort Hotel; it seemed to take twenty years. And as she fumed at the traffic, Bryn worried herself into a state of nausea as one refrain kept going through her mind. What if something went wrong? What would happen to Adam if something went wrong? What if--what would happen to Adam--if something went wrong?

Her teeth were chattering as she drove up to the impressive portico of theMountain View. A cordial valet stepped up to open her door, and she tripped climbing out of the van. He steadied her; she thanked him in a confusion of monosyllables,

andstarted to leave him before taking her ticket. He called her back, and she could see in his eyes that he thought she was a crazy tourist as she thanked him again for the ticket.

There must have been half a dozen conventions going on in the hotel. People were everywhere. Bryn hurried to the large red couch that was set attractively before the forty-foot glass windows that looked out on a panorama of greenery and fountains. She saw the phone booth; it was an elegant,paneled nook in the wall, not ten feet from the red couch. She stared back toward the reception desk at the large clock
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