Smoke and Mirrors (39 page)

Since that night, he had kept his distance from women.

Women?

Fiona!
The name struck him with the force of a nor’easter, and he scrambled to pull the mobile from his discarded overalls. He called her number, depressed when it went straight to voicemail.

“Fiona, it’s me, Christian. I’m so sorry, lass. I forgot to… ” He hit end when he realized it was too late for apologies. Picking up the half-empty bottle of Oban instead, he drained the rest of its golden measure.

Lunch had been a nightmare, and not for the first time, Fiona was ready to quit and disappear to a place where she could start over. No more pity, no more Sunday morning therapy sessions, no more sleeping on the floor of the inherited Brownstown because being on a mattress held only one memory.

The salmon had gone over like a lead balloon, a party of six had canceled due to last minute Wicked tickets, and the sous chef had run out of cream. Speeding across the pier and down a side lane toward the grocer’s, Fiona swore a blue streak when she skidded on the snow. “Fuck Christian Ollason and his goddamned salmon!”

Her arms windmilled, and when she finally regained balance, she caught sight of the blond stalker from her now-distant morning. He was a few yards behind her, feigning interest in an outdoor postcard stand, and he didn’t seem to realize she’d seen him.

Her anger evaporated as she silently inventoried her options. She had taken a shortcut between two brick office buildings, and the doors facing her were locked. Going back wasn’t possible, and the alley to her left ended at a desolate dock.

Her throat tightened.

Until she remembered the little water taxi which catered to locals wanting to avoid traffic.

She glanced at her watch and realized the boat just might be there. Spinning down the passage, she kicked off her boots and broke into a run. Footsteps sounded behind her, lending her speed she didn’t know she possessed.

The pounding grew louder, and she could almost feel the man’s breath on her neck when the taxi popped into view. It was waiting, buttoned against the chill of the day with a plastic top. She leapt through the triangular flap and sprawled beside the shuttle’s startled driver. “Go! Someone’s following me.”

The driver–a comely Irishman of about sixty–took one look at her shoeless feet and another at the menacing figure bearing down on them. “Mary, Mother of God. Right. Now hold on. He’ll not get an Irish girl if I can help it.”

They cleared the harbor in a haze of smoke. A few long moments later, Fiona straightened, her body shaking with cold and fear. “What makes you think I’m Irish?” she asked, holding first one foot, then the other, in an effort to regain warmth and nerves.

He tilted his head as if she were pulling his leg. “You were speaking Gaelic, love.”

Fiona’s skin prickled. Gaelic? Why now?

Her bag answered her thoughts with an electronic version of Wagner’s Flight of the Valkyries, and she stooped to retrieve her cell. There was a message. She pressed play and listened dumbstruck to the deep, sexy voice that poured forth.

The taxi driver, hearing every word, gazed at her with a gleam in his eye. “He sounds like someone who could kick the ass of that blond Nazi back there. Would you be heading to see him?”

Brushing an errant piece of hair from her mouth, Fiona shook her head numbly. “Me? No…he…I mean…he’s Scottish…as in…he lives in Scotland.”

Logan Airport loomed into view, and the driver shook his head despondently. “Ah well, that’s where they usually live. We’re here. Would you like me to call the police?”

“I… ” Fiona sucked her lower lip between her teeth. What the hell was she going to do? She couldn’t go back to the restaurant. What would she tell the police? They’d shake their heads in that knowing way. Trauma from her kidnapping. Thinks she’s seeing one of the fishermen who used her like joy riders in a stolen Porsche. “No. I’ll be fine. He won’t know which terminal I’ve gone to.”

“Okay then. Take care of yourself.” With that, he offered Fiona a hand, which she politely declined, and she stepped out onto the airport dock.

“Thank you.” She held out a fifty-dollar bill.

He grinned at the generous payment. “Well, you’ve obviously got money and from the sound of his voice, you won’t be needing your clothes!” He waved a final time and disappeared before his words could sink in, leaving Fiona speechless beside a chugging bus.

“Where to?” the driver bellowed.

She stepped up onto the bus and glanced out at the snowy terminals. Far. She had to get far away from the man with the gun. “I don’t know…how about British Air…Departures?”

“Right, no bag?”

She shook her head. “No bag. No shoes.”

The driver tugged the door closed with a contented grunt. “Well, sit down, it’s slippery and I don’t want you to fall.”

S
he bought her ticket with cash from her deceased father’s account.

That way her stalker would lose her trail.

Or perhaps not, she countered, sitting in first class so she could monitor everyone who came aboard.

Why had Christian suddenly called her? Why had he broken that barrier? She picked up her cell and listened once more to his message.

“Fiona, it’s me. I’m sorry, lass, I forgot to…”

His voice was heady with compassion, disquiet and ale. Was he a drinker? Did he too struggle against unseen enemies?

Lass. She’d never been called that. Most words, yes. Not that one. It was new, snow-like with freshness. She could answer to lass. It held no promises, no threats.

His lass.

Or not. Did he have a wife? Girlfriend? Boyfriend?

She stared out into 32,000 feet of blackness and saw something else. Something unbidden.

A man, tall and shirtless, stared through a stone casement until the whisper of silk shifted his attention. From over his shoulder, he watched a woman approach. Her fingers slid around his muscled torso, and he closed his eyes.

The raven-haired lady pressed her mouth against the plates of his spine. “What troubles you?”

He pulled her hands tight to his chest and rested his head against the curve of her forehead. “Nothing. Well, nothing of import,” he amended.

“Tell me.”

He inhaled, deepening the hollows between his cheekbones and jaw. “I feel empty, like all the time and effort spent getting to this point meant more to me than victory. We are home now, freed from war at last, and yet I feel edgy. Restless.”

She stilled and he turned to face her, their circle of flesh unbroken.

“Not with you though. Never you.” His apology met with freckled forgiveness and contented green eyes.

“I fight similar demons.” She smiled and raised a finger to his parting lips. “Not you though. Never you,” she mimicked softly before adding, “Perhaps it is wanderlust from which we suffer. We are, both of us, cut from the cloth of gypsy folk.”

He chuckled and took hold of her neck, enveloping jaw and skull in his hands’ embrace. Then his tongue parted her lips.

“I’m going to fall,” she murmured. But when she did, he did as well, onto the sheepskin rug.

She was disrobed before they landed, her richly embroidered gown unclasped and shed with one stroke of his hand. The same could not be said of him. Still clad in breeches, he struggled against their grip. She laughed and covered his flesh from thigh to mouth with her own.

He skimmed across her, fingertips and tongue traveling her terrain with jerky unevenness.

“Gypsies we are, even unto each other,” she noted distantly.

“Give me your mouth.” He flipped to his back, dragging her with him, nudged apart her knees and thrust upward. The sound of her gasp echoed off the room’s stone walls.

Rolling once more, he twisted erotically against her unguarded hips. Her fingernails skated across his back, crested his shoulders, and were beginning their descent when he jailed them. Jamming them over her head, he pinned them to the rug with interlaced fingers.

She cried out, green eyes flashing lust, and he jerked hard.

She wrapped her long, elegant legs around his hips, drawing him deeper. But he had already released her. “I didn’t mean to hurt you. I…”

“Shhh.” She shook her head, blue-black streams of hair twisting upon the pillow. “War has been your bedfellow of late, my love.”

A troubled tint cast his blue eyes, but he thrust his palms into the fur beside her shoulders and plunged until their hips kissed. His eyelids dropped, blond lashes framing Norse features drawn with concentration. Sweat beaded his face. His breath was ragged, his movements no longer smooth. Then he dropped his head, brushing his chin across her lips once before his posture broke and his hips bucked against hers.

“Miss?”

Fiona woke, curled on her side, her chair still fully flat.

The flight attendant looked worried. “My apologies, miss, but we are preparing to land.”

A blush warmed Fiona’s face. “No, fine. Sorry.” Fiona glanced numbly at the hands of her watch. Six hours had gone in the blink of an eye. The man beside her was staring. She raised the seat and turned toward the window, humiliated.

Who were the man and woman in her vision? There was a love, an incandescent lust, between them that she’d never believed possible.

Were they part of her memory? A half-remembered dream?

Impossible. Fiona didn’t have pleasant dreams.

Before she could come to terms with her latest vision, the seatbelt light was switched off and she was disembarking.

Jostled along the boxy corridor, Fiona felt as though her strings had been cut and she was floating away. Except for a wretched weekend on Nantucket with her father’s suspicious sister, Fiona had only been away from Boston one time.

She’d flown to Quebec for a wedding and been captivated by the city and its castle-like hotel. Perhaps she could find a similar inn - one that had a window-seat.

She remembered that sheltered spot. Remembered curling there in the not-a-bed and watching the stars glitter over the darkened St. Lawrence Seaway, until she’d slept.

It had been a dreamless, restful sleep that Fiona longed to duplicate.

Only the airport in Quebec had not been this large. It had been easy to navigate the one terminal, sprinkled with racks for skis and the heel prints of snow.

Fiona glanced down at her bare feet, glad there was no ice at Heathrow. She needed shoes, so she walked on. The day was soot gray, but she didn’t think anyone had followed her.

Maybe after a few days, Sean would tell her a blond foreigner had been arrested for harassing restaurant patrons. Then she could go home again.

Only, it wasn’t home, was it? Not the impersonal Brownstone decorated by her late mother. Not the city of Boston, which though lovely, felt about as comfortable as six-inch heels.

Perhaps she should find work in London or Oslo. She’d often taken holiday brochures and lost hours staring at pictures of Scandinavia. Something about the stave churches and deep fjords spoke to her soul. But then she’d recall that harsh whisper of Danish. Those cruel eyes and ruthless hands.

What if she ran into one of her captors there? Fiona shuddered. No, definitely not Scandinavia.

The corridor was ending, and she turned the corner, careful not to bump any jostling elbows. It had been bad enough that the man on the plane had brushed her knee each time he reached down to take something out of his briefcase. But to be touched by so many people at once…

Fuck. A vision fired like a muzzle flash.

Twenty feet ahead there was a woman, elegant and blond, vanishing through a private mahogany door. Her posture was impeccable, her clothing couture. She radiated force and something else. Something so terrifying it stopped Fiona dead, panic squeezing the air from her lungs.

Only it’s not really there, is it? she tried telling herself. The door. The woman. It’s only a knot of people.

Forcing herself onward, Fiona fought off dizziness and nausea. Jet lag. Exhaustion. It must be a combination of the two…

She froze an instant later.

There, just ahead. It was the door from her vision - behind real people - visible only now when the throng parted. Only there was no woman. Just the lingering scent of her unmistakable perfume. Dear God, I need help.

Suddenly, the memory of Christian’s voice was her only lifeline. She would go to Scotland. Had to. Thirty minutes later, Fiona had purchased a ticket to Lerwick and boarded the flight dressed in new jeans, a sweater and boots.

In the confined space, cell switched off, free from her stalker, free from the woman behind the door, peace enveloped her, and, finally, she slept.