The Defiant Hero (21 page)
And by the time Juliet awakened from her feigned death to find Romeo dead by his own hand from poison, Nick was holding his breath.
“ ‘What’s here? A cup closed in my true love’s hand?’ ” Ralph wasn’t reading anymore. He knew these words by heart. Eve kept her eyes tightly shut as she felt him gather her into his arms. He radiated such heat, she felt nearly on fire. After he gave it back, her dress would smell like Ralph. She would never wash it again.
She prayed he wouldn’t feel the way her heart was pounding.
“ ‘Poison I see has been his timeless end.’ ” His voice broke. “ ‘O churl, drunk all; and left no friendly drop to help me after? I will kiss thy lips; haply some poison yet doth hang on them, to make me die with a restorative.’ ”
And then it happened.
Ralph kissed her.
It was the softest kiss, just the sweetest, gentlest pressing of his lips to hers.
Eve opened her eyes.
They were nose to nose, and she was in his arms, half lying across his lap.
She expected him to be shocked. She thought he would be appalled at what he’d done, but instead she couldn’t begin to read the odd expression in his eyes. Was it a glimmer of . . . satisfaction? Had he planned this from the start?
“But wait, methinks I best try that again,” he said. “Perhaps a deeper kiss will do this thing.”
The lines weren’t in the script, but he spoke in perfect, poetic iambic pentameter.
And he was going to kiss her again.
Eve knew she should move. She should tear herself out of his arms. She should leap up and away before he got himself into even more trouble.
“ ‘Go breath, go soul . . .’ ” Ralph’s gaze was locked on hers, she couldn’t have looked away, let alone moved out of his arms if her life had depended upon it. “ ‘. . . with thou who holds my heart.’ ”
“That’s you, sweet Eve,” he whispered, and kissed her again. Not as Juliet kissing Romeo, but as Ralph kissing Eve.
And oh, it was wonderful. His lips were so soft against hers, his mouth was sweet. He tasted of butterscotch and sunshine.
She knew all about kissing from the movies, and she’d always been afraid of laughing the first time someone tried to put his tongue into her mouth.
But suddenly, there she was, kissing Ralph, and it wasn’t funny or strange or even the slightest bit disgusting. Instead, it was perfect.
His mouth was warm and he tasted delicious. Dizzy and giddy and melting inside, she clung to him, wanting . . . what? She wasn’t sure, but it definitely involved kissing him like this forever.
“Can we skip the kissing part?” Nick demanded plaintively.
Ralph pulled back, and Eve knew from the sudden flare of chagrin and embarrassment in his eyes that he was about to apologize for what had to be the best thirty seconds of her entire life and—God help her—transform back into a proper, too-polite Englishman.
She wasn’t ready for that. Not yet. Maybe not ever.
“No,” she told her little brother, grabbed Ralph by the front of her dress, and kissed him again.
She could taste his surprise, feel his laughter.
This time, when he kissed her back, he wasn’t quite so gentle. This time her mouth—no, her entire body—felt on fire.
It was terrifying. And wonderful.
And over far too soon.
Ralph was breathing hard when he pulled away from her. She was, too—and her heart was pounding. And if it hadn’t been, the heat in his eyes would’ve kicked it into double time.
“You will have dinner with me tonight,” he told her.
Eve nodded. Yes.
He smiled then, and she knew she had no choice.
She reached around him, into the pocket of her dress, and took out the note she’d written just last night.
She scrambled to her feet and flung it over the side of the boat.
Ralph came to stand beside her as she watched it float for a moment, the ink slowly running and turning the paper blue, before it started to sink beneath the surface.
“What was that?” he asked.
“Nothing.” She wouldn’t tell him—she couldn’t tell him. Not now. If he found out the truth now, after kissing her that way, he’d leave. She knew he would. And she’d be unable to bear that.
Instead she’d somehow manage to bear deceiving him.
She gave him a bright smile. “Shall we finish the play? Where were we? Romeo’s dead and poor Juliet just found his body.”
“No more kissing,” Nick said.
As Ralph handed Eve her copy of the play, he smiled, and she knew. There’d be plenty more kissing.
Just not in front of Nick.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ten
NILS HADN’T LIED to Lieutenant Paoletti. Not really.
The SEALs had been assigned to continue to be on standby at the K-stani embassy. Even though there was no longer any threat, even though Meg had escaped with Razeen, the FBI wanted them to remain.
The tape loop was going to be kept running, to avoid the embarrassment of having to explain the current situation not just to the Kazbekistanis but to all the CNN and other news cameras positioned outside. The SEALs’ presence would help with the charade, at least until Meg Moore and Osman Razeen were apprehended.
Tom Paoletti had looked hard at Nils when he’d asked for the next thirty-six hours off. “Do you have a guess where Meg Moore is?”
“No, sir,” Nils had said, looking Paoletti straight in the eye. And it wasn’t a lie. Nils wasn’t guessing. He knew where Meg was. “I need a whole lot of uninterrupted sleep.” That wasn’t a lie either. He needed the sleep—he simply wasn’t going to get it.
Paoletti nodded. “Go and crash.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“John.”
Nils turned back.
Lieutenant Paoletti looked tired, the lines in his tanned face more pronounced than usual. “This probably isn’t going to have a happy ending. You know that, right? Meg’s either way over her head with Razeen—in which case he may well have already overpowered her and . . .”
And killed her. Nils nodded. He knew that. There was a chance he wouldn’t be tracking Meg with WildCard’s system, but rather Meg’s body.
“Or she’s working with Razeen,” Paoletti continued, “in which case she’s not who you thought she was. In which case she never was.”
“I’m aware of that, L.T.”
“Good.” Paoletti didn’t try to force a smile, the way some people might have. This sucked, and they both knew it. He didn’t try to pretend that it didn’t. It was one of the many things that made him a great CO. “I’m sorry, Johnny. Go get some sleep.”
“Yes, sir.” Nils turned and went, feeling like shit on a stick for being unable to come clean with the man.
He and WildCard had nearly made it out of the lobby when Senior Chief Wolchonok flagged them down. WildCard was needed back at the other hotel. There was some kind of technical glitch with the backup tape loop that only the boy genius could handle.
WildCard told the senior he was on his way, handed Nils his laptop, and gave him a crash course in his tracking system. Nils would need to use a cell phone hooked into the computer, and he could run the laptop with an extension cord that plugged into any car’s cigarette lighter. Easy as pie.
WildCard went in one direction, Nils in another. He rented a car, picked up some coffee, and within thirty minutes was heading south on Route 95.
Nils knew Sam would be pissed that he’d gone after Meg by himself, but every minute that he delayed, she was getting farther away. And while he wasn’t exactly UA—guilty of an unauthorized absence—there were elements of potential goatfuck written all over this.
Yes, if he managed to find Meg and bring both her and Razeen back alive, everything would be cool. But if something went wrong, the FBI was going to start shouting about aiding and abetting and obstruction of justice and God knows what else. It was bad enough that Sam and WildCard were involved. Nils couldn’t bring any of his other teammates into this mess.
The sound of the tires against the road was much too soothing and Nils turned on the radio to keep himself awake. He didn’t have time to be exhausted, but his body was struggling to stay alert. The fatigue came in waves—he had to fight harder when it hit. Country music blared, and over it, Lieutenant Paoletti’s voice seemed to echo, tinny and distant, like some disconnected DJ who didn’t realize the mike was still on.
If she’s involved with Razeen, she’s not who you thought she was.
This wasn’t a good sign. When Nils started hearing voices in his head, echoes of conversations past, he was well on his way to falling asleep.
And at 80 mph, that could be messy.
He opened the hot top on his coffee and took a sip even though it was still close to the temperature of molten lava. It burned all the way down.
Pain was good. Pain meant he was awake. He took another even bigger slug, making his eyes tear. Christ, even his stomach felt scalded.
Paoletti’s words still echoed, but he was over the hump. He was awake, and by the time he finished the large cup of coffee, the caffeine would have kicked in.
If she’s involved with Razeen, she’s not who you thought she was.
That was for damn sure.
Best case scenario had Nils catching up to Meg when she stopped to get some sleep at a roadside motel. He could get through the cheap lock on the door in a heartbeat and once inside . . .
Worst case scenario had Nils walking in to find Meg and Razeen together, in bed.
Yeah, that would be just about as bad as it could get.
Well, maybe not. It might be a little bit worse if Meg then told him she and Razeen had hidden a nuclear device back in DC, and it was set to go off in thirty seconds.
“I don’t know anything about you.”
Meg’s voice rang so clearly, Nils glanced in the rearview mirror to make sure the backseat of this rental car was still empty. No, her voice had definitely only been in his head.
He took another slug of coffee. Come on, caffeine . . .
Come on, brain, stay alert.
It had been—what?—nearly three years since she’d said those words to him? Yeah, it was that summer, six months after they’d first met in K-stan. They were having a picnic down by the Lincoln Memorial. Nils had been in DC for over ten days by then—his inquiry having been postponed for the sixth goddamned time.
He’d figured it out. The foreign service office was waiting for Daniel Moore to arrive back in the States. Apparently he was involved in some diplomatic mission that took precedence over the inquiry, something important enough to put a Navy SEAL ensign on hold for nearly two weeks.
Not that Nils had particularly minded.
After he’d finished helping Meg paint Amy’s bedroom, he’d found other excuses, other reasons to show up at her apartment.
And she’d welcomed him.
Probably because he was playing things completely cool, restraining himself from throwing her over his shoulder and carrying her into her bedroom, tossing her onto her bed and . . .
He always greeted her with a smile instead of a soul kiss. He always tried to stay at least three feet away from her, and he never, ever grabbed her in the elevator and nailed her to the wall.
Even though he wanted to more than just about anything.
He played nice, and his reward was that they had lunch and dinner together every day.
And he comforted himself when he was alone in his hotel room at night by telling himself that lunch and dinner were far more than Daniel Moore was currently getting from her.
“I don’t know anything about you.”
She’d said it while eating a grape Popsicle. He’d never been so jealous of a piece of ice before in his life.
“What, are you kidding?” he’d asked. “I’ve done nothing but talk about myself for the past week. I feel like I’ve been interviewed by Barbara Walters. What don’t you know? I was born on Long Island, when my mother died I lived with my father and my uncle and his wife. We covered this. I attended Milfield Academy—the best private school in the state—went to Yale, joined the Navy—”
“You talk about it as if it’s someone else’s life,” she said. “As if you’re listing facts you’ve memorized or—”
He looked at her. “What is that supposed to mean?”
She instantly apologized. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to make it sound as if I don’t believe you.”
“But you don’t believe me.”
“I do. John, I just . . .” She leaned toward him. “I want to know the rest. I want to hear all the parts you’re leaving out.”
Nils was silent. What could he say to that?
She touched him then. She put her hand on his knee.
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