The Fall of Lucas Kendrick (12 page)

She felt his hands touch her waist and, as her eyes became accustomed to the darkness, saw the glimmer of his smile.

“Later,” he murmured.

Kyle wasn’t at all inclined to argue with him, but she was dimly aware that what was between them couldn’t be allowed to interfere with his work a second time. She felt the smooth material of his lapels beneath her fingers, saw a flashing image of Zamara’s red-tipped fingers, and somewhat defiantly slid her arms up around his neck.

Strands of his thick hair slid through her fingers like silk, and she caught her breath when he pulled her lower body against his firmly.
“I—I thought you didn’t want to rush things,” she managed unsteadily.

“I don’t.” His head bent, and his lips pressed warmly against the bare flesh of her shoulder. “But I have to touch you, Kyle. I’ve spent so many nights … in the dark like this … remembering the softness of your skin. Remembering how your body felt against mine. Feeling your heart beating under my hand until it was my heart, and it beat so hard that it hurt.”

His low, compelling voice was a caress, sliding over all her senses until she could
feel
the words, feel them flowing through her veins, tensing her muscles, weakening her bones. He was moving subtly against her, a sensual movement that made her vividly aware of the thrusting desire of his body and the aching, yielding need of her own. She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t draw enough air through her constricted throat to sustain life, and yet her body had never been so alive.

She felt his hand move to her side, her rib cage, drift slowly upward over the tight silky
material of her gown. And when those long fingers closed over her breast, trapping the pounding heart beneath, a rough little sound of hunger escaped the tightness of her throat. Her head tipped back as his lips burned a trail up her throat and her eyes closed, only to open a moment later when he lifted his head.

“Luc?”

Both his hands were at her waist now. He was very still, and she sensed he was trying to retain some small command over the needs of his body. And when he spoke, his voice was harsh with strain.

“When all this began, and I knew I’d see you again, I woke up one night remembering. Wondering what might have happened between us. I told myself you would have outgrown what you felt for me, but … oh, dear Lord, Kyle, I’ve made so many mistakes!”

“We both have,” she whispered. The darkness of the room, she thought, left them vulnerable as they could never be in the light, and she shied away from that only because there was so
little time to do what they had come here to do, and she couldn’t allow a repeat of what had happened before. As important as their feelings were, a second failure to complete the job he was entrusted with could destroy Lucas.

She reached beside his shoulder to find the light switch, flicked it, and several lamps came on at once in the large room.

“We aren’t going to make mistakes like those again, Luc. And we won’t let the past poison the future. It’s over—finished. It’s behind us.”

“Kyle—”

“No.” She gazed up at him, her eyes direct and certain. “I won’t be haunted anymore. I won’t let you be. It happened a long time ago. I think we both paid, but nobody’s asking us to go on paying.”

“A reprieve isn’t a pardon,” he said finally, gruffly.

Kyle touched his cheek with gentle fingers. “I can’t pardon you, Luc. I can understand and forgive—and I have. I can stop looking back
and look forward. I have. Now there are only two things from the past left to deal with.”

“Which are?”

“You have to do the job you were sent here to do. I think we both realize there’s a danger in something similar happening again. A danger of me coming between you and your job again.”

“Kyle—”

“It’s true. We both know it. Not the same kind of interference, but there’s still a danger.”

Finally he nodded. “Yes. And the second thing?”

“That pardon you were talking about.” Her voice was soft. “It isn’t mine to grant, Luc. It’s yours. I forgave you. Now you have to forgive yourself.”

He realized then that she was right. He
hadn’t
forgiven himself, had never done so, and that self-betrayal had colored his life ever since. He had hurt her, hurt himself, walked away from his responsibilities, broken the law by destroying evidence and lying to his superiors. For ten years he had lived with the knowledge that out
of whatever motives he had failed badly during a critical moment in his life.

He had failed
.

Gently she said, “When you asked if I wanted atonement, you were asking for yourself, weren’t you? You’re the one who can’t forgive yourself for being human.”

Lucas felt shaken, but he also felt a sense of release somewhere deep inside him. As real as the maze outside was the one within him, and ever since coming back into her life he had been feeling his way blindly, finding unexpected turns and dead ends. But she had led him to the center now, and he stood confronting his own grinding sense of failure.

Kyle wanted to turn her eyes from the wounded look in his, but she didn’t. If he could show her that naked anguish, she could find the strength not to flinch from it.

With quiet certainty she said, “It’s
over
. Past. Put it behind you, Luc, and go on.”

He didn’t resist when she stepped back, but his hands lifted to hold her shoulders. “The
worst failure,” he said roughly, “was the one with you. That’s the one I can’t forget.”

“You didn’t fail with me,” she told him. “I don’t think I was ready then for real love. I don’t think I would have known or valued what either of us had to give. Not then.”

“We might have had ten years,” he said.

Kyle looked reflective. “I read something once that some wise poet said. Something about the saddest words of tongue or pen being ‘what might have been.’ Would we have had ten years, Luc? I don’t think so. If you had told me who you really were, I think I would have run from that. And if you hadn’t told me, well, I would have run, anyway, eventually. I wasn’t ready to love you completely. What we have now—within our reach—is so much stronger than what we would have had then. Because we’re both stronger. From triumphs and failures and time.”

“I hope you’re right,” he said, a bit wry but trying for lightness.

“I know I am.” She smiled at him. “But first
we have our work cut out for us this weekend: to find the secret of this house. And this is Friday night.”

He followed her lead, realizing they both needed a little breathing space from their turbulent emotions. He felt almost exhausted, yet his body throbbed slowly, achingly. Releasing her shoulders, he tried not to think about that. “All right. Where’s the safe? And what is it you’re looking for in here?”

Kyle turned to survey the book-lined room, frowning. “I think the safe’s behind those bookshelves by the window. There’s a catch somewhere near the third shelf. And what I’m looking for is a book about the Rome family—and this house. A private history printed almost a hundred years ago.”

Lucas moved to the area of the room she had indicated, his mind shifting reluctantly back to business. “Is there such a book?” he asked, running sensitive fingers over the third shelf.

She was several feet away, scanning titles on the shelves behind a massive oak desk. “I saw it
once, when I was a kid. Martin’s wife told me all the secrets of the house were in it. She might have been trying to be dramatic for my benefit.”

“But worth a try,” he agreed.

“Got it!” They both spoke at once, Kyle straightening with a leather-bound book in her hands and Lucas stepping back to permit the outward swing of the shelves.

And both were suddenly conscious that they’d been locked in the room for some time. Any of the other guests, a passing servant, or Martin Rome himself could knock on the door. Kyle quickly sat down at the desk and began looking through her slender volume, while Lucas brushed up on his safecracking abilities.

A quarter of an hour later Lucas said, “He doesn’t keep much here. Just a few important papers.”

Kyle looked up from the book to find him frowning over a legal document that looked familiar. “His will?”

“Ummm. Dated just a month ago. Her Highness isn’t mentioned, by the way.”

Having returned her attention to the book, Kyle said vaguely, “He’d never leave anything to a mistress. He has a young nephew. The heir?”

“The heir indeed. If he’s twenty-one or older when he inherits, the young man is to be given a private letter held by Rome’s attorneys. If he’s younger, the estate will be held in trust for him, until he’s of age. Odd.”

“What’s odd about that?”

“Nothing. I mean, what’s odd are the stipulations. This is more Rafferty’s department than mine, but it looks as though this house and its grounds are so tied up that it would be virtually impossible to sell anytime soon. There’s a paragraph here that explicitly urges the nephew and trustees not to sell. Nothing—not so much as a stick of furniture, a painting, or an umbrella stand—is excluded. And there’s a complete inventory and appraisal attached to the will—dated six months ago.”

She watched while he replaced the will, closed the safe, and then swung the shelves back into place. When he came over to rest a hip on the corner of the desk and gaze down at her, she said, “Well, it’s unusual, I suppose. And it sounds awfully rough on the nephew. I mean, Martin has business interests, stocks, things like that, but most of his wealth is here in this house. If the nephew has to liquidate most of his inheritance just to pay taxes and keep this place intact, he could actually end up in debt.”

An expression of surprise crossed Luc’s face, and then one of speculation. “Maybe there’s a motive in that,” he mused.

“What do you mean?”

They heard laughter suddenly from the hallway as a couple passed the library door, and Lucas stood up. “Let’s talk about it upstairs. I think we’ve been in here long enough. Will Rome miss that book, d’you think?”

“I doubt it. But I don’t have any way to carry it without being obvious—”

“Let me.” He took the leather-bound volume
and slipped it beneath his cummerbund at the small of his back. “Come on.”

When Kyle took his arm as they left the library, she wasn’t even thinking about appearances. She was thinking about Lucas and about her, and hoping they could clear this assignment up quickly.

They had other things to do.

Josh studied the Rubens with a critical but wholly approving eye. “Beautiful. I’m surprised you’re willing to sell it.”

“It was a favorite of my father’s,” Martin Rome said, “but never one of mine. A matter of taste, of course.” He looked at Raven. “Do you share your husband’s interest?”

“This one is lovely. He has some paintings, though, that should be hung facing the wall.” She looked at Josh in amusement. “All for a good cause. They’re works by beginning artists.”

Raven and Josh were standing with Rome
and Zamara just inside Rome’s gallery, a wide corridor specifically designed to display his collection of paintings. All of them noticed Lucas and Kyle emerge from a dark alcove and slip down another hallway toward the stairs.

“Those two are really something,” Raven murmured softly.

“Kyle certainly fell hard,” Josh agreed. “And he can’t take his eyes off her.”

“Or his hands,” said a throaty voice.

Josh could feel Raven bristle even though she didn’t lose her smile, and he somewhat hastily pulled her into the circle of his arm. “Young love,” he reminded Princess Zamara mildly.

She slipped a possessive hand into the crook of Rome’s arm. “
Young
love, Joshua? But isn’t love at any age an exhilarating experience?”

Promptly he said, “It certainly is.”

Zamara rubbed her cheek against Rome’s shoulder and before Raven’s fascinated eyes the man seemed to go into a kind of stupor. He actually went a little pale, his eyes glazed over,
and the hand he lifted to cover hers shook slightly.

“Excuse us,” he said in a vague tone.

Raven watched them move away toward the stairs rather than the still crowded salon, then looked up at her husband. “Well, I’ll say this for Her Highness—whatever she’s got packs quite a wallop.”

“And that’s the second time since dinner they’ve disappeared upstairs,” Josh noted.

“I hope she remembers to put both earrings back on this time. She’s unnerving some of the guests who devoutly wish those two, but especially Zamara, would be a little more discreet.”

“She isn’t subtle, that’s for sure.”

“She’s also trying too damned hard,” Raven said broodingly. “The first time she enticed Rome upstairs, he was talking to us, remember? In fact, every time we’ve gotten near him, she’s put in an appearance.”

“Maybe she’s afraid you’re going to steal Rome away from her.”

“Whatever her faults, darling, she isn’t unobservant.
I’m not terribly subtle where you’re concerned, and she’d have to be blind, deaf, and stupid to think I wanted anyone else. I wonder …”

“What?”

“I wonder just how secure her hold on him really is. I don’t think she’s afraid of losing him to another woman, but she’s worried about something.”

“My instincts are jangling too,” Josh admitted. “I feel as if we’re sitting on a powder keg, and somewhere nearby, someone has lighted the fuse.”

Raven nodded. “I certainly hope Lucas and Kyle found something.”

“I
T MAKES SENSE
,” Kyle admitted slowly, “if we accept that Martin has absolutely no scruples about protecting his family’s heritage.” They were back upstairs in her room. She was sitting at the foot of her bed with the Rome family book in her lap, and Lucas was leaning against a tall, burnished mahogany bedpost beside her.

“It explains a puzzle or two,” Lucas said. “Like why he’d have a room full of artwork stolen if he only wanted the mask. And about his leaving the house and grounds as difficult to
sell as possible. The letter of instruction to his heir is key; the nephew would have to know where to find the stuff.”

“He wouldn’t want to leave his heir indebted,” Kyle realized, agreeing with Lucas. “But the nephew could sell off the artwork a few at a time, claiming he’d discovered them hidden, or that they were bought in good faith. He may even think that’s true, and just assume his uncle wanted to protect him from inheritance taxes. The statute of limitations will likely expire before he inherits, anyway.” She shook her head. “And if he
does
know and wants to avoid questions altogether, there’s always the black market. Neat. As long as that stuff remains hidden, who’s to know?”