Trading Secrets (10 page)

“It’s nothing, Sabrina. Just a lot of small accidents over the years.”

“Accidents with what, for heaven’s sake?”

“Knives. It happens when you work a lot with knives.” Irritably he carried her fingers up to his own neck. “Sabrina, forget my hands, will you?”

She smiled wistfully, making no attempt to pull free. The feel of his broad shoulder was inviting. “I can’t forget your hands, Matt. They’re one of the things I will remember most clearly about you. Along with your delightfully overbearing military manners, of course.”

“I’ll be goddamned if that’s all you’re going to remember!” His fingers tightened with sensual roughness on the nape of her neck and he used his thumbs to prod her chin upward.

Sabrina knew the familiar excitement of the physical attraction that flared so easily in her when she was around Matt. When he held her all of her senses seemed involved. The scent of his body, tangy now with a trace of sweat, filled her nostrils, and the heat of him seemed to engulf her. Beneath her fingers the contours of his back invited stroking. When his mouth came down on hers, Sabrina didn’t even try to resist the compelling invasion. As she had told Matt, she would make no attempt to deny the attraction. It existed.

The kiss was a composite of simmering frustration and the natural aggression that seemed to be an intrinsic part of Matt August. It occurred to Sabrina that he might not be capable of a tender seduction or of gentle lovemaking even if he weren’t trying to punish the woman in his arms. The forceful, instinctive attempt to master her was too fundamental to be explained away simply by assuming Matt was in an irritable mood.

Sabrina’s mouth surrendered territory rapidly beneath the onslaught of his tongue. She shivered in reaction to the urgent feel of Matt’s hand as he slid his palm down the length of her spine and found the curve of her hip. There his fingers bit deeply into the fullness, forcing her against him. Sabrina was made to know beyond a doubt that he was already aroused and hungry.

“Lady, you’re going to drive me out of my mind. I need you, honey. And I swear to God I can make you need me. Stop fighting me. Let me have you. Let me show you how good it can be between us.”

Christ, it felt so good to hold her. Matt’s head began to spin as he cradled her thighs against his own. So soft and warm and feminine. He wanted to take her to bed and lose himself in her. And she wanted him, damn it! Hadn’t she admitted as much? Hell, she’d picked him out of that bar full of men the first night. Him!

She shuddered in his arms, and he felt the tremor in the farthest reaches of his body. Exultation flared in his veins. She did want him, and if he kept control of himself and of her she would ultimately have to acknowledge that she couldn’t deny either of them. He searched his head for the words he needed to soothe and reassure her.

“Sweet Sabrina, don’t be nervous. Just relax, honey. Relax and let me hold you. Let me touch you here and here until you’re on fire.” He found the sweep of her thigh and then moved his hand up to her breast. His lips slid damply across the edge of her mouth and found the exquisitely sensitive place at the base of her throat. She was still wary of him. But she was at the mercy of her own desire, and he could make that work in his favor.

The sensation of knowing she really did want him and that she was fighting herself more than she was him sent another wave of excitement through Matt.

“Sabrina, honey, it’s all right this time,” he whispered huskily at the curve of her throat. “It’s all right. I’m going to take you back to the hotel. Upstairs to your room. And I’ll do everything just right. I’ll make love to you all night long.” His body was blazing now with anticipation. “Come with me, honey. Come to bed with me.” And afterward, he vowed, she wouldn’t go hunting for good-looking hotel managers to fill in the time.

“No.”

The single word was muffled by the neatly pressed white shirt Matt wore, but it was firm. Sabrina felt the abrupt rigidity in Matt’s body and knew it was caused by sheer disbelief. Male arrogance was an incredible thing at times.

“Damn it, Sabrina, why not?” He crushed her to him with a taut violence that kept her mouth pressed into his chest. She could barely move.

“Because I’d hate myself in the morning, Major!” It angered her that he held her so shockingly still, but that anger gave her the determination she badly needed at this point. Matt thought he held her in the palm of his hand just because he could make her respond to his kiss.

“Don’t give me that crap!”

“Oh, I wouldn’t hate myself for the sexual side of the experience, assuming, naturally, that you could manage things right this time, which is one hell of a large assumption—”

“Sabrina, I’m warning you—”

“I’d hate myself for having broken my own rules,” she concluded with all the self-possession she had. His frustrated confusion made him relax his hold slightly, and Sabrina raised her head. “I drew them up somewhere along the Interstate between California and Texas.”

“Oh, Jesus.”

“Rule number one is that I make my own rules. Rule number two is that I live by them. I should think that, given your obvious dedication to the military style, you’d understand something about rules and codes of conduct.”

“And any man who gets close to you has to play by your rules, is that it?”

“Let’s just say I’m looking for friends and lovers who share a similar code of conduct. I misjudged you that first night, Matt. I thought you were someone like me; someone who lived life on his own terms and let others do the same. I was wrong. Like most men, you want to control everything.”

“I don’t believe this! Because of what happened in California, you’re going to make every man you meet jump through a hoop or tell him to get lost?”

“Just like in the Army.” She smiled. “But in all honesty California was not the single, traumatic incident that made me suddenly change my life. It was more the culmination of a lot of things; some large, some small. I’ve been fighting for the right to choose my own lifestyle since the day my family stuffed me into pink rompers when what I really wanted to wear was a pair of yellow ones. I tried to please people when I could; made some compromises; tried to maintain a balance between what I wanted and what everyone else thought I should have. After California I asked myself, ‘Why bother? Life is short. I’m going to live it my way.’ “

“And to hell with anyone else, is that it?” Matt asked roughly. “You let yourself get pushed around a bit by your family and then that jerk out in California and now you’re out to prove it won’t happen again.”

“Full marks for perception, Matt. As they say in the military, I think you’ve got the big picture.” She pulled free of his arms, turning to walk slowly back along the beach to the hotel. He followed at once, stalking alongside her with the restlessness of a male who has played his last card and knows it isn’t a winner.

“Sabrina, I can’t believe you’re going to do this to both of us.” He made no attempt now to touch her, and his eyes were on the lights of the hotel ahead. But forty-eight hours later, when he put her on the evening flight to Dallas, Matt acknowledged bitterly that she was, indeed, going to do it. He drove the jeep back toward town as Sabrina’s jet climbed into the evening sky, and he wondered how he was going to get to sleep that night.

The restlessness was heavy in his blood. Something about the dark foliage on either side of the road reminded him of that last night in that fouled-up backwater country farther south. The moon had cast the same shadows then; created the same pockets of fathomless darkness in the jungle. He could remember the gut feeling he’d had that night; the deep certainty that everything was wrong.

He’d been right. It had cost him two men and a career to find out just how right. But he’d had his orders. Matt’s scarred fingers tightened on the jeep’s steering wheel. And he’d been the kind of officer who did the job he was paid to do.

It had cost him just about everything he had in terms of willpower and physical ability to get himself and the five surviving men of his small team back out of that jungle hell after the ambush. He’d had no choice but to leave the bodies of Jenkins and Symington behind. He was too pragmatic an officer to risk more lives going back for bodies.

But the guerrillas had gone back for Jenkins and Symington after giving up on finding Matt and the others. Three days later they had produced the bodies amid a blaze of publicity that had thoroughly embarrassed the U.S. government and the Army.

Matt pushed aside the memories, his mind going back to Sabrina Chase. She had told him to get rid of the bits and pieces of the military that still stuck to him. Maybe she hadn’t realized those bits and pieces were keeping him glued together.

Then he thought about Rafferty Coyne and the little man’s offer of a job. Matt wondered what good it would do to prove to himself that he could still handle that kind of work. Would it stave off the growing sensation that his world was losing a sense of focus? Did he really want to spend the rest of his life selling blood-and-guts adventure fiction and trashy New York best sellers to tourists who left suntan-oil marks on the covers?

This damned restlessness. He’d never experienced anything quite like it, not even during the unpleasant period of adjustment he’d made to civilian life two years before.

Sabrina Chase was the one who had done this to him, Matt decided. Until she had appeared in his life he’d been doing a fairly good job of keeping everything under control. Just barely, perhaps, but under control. Now the immediate future looked as though somehow it didn’t belong to him. Rented, just like his white stucco villa on the hill.

High overhead Sabrina, too, tried to account for an unfamiliar sense of dissatisfaction and restlessness. Maybe this was what it was like to live by your own rules. Would there be many instances of wistful regret?

No, she told herself, there wouldn’t. For the simple reason that there weren’t many ex-Major Matt Augusts running around. She had really picked one hell of a way to celebrate her birthday.

It was all very complicated, but one thing was for certain. She had made the right decision. Matt August was all wrong for her, even for a vacation affair. He was too military, too conservative, too autocratic, and too fascinating. She had done the right thing by staying in control of the situation.

Hours later at the Dallas-Fort Worth Airport she collected her bags and made her way out to the parking lot, where the Alfa Romeo waited with a coat of Texas dust on its sleek white surface. Moments later she sat behind the wheel and loosened the reins. The car plunged forward into the night as if it were the white stallion of her adolescent fantasies.

Matt would probably have been amused.

He would probably also have found it humorous three days later when the silver paint started flaking off the necklace he had warned her wasn’t really a bargain.

The phone rang at three in the morning. Calls that demanded a drastic change in your life always came at that hour of the morning, Matt decided as he lunged blindly across the bed to grab the receiver. He should have taken the thing off the hook. For some reason he had always assumed that the idiosyncrasies of the Mexican phone system would protect him from those kinds of calls.

“If this is you, Coyne, I can give you my answer right now. It’s no. I never say yes to anything at this hour of the morning.”

“Matt? This is Ginny. How can you stand to live in a place without a decent phone system? Do you realize how long I’ve been trying to get hold of you? Where have you been?”

Matt closed his eyes and dropped back against the crumpled pillow. He considered the question and decided to answer.

“Out.”

There was a beat of silence on the other end of the line. Then Ginny drawled in weary disgust, “Same old Matt. Same old answer.”

“What do you want, Ginny?”

“Help,” she retorted succinctly.

Matt didn’t move, but he was suddenly very wide awake. He stared intently at the shadows on the ceiling. “Is Brad all right?” he asked tautly.

“No, he is not all right. He’s ruining my life, as a matter of fact. I’ve had it, Matt. You’re going to have to do something. He’s your son.” Ginny didn’t bother to hide the anger. “My God, is he your son. More so every day. I won’t let him ruin my marriage. I waited until the end of school, but I can’t wait any longer. Summer vacation starts tomorrow. You’ll have to come get him. Maybe a summer spent with you will let him see that his father is not some comic-book combination of General Patton and the Lone Ranger.”

“The summer?” Matt sat up slowly, shoving aside the sheet. “You want me to take him for the summer? I thought you always said I’d be a bad influence on him.”

“You’ve already influenced him,” Ginny muttered with suppressed violence. “So much so that I just can’t handle him anymore. He’s causing nothing but trouble between Paul and me, and I simply won’t let him ruin my life. I’ve tried to handle it in a normal, civilized fashion. God knows how many hours I’ve spent with school counselors and guidance people. I even tried to get him into group therapy, but—”

“Therapy!”

“Yes, therapy! What’s the matter, Matt? Don’t you like the fact that your only son is in need of professional help?”

“I hardly qualify as professional help,” Matt shot back roughly. “You always cast me more in the role of financial help. Remember the house, the cars, the bank account, the cash settlement that wiped me out? And then there are all those contributions you’ve received from my parents that are supposed to go to Brad’s college fund.”

Ginny ignored that. “I want you to come and take him, Matt. I want some time away from him before he drives me crazy. Before he drives Paul crazy.”

Unspoken was the rest of the sentence, but Matt could fill it in for himself. The essence of it was simple: If Paul Martin decided he’d had enough of playing father to someone else’s difficult kid, he would leave, taking the security of his oil-based money and his country-club lifestyle with him. Ginny would probably never forgive Brad if he succeeded in driving off her new husband.