Darkness at Dawn (25 page)

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Authors: Elizabeth Jennings

Tags: #Romance, #General, #Suspense, #Contemporary, #Fiction

BOOK: Darkness at Dawn
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The old man’s eyes widened. “Merr-itt,” he whispered.
Lucy bowed and pulled the door open.
The old man moved quickly across the room, leaving the heavy tray on a sideboard, then turned to her.
“It is an honor to meet you, Lady Merr-itt. Your esteemed parents are legends in this country. Please consider me your humble servant.”
It was said in one breathless stream, fast, in a choked voice.
Lucy bowed again, and the old man bowed back so low his forehead nearly touched his shins. He backed away, much as courtiers used to back away from the Sun King, and closed the door quietly behind him.
“Well, that was interesting. I think you’ve just made a new friend,” a deep voice said from behind her. She turned and had to fist her hands so hard her nails bit into her palms to keep from throwing herself at him.
Mike was just so incredibly, impossibly sexy, sitting up cross-legged in bed, bedclothes tumbled around him, head leaning against the brightly painted headboard. By some wild coincidence, his head covered the round orb of the sun and bright yellow rays emanated from his head like an old-fashioned halo. But he was no angel. Not the way he was looking at her.
“Do you, um . . .” She coughed to clear a dry throat. “Do you think that
that
,” she pointed at the tangled covers, “might be due to the altitude?”
It was one explanation. She didn’t remember a craving for sex as the body’s reaction to high altitude, but then the last time she’d been here she’d been fourteen years old.
“No, ma’am.” A corner of his mouth lifted. He looked like sex on a stick, a comma of jet black hair hanging down over his forehead, morning stubble darkening his cheeks and what had been a remarkable erection probably still alive and kicking beneath the sheets. “If anything, high altitude is a libido-killer. Nope.
This
—” His voice mimicked hers as he swept his hand over the tangle of bedsheets covering his groin. “This is all us.”
Oh, God.
This was not good, on so many different levels. She couldn’t even begin to list the reasons why this wasn’t good.
They were here on very serious business. Dangerous business. Undercover, too. It was one thing for two perfect strangers to pretend to be engaged. It was all playacting, none of it real. But if they became lovers for real, some truth would seep in, muddy the waters. When your emotions were involved, it was all too easy to zig when you should zag.
Lucy met Mike’s eyes. Something of what she was thinking must have seeped through into his consciousness, because he’d lost the grin. She could only hope he’d lost the erection, too.
“I think we should eat breakfast and then plan the day.” To her surprise, she was wringing her hands. She stopped, could feel a flush rising in her cheeks, and clasped her hands behind her back.
From childhood she’d been taught to control her emotions. Cool, calm, collected. It was second nature to her.
Somehow, coming back to Nhala, the strong shock of being back in a country she’d never thought she’d see again, reuniting with Paso, the enormous danger they were facing—they’d all worked to jolt her out of her usual head-space.
She thought she heard a sigh coming from the bed, and Mike threw back the covers and stood up. At some point during the night he’d lost his silk pajama top but the pajama bottoms were thin silk. Sure to show everything. Lucy raised her eyes to the ceiling.
“It’s okay.” Mike’s voice was wry. “I’m okay. Back to, um, normal.” He walked to the big tray, studying its contents with interest. “Why don’t you go first to the bathroom?”
“You just want first whack at the breakfast tray,” Lucy said accusingly.
“Busted.” He grinned again, a faint simulacrum of his earlier, sexy grin on the bed, watching her face.
All of a sudden it occurred to Lucy that he’d noticed her floundering, seen how unsettled she was and was trying to put her at ease.
How odd, the feeling of being looked at and . . . and understood. She was so used to gliding through life keeping her thoughts and feelings to herself.
It made her feel unsettled. The bathroom sounded like a really good place to be right now. She grabbed her clothes and fled.
It had been touch and go, there.
What had he been thinking? Well that was the problem. He hadn’t been thinking at all. Just feeling. Feeling Lucy’s slender body beneath him, a flash of immense heat prickling under his skin wherever he touched her. And the taste of that Angelina Jolie mouth . . . God, he’d forgotten everything.
This was not like him at all. Mike liked sex as much as the next guy. More, even. But he liked doing his duty even more than getting laid. Except right now.
Right now he was sorely tempted to march into the bathroom where at this very moment she was undoubtedly naked—the sound of the shower started up and he groaned, because now she was naked and officially
wet
—grab her and finish what they’d started. Get this prickling feeling out of his system, because it was annoying him, like a huge itch you couldn’t scratch. He wasn’t used to unrequited lust. He made real sure he didn’t get the hots for the wrong kind of woman—no crazies, no druggies, no working girls. And above all they had to be single—no messing around with another guy’s life. That still left a lot of women. When he latched on to a woman, she usually wanted him back. Just like Lucy.
So holding it back right now felt unnatural. What was the problem? Why not just go for it?
Well, there was this pesky fact that they were on a mission to stop really bad guys from doing really bad things. There was that.
But if he had to be honest with himself, and he always made a point of knowing himself, he’d admit it was the expression in her eyes that stopped him.
She’d just looked so lost.
If he pushed, she’d fall. He knew that. Taken unawares just after waking up, her body had been totally welcoming. It had been unmistakable and, well, pretty damned wonderful. Her arms had opened up, her legs. He’d never felt anything like it, like some rare flower blossoming.
But right now? She’d gone back into her shell, back behind that beautiful, untouchable mask she wore. She wasn’t ready for sex. He was—he was raring to go. But he didn’t want to persuade her, he wanted her to come to him on her own, because she wanted it as desperately as he did.
So, he thought as he dressed, if he couldn’t have sex, he could at least have breakfast. Someone in the Palace kitchen had prepared enough food for ten stevedores. There were three kinds of omelets, several kinds of biscuits, a big bowl of something warm and sweet that looked like oatmeal but wasn’t, four kinds of bread and about a thousand different tiny bowls with various flavors of chutney, a big platter of fruit and an enormous teapot with enough tea to drown a horse. It was all good, and he was hungry.
She stayed a long time in that shower. More than long enough for him to have finished everything on the tray. However, though it cost him, he scrupulously left her half.
Lucy stuck her head out of the bathroom door, cautiously, as if uncertain of his mood.
He kept his voice casual. “You better get here quick before I finish everything off. Because I don’t know if they have a coffee shop in the Palace.”
Lucy smiled faintly. “No, there’s no coffee shop, and not much coffee, either. But I imagine all we’d need to do is ask for more tea and biscuits and they’d bring it.” She sat down in one of the huge carved wood chairs and poured herself a cup of tea.
She’d put on her Serious Woman uniform. Dark blue turtleneck sweater, tailored dark blue trousers. She’d draped a blindingly white lab coat over a chair, just waiting. She had on minimal makeup, her hair was pulled back into a tight ponytail, and she was wearing black, severe Marian the Librarian glasses.
It was a message. Mike read it, loud and clear:
No fooling around
.
O-kay.
“I want to go with you to where they’ve set up your lab. I want to see where it is.” He tried to keep command out of his voice, so as not to get her back up. But he had to know where she’d be all day while he was up in the mountains looking for a dead man’s flash drive.
He wouldn’t be able to concentrate unless he knew she was safe. So he put mildness in his voice, though he wasn’t about to take no for an answer.
But he underestimated her. She sipped at her tea and put the cup down gently. “That’s a good idea. And I’ll wait there for you to come to me this afternoon so we don’t end up chasing each other all over the Palace.”
Man, he really liked it that she didn’t make a big song and dance about her independence. This wasn’t a man-woman thing. They were teammates, and the first rule in the field, after staying alive, was to keep track of your teammates.
“Okay, it’s a deal.” He waited for her to put a jacket on, fold her lab coat and fit it into her purse, and pick up her heavy briefcase. Or toolbox, more like it. She listed slightly to one side, so it must have been heavy. “Need help with that?”
“No, I’ve got it.”
Don’t push your luck
, he thought. “Okay. Let’s go.”
The ceremonial guard outside their door must have had instructions, because he silently turned and beckoned them to follow.
Down huge hallways, up staircases, down staircases, every wall painted a different brilliant color, gilt statues everywhere, every door and window with a painted and carved frame or casement—it was ADD paradise.
Mike tried to keep track in his head, trying to fix the route by color—left green, right red, left yellow . . .
After they’d been walking for what seemed like hours, they descended stairs into a more modern part of the building. The colors were the cool gray and beige of Western modernity. Even the smell of the air had changed from ancient mustiness to the modern smell of neon and electricity and fax toner and central heating.
Lucy slowed down imperceptibly, and he followed her lead. She stared straight ahead and spoke in a low voice that wouldn’t carry. “I know that felt like a labyrinth, but essentially we crossed the north-south axis of the building and are at the opposite end of the Winter Palace from our room.
Mike instantly oriented himself in his head, as if pondering a map that made no sense until it was turned around the right way. She was right, and now he knew he’d be able to find this part of the Palace again. He gave an unobtrusive thumbs-up, staring straight ahead. They caught up with the guide as he stopped outside a white laminated door and opened it. Mike and Lucy walked through, and the door closed behind them.
They were alone in the room. It was windowless, the air close and sterile. Lucy shook out her lab coat briskly, put it on, then hauled out that heavy briefcase and started removing things. Jars and bottles and steel instruments and every single size of brush known to man.
When she was completely ready, she looked around. “I wonder—”
The door opened suddenly, without a knock. General Changa stood in the doorway; he looked around coldly then entered the room. He said a word in a low voice, and a soldier behind him snapped to attention, took two steps forward and handed a long and beige roll of parchment to the general.
“Dr. Merritt,” he said, handing it to her. The manuscript.
Lucy smiled enthusiastically. “My, what an honor!” She put on cotton gloves and unfolded it reverently, the very picture of a scientist with something new and interesting. “Hmm.” She hummed a little as she touched the rough, dirty surface reverently with a gloved finger. “Now, I don’t wish to be hasty, and of course I’d need to run some tests, but I think we have some polyphenols here, together with epigallocatechins plus some minor catechins.” She bent over to look at the manuscript more closely. “Very exciting.”
She came across as an adorable nerd, pretty nose almost stuck to the parchment.
The general simply stood there watching her impassively, eyes cold and dark.
Lucy’s eyes rounded. She turned enthusiastically to the general. “General Changa, this is partially written in the Old Language! This dates it back at least five hundred years, perhaps more. As you know, the Old Language died out five hundred years ago, but remains to this day in formal speech, much as demotic Greek remains embedded in modern Greek.” She glanced up at his face and smiled. “I am so sorry. My enthusiasms do get the better of me. My parents were anthropologists but they had a strong interest in the semiotics of language and—”
“When will the manuscript be ready?” That cold voice, interrupting.
“Oh.” Lucy pushed her glasses up to the bridge of her nose. “Ahm . . . well, let’s see. I’ll need to do mass spectrometry. I’ll need to take a fragment of the manuscript, but I assure you it will be a minute amount. I can actually shave some fibers off with a razor, that will give me enough material to put into the mass spectrometer. And of course, it will require an initial cleaning, and once I’ve determined the exact composition, I can get down to a more careful cleaning, and then—”
“I want a readable copy to present to the people on the day of the Snow Dragon Feast.”
“Oh!” Lucy blinked. “Well. Well, uh, that’s the day after tomorrow, and I don’t know—”

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