THE PERFECT TARGET (9 page)

"Would you have believed me?" he asked now.

"The truth is always better than lies."

"Not always,
bella,"
he murmured, then lifted a hand to her face. His touch was warm, gentle. Unbearably sad. "Sometimes, they're one and the same."

Her throat tightened. They stood body-to-body, the room darker by the second, the only sound that of their breathing. She looked up at him, at that mouth he'd pressed to hers in the alley. He'd only been trying to staunch the flow of her words, but the feel of his lips on hers had tapped into another flow, this more like a lazy river, a foolish, ill-fated river that now lapped against a papier-mâché dam.

Miranda could count on one hand the number of men with whom she'd wanted to share intimacies. For the most part, the boys and men with whom she'd had contact had been as stuffy, predictable, and uninteresting as geology textbooks.

That within only a matter of hours her father's new yes-man had created the need to engage her other hand blew her mind.

"I'd better clean and bandage your shoulder," she said, ducking under his arm and returning to where the supplies lay strewn on the cold stone floor.

"I hardly feel a thing," Sandro said from behind her.

That's what she was afraid of. He was a man who followed orders, doing what needed to be done regardless of impact. He'd come on to her with the same efficiency with which he'd fired his briefcase gun. He'd kissed her with the same thoroughness as the shopping trip he'd made into town. No detail escaped his attention.

And other than the mention of his friend's death, he gave no indication that anything that had happened today fazed him one way or another.

Just another day on the job.

"So you'd rather let it fester and risk infection?" she asked pointedly.

He turned her to face him, having moved without making a sound. "Careful,
bella.
A man might think you care."

"You saved my life today," she said. Caring involved emotion. What she felt right now, this … longing, involved an entirely different area of her body. Because of the danger, she rationalized. She'd heard men and women whose lives had been in jeopardy responded by reaching out to each other to affirm life.

"No matter what else happens," she said, "nothing can erase that. I don't want to see you suffer."

Sandro winced. "It's a little late for that," he muttered.

Miranda blinked. His shoulder, she told herself. That was all he meant. "Then sit," she instructed. "And let me help."

That glimmer again, a speck of light in those dark, dark eyes. "How?" he asked, lowering himself to the floor. "With a kiss?"

She looked at him sitting there, one long, incredibly muscled leg stretched out before him, the other bent, his darkly tanned chest bare, that broad shoulder patiently awaiting her touch, and knew the real danger had yet to begin.

"You think that will make everything better?" she asked.

His smile faded. "Not a chance."

Going down on her knees, she picked up the bottle of antiseptic. The wound on his shoulder didn't look anywhere near as bad now that he'd rinsed away the blood, but it still needed treatment.

"What happens next?" she asked, trying to distract him from the sting about to follow. "Where do we go from here?"

He watched her squeeze the clear liquid onto cotton, as though she was preparing to brutalize him in some hideous manner.

"After you finish torturing me," he said evenly, "we eat and wait for total darkness. Then we head for Lisbon."

She looked up from the bandage she'd been preparing. "I thought you said we'd be safe here."

"I changed my mind."

Uncertainty nudged against caution. He said she was safe and she believed him, but she couldn't shake the feeling that there was more going on that he'd yet to share with her.

"If I didn't know better," she commented, "I'd think you were making this up as you go along."

He lifted a single dark brow. "Do you know better?"

No, she didn't. But rather than answering with words, she smiled and pressed the cotton to his shoulder.

His shout of pain gratified more than it should have. "I thought you said you didn't feel anything," she reminded, with all the innocence of a newborn kitten.

"And I thought you didn't want to see me suffer," he growled through clenched teeth.

She eased the cotton from his flesh and dribbled the antiseptic onto the wound.

"What was it you said about the truth and lies?" she asked breezily. "Sometimes they're one and the same."

* * *

"Fred and Ethel?"

Sandro closed the door to the small hotel room and crossed the well-worn carpet to secure the curtains. Flashing lights from the adjacent discotheque cut through the darkness, much as they had only two nights before, when Javier had first called with news of Miranda Carrington. The remainder of that night Sandro had paced, and planned.

Never had he imagined less than forty-eight hours later he'd be escorting the ambassador's daughter into a small, barely clean room that smelled like stale antiseptic and cheap perfume.

But he trusted Teresa at the front desk, and with a smile and a handful of escudos worth over a hundred American dollars, he could be assured of safety for a few hours.

"The clerk needed names for her records," he told Miranda. She stood with her back to the door, a turquoise scarf holding thick blond hair from her face, revealing the odd mix of fascination and dread shimmering in the green of her gypsy eyes. Her blouse was dirty, the peasantlike skirt torn. She looked more like a vagabond than a member of one of the most elite, beloved families in America.

Regret cut hard and fast, that he couldn't give her the same accommodations she'd no doubt enjoyed back in Cascais. A woman like her deserved finery, bright clean rooms with fluffy white bathrobes and strawberries awaiting near a bottle of champagne.

He had only shadows to offer.

"Couldn't you have been more creative?" she asked, finally moving deeper into the room. She set the supplies he'd purchased on the pitiful excuse for a dresser, then reached for the remote control and sat on the bed.

"What did you have in mind?" he asked, then immediately wished he hadn't. Not the right question to pose to a woman sitting on the side of a bed.

She looked up slowly, a curtain of hair falling back to reveal a grin that damn near knocked the breath from his lungs.

"How about … Boris and Natasha?" she suggested, lips twitching. "You look much more like a Boris to me."

Sandro just stared. Only moments before he'd wanted to slam his fist into the wall. Now with a few simple words, she had him damn close to laughing.

"Too exotic," he almost growled. He couldn't let the sight of her on that squeaky bed distract him. He couldn't forget who they were and why there were here. "We're traveling as tacky American tourists, not glamorous Russian spies."

Call me, Javier,
he added silently.
Call, damn it!

"Spies sounds much more exotic."

"Exotic is dangerous. My job is to keep you safe. As tourists, we can hide in public."

Miranda picked up one of the bags he'd dropped on the floor by the bed and pulled out a floppy straw hat. "So that's what this is all about? Looking like tourists?"

"The Jumbo doesn't offer the world's greatest selection."

She rummaged through the bag, pulling out brightly colored shirts and a few pairs of denim shorts. "I don't see any clothes in here for you."

He motioned toward a duffel bag sprawled near the dresser, where a few shirts, sole remnants of the life he'd left behind, lay folded inside. "I had stuff at the villa."

He'd burned everything else.
Almost
everything, he corrected, slipping his hand into his pocket and curling his fingers around his only other link to the past.

"Oh." Frowning, Miranda dumped the rest of his purchases onto the frayed bedspread.

Sandro braced himself. When he'd visited the Jumbo, he'd anticipated spending the night at the villa. But after the unexpected visitors, he'd decided not to push his luck.

A moving target was always harder to find.

His decision to leave had nothing to do with the way the room that had served him well over the years had seemed to shrink with every minute they spent alone together, isolated from the rest of the world. They would be alone together here at the hotel, after all. And there was a bed here. Far more possibilities for his imagination to hang him out to dry.

"We'll want to strip these sheets and use the blankets I picked up before you go to sleep," he instructed.

She looked from him to the bed, where faint stains littered the spread. "Oh." Her nose wrinkled, but she rallied fabulously, as if she frequently found herself in hotels where the sheets could keep a DNA expert busy for weeks. "Where will you sleep?"

He heard no real alarm in her voice, only a mild curiosity. "Where do you want me to sleep?"

Another stupid question.

She hesitated. "Where … where do you think is safest?"

Again, her response surprised him. He'd seen uncertainty streak through her eyes, the awareness that the room held only the one bed and an old wooden chair, and that to offer her maximum protection, he needed to stay as close to her as possible. That would mean sleeping in the same small bed. He'd seen the moment of alarm, but rather than pitching a fit about how she wasn't about to let him into her bed, she'd bravely asked what arrangement would be safest.

"I'll drag the chair by the door," he said abruptly. "No one can get in through the window."

A flicker of relief. "You don't think anyone will find us here, do you?"

"No, I don't. But a man can never be too careful." And the last thing he needed was to crawl between two soft warm blankets, next to her soft warm body. That would be more than risky. That would be stupid. He had to remain alert, after all. Surrounded by all that softness and warmth, he might sleep too deeply.

Abruptly, Sandro turned and reached for another bag. Sleeping soundly while Miranda Carrington lay so close her unique scent of flowers and sunshine clouded his senses was as likely as waking in the morning, only to discover the past two days hadn't really happened. They'd only been a nightmare. His plan hadn't backfired. He hadn't ended up with Miranda Carrington, after all. The general wasn't waiting for Sandro to turn her over into his demented little hands. And he, Sandro, wasn't saying a prayer every time he looked into her startling gypsy eyes and saw possibilities he'd written off years before.

"How long are we going to be together?" she asked from behind him.

He turned toward her. "As briefly as I can help it. Why?"

She held up the toiletries he'd purchased. "Baby powder and lotion?" Next to her hand lay a bottle of plumeria shampoo.

"They were on sale," he explained lamely. It had been stupid and he knew it. He'd seen the toiletries on the end-aisle display, and they'd looked soft and feminine, alluring, like her. It was only a small thing, he'd reasoned with himself. Buying her a few luxury items didn't mean anything. It wasn't like he was going to insist on smoothing the lotion over her curves and down her legs. And he sure wasn't going to be close enough to enjoy the clean scent of the baby powder.

"Here," he said, dumping the second bag on the bedspread. With luck, he would douse the damning sparkle in her eyes. "I wasn't sure which shade you'd like best, so I bought a few."

Three boxes of hair color fell around her, one jet black, another auburn, a third soft brown. Miranda stared a long moment before looking up at Sandro. "You want me to dye my hair?"

"I want you safe," he corrected. "And while blond is sexy as hell, it's also likely to draw extra attention here in Portugal, where pale hair and eyes are the exception, not the norm." He could still see her standing by the sea wall just that morning, the sun glimmering off that gorgeous hair of hers. She'd stood out like a swatch of light on a cloudy night. "So why don't you just sashay into that bathroom and have an organic experience. I can't have you turning heads everywhere you go."

"I see." Frowning, she looked down at the three boxes, her hand drifting toward the one with the soft brown color.

"Don't look so sad," he tried to tease. "It's not true what they say."

"What's not true?" she asked halfheartedly.

"About blondes. They really don't have more fun."

That got her attention. She looked up abruptly, her expression no longer wistful, but almost … stricken. "I don't care about fun."

She muttered the words defensively, as though he'd backed her into a corner and accused her of something heinous. Protective instincts surged. "What
do
you care about?"

Light from the discotheque kept flashing in through the windows, illuminating her face in one instant, casting her in shadow the next.

Sandro found he much preferred the light. The shadows made her look too sad. Too remote.

"You wouldn't understand," she whispered.

"Try me."

Outside, the familiar drone of European sirens wailed closer, but she didn't flinch, didn't look away. She just looked at him, through him, tempting him to twist around and see what she stared at, but he knew there was nothing behind him, just a cheap piece of artwork featuring a sunset over the ocean. Slowly, Miranda lifted her hands to the turquoise scarf holding the hair back from her face and tugged it loose. Then she handed him the brush he'd purchased and turned her back to him.

Unease snaked through him. "You want me to brush your hair?"

"Please."

The request seemed simple enough, but there was something intimate about a man brushing a woman's hair while sitting on the edge of a bed in a motel room. And Sandro didn't want intimacy. Not with the ambassador's daughter, not with anyone. Intimacy led to expectation and complication. Intimacy distracted. Intimacy killed.

But in all likelihood Javier would call with the sunrise. Sandro's time with Miranda would be short. She was asking him to brush her hair, not indulge in sensuous foreplay, not stretch out alongside her and learn every contour of her body, memorize the sound of her sighs, the feel of her legs wrapped around his.