The Silver Fox and the Red-Hot Dove (5 page)

She sank to the steps and sat there for several minutes, her hands knotted into fists of emotion against her face. Even from the porch she could see where his blood had spattered the sand. A fierce, unrelenting thought tore at her.
The arrow hit an
artery. He may bleed to death before his people can reach him
.

Her fingers burned with energy. Every instinct that flowed from her gift urged her to do what she was meant to do, to use the wonderful power that had never been perverted, not even by Kriloff. Crying, she shook her fists and looked toward heaven. “All I wanted was to be free!”

She leapt from the steps and ran after Audubon.

He woke with his head in someone’s lap and his legs in the ocean. A shadow made his face feel cooler than his arms. He could feel the sun on them as well as on his bare chest and stomach. He could feel the softness of the thighs beneath his head. He could feel the strange, tingling heat against his side.

It was all very pleasurable, and suddenly he realized that none of it would have felt so good if he were dead. He opened his eyes quickly and stared up into the faded cotton flowers covering Elena Petrovic’s chest. She was bent over him so deeply that he inhaled the soap-fresh scent of the fabric and the sexual, feminine scent of her body. With ease he could have lifted his head and nuzzled the mounds that pressed downward against the thin cloth. Hibiscus had never looked so interesting before.

He was in a languid mood, as if half-asleep. Slowly he tried to remember how he’d gotten this way. His last memory was of sinking to his knees in the surf, too weak and dizzy to climb into the dinghy he’d left on shore. It had floated away, taking his last bit of consciousness with it.

Now energy was flowing back into him through the puzzling sensation beneath his rib cage. The wound! He tilted his head up in a hurry to see what was happening, but instead mashed his upper face into the lovely upside-down hills covered in hibiscus.

Elena leaned back, taking her shadow with her. Sunshine flooded his eyes and he turned his head to one side, blinking, his mind and eyes beginning to
focus. He disliked the helpless feeling, which reminded him of the time he’d been wounded in Vietnam. But when Elena ran her hands up his chest, bringing the comforting, energized glow with them, he exhaled with delight.

Her hands flattened over the center of his chest; his heart seemed to be drawn to them, to her. He was liquid inside, responding to the pull of her elements. It was like nothing he’d felt before, like nothing any other woman had made him feel … or want. “What are you doing to me?” he asked.

“I applied pressure to your wound.” Her voice sounded drained, hollow. “Nothing mysterious. It stopped the bleeding. Sheer luck.” Her hands fell from his chest, cupped his head, then lowered it to the sand as she slid from under him.

Audubon raised up on his elbow and looked at himself. The surf ruffled over his lower legs, taking away red clouds of blood that had soaked his trousers on the side beneath his wound. His shirt hung open, the ends trailing red streamers on the sand. His torso’s covering of fine, dark brown hair, which had never turned white like the hair on his head, was crusted with dried blood.

He’d come much closer to dying than he’d realized. Elena Petrovic had stopped the bleeding with simple pressure techniques? Impossible. Quickly he craned his head so that he could find the wound under his rib cage. Shock poured through him. The gash was dry, and the edges had closed. They were already forming pink ridges of scar tissue.

He stared in utter disbelief, then rubbed his eyes and looked again. Cool air from the surf misted him, and he shivered. Probing the wound with his fingertips, he expected it to change back into what he
knew
it should be. It didn’t.

Audubon shot upright, peeled his shirt off, and explored the area around the wound again and again, frowning. He’d led a highly adventurous life that had left him immune to feelings of wonder. Now his
cynicism was washed away by wide-eyed fascination, and he felt like a child who believed in magic.

From the corner of his eye he caught Elena’s movement and swiveled to watch her. She was a short distance away, curled up on her side in the sand above the surf line. She had one arm under her head as a pillow. Loose chunks of blond hair, matted by the wind and moisture, fell over her exhausted-looking face, and she observed him through it with sad, groggy eyes.

When he vaulted toward her, she frowned and started to push herself upright, but appeared too weary to fight. Audubon knelt beside her, slid a hand under the ragged cascade of hair, traced the lines of the smooth, slender neck, and found the pulse point under her jaw. Her pulse felt strong but a little fast—no surprise, since she was obviously afraid of him. But what else was wrong with her?

“Are you sick?” he asked.

“No. Just exhausted.” She braced herself with both arms. Her head drooped. “Exhausted, and angry, and defeated. Caught in my own trap, you might say.”

“What did you do to my wound? How did you heal it?”

“Forget your questions, Mr. Audubon. I won’t answer them. I don’t care what happens to me. I won’t cooperate.”

He was bewildered, excited, and alarmed by her mystery. The sorrow and resignation in her voice filled him with sympathy, but the practical part of him said now was the time to take this valuable prize home for further study. He had earned his reputation for unsentimental idealism. Others might picture him as a bit driven and manipulative, but they never complained about his motives.

Then his practical self faltered, still dazed by the miracle she’d created with her hands. “You saved my life,” he murmured. “There’s no explanation for how you did it. I should be dead. Without your talent for miracles, I would be. I feel … I feel like one
of those people who have near-death experiences and come back to consciousness knowing that their lives will never be the same.”

“You’re overreacting. I told you, I just applied the correct pressure techniques.” Under his disbelieving stare she wavered, sank back to the sand, and shut her eyes. “If you feel so grateful, leave me here and don’t tell anyone you found me.”

With a ragged sound of dismay at the mysteries hovering around them as persistently as gulls, he bent close to her and framed her face with his hands. One of his thumbs left a dab of his blood on her cheek; he shivered with the idea they had marked each other in some basic, unchangeable way.

Now shadowed by his body as he had been by hers, she half-opened her eyes and looked up at him, frowning. “I didn’t mean to shoot you.”

“I know.”

She searched his expression for a moment. “I see. You don’t want revenge. What do you want, really?”

“You. Everything about you, everything I see, and touch, and hear, everything I know and don’t know—yet.”

She blinked slowly, as if in a trance. “It would be easier if you admitted the truth. I have not had much honesty from the people who control my life. I would appreciate it from you, perhaps more than you can guess.”

“This is honesty.” He lowered his mouth to hers and kissed her gently, then feathered another kiss across her forehead. Whether she was hot from the sun or transmitting her special fire to him, he didn’t know. She wasn’t small or helpless looking, but right now she seemed frail, and one glance at her face told him he was upsetting her. “I’m your friend.”

Audubon got to his feet, scrutinizing every detail of the bedraggled woman who had given his life back to him. His quick inventory of new information included her sinewy, strong feet and beautifully muscled calves. The floppy sack of a dress was slicked to curvaceous thighs and wadded between finely boned
knees, revealing a tiny brown mole beside one kneecap. It was an alluring beauty mark on her fair skin.

Looking closer, Audubon saw that her lower legs were sunburned and dirty from working in Beckel Nilly’s field. Her bare arms were also that way.

She met his assessing gaze with eyes whose blue had faded from her odd spell of fatigue. Her mouth was drawn into a bitter line. “I can’t run from you right now, and you know it.”

“Yes. I don’t understand it, but I’ll have to wait until you trust me enough to explain. And this”—he pointed to the pink, star-burst scar on his side—“you have to explain it too.”

“No. I’m through handing my pride over to others. What I can keep inside me, what few freedoms I have left, I will
keep
. You’ll be very disappointed, and so will Kriloff, when you turn me over to him.”

“You’re not going back to him.” Audubon became brusque, glanced up at the sky, and cursed the loss of time. “I’m sorry, but for now you’ll have to believe whatever you like. We have to go.”

The dinghy, dragging its small anchor, was just offshore. He brought it back and carried her to it. She slumped in the bow seat, hugging herself, as he cranked the motor. Farther out, the fishing boat floated peacefully. After Audubon hoisted her up the ladder, her knees collapsed and she sat down limply on the deck. He climbed into the boat after her and helped her rise to a cushioned seat along the side.

“I have some food in the refrigerator. Would eating make you stronger?”

“No. I’ll be fine in a few minutes.”

Fearing she might throw herself overboard when her strength returned, he quickly radioed the helicopter. The pilot had worked for Audubon for over a decade. He skillfully maneuvered the impressive machine, equipped with its pontoons for water landings, bringing it down no more than a dozen yards from the boat.

Turning her head wearily, Elena Petrovic pushed the hair from her face and moaned at the sight of
the helicopter. “You
are
working for your government. How else could you have this?”

“I’m a disgusting capitalist with more money than you can imagine.”

Audubon’s pilot stared at his bloody trousers and the strange scar, but said nothing as he helped them board the helicopter. “What will become of your boat?” Elena asked Audubon as the pilot fastened a seat belt across her in the back passenger compartment.

“One of my people will take care of it later.”

“One of your people? How many do you own?”

Audubon arched a brow. “One more than I owned before.”

From the miserable expression on her face, he realized she had taken him seriously. She twisted away and stared out the window, placing one hand flat on the glass with the fingers spread in yearning. He stroked her shoulder soothingly, but she jerked away. “Have
one of your people
tell Mrs. Nilly some kind and apologetic lie about my departure, please.”

“It will be taken care of. Don’t worry.”

“Everything will be taken care of for me.” He saw a muscle work in the back of her jaw, as she ground her teeth. “How nice. I’ve heard that all my life. It’s another way of telling me I have no choice.”

Audubon watched her from the side as she fought and lost a battle to stop silent tears from slipping down her sunburned cheek. He wanted to touch her again, to take her in his arms and comfort her more than he’d ever comforted another human being, including himself. She’d nearly killed him, then saved his life, and whatever she’d done to accomplish the latter continued to renew him. Touching the scar on his bare side again, he had the disturbing idea that somehow she had put her spirit inside him … or had taken part of his.

What nonsense! He wanted to laugh but couldn’t. The Russians were demanding she be found and returned, and he suspected that whatever made her valuable to them would make her doubly valuable to
the State Department. If that was the case, Audubon needed her for some critical negotiations of his own.

No one at the State Department would hurt her. They’d be glad to help her defect. They’d simply expect her to cooperate in interrogation, to make herself useful. But that would be better than returning to Russia, wouldn’t it? She’d be free, in a way. Tested, poked, prodded, spied on, and paraded in front of experts who’d find out all of her proud secrets, and then exploit them.

But she’d have more freedom, he told himself. And she’d understand, eventually, that she had helped him make a life-or-death deal, for a very good cause.

When the helicopter rose into the blue spring sky, she drew her fingertips along the window as if telling her hopes good-bye. Audubon lounged in the seat beside her, watching intently and beginning to dislike his merciless devotion to his work, no matter how noble. He struggled with a desire to protect her at all costs from anyone who might make her unhappy, including himself.

She had never flown in a helicopter before, and the noisy two-hour trip wore on her nerves. Her neck ached because she refused to turn away from the window and look at her captor. She spent the time picturing his “home,” which she was certain must be some prison like laboratory or concrete government building filled with sinister servants who would spy on her.

And as she puzzled over his reasons for wanting her she hit upon the most logical answer: ransom. Elena knotted her hands in her dress. Of course! He said he was just a businessman, not a government agent. If that was true, then he must intend to
sell
her to Kriloff—or even to his own government.

She drew her conclusions and used them to build a wall. There would be no more demonstrations of her gift, and absolutely no more lowering of her guard with T. S. Audubon. He would get nothing from her until she decided how to use him for her escape. His seduction tactics wouldn’t sway her.

Unless, by some impossible chance, they were sincere.

He put a hand on her shoulder. The careful, confident grip made her stomach drop—or was it the descent of the helicopter? Her expression frosty, she twisted to look at him. His pilot had given him a
cotton undershirt to wear, but it was too small and accentuated the thick muscles of his shoulders and arms, making him look brawny and uncivilized. His hair, cut in long layers that reached the base of his neck in back, was disheveled and bore a streak of red from a careless stroke of his hand.

A bloody barbarian
, she thought, but the image sparked her awareness of him as a man even more. His face, which she had never really had a chance to scrutinize closely before, had too many leathery creases and angles to be beautiful, but the mouth was cleanly sculpted, the nose noble, and the eyes large, with dark brown brows and lashes that curled up at the tips.