Who Do You Trust? (6 page)

Melissa the dream slayer.

“It’s all right, Lissa. I’m not going to jump on you.”

Startled, she whirled around to find Mitch watching her, his face shuttered and cold. “Wh-what?”

“You’re right. Changes happen, even in Breckerville.” He shrugged as if he didn’t care, but the twist to his lips and flatness in his eyes told her he cared like hell. “You’re not the girl I knew if you get so damn angry about a stupid pizza or that I wanted a family celebration to let the kids know I’m thrilled to be back with them. If your eyes turn to ice because I ask you to reassure my scared and damaged kid I’ll still around in half an hour. God, Lissa, do you think I’m so bloody desperate to have you I’d blackmail you into marrying me through the kids?”

She felt a rising wave of color slap into her face. “Not me. I don’t flatter myself that it’s me you want. Just the family you always dreamed of. Good old reliable Lissa will take my kids—and me. It’s not like she’s got anyone else who wants her!” Then she gasped when she realized what she’d said. Darn it, did she always have to make an idiot of herself with men? Her runaway mouth, saying things she shouldn’t think or feel—

Then Mitch riled her with his quiet “Is that what you think? Is that what you believe, Lissa? That I don’t want you?”

On the defensive, it was her turn to shrug. “Oh, sure. For cooking. For cleaning. To be there for your kids. Sure you want me. I get the picture.”

She nearly fell over when he burst into huge gusts of hard-edged laughter. “That’s so bloody funny,” he gasped. “Uh-huh. I don’t want you.
I don’t want you!
”

He almost doubled over he was laughing so hard.

Tears sprang to her eyes. She turned away, determined not to dash at her face until she was alone. “I said I get the picture. You don’t have to laugh at the idea of wanting me! Is it so hard to believe any man could look at me?”

But at her dramatic intensity, he only laughed harder. “Hard to believe—oh sheesh, this is a farce!” Then as she tried to stalk past him he reached out, grabbing her, halting her stormy exit. “Oh, no, you don’t, Miller. You’re not cheating me of the chance to—”

She struggled against him, terrified of making a complete twit of herself by breaking down. “To what? Humiliate me some more? News flash, McCluskey—I don’t
do
humiliation. I don’t go in for the masochistic side of S&M. Go find another sucker, you—you
loser!
” she yelled, coining Matt’s favorite expression, trying to pull herself free from his hand.

“News flash, Miller—I might be a loser, but the only sadism—no, masochism—I’ve indulged in in the past seventeen years has been staying away from you!” But far from angry, his eyes were bright with fun—the sweet cascade of happiness only Mitch showed so simply and clearly. She hadn’t seen it in so long she ached just watching him. Wishing she could feel what she saw in his eyes. He was having a great ol’ time, teasing her, riling her.

But she wasn’t in the mood for games; his light, mocking attitude sparked a fury inside she hadn’t known she was capable of. “So why did you do it? Why
did
you stay away from me so long?” she shouted, driven past endurance.

“Damned if I know.” He grinned wider and pulled her against him, close, so close she could feel— “So come here and end my misery, will ya?”

She gasped and wiggled, shocked and scared and thrilled by the discovery she’d made: a hard bulge nudging her through his jeans. Was that really—? Could he be—? “Don’t order me around, McCluskey,” she said, but it was little more than a breathless rush of sound. “I’ll
damned
if I—”

“Lissa, honey, I’ve waited for this moment for seventeen years. Can we fight later? For now, just shut up and kiss me.”

She stared up at him, her lips parted in numb surprise. He sighed again, but it was a soft, sexy sound; the whispering sound lovers make in the night. “Okay, I’ll forgive you, but just this once.” He bent to her, touching her mouth with his tongue.

Then he groaned with that first touch—with the gentle moan, the shudder of need Lissa could no longer help or hide. She wanted him so badly, oh, how she needed this to be
real….

And then he shuddered. “Lissa, oh, Lissa, I can’t wait anymore.”

And finally, at long last, her sweetest girlhood fantasy came to life: Mitch McCluskey, her first and secret love, the man whose shadowy form still came to her bed in the darkness of her dreams, held her in his arms, not as a friend, but a lover. Caressing her skin. Touching her hair. Lifting her face—

And he kissed her.

“I’m in.” The tired man hunched over the computer tapped the keys one final time, and, like magic, the database opened to his bleary eyes. After a few more minutes of searching, he spoke to the other man, young and intense, standing in the shadows of deep night behind him. “Yeah, Damon, you were right. It’s your boy.”

“You’re sure?” The young man’s eyes blazed, as bright as the other’s were weary; but then, he’d woken the former data operator at 2:00 am. Lucky he had a liking for money and a grudge against the Air Force for dishonorable dismissal. “Confirm it’s Squadron Leader Mitchell McCluskey of the Royal Australian Air Force?”

The long-haired hacker, as slovenly and unkempt now as he’d once been clean-cut and meticulous, punched more keys. “Here’s the list of his career. It’s Ex-Squadron Leader McCluskey now. He quit a couple of years ago.”

The younger man started. “What? He left the force two years ago?” He frowned and paced the room. “Then why the hell was he in Tumah-ra on recon? Why would the brass let a civilian check out a war zone? Something’s not right—something stinks in all this.” He chewed the inside of his lip, looking thoughtful. “Or was he there
without
orders—without
official
orders?”

The hacker shrugged. “Final mission or something? A Joan Sutherland command performance for the brass? I dunno. I’m just a computer geek. Anyway, it’s the guy you’re after. He brought the kid in illegally all right. Here’s the printout from DIMA. Careful with them. It’s classified.” He tossed the sheets over.

The man known to the backstreet hacker as Damon caught the printed sheets from the Department of Immigration, and slowly read them through. “The department wanted to keep the kid in some refugee facility until they sorted out what to do with her, but McCluskey got clearance to take her to a Tumah-ran family living in Darwin. God knows how he managed that—this kind of clearance could only come from the top brass. What the hell’s he up to“I don’t know, man. I did my job.” The hacker held out his hand expectantly for the envelope Damon held in his fist.

Damon handed the envelope to the other man, with a slow grin, and walked to the door. “This was a transnational crime. No matter how he got the clearance or who got him into Tumah-ra, he broke the law—and someone in high places is covering up for him. It seems Ex-Squadron Leader McCluskey’s sins are finally about to catch up with him. One way or another.”

The hacker turned back to the computer, placing the envelope beside him, and Damon clicked the silencer on in time to the clacking keyboard. Then, with consummate casualness, he turned and shot the hacker through the head.

The next five shots took out his hard drive.

Within seconds Damon walked out, carrying the hacker’s every disk, as well as the envelope containing both his money and the only trace of his fingerprints in this cheap backyard office. He changed his shoes in the yard, and gave the previously unused runners to a grateful drunk in the alley behind the house.

All bases covered—for now.

M
itch was finally kissing her….

And oh, how he kissed her.

In dreams her gentle hero, her wandering prince, kissed her in exquisite tenderness and dainty persuasion, showing her how precious she was to him. Then he’d hold her and tell her he loved her and ask her to marry him. Then he’d sweep her up in his arms and carry her to the bedroom…and the loving would be as sweet and tender as the kiss.

Welcome to the real world, Lissa….

Either the sun had shifted a million miles closer or Mitch’s kiss was hot enough to burn her alive. She was plastered against him from breast to thigh. His kiss ravaged her with a hunger bordering on desperation. He plundered her mouth with lips and teeth and tongue, intense, overwhelming, insatiable. His hands glided, cupped, caressed every inch of exposed flesh, exposing what wasn’t open to his search with low impatient growls every time he found a barrier, pushing aside what he could, tearing what he could not. As if he had to know every secret inside her, right here, right now.

This fevered need to devour her—all of her—did not just come from temporary male deprivation. She knew it, could feel it: the fever, the need, was all for
her.
He kissed her as if he couldn’t get enough of her…and she moaned, matching kiss for kiss, touch for touch, meeting his need with her own, because she couldn’t get enough, either. He was melting her from the inside out. Every flimsy barrier she’d erected against his potent magic puddled like heated rain at her feet. Her body was on fire, her breathing ragged, her breasts swollen, nipples hard. Her belly was a rippling lava pool of heat. She wanted to eat him alive, drink him inside her, suck him in through her very pores….

Drag him to bed and love him all day and night.

“Can you feel me?” he growled too soon, moving his arou against her without shame or compromise. “I’ve been this hard all day, knowing I was finally going to see you again. I’ve been in pain since I saw you in the garden—and right now I’m ready to explode at one more touch—just one. So don’t push me, Miller, or I’ll show you here and now, where our kids could come in any moment, how much I don’t want you!”

She staggered back, groping for support. Her body was flushed with heat, her lips swollen, throbbing with a pleasure bordering on pain—the sweetness of pure feminine sexuality she’d never known. She couldn’t speak; she could only watch him, her eyes wide, her pulse pounding. Waiting for the rest of what this new, totally foreign, frighteningly male Mitch had to say.

He followed her like a stalking panther in the jungle grass, moving with sinuous grace and pulsing heat until he stood before her. Breathing. Just breathing. Hot and hard and ready to mate.

Her knees almost collapsed beneath her.

He only touched her chin, yet she felt trapped, helpless, made weak by her own wanting and the once-sure knowledge, untested until now, that Mitch,
her
Mitch, would never hurt her in a physical way. “So let’s get this straight,” he said softly, his heated breath caressing her face. “No woman would make my boys a better mother than you. I’m not ashamed to admit that—but I want you as my lover, no matter who else benefits from it or how much I need you for the kids.
I
want
you.
I want you in my bed as well as in my life. I want you for
me.
You’re like a foreign fever inside me there’s no shot for. I always did and I always will want you. Totally. Constantly. Always.”

Shooting straight from the hip. No sweet words. No half promises. No winning smile. Just Mitch.

I can’t speak pretty words. I only speak what I know.

She groped for a chair and sat before she fell down. As soon as she could stop shaking, she whispered, “If…if that’s true, why haven’t you ever told me?”

He crouched before her; she could see him trying to gauge her reaction. “When you were fourteen, your parents would have stopped our friendship, or Old Man Taggart would have sent me back to the orphanage. Then, when you were sixteen, I was going to tell you, but you started dating Tim first. Then you were engaged—then married.”

She felt tears well up. Tears for all the years lost, all the innocence forsaken. The belief in herself she’d never gotten back since she married Tim Carroll, the childhood friend she never should have married at all. “It’s too late, Mitch.” She choked on the words so badly they came out as a whisper.

“Why?” he asked, just as quiet.

How could she explain? There were only bald words—words she couldn’t utter. She swiped at her tears, wishing he’d turn away so she wouldn’t humiliate herself by having him watch her crying.

He brushed at her face, more of a caress than a wipe of her tears. “What did he do to you, Lissa-My-Lissa?”

With the nickname he used to give her in private—coined from one of her beloved Anne of Green Gables books—he melted her. “Please, let’s not talk about it now,” she murmured, soft and husky. “It’s not worth it.” I just want to forget.

“It’s worth talking about if it’s stopping you from taking another chance on life,” Mitch argued quietly. “It affects my life, too. And the boys’ lives, as well.”

He had a point; but she’d kept silent so long about her marriage, she didn’t know how to speak. “Not yet.” She twisted her hands in her lap. “Please. I’m thinking about it. You shocked me, saying it like that so fast, but—I’m not saying a final no. I realize how much is at stake for the boys. And…and for you.”

He pulled her hands into his, kissing each abused finger, slowly and tenderly. She trembled, watching the intimate, sensual act, as if they were already lovers. “I’ve waited this long. I can wait a little longer. Take your time. I know it’s hard for you to trust me. I’ve been away too long. I’ll go play with the kids.” He smiled at her in strong, masculine sensuality. “But you will be mine,” he said softly, getting to his feet. “And when you are, there’ll be no divorce. It’s forever this time.”

Her gaze lifted in teary challenge. “And will you be mine, or is this marriage-and-forever proposal only a one-way contract? You know, like—you owner, me slave?”

Almost at the door he wheeled back, frowning, searching into her gaze with disturbing depth. But whatever he sought, he obviously didn’t find it. “If you honestly don’t know the answer to that question, you never knew me at all.”

She gave a shuddering sigh. “Maybe I didn’t,” she conceded, hating the sharp dagger thrust of pain the admission cost her. “And that’s no basis for marriage, is it?”

In three strides he was before her, lifting her to her feet, looking into her eyes again. This time she felt as if he read past her words and straight into her soul. “Where’s my brave Lissa gone, who took on all comers that hurt me? Liss, maybe it’s yourself you don’t know. It’s what’s inside you—all the fears, all your anger—you’re afraid to let out. You’re so scared of life, even healing from whatever Tim did to you terrifies you.” He touched his lips gently to her cheek, and she felt her whole face flame—from both the kiss, and his perception. How did he know so much about her most secret self, when he’d been everywhere around the world but near her in twelve long years?

Mitch sighed at the implicit rejection, but in sadness, not impatience. “Oh, baby, whatever it was he did to destroy your self-confidence, I can fix it if you’ll only let me.”

Again she wanted to cry. After six years she thought she’d become an expert at shutting off all feeling except with the kids. Yet she’d been with Mitch less than two hours and she’d fallen apart, not once, but twice. He’d done it again, he’d woven the Merlin wand over her soul, making her think, feel,
want….

She couldn’t afford to want—not Mitch. He’d only walk out again. Sooner or later everyone walked out on her.

She lowered her gaze before he could see the hunger growing, screaming inside her like a living thing,
I want, I want I want.
“It wasn’t Tim’s fault.” She balled her hands into fists to stop the nervous twisting. “He didn’t want to hurt me.”

“Yeah, right. That’s what they all say. I thought you were too intelligent to fall for such a pitiful line.” His tender understanding vanished like a shimmering water hole in the desert. “‘Sorry, I couldn’t help myself—I fell in love,’” he mimicked, a painful if unconsciously perfect parody of Tim’s words to her the night he walked out. He gripped her arms, his gaze burning into hers with frightening intensity. “Grow up, Lissa. Wake up! Men have been saying that crap since the dawn of time, making the same lame excuses for their behavior, and women swallow it, forgive them and let them home when they’re tired of that little piece of variety. All his life Tim’s done whatever the hell he liked, and let others pay the price for his selfishness. And if I knew where he lived I’d go and shove his damn line down his lying throat!” She was stunned, unable to speak, as he stared hard at her. “I thought you were smart.” His voice lashed at her like a low predatory snarl of a panther on the hunt. “The guy left you. He’s been gone six years. He slimed on you and screwed around on you and left when you were pregnant with his own kid. Why the hell are you still loyal to him?”

Trembling inside as they stood face-to-face, their bodies almost touching, she still managed to face him down. “He might have left me—but you see,
he
comes back. He calls to see if I’m all right, that I’m still alive, if I need anything. He might be in love with someone else, but he still looks after us, fixing stuff, painting, maintaining the house for me. He helps me with the kids, he’s been like a father to the boys, as well as Jenny. He loves them all.” And she held his heated, angry gaze with her own fury, burning inside her with an intensity hotter and stronger than ever after twelve years. “
He still comes back to me
—and that alone would earn my loyalty, if nothing else.”

“He comes back to see Jenny. He calls to ease his guilt over leaving you—he knows you won’t take anything from him, with that damn-fool stubborn pride of yours. So he comes back once a fortnight like a conquering hero, plays with the kids, pats you on the head with a few household jobs and gets free sex in gratitude for his sterling efforts.” He was openly furious now. “Which part of that particular form of care turns you on, Lissa? Is that what you call a relationship? Or don’t you care, so long as you’re not alone for those few hours before he goes back to his other lover? You certainly have changed, if you’ve sunk low enough to swallow such a pitiful amount from him.”

She shivered, sick to her stomach with his calculating assessment, as if he’d dissected her soul to find the disease within. But she couldn’t answer him. Even letting him think she was a fool of this caliber was better than his knowing the truth.

He shoved his fists in his pockets, his dark gaze tight and brooding. “I wish I knew why the hell you still love him,” he said quietly. “Why, Lissa? Do you even know?”

Unable to stand any more, she turned away.

Moments later he stalked out the door to the kids.

The sight of him playing with the children, his strong dark face alight with love and laughter, was more than she could take. She alked out to the market garden, cursing herself for her stupidity. She might have won this round in keeping her secret—but was maintaining her pride intact worth the ultimate cost? Deep inside she knew that, through her damn-fool pride and stubbornness, she’d won one fight, but she might well have lost something far more precious than a battle with the truth: the implicit trust and faith she’d always had with Mitch.

“That’s enough, Burstall. You hear me?”

The young man in uniform stiffened; his strong, square jaw tightened. “It’s the truth, sir. He smuggled the kid in, and it’s not the first time, is it? What happens to the kids after? Are the adoptions legal or bought? What level clearance does McCluskey have, to keep breaking transnational laws and getting away with it? What brass is in on this? This case involves people smuggling at its worst, sir. And you know that yourself, sir!”

A short silence, his commanding officer clearly shifting, on edge. “It’s commendable that you have such eagerness to fulfil your work, Burstall, but this time I’m giving you a direct order—to leave it. Leave Squadron Leader McCluskey alone.”

“But he’s not a Squadron Leader now, is he, sir. He left the Air Force two years ago.”

“How do you—damn it, that’s highly classified information!” his commander barked, half starting up from his chair, his face purpling. “If you’ve been using our computers to break access codes for more dope on McCluskey, I’ll personally see you get a dishonorable discharge from all duties—anywhere! No more investigation into this. You’re not to gain access to check on those adoptions. Are we clear on this, Burstall?”

“High connections giving you pressure, sir?” Damon taunted softly. “Has McCluskey got a politician in his payroll? Seems so—and he’d need one pretty high up to keep this under a tight lid. The immigration minister? The prime minister?” He let his gaze, flat with accusation, speak for him. “It’s harder to fight this filthy trade when those at the top are involved. It makes it hard to keep your own job, doesn’t it, sir?”

The commander’s heavy-jowled face reddened. “That’s enough, Burstall. There’s more going on here than you know or need to know. Leave Squadron Leader McCluskey alone. That’s an order!”

With open reluctance, Damon took the hint, saluted his commanding officer, turned on his heel and left the office.

So he couldn’t use his computer anymore. It was probably safer not to. Anyway, it’d be a snap to find another ex-military hacker with a mercenary soul. It was amazing how easy it was to find people with a grudge against the forces these days.