One long stride and he was there, holding her tightly.
“Douglas! Oh my God!”
She was shaking, face completely bloodless.
“Easy honey, it’s okay, I’ve got you. What’s wrong? Did you trip?”
“I—” she gasped, unable to continue. She was going to break a bone if she shook any harder. He wrapped his arms around her to comfort her and try to dampen down some of the trembling. She burrowed deep as if to hide from something.
Allegra grabbed his jacket and tugged downward, wanting to talk into his ear. She couldn’t get the words out and had to swallow to talk. “Douglas, quick! Do you see an elegant middle-aged man, not too tall, slender, shoulder-length blond hair?”
Kowalski lifted his head. He was taller than anyone here and could see the entire square and everyone in it. He scanned the crowd as he would a combat area, in quadrants. He looked hard at one quadrant, blinked to black, then scanned the next. He was fast but thorough. If the guy Allegra described was here, he’d see him.
First quadrant. Couple in jeans and parkas with baby in stroller. Young couple in designer duds, arguing. Old man with cane and cashmere overcoat. Tall, lanky redheaded guy, leather jacket and high-tops. Two young punks, both with green hair and enough metal in their faces to set off a metal detector.
Next quadrant. Two families with about a dozen kids between them. Three sharp dudes on the prowl for women. Black couple dressed for end-of-the-world winter weather. Three elderly ladies walking gingerly over an icy patch. Blink to black. Third quadrant. Every variety and race and gender except medium-height, middle-aged, blond elegant male. Fourth quadrant ditto.
Kowalski scanned the entire square again, fast. Nada. Zip.
Allegra’s head was tilted up to his, her face anxious and white. The tremors had died down a little but she was still shaking. Whoever she thought was here scared the shit out of her.
Kowalski normally lived his life in Condition Orange. He was ready for anything at all times. More than one woman had called him paranoid. He wasn’t paranoid, just very alert and ready for trouble. What was happening right now pushed his buttons, every single one. Allegra frightened of someone edged him right up to Condition Red.
Whoever the motherfucker was, he going to die if he so much as touched Allegra.
“Do you see him?” Her voice was breathless with fear.
He wiped everything from his voice but gentleness. She didn’t need to hear the red alert in his voice. She was scared enough as it was. “No, honey. No one of that description. Who is this guy?” Whoever he was, Kowalski was going to nail his hide to the wall.
She simply stood there, breathing fast.
Allegra was terrified. Unless you’ve trained and trained hard for it, fear slows the mind, makes you stupid. Fear makes civilians easy prey. Kowalski shook Allegra a little, to nudge her out of the stupor of terror.
“Honey? Who am I looking for? Did he threaten you? What’s his name?”
“Name? Oh, ah—” A little color had come back into her face when he told her no one matching her description was in the square. She shook her head sharply. “Oh, God, Douglas, I’m so sorry.” She leaned into him. “I thought—” She shook her head again, clutching him around the waist. “Never mind, it can’t possibly be the person I thought it was.”
“Tell me who—” Kowalski said, at the exact same moment she said, “I want to—”
“What, honey?” Good thing she couldn’t see his face. He kept his voice gentle but he had on his War Face and people were backing away. “You want what?”
She was looking up at him, still pale, eyes glossy with unshed tears. “To go home,” she whispered. “Take me home now, please, Douglas.”
Chapter Thirteen
“Here we go.” Kowalski held the door open for Allegra and ushered her over the threshold with a gentle hand to her back. It was already dark. It had taken them twice the time to come back from Lawrence Square than it had taken to walk there. She’d lost that confident, quick stride, and shuffled back hesitant and slow. Kowalski hadn’t tried to hurry her up. He’d simply kept pace with her, patient and worried.
Allegra entered the house silent and pale, head bowed. The laughing, confident woman who’d walked at an almost normal pace to Lawrence Square with him was gone and this white, hesitant wraith had taken her place.
Whoever she thought she’d seen had jolted her back into the frightened, faltering woman of before. This was shock. Kowalski didn’t know what had caused it, but by God he recognized it. Her senses were dulled. It took her several seconds to answer questions, almost as if a question had to sink in first. Shock.
Classic.
With new recruits, he had to bully them out of it fast. A soldier has to train himself to resist the paralysis of shock and Kowalski was the one who had to drum it into his head. Kowalski’s methods were brutal, deliberately so, and if the soldier couldn’t take it, he was out.
The idea of browbeating Allegra made Kowalski physically sick. He was going to have to pamper and love her out of her shock, definitely a new one for him.
Kowalski stripped her of her gloves, hat and eiderdown coat. Allegra stood still and silent, like a little doll, as he got rid of her outerwear. She shivered, wrapping her arms around her middle. It wasn’t cold in the house. Kowalski had kept the heat on. She was suffering from the cold of exhaustion—her first long walk in months had tired her out—and shock.
“You know what you need, honey?” It was a symptom of how she was feeling that it took her two beats to respond. She lifted her head.
“No. What do I need?” Her voice was low, almost a whisper. She sounded beaten. Jesus, but it hurt to hear her like this.
“You need to take a warm bath, then you need something to eat.” Heat and nourishment, the eternal healers.
She stood stock-still in the little living room. “I do?”
“Uh-huh.” Kowalski ushered her into the bathroom. He started running hot water for the bath, rummaging among her toiletries, fingers lighting on a little bottle of lavender oil. He’d read somewhere that lavender oil was relaxing, so he poured half of it into the tub. Soon the bathroom smelled like a friggin’ lavender field.
As the steam filled the room, he carefully stripped her. If she resisted, he’d stop immediately, but Allegra stood completely still, obediently raising her arms as he pulled the sweater up over her head.
The semi-hard-on he always had around her graduated to a full-fledged one as he gently unhooked her bra and slid her panties down her long legs. He bent and she fitted a hand to his shoulder for balance, lifting one foot, then another. “That’s my girl,” he murmured.
He remembered, vividly, touching every inch of her. He remembered that she shuddered with pleasure when he lightly bit the side of her neck. He remembered the taste of her breasts, creamy and salty at once, heaven. He remembered that her stomach muscles clenched when he sucked her nipples and that she panted when he sucked hard. He remembered that when he got her wet, little droplets formed in the cloud of soft red hair covering her mound, and that his come looked exactly like little pearls there.
Kowalski straightened, wincing at the boner pressing against his pants. She was so lovely, standing naked here in the scented bathroom. Her skin glowed like alabaster, delicate and smooth, the only colors her rosy nipples and the fiery red hair between her thighs.
He wanted her even more than he had last night. Usually a night of fucking got a woman out of his head, but with Allegra the hunger just kept on growing.
If she hadn’t been so shocked, looked so unhappy and lost, he’d have carried her right into the bedroom, laid her on the bed, climbed on top and slid right in. The way he was feeling right now, he probably wouldn’t even have the patience for foreplay.
That was the last thing she needed now. Her face had the pale pinched look he hated to see, the look of fear and anguish. She wouldn’t want sex right now, no way.
So Kowalski tucked his lust away in his min
d, putting it in that place where he put fear and hunger and thirst when in the field. It was okay. He was used to ignoring the demands of his body.
He shut the water off and tested it. It was just warm enough to heat her up nicely, not so warm it would burn that delicate skin of hers. “Water’s ready now, honey.” He frowned as he lifted her long hair away from her shoulders. It slid like silk between his fingers. “What do we do about your hair? I don’t want to get it wet.”
Allegra lifted her head. “On the shelf above the sink there should be two picks. One ivory, one ebony.”
Picks? For an instant, Kowalski had a vision of a miner’s pick. Did she want to hack off her hair? His head swiveled and he stared at the shelf above the sink. The only things on it were two funny looking sticks, one black and one white.
Oh.
The sticks were picks? Apparently. Though what she could do with two sticks was beyond him, he pressed them into her hand. “Are these what you mean? What are you going to do with them?”
A little smiled creased her face for the first time since they’d walked home from Lawrence Square.
“Watch, O Great Warrior, and learn,” she said. Two swipes of her hand and all that hair—enough for eight women—was swept up and tied into some kind of elegant knot at the top of her head, as smooth as if she’d just spent the day at the beauty parlor.
Kowalski was dumbfounded. “How did you do that?”
“Practice. Is the water ready?” She turned to the tub, sniffing delicately. “I think you dumped the whole bottle of lavender oil in. Just a few drops are enough.”
“Sorry,” Kowalski rumbled.
“No, no, please don’t apologize.” Allegra held out her hand, waiting until he fit his forearm to it. She clutched his arm. “I was just teasing you, Douglas. I don’t have words to say how grateful I am to you. For helping me. For being here. You can dump a ton of lavender oil in my bath if you want.”
Jesus. She was standing there naked, all that smooth white skin gleaming in the steamy bathroom. Douglas had a stab of lust that nearly brought him to his knees, electricity running through his cock. He waited for a moment to guide her to the tub because his hands were shaking.
As he helped her into the tub, he caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror and nearly recoiled with shock.
Who was that monster in the mirror?
He’d forgotten how butt-ugly he was. Now he was even uglier than usual, his face contorted with lust, sallow cheeks and lips suffused with blood. That horribly disfiguring scar was white against his sun-darkened skin. His nose was smashed against his face, as ugly and brutal as a boxer’s—he’d broken it enough times he could qualify for the heavyweight championship. Acne scars from long ago pocked his cheeks. His eyes were small slits in tough bone and weather-beaten skin.
He looked like your worst nightmare.
This time alone with Allegra was like a gift life had thrown at him—a bone, maybe, for all those years spent alone, fighting for his country. He was being allowed time with the most beautiful woman in the world, but only because she was blind.
This was his time out of time—she was going to kick him out soon enough. Hell any woman would, let alone one as desirable as Allegra. Might as well stock up on memories.
“Come on, into the tub.” He picked Allegra up, clenching his jaws against the feel of her in his arms, and stood her in the tub. The water came almost to her knees. Allegra held onto him as she sank gracefully down. Kowalski gritted his teeth as he grabbed a sponge, soaped it and started washing that smooth, smooth skin. Even the fucking soap smelled of flowers. He was suffering from sensory overload. Every single atom in the room reeked of woman and sex. If he stayed any longer, looking at her, smelling her, his head was going to explode.
He kept the sponge between his hand and her skin because otherwise he’d be too tempted to start touching her. He knew exactly how she liked it. And where. She liked it when he stroked her thighs, slowly, running his rough fingertips up the smooth skin of her inner thigh. She liked it when he entered her with his finger, circling her clit with his thumb. She liked it when he cupped her ass in both hands, lifting her into his strokes.
Kowalski sat on the edge of the tub, clutching the sponge, and let his head fall forward. Maybe his harsh breathing worried her, because she said, “Douglas?” hesitantly. She was probably wondering if something was wrong.
Well, it was. Keeping his hands off her was torture.
“Douglas?” Her voice was sharper now and she tried to sit up in the water.
Way to go Kowalski, get her worried and upset because you’ve got a boner that won’t quit.
“Just sit back, honey. Let your muscles soak in the warm water, they’re stiff from the cold.”
“Oh.” Satisfied when she heard his normal tone of voice, Allegra settled back down.
Kowalski took a deep, silent breath, then another, then settled himself down to doing the hard thing. No problem. He’d been doing the hard thing all his life.
He soaped her up, then gently helped her settle deeper into the water. Only her head was out, resting against the rim of the tub. “Stay there,” he said quietly. “I’ll go get you a cup of tea.”
She was leaning with her head back, eyes closed. There was a faint undertone of rose to her skin now. She nodded. “That would be nice.”
“Be right back.”
Kowalski found a packet of Earl Grey bags, nuked a cup, then put an ice cube in the cup to cool it down. She was in the exact position he’d left her in.
“Here, honey.” He took her hand, curling it around the cup. His hand supported hers as she lifted it to her mouth. She sipped, gingerly at first. When she realized that he hadn’t given her boiling hot tea and that she wouldn’t burn herself, she drank deeply.
“Mmm.” She drained the tea, handing the cup back to him. “That was really nice. Thanks. I think I’ll get out now.” The water made silvery rippling noises as she held onto his hands to pull herself up.
She was so quiet, with a sad, poignant smile, brave and beautiful. She held onto his arms, lovely face upturned to his. Her hands rested lightly on his arms but there was the full weight of her utter trust in him. He knew, with every beat of his heart, with every cell of his being, that he would do whatever it took to keep this woman safe and happy.
Grabbing a big bath towel he’d put on the radiator to heat up, he gave her a light kiss then dried her and dressed her in a warm nightgown. She stood still and quiet under his ministrations, making sure she always touched him in some way.
After he slipped the nightgown over her head, she moved in close, unexpectedly, to hug him tightly. “Thanks.” The word was muffled against his chest, but he heard.
They stood for a moment, Allegra’s cheek against his shoulder, her hand over his heart. His fast-beating heart. It was a moment out of time, completely unlike any other moment in his life. He couldn’t begin to put a name to what was churning around inside him, all he knew was that he wouldn’t have traded places in this exact moment with anyone in the world, and that he would remember this moment for the rest of his life.
Kowalski dropped a kiss on the top of her head and nudged her toward the door and into the kitchen. He wanted to know who or what had spooked her, but first he had to feed her.
The cornucopia in Allegra’s freezer yielded up lentil soup and frozen slices of rosemary focaccia—perfect. While two bowls were heating up in the microwave, he put four slices of focaccia in the toaster oven. He was hungry, too.
They ate quietly in the dark kitchen. It would have helped if she’d drank more wine, but she couldn’t get down more than a third of a glass. He topped his own three times. He had three full bowls of soup to her half-full one. Even downing that much taxed her. She swallowed the delicious, fragrant lentil soup as if she were being force-fed castor oil.
Finally, Allegra put the spoon back in the bowl with a clatter and sat back, staring blankly ahead.
Kowalski was puzzled. Something
tickled the edges of his consciousness. Something…familiar? Allegra was subdued, senses dulled. But there was something about her reaction…
Kowalski tucked it away for consideration later. His first priority now was finding out what had happened in Lawrence Square.
“So.” He picked up her hand, marveling again at the delicacy of it, the fragile bones and tendons, the long fingers that could pluck magic from strings. “Do you want to tell me who you think was there this afternoon? Who was this guy? Medium height, elegant, middle-aged blond, you said. Who is that?”
Kowalski kept his voice calm and even. No big deal. Guy asking his girlfriend some casual questions.
Yes, love. Who is this fucker who scared you so much you practically became catatonic? Let me know, honey, because I will fucking tear him limb from limb. I will cut his heart out and eat it for fucking breakfast.
“I—it doesn’t matter.” Pale, lifeless, Allegra’s weak voice contrasted with the tight grip she held on his hand. “It wasn’t the person I thought it was. Couldn’t be. He’s—not here.”
Patience, Kowalski told himself. Patience was a hallmark of his. He could—and had had to—lie in ambush for days. He could set up a sniper shot and hold it for hours. Patience was his old friend. But now his old friend deserted him. Patience slipped right through his fingers. He was burning to go out, find this guy and rip his freakin’ head off.
He tightened his hold on her hands. “Well, maybe it was and maybe it wasn’t. But who did you think you—” Saw. Kowalski nearly said saw. He closed his mouth with an audible click. “Who was it you think you heard?”
Damned if that pretty chin of hers didn’t go up a fraction. Damned if Irish stubbornness didn’t settle in.
“No one.” Her mouth tightened. “No one—I was mistaken.”
Kowalski’s jaw tightened in return. “Okay, so you were wrong. But who did you think was there?”