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.
Three
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.
Those eyes, a warm green color, were watching her with soulful depth, yet as open and expectant as a puppy’s. Mystified, she stared into them, searching for a way to trust him, wanting to trust him, and wishing suddenly that he and she didn’t come from such different worlds. But this was no puppy, this was an elegant white wolfhound just waiting to taste her neck. Proklyatnye! And all his schemes could go to hell with him!
Elena pushed his hand off her shoulder. “Yes?”
“We’ll be landing soon. We’re flying over my estate. Look.”
“Why should this make any difference to me?”
“It’s not what you expected, I think.”
Casually, but with a hidden undercurrent of intrigue, she craned her head and saw only forest broken with wide swaths of meadow. “Do you live in a tree?”
“I have so much land that you’d never tire of exploring it.”
“If I was allowed to go where I wished.”
“You will be.”
The helicopter passed over a stone wall that ran through an alley in the forest as far as Elena could see. “Is your estate enclosed on all sides?”
“The central part, yes. I like my privacy.”
“That wall looks rather high and unclimbable,” she said with disgust. “A prison is a prison, no matter how much greenery you grow inside it.”
“I’m not holding you prisoner, Elena, I’m hiding you.”
“I was already hidden.”
“Your people would have found you soon.”
“The KGB are not ‘my people.’ ” She thought of dear Sergei, who, though he’d been as affectionate as a grandparent with her, would do his duty regardless. “And what will happen if your people find me?”
“They won’t. But eventually you’ll have to ask the State Department for permission to stay in this country, you know.”
“I will ask no one. They might send me back.”
“No. They wouldn’t do that.”
“How do you know? You say you’re not with the government. What gives you such assurance?” “I’d have, hmmm, heard about it on television if we ever turned anyone down.”
She thought there was a sly tone in his voice, but she couldn’t be certain. The helicopter was too noisy to hear such subtle changes. “Such incidents are openly discussed?”
“Oh, yes. You should see our talk shows. Because of them, we keep up with everything from Russian defectors to the sex lives of men who wear skirts.”
“You talk about sex on television?”
“Only between game shows, and usually before noon.”
She frowned at the humorous glint in his eyes. “Well, I’m sure I’ll see my story on television when you sell me to the highest bidder.”
“Sell you? No.” His expression turned serious, his eyes, shuttered. Elena’s training at the institute had been designed to fine-tune her alertness to the emotional as well as physical energies that swirled within people. Now she easily read the truth in Audubon’s expression.
He was going to use her in some way. There was no doubt. It troubled him, perhaps made him feel guilty, but he would do it. “Sell me, yes,” she said wearily, but with sarcasm. “You terrible liar.”
“I’m actually a magnificent liar, when the need arises. I’m afraid it’s a talent my work requires. Not a dishonorable one, when used for the right purposes.”
“Hah. You make importing and exporting things sound like a profession filled with intrigue.”
“Yes.” He leaned back in the heavily upholstered seat, stretched his long legs across her share of the small floor space, and linked his hands over his stomach. His invasion of her territory rattled her; his hooded eyes could hide his emotions much better than she’d expected. “I’m not going to sell you,” he repeated.
“Then why are you interested in me?”
“You’re beautiful, you’re in danger, and you find me irresistible.”
“Only one of those is correct.”
“Then it will be very interesting to find out which one, won’t it?” He smiled at her. “So, tell me why you expect me to sell you. You seem to think you’re worth a lot of money. Is there a shortage of secretaries in Moscow? Do you type a thousand words a minute?”
“You think I’m worth a great deal. That’s what I meant.”
“I think you’re worth much more than money. I have plenty of money.”
“What don’t you have, then?”
His smile became mysterious, teasing, sexual. “I’m still trying to decide.”
The pilot glanced over his shoulder. “Home, sweet home.”
Elena turned back to the window, her heart beating rapidly. An exclamation of surprise burst from her. They were only a short span above the treetops and closing in on an oasis of luxury in the middle of Audubon’s wilderness. In front of them stretched beautiful lawns, gardens, ponds, white-fenced pastures dotted with horses, stables, and other outbuildings constructed in a style she’d seen in books about the English countryside.
And at the center of the estate rose a mansion built of stone and timber, its walls whitewashed so that the dark woods crisscrossed them in ornamental patterns with dramatic contrast. There were several stone chimneys, and a stone turret nestled into one of the mansion’s nooks. It was a ver
y welcoming and yet awe-inspiring place, surrounded by an apron of stone courtyard and patios. Everywhere were flower beds, manicured shrubs, and enormous trees.
She’d never seen anything as lovely and as … as comforting, she decided. How could anyone harm her in this country manor with its Edenlike setting? It seemed peaceful and safe. Except that Audubon would be with her. Or perhaps because he would be with her. Her head throbbed with confusion.
“You won’t be unhappy here,” Audubon said. “And you won’t regret accepting my help.”
Elena sank back on the seat, brooding about doubts—and temptations. “Whatever acceptance you get from me will cost you dearly.” She raised proud eyes to his somber ones. “And money will be the least of it.”
After he and she shared a tense, silent dinner—five courses, unfortunately—in the house’s grand dining room, Audubon escorted her to her suite upstairs. They walked along a hall done in dark English antiques and colorful tapestries. There were no sounds, even their footfalls were silenced by the heavy carpet. “There are so many people in this house,” she muttered. “How can it feel so empty?”
Her question disturbed him because he’d asked it himself in the past few years, but for a different reason. “There are only five people in the house full-time. And they’re either at their jobs tonight or in their apartments in the downstairs wing. They don’t come up here.”
“But what do they all do? I understand the chef, of course, and his assistant, and the housekeeper, but …”
“There’s a security coordinator, and my personal secretary. You’ll meet them tomorrow.”
“Don’t any of them have families? Wives? Husbands?”
“No. It’s a condition of working for me. If they do marry, they can’t bring their spouses here to live.”