"And what is the next step, Ryker?" she asked. She raised her head to meet his gaze. "I don't think either one of us can afford that kind of vulnerability. We're much safer going on as we have been."
He smiled as he leaned forward to brush a kiss on
the tip of her nose. "We may not be prepared for a permanent disarmament, but we might settle for a temporary truce. That shouldn't damage our fortifications too drastically. Will you give that to me, little Piper?"
"It would be a mistake," she whispered. All her life she'd avoided the pain that went with being that close to anyone. The friendship he was talking about was not the casual camaraderie with which she filled her life. She could handle that and still protect the core of privacy that kept her free. There was every chance Ryker would trespass on that very private territory. If there was one thing she'd learned about him in the last two weeks, it was that he never did anything halfway. "I don't think I could do it."
"You can do anything," he said, his eyes twinkling. "You're the Piper, remember? You have er'b."
She suddenly knew with certainty that he was right. Why shouldn't she take what she wanted? And what she wanted was an intimate knowledge of Jared Ryker. If she had to let him breach her own walls to attain that goal, she could always rebuild them later. For a woman with eŕb, it would be child's play. "You're right," she said, her dark eyes dancing. "I can do anything, Ryker."
"Of course you can," he agreed promptly. "Now, do you suppose you could begin by calling me Jared?" He grinned. "Ryker sounds a bit militant, and I could use a change of pace after the hostilities of the last two weeks."
"Jared."
His name on her lips sounded oddly intimate, and he felt a little shock of sensation surge through him. He drew a deep breath, carefully keeping his expression from registering pleasurable emotion. He could sense the hesitancy and fear behind Tania's impudent acceptance, and he didn't want to disturb the fine balance between them. Strange how he was beginning to catch those vibrations emanating from her almost as if they were his own. Now those vibrations indicated the need for very delicate handling if he was going to coax her into is hand.
"That's better," he said lightly. "See how easy that was? There won't be any problem at all if we take it one step at a time."
The simple phrase caused her spirits to lift and banished the last vestige of uncertainty. They were the words that had given her strength during her ordeal in the Andes. She had a sudden fleeting memory of Jared in bed with her murmuring those words as he held her in his arms in an agony of sympathy on her first morning at the chateau.
"All right, Jared," she said quietly. "One step at a time."
"Good." He gently pushed her off his lap and stood up. "Now, why don't we celebrate our truce by taking a stroll up to the birch grove?" His eyes twinkled. "As usual, after a few hours in your very desirable presence, I feel a definite need to cool off."
Chapter 7
The night was crisp and clean, and the moonlight cast a pale glow over the valley below that made it look as unreal as a picture in a fairy tale. It was an indisputably lovely sight but Tania felt a shiver run through her just the same.
Jared looked down at her in quick concern. "You're cold? I thought surely that jacket would be enough. Do you want to go back to the chateau?"
She shook her head. "I'm fine. A goose walked over my grave, I guess." She suddenly chuckled. "What odd sayings you Americans have." But so descriptive, so very descriptive, she added to herself. Her gaze traveled restlessly over the rough terrain. "I can't say I share your fondness for this spot. In the daylight it's all right, but at night it's too harsh, too cruel."
He stopped, and his eyes searched her shadowed face. "Is it the mountains? You said before that they bothered you."
"Probably." She shrugged wearily. "I don't know." She paused beside the slender birch tree on the very edge of the precipice. She had an evanescent memory of her first glimpse of Jared leaning against this tree, so remote and strange, like the mountains around him. She shot him a swift, defensive look. "I'm not frightened, you understand."
"I'd never make the mistake of thinking such a thing," he said, his lips quirking. "Never you, little Piper."
Was she afraid? No, of course not. She just didn't like bloody mountain ranges. But it was suddenly intolerable that Jared would think she was. On their almost silent stroll from the chateau, she had been conscious of an odd closeness with the man by her side. It was as if there were a living cord binding them together.
"I'm tired," she said abruptly. She deliberately dropped down on the ground and leaned back against the white birch. "I think we should rest before we go back to the chateau." She cast a carefully casual glance at the rugged outlines of the mountains closest to them. "They're really quite pretty, aren't they?"
There was a gentle smile of amused comprehension on Jared's face as he sat down beside her. His arm drew her close in a sexless embrace that offered only warmth and comfort. "But they're not to everyone's taste. I can see how you could prefer other surroundings. I think you would have liked my island. Not a mountain on the entire three miles."
She remembered that Jared had mentioned he'd spent the last few years on an island in the Caribbean. She hadn't given it much thought, but now she was curious. "Would have?" she asked. "Why the past tense? Don't you own it any longer?"
"I sold it before I came back to civilization. It had served its purpose and furnished me with the privacy I needed to do my work." His voice lowered. "There wasn't a chance in hell I'd be let alone on the island once I went public. I needed a wall around me the size of Fort Knox."
"So you approached Sam Corbett?"
He nodded. "He had a ready-made security system, political contacts, and credibility. He also had the reputation for being fairly honest." He smiled cynically. "As honest as any politician."
There was an element of hardness in his voice that disturbed her. She hadn't realized how quickly she'd become accustomed to that gentleness of tone in the last few hours. She instinctively moved to distract him from the subject that had brought that abrasiveness to the forefront. "You're right, I probably would have enjoyed your island," she said lightly. "And not only for the lack of mountains. I much prefer a little foliage on my trees." She raised her hand to indicate the grove that surrounded them. The slender white birches looked strangely ghostly in the moonlight, their branches stretching toward the sky in a loveliness as stark as the mountains themselves. "I always hated the time when the leaves would fall and there would be nothing to protect the trees." Her face was dreamily reminiscent. "There was a tree in my mother's garden that was very old and gnarled, but it had the most beautiful glossy green leaves imaginable. I used to gather them and sew them into chains that I'd wear as a necklace or crown."
"Your home was in a small village just outside Moscow, wasn't it?" he asked, careful to display only an idle interest. "The autumn is short there; the winters are extraordinarily cold. There must have been many, many days when the trees were as bare of leaves as these."
"Yes, but it didn't really matter, for then there were always the wind chimes."
"Wind chimes?"
She nodded, her gaze fixed on the valley below, but not really seeing it. "Every year when the leaves would start to fall, my mother would hang wind chimes from a branch of a tree. It became a little tradition with us. She had brought them from Hungary with her. She told me that her father had given them to her when she was just a little girl herself." She closed her eyes. "1 loved those wind chimes. No matter how ugly or harsh everything was, they were always beautiful. They glinted and shimmered in the sunlight like icicles, and their music. ..." she paused, searching for words, "their music was like a blessed balm when things became too much to bear."
"And did they get that way very often?" he asked quietly.
Her eyes opened, and he inhaled sharply at the desolation he saw there. "It was never any other way," she said simply. "My mother was a whore, you know."
/> He felt himself stiffen with shock and then mentally cursed the instinctive reaction. Now that she was at last opening to him, he wanted nothing to inhibit the flow. "I don't understand," he said gently. "According to what I've read, your father was a colonel in the army and brought your mother with him when he returned from his tour of duty in Hungary. The magazines played it up as a grand passion."
"It was a passion, all right." Her smile was bitter. "He probably desired her greatly at the start. My mother was quite beautiful, you see." Her lips tightened. "She was also very simple and very gentle. She was perfect for my father."
"Perfect?"
"What could be more ideal for a destroyer than the quintessential victim?" she asked. "They were really quite a pair."
He was silent, afraid even the most casual comment would cause her to close within herself.
"After my mother died, I tried to look at him objectively. I tried to tell myself that he couldn't be as bad as I thought he was." She shook her head." "It didn't work, because he was that bad. I don't know what made him like that, and I don't even care anymore. No one has
the right to drain all the joy from life, the way he did. He was like a vampire, devouring all the good things in life."
"Your mother?" he prodded.
"My mother was in love with him." Her lips twisted. "I told you she was simple. She'd let him do anything he wanted with her. When he took her from her home and family in Budapest to a strange country, he didn't even marry her. He set her up as his mistress in a cottage outside Moscow and visited her when the mood took him. I was born there, two years after she left Hungary."
"You were illegitimate, then?"
"To put it politely. My father rarely was so courteous. From the time I was old enough to understand, he made sure that I was aware that I was a bastard whose birth never would have happened if my mother hadn't been so stupid that she couldn't remember to take the pill." She smiled sadly. "She was always afraid to admit it even to me, but I don't think she'd really forgotten. I think her life was so hellish by then that she wanted something of her own. Someone to love who would love her back. It wasn't a great deal to ask."
"No, it was very little."
"My father didn't feel the same way. He thought she should be punished for the inconvenience and expense she'd caused him." She drew a deep, shaky breath. "So he decided to see that he was compensated for some of that expense. He started to send her other officers to 'entertain.' At first they were only high-ranking officials he wanted to impress or curry favor with. Later he wasn't so discriminating."
"Why didn't she just leave him and return to Hungary?"
"By that time he'd found I was useful for something after all," she answered. "He'd threaten to take me away from her and she'd do anything he wanted." Her voice
was suddenly fierce. "Do you know how it made me feel when I realized that I was the scourge he was whipping her with? I wanted to kill him! Whenever he was around, it was as if I were burning up inside, as if a poison were eating at me." Her dark eyes were blazing. Then I realized that was what he wanted, what he was feeding upon. He wanted to be able to inflict pain, anger, unhappiness—any of the negative emotions—wherever he could, because it increased his feeling of power. The only way I'd ever be able to defeat him was to rob him of that satisfaction." She drew a ragged breath. "So I began to sublimate the pain and the hate and concentrate on finding some element of joy in everything around me. God, it was hard sometimes."
She unconsciously nestled closer to him. His arm about her had gradually tightened in an attempt to pour strength and support into her. He could feel his throat tighten achingly, as if her remembered pain was his own.
"But it worked. I could see that it was working and I was getting stronger with it. He had control of every aspect of my life, but he couldn't take that away if I didn't let him." Her eyes flashed. "And there was no way on earth I was going to let him do that. He'd already destroyed my mother, but he wasn't going to do that to me. I wasn't a victim. I have eŕb!”
My God, and how she must have needed that strength. She was small and fragile even now, and he could imagine what a big-eyed slip of a child she must have been. Lord, he'd never counted on the tenderness that was flooding him with every word she spoke in that husky, intense little whisper. He felt as if he were melting inside, and it hurt damnably.
"How did you begin dancing?" he asked, hoping to ease her away from the more painful memories.
"My mother arranged for lessons in the village while my father was on one of his tours of duty outside the country." Her smile displayed a savage satisfaction. "By the time he returned, it was too late. I'd exhibited what they called 'exceptional promise,' and had been sent to the cultural department at Moscow and been accepted at the Bolshoi School. The cultural department is very prestigious and powerful in Russia, and he wouldn't have been able to withdraw me without showing cause." The smile faded. "He did manage to salvage a minor victory. He wouldn't allow my mother to go with me. He placed me in a foster home near the academy, and I was permitted to go back to visit her only twice a year. That was a lovely two-edged sword he could turn. It hurt both my mother and me." She shrugged wearily. "After a while, though, I don't think it really mattered anymore to her. She didn't care about anyone or anything that happened. He had won, you see. Her spirit was totally destroyed." There was a long silence that was fraught with raw tendrils of emotion so extreme it could almost be felt. Tania's eyes were bright with unshed tears as she stared blindly before her. He wanted to draw her into his arms and cradle her there. He wanted to reach out and take her pain into himself. He wanted to do anything that would erase that agony of desolation.
"Will you let me hold you, little Piper?" he asked, his voice suspiciously husky.
At first she seemed not to hear him; then her gaze moved dazedly to meet his own. "Oh, yes." Then, as he carefully enfolded her in his arms, she murmured, "Thank you, Jared."
He swallowed hard to relieve the ache that was tightening his throat at that polite, almost humble, acceptance. "You're welcome, sweetheart." His lips brushed her temple gently. "It's my pleasure."
Her arms slid around his waist, and she cuddled close with a touching childishness. Indeed, she felt more
like a child at this moment than she ever had in her life. It was so good to be held and cosseted in arms that seemed to embody all the security and all the caring she had never known. Strange, she hadn't realized how much she'd missed those qualities until they were suddenly available to her. She'd been so lost in memories of that time long ago that it all seemed wonderfully right and natural.
His hands were massaging her back in soothing little circles. "Just relax, love. I'll take care of you."
Yes, he'd take care of her, she thought contentedly. She could trust Jared to hold back the darkness of those memories. He was strong. So very strong.
Strong. The word sent a sudden tingle of shock through her that pierced the dreamy euphoria and caused her to stiffen in his arms. Jared was strong, possibly the strongest man she'd ever known, and there lay the danger. "No," she murmured, shaking her head frantically. "No, let me go." Her hands were pushing at his chest. "I won't let you do this to me."
For a moment his grasp tightened around her, and she thought he was going to ignore her plea. Then his arms loosened slowly, before letting her go entirely, and she hurriedly moved away from him. He was too close. And she suddenly felt cold and lonely outside his arms. He made no move to follow her, but his gaze narrowed thoughtfully on her tense face.
"What is it?" he asked quietly. "Why are you so frightened?"
"I'm not frightened," she said fiercely. Oh, but she was. More frightened than she'd ever been in her entire life. "I just don't want you to hold me anymore. I don't need you. I don't need anyone."
"Don't you?" he murmured. "Somehow I got an entirely different impression a few minutes ago. Why won't you let me comfort you? I'm not going to hold a momentary weakness against you."
r /> "I'm not weak!" she said, her voice vibrating with the force of the words. "I'll never be weak, and I'll never be dominated. Not by you or anyone else."
"Why do you think I'm trying to dominate you?" he asked, his lips twisting in a wry smile. "I don't think I've exhibited any overwhelmingly domineering proclivities in our relationship to date, and you certainly seem well able to hold your own."
"The strong will always dominate," she said. "It's a natural instinct to hunt out the weaknesses of those around them and use them to conquer."
"You're wrong," he said gently. "Strength doesn't always have a component of ruthlessness, as it did in your father's case, Tania."
"Perhaps not, but it's too dangerous to chance." Her dark eyes were glowing feverishly as she moistened her lips. "But why should we be talking about it anyway? There's no question of your ever being in a position to dominate me. This is an isolated situation that will never reoccur."
"Why do I have the feeling that our truce is now at an end?"
"It would never have worked anyway. I must have been crazy even to agree to try it." She tossed her head. "It must have been the full moon. It's said to do strange things to sane people."
"So we're back to square one?"
She rose lithely to her feet. "I've found that you can rarely go back. That leaves only forward, doesn't it? But whichever way it is, it'll be my way, Jared. It will always be my way!"
Then she was gone, streaking toward the distant chateau through the ghostly trees like a slender shadow.
Tania slammed the door of her room and leaned against it for a moment, breathing hard, her heart a rapid throbbing in her breast. She knew there'd been no pursuit. Jared had merely watched her flight with that quiet, resolute patience that characterized his every move. There was no reason for this panic she was feeling, and it had been a mistake to run away from him. Those keen gray eyes seemed to know everything about her, and there was little chance that he'd not interpret her action for what it was. She would not be afraid of him—there was no way he could reach her if she remained firm. She was just as strong and determined as he, wasn't she?