Black Satin Read online

  “Originally, it was my way of clearing the books between us. You helped me out, and I owed you. Simple business arrangement.”

  His eyes narrowed a bit. “And now?”

  “And now I know it was an excuse, albeit a legitimate one,” she added with a small smile.

  He looked a bit less tense, but his shoulders were still tight under her light grip. “An excuse for what? You knew I wouldn’t take it, didn’t you? So why try?”

  “Because I had to see you again.”

  His pupils expanded at her heartfelt answer. But his voice when he spoke was still guarded. “Then why come in the middle of the night? Normally, I wouldn’t have been here.”

  “I didn’t realize the truth until I saw your bike in the lot. Then I heard you shouting.”

  “Kira to the rescue,” he said quietly. He broke eye contact, looking at the floor, shaking his head slightly. “I won’t be another one of your charity cases.”

  She cupped his neck with her hand and placed her other hand on his shadowed cheek, lifting his head until their eyes met. “And I won’t let you throw me away the way you apparently have everything else.”

  He studied her for a long moment, then said, “Where did you get it.”

  “What?”

  He nodded at the envelope.

  “Oh. The investors were very generous. Thanks to you. You deserve some of this, Cole.”

  “I don’t want your damn money.” His voice was hoarse.

  “Fine!” She was yelling now, and she didn’t care. This wasn’t how it was supposed to go. He was pulling away from her again. Only this time she’d fight with everything she had. She snatched the envelope from his hand and tossed it on the floor behind her. “There. No longer an issue between us, okay?” She didn’t wait for an answer. “Now I’ve answered your questions, you answer some of mine. Who’s Felicia?”

  He flinched at her less than diplomatic demand. “You don’t pull any punches.”

  He looked at her, and she could see the battle waging behind his eyes. There was grief and fear, but most wrenching of all was the hopelessness she saw. “Tell me, Cole. You’ve got to get this … whatever it is that happened to you, out in the open.”

  “Don’t play shrink with me, Kira,” he warned. “I tried that two years ago. It didn’t help then.”

  “Kiss me, Cole.”

  “What?” He looked at her as if she’d lost her last remaining marble.

  She moved closer to him but didn’t touch him. “I said, kiss me.” When he continued to stare at her, she added, “You still want to, don’t you?”

  His eyebrows lifted a fraction, then lowered as he released a long breath. “Yeah, beats the hell out of fighting.”

  ELEVEN

  Kira’s lips had barely begun to curve in a smile when they were devoured by his. He clamped his hands on her hips and hauled her onto his lap. She wrapped her legs around his waist, holding him as tightly as he held her while pouring everything she felt, everything she had, into their kiss.

  The second he broke off for air, she gulped some of her own and whispered, “Don’t you see? I’m not trying to be a shrink, Cole. What’s between us has nothing to do with the fact that you’re hurting and I’m a trained healer.” She gripped his head and held it tightly as she looked deeply into his eyes. “But it has everything to do with the fact that I love you.” Her eyes burned at the brief flash of incredulous joy she saw in his, before his ingrained defenses shuttered them again. “And, dammit, if I want to help you, heal you, then it’s because I want to have a stake in the result. I want you in my life, Cole.” Tears tipped over her lashes and trickled down her cheek. “I love you.”

  His eyes burned suspiciously bright at her fervent speech, but her vision blurred, and she simply held on to him, waiting for him to say something, anything.

  “Felicia was my wife.” His voice was a choked whisper; his hands were still woven in her hair.

  She stilled for a moment, then sniffed and reached up to wipe her eyes. “What happened to her?”

  He kept his gaze steady on hers, but they were fierce now, openly filled with pain. “She was killed when a bomb exploded on the boat I was using to transport guns from Cuba to Miami.” He paused, scrutinizing her, apparently looking for whatever response he seemed certain he’d find.

  “And you survived. Oh, Cole, I’m so sorry. You must have loved her very much.” She could tell her understanding wasn’t the first response he’d expected. “If you thought you’d put me off with the gunrunner bit, you still don’t believe me. I love you, Cole. I don’t care what you did, what you were.”

  “You don’t care that because I was so involved with my job, I let my wife and a dozen children get blown to kingdom come?” His voice was brutal, filled with self-loathing.

  She flinched, unable to prevent the automatic response to such a statement. Cole abruptly stood and set her on her feet. He strode across the room, and she thought he meant to go on out the door, but before she could call him on running away, he stopped and turned back to her, eyes blazing.

  “I should have known, Kira. I should have known she wouldn’t give up her crusade to get those children out of Cuba.”

  He looked at once wild and beaten. But Kira didn’t interrupt, didn’t go to him. No matter how badly she wanted to help him through this, he needed to get it out in his own way.

  “I was sent in to infiltrate a large cartel that was illegally transporting firearms into the States. Felicia was the sister of the cartel’s top gun, Marcos. I was playing the sax in a little club outside of Havana, working my way into the ring as a runner. Marcos owned the club. He was my contact, my in. No one knew I was a plant. I’d been under for almost two years, gaining their trust, before we finally had everything in place. I hadn’t counted on Felicia.” He stopped and rubbed his palm over his eyes. “She was using her brother’s connection to smuggle orphans out of Cuba.”

  “She knew what he really did for a living?”

  “Yeah. She hated it, but she also knew she couldn’t change it. Marcos was devoted to her, and as long as she made sure no one knew what she was doing, he looked the other way. She was always very cautious.”

  “You helped her, didn’t you? She smuggled them out on your runs.” It wasn’t really a question, but he nodded.

  “I was … I don’t know, captivated by her, I guess. I was so far away from everything normal, so entrenched in my role, and she represented a niche of sanity, of goodness, in the middle of all the filth and evil.”

  “What happened? Did she know who you really were?”

  “No.” The word was bitten off, an oath. “She knew I was an American citizen, but she believed I worked for her brother.”

  Kira’s smile was small and ironic. “And she loved you anyway.”

  Cole bowed his head. “I shouldn’t have lied to her. I guess part of me knew the loyalty between brother and sister went both ways. She might have turned me in. I couldn’t allow that to happen.”

  Kira shook her head slowly, wondering if Felicia would have turned him in. Wondering what she’d do in the same situation. Her family ties were pretty strong, too, but she simply couldn’t imagine betraying Cole.

  “I knew things were about to hit the fan,” he continued, “and I wanted her safe. The only way I could do that was to marry her and get her the hell out of there. I set her up in an apartment in Miami. I saw her when I was on this side. But I knew it was all going to go down soon. I figured we’d pull off the sting, and I’d quit and come back to her. I’d tell her everything. If she was still willing after I got done, then I’d have done everything in my power to make it work.”

  “What happened?”

  Abruptly he turned away, placing his palms flat on the wall next to the glass door. Suddenly she didn’t want to put him through the last part. Didn’t want him to relive it again, fully conscious and wide open for the pain.

  “Never mind,” she said quickly, crossing the room toward him. He didn’t
turn, and she stopped a foot away from his broad back. “It’s enough that I know you feel responsible. But I also know that whatever happened wasn’t—couldn’t have been—your fault. Not deliberately. I know you.”

  He whirled around, tears standing on the edge of his black lashes. He clenched his fists at his side. “I left her in Miami. My thoughts totally on my mission. She got a job in a small Cuban grocery; she made friends. She seemed happy, content. Not once did I think that she’d find some way to continue her efforts. In Miami, of all places. She was smart and resourceful. She made contacts and was bold enough, sure enough, to push things until she got them set up.”

  “But she didn’t tell you?”

  “No—”

  “Well, then how can you take the blame?”

  “Because I should have known!” he roared. “She was my wife!” He grabbed her shoulders as if he meant to shake her, but he didn’t; he just held her. “She used my boat that night. The night the raid was taking place. She couldn’t have known what was going to happen. I had no idea she was aboard. Things didn’t go smoothly. Marcos figured out who I was and launched a bomb at my boat just as the other agents were closing in.” He shut his eyes tightly for a moment.

  “Cole, don’t—”

  They flashed open. “It missed. I tried to move away, draw him after me so the rest of the operation wouldn’t fall apart. But just then this blur rushes past me and dives into the water. Then Felicia storms out of the below-deck hatch after him. It threw me, but she was yelling at me to save him, and I didn’t have the time to think. I turned and saw the young boy swimming as fast as he could away from the boat. Another round of bullets blew the side of the boat to hell, killing the motor. I shoved Felicia down, shouted to Marcos that his sister was on the boat, then dove into the water after the boy.”

  Cole’s eyes were glazed with pain, his expression tortured. Kira moved closer to him, running a soothing touch over his cheek. She knew he was in the clutches of the nightmare and wouldn’t stop until he’d finished, but she couldn’t stand there and do nothing. She wished she’d never forced this on him.

  “The boy must have panicked when he heard the shots,” he went on doggedly, sweat beading on his forehead and temples. “It took a while for me to catch up to him. We’d just turned back when it happened.” He began to shake. “Marcos hadn’t heard me, or he’d never have done it. Another bomb, Kira,” he whispered, his voice ragged with grief. “Only it didn’t miss. I couldn’t get to them. I was too far out. They … they—”

  His voice broke and Kira pulled him into her arms. His arms went around her so tightly her breath was cut off. She didn’t mind. She was crying freely now, and from the racking motion of his chest and shoulders, she suspected he was too. “I love you,” she whispered through the tears. She didn’t bother telling him it wasn’t his fault. She told him what he needed to hear now. This she could—had to—make him know and believe. “I love you, Cole Sinclair.”

  He just held her. She had no idea how long they stood there, didn’t care. Finally, he pushed his face into the hair tangled at the side of her neck. He nuzzled through and placed a soft, heartbreakingly sweet kiss below her ear where her skin pulsed. “Then it’s wasted, Kira. Don’t love me.”

  She pulled her head back and held his face between her hands until he looked at her. She wanted to cry all over again at what she saw there. Added to the pain and despair, she saw defeat. No! “Too late for that,” she said softly. “Cole, if you had been killed during the raid, would you expect Felicia to take the blame? After all, she had to know you were under a constant threat of danger, yet she put you at deliberate risk by not telling you she’d stowed herself and the children aboard. You said she was smart and resourceful. You even suspected she might turn you in. Maybe she had her own agenda all along. No one will ever know. But the bottom line was, she was an adult, and it was her actions that placed those children at risk—not yours.”

  “That’s just it, Kira. My whole life—hers too—was about playing roles. Playing one person against another to get the job done.”

  “But you were one of the good guys!”

  He laughed, but it was empty of humor. He stalked over to the opposite wall, slamming his hand so hard against it that she jumped. “See these?” He ran his fingers over the scattered holes she’d noticed her first night aboard. “Bullet holes, Kira.” He swung his arm in a wide arc, encompassing the room’s furnishings. “You know how I got this boat? It was picked up during a drug raid. I got it real cheap because it was too beat-up to salvage for auction. Lord only knows what went on in this very room, but did I care? No, it was a job perk to me.”

  He walked back to her, standing so close, she could feel the vibrations of his voice on her skin.

  “It’s not just what happened that night. It was all of it. I ran guns, for God’s sake! Just because I was going to get them in the end, or planned to, doesn’t make it any easier to live with. It eats away at you, Kira, until you’re no longer sure who’s on the good side, or even if there is one. After that night, I got out. I knew I’d never be able to function in that world again. Problem was, I couldn’t function anywhere else, either.” He voice was ragged, his grip on her shoulders too tight. He took a deep breath. “If I can’t learn to live with myself, Kira,” he said quietly, “then how the hell do you expect me to live with you?”

  Kira swore she could feel her heart splinter apart. The ache in her chest escalated to a clutching pain as he let his hands drop and took a step back away from her.

  Her skin cooled immediately with the removal of his body heat. She was only vaguely dismayed to discover she was standing in front of him stark naked, the satin sheet having fallen off long ago.

  She turned and sought the sheet, not because she had a sudden attack of modesty, but because it gave her something to do. A small step toward leaving him. If she concentrated very hard, she could take another one, then another.…

  She made it as far as his bedroom door when her steps faltered. The silence was deafening. The numbness began to fade when she was faced with a harsh choice. To get her clothes, she had to go into the bedroom. His bedroom. A place she’d left not long ago filled with dreams and warmth and naive plans for her future. Their future.

  But her other option was to turn and face him again. She wasn’t ready for that either. And suddenly she was angry. At herself for getting into this predicament, at Cole for not being willing to fight for what she knew—knew—they could have together. Now it seemed imperative to get the hell out of there before she did something even more foolish. Like begging him, or pleading with him.

  But to do that she needed her clothes. Closing her mind to the tantalizing visions of last night and this morning, she stormed into his bedroom and flung the bedclothes around until she found everything. She yanked them on and left the satin sheet where it had dropped. She took a moment to gather herself; then, realizing that might take years, she stepped back out into the living room.

  He was still standing by the glass doors. He was only twenty or so feet away from her, but he might as well have been twenty miles away. His expression … wasn’t. His face was closed. Remote and distant. She looked away, then walked directly to where the envelope had fallen. The money had spilled out onto the carpet, and she carefully gathered it and tucked it back inside. Then she stood and moved to the bar, laid it down, then turned to face him. His gaze was riveted on hers, but his expression hadn’t changed. She started toward the opposite door.

  “Take it,” she heard him say.

  She paused, but only for a second. She flipped the latch and slid the door open just enough for her to fit through. She was halfway out when she stopped. She bowed her head, a sigh escaping her lips. Apparently she was going to have to face that he’d been right about one thing. She had absolutely no sense of self-protection.

  She stepped back inside but kept one hand on the door. “The money is yours, Cole. Like I said earlier, it’s a business transaction. You can
burn it for all I care, but I won’t take it back. Now we have no obligations between us.” She took a breath. The next part was the hardest. Probably the most difficult thing she would ever do. And possibly the most painful. She walked across the room, praying silently, repeatedly, that he would let her get through it.

  She stopped with barely a breath of air between them. He might as well have been made of granite. He didn’t so much as blink when she laid her hand against his cheek. Lifting up on tiptoe, she kissed him on the lips, breaking away quickly without giving him time to respond. His arms were still at his side. His expression had finally changed, but the bleak hollowness she saw didn’t encourage her a bit.

  She took a step back. “You let me touch you, Cole. I know you want me to.” She walked to the glass doors and wrenched open the vertical blinds. “I want to see you in the sun. I want to touch you. I need you. I love you. Fight for me, Cole,” she repeated, “like I’m fighting for you right now.” She moved back to the doorway, her courage rapidly dwindling in the face of his continued silence. She looked back at him. “If you do, I promise you’ll never regret it. But do it soon, Cole, because I won’t wait around for you forever.”

  She rushed out then, leaping to the dock, stumbling, then righting herself. She ran toward the end of the pier, knowing she’d lied about one thing. She would wait for him. Forever, if necessary.

  The sound of shattering glass pierced the quiet with a sudden violence, and Kira skidded to stop. She started to turn back but didn’t. There was nothing else she could do for him. Whatever happened next, if anything did, would have to come from him.

  All she could do was wait. And love him.