Dangerous to Hold (29 page)

“Thanks, but there's no sense muddying it up any more. I'll use my shirt to dry off with. It's already half soaked and sticking to me like feathers to tar.”

He shrugged out of his jacket, and Alex noted the businesslike shoulder holster he wore under it. Despite her father's aversion to firearms, she was no stranger to them. During her summers on the steppes, she'd learned to handle them and
respect them. Sloan unbuckled the weapon and set it aside, then unbuttoned his blue cotton shirt.

Resolutely Alex kept her attention fixed on her task, ignoring the ripple of muscle and the slick sheen of his skin as he shook himself like a lean, graceful borzoi. He toweled his tawny hair, sending water droplets in all directions, then sat down again to tug off his socks.

By the time he tossed the shirt aside and pulled his jacket back on, Alex had finished with the colt. The animal whuffled softly and stuck its muzzle into her side, as if wanting to share her body heat. Evidently deciding she didn't have enough to spare, he ambled over to join the other horses. With a tired sigh, she sank back down.

Sloan's deep voice carried easily over the drumming rain. “Your turn.”

“What?”

By way of response, he dug under her coat and located one icy foot. Grasping her heel firmly in one hand, he began to massage her numb toes with the other.

Alex jerked at the touch of his big, warm hands on her skin.

“Relax,” he instructed. “I've had a lot of practice at this. From the time I was big enough to get my hands around a bottle of liniment, I'd work Wily Willie over after every rodeo.”

He glanced up from his task, his mouth curving. “Willie generally collected a sight more bruises than he did prize money, you understand?”

“Mmm…”

That was the best Alex could manage, with all her attention focused on the warmth that was transferring itself from his hands to her chilled toes. He had working hands, she thought, feeling the ridges and calluses on his palms with each sure, gentle stroke. The kind of hands her grandfather had possessed.

“What did he do when he wasn't rodeoing?” she asked
after a few moments, more to distract herself from the feel of his flesh against hers than anything else.

“Willie?” The skin at the corner of Nate's eyes crinkled. “As little as possible, mostly. As long as he had enough money in his pocket for the entry fees at the next event and the gas to get us there, he was happy.”

“And you? Were you happy?”

“What kid wouldn't be? I grew up around men who didn't pretend to be anything but what they were, which was mostly down-and-out cowhands. I was convinced that sleeping in the bed of a truck and feasting on cold beans out of the can was the only way to live.”

“You slept in a truck?”

“When we had one,” he replied, with a lift of one shoulder. “Willie was always selling it to raise the cash for entry fees. He and I were the only ones who knew how to wire the starter, though, so we always got it back at a reduced price when he was in the money again. Here, give me your other foot.”

How strange, Alex thought, studying his face as he took her heel in his lap and worked her instep with his incredible, gentle hands. All the while he shared more stories of this character who had given him his name and his peculiar philosophy of life and not much more, apparently. Nate Sloan came from a background as nomadic as that of any Karistani, one he'd evidently enjoyed, despite the deprivations he made light of.

Alex hadn't thought about it before, but perhaps in every culture, on every continent, there were people who preferred change to stability, movement to security. People who felt restless when surrounded by walls, and crowded when within sight of a town.

With a grudging respect for Katerina's instincts, Alex admitted that her cousin had been right in her assessment of this man. Sloan seemed to possess many of the same characteristics as the Cossacks who had originally claimed the steppes—the stubbornly independent outcasts who'd fled Rus
sian oppression and made the term
kazak
synonymous with “adventurer” or “free man.”

This tall, self-assured man fit in here far more than she did herself, Alex thought, with a twist of the pain she'd always kept well buried. She was the product of two cultures, torn by her loyalties to both, at home in neither. Sloan was his own man, and would fit in anywhere.

“And now?” Alex probed, wanting to understand more, to know more. “Now that you say Willie's retired and settled on this bit of land you have in…”

“Wolf Creek.”

“In Wolf Creek. Do you always just pick up and travel halfway across the world as the mood or the opportunity strikes you?”

His hands shaped her arch, the thumbs warm and infinitely skilled as they massaged her toes. “Pretty much.”

“You've never married? Never felt the need to stay in Wolf Creek?”

“No, ma'am,” he drawled. “I've never married. Why? Does it concern you? Are you worried that I might be woman-shy and upset this little scheme of yours?”

“I worry about a lot of things,” she responded tartly. “That's not one of them.”

He caught her glance with a sardonic one of his own. “I might not have the experience Three Bars Red has, but I'll surely try to give satisfaction.”

At the sting in his voice, Alex hesitated. “Look, Sloan, I know I may have pricked your ego a bit this morning by offering you up like a plate of pickled herring, but…but you don't understand the situation here.”

Strong, blunt-tipped fingers slid over her heel and moved up to knead her calf. “Try me.”

Alex bit her lip. For a few seconds, she was tempted. With an intensity that surprised her, she wanted to confide in this man. Wanted to share the doubts and insecurities that plagued her. To test her half-formed plan for Karistan's future against the intelligence he disguised behind his lazy smile.

With a mental shake, Alex shrugged aside the notion. One of the painful lessons she'd learned in the past few weeks was that responsibility brought with it a frightening loneliness. She couldn't bring herself to trust him. To trust any outsider. Not yet. Not while there was still so much danger to her people and to Karistan. And not while Sloan had his own role to…to perform in the delicate balance she was trying to maintain for the next few days, a week at most.

While she debated within herself, his hands continued their smooth, sure strokes.

“You're using me as a diversionary tactic, aren't you, Alexandra?”

She shot him a quick, startled glance. Had the man read her mind?

His eyes locked with hers. “I'm supposed to draw the friendly fire, right? Keep Katerina and the others occupied until you resolve whatever's putting that crease in your brow? No, don't pull away. We can talk while I do this.”

“Maybe you can,” she retorted, tugging at her leg. “I can't.”

Alex wasn't sure, but she thought his jaw hardened for an instant before he shrugged. “Okay, we'll talk later.”

It wasn't the answer she'd expected, but then, Alex never knew quite what to expect of this man. Frowning, she tugged at her leg. “Look, maybe this isn't such a good idea.”

He relaxed his hold until her calf rested lightly in his palm. “Why so skittish, Alexandra?” he taunted softly. “We established the ground rules last night, remember? I won't touch you…unless you want it. Or unless I want to risk getting my hide stripped by that short-tailed whisker brush you tote.”

“I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss the
nagaika,
if I were you,” she retorted. “The Cossacks of old could take out a gnat's eye with it…at full gallop.”

A rueful gleam crept into his eyes. “After seeing Petr Borodín in action this afternoon, I don't doubt it.”

Belatedly Alex realized that his hands had resumed their stroking during the short exchange. Had he taken her failure
to withdraw from his hold as permission to continue? Or had she given it?

With brutal honesty, she acknowledged that she had. His touch was so gentle, so nonthreatening. So soothing. Slumping back against the wall, she gave herself up to the warmth he was pumping through her veins.

The minutes passed. Rain drummed on the stone roof above them. An occasional roll of thunder provided a distant counterpoint to the snuffling of the horses. The faint scent of wet wool and warm horseflesh filled Alex's nostrils.

Gradually it dawned on Alex that Sloan's gentleness was every bit as seductive as the raw strength she'd tasted in his arms last night. The slow, sure friction of his big hands generated more than just heat. Prickles of awareness followed every upstroke. Whispers of sensation came with each downward sweep. Telling herself that she was crazy to let him continue, Alex closed her eyes.

Only a few moments more, she promised herself. She'd hold on to this strange, shimmering feeling that pushed her tension and her worry to a back corner of her mind for just a little longer.

Only a little while longer, Nate told himself. He'd only touch her a little while longer.

Although it was taking more and more effort to keep his hold light, he wasn't quite ready to let her go. He couldn't. Despite the heat that warmed his skin and the slow ache that curled in his belly.

When her dark lashes fluttered down against her cheeks, a tangle of emotions twisted inside Nate. Emotions he had no business feeling.

He should be using this enforced intimacy to draw some answers out of her, he reminded himself brutally. She still stubbornly refused to confide in him, but she was coming to trust him on the physical level, at least. It was a step. A first step. Something he could build on. Something his instincts told him he could take to the next, intimate level…if he was
the kind of man she thought he was. If he was the stud she proclaimed him.

At that moment, he sure as hell felt like one. He'd spent enough of his life around animals to respect the breeding instinct that drove them. And to know the raw power of the desire that sliced through his groin as he stared at her shadowed face.

Fighting the ache that intensified with each pulse of the tiny blue vein at the side of her forehead, he stilled his movements.

“Alexandra?”

The dark lashes lifted.

“I think you ought to know that massaging Wily Willie's aches and pains never gave me a whole set of my own.”

It didn't take her long to catch his meaning. Eyes wide, she tugged her leg out of his hold.

As her warm flesh slid from his palm, Nate cursed the sense of loss that shot through him. Settling back against the stone wall, he raised one leg to ease the tight constriction in his jeans and rested his arm across his knee.

With Alex watching him warily, he repeated a silent, savage litany.

This woman was his target.

She was the focus of his mission.

He was here to locate a small black box and extract it from her. Not the shuddering, shimmering surrender he was beginning to want with a need that was fast threatening to overwhelm both his common sense and his self-restraint.

Christ! He had to get himself under control.

Forcing his eyes and his thoughts away from the woman sitting two heartbeats away, he made himself focus on the mission. He'd made a little progress this morning, but not much. With Katerina and Anya and the others as willing, if unwitting, accomplices, he'd pretty well searched the entire camp. If Alex had the damn thing in her possession, he was willing to bet it wasn't hidden in any of the goathide tents.

A frustration he didn't allow to show grabbed at his gut. It
was two parts physical and one part professional, with a whole lot of personal thrown in. The agent in him didn't like the fact that his progress was so slow. As a man, he was finding the fact that Alex couldn't bring herself to trust him harder and harder to deal with.

As he settled back against the stone wall, Nate hoped to hell Maggie wasn't running into as many complications on her end of this mission as he seemed to be.

O
h, Lord, Maggie thought with an inner groan. As if this operation weren't complicated enough!

Reaching across the table, she eased a cloudy, half-full glass out of Richard's shaky grasp.

“But we're not fin… We haven't finush…” He blinked owlishly. “We're not done with the toasts.”

“I'm sure President Cherkoff will understand if we don't salute the rest of the nations represented on the UN team. At least not until they arrive tomorrow.”

She set the glass out of Richard's reach and glanced at the man with the shock of silver hair and the gray, almost opaque eyes. Those eyes had sent an inexplicable shiver along Maggie's nerves when the White Wolf of Balminsk received them a half hour ago.

“We've been traveling for three days,” she offered as a polite excuse. “We haven't slept in anything other than a vertical position in all that time. We must seek out our beds.”

President Cherkoff curled a lip in derision, as if in recog
nition of the fact that Dr. Richard Worthington would be horizontal soon enough, with or without the benefit of a bed.

Maggie stiffened at the look, although she had to admit, if only to herself, that Richard was rather the worse for wear. She hadn't needed his ingenious aside to know that he'd never tasted vodka before. When the first shot hit the back of his throat, his brown eyes had rounded until they resembled one of Vasili's threadbare truck tires. His Adam's apple had worked furiously, but, to give him his due, he'd swallowed the raw liquor with only a faint, gasping choke.

Unfortunately, with each of the interminable toasts their host insisted on, Richard had managed to get the vitriolic alcohol down a little more easily. In the process, he seemed to have lost the use of his vocal cords. Maggie should've had the foresight to warn him to sip the darn stuff instead of letting himself be pressured into following their host's example and throwing it down his throat.

“One last salute,” Cherkoff ordered in heavily accented English. “Then my son will show you to your quarters.”

It was a test. A crude one, admittedly, but a test nonetheless. Maggie recognized that fact as readily as Major Nikolas Cherkoff, who stood just behind his father. The livid scar slashing across the major's cheek twitched once, then was still.

Richard stretched across the table to retrieve his glass. The clear liquid sloshed over his shaky hand as he raised it shoulder-high.

“To the work that has brought you here,” the White Wolf rasped. “May it achieve what we wish of it.”

Since Cherkoff had made no secret of the fact that he bitterly resented the UN's interference in the affairs of Balminsk, Maggie wondered exactly what results he wished the team would achieve. She'd been briefed in detail about Cherkoff's reluctant compliance with the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty. Only the fact that his country teetered on the brink of collapse had forced him to comply with the START provisions at all.

Once part of the breadbasket of the Soviet Union, Balminsk was now an
economic
basket case. During their ride across the high, fertile plains, Maggie had learned from Vasili that the huge combines that had once moved through endless wheat fields in long, zigzagging rows had fallen into disrepair, with no replacement parts to be had. The rich black chernozem soil now lay fallow and unplanted.

As they drove through the deserted, echoing capital, Maggie had seen only empty store windows and equally empty streets. A casual query to Major Cherkoff had elicited the flat response that prices in this small country now doubled every four weeks. A month's salary wouldn't cover the cost of one winter boot…if there was one to be bought.

From her briefings, Maggie knew most experts blamed Balminsk's problems on President Cherkoff's mismanagement and the unceasing war he'd conducted with his hated enemy, the old headman of Karistan. Unlike Karistan, however, Balminsk had at last ceded to economic pressures.

In return for promises of substantial aid, Cherkoff had agreed to allow the UN to inspect and dismantle the missiles occupying the silos on the Balminsk side of the border. But the old hard-line Communist wasn't happy about it. Not at all.

Even Richard sensed the hostility emanating from the ramrod-stiff man across the table. Blinking to clear his glazed eyes, he lofted his glass higher.

“To…to the work that brought us here.”

Throwing back his head, Richard tossed down the rest of the vodka. He swallowed with a gurgling sort of gasp, blinked rapidly several times, then turned to look at Maggie.

As did the White Wolf of Balminsk.

And Major Nikolas Cherkoff.

Suppressing a sigh, Maggie pushed her thick, black-framed lenses back up the bridge of her nose with one forefinger and lifted her half-full glass. She downed the colorless liquid in two swallows, set the glass back on the table and gave the president a polite smile.

Behind that smile, liquid fire scorched her throat, already searing from the cautious sips she'd taken after each toast. Raw heat shot from her stomach to her lungs to her eyelids and back again, while her nerve endings went up in flames. Yet Maggie's bland smile gave no hint of how desperately she wanted to grab the water carafe sitting beside the vodka bottle and pour its contents down her throat.

The White Wolf bared his teeth in response and waved a curt dismissal.

With Richard stumbling behind her, Maggie followed the major from the dank reception room. Once out of the president's line of sight, she slipped two fingers under her glasses to wipe away the moisture that had collected at the corners of her eyes. Dragging in quick, shallow breaths, she brought her rioting senses under control and began to take careful note of her surroundings.

From the outside, Balminsk's presidential palace had appeared a magical place of odd-shaped buildings, high turrets and colorful, onion-shaped domes. Inside, however, long strips of paint peeled from the ceilings and brown water stains discolored the walls. The cavernous reception room they'd been shown into boasted ornate carved pillars and moldings, but the gilt that had once decorated them was chipped and more verdigris than gold. The empty rooms they now walked through hadn't withstood the passage of time any better. Maggie's boots thumped against bare, sadly damaged parquet floors and sent echoes down the deserted corridors.

After a number of convoluted turns, the major stopped in front of a set of doors guarded by an individual wearing a motley assortment of uniform items and a lethal-looking Uzi over one shoulder. At Cherkoff's nod, the guard threw open the doors and stood to one side.

“It is not the St. Regis,” Nikolas said, “but I hope you will be comfortable here. There are enough rooms for the rest of your team members when they arrive.”

Richard mumbled something inaudible and tripped inside. Maggie paused on the threshold, tilting her head to study the
major's lean face. Just when had this enigmatic, scarred man been inside that venerable landmark, the St. Regis?

“I spent two years in New York City,” he said in answer to her unspoken question. “As military
chargé
with the Soviet consulate.”

Before Maggie could comment on that interesting bit of information, he bowed in an old-fashioned gesture totally at odds with his rather sinister appearance.

“Sleep well, Dr. St. Clare.”

Maggie stepped inside the suite of rooms. The door closed behind her, and she heard the faint murmur of voices as the major issued orders to the guard to stay at his post.

Her eyes thoughtful, she strolled across a small vestibule lined with an array of doors. In the first room she peered into, a magnificent nineteenth-century sleigh bed in black walnut stood in solitary splendor in the middle of the floor. Her battered metal suitcase was set beside it. There wasn't another stick of furniture to be seen. No chair, no wardrobe, and nothing that even faintly resembled a sink. After a quick search through several other similarly sparse rooms, she finally located Richard.

He was standing in an odd, five-sided room, staring out a window that showed only the wall of an opposite wing and the gathering darkness.

Tugging off her heavy glasses, Maggie slipped them into her shirt pocket. “Richard, have you discovered the bathroom yet?”

“N-no.”

Her heavily penciled brows drew together at his mumbled response. “Are you all right? Can I get you something? I think I have some Bromo-Seltzer in my bag.”

He hunched his shoulders. “No. Thanks.”

“Richard, if you're going to throw up, I wish you'd find the bathroom first.”

“I—I'm not going to throw up.”

Maggie sighed. Crossing the dusty parquet floor, she gave his shoulder a consoling pat.

“Look, you don't have to be embarrassed or macho about this. That was pretty potent stuff you chug-a-lugged back there. I'm not surprised it's making you sick.”

“It…it's not making me sick…exactly.”

“Then what?” Maggie tugged at his shoulder. “Richard, for heaven's sake, turn around. Let me look at you.”

“No, I don't think I should.”

“Why not?”

“It's…not…a good idea.”

Alarmed at the low, almost panicky note in his voice, Maggie took a firm grip on his arm and swung him around. He stood rigid and unmoving, his brown eyes pinned on the blank space just over her left shoulder.

Frowning, she searched his face. His dark hair straggled down over his forehead, and he was a little green about the gills, but he didn't look ill enough to explain his unnatural rigidity or the way he kept swallowing convulsively. Unless…unless the damned White Wolf of Balminsk had slipped something other than vodka into his glass.

“Richard, what's the matter?” Maggie asked sharply. “What's wrong with you?”

“It's not an unexpected physiological reaction,” he said through stiff lips.

“What is?” She shook his arm. “Tell me what you're feeling!”

“In…in clinical terms?”

“In any terms!” she shouted.

He swallowed again, then forced himself to meet her eyes. “I—I'm aroused.”

“You're
what?
” Involuntarily, Maggie stepped back. Her gaze dropped, and then her jaw.

Dr. Richard Worthington was most definitely aroused. To a rather astonishing degree.

“I'm sorry…” His handsome young face was flaming. “It's the vodka. Apparently alcohol has a stimulating and quite unexpected effect on my endocrine system.”

Maggie dragged her stunned gaze away from his runaway
endocrines. Wetting her lips, she tried to ease his embarrassment with a smile.

“Gee, thanks. And here I thought it might have been this road-dust cologne I've been wearing for the last six hours.”

His agonized expression deepened. “Actually, you have a very delicate scent, one that agitates my olfactory sense.”

“Richard, I was kidding!”

“I'm not. I find you very excitatory. Sexually speaking, that is. Er, all of you.”

Maggie gaped at him. She was wearing boots that gave her the grace and resonance of a bull moose making his way through the north woods. Her pants were so stiff and baggy, not even the roughnecks on her father's crew would have pulled them on to wade through an oil spill. The heavy, figure-flattening T-shirt under her scratchy wool shirt just about zeroed out her natural attributes, and there was enough charcoal on her eyebrows to start a good-size campfire. Yet this young man was staring at her with a slowly gathering masculine warmth in his brown eyes that made her feel as though the artists at Glamour Shots had just worked their magic with her.

It was Maggie's turn to swallow. “I think we need to talk about this.”

“Not if it makes you feel uncomfortable,” Richard replied with a quiet dignity.

It wasn't making
her
feel uncomfortable, Maggie thought wryly. She wasn't the one with a bead of sweat trickling down the side of her neck and the endocrine system working double overtime.

Although it obviously took some effort, he managed a small, tight smile. “You don't have to worry. I won't attempt anything Neanderthal. But you must know how I feel about you.”

Astounded at his mastery over a vodka-filled stomach and rampaging hormones, Maggie shook her head.

“Well, no, as a matter of fact. I don't.”

He lifted one hand and traced the line of her cheek with a
gentle finger, gliding over the semitattoo on the side of her jaw.

“I think you shine with an inner beauty few women possess, Dr. St. Clare…Megan. A beauty that comes from the heart. I've seen you swallow your impatience with me time and again these last few days. You've never once undermined my authority with the team, or let the delays and inconveniences bother you. I've heard you laugh in that delightful way you have when the others were simmering with irritation, and seen your eyes sparkle with a joy of life that makes my breath catch. You're a kind person, Megan, and a very beautiful woman. And I'm sure you're a most proficient geologist,” he tacked on.

Kindness wasn't exactly high on the list of most desired qualities in an OMEGA agent. And, in Richard's case, at least, beauty was definitely in the eye of the beholder.

But Maggie sighed and let her chin rest in his warm palm. That was the longest, most coherent string of sentences she'd heard the young physicist put together at one time, and probably the sweetest compliment she'd ever receive in her life.

“Just how many women have you really known, Richard?” she asked softly. “Outside the laboratory, I mean?”

The shy smile that made him seem so much younger than his years tugged at his lips. “Aside from my mother? One, really. And I didn't particularly impress her, either. In fact, I've only heard from her once in the three years since we met. But that doesn't mean I don't fully appreciate what I feel for you.”