Zach's Law (6 page)

Still without thought, he told her.

“I had set up a security system for an American businessman in South America. His family was there, and he worried about their safety. Rightly, as it turned out. His daughter was kidnapped.
They’d breached my security system, and I felt responsible. So I went after her.”

Teddy felt her eyes widen at his flat tone, the utter simplicity of his words. What he had done was matter-of-fact and reasonable to him, as if every man was sometimes called upon to wade into shark-infested waters to retrieve something the swirling currents had carried away from him.

“They had taken her deep into the jungle, but I managed to get to her. And get her safely away from them. But they were after us, and we had miles of jungle to cross before we reached safety. It was hellish and dangerous, and the conditions were primitive in a way she’d never experienced before. She had no one to turn to but me. So she did.”

Zach’s mouth twisted, but he never looked away from Teddy’s eyes. “I found out too late she’d never had a lover. Still, it didn’t seem to matter. She said she’d never been in love before, either. And even though I knew the jungle was no place for love, I believed her. I believed her.”

Because I felt it too
.

He didn’t have to say it, but Teddy heard it. She drew a deep breath. “What happened?”

His smile was bleak and rather frightening. “We got back to civilization. And with the mists of the jungle gone, I didn’t fit her image of what her husband should be. I was hard, she said. I frightened her. So I left.” And his next words seemed wrenched from him with a raw, torn sound. “I found out later—she had an abortion.”

Teddy stared into the diamond-bright sheen of his gray eyes and felt a throb of pain for him. No wonder, she thought dimly, he was rabid about being a woman’s first lover and distrustful of “the wrong time” for conception.

“I understood,” he said, calmer, his voice going remote. “What happened between us was an accident, a mistake. She didn’t want to pay for that mistake, and it was her right to make the decision.”

“What if she had told you?” Teddy hadn’t
realized she was going to ask him and almost held her breath for his answer.

For the first time Zach looked away from her. His eyes were blind, opaque. He shoved his chair back and rose to his feet, his lean face expressionless. “I love kids,” he said abruptly, and turned away to go over to the clutter of equipment on the makeshift shelf.

Teddy sat where she was, staring at his back. She was unaware of the hot tears brimming over her eyes and searing their way down her cheeks. She was aware of nothing but what her heart was crying out to him.

How long has it been, Zach? How long have you tortured yourself? How many times have you asked yourself what you would have done if she’d told you about your child? Do you wonder if you would have had the right to ask that she give birth to your baby? Do you wonder if you would have asked, rightfully or not?

She got up slowly, stiffly, and began clearing the table. Zach was sitting at his equipment,
earphones in place and closing her out, signaling flatly his refusal to talk anymore. And Teddy respected his wishes, partly because he had withdrawn so completely and partly because he had told her what she guessed he had told no one else. Or at least no other woman.

It was enough. For now it was enough.

She occupied herself in quiet, hearing the occasional clicking of three different tape recorders that seemed to go on and shut off in response to some silent signal. She dug out her deck of playing cards and sat on the bed, playing solitaire and thinking.

He had told her, and in telling her, he had triggered something deep inside her. What was it? she wondered. There had been something deep in his eyes.…

And then she remembered. Years before, she had helped to track a cougar that had escaped a small circus and disappeared into the hills. She had found him, and her tearful, bitter swearing had brought the others to see what she had found. The cougar, young and powerful,
had two legs caught and mangled by the cruel steel traps that some fool had set, and he’d had to be destroyed.

But during her few moments alone with the big cat, Teddy had looked into the eyes that held such terrible pain and yet were stoic, proud. Those proud, anguished eyes had seemed to say, “It was my own stupid fault”; he hadn’t blamed the cruel human who’d set the trap. The eyes of an intelligent creature with a wild heart, a creature that would have dragged his mangled body away and licked his wounds alone, given a choice.

Alone …

Teddy felt a wave of dizziness pass over her suddenly, and she seemed to be somewhere else. Behind her closed eyes, images flashed like a film reel gone mad, then slowed and steadied, and the focus sharpened.

A young soldier, his fatigues drenched and muddied, pushed his way cautiously through a cloying jungle, his gray eyes red-rimmed with
weariness but sharp. On his left cheek was a long, thin slash that still trickled blood
.

The same man, but older now, worked among a bank of electronic equipment, his long fingers moving with expert precision. But he was still in fatigues
.

The street was crowded—it was New York—and the man moved with the silence of a shadow in that concrete jungle, yet his fatigues set him apart from the casual and business dress of the hurrying mass of people all around him
.

An office. No, a boardroom. And men with the hard, tough faces garnered in living in a corporate jungle. A dark and handsome man sat at the head of the table, and his rather cold blue eyes warmed when he looked back at the man in fatigues standing to indicate a set of blueprints on display
.

Another place, screaming of danger. Men with guns, and a dark-haired woman and two teenage girls with terrified faces. A swift, hard
battle, with the man in fatigues taking down a gunman in effortless silence
.

A storm-tossed island and a flimsy vessel. A blond man and a man with copper hair and a woman with a beautiful face and sea-green eyes. And the man in fatigues carrying guns and explosives, and another man brought out of a cell. And a large vessel that became an even larger one, and champagne to celebrate—

A rotund little man with brilliant eyes in a cherub’s face, a man with a voice of authority who thought he was Charlemagne and Richard and Lincoln and Machiavelli.… And the man in fatigues gathering equipment and going to war again, because it was wrong not to, and this time he would fight alone
.

The images whirled madly, confused, as if some capricious winds snatched at them. And then they steadied, focused, and she saw him again. And he was no longer set apart by the clothing of a warrior. He was no longer alone
.

Teddy opened her eyes, the images gone as swiftly as they had come. She was sitting up,
hugging her knees, the cards forgotten. She was shocked, as anyone would be when confronted by the inexplicable, but she was not frightened. She had, in a sense, been preparing for that dizzying journey all her life.

It happened only once, her mother had told her. And who knew if it came from a Scot with second sight or a Gypsy with an enigmatic gift. But it came once in a lifetime. An intense vision of past and present and future. A gift of understanding when that was most needed.

And Teddy looked at Zach, seeing that her silent journey had not disturbed him. She looked at him—and understood.

He had worn no uniform in the streets of New York. No uniform in boardrooms or in small houses where dangerous things happened. He had worn no uniform on a storm-battered island. Those parts of the images had been symbolic.

He was a warrior, a man of hard danger, born in the hazardous jungles of the world. A
lone wolf who had friends but who stood apart from them by choice.
“He walked by himself, and all places were alike to him.”
Kipling again. Wise Kipling.

She knew now why her memory of the cougar had risen in her mind. Because Zach was like that big cat. He didn’t blame the woman who had hurt him so badly. He blamed himself. It was his own stupid fault for getting into that mess. And now he’d be damned if he did it again. He wouldn’t let himself step into the jaws of a trap and watch it mangle a part of him.

Teddy drew a ragged breath, even her determined nature staggered by the odds against her. She guarded the small nugget of hope nestling inside her, the promise of the final image that had flashed before her, but she also knew how tough the battle would be.

She had to tame the wild heart of a jungle warrior, had to chip away at the suspicious, protective layers of iron he had wrapped himself
in. She had to coax a lone wolf to walk willingly at her side.

She knew what her motive was now.

And she knew he’d never believe her.

   “I have to go out for a while,” he told her.

Teddy was still sitting as before, but her forehead was resting against her raised knees. She didn’t dare look at him, struggling to master a tumult of emotions every bit as primitive as the physical sensations of the morning had been. Her understanding of him and of what he was to her had somehow severed the threads of her control, leaving her nakedly vulnerable.

“All right,” she responded.

“You won’t—?”

“I won’t try to leave.” She felt more than heard him step closer, and grappled against the urge to look at him.

“Are you all right, Teddy?” The stiffness was leaving his voice, replaced by concern.

She hugged her knees harder. “Yes.”
How
insane! I’ve never been less right in my life! Or more right. Oh, God, help me
. She could feel his hesitation, the instant’s suspension. Then he was shrugging into his shoulder harness and gathering a few other things. She kept her eyes closed, but she could almost see what he was doing. The door closed quietly.

Teddy looked up—and froze. “That’s cheating,” she whispered.

He was standing at the door, staring at her. He had known she wouldn’t look up until she thought him gone, she realized. And now he was gazing at her, his brows drawing together in a frown, and she knew her face was white, her eyes wild.

Well, dammit, she thought half hysterically, a woman didn’t fall in love with a lone-wolf warrior every day. It was bound to be a shock to her system.

“Something is wrong,” he said, taking a step toward her.

She was quite literally gritting her teeth, fighting a powerful, wild, mad urge to grab him
with both hands and hold on for dear life. Somewhere in her was a small astonishment that she could feel with such devastating strength, but another part of her was gloriously elated by it. It would require, she thought, a strength like that to catch and hold a wolf.

“Teddy?”

She felt herself smiling, and wondered what kind of smile it looked like. It felt dreadful. In a wonderfully conversational tone with only a trace of huskiness, she said, “If I were you, I’d leave. You see, I’m not quite safe at the moment.”

He looked bewildered—as well he might, she thought.

She drew a deep breath and held on to her knees tightly. “Zach, I don’t want to make you mad just now, and if I told you what I’m feeling, I’m afraid you’d get mad. You’ll get mad, anyway, of course, but I can’t handle it at the moment.”

“Dammit, Teddy—”

As the lesser of two evils, she told him part
of what she was feeling. “I want you,” she said baldly. “Rather badly. So would you go away for a while, please?”

A hot flare of response lit his eyes almost instantly, but then he swore softly and quickly turned away. And this time he really did leave the cabin.

Teddy just sat there trembling for a long time, trying to find some way of controlling these incredible feelings. She was finally able to get up and went into the bathroom on shaking legs to splash cold water on her face. It didn’t really help. She hadn’t really expected it to.

Good Lord, she thought bemusedly, how could a body that didn’t fully know what it was all about
want
it so badly? And what about these other feelings, the tangle of love and tenderness and pain and longing? How did people
survive
this? She was aching, trembling, hot inside with a need that seemed to be tearing her apart.

She wanted Zach. It sounded so simple, but everything she felt told her it wasn’t. She
wanted to sob, to laugh, to cry out wildly in order to release whatever was tearing at her to get out. She wanted to hold on tightly to Zach because he would anchor her in the chaos of a world gone mad.

If a bargain with the devil would have assured her of his love, she would have fought her way to hell and demanded it.

Teddy paced. She walked the confined space of the cabin, jerkily at first, then methodically, groping for control, for exhaustion, for anything that would ease the torment. She ate three apples and half a bunch of bananas, instinctively trying to assuage an aching hunger that no amount of food would satisfy.

And finally it was exhaustion that she found. She curled up on the bed, hugging a pillow that was too soft and not nearly large enough, her eyes stinging hotly and her body throbbing with the dull soreness of something battered. Her world had narrowed to this, and no one had warned her that it hurt so much.