Zach's Law (9 page)

Fighting off the awful despair, she spoke off the top of her head with no thought. “Maybe the buyers haven’t seen the goods yet and plan to meet the truck somewhere to make certain the stuff’s authentic before they tell where the guns are waiting. Or has that meeting already taken place?”

Zach was looking at her. “No. No, we think not.” He turned his head to gaze into the mirror and cursed softly.

“What?”

He moved to lean against the doorjamb, using a small towel to wipe away the remaining lather. As if to himself, he muttered, “I should have let Josh strangle him last year. It would have saved us all a lot of trouble.”

Teddy was bewildered. “Strangle who?”

He sighed. “The federal maestro I’ve been stupid enough to take orders from,” he explained with a certain amount of bitterness.

“I don’t understand.”

“Let’s just say that if I had a brain worthy of the name, I would have learned long ago to distrust
the maestro’s solemn assurances that he gives his operatives the whole truth and nothing but the truth.”

“He kept something from you?” she ventured, still puzzled.

“It’s beginning to look that way.”

“What? I mean, how do you know?”

Zach didn’t answer for a moment, slowly buttoning his shirt as he came into the room. Teddy went ahead and put breakfast on the table, then sat down when he did, and waited. Zach sipped the coffee he had made before going to shave, his expression abstracted.

Teddy started eating and waited until he followed suit before asking again, “What?”

He shrugged. “Nothing I can explain. It should be straightforward from here, everything according to plan. But—it smells. There’s something off-center, out of focus. And I don’t know what it is.”

Teddy couldn’t help him really, except to listen. And when she realized that the restlessness in his eyes wasn’t due entirely to his worry over
elusive things, she could hardly help but be encouraged by it. She’d lain awake for hours the previous night, trying to think of some way of reaching him. And her eyes still ached with her tears of despair.

But if—even now, in the midst of serious concern—he could look at her and want her, then there was still a chance, despite the threat of time running out. Because she was still determined. She loved him, and no matter what Zach thought, that love was very, very real.

He was visibly restless by the time breakfast was finished. The tape recorders had remained inactive, and he rose after a glance at them to help her clear the table. The area near the sink was cramped, and Teddy was all too conscious of his nearness. She could feel the storm hovering, sending warning gusts of wind toward her, and her fragile control began to splinter.

She heard her own voice, calm but husky, speak to him. “Is it dangerous, this off-center thing you’re sensing?”

“Everything’s dangerous in a situation like
this.” Zach was standing beside her, her shoulder almost brushing his arm, and he felt oddly winded, as if something were tightening around his chest, squeezing the breath out of him. He tried in vain to shake off the feeling. “Especially,” he added, “something you can’t put your finger on.”

He reached to put the bread back on the shelf, and before his arm could fall to his side again, he felt her fingers on his forearm below the rolled-up sleeve of his flannel shirt.

“Sometimes,” she said, “what you can touch is even more dangerous.”

He looked at her hand, creamy pale against the smooth bronze skin of his arm. The hand that was so small and slender and trembled a little. Clearing his throat of some mysterious obstruction, he said, “You should always avoid danger—”

“If you can,” she finished. “I can’t, Zach.”

He looked, finally, at her face. “I can,” he told her, the sudden hoarseness of his voice
giving the lie to his promise. “I can for both of us.”

“You?” She almost laughed, a soft sound that was part humor and part vast understanding. “You were born for danger. Shaped for it.” She stepped closer as he automatically turned to face her, and her free hand came to rest on his chest. “You could no more avoid it than another man could willfully stop breathing.”

“Teddy—”

“Don’t tell me that what I’m feeling is wrong, that it isn’t real.” Her eyes held the amber fire of a cat’s. “Don’t tell me I’ll get over it. I don’t believe that, Zach, I
won’t
.” She drew a deep breath. “But I won’t make demands on you, I promise. If—if you don’t want to see me when this is over, then I’ll understand.”

“It’ll be you,” he muttered, “who won’t want to see me.”

“Don’t count on it.” But her voice was half smiling, because he had, with the statement, implied that there would be a time after this.
She hoped. Her hands slid up his chest as his found the curve of her hips, and she tried desperately to rein the wild hunger rising in her, half afraid that what was inside her was too abandoned, too violent.

Zach’s eyes were half closed, his lashes hiding the darkening gray as he looked broodingly down on her. His hands remained at her hips, and though they held her tautly, it wasn’t to draw her closer but to hold her firmly away from him. “No,” he said finally, a guttural sound. Before she could react, he stepped away from her abruptly.

“Zach—”

“No, dammit!”

A part of Teddy’s emotions took wing then, and she allowed them their fierce, angry flight. “I’m twenty-six years old,” she told him furiously. “Why won’t you believe I know what I’m doing?”

“Because you don’t know.”

“Well, then, give me a chance to find out, dammit,” she retorted a little wildly. “It’s my
body, and if I want to give it to you, then that’s my own business!” She realized the absurdity of what she was saying but somehow couldn’t stop the words.

Zach laughed curtly and turned away. “If all you want is a stud, Teddy, you’ll have to wait until you get to Boston.” He stopped as though he’d run into a wall, closing his eyes briefly as he realized what he had said to her. Behind him was utter and complete silence. “Sorry, I didn’t mean that.”

She said nothing.

He braced himself and turned back to face her. The only life in her white face was blazing in amber eyes, and he couldn’t read the emotion burning there. “Teddy … I’m sorry.”

She looked at him as though he were a stranger just met, her head tilted a little, the expression on her pale face vaguely curious. “You can be cruel, can’t you, Zach.” It wasn’t a question, just a peculiarly detached observation. “As you said, if I had a brain worthy of the name, I’d be afraid of you too.”

It hurt, and Zach knew he deserved it. He nodded a little, accepting it, then went over to his equipment silently and began labeling tapes, storing them neatly. Packing away unnecessary things. Getting ready, she realized, to leave this place.

Teddy finished cleaning up, moving by rote, then forced herself to do other things, to keep busy so that she couldn’t think. It didn’t work, but at least she wasn’t feeling very much. Those wild feelings, she thought, had been shocked into stillness by this rejection, leaving only the dim echoes of what had been.

It was late in the day, and Zach had silently left the cabin several times, when Teddy ran out of things to do. She had made a stab at organizing her purse, she had straightened the tumbled clothing in her suitcases, and she had cleaned up the cabin. After preparing a supper that neither of them did justice to—and in silence—she finally shut herself in the bathroom and took a bath of sorts.

It wasn’t easy, but the creativity demanded
for the task at least occupied her mind. The sink was small, the water cold, the room cramped. But she managed to wash by standing naked in a battered tin washtub she’d found, soaping and rinsing methodically. She even managed to wash her hair.

She emerged finally, wearing a definitely overlarge flannel shirt as sleepwear, her hair wrapped turbanlike in a towel. Ignoring the uncommunicative expanse of Zach’s broad back, she crawled into bed with her comb and brush and sat toweling her hair until most of the water was out. Then she combed the tangles from the unruly mass before brushing it steadily while it dried.

The automatic motions were soothing, and Teddy blanked her mind as much as she could. By the time her hair was dry, though, her mind wasn’t the problem. Since that first burst of passion between them she had been walking an emotional high-wire, surprising herself again and again by saying and doing things she hadn’t anticipated. The wild mood swings
from temper to depression to a kind of aching apathy seemed unmanageable and beyond her understanding.

She wavered between hope and despair, passion and anger, determination and anguish. And now she was aware of all those feelings rising in her throat, choking her, clawing to get out after the dazed stillness of hours. She set the brush and comb on the floor and slid down under the covers, turning her face to the wall. And she realized she was chewing on a knuckle only when she felt the pain and, feeling it, bit harder, because at least she knew then why she hurt.

Zach had been aware of her every movement. He had sat and kept himself busy with packing away instruments, with listening to uninformative conversations from the house and going out to check the area, with requesting and studying data from Interpol and other data banks—all of it mindless, barely scratching the surface of his thoughts.

He kept reminding himself, over and over,
of why he had turned away from Teddy. Of why he had to. But as the hours passed, that reasonable voice grew weary and fainter. He stopped listening to it altogether when he heard the quiet sounds of her bathing.

He was under control again when she came out, but didn’t dare turn and watch her. Still, he knew she was in bed and brushing her hair. He knew when she put the brush aside and when she lay down in the bed.

Zach did turn then, gazing toward the bed. She was a mass of red hair and blankets, facing the wall. She wasn’t crying, he knew. It was something worse than tears, something that reached out in a way he didn’t understand and wrenched at him. She didn’t move or make a sound, but he felt his willpower vanish, his control splinter. For just a moment he sat there, unable to move for the sheer power of the feelings battering him. His? Hers? He didn’t know.

He didn’t care.

Zach didn’t remember crossing the room but he must have, because he found himself sitting
on the edge of the bed. He touched her shoulder, finding it tense, spoke her name softly. She didn’t move, and he turned her gently onto her back. She was looking up at him with huge eyes that were dry but feverish.

His large hand closed around her wrist and pulled her knuckles away from her mouth. Her creamy skin was reddened and bore the marks of her teeth, and he knew she would be bruised there tomorrow. He lifted her hand to his own mouth, rubbing his lips softly across her knuckles. His free hand cupped her cheek, the thumb gently drawing her bottom lip from between her teeth.

“Don’t be kind,” she told him in a voice that almost wasn’t there.

His mouth twisted, and Zach bent toward her, murmuring, “I haven’t got a kind bone in my body.” He fitted his mouth to hers, firmly and with utter possession, his tongue diving deeply to twine with hers.

Instantly, Teddy responded, her arms going around his neck, a faint whimper escaping the
molten joining of their lips. She could feel his hand slide around to the nape of her neck, drawing her up against him, and his other hand was at the small of her back. Her breasts were pressed into the hardness of his chest, and the pleasure of that alone tightened an already quivering coil of desire deep inside her. They were locked together for long moments, and her body strained instinctively to be closer, to be a part of him.

He eased her back a little so that he could unbutton her shirt, his fingers quick and sure, and she lowered her arms long enough to let the flannel slide away. She would have reached out for him again—did, in fact—but he was straightening, and Teddy felt a quick flare of pure panic.

She gasped. “If you leave me now …”

Darkened gray eyes were sweeping her body that the discarded shirt and tumble of blankets left bared to the waist, and he smiled just a little as he swiftly unbuttoned his shirt. “No,
honey,” he said in a voice like rough velvet, “I’m not leaving you.”

Reassured as much by the expression in his eyes as by the words, Teddy allowed her body to relax and lay still, watching him. Completely unselfconscious and utterly fascinated, she watched the golden light play over his rippling muscles, and when he bent to discard the light moccasins he always wore, she reached out to gently touch one of the several faint scars on his back. His muscles moved like a living animal under her fingers, and he turned his head to look at her with a hint of that untamed intensity in his eyes.

“So much hurt,” she murmured, thinking of mangled cougars and wounded warriors. Her fingers traced the puckered scar that had to have been left by a bullet, then trailed downward to follow the curving ridge of scar tissue high on his rib cage; God only knew what had made that awful wound.

Her hand fell away when he stood up to finish undressing, and she caught her breath. The
raw male beauty of him made her ache, heart and soul, and the vital force he exuded ignited her senses instantly. His big body was tanned flesh covering corded muscle; the smooth expanse of bronze was broken only by the jet-black hair lightly furring his long legs, covering his powerful chest, and arrowing down his flat stomach to the thicket over his loins.

Clothed, he was an imposing man, the size and obvious strength of him intimidating, his grace of movement riveting; naked, he was all that and more. He was a male animal in the prime of his power and virility, and he was beautiful.

Teddy reached out to him when he swept the covers away and lowered his weight beside her, but he caught her wrists gently in one big hand and anchored them to the pillow above her head. “I want to look at you.” His voice was a deep, soft rumble. He gazed down at her slender body, which seemed curiously insubstantial because it was half hidden in his own shadow.

Her breasts rose and fell quickly with her shallow breathing, the position of her arms lifting and rounding them so that they begged mutely to be touched, kissed. She seemed incredibly fragile, her body delicate, her creamy flesh the kind that would be easily bruised; but she was unmarked, utterly perfect, and beautifully feminine.