“Most passports do,” she snapped.
He nodded. “All right. There’s nothing we can do about it for now. We’ll figure something out once we get to the safehouse.”
“Is there such a thing?”
“Our friend Vasili arranged for an apartment down by the railroad tracks. People leave you alone down there, he said. As long as we lie low, we’ll be all right.”
“For how long?”
He’d looked at her then, at the stubborn, angry set to her mouth, the pain and sorrow still lingering around her fine eyes. “That’ll depend on how long it takes to get you another passport.”
“In other words, it’s my fault.”
“In other words, don’t complain if it takes awhile,” he said evenly, his voice showing none of his feelings. He’d seen the apartment—Vasili had insisted on showing him before he went to fetch Maggie. It was one room, with a table, two chairs, and a double bed. Randall had every intention of using that bed to good advantage while they were holed up waiting.
He saw the dislike in her eyes, and he knew why it was there. She was keeping it in place to fight off her attraction to him. He knew women too well not to recognize when one wanted him, and he knew Maggie Bennett wanted him as much as he wanted her. A day trapped in that dingy apartment hiding from the police, and middle-class morality was going to fly out the window. It was the only thing that could push Jim Mullen’s white, sweating face out his mind.
* * *
Randall sat up, staring around his luxurious hotel suite with unseeing eyes. For a moment he’d been back in that tiny little room with the cracked plaster, sagging ceilings, and the smell of cabbage embedded in the walls. And Maggie had been there, staring at him out of those eyes of hers, a mixture of anger and panic and something far more pleasant warring for control. He’d broken that control once, and he could do it again, fighting through her defenses until he had her exactly where he wanted her. And he would do it again, and again, and again, until he finally understood and grew tired of her—and brought the whole tangled affair to his own end.
That must have been the problem, he’d told himself more times than he could remember. He couldn’t get her out of his mind because it wasn’t over. He’d walked out on her with unfinished business between them. And because they hadn’t settled it, he’d been unable to get on with his life. But that would be over, soon. And then maybe he’d get rid of the aquamarine eyes that haunted him.
In the meantime, maybe remembering wasn’t such a good idea after all. Nor was lying alone in an empty hotel room thinking about her. He needed to be out among people; he needed distraction. He moved from the bed, headed toward the telephone, then stopped. There was no one he could call, no one he wanted to call. He was trapped, waiting. As he’d been waiting six years. With a silent curse, he turned back to the brandy.
She was getting drunk. It was a pleasant enough feeling, Maggie thought, sipping at the Scotch and smiling at the darkened living room and the sleeping figure of her sister. Hell, she deserved to get drunk—she’d faced the ghost of her past and survived. Randall Carter, in the flesh, was something she’d assiduously avoided for so long, it had become second nature to her. Then he’d shown up, the skeleton at the feast, when she was least expecting it, asking questions about grapefruit marmalade. Fancy he’d remember that, she thought, shifting around in the chair with careful deliberation, not spilling a drop of her umpteenth drink. Why would he remember it after all those years?
The apartment had been small and squalid. Randall had left the Mercedes on a side street, where Vasili would pick it up and return it, no questions asked. They’d made it down the narrow, depressing streets and up the three flights to their room without running into anyone. And there Randall had abandoned her, with nothing but the hot plate, chairs, and the bed, while he went off and met with the underground.
If the thirty-six hours by Jim Mullen’s side had seemed endless, these were even more so. She sat in the sturdier of the spindly chairs, staring out the window into the depressing streets of Gemansk, and tried to stay awake.
In the end it had been a useless battle. She crawled into the bed, just for a few moments, and then exhaustion took over, followed by a deep, drugged sleep.
She would have been fine without the dreams, she told h
erself later. She’d done a great job of fending off Randall, of ignoring the insidious attraction that he’d been trying to feed. But dreams pay no attention to common sense, and she lay on the sagging bed in a cocoon of sleep, prey to the erotic fantasies of her subconscious mind. The dream was so different from any of the unpleasant sexual realities she’d experienced that she awoke, flushed, sweating, completely aroused, to hear the sound of a key in the thin panel door.
It had been dark in the hideout. Fitful light filtered in from the streets, and through the thin walls and ceilings Maggie could hear footsteps, voices, babies crying. Randall stood in the doorway, illuminated by the dim light bulb from the hall, and for the first time since she’d known him, he wasn’t wearing one of his impeccable suits. He was dressed like the workers on the street, in rough clothes and work shoes; his black hair looked longer and scruffier around his head, setting off the Slavic cheekbones. He shut the door behind him, plunging them both into semidarkness, and he came across the room to the bed, dumping a bag on the rough little table as he moved. He still had that peculiar grace of his; it would have set him apart from the workers of Gemansk, but she had little doubt that he’d corrected that in public. She lay on the bed, bemused and unmoving, as he approached her.
“I’ve brought you some clothes,” he said, and his low, rich voice danced along her nerve endings. “Vasili will be by after midnight with some food. Until then, there’s nothing we can do but wait.”
She nodded, then thought that perhaps he couldn’t see her, so she tried to speak. Her voice came out a little hoarse. “Yes.”
She could see the flash of teeth in the dim light. The big bad wolf, she thought fancifully. What did he find to smile about in their current situation? “We have to keep the lights off. This apartment’s supposed to be empty. We don’t want any of our neighbors coming to investigate.”
There was nothing else she could say. “Yes.”
He moved closer, so that his long legs were touching the bed, and she could see that his shirt was open, exposing a strong, tanned chest. It made him desirable, and it made him irresistible. She stared up at him, her face mirroring all of her thoughts.
He knelt down beside her, and his hand reached out to touch her face. It was still his hand, strong, thin-fingered, ringless. That didn’t mean he shouldn’t be wearing one, she tried to remind herself, but failed. His hand gently stroked the side of her face, and his fingers brushed her lips. And then it was too late—his mouth was on hers, his hands had claimed her, and the darkness of the Gemansk night closed around them.
“Yes,” she said. “Yes.”
Why the hell couldn’t he stop thinking about her? Randall began pacing back and forth over the thick wall-to-wall carpeting of the hotel room, trying to blot the memory of that look from her eyes when he’d come back and found her waiting for him. Panic, anger, and wanting had all been mixed up. He’d known how to use all three. He’d known how to use her.
She’d been strangely docile as he’d stripped the clothes off her, but he’d liked that. He’d liked kissing her, arousing her, playing with her until she was lying in his arms, shivering and gasping and trembling, reaching for him with desperate hands that were clumsy and untutored and infinitely arousing despite, or because of, their innocence. He had half-expected to find her a virgin, was almost disappointed when he finally took her, plunging into her with a deep, almost savage stroke and finding no barrier. But disappointment was the farthest thing from his mind as she tightened around him, clinging to him, strange, moving little sounds of both panic and desire coming from the back of her throat. It hadn’t taken him long to bring her to the peak—she was starved for it, desperate for it, and he exulted in his sense of power, bringing her to ecstasy again and again, until she was weeping against him, begging for him, and he’d finally dropped his iron control and given himself to her, plunging deep and losing himself as he seldom dared to do.
If she’d looked shell-shocked, still half-panicked, it was nothing compared to what he felt when he finally pulled away from her. Suddenly he was exposed, naked, and vulnerable. And his panic matched hers.