Diamond Bay Read online

  Patience, the ability to wait even in the face of great urgency, was one of Sabin’s greatest gifts. He knew how to wait, how to pick his moment for optimum success, how to ignore danger and concentrate solely on timing. He could literally disappear into his surroundings, waiting, so much a part of the earth that the wild creatures had ignored him and the Vietcong had at times passed within touching distance of him without ever seeing him. His ability to wait was enhanced by his instinctive knowledge of when patience was useless; then he exploded into action. He explained it to himself as a well-developed sense of timing. Yes, he knew how to wait…but waiting for Rachel to come home was driving him crazy. He wanted her back safe in his arms, in bed. Damn, how he wanted her in bed!

  He didn’t turn on any lights in the house; he didn’t think it likely that the house was being watched, but he couldn’t take the chance. Rachel and Ellis might return early, and a lit house could trigger Ellis’s suspicions. Instead he moved silently through the darkness, unable to sit still despite the ache in his shoulder and leg. His shoulder had been giving him hell since the afternoon, and he absently massaged it. A humorless smile quirked his lips. He hadn’t felt a thing while he’d been making love to Rachel; his senses had been centered completely on her and the unbearable ecstasy of their bodies linked together. But since then the shoulder had been painfully reminding him that he was a long way from being healed; he’d been lucky he hadn’t torn it open again.

  Abruptly he swore and limped through the kitchen to the back door, so agitated that he couldn’t remain inside the confines of the house any longer. As soon as Kell opened the back door he sensed Joe leaving his stakeout under the oleander bush, silently moving through the shadows, and he softly called to the dog in reassurance. Kell no longer feared being attacked; Joe had warily accepted his residency, but Kell didn’t trust him enough to refrain from identifying himself before going down the back steps.

  Automatically keeping himself in the shadows, Kell circled the house and investigated the pines, assuring himself that the house wasn’t under surveillance. Joe padded along about ten feet behind him, stopping when Kell stopped and advancing when Kell moved on.

  A new moon was just rising, a thin sickle of light on the horizon. Sabin looked up at the clear sky, so clear, like Rachel’s eyes, that infinity seemed within his reach.

  His heart twisted again, and his hand clenched into a fist. He whispered a curse into the night. She was too gallant, too strong, for her own good; why couldn’t she play it safe and let him take all the risks? Didn’t she know what it would do to him if anything happened to her?

  No, how could she know? He’d never told her, and he never would, not at the expense of her safety. He’d protect her if it killed him. His mouth twisted wryly; it probably would kill him, not physically, but deep inside where he’d never let anyone touch him…until Rachel had slipped past all his defenses and seared herself into his mind and soul.

  Of course, there was always the possibility that he wouldn’t get out of this alive, anyway, but he didn’t dwell on that. He had thought a lot in the past few days, considering and discarding options. His plans were made. Now he was waiting: waiting for his wounds to heal more completely; waiting until he was physically ready; waiting for Ellis and his pals to make some little mistake; waiting until he sensed the time was right…waiting. When the time came he would call Sullivan, and the plan would be put into action. He would rather have Sullivan with him than any ten other men. No one would ever be expecting the two of them to be working together again.

  No, his only uncertainty was because of Rachel. He knew what he had to do to protect her, but for the first time in his life he dreaded it. Letting her go was one thing; living without her was another.

  He stood there in the night and cursed whatever it was that made him different from other men: the extraordinary skill and cunning, the acute eyesight and athletic body, the extreme coordination between mind and muscle that, all combined, made him a hunter and a warrior. When his emotional aloofness was added to that it had made him a natural for the job he held, the perfect, emotionless soldier in the cold gray shadows. He couldn’t remember ever being any different. He hadn’t been a noisy, laughing child; he’d been silent and solitary, holding himself aloof even from his parents. He’d always been alone deep inside himself and had never wanted it any other way; perhaps he’d known, even as a child, how much it would hurt to love.

  There. He’d let the words form in his thoughts, and even that was so painful that he flinched. He was too intense ever to love casually, lightly, to play the game of romance over and over. His emotional distance had been a defense, but Rachel had shattered it, and it hurt. God, how it hurt.

  RACHEL SAT ACROSS from Tod Ellis, smiling and chatting and forcing herself to eat her seafood as if she enjoyed it, but it chilled her every time he gave her that toothpaste-ad smile. She knew what that smile concealed. She knew that he had tried to kill Kell; he was a liar, a murderer and a traitor. It took all her strength to continue acting as if she were having a pleasant time, but nothing could keep her thoughts from slipping back to Kell.

  She had wanted nothing more than to continue lying in his arms that afternoon, her body limp and throbbing from his rough, fast, but intensely satisfying possession. She had forgotten what it was like…or perhaps it had never been like that before. Being married to B.B. had been warm and fun and loving. Being Sabin’s woman would be like burning alive every time he touched her, going soft, hot and moist at his glance, his lightest touch. He wasn’t easygoing and cheerful. He was a hard, intense man, the force of his personality radiating from him. He wasn’t playful; she’d never heard him laugh, or even seen his rare smiles reach his eyes. But he had reached for her with such desperate, driving need that everything in her had responded immediately, and she had been ready for him, wanting him.

  No, Kell wasn’t a comfortable man to be around, or an easy man to love, but she didn’t waste time railing against fate. She loved him, and accepted him for what he was. She looked at Tod Ellis and her eyes narrowed a little, because Kell was a lion surrounded by jackals, and this man was one of the jackals.

  She put down her fork and gave him a bright smile. “How much longer will you be around here, do you think? Or are you permanently assigned to this area?”

  “No, I move around a lot,” he said, responding to her direct attention by flashing his smile once again. “I never know when I’ll be reassigned.”

  “Is this sort of a special assignment?”

  “It’s more of a wild-goose chase. We’ve been wasting our time. Still, if we hadn’t been searching the beach I never would have met you.”

  He’d been throwing out lines like that since he’d picked her up, and Rachel had been determinedly skirting them. He evidently thought he was a modern day Don Juan, and probably a lot of women found him attractive and charming, but, then, they didn’t know what Rachel did about him.

  “Oh, I’m certain you aren’t hurting for casual dates,” she said in an offhand manner.

  He reached across the table and put his hand on hers. “Maybe I don’t consider this a casual date.”

  Rachel smiled and removed her hand to pick up her wineglass. “I don’t see how you could consider it anything else, considering you may be reassigned at any time. Even if you aren’t, I’ll be leaving on vacation soon and probably won’t be back for the rest of the summer.”

  He didn’t like that; it put a small dent in his ego that she wasn’t willing to hang around for as long as he was there. “Where are you going?”

  “The Keys. I’m going to stay with a friend and do some research in the area. I was planning to stay there until I have to come back to teach a night course in Gainesville when the fall quarter starts.”

  Anyone else would have asked her about the course she was teaching; Ellis scowled at her and said, “Is your friend male or female?”

  J