She paused. "George had a problem, a medical one. He wasn't capable of being anyone's lover."
"So that part of the report was wrong, too."
"Deliberately. He used me as a sort of shield."
He put his hand in her hair and held her for his kiss. "I'm glad. He was too old for you."
Jane watched him with wise, dark eyes. "Even if he hadn't been, I wasn't interested. You might as well know, you're the only lover I've ever had. Until I met you, I'd never... wanted anyone."
"And when you met me...?" he murmured.
"I wanted." She lowered her head and kissed him, wrapping her arms around him, slithering her body over his until she felt his hardening response.
"I wanted, too," he said, his words a mere breath over her skin.
"I love you." The words were a cry of pain, launched by desperation, because she knew this was definitely the last time unless she took the chance. "Will you marry me?"
"Jane, don't."
"Don't what? Tell you that I love you? Or ask you to marry me?" She sat up, moving her legs astride him, and shook her dark hair back behind her shoulders.
"We can't live together," he explained, his eyes turning dark gold. "I can't give you what you need, and you'd be miserable."
"I'll be miserable anyway," she said reasonably, striving for a light tone. "I'd rather be miserable with you than miserable without you."
"I'm a loner. Marriage is a partnership, and I'd rather go it alone. Face it, honey. We're good together in bed, but that's all there is."
"Maybe for you. I love you." Despite herself, she couldn't keep the echo of pain out of her voice.
"Do you? We were under a lot of stress. It's human nature to turn to each other. I'd have been surprised if we hadn't made love."
"Please, spare me your combat psychology! I'm not a child, or stupid! I know when I love someone, and damn it, I love you! You don't have to like it, but don't try to talk me out of it!"
"All right." He lay on his back, looking up into her angry eyes. "Do you want me to get another room?"
"No. This is our last night together, and we're going to spend it together."
"Even if we're fighting?"
"Why not?" she dared.
"I don't want to fight," he said, lunging up and twisting. Jane found herself on her back, blinking up at him in astonishment. Slowly he entered her, pushing her legs high. She closed her eyes, excitement spiraling through her. He was right; the time was far better spent making love.
She didn't try again to convince him that they had a future together. She knew from experience just how hard-headed he was; he'd have to figure it out for himself. So she spent her time loving him, trying to make certain that he never forgot her, that no other woman could begin to give him the pleasure that she did. This would be her goodbye.
Late in the night she leaned over him. "You're afraid," she accused softly. "You've seen so much that you're afraid to let yourself love anyone, because you know how easily a world can be wrecked."
His voice was tired. "Jane, let it be."
"All right. That's my last word, except for this: if you decide to take a chance, come get me."
She crept out of bed early the next morning and left him sleeping. She knew that he was too light a sleeper not to have awakened some time during the shower she took, or while she was dressing, but he didn't roll over or in any way indicate that he was awake, so she preserved the pretence between them. Without even kissing him, she slipped out the door. After all, they'd already said their goodbyes.
At the sound of the door closing Grant rolled over in the bed, his eyes bleak as he stared at the empty room.
Jane and her parents fell into each other's arms, laughing and crying and hugging each other exuberantly. Her return called for a family celebration that lasted hours, so it was late that night before she and her father had any time alone. Jane had few secrets from her father; he was too shrewd, too realistic. By silent, instinctive agreement, they kept from her mother the things that would upset her, but Jane was like her father in that she had an inner toughness.
She told him how the entire situation in Costa Rica had come about, and even told him about the trek through the rain forest. Because he was shrewd, he picked up on the nuances in her voice when she mentioned Grant.
"You're in love with Sullivan, aren't you?"
She nodded, sipping her glass of wine. "You met him. What did you think about him?" The answer was important to her, because she trusted her father's judgment of character.
"I thought him unusual. There's something in his eyes that's almost scary. But I trusted him with my daughter's life, if that tells you what you want to know, and I'd do so again."
"Would you mind having him in the family?"
"I'd welcome him with open arms. I think he could keep you in one place," James said grumpily.
"Well, I asked him to marry me, but he turned me down. I'm going to give him a while to stew over it; then I'm going to fight dirty."
Her father grinned, the quick, cheerful grin that his daughter had inherited. "What are you planning?"
"I'm going to chase that man like he's never been chased before. I think I'll stay here for a week or two; then I'm going to Europe."
"But he's not in Europe!"
"I know. I'll chase him from a distance. The idea is for him to know how much he misses me, and he'll miss me a lot more when he finds out how far away I am."
"But how is he going to find out?"
"I'll arrange that somehow. And even if it doesn't work, a trip to Europe is never a waste!"
It was odd how much he missed her. She'd never been to the farm, but sometimes it seemed haunted by her. He'd think he heard her say something and turn to find no one there. At night... God, the nights were awful! He couldn't sleep, missing her soft weight sprawled on top of him.
He tried to lose himself in hard physical work. Chores piled up fast on a farm, and he'd been gone for two weeks.
With the money he'd been paid for finding Jane, he was able to free the farm from debt and still have plenty left over, so he could have hired someone to do the work for him. But the work had been therapy for him when he'd first come here, still weak from his wounds, and so tightly drawn that a pine cone dropping from a tree in the night had been enough to send him diving from the bed, reaching for his knife.
So he labored in the sun, doing the backbreaking work of digging new holes for the fence posts, putting up new sections of fencing, patching and painting the barn. He reroofed the house, worked on the old tractor that had come with the farm; and thought about doing more planting the next spring. All he'd planted so far was a few vegetables for himself, but if he was going to own a farm, he might as well farm it. A man wouldn't get rich at it, not on this scale, but he knew how to do it. Working the earth gave him a measure of peace, as if it put him in contact with the boy he'd once been, before war had changed his life.
In the distance loomed the mountains, the great, misty mountains where the ghosts of the Cherokee still walked. The vast slopes were uninhabited now, but then, only a few hardy souls other than the Cherokee had ever called the mountains home. Jane would like the mountains. They were older, wreathed in silvery veils, once the mightiest mountain range on earth, but worn down by more years than people could imagine. There were places in those mountains where time stood still.
The mountains, and the earth, had healed him, and the process had been so gradual that he hadn't realized he was healed until now. Perhaps the final healing had come when Jane had shown him how to laugh again.
He had told her to let it be, and she had. She had left in the quiet morning, without a word, because he'd told her to go. She loved him; he knew that. He'd pretended that it was something else, the pressure of stress that had brought them together, but even then he'd known better, and so had she.
Well, hell! He missed her so badly that he hurt, and if this wasn't love, then he hoped he never loved anyone, because he didn't think he could stand it. He couldn't get her out of his mind, and her absence was an empty ache that he couldn't fill, couldn't ease.
She'd been right; he was afraid to take the chance, afraid to leave himself open to more hurt. But he was hurting anyway. He'd be a fool if he let her get away.
But first there were old rifts to try to heal.
He loved his parents, and he knew they loved him, but they were simple people, living close to the earth, and he'd turned into someone they didn't recognize. His sister was a pretty, blond woman, content with her job at the local library, her quiet husband, and her three children. It had been a couple of years since he'd even seen his nephew and two nieces. When he'd stopped by the year before to tell his parents that he'd retired and had bought a farm in Tennessee, they'd all been so uncomfortable that he'd stayed for only a few hours, and had left without seeing Rae, or the kids.
So he drove down to Georgia, and stood on the weathered old porch, knocking on the door of the house where he'd grown up. His mother came to the door, wiping her hands on her apron. It was close to noon; as always, as it had been from the time he could remember, she was cooking lunch for his father. But they didn't call it lunch in this part of the country; the noon meal was dinner, and the evening meal was supper.
Surprise lit her honey-brown eyes, the eyes that were so like his, only darker. "Why, son, this is a surprise. What on earth are you knocking for? Why didn't you just come in?"
"I didn't want to get shot," he said honestly.
"Now, you know I don't let your daddy keep a gun in the house. The only gun is that old shotgun, out in the barn. What makes you say a thing like that?" Turning, she went back to the kitchen, and he followed. Everything in the old frame house was familiar, as familiar to him as his own face.
He settled his weight in one of the straight chairs that were grouped around the kitchen table. This was the table he'd eaten at as a boy. "Mama," he said slowly, "I've been shot at so much that I guess I think that's the normal way of things."
She was still for a moment, her head bent; then she resumed making her biscuits. "I know, son. We've always known. But we didn't know how to reach you, how to bring you back to us again. You was still a boy when you left, but you came back a man, and we didn't know how to talk to you."
"There wasn't any talking to me. I was still too raw, too wild. But the farm that I bought, up in Tennessee... it's helped."
He didn't have to elaborate, and he knew it. Grace Sullivan had the simple wisdom of people who lived close to the land. She was a farm girl, had never pretended to be anything else, and he loved her because of it.
"Will you stay for dinner?"
"I'd like to stay for a couple of days, if I won't be messing up any plans."
"Grant Sullivan, you know your daddy and I don't have any plans to go off gallivanting anywhere."
She sounded just like she had when he had been five years old and had managed to get his clothes dirty as fast as she could put them on him. He remembered how she'd looked then, her hair dark, her face smooth and young, her honey-gold eyes sparkling at him.
He laughed, because everything was getting better, and his mother glanced at him in surprise. It had been twenty years since she'd heard her son laugh. "That's good," he said cheerfully. "Because it'll take me at least that long to tell you about the woman I'm going to marry."
"What!" She whirled on him, laughing, too. "You're pulling my leg! Are you really going to get married? Tell me about her!"
"Mama, you'll love her," he said. "She's nuts."
He'd never thought that finding her would be so hard. Somehow he'd thought that it would be as simple as calling her father and getting her address from him, but he should have known. With Jane, nothing was ever as it should be.
To begin with, it took him three days to get in touch with her father. Evidently her parents had been out of town, and the housekeeper either hadn't known where Jane was, or she'd been instructed not to give out any information. Considering Jane's circumstances, he thought it was probably the latter. So he cooled his heels for three days until he was finally able to speak to her father, but that wasn't much better.
"She's in Europe," James explained easily enough. "She stayed here for about a week, then took off again."
Grant felt like cursing. "Where in Europe?"
"I don't really know. She was vague about it. You know Jane."
He was afraid that he did. "Has she called?"
"Yes, a couple of times."
"Mr. Hamilton, I need to talk to her. When she calls again, would you find out where she is and tell her to stay put until I get in touch?"
"That could be a couple of weeks. Jane doesn't call regularly. But if it's urgent, you may know someone who knows exactly where she is. She did mention that she's talked to a friend of yours... let's see, what was his name?"
"Sabin," Grant supplied, grinding his teeth in rage.
"Yes, that's it. Sabin. Why don't you give him a call? It may save you a lot of time."
Grant didn't want to call Kell; he wanted to see him face to face and strangle him. Damn him! If he'd recruited Jane into that gray network...!
He was wasting time and money chasing over the country after her, and his temper was short when he reached Virginia. He didn't have the clearance to go in, so he called Kell directly. "Sullivan. Clear me through. I'll be there in five minutes."
"Grant-"
Grant hung up, not wanting to hear it over the phone.
Ten minutes later he was leaning over Kell's desk. "Where is she?"
"Monte Carlo."
"Damn it!" he yelled, pounding his fist on the desk. "How could you drag her into this?"
"I didn't drag her," Kell said coolly, his dark eyes watchful. "She called me. She said she'd noticed something funny and thought I might like to know. She was right; I was highly interested."
"How could she call you? Your number isn't exactly listed."
"I asked her the same thing. It seems she was standing beside you when you called me from Dallas."
Grant swore, rubbing his eyes. "I should have known. I should have been expecting it after she hot-wired that truck. She watched me do it, just once, then did it herself the next time."
"If it's any consolation, she didn't get it exactly right. She remembered the numbers, but not the right order. She told me I was the fifth call she'd placed."
"Oh, hell. What kind of situation is she in?"
"A pretty explosive one. She's stumbled across a high rolling counterfeiter. He has some high quality plates of the pound, the franc and several denominations of our currency. He's setting up the deal now. Some of our comrades are very interested."
"I can imagine. Just what does she think she can do?"
"She's going to try to steal the plates."
Grant went white. "And you were going to let her?"
"Damn it, Grant!" Kell exploded. "It's not a matter of letting her and you know it! The problem is stopping her without tipping the guy off and sending him so deep underground we can't find him. I've got agents tiptoeing all around her, but the guy thinks he's in love with her, and his buyer has watchdogs sniffing around, and we simply can't snatch her without blowing the whole thing sky high!"
"All right, all right. I'll get her out of it."
"How?" Kell demanded.
"I'll get the plates myself, then jerk her out of there and make damned certain she never calls you again!"