The Phoenix Encounter. Linda Castillo

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СКАЧАТЬ with practiced precision. He wasn’t exactly sure what was going on but knew he couldn’t dwell on it. He couldn’t let himself think of her in those terms. Not when he’d worked so hard to get her out of his system.

      “I could ask you the same question,” he said.

      “I—I live here.” She glanced at him over her shoulder as she walked into a small kitchen area. “Were you looking for me?”

      “No,” he said quickly and held his ground at the door. “I was supposed to meet someone here.”

      He watched her pour Rebelian black tea into two mismatched cups. She looked cool on the outside, maybe even a little tough, but her hands were shaking, and for the first time he realized she was merely hiding her shock better than he was.

      She carried both cups to the wooden chairs in front of the hearth. “Your contact?”

      That she knew about his contact shocked him all over again. Lily didn’t know he was an ARIES operative. No one did, aside from his counterparts and other ARIES personnel. There was no way in hell he would ever tell her. The less she knew about him, the safer she would be.

      Because he wasn’t quite sure how to respond, he didn’t answer. Instead, he followed her to the hearth, keenly aware of her scent, that her essence filled not only the room, but the entire house. “I’m doing some missionary work for the French government.”

      She looked at him oddly, a student perplexed by a particularly difficult math equation. “I was supposed to meet someone here tonight, as well.”

      A sinking sensation swamped his gut. And suddenly he knew this was no coincidence. “Jacques brought me here.”

      Her knowing eyes met his. “Jacques is…with me. He’s part of the movement.”

      With me. Of all the words that stuck in his brain, he hated it that it was those two. He stared at her, torn between turning around and walking out and forgetting this had ever happened, and shaking her until she told him how it was that she was alive and he’d spent the last twenty-one months dying a slow death because he’d thought her gone.

      “There’s got to be some kind of mistake,” he said.

      “There’s no mistake.” She handed him one of the cups. “I don’t have any sugar. That’s one of the many things we no longer have in Rebelia.”

      Amazed that she could be thinking about sugar when his world had just been rocked off its foundation, he took the cup and sipped the strong, dark tea, trying desperately to rally his brain into a functioning mode.

      “I just can’t believe it’s you,” she said, sipping her tea. “This has been planned for months. We need your help.”

      “I’m here for information,” he said. “Not to help you.”

      Holding her cup between her slender hands, she looked at him through the rising steam. “I’m your contact. And if you want information from me, you’re going to have to earn it.”

      Chapter 2

      Having spent the last two years in a country decimated by civil war, hunger and indiscriminate violence, Lily thought she had endured every kind of shock a human being could endure. She’d seen things she couldn’t fathom. Things she refused to think of once the lights were out and she was alone in her bed. A few minutes earlier, she’d thought she could handle just about anything fate saw fit to throw her way.

      She’d been wrong.

      Not even the horrors of war had prepared her for seeing Robert again. She simply couldn’t believe he was standing in her living room, as warm and alive as the last time she’d seen him. The night she’d hurt him terribly and then watched as he’d been cut down by shrapnel.

      God in heaven, how was she going to handle this? How was she going to tell him everything that had happened since he’d left? Things that would change both their lives forever. The questions gnawed at her like voracious little beasts. Questions that terrified her more than the threat of any bomb or soldier’s bayonet or stray bullet. Questions she had absolutely no idea how to answer.

      Standing next to the hearth, Robert regarded her with hard, suspicious eyes. He may look the same, she mused, but the last months had changed him. Made him hard. Maybe even bitter. She considered the bitterness in her own heart and wondered if the last months had been as hard for him as they had been for her. She didn’t see how.

      Still, the steely gaze that swept the length of her remained starkly familiar. The pull was still there, too, she realized, and a shiver rippled through her hard enough to make her hands shake. She endured his scrutiny with stoic silence, hoping he couldn’t hear the deafening rush of blood through her veins or see her shake.

      Refusing to be cowed, Lily stared at him, trying to keep her thoughts on the business at hand and failing miserably. He offered a commanding presence that unnerved her as much as the sight of any enemy soldier. Broad shoulders. Lean hips. Legs slightly bowed with muscle. He seemed taller than she remembered even though she knew that was an impossibility. He had the most fascinating face of any man she’d ever seen. Intelligence and a subtle cunning burned bright and hot behind piercing blue eyes. Laugh lines cupped a mouth that was much more harsh than it had been when she’d known him. A five-o’clock shadow darkened a square jaw that lent him a hostile countenance. Even from three feet away she could smell him, an out-of-doors scent that reminded her of mountains and rain—and a time when he’d ruled her senses as surely as he’d held her heart in the palm of his hand.

      Lily cut the thought short with brutal precision. Now wasn’t the time to remember how well she’d once known this man.

      “You can’t possibly be my contact,” he said after an excruciating minute.

      “I am.” Having lost her appetite for the tea, she took it to the sink and dumped it.

      “Lily, for God’s sake, I thought you were dead.”

      For a while, Lily had thought she’d been dead, too, only to realize that sometimes it was much more painful to be alive. The old pain roiled inside her as the memories shifted restlessly. Memories she’d refused to think of because the pain was too great. Memories that had eaten at her from the inside out for nearly two years. If it hadn’t been for Jack, she wasn’t sure she would have survived. Sweet, precious Jack had given her hope when the last of her hope had been all but ripped from her heart.

      Gathering her frazzled nerves and the tangled remnants of her composure, she turned to face him. “As you can see, I’m very much alive.”

      “I can see that. But…my God, how—”

      “I was injured.” Self-conscious, she touched the scar at her temple and tried not to remember that her physical injuries had not been the worst of what she’d endured.

      He stared at her with those hard eyes, and she knew the shock of seeing her was giving way to the need for an explanation. A explanation she had absolutely no idea how to relay. She’d consoled herself with anger in the weeks she’d been held captive, tried hard to convince herself that Robert had abandoned her. Some days she’d even believed it. Days when it was easier to be angry than it was to hurt.

      “Why didn’t you contact me?” he asked incredulously. “Why didn’t you let me know you СКАЧАТЬ