The Bride And The Mercenary. Harper Allen

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СКАЧАТЬ suddenly screamed through his head like an express train, and he squeezed his eyes shut, riding with it. He could feel sweat popping out on his temples, and a wave of nausea washed over him.

      It hadn’t been this bad for a long time, but for the past week it had been getting steadily worse. He could pinpoint the exact moment it had started escalating. He’d been going through a discarded Boston Globe page by page—wherever he was living, he made it a point to scan a major newspaper every single day. He’d never been sure what he was looking for, but he had the feeling that if he found it he’d know—and out of the blue it had suddenly felt as if his brain was exploding.

      The nausea passed. Hoping she hadn’t noticed anything, he opened his eyes and found himself staring into hers, only a few inches away.

      “You’re hurt, aren’t you? What’s the matter, did a piece of the door hit you when they shot in the gas canister, Malone?” Her voice was edged with worry, but at it his headache intensified.

      She had to stop calling him Malone.

      “That’s not my name. Why can’t you understand that?” It cost him to speak, but he continued. “In…in the pocket of my coat are some papers. Get them out.”

      Ignoring him, she leaned closer. The heavy perfume she’d been wearing seemed to have dissipated, and he was grateful for that. “We have to get you to a doctor, for God’s sake. There’s a pay phone by the stairs over there. I’m going to call an ambulance.”

      “No! No hospitals, no doctors.” He gritted his teeth. “Just…just give me the papers. I want to show you something.”

      She hesitated for a moment and then reached inside the coat pocket, her gaze never leaving his face.

      Her delusion was powerful. He’d hadn’t wanted to force the truth on her, but obviously nothing else would jolt her back to reality. Briefly he wondered what kind of man the mysterious Malone was and just how he’d disappeared from her life.

      He hadn’t deserved her. The thought flashed into his mind with cold certainty. Whoever he was, he hadn’t deserved a woman like this, and her actions today, as crazily impulsive as they’d been, proved that.

      In the alleyway she’d said something about believing he was dead. The son of a bitch hadn’t even had the guts to say goodbye to her.

      But if Malone hadn’t deserved her, the man she’d been about to marry today didn’t, either. If he had, she wouldn’t have had to look to the past to find the love of her life.

      “Here.”

      She thrust the papers into his hand, and for the first time he noticed the slight callousing on her knuckles. When he’d held her by the arm earlier, under the overblown frills of her sleeve he’d felt incongruously hard muscle. Even though it was a wedding dress, like the perfume, it was all wrong for her, he thought. She wasn’t flounces and fussiness. She had the kind of beauty that could stand alone.

      He pulled the rubber band off the small package of papers and cards, and shuffled through them, the left side of his head throbbing. That was where the scar was, hidden somewhere under his hair. It always hurt more in that area.

      “My driver’s license.” He handed it to her. “A letter of reference from a garage owner I worked for in Idaho last year.” He unfolded it and passed it over. “My photo ID and dock pass. I was a deckhand on a salvage vessel in Florida a couple of winters ago. Check out the name on all of them.”

      Watching her carefully as she looked at each item, he continued. “I’ve hit a run of bad luck lately, but I haven’t always lived on the streets, lady. I’ve got a history. I’ve got an identity. I’m not the man you’re looking for.”

      “John Smith?” There was a thread of incredulity in her tone. Holding up the license again, she peered at it almost fearfully. Her glance darted to him and then back to the ID, as if she suspected some trick. “John Smith? What kind of a name is that? That could be anyone’s name!”

      Time was running out. His usual practice after such a close call was to put as much distance between himself and them as possible, and he knew he had to get moving. But he couldn’t leave—not yet.

      With every minute that passed, the danger was lessening for her. They knew he traveled alone, and they knew he would never reveal his destination to anyone, so any interest they had in her would fade within hours. Still, he’d feel easier knowing that she was—how had she put it?—back in her own world, before he left.

      And he needed to break through the barrier of denial she was putting up. This Malone bastard had run out on her once before. He wasn’t going to leave her believing that the man she loved had abandoned her a second time.

      “It’s not anyone’s name, it’s my name.” He tried to smooth out the hoarseness in his voice, suddenly wanting only to make the glaze of her tears disappear, to erase the shadow of grief that haunted her features.

      “Maybe I look a little like him. It’s been so long since I’ve seen myself without this—” he gestured toward his moustache and beard “—that I hardly remember what I look like clean-shaven. But a chance resemblance is all it is. I’m not him. You’ve got to believe me.”

      “But your eyes—they’re exactly the same!” She sounded desperate, as if she was holding on to something that was slipping away. “And…and you were whistling ‘Danny Boy,’ just the way he used to!”

      “I don’t know much about my background, but I think there’s more than a touch of Irish in it.” The pain flared behind his eyes, sharper than before. “From his name, I’d guess your Malone and I have that in common. But that doesn’t mean much.”

      “You called me Lee.” Her gaze was brilliantly intense. She knew, he thought. She knew now, but her heart hadn’t caught up to her head. “How did you know my name?”

      “I didn’t. I think you heard what you wanted to hear,” he said heavily. “I’m not him, and he’s not worth it, Lee. If he ran out on you, you’re better off without him.”

      “John Smith.”

      She glanced down at the papers in her hand once more. He saw her shoulders slump, and the small movement of defeat came close to tearing him apart. She wasn’t a tall woman. In the grease-smeared white gown and the now-filthy satin slippers she was wearing, she looked like a little girl at her own birthday party, watching the guests leave early.

      Except she wasn’t a little girl, he told himself as he saw her shoulders straighten. She was a woman. She had courage, she had the strength of her convictions, as misplaced as those convictions might be, and her only vulnerability was that she’d loved too well. Again a flicker of anger at the mysterious Malone flared in him. At her next words, it was snuffed out completely.

      “I went to his funeral. I put red roses on his casket. You really aren’t him, are you?”

      The express train inside his skull screamed down the tracks, its rushing metal wheels throwing off sparks of unbearable pain. The nausea had come back in full force. She’d gone to his funeral. She’d stood by his grave and watched him being lowered into the ground. The man was dead. He hadn’t run out on her, he’d died.

      Instead of anger, the emotion now flickering just beneath the blanket of pain in his head was envy.

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