The Phoenix Encounter. Linda Castillo

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      “You still working?”

      “I wrote for the Rebelian Times Press for a while.”

      “And now?”

      “A few months ago DeBruzkya took control of the media, and I just couldn’t do it any longer.”

      “Censorship,” Robert said with distaste.

      Lily nodded, feeling the same distaste all the way to her bones. “I kept writing. About the war. About the people. The children. They’ve all got stories to tell. Some of them are quite amazing.” She grimaced. “I didn’t have an income, but by then the economy was so bad it didn’t really matter. I sent pieces to the Guardian in London and the New York Times. One thing led to another, and before I knew it I had started a sort of underground newspaper.”

      He cut her a sharp look. “Jesus, Lily…”

      “The Rebellion is printed weekly. For some people, it’s the only way they can find out what’s going on in their own country that isn’t fabricated by the government or part of DeBruzkya’s propaganda.”

      He stared at her intently. “DeBruzkya doesn’t tolerate journalists who print the truth. He’s murdered them in the past. Damn it, Lily, he’s brutal—”

      “He doesn’t know about the Rebellion.”

      “Lily, for God’s sake, how can you be so naive?”

      “I may be a lot of things,” she snapped, “but naive isn’t one of them.”

      Rising abruptly, Robert limped to the fire. Setting his hand against the mantel, he leaned and stared into the flames, the muscles in his jaws working angrily. “DeBruzkya is ruthless. If he wants to find you, he’ll stop at nothing until he does.”

      The words chilled her, but Lily didn’t let herself react. She might be afraid on occasion, but she refused to live her life in fear. She refused to let it make her decisions for her. “I’ve been careful. I write under a pseudonym. He doesn’t know I’m an American. He doesn’t know where I live.”

      “I don’t understand how you can believe that, unless you’re into denial.”

      “I’m not denying anything.”

      “He’s a dangerous son of a bitch, Lily. Especially to the people who’ve crossed him.”

      “I haven’t crossed him.”

      He cut her a hard look. “I’d say running an underground newspaper in the midst of his dirty little war qualifies as crossing him. Information in the wrong hands can be a dangerous thing to a dictator.”

      “It would be a thousand times worse if I sat back and did nothing.”

      For the first time the layers of anger thinned enough for her to see the raw pain beneath, and she knew his concern for her was real. The realization touched her, and she felt her emotions shift dangerously.

      “Why do you do it?” he asked quietly.

      For the lost ones, she thought. “Because I have to.”

      He contemplated her like an angry dog that had just been swiped by a unassuming feline. Lily stared back, wondering how he would react if he knew everything.

      And as she gazed into the electric blue of his eyes, the endless months they’d been apart melted away like steel in a smelter. The pang of longing was so powerful that for a moment she couldn’t catch her breath. The urge to go to him pulled at her like a dangerous tide. A riptide easing a hapless swimmer into a treacherous sea.

      But because she knew he represented a very real danger to her—because she represented an even bigger threat to him—Lily banished the thoughts. She could never think of Robert in those terms again. Going to him, touching him, getting too close were things she couldn’t allow herself to do. Giving in to the feelings coiling inside her might just get them both killed.

      A cry from the bedroom at the rear of the cottage jolted her. She felt Robert’s questioning stare on her, but she didn’t dare meet his gaze. In her peripheral vision she saw him glance toward the rear of the cottage, and a shudder ran the length of her. For a instant, she stood there, frozen with indecision, a hundred emotions pulling her in a hundred different directions.

      “Is there a child here?” he asked.

      Trying in vain not to shake, Lily rose from the chair. “That’s…Jack.”

      “Jack? Who is Jack?”

      She started toward the bedroom, keenly aware that Robert was following her and that she didn’t have the slightest idea how she was going to explain a one-year-old baby to a man who had every right to know.

      Lily closed her eyes. “Jack is…my son.”

      Behind her, she heard Robert stop dead in his tracks, but she didn’t slow down. She didn’t turn to look at him. She wasn’t sure what her eyes would reveal if she did. She’d never been able to lie—not to Robert. She wouldn’t lie now—even if the truth was more brutal than any lie she could have fabricated.

      Jack is my son.

      The words reverberated like the echo of a killing shot inside Robert’s head. He stood in the semidarkness of the hall and watched Lily disappear into a small bedroom at the rear of the cottage, his head reeling.

      Lily had a child. He couldn’t believe it. Couldn’t believe she’d moved on so easily while he’d spent the last twenty-one months crippled by the past. The thought angered him, shook him more than he wanted to admit. He tried to blame his reaction on exhaustion and stress and the shock of seeing her again after believing her dead for so long. But he knew there was more to it than that. Knew it went a hell of a lot deeper than any of those things.

      Movement down the hall yanked him from his dark reverie. He looked up to see Lily holding a small bundle wrapped in a blanket. A blue blanket. He wondered how, in a country as devastated as Rebelia, she’d managed to find a blue blanket for her baby boy.

      He stared at her, then the child, trying desperately not to think about what her having a child meant.

      I’ve moved on. You should have, too.

      The full meaning of the words penetrated his brain. Evidently, she had, indeed, moved on. Judging from the size of the baby, she hadn’t waited too long after Robert had left to do so. He wondered who the father was and tried like hell to ignore the knot of jealousy that tightened in his gut. He knew it was stupid to feel that way. His relationship with Lily had been over for a long time. Any feelings he’d once had for her had been replaced by bitterness.

      The bitterness surged forth now with such force that Robert could taste its acrid flavor at the back of his throat. He watched her approach, then pass him without acknowledging him. Feeling angry and out of place, he trailed her to the living room, then paused to watch her spread a blanket on the sofa and lay the child down to change him.

      “He’s your…son?” he asked.

      She didn’t look at him but continued tending the baby. “Yes.”

      Robert СКАЧАТЬ