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  As he stood, he took her left hand and pulled her easily upright. They spotted her missing hair clip at the same instant. With startling swiftness, he scooped it up before she could do more than reach toward the barrette.

  “I’ll take care of it,” he said, stepping behind her.

  He caught her hair in his right hand and clipped the chestnut mass in place with his left. When he was finished, he gently, slowly stroked her gold-shot hair.

  Raine froze beneath the caress as every female nerve ending she had came to full alert. She felt the faint humid warmth of Cord’s breath on her neck, and a delicate touch that could have been his lips.

  “Your hair smells like sunlight,” he said, his voice husky. Then, as though he had said nothing at all, he asked, “Where do we go from here?”

  She turned and stared at him, off-balance once more. He had outmaneuvered her again, only this time the assumption was buried in the question. We. Where do we go from here? Talk about an open-ended, fully loaded question . . .

  She was too smart to touch it. The problem was, she wanted to touch Cord. She didn’t know why, but she knew how much.

  Too much.

  Gathering what was left of her concentration, Raine bent over to pick up her rucksack. Cord beat her to it, swinging the sack up easily over one shoulder. He picked her camera and binoculars off the ground and put the straps around her neck. The pad and pencil appeared in his hand again.

  “You handle the camera,” he said. “I’ll take care of the sketches.”

  “That bad, huh?” she asked, amused. She knew that her sketches were awkward and all but unreadable to anyone but herself. Captain Jon told her frequently.

  “Let’s just say that you don’t threaten Da Vinci.”

  “Do you?”

  “You can tell me tonight, when you look at my, um, sketches after dinner.”

  “Mr. Elliot,” she began, determination plain in the lines of her face and her tone of voice.

  “Aren’t you hungry after all your walking around?” he asked, before she could say any more.

  “Of course, but—”

  “Good,” he cut in smoothly. “You drive me to Santa Anita and I’ll buy you dinner. Fair trade, don’t you think?”

  “But—”

  “All right, two dinners,” he said quickly, smiling down at her. “You drive a hard bargain, lady. And my name is Cord, not Mr. Elliot.”

  Raine’s teeth clicked together in frustration. She hadn’t felt so overmatched since the time years before when she took on both her older sisters at once. It had been a learning experience.

  “Lead me to your hilltop,” Cord said. Subdued laughter made his voice even deeper than it usually was. Then the laughter slid away, leaving only hunger, an intensity burning in him as he watched her. “If you want me to leave, I will. But I’d much rather stay. I’ll be good. I promise you.”

  Slanting light fell across his eyes, making the countless splinters of blue within the ice-pale irises glitter like a fine diamond. Against the angular male planes of his face, his eyes seemed impossibly vivid, fringed in lashes as dense and dark as midnight.

  With an effort Raine forced herself to look away from him. She had come out here to learn about the land, not a man. Even one as compelling as Cord Elliot.

  Gradually she saw the countryside rather than the man. The hills were empty, the houses few and distant. Twilight was slowly welling up from nameless ravines, shadow pools spreading and joining, forerunners of the darkness to come.

  Suddenly she was glad Cord was with her. Intentionally or not, he had yanked her out of her cozy, civilized world of equestrian competition. It had been a harsh reminder that there was another, much larger and colder world out there, a barbarian world where violence rather than safety was the rule.

  “What about your work, whatever it may be?” she asked finally. “Don’t you have something you have to do?”

  “My work is the same as yours.”

  She spun back toward him, unable to hide her astonishment. “You’re a rider?”

  “Not in the way you mean, not anymore.” The corner of his mouth lifted in a half-smile. He had been a rider once, broncs and mustangs and tough little cowponies, the sort of horses Raine had never ridden and probably never even seen. “But we’re both here for the same kind of work today—a quick recon of the cross-country course.”

  “If you’re not a rider, what are you looking for?”

  “Places to hide and seek, fields of fire and radio dead spaces, sniper angles and ambush sites.”

  Cord’s casual acceptance of such violence shocked Raine. She watched uneasily while he took a very small walkie-talkie unit out of his hip pocket, extended the telescoping antenna, and spoke quietly.

  “Thorne?” he said clearly. “Another hour. Same place.” Pause. “Right.”

  Raine didn’t understand the crackling that came from the flat black rectangle, but Cord did. He collapsed the antenna and replaced the unit in his pocket. Then he took her hand and set off toward a nearby hill. Its top overlooked the dry riverbed that wound through the Olympic endurance course.

  “What sort of things does a rider look for?” he asked.

  She was walking right next to him, but she didn’t really hear his question. She was still caught in the moment of stunned understanding when she realized the kind of world he lived in, a place where violence and treachery were expected rather than shocking.

  It was the world of her father.

  It was a world she hated.

  It was a world she had vowed never to enter again.

  “Raine?” Cord asked, wondering at the look on her face.

  She took a deep breath and began talking, telling him about riding the three-day event. And wondering why she bothered. The routine of her life could hardly have been more alien to him if he had stepped off a flying saucer.

  “Today, I’m just trying to get a feel for the country. It’s not at all like Virginia,” she added wryly, looking at the sunburned hills.

  Cord’s glance was quick, penetrating, but all he said was, “You don’t have a southern accent.”

  “My father is with the government. I’ve lived in too many places to have any kind of accent at all.”

  Exclusive boarding schools also didn’t encourage accents, but Raine didn’t go into that. Wealth was the least of the things that separated her from the man who could make her pulse stutter with a word, a touch, a glance.

  “What kind of thing are you looking for?” he asked. “Maybe I can help.”

  She hesitated, then shrugged. “I’d know what to expect if twenty horses went over the Virginia hills in front of me, but a dry land is different.” She frowned. “I’ll probably have to tape Dev’s legs more heavily than usual. In some places here the going will be harder than he’s used to.”

  “Watch the water jumps. There’s a lot of clay around. Slippery as sin.”

  She looked at Cord. “Are you sure you aren’t a rider?”

  “Not professionally, not since I was eighteen.”

  “You’re too big to be a jockey,” she said, assessing his six-foot-plus height. “Strong shoulders and legs, steady hands, and great coordination. Did you hunt?”

  His lips curved in silent laughter. “Yes, but not the way you mean. I ate what I shot, and when I rode, it was for pay as well as pleasure. Rodeo.”

  Intrigued, she waited for him to say more about his past. When he didn’t, she asked, “Why did you give it up?”

  “Vietnam,” he said briefly, opening and closing the subject with a single word.

  “And then?” she asked, unable to curb her curiosity about the man walking beside her, holding her hand as though they were on a date.

  “More of the same.”

  She waited, then persisted. “And then?”

  “There wasn’t any ‘and then’ for me.”

  Raine knew she should let it go. It was becoming clear to her that Cord’s life might very well be stamped TOP SECRET, DRO
P DEAD BEFORE SHARING.

  Like her father’s life.

  “So you’re still in the Army or Marines or whatever?” she asked, unable to stop herself, hungry for details about Cord’s past.

  He stopped and swung toward her, his eyes narrow. Silently he looked her over from her hair to her dusty hiking shoes.

  She looked back at him with the same mixture of intelligence and challenge, defiance and yearning that had made her childhood difficult for her and for anyone else who got in the way of something she really wanted.

  “Funny,” he said sardonically, “you don’t look like a cat. No furry ears or long tail or whiskers. But you’re as curious as any cat I’ve ever known.”

  “And you’re a man used to asking rather than answering questions.” Her voice was neutral and her eyes were as narrow as his.

  “Curiosity, and claws, too.” For a long moment he looked down at her oval face, at her hazel eyes with their surprising glints of gold and green, at the feminine mouth that was quick to smile but wasn’t smiling now. “What do you really want to know, Raine Smith?”

  Chapter 3

  “I . . .” Raine’s voice faded into silence.

  She couldn’t answer Cord’s question for the simple reason that she didn’t know what she wanted to ask him.

  She had seen men who moved like him before. Men walking discreetly through embassy halls. Men watching the crowd while the crowd watched a statesman speak. Men whose job it was to guard diplomats and foreign dignitaries and people whose names and titles and true functions were shrouded in files only a few officials were cleared to read. Men whose very lives were state secrets.

  Men like her father.

  She hadn’t thought about such men in years. She had never really been a part of her father’s life. He no longer was a part of hers. She loved him, but she didn’t know him at all. She rarely saw her parents for more than a few hours at a time. Despite mutual love, their lives just didn’t overlap.

  “I don’t know what question I was trying to ask,” she said finally. She shrugged. “It’s been a long time since I’ve been around a man like you.”

  “A man like me?” Cord smiled, but there was little humor in the hard line of his mouth or the narrow slash of white teeth. “One head, two arms, two hands, two feet, two legs—”

  “And one gun in the small of your back,” she cut in coolly. “Or do you carry it under your arm?”

  There was a flash of surprise before his face lost all expression. He watched her the way he had when he first saw her walking the hills, winter eyes and icy speculation.

  Raine tried to smile; she failed. It hurt too much. There was no logic in her pain. It was simply there, a fact as deep as her own heartbeat.

  “So I was right,” she said, her voice flat, weary. “You’re a man like my father, and like the men who guard him.”

  A man like her father, devoting his body and soul to an uneasy combination of ambition and idealism. A man like her father, who had little time for the wife he loved, and less time for his own children.

  “Your father?” Cord asked, his voice ruthlessly neutral. He was too disciplined to reveal anything now, even interest.

  She hesitated. Ordinarily she was careful not to mention her family. But there was nothing ordinary about the situation or the man walking beside her. Or her response to him.

  It would be better if Cord knew. Better to end the attraction now, retreating behind an armor of old wealth and impeccable, powerful names.

  “My father is Justin Chandler-Smith the Fourth,” Raine said, her voice soft, empty. “You probably won’t have heard his name. He’s what they used to call a ‘gray eminence,’ a man whose life is international politics, international power. When he talks, presidents, kings, and prime ministers listen.”

  With every word she spoke, she regretted the impulse that had brought the conversation around to her family. But it was too late now. It had been too late since she had discovered that Cord, too, lived a life that put work first and everything else last.

  “My father’s recommendations make or break countries and cultures,” she continued evenly. “He lives and breathes scenarios of human savagery, betrayal, and violence. It’s a horrifying way to live, always focused on the worst side of human nature, where men are viciously evil and genocide serves a political purpose.”

  “Somebody has to live in that world or it would be the only world left for everyone to live in,” Cord said evenly.

  “Yes.” Her voice was distant. “That’s what my father says, too.”

  “You don’t believe him?”

  She shrugged. “I’m sure he’s right. He always is.”

  Cord waited, but she said nothing more.

  Neither did he. Beneath his exterior calm, anger and adrenaline prowled through his veins like tigers through a hot night. With each word Raine spoke, he sensed her pulling back from him, turning away, shutting him out.

  He sensed it, but he couldn’t stop it. He could only push ahead and find out how much damage had been done, how much he would have to undo before she came willingly to his arms. He knew she was going to end up there. He was as certain of it as he was of his next breath.

  Because he needed her as much as he needed his next breath.

  “Go on,” he said neutrally.

  “About what?”

  “Whatever it is that’s making you look like you bit into a lemon.”

  Anger shot through her, the same anger she thought she had outgrown. But she hadn’t. She had just outrun it.

  “Fine,” she snarled, turning on him. “Dad is a stellar citizen and a boon to humanity. But did he have to live with the savages all the time? Wasn’t anything else important to him? His wife? His kids? Anything at all?”

  “Maybe it’s because his family was so very important to him that he gave himself to protecting them,” Cord said tightly. “Did you ever think of that?”

  “Maybe.” Her voice was flat. “And maybe he just likes the world of adrenaline and violence better than he likes the world of family and love.”

  “Is that the question you wanted to ask me? If I like the world I work in?”

  She tilted her chin and met his pale, fierce eyes without flinching. She spoke distinctly, clipping each word. “Yes. I do believe that’s the question I had in mind.”

  For a moment he hesitated, watching the woman who so disliked being associated with her father that she refused even to use Chandler-Smith’s full name.

  “My work is satisfying in many ways,” Cord said finally. “Exciting, at times. Alarms and excursions,” he continued, his voice lightly mocking, but the mockery was aimed at himself rather than at her. “Saving civilization from barbarians, winning and losing and fighting again, life and death as close together as bullets in a clip.”

  His voice faded as he remembered how it had been fifteen years ago, when he was twenty and everything had seemed so clear. Lately it seemed there was much more death than life, far more doubt than certainty, and nothing was black-and-white; and everything was a thousand shades of gray.

  In the past fifteen years, he had lost patience with people who believed in simple slogans, easy solutions, and the inevitable victory of civilization over barbarism. He had learned in the hardest possible way that happiness was a rare gift rather than a God-given right, that people had died and would continue to die so that others could live . . . and sometimes in the hours before dawn it seemed that the barbarians were winning because civilization just didn’t give a damn.

  Cord pulled his mind away from the dark downward spiral of his thoughts. He knew the danger of what he was thinking. He assessed his own emotions as unflinchingly as he assessed a dark street when he was outnumbered five to one. He was getting cold inside. He was feeling darkness without dawn, winter without spring.

  Burnout.

  Maybe it was time to let someone else take his place in the thin bloody line standing against the barbarians. Someone who found more excitement than disillus
ionment in the battle. Someone who didn’t feel cold all the way to his soul.

  Someone who hadn’t frightened a woman called Raine.

  “Cord?” Her voice was soft, unhappy.

  It was an effort for him to banish his bleak thoughts. Lately they came more often, and they took more energy to turn back. The day would come when he didn’t have the energy. When he didn’t care. Then he would go under and darkness would be all he knew.

  Raine sensed the bleak chill beneath his exterior calm. Without thinking about the past or the future, she reached out to him, unable to bear the thought that she had added to the sum of darkness in him, to the cold condensing like winter in his soul.

  “I’m sorry,” she said huskily. “I don’t have any right to attack you or your work. It’s not your fault that my father never had enough time for his family.”

  Her hand moved in a gesture of appeal that was also an apology. Her fingertips touched the silky black hair on his forearm, then settled against his warm skin with a feeling like coming home.

  “Despite how I just sounded,” she said, smiling unevenly, “I’m not naive or stupid. I know your work is necessary. It’s just that I don’t like thinking about it. I can’t live that way. It would destroy me.”

  Very gently he lifted her hand from his arm. He looked at the slender fingers with their clean, short nails. Slowly he ran his thumb over the calluses on her palm, legacy of a lifetime of holding reins and lead ropes.

  I can’t live that way. It would destroy me.

  He needed her. The certainty of that need shook him all the way to his soul.

  But if he took her, he would destroy her.

  Slowly he bent his head and kissed the center of her hand. The caress was as natural and warm as the late-afternoon light. And like the fading light, the touch told of endings rather than beginnings.

  “There are times I don’t like thinking about my work, either,” he said quietly. “So tell me about your work, Raine Smith-only, no Chandler. How did you come to be an Olympic equestrian?”

  The weariness and defeat she heard in Cord’s voice made her throat tighten with something very like grief. There was a deep current of longing in him that reached out to her, a need more compelling than simple sexual desire. She couldn’t help but respond to the hunger and strange gentleness in him, and to his deeply buried, nameless yearning that called out to her as surely as she called out to him.