And he knew the truth.

Cybele loved Charles. And it was glaringly obvious that Charles loved her, too.

Joe had merely been a pawn in a game he hadn't even known they all were playing.

He turned silently and walked out of the house. When he heard Charles follow him, he ran.

He couldn't remember much of that day, wasn't sure where he'd been, what he'd done. All he knew was that he came back. As much as he wanted to, he couldn't stay away. There were people depending on him, and one of them was Cybele.

Whom he loved. Still.

She was waiting for him in his room, curled up asleep on his bed, with all her clothes on.

He sat on the edge of the bed, and the movement of the mattress woke her. He hadn't lit a candle, but the moon shining in through the open window was bright enough to light her face.

"Giuseppe, I'm so sorry," she said. Her apology was sincere. Not that it made it hurt any less. "I'm not as terrible as you must think. I honestly thought last night would . . . I don't know . . . save me, maybe. Don't you see? I can have nothing I truly want. I thought if I could make myself want something I can have . . ." She bowed her head. "It was wrong and I'm sorry. The last thing I've ever wanted was to hurt you."

He was silent. What could he say?

"I do love you," she whispered. "Just not the way you want me to."

"Not the way you love Charles." He had to know for sure. Maybe hearing the truth would make him stop loving her. God, he wanted to stop loving her.

And she didn't deny it. "I'm sorry."

Anger sparked. Frustration. Jealousy. "He's married."

"I know."

"Is it his money that-"

"No!" She was vehement. "I don't care about that. It means nothing to me. I own this house now. I'm a wealthy woman, too."

"I don't understand why-"

"I don't, either," Cybele said. "All I know is he pretends so hard not to care about anything or anyone. He says he doesn't remember going back into the church, risking his life for that child. He says he'd never do it again, but I don't believe him."

"And you think he could . . . save you somehow?" His voice sounded rough and harsh to his own ears, but he had to know. He had to stop loving her.

"I don't know," she admitted. "But just sitting with him, just looking into his eyes, makes me feel both despair and hope. And it's been so long since I've felt anything but despair."

Her breathing was ragged, as if she were crying, but her face and her eyes were dry.

"Every breath I take hurts," she whispered. "It's so heavy, so suffocating. If it weren't for the anger and the hate I feel for the Nazis, I'm sure I would die.

"And I know I'm not alone. I know I'm not the only mother who lost a child in this war. There must be millions of us-" Her voice broke. "And oh, I think, what an army we'd make. All that outrage, all the anguish making us invincible. But then what? After we completely crush the Third Reich, what then? What will we have won?"

Joe couldn't answer.

"A chance for Marlise's baby to live more than two years. That's the best I can hope for. There's nothing I can do that will bring Michel back."

And still Joe couldn't speak.

"I'll win this war against the Nazis," she told him fiercely. "I'll win or I'll die. But when I win, I'll die anyway, because without an enemy to hate, I'll be completely alone with only the despair."

"You're not alone," he told her. "I'm here." He reached for her, but she pulled away. She didn't want him. God, that hurt.

"I wish I could love you," she said wistfully.

When Joe looked at Cybele, he, too, felt hope with his despair, despite his hurt, despite his anger. "Maybe someday you will."

She gazed at him a moment longer, her beautiful eyes ancient looking and weary, as if she foresaw her own future and believed she had no someday to look forward to.

She closed his door gently behind her, leaving him loving her still, and suspecting that he always would.

Chapter 14.

KELLY CAME INTO her bedroom at full speed, singing a pop tune at the top of her lungs-baby, keep me up all night.

And taking off her clothes.

Tom was at her computer, and he didn't have time to warn her he was there. She spotted him at the exact same moment she flung her dress over what should have been her computer chair, hitting him full in the face.

"Oh, my God!"

She snatched her dress back, holding it up in front of her like a shield. As a dress, it was exceptional. However, as a shield, it didn't function well at all.

"Sorry," he said, nearly knocking the chair over as he stood up. "I needed to get on-line, and I didn't think you'd mind. I'll get out of your way." He turned back to the computer. "Just let me-"

"Wait." Kelly moved closer to the computer, looking at the picture of the Merchant that was on the screen. "Is that . . . him?"

When she stood next to Tom, the dress worked even less well as a shield. Her entire back half was exposed. He forced himself not to look, but his peripheral vision was too damn good. She was wearing her trademark thong. In dark purple satin. Against pale skin. Dear God.

Tom sat back down so that she was slightly behind him, out of peripheral range.

Yes, they were having dinner tonight. Yes, he'd kissed her again while they were in Boston. Yes, he was intending to kiss her again tonight. And yes, very big yes, he wanted to explore all the wonderful possibilities of where this mutual attraction could go.

One of the possible places was back here, in Kelly's room, with the door tightly shut the way it was, with Kelly in only her underwear, also the way she was.

But there was a lot of talking that needed to be done before they reached that place. And as much as every cell in his body was screaming for him to stand up right now and take her into his arms, to slide his hands all over all that smooth, perfect skin, communication was key. The talking part had to come first.

It had to.

She trusted him.

She was looking at the picture on the computer screen, waiting for him to answer her question. Is that him?

Tom cleared his throat. "Yeah, that's um . . ." What's his name. "The Merchant. Before plastic surgery."

"Can I see what he looks like after plastic surgery?" she asked.

"No," he said, "I don't have any recent photos of him. He's been presumed dead since '96. I'm assuming he had his face changed sometime between then and now."

She moved back into his peripheral vision range, looking at him instead of the screen. At this proximity, her eyes were an illegal shade of blue. "Assuming?"

"It's what I would've done if I were him." He tried not to sound desperate. "Can you do me a huge favor and put on a robe?"

She gave him what he was starting to recognize as her innocent face. The wide-eyed one that really wasn't very innocent at all. She was enjoying this. "You mean the one you're sitting on?"

Tom stood up, and she pulled something that might've been a bathrobe off the back of the chair, showering the floor with a rain of lingerie.

Of course.

It was bad enough to sit here surrounded by it when she wasn't in the room. But when she was there . . . It was like finding out that Pollyanna modeled for Victoria's Secret on the sly. And then being invited to a photo shoot.

"Whoops," she said, "that's the clean stuff."

She slipped on the robe-if you could call something that was made of very thin cotton and came only to midthigh a robe-tossed her dress onto her bed this time, then gathered up the "clean stuff," throwing it into her top dresser drawer. "I don't suppose you've seen the belt anywhere, have you?"

Dear Christ, there was no belt to this so-called robe. "No, but I bet if you give Mrs. Lerner a miner's helmet and forty-eight hours, she could find it."

Kelly laughed. "It's not that bad in here."

"Do you keep anything in your closet? I mean, what's the point in even having a closet?"

"I'm very neat back home-in my apartment in Boston." She rummaged through the piles of clothing on a chair next to her bed. "I think I've been resisting putting my clothes away because if I do, that's like admitting I'm really living here again. Dealing with my father's illness is hard enough without having to focus on my personal failure issues at the same time."

She found the belt-thank you, Lord Jesus-and threaded it through the loops of her robe, tying it shut in the front.

"Failure issues?" he echoed.

"Pass," she said. "That's too pathetic a topic-and I'm in too good a mood. And my mood got even better when I got home and found my father sitting out on the deck with Joe. Do you know they spent the entire day together-without anyone needing extra oxygen?"

Tom let her change the subject. He had plenty of failure issues of his own, and God knows he didn't want to talk about them right now. The fact that his CAT scan had come back normal, that there wasn't an obvious if not easy fix to his physical problems, was also high on his list of topics to avoid.

"Yeah, they spent the early part of the afternoon staking out the hotel for me again. I told them it could be just a waste of time, but they don't care. They sit in the hotel, playing chess, watching for any suspicious-looking men." Tom laughed. "Kind of a vague order, but they're okay with it. I think they like having an excuse to hang together. And I've told them I won't let them help me if they fight. So they don't fight. At least not in front of me."

"Bless you," Kelly said. "I can't tell you how glad I am you're here."

Her eyes were too warm, and that robe was too short. Tom tried not to look at her legs.

Talk about failure issues. He was failing completely.

He had to get out of here. Fast. Before he kissed her again. Which would be fine later, downstairs, when they were both fully dressed. But as for right now . . .

"Tell me more about the Merchant." Before he could stand up and lunge for the door, Kelly blocked his way and sent the conversation rocketing back in another direction. "Do you have any other photos? Anything that really shows his eyes?"

She came up right behind him, spinning his chair back so he faced the computer, resting her hands possessively on his shoulders. He liked that she did that. Too much. Yes, he had to get out of here.

"Even if he had plastic surgery, he can't really change his eyes, can he?" she asked. "I mean, he could change the color, sure, but color's just a small part of it. The intensity would stay the same. Look at his eyes in this picture-scary."

She started rubbing his shoulders, and Tom knew damn well that he wasn't going anywhere. Especially not when her hands were cool against the back of his neck, her fingers in his hair.

Tom used the mouse to click through a series of pictures. The aftermath of the Paris embassy bombing. Five devastating cafe bombings in Afghanistan, a bus bombing in Israel. And then the Merchant. Most of the photos were taken from a distance, slightly blurred. But the last one was again in close-up. WildCard had done his computer voodoo on it, enhancing it, sharpening the edges. It was definitely the Merchant, smiling at the woman who was to become his wife, taken about a year before Paris.

Kelly leaned closer, and he could feel the softness of her body against his shoulder. He could smell her sweet scent. It wasn't perfume-it was probably some kind of lotion or maybe her shampoo or soap. Whatever it was, it made her smell delicious.

"In this one, he doesn't look like a monster," she said. "He looks like a regular man. A man who likes this woman-look at the way he's looking at her. He's crazy about her. He can't be all bad."

"He's claimed responsibility for the deaths of over nine hundred people," Tom told her.

"God," she breathed, taking an even closer look. "No wonder you're worried he's still out there. I could see how someone like that might stay on your mind."

"I keep thinking he's the perfect man to succeed with a full-scale, high death-toll terrorist attack here in the U.S. He's not some amateur-he knows what he's doing. Yet he's not being watched twenty-fourseven like all the other big league players we do know about. He's invisible because he's on everyone's presumed-dead list. It was probably laughably easy for him to get into the country." He shook his head. "Unless he's on everyone's presumed-dead list because he is dead."

Which meant Tom was the dangerous one, the complete fucking nut job who was going to start killing innocent salesmen from Des Moines or Cincinnati, imagining they were hard-core terrorists.

Kelly was rubbing his neck again, her fingers strong and cool against the heat of his skin. It was definitely time to leave before his eyes started rolling back in his head, before he came to the conclusion that talking was way overrated, that what he really wanted was a whole lot of nonverbal communication, and who really gave a damn about trust anyway?

It took a great deal of effort, but Tom cleared the screen, signed off the computer, and slipped out of both her hands and the chair. "I'm going to go take a shower." His voice sounded as ragged as if he'd just run ten miles, fast.

Her robe met in the front in a V that was growing deeper every moment. He caught a flash of dark purple against the soft, pale swell of her breasts, and as he looked up into her eyes, he knew the battle was lost.

She knew it, too.

He lunged for her as she reached for him, and then, God, she was in his arms and he was kissing her.

And she was kissing him back just as hungrily, her soft body tight against his.

Tom caught himself before he peeled her robe from her shoulders, forcing himself to slow down, to kiss her more tenderly and less ferociously, to stay in control, to keep from devouring her whole.

She was everything he wanted, everything he'd always stayed far, far away from.

Dinner first.

Talking first.

She trusted him.

Breathing hard, he pulled back. He could see the promise of paradise in her eyes. But the woman trusted him, dammit. "I'll meet you on the deck for dinner in about an hour, okay?"